Book of the Righteous Dethroned!
- Thread starter JoeGKushner
- Start date
Hypersmurf
Moderatarrrrh...
Cergorach said:
And even so... be nice, hmm?
-Hyp.
(Moderator)
AdmundfortGeographer
Getting lost in fantasy maps
While I own the book, (I bought it at it's GenCon premier, so, what, 3 GenCon's ago?) I have not used anything in the book... yet. I was still very impressed with the work that author put into it.
My impression of the review was that the reviewer in question here seemed to want the book to be something it wasn't trying to be. Such as the complaint that the book insists holy warriors, even to non-good gods, must be of good alignment. My thought was, "well, yeah".
In D&D:
Holy = good
Unholy = evil
Anarchic = chaos
Axiomatic = law
The book made an effort to fit within the D&D Core Rules alignment framework as best it could. That's what it set out to do. It did it well.
My impression of the review was that the reviewer in question here seemed to want the book to be something it wasn't trying to be. Such as the complaint that the book insists holy warriors, even to non-good gods, must be of good alignment. My thought was, "well, yeah".
In D&D:
Holy = good
Unholy = evil
Anarchic = chaos
Axiomatic = law
The book made an effort to fit within the D&D Core Rules alignment framework as best it could. That's what it set out to do. It did it well.
Numion
First Post
Eric Anondson said:
Just to make sure, you think that this should result in a higher rating? Because the other god book, Deities & Demigods, set out to stat gods, not to tell how to use them. It got slammed for that in the reviews. Was that right?
(The god stats were crappy too, IMO, but thats beside the point
)LoneWolf23
First Post
Me, I love the book. I understand that even the non-good gods are essentially siding with the Good ones, simply because they dislike the evil gods more. It's explained in the Great Church section that the entire pantheon is considered dominantly Neutral Good, as even though there's a Law-Chaos split, they are united in their opposition to the works of Evil.
And that's what worked for me: The gods, as a whole, are seen as predominantly benevolent beings worthy of worship, even if they have "classical" flaws like Terak's bad temper. The "Gods of Evil" aren't worship by any but the most debased of people, and serve quite well in the position of "Adversaries" to the gods.
And best of all, it's customisable.. My version of the cosmology, for exemple, includes a christ-like "prophet" who founded the Great Church, has Kador as the "Ultimate Lord of Evil" with a pantheon of lesser "gods of evil" as his underlings of various Evil Alignments, and I'm using the Paladin and Blackguards as replacement Holy Warriors and Unholy Warriors. That conversion's easy: take the Paladin, change the alignment requirment from "Always Lawful Good" to "Any Good", then integrate the Forgotten Realms suggestion of allowing Paladins of a deity to multiclass in other classes appropriate to the patron deity. So a Paladin of Terak could multiclass as a Fighter or Monk, while a Paladin of Darmon could multiclass as a Rogue.
At least that's how I use this book.
And that's what worked for me: The gods, as a whole, are seen as predominantly benevolent beings worthy of worship, even if they have "classical" flaws like Terak's bad temper. The "Gods of Evil" aren't worship by any but the most debased of people, and serve quite well in the position of "Adversaries" to the gods.
And best of all, it's customisable.. My version of the cosmology, for exemple, includes a christ-like "prophet" who founded the Great Church, has Kador as the "Ultimate Lord of Evil" with a pantheon of lesser "gods of evil" as his underlings of various Evil Alignments, and I'm using the Paladin and Blackguards as replacement Holy Warriors and Unholy Warriors. That conversion's easy: take the Paladin, change the alignment requirment from "Always Lawful Good" to "Any Good", then integrate the Forgotten Realms suggestion of allowing Paladins of a deity to multiclass in other classes appropriate to the patron deity. So a Paladin of Terak could multiclass as a Fighter or Monk, while a Paladin of Darmon could multiclass as a Rogue.
At least that's how I use this book.
CRGreathouse
Community Supporter
Cergorach said:
Out of pure curiosity, who did you confuse me with?
Mark
CreativeMountainGames.com
There is only ONE CMG guy and that's... Oh, yeah. Me.
Check out the demo and it's all you need to see to know what I've done with it. I think some people believed that the goal of an SRD supplement was to create a pretty pdf that could replace the books. That wasn't my goal. Pretty has the unfortunate side effect of also being unweildy (file size) and thus very slow on any system that isn't brand-spanking new.
