Arcana Unearthed: Pro's and Con's

[WayneLigon]

Hmm. Five points, three of which deal with layout and art. Really, layout just doesn't matter all that much to me as long as the result is clean and easy to read. AU has both of those, so there's no downside there for me. The black-and-white art didn't disappoint me.

but this is a $30 hardcover from a major RPG publisher. I expect top-notch production values!

Oh, we expect that now, do we? Malhavok is still a small publisher, and this is the first hardcover release. Seems the boom in color production has spoiled a few people

I'm happy not to get games in ziplocked baggies anymore. The hardback hasn't broken apart on me, which is more than I can say for some other 'major RPG publishers' out there.

There's a fine balance in dealing with new races. I've avoided most race books like the plague, since they seem filled with things that I cannot imagine anyone playing or they deal with higher-level creatures that don't do me any good if I'm starting a game at 1st level. There were plenty of fine RPG books that tried to take the 'no elves, all unique races' approach, and without exception they're no where to be seen today.

Most people need a 'hook' into a character, and it's a lot easier to relate to a race that at least resembles something terrestrial. Without the human form, that doesn't leave a lot of leeway except to look at animal forms. It's a nice break from 'elf, dwarf, orc, token weird race' that other games have.

 

[Blacksad]

Monte actually came up with this idea many months before Savage Species was released (before they announced racial levels).

err, in fact many fans came up with that idea when D&D 3.0 was released: it was the conversion of the humanoid handbook for AD&D 2nd Ed.

 

[Desdichado]

CON'S
1. Cover art is uninspired and fails to excite any emotion except "what were they thinking? it looks like GURPS!"

And looked a darn sight better than 3e or 3.5, in my opinion. Do those covers inspire you?

2. Interior art is poor to mediocre at best; the item, weapon and armor illo's are particularly bad rip-offs of the ones in the PHB.

Interior art was one of the strong points. Give me more Sam Wood any day. And he seemed to do the bulk of the art.

3. Layout is poor. No alternating shaded bars separate listings in tables, making tables hard to read. The book is so unappealing that it becomes a chore just to crack open and read. I get bored just looking at it, and only one font was used, making it harder to find any information. The interior was all black and white, and color would have helped immensely. The paper stock was nice, but not as nice as the WoTC books. If this were just another low-rent pdf, I wouldn't complain, but this is a $30 hardcover from a major RPG publisher. I expect top-notch production values!

You got'em too. AU has one of my favorite layouts. I really like the look of the book, and I'm especially pleased that it doesn't look like the 3e/3.5 books rehashed in terms of layout.

4. Monte's ideas for his Diamond Throne world are hackneyed and cliche. Dragon Men? Lion men? Dog men? Faeries? Giants? Hardly original. In fact, I absolutely HATED practically every idea he had for his DT campaign setting. Really amateur stuff anyone could have dreamt up after watching an episode of HE-MAN or THUNDERCATS. Really, really bad, as in the only reason it would ever see the light of day is because of Monte's name recognition bad. YMMV, IMO, and all the standard disclaimers apply. But I think it stinks. Did I mention it was bad? LOL. This has nothing to do wth Monte's ability as a game rules designer, but on his ability (or rather lack thereof) to create a FRESH and EXCITING setting.

What exactly are you comparing it to when you call it cliched and hackneyed? D&D? I sincerely hope not. There's a fine balance between doing something fresh and doing something that's just too "out there." I think he hit that line pretty well. I'm not crazy about dog men and cat men (although if they'd had bunnymen, I'd have made a character called Echo that hung around with them ) but those are recognizable fantasy archetypes that are considerably less hackneyed and cliched that retreads of Tolkien's work.

5. Too much reprinting of material from the PHB, supposedly so the book could be self-contained, but it just feels like cheap filler to pad out the page count, and thus keep the price high.

I dunno -- at the very least you should have expected this to true.

PRO'S
On the positive side, there are:
1. Some cool new feats

Hurray! Haven't seen those in any d20 publication before.

2. Some cool new spells and spell templates

I'm always on the market for a new spell system, being highly disatisfied with D&D standard after all these years.

3. Some cool new classes and the racial class concept (borrowed from Savage Species)

Or perhaps the other way around, but who's counting.

4. Some nice revisions of existing spells (such as raise dead).

That's not something I'd go out of my way to buy a new book for.

5. No restrictive, artificial alignment system!

That's easy enough to do anyway without buying a new book!

I guess I disagree with nearly everything you said. The things you don't like I think are strengths of the book, the things you do like I'm generally indifferent about.

 

[Mythtify]

I agree that the book itself looks boring. The excuse that Monte is a small publisher, so excuse the poor production values does not stand up. Just look at the Monsternomican. It comes from a small publisher, it is hard back, its 240 pages, all black and white, priced at $29.95 and is absoultely fantastic to just look at. Small publishers, even in all black and white, can put out products that compare with Wotc in term of presentation and production value.

I am also disappointed in the reprinting of rules I already have. Even if I didn't have a 3.0 or 3.5 phb, I can get the srd for free.
This is one of the reasons I won't buy books like the Everquest RPG, or Warcraft RPG.


I guess I am in the minortiy, I enjoy the races a lot. They may be common in the fantasy in genral, but I can't think of very many RPGs that persesnted races like this as player characters. What game has presented Giants, cat people, fey, and lizardmen as player characters before?

I know that in second edtion, and in third edtion, you have all sorts of rules to allow any monster to be a player character. There is a difference between presenting rules for monsters as characters, and presenting a race as a core race.

Giants: in most rpgs giants are presented as cruel and dumb. AU's giants are not either. They are realy a races with a paladin mindset. They see there postion in the world is to protect all the rest of the world, requardless of what the rest of the world may think about it.

