Anyone Running Mercenaries Capaigns?

[Crothian]

Is the AEG book worth it? It seemed a bit overpriced to me, but then I am straying from AEG after buying many of their products.

h

It is probably one of their best products to date. It's very informative and organized.

Here is Psion's review of it

http://www.enworld.org/d20reviews.asp?sub=yes&where=active&reviewer=Psion&product=mee65

 

[Psion]

Originally posted by hellbender
Is the AEG book worth it? It seemed a bit overpriced to me

If you think that Mercenaries is overpriced, you haven't a clue about pricing of d20 system products. It is 256 pages for 30 bucks. The only better price per page you are going to get is out of books with significantly lower production values (like Twin Crowns and Mystic Warriors) and it has denser type and better art than most previous AEG books.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Right now I'm just trying t oform some ideas.

I'm thinking the group itself will be large with the characters rolls becoming more important as they gain levels.

Magic and racial selection will probably be very limited. No spellcasting classes I'm thinking. Just a thought. Without mages and priests, lare scale combat becomes more dangerous and fighting itself more deadly.

 

[The Cardinal]

read:

Glen Cook's Black Company

Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen

Mary Gentle's Ash

Steven Pressfield's Gates of Fire

Xenophon's Anabasis

 

[JoeGKushner]

So far the anime DVD Berserk has had the most 'inspiring' effect on me.

I'm reading Glen Cook's first book, Black Company, the one with Soul Catcher on the cover. Good book but it moves way too fast for a RPG style game. Most of the characters look like they'd be NPCs. "Yeah, Raven does this. One Eye does this. Goblin does this. What do you do?" "I write it down and hope that I'm not killed."

Good writing but I don't know about RPG inspiration outside of mood and theme.

 

[hellbender]

If you think that Mercenaries is overpriced, you haven't a clue about pricing of d20 system products. It is 256 pages for 30 bucks. The only better price per page you are going to get is out of books with significantly lower production values (like Twin Crowns and Mystic Warriors) and it has denser type and better art than most previous AEG books.

It is actually quite a bit less about my having 'a clue' about the pricing of a d20 system product, and the content of any product. I thumbed through the Mercenaries book by AEG. After purchasing Evil and Monster, I find AEG basically has hollow books. I don't care if I get 1000 pages for $30, if most of it is redundant and/or full of errata, then where is the value?

The art inside Mercenaries was abyssmal as well, and skimming it I didn't really see any information that caught my eye, or that an average DM couldn't figure out on their own. Therefore, I felt justified in asking if anyone else found it of use.


hellbender (not nearly as clueless as one may think)

 

[JoeGKushner]

I haven't picked up mercenaries yet but I do have some mixed feelings about it based on borrowing my friend's book.

1. Repeat material. Not only from AEG books but by SRD.

2. There is some fantastic art there but also some horrible art. AEG needs to cut the ties that keep the bad artist there. I recognize his style from old L5R products and while it may be good for something that requires some okay ink drawings, a lot of the art in Mercenaries kicked up the demands. By including the bad illustrations, it just seems kinda like shooting yourself in the foot.

3. Psion, you seem pleased with it, but gave it a 4. Are the problems I mention above the reason why? Seems that you're pretty pro but havent' stated what it would need to get a 5.

 

[Psion]

he art inside Mercenaries was abyssmal as well, and skimming it
(...)
hellbender (not nearly as clueless as one may think)

Ah, you "skimmed it", so ergo you are not clueless, eh? *coff*

 

[Psion]

3. Psion, you seem pleased with it, but gave it a 4.

I don't see that it's a "but" statement. If I am pleased by a product, an above average rating should be sufficient to say so.

Are the problems I mention above the reason why? Seems that you're pretty pro but havent' stated what it would need to get a 5.

Well, since you know I gave it a 4, you must have read my review, right? As stated there, I felt like many of the class concepts were redundant (with no less than three ranger knock-offs) and the feat selection wasn't the greatest.

Still, I could see that this could be a very useful product with lots of material that you could quickly drop into a game, so I see a lot of utility to it.

It takes more than that to get a "5" from me. 5's require a certain "wow" factor, an immediate sense that I must use it in my game (or that I would were I running a game that fit the concept of the product) in addition to good rules and ideas execution.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Thanks for the reply Psion. I sometimes feel that the rating system we have here on EN World is a little too low. 1-5 is an okay scale but then if you see something like Mercenaries and its got a lot of great stuff with some problems, giving it a 4 seems... weak? I had the same problem with Book of the Righteous. There was some stuff in there I thought was missing but I thought everything else more than made up for it. If we had a higher scale rating like 1-10, I would've probably given that a 9.

Still reading Black Company and have picked up the other books on the strength of this one. I've heard that the order is a little off though from their published dates, much like Elric and Conan. Is there a set way to read them?