Further, it's a huge waste of time to try and create a pretty SRD with an expectation that people will be printing them out because, in the end, that much material is not going to be printed by the majority of people. I can't imagine someone thinking it a good idea to purchase an SRD pdf and printing over a thousand pages rather than just buying the books.
So, the CMG goal was to create a series of very utilitarian documents, as tight on file size as possible, while maintaining a high level of usefulness, and interconnect them for fast and easy reference. In particular, the spellcaster books that are separated out from the other sections have some redundancy in their material, but as individual pdfs they are incredibly useful for character building. I can't imagine making an NPC without them.
The addition of the full SRD set of monsters in one pdf as standard format and a separate pdf as standard stat blocks might not seem very creative, but it's a hell of a lot of work that most people would rather not tackle and when I am building an adventure it is absolutely invaluable. While I love adding levels or hit dice to creatures, it is surely a damn sight easier to accomplish this quickly with the base stat block already done.
I think some folks get a little frustrated with my SRD project because they have taken a brief run at it themself and realize what a daunting task it can be. Of course, CMG has been my fulltime job for the last three years (plus) and I'm a single guy with no children so you can't really expect someone to create a SRD pdf supplement as extensive as the CMG version when they are doing it in the hours that they don't have to work at their day job or spend time with their family.
In the end, the whole thing is like a huge publisher's reference that is being shared for a nominal price with the public...and the updates are free! I get emails from folks who got on board last August for five dollars when it was just two pdfs (basics and monsters in standard format) telling me that they use it every few days to prepare for their games and save themself hours or time every week.
"We do the Work, So you can Play!" is the company motto for a reason. I don't expect that most people want to spend all of their free time for several years making and refiing the best damned reference document of the SRD that can be made. I expect them to realize that for an hour or two worth of pay, they can just buy the one I have made and they can spend their time more productively, creating their campaign world, running their games, and having a hell of a lot more fun!
CMGSomebody, my eye!
Check out the demo and it's all you need to see to know what I've done with it. I think some people believed that the goal of an SRD supplement was to create a pretty pdf that could replace the books. That wasn't my goal. Pretty has the unfortunate side effect of also being unweildy (file size) and thus very slow on any system that isn't brand-spanking new.
Further, it's a huge waste of time to try and create a pretty SRD with an expectation that people will be printing them out because, in the end, that much material is not going to be printed by the majority of people. I can't imagine someone thinking it a good idea to purchase an SRD pdf and printing over a thousand pages rather than just buying the books.
So, the CMG goal was to create a series of very utilitarian documents, as tight on file size as possible, while maintaining a high level of usefulness, and interconnect them for fast and easy reference. In particular, the spellcaster books that are separated out from the other sections have some redundancy in their material, but as individual pdfs they are incredibly useful for character building. I can't imagine making an NPC without them.
The addition of the full SRD set of monsters in one pdf as standard format and a separate pdf as standard stat blocks might not seem very creative, but it's a hell of a lot of work that most people would rather not tackle and when I am building an adventure it is absolutely invaluable. While I love adding levels or hit dice to creatures, it is surely a damn sight easier to accomplish this quickly with the base stat block already done.
I think some folks get a little frustrated with my SRD project because they have taken a brief run at it themself and realize what a daunting task it can be. Of course, CMG has been my fulltime job for the last three years (plus) and I'm a single guy with no children so you can't really expect someone to create a SRD pdf supplement as extensive as the CMG version when they are doing it in the hours that they don't have to work at their day job or spend time with their family.
In the end, the whole thing is like a huge publisher's reference that is being shared for a nominal price with the public...and the updates are free! I get emails from folks who got on board last August for five dollars when it was just two pdfs (basics and monsters in standard format) telling me that they use it every few days to prepare for their games and save themself hours or time every week.
"We do the Work, So you can Play!" is the company motto for a reason. I don't expect that most people want to spend all of their free time for several years making and refiing the best damned reference document of the SRD that can be made. I expect them to realize that for an hour or two worth of pay, they can just buy the one I have made and they can spend their time more productively, creating their campaign world, running their games, and having a hell of a lot more fun!
CMGSomebody, my eye!
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