Mojh: Your typical lizardmen are presented as tribal and savage. The Mojh arent even lizard men, but transformed human. As a race they are not savage but scholarly.

Of all the races, the opnly one that I am not realy intrigued with are the sibeccai. They don't do anything for me. Then again, I have never been interested in dwarfs and gnomes enough to play them either.

 

[Teflon Billy]

Huh!

I have to say I'm kind of surprised by all of the hate for Dog Men and Cat Men. I think they are pretty cool ideas that I will likley be adding to my campaign (assuming I ever manage to get AU--see my Gen Con fiasco)

Is it an anti-furry thing? If so, consider me onside. Nothing in this hobby is worse than a furry in my opinion.

But Anthropomorphic Animal-men have along tradition in fantasy literature, and I think there is a good place for them in Monte's book.

We were promised fresh material, and I don't consider Animal-Men to be such a outlandish stretch as to be called "out there" or "new, just for the sake of being new"

And I agree with whoever said that Toren Atkinson and Sam Wood should work more

Sketchy-Blotchy guy? Not to my taste.

 

[garyh]

I am also disappointed in the reprinting of rules I already have. Even if I didn't have a 3.0 or 3.5 phb, I can get the srd for free.

I'd imagine a good percentage of players aren't even aware the SRD is on-line (or, for that matter, even know what the SRD is). And even if they know about it, reading off a PC screen or leafing through hundreds of printed pages isn't most people's idea of fun. I'd also imagine that someone buying AU who doesn't own the core books is almost guaranteed to not be aware of the on-line SRD.

Do I have the 3.0 and 3.5 core books? Sure. Do I mind reprinted SRD material in other products? No. So long as the new material is worthwhile, the product is worthwhile.

 

[RodneyThompson]

Hey gang,

I was also very disappointed in AU. I don't think I was a victim of hype (other than the "alternate PHB" hype), but I expected more. The races were cool, classes were cool, and some feats were cool. What I was really looking forward to, the alternate magic system, was not different enough to really grab me.

My biggest gripe? $30 for a hardcover book....with a bland, ugly black-and-white interior. Maybe I'm spoiled, but give me that full-color art and a decent graphic design anyways. After the stellar cover (which I *love*) the inside just was sort of a very dull slap in the face.

AU definitely left me disappointed, but I'm still glad I bought it.

 

[BiggusGeekus@Work]

Is it an anti-furry thing?

In my opinion the dog-men and cat-men aren't what I think of when I think of furries. I'm completely OK with furry-bashing (yes, I am Johnny Smallminded), but these don't have the almost anime "feel" that I frequently see when presented with furries. They're definately more besitial and not people-in-animal-suits.

Just my two cents.
Your miliage may vary.
In my humble opinion.
I reserve the right to be on psychotropic drugs and therefore oblivoius to reality.
etc.

 

[Iron_Chef]

Re: Re: Arcana Unearthed: Pro's and Con's

That's a bit like saying chess is a bad game because you played on a roll-up board w/cheap plastic pieces. If "poor presentation" of game material was enough to "kill" a ruleset, D&D would never have made it past the 1970's

In fact, I don't recall the 1st edition AD&D books even having indexes, though I could be wroung about that...

Anyway, the presentation isn't the most readable, and pales in comparion the 3.5E PHB. That said, its not about the art, or even the layout, its about the information. Nice artwork isn't going to help you run an interesting game, which takes place in the participants imagination, the last time I checked...

...Its not just a collection of new feats, classes and spells.

Expectations, book design and technology were very different in the 1970s, so that's hardly an accurate comparison. I can look at 1970s books and judge them by 1970s standards; the art in those books can still inspire me today! I judge brand new books by brand new standards set by WoTC, Fantasy Flight, Green Ronin, AEG and others. AU falls flat on its face. It looks amateur and boring, not what I'd expect at all from a $30 hardcover, regardless of publisher. Heck, even Fast Forward has better looking books than AU, LOL!!!

Art makes a huge impact on how I react to a book. Bad art makes me throw it away on gut instinct--if the art's bad, mustn't the rest of the content be similarly poor? Art is there to inspire, to excite the imagination. Even Sam Wood and MacBin did nothing to inspire or excite me (they broke no new ground and their art felt like tired retreads of pieces they've done for WoTC and/or Green Ronin), and the "sketchy/blotty" guy should never have been hired in the first place, by anyone, ever. The cover art, the most important factor in getting someone to actually pick up and read your book, was awful, just really boring and old school GURPS-y with too much open space (like the interior layout). The only thing I liked about the cover was the raised surface of the art, but that was too subtle an effect to save it.

I disagree that artwork is not helpful to running an interesting game; great art can inspire all kinds of ideas in players and DMs alike, and it makes them want to compulsively read and reread a game book. Bad art (like bad layout) inspires nothing but boredom and contempt.

All I really wanted from AU was a collection of brand new feats, classes and spells, with variants of same; I don't want a book so utterly tied into a setting I have zero interest in. I guess I got that, but it ust doesn't feel right... AU is both "too different" and "not different enough." It doesn't feel like D&D and that's a very bad thing for a game that is being marketed as a variant "plug-n-play" D&D to D&D gamers. WW's Everquest and Warcraft both suffer from the same problem, though Everquest looks "too busy" (and too different to use with 3e/3.5e) and the Warcraft book just looks terribly boring (with bad layout and not enough interesting art).

 

[Jaws]

And I agree with whoever said that Toren Atkinson and Sam Wood should work more

Sketchy-Blotchy guy? Not to my taste.

Peace and smiles

j.