Any love for the Scarred Lands?


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Banshee16

First Post
I have several of the books, but have never played. I really liked the more mature, darker nature of the world, and the Gods vs. Titans angle.

Among my favourite books were the one about the dwarves and drow, and the one about the Asaathi. I still feel the Asaathi are about the coolest take on a serpent people race that I've seen in any setting.

I stopped following the setting later on, as I became more interested in Midnight, but I still liked much of the material.

Some of it is a little flaky in balance. Some of the spells in Relics and Rituals were a little off, but many were very flavourful and useful. So the entire books have to be looked at. They gave us some pretty useful ritual rules among other things that to me still stand tops among any D&D ruleset for showing how cooperative spellcasting could work.

Some interesting chronomancy type spells in there as well, and others that filled gaping holes. There was one that allowed a spellcaster to clear the space around them....i think it basically bull rushed *anyone* standing adjacent to them.....sort of like an old spell from the Diablo II game.

Banshee
 

Banshee16

First Post
Oh - that is another gem of a book. The Prestige Class (some kind of rune-themed wizard) is a little wonky but the fluff text is top notch. Really nice maps of the undermountain city in that too. Basically some well written 'classic' mountain dwelling dwarfs.

I liked both the Rune Wizard and Tatoo Adept. They actually made the idea of creating a Sartan or Patry viable.

I loved the idea of tatoo magic in Scarred Lands, and never liked the way WoTC did it, where they were expendable tatoos that vanished off your body. Instead, they`re like permanent magic items with a set number of daily uses, and a penalty that is incurred after using them.

And the idea of a rune wizard who doesn`t carry around a bunch of sticks and stones with runes carved upon them, but instead traces out glowing sigils of light that hang in midair has a really cool vibe.

Banshee
 

Rechan

Adventurer
To me, SL is/was a DM idea buffet. Influenced a campaign idea I had of the world starting to go to hell. I'd love tose the Titanswar there, but that's a little more overt than what I was going for. But it makes for good history.

While I didn't like 80% of what was in the Creature Collections, I loved the setting when it first came out. Never got the chance to play, collected some of the books.

Loved the Titaswar. The skaven- I mean slitherin and how they differ based on who fed on what titan is just awesoe. Also loved the Carnival of Shadows. Really I need to sit down with the Hornsaw book and the Blood Bayou book.

One thing that makes me grumpy is how I just can't read most of the fancy fonts in Hollowfaust. I know there's richness there, it's just illegible to me.

But SL felt so much like a world where you needed to be a hero, a world that needed you, and that it was far outsidethe comfort zone of most Fantasy which is mostly OK except for the monsters at the edges and the cacklin villains.
 

Rechan

Adventurer
Huh. I never made the Exalted / SL connection.

I think 4e is more Exalted d20 though. The Primordials/Gods fight is pretty, um, obvious. And 4e PCs feel more like Exalts, especially with how much more badass they are than NPCs.

I love Exalted; my best player experience/DM training came from the campaign I played in. Every game I run has Exalted-style Spirits in it, and that's how I interpret the primal spirits in 4e. I also love the big feeling of being a PC, and also that the point is to go out and make a Dfference.
 

Holy Bovine

First Post
I liked both the Rune Wizard and Tatoo Adept. They actually made the idea of creating a Sartan or Patry viable.

I loved the idea of tatoo magic in Scarred Lands, and never liked the way WoTC did it, where they were expendable tatoos that vanished off your body. Instead, they`re like permanent magic items with a set number of daily uses, and a penalty that is incurred after using them.

And the idea of a rune wizard who doesn`t carry around a bunch of sticks and stones with runes carved upon them, but instead traces out glowing sigils of light that hang in midair has a really cool vibe.

Banshee

Oh don't get me wrong - I liked the Rune WIzard just fine. It actual game play it proved to have some odd quirks but nothing game breaking. Keep in mind this is from my memories of 5-6 years ago so I might even have that wrong.

One thing that makes me grumpy is how I just can't read most of the fancy fonts in Hollowfaust. I know there's richness there, it's just illegible to me.

??? What fancy fonts are you referring too? Except for the very beginning when the book has a few pages of "oldy tyme script" written on "parchment" (which is nearly illegible to me as well) the rest of the book is a pretty standard looking font (in fact according to Word it is New Times Roman).

But SL felt so much like a world where you needed to be a hero, a world that needed you, and that it was far outside the comfort zone of most Fantasy which is mostly OK except for the monsters at the edges and the cacklin villains.

Oh yeah - that is what drew me to SL in the first place. The idea of the world being in a fragile state where there are no great heroes left in the world and it is up to the PCs to become those heroes. The idea of the good races having little more than city-states and small enclaves holding back the surrounding tide of darkness really appealed to me and my group.
 



Rechan

Adventurer
The one thing about the Scarred Lands that from the get-go made me go "Really, really?!" was the bit in Relics & Rituals about magic resulting in excess heat, so people need to cast spells in the least clothes as possible.

That's some serious fan service, a "Let's get some hot chicks naked" rule. It specifically talks about dark elf sorceresses in leather shorts and metal bras.

What this means though, is that the guy in the party playing the wizard is routinely stripping. It also meant that every arcane spellcaster with bad charisma, from hags to Titanspawn, are getting nekkid.

The horror. The horror.
 

Barastrondo

First Post
What this means though, is that the guy in the party playing the wizard is routinely stripping. It also meant that every arcane spellcaster with bad charisma, from hags to Titanspawn, are getting nekkid.

The horror. The horror.

There's a reason that the necromancers of Hollowfaust invented coldweave as quick as they did. Justifying the trope of half-naked sorceresses is all well and good, but you can't let it stand in the way of fashion.
 

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