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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Iron_Chef" data-source="post: 1063505" data-attributes="member: 4530">Just got my Arcana Unearthed in the mail today and must say I'm terribly unimpressed by the mediocre production values.CON'S1. Cover art is uninspired and fails to excite any emotion except "what were they thinking? it looks like GURPS!"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.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!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.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.PRO'SOn the positive side, there are: 1. Some cool new feats2. Some cool new spells and spell templates3. Some cool new classes and the racial class concept (borrowed from Savage Species)4. Some nice revisions of existing spells (such as raise dead).5. No restrictive, artificial alignment system! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />6. It implements the alternate magic item creation rules from GR's Plot & Poison. You know, the rules that actually make sense, LOL.As to the variant magic system, I haven't really poured over it with a fine tooth comb yet. Some ideas I like, but I wonder how much trouble it will be to implement. I know I will not be buying anything else in this series as a result of my disappointment in AU, and will never order anything sight unseen on good faith from Monte again. The book is simply too poorly layed out and illustrated to make for a good read, let alone a quick reference tool. It elicits yawns just from flipping through it; it is a painfully boring book to try and sit down and read. FINAL ANALYSISAll in all, AU was overhyped and underwhelming for its price and format; it felt (and looked) like a glorified pdf, not a major hardcover release. It had some good ideas, but ultimately the poor presentation killed it.</blockquote>

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