Any love for the Scarred Lands?

[Treebore]

My favorite 3.x edition setting - I liked it more than Midnight, Dawnforge, and probably Eberron, although they are comparable, I think. Never ran or played in it, though, just bought the setting books.

I don't know, they definitely have enough differences to check out each. Midnight has its own cool concept, as well as Dawnforge, and even Eberron, even though that one failed to interest me. Only reason I have so much of Eberron, maybe even everything, is because I got them so cheap. I believe it worked out to $3/book, and even Eberron interested me that much.

 

[amnuxoll]

Another SL fan here. I have most of the books as well. The characters and places just feel much more believable to me than they do with other settings. Great fluff.

 

[Keeper of Secrets]

I loved the setting when it first came out due to the background material. The titans and godswar angle reminded me so much of Greek myth and it sparked my imagination. I lost that the more they added to the setting. It seemed to go in the opposite direction, and I lost interest. Sold most of my books off after they stopped doing the books.

I do think the idea of 'Greek Mythology' seems like what they were going for. Much as I did not like some of how their cosmology was executed, what I certainly DID appreciate is how far they tried to go with it and generate a really detailed story with their gods. Mountain ranges the results of fights, blighted areas due to some god's poisoned blood and so on. It made it feel much more 'real.'

 

[DragonLancer]

I do think the idea of 'Greek Mythology' seems like what they were going for. Much as I did not like some of how their cosmology was executed, what I certainly DID appreciate is how far they tried to go with it and generate a really detailed story with their gods. Mountain ranges the results of fights, blighted areas due to some god's poisoned blood and so on. It made it feel much more 'real.'

I agree. I don't think that was the feel they were after. The Creature Collection was one of the first 3.0 books I bought after the core, and it had the initial hook blurb. The combination of that imagery (in my mind) with the whole wasted landscape really hooked me. I think that what the blurb spoke to me about was very different to where WW took the setting.

But don't get me wrong. I had a great time running SL campaigns, and for a time helped out on the Fangsfall chat site they put up. Was good times.

 

[Holy Bovine]

Solid recommendations!

Also, wasn't that Mithril City supplement part of SL? Or is that another setting? There were several books set around swamps (Blood Bayou?) that ended up having a lot of cool ideas and a couple of great villains in them.

Yup - Mithril: City of the Golem and Blood Bayou (with lots of details of the Jack of Tears an insanely awesome villain who led the Carnival of....something - the name escapes me right now but it was filled with creepy "carnies" who ranged from heron-men to psychotic assassins) both excellent. Most of the monsters for the Carnival appeared in Creature Collection I & II (to the OP - if you are seeking out the CCs make sure to get the revised version of the CC I, the first one was so full of mistakes and bad art as to be laughable).

There was also a supplement on the Blood Sea and the Hornsaw Forest that were very well done.

 

[Remus Lupin]

It's driving me crazy that I can't find my box with all my hard cover Scarred Lands stuff in it. This thread is making me want to look through all of those books again!

 

[Zelda Themelin]

I do think the idea of 'Greek Mythology' seems like what they were going for. Much as I did not like some of how their cosmology was executed, what I certainly DID appreciate is how far they tried to go with it and generate a really detailed story with their gods. Mountain ranges the results of fights, blighted areas due to some god's poisoned blood and so on. It made it feel much more 'real.'

Yes, there was that kinda clear theme at beginning. Then they started to give writing to freelancers who didn't kinda get it. They started to lost their theme. Major plot in books for f* sake was returning forsaken elves to normal boring elves. Sure some later books were still well written, they had just forsaken original Scarn.

Edge of Infiny had some cool new stuff, but IMO it was worst book ever, because how it refered to older stuff. It got numerous stuff plain wrong, like Lethene's place of imprisoment suddenly was not Abyss. And Enkili was referred as having some insanity aspect (must be some attitude to CN alignment), but it Scarn that aspect was Belsameth's.

Divane planes sounded really boring in that book too. I am speaking of content not writing skill here. It felt like someone had thrown little Scarn names in planar system borrowed mostly from original Manual of Planes (first edition AD&D).

Star things were new, and thus addad something there. That book was big missed opportunitity. Then again, at that point White Wolf was basicly already made decision to end Scarred Lands line.

I think Golarion book about planes is much better. Much more inspiring.

Scarred lands was in beginning very unique fantasy world. At the end, if you keep all sutff published as it you'd get something different. And much less cool. But many books have IMO much good to steal, execpt for Faintless and Forsaken, but that's me.

 

[Zelda Themelin]

Yup - Mithril: City of the Golem and Blood Bayou (with lots of details of the Jack of Tears an insanely awesome villain who led the Carnival of....something - the name escapes me right now but it was filled

Carnival of Shadows

 

[ssampier]

Scarred Lands (Scarn) had some really cool ideas in it. The implementation of those could be hit/miss, however.

I think the biggest mistake was the Ghelspad book. Ghelspad should have been the setting bible essentially, but you needed at least Divine & Defeated, GM Screen (for settings races), and one or both Creature Collection to really get the setting.

The production values of the book weren't great either with some so-so art in most books and black and white throughout.

If a company similar to Paizo wanted to polish and update the rules I would buy it.

 

[Keeper of Secrets]

I really liked Divine and Defeated and I liked all their critter books. But as mentioned - correctly - they kind of lost some of the editorial control over things and then they seemed to slide downhill.