Ancient Empires - a book of general interest?

[MerricB]

For the first time, the secrets of past empires of the Forgotten Realms world are chronicled in one comprehensive sourcebook. For players, this book contains new options for characters wishing to delve into ancient ruins, including new feats, prestige classes, magic, and equipment. For Dungeon Masters, this book contains new material associated with ruins, including rules for how to build and sustain a ruin-based campaign, more than a dozen detailed adventure sites with maps, and new monsters and artifacts.

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=products/fracc/177380000

(February 2005, 192 page hardcover, $29.95)

Interesting - "this book contains new material associated with ruins, including rules for how to build and sustain a ruin-based campaign". I wonder how applicable this will be to non-FR campaigns? I don't normally get FR books. Indeed, I only own the FRCS and Monsters of Faerun (the latter hardly qualifying), but this one sounds very tempting.

I'm a dungeon delver at heart, I guess.

Cheers!

 

[Knight Otu]

I guess that the designers attempt to make the Realms products more attractive to "looters", who buy the books to see what they can add to their campaign. That's an impression I got from Underdark, and I hear that Serpent Kingdoms is similar. It may very well be true for Ancient Empires, as well. And we have a quote already for the book:

[font=&quot]Post from Rich Baker on Ancient Empires in this thread: http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=282525

[font=&quot]yeah, we are doing a book called Ancient Empires. The authors are Travis Stout and Ed Bonny. I handled the mechanical development work on the book, while Eric Boyd and George Krashos handled a Herculean job of continuity-checking and tweaking.

The main features of the book include:
- A chapter on feats and prestige classes themed around ancient empires.
- A chapter on monsters you often find in or around ancient ruins (which, coincidentally enough, is pretty much the PGtoF's cut monster chapter, with a few new additons).
- A chapter each on half-a-dozen key eras/regions/groupings of fallen empires.
- A number of ready-to-play adventure sites themed around the ruins.
- A brief look at some of the more important "dead" gods, and (at last) a mechanical explanation for why some still have clerics running around.
- A map of Faerun as it appeared in -676 DR, 2000 years ago.[/font][font=&quot]

Ed Bonny has also posted a bit in the 2005 products thread.
[/font][/font]

 

[Hand of Evil]

While of interest, it is Forgotten Realms and while not a bad thing I do think it would have been better for them to provide a general book to be used by one and all.

 

[Arnwyn]

I wonder how applicable this will be to non-FR campaigns?

My answer would be "who cares?". If it has the FR logo, I expect the FR setting to be fully integrated into it. If it's not, then don't include the logo.

Of course, I'm an all-or-nothing kind of guy when it comes to campaign setting material. Either fully integrate the setting into the material, or don't bother making it a setting book in the first place.

 

[Desdichado]

I'm more interested in the idea of exploring ancient FR history than I am of integrating a campaign around ruins. Contrary to MerricB, I most definately am not a dungeon delver at heart!