Anyone Playing Arcana Unearthed?

[The Souljourner]

A member of my D&D group suggested starting a campaign using Arcana Unearthed as the basic rules, and I was wondering if anyone has played it, and what they thought of it.

I have the book, but after skimming it a few times, I haven't really looked at it too thoroughly, but the chance to play a D&D-like game that is slightly different sounded amazingly refreshing. Seeing as I'm in something like 6 campaigns right now, of varying frequency, generic old D&D has lost some of its glamor.

So... what are the good, the bad, and the ugly of AU?

-The Souljourner

 

[EricNoah]

I've been running an AU campaign for a few months now and so far we're having fun. Some of the fun is from it being all new and fresh, yet familiar; I have also taken this opportunity to try out some house rules regarding healing, subdual damage, the heal skill, herbal medicines, and a few other related topics, and that has meshed in pretty well with some of the core AU rules & flavor tweaks.

You can read about my ongoing campaign and find some electronic tools that can help you on my website: http://webpages.charter.net/ericnoah/noahrpg/#Arcana

I'm gonna slide this over to the "right" forum and hopefully you'll get some replies in addition to mine.

 

[SSquirrel]

Ok, I'm going to be running Monte's 2 free adventures soon and probably start a campaign afterwards. Not exactly what you asked for, but I've been making people ooh and ahh over this book since I got it *grin*

IMO, the strengths of the game are that it IS so different from 3E. Magic is MUCh more flexible. Slightly more complex ini ts own way, but once you understand it it actually feels easier and makes more sense. He sort of ties some of the flexibility of the Whee lof Time's channeling system into things the way you can weave lower spell slots into higher ones and vice versa, which I thought was very cool.

I like that only humans crossover and the other races and all the classes are totally new. If we have the 4 basic classes (Fighter, Wizard, Thief, Cleric) in this game and new ones beyond those, people would fall back on old standard and it would be boring.

I really like how pretty the book is and that everything in The Diamond Throne sourcebook is very useful...adventure ideas abound. Monte has been very god about giving lots of cool stuff away for it all and www.thediamondthrone.com also has a multitude of goodies for your perusal.

Honestly, I really want to PLAY not RUN this game, but I will happily run the game if it means that I get to see all of this in action.

Hagen