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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Iron_Chef" data-source="post: 1065674" data-attributes="member: 4530">Re: Re: Re: Re: From his wife...No, the last post was in response to someone else insisting I was wrong for lambasting the book's look. The fact that I dislike the look of the book intensely is not my sole reason for not liking it overall. I don't consider Greyhawk to be truly integrated in any meaningful way into the D&D core rules as the default setting, so my complaint with AU is that Diamond Throne is TOO integrated into AU. If the DT setting were even remotely interesting or original, I might feel differently about its presence... AU becomes less useful to a larger number of gamers because of its close connection to the dreadful DT setting. It is not easily ported over to D&D worlds such as Greyhawk, FR, DL, PS, DS, RL or whatever. This is a monumental mistake on Monte's part, as he is aliennating a significant number of customers who wanted it solely to mine for their D&D game. DT is a bad setting because it relegates humanity to the background, under the shadow of the giants. This is even worse than the Midnight setting, where all "good" people are relegated to the status of fugitives and saboteurs. To make a truly great game setting, humanity must be in the forefront, and there must be options for different types of people, religions and governments to clash against each other. Playing in a world where the battle has already been won or lost is not only boring, but an exercise in sheer frustration for the players, unless they are on the winning side. Doubtless fans of Midnight and DT will disagree.The races are in AU just for the sake of being "different," even though they are hardly original... they are just not races presented in the PHB. Nobody in their right mind would lose their humanity to become an asexual bipedal dragonoid capable of giving birth to a whopping three asexual kobolds, especially given the fact that pretty much everybody in the DT setting hates dragonoids. "Let's see... I'm giving up sexual gratification, gender identity, racial identity and everybody hates me and wants to kill me? Yeah, that's a groovy trade-off. Where do I sign up?" The Mohj were poorly thought-out as a "race" and make for a ludicrous PC choice. Don't get me started on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle type furry races, or the faeries... <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f621.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":mad:" title="Mad    :mad:"  data-smilie="4"data-shortname=":mad:" /> AU has some good ideas, but it is NOT a shining example of good game design, setting design or presentation. I will steal what I can from it, but I feel cheated by the book's content and design, and will dispose of it at the first opportunity. In short, Monte has taken a huge gamble with AU/DT and I believe he has failed (not spectacularly, just failed), and he has damaged his credibility as a game designer and publisher, at least to me... not irreparably, but it is quite tarnished as a result of this book.My complaints go on, but this post doesn't. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f60e.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":cool:" title="Cool    :cool:"  data-smilie="6"data-shortname=":cool:" /></blockquote>

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