Battlefield Adventures - Andy Collins speaks!

[Macbeth]

For what it's worth, I think this actually looks interesting. Sounds like it may tend away from rules related stuff (since there is no new mass combat system) and instead give DMs advice for running mass combat without a mass combat system (i.e. making the PCs the stars. Not that I have anything against mass combat systems, but I like this idea.

DungeonMaster, you have your opinoins and others have theirs. Making Andy Collins out to be the root of all D&D evil may fit your views but not others. If you don't like the writer, that's cool, but trying to get everybody else to see it that way is just going to lead to the message board equivalent of a shouting match.

 

[BigFreekinGoblinoid]

Heck.

I just want a decent PrC for my warmage, that's all.

Anything more will be gravy.

Brad

I'm sure you will happy CP! It sounds like those of us that are tired of PrC's dominating our sourcebooks will be dissapointed...

I'm off to the Wizards forums to read more about it though, because I'm a little confused by the quotes in Merric's post - It's a DM's book, but all that was mentioned in detail is character options...

edit: no help there...

 

[ecliptic]

Andy Collins is one of my favorite designers, glad he is on board.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Andy Collins has been involved in almost every core D&D book I've actually liked, and this sounds like an absolutely brilliant book.

I haven't looked forward to a WotC release this much in a long time.

 

[Pants]

DungeonMaster, you have your opinoins and others have theirs. Making Andy Collins out to be the root of all D&D evil may fit your views but not others. If you don't like the writer, that's cool, but trying to get everybody else to see it that way is just going to lead to the message board equivalent of a shouting match.

And just because his name is on the cover doesn't mean Andy is the one who wrote the 'broken' or 'dumb' parts. Andy gets way more crap than he deserves and its getting to the point where it just plain annoys me.

Indeed on both counts.

Andy may not be my favorite, but he doesn't deserve all the garbage people give him. He's a nice guy, he's the one who pushed for UA to be OGL, and for that he's got my respect. The Draconomicon may have some overpowered bits in it, but it's still a fantastic book for its usage of dragons and the fluff contained therein.

I don't think I'm going to get Battlefield Adventures, mostly because there's other books coming out that look more interesting and I'm not that interested in the subject matter.

 

[reanjr]

After the comment, the book no longer has any appeal to me. And since it's a DM book (limited audience), and doesn't give DMs what they probably expect the most from it

This is exactly what I expected from it. I'm not sure what else it could have been...

I think this series is a really good idea. It would be great to take these books as thematic elements to add to a game. A little bit of war here, some other thematic elements there. I think this is a great building tool (or at least has the potential for it).

 

[dvvega]

Well from what I understood, it is all about a war and the PCs doing things in that scope which affect the outcomes.

Likening it to LOTR is quite accurate because that is what LOTR was. A group of PCs (2 groups actually) being "placed in the right place at the right time" to cause things to occur to change the course of the war.

I've had 2 major wars break out in my homebrew world and being at a loss of what to do with the PCs during this period except for

* the obvious treasure hunt for some artefact
* assassination of an evil leader
* escorting an official/ambassador
* ensuring an alliance is formed (marriage, meeting, treaty)

I couldn't think of anything else to run. Those adventures are pretty much playable inside and outside of a war. If this genre series can extend that and give me more opportunities that fall outside the realm of "standard" adventuring I'll give it a look.

D

 

[Gez]

OK, so, between the Complete Warrior and the Miniatures Handbook, nobody has any needs for Battlefield Adventures, right? From the thing Merric quoted, it seems it's just an expanded version of the Warrior Campaign chapter of CW...

 

[Pinotage]

I must say that I'm somewhat disappointed after reading that. I'd expected a little more from this book, but I'm still going to keep an open mind. Sounds a lot like the new series is following in the footsteps of Monte Cooks 'Event' books.

Pinotage

 

[Li Shenron]

Battlefield Adventures is not about running army vs. army conflicts, but rather about running a D&D game that features warfare as a significant theme of the game.

Think of it this way: ...it will let you run all the interesting encounters featuring Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli (aka the player characters), and it'll let you build warfare-minded characters like Eomer.

Battlefield Adventures isn't really like any other book that we've done in the past. My best comparison would be to Frostburn, not in terms of subject matter but in terms of exploring and expanding a concept of the D&D universe so that DMs can focus on it in their games.

From a brand new hardcover book with that title (how many pages? I doubt less than 200), I would have expected it to cover both, the normal game in warfare theme AND the army vs army conflict.

I am curious to see what actually is this book going to give us gamers. Something that we cannot do with core rules? Rules-free discussion about how to fit D&D characters in an army, or without fighting along with the army? What about "building warfare-minded" characters, is he talking about commanders? But he just said that the book doesn't cover army battles, how are you going to play a commander if not commanding?

It's very foggy to me, this book could be anything from total crap to fantastic, depending on what the real content will be. One of my guess is that it will retry covering vehicles rules, but what else?

Anyway, I still think that this book could and should have covered mass combat as well, once and for all with a good official system.