cover of the Hermit

[JoeGKushner]

But how much useless info was in that monster book? How much tweaking do you have to do to fit creatures like Wendigos and Skinwalkers, tailored for Native American lore, into your DnD game? Understand, dual-stat is not my prefered way of doing things either, but its become a necessary evil since games I like (7th Sea, Fading Suns, Deadlands) have embraced the d20 system in hopes to promote their settings. I find it interesting you've no problem plumming setting specific books for feats and prestige classes, potentially disregarding all the (useless) setting material, but when it comes to alien game stats, you have a fit. Oriental Adventures offers a lot of info that is useless to my GH game, and I won't buy it regardless of ninjas or feats.

Well, I figured since you quoted me, I might as well return the favor.

Some books I'll buy because I enjoy the subject but we're not talking about a particular subject like American Indians or Oriental Adventuers, which I may use at a latter date, but game stats for a system I'll never use. Don't get me wrong, if this was a massive sourcebook like Canting Crew, which I bought and regret, I might be more inclined to agree with you, but it's an adventure.


Huh? So you are normally more apathetic to adventures with nothing but d20 stats? Well then by all means, let me suggest a few non-d20 adventures that should make you positively giddy.


And those suggestions are? I've used many non-adventures like the Convert, Aeshiba, The Good King Despot and others. You have nothing to show me I hate to say. Nothing.

Adventures are worth more than just stat-blocks. I can always convert a good adventure one way or another. The value of an adventure is subjective anyway. There are some really crappy d20 adventures out there that aren't worth the paper they're printed on, but those are supposed to be better values because they aren't dual stated? Whatever.

Yes they are better because they aren't dual stated because the author then has more room, in this case 5-6 pages worth to provide other hooks, maps, alternatives, and advice to players enjoying the module instead of just crunchy bits. There are enough fine products by Necromancer, Fiery Dragon, and Malhavok, not to mention Dungeon Magazine, that i seriously doubt I'll ever "need" another adventure again. By making a module with dual stats, it lessens my interest right off the bat.


If the Hermit tanks as a product, its gonna have more to do with the quality of the adventure than the number of pages devoted to useless content.


First of all, The Hermit was originally an LA adventure, designed to introduce people to the system years ago when it was run exclusively (the mod, not the game) on Macray's Keep. So in this chicken or the egg instance (no pun intended), there would be no adventure w/o the LA system.

Sure there would. I'm sure if you approached Gary as a publishing company and said, Gary, I want you to do X, he'd do it. He's not going to turn down your money. His name has been on many products, some qulaity, some garbage, but it's been on them.

Second, I don't pretend to know the specifics behind TLGs and Gygax. But I will say this: my first TLG book was Canting Crew. My next will be The Hermit and the World Builders book. Not because they were written by Gygax, but because they have some support for LA. So TLG gets a customer they otherwise would have missed. And I know plenty of other LA players who will do the same. If TLG were to put out sourcebooks that covered LA but weren't written by Gygax, I'd seriously look at those as well. In fact, I say bring it on! If the quality is there, they'd get the full support of the LA community -- even if all they did was offer conversions as a web enhancement.

Well Troll Lords, take his word for it and offer the LA stuff as a web enhancement.


Now there's no doubt d20 has a larger audience than LA. But does TLG lose more d20 customers by dual stating these books than they gain through LA players? I dunno. Obviously not or they'd probably renegotiate their deal.

I disagree. I feel it's Gary's name with the older crowd, which many feel have come back to the game with 3rd edition.

 

[Hikaru]

Oops, I wonder where I got 48 pages from? Oh well, that's still expensive enough that I would not be happy about paying for the LA space if I were to buy this module.

Geez... Let me quote a former post of yours: "$13.95 is not a bad price for a 48 page module (though it's not a good price). "

So $13.95 for 48 pages is not bad, but $13.95 for 64-5= 59 pages is horrible??

 

[Setanta]

So $13.95 for 48 pages is not bad, but $13.95 for 64-5= 59 pages is horrible??

It's not a horrible price, and I didn't say or imply that it is. I just think it's on the high side. Given that it's got several pages that I won't use, that further decreases the value. I was trying to be diplomatic when I thought it was $14 for 48 pages- that's overpriced. 64 pages for 14 is on the high side- I would certainly pay that for the right product, but given that I won't use several pages in this product, I have no desire to pay a somewhat high price for a product in this class (64 page adventure).

 

[JeffB]

I'm pleased as punch that Troll Lord is putting in Stats for the LA game..I like d20, but I like to run LA more...now depending on which game I want to run, I don't have to do any work.

And actually I'm on the opposite spectrum..I've got no problem paying 12 bucks for a 32 page adventure if it's good and not full of stat blocks..But damn If I'll pay 15 bucks for a 96 pager that is...I hate stats..period..no matter what game (And we play many different games)...That's one of the reasons I like LA so much, it's very stat lite; more room for the adventure!

I love Gygax..I look at everything he puts out and buy most of it.. but I didn't buy Canting Crew and his Mongoose book because of lack of utility for my own games...Adventures, I can use..and the WB book too probably..

Besides, there are BAZILLIONS of D20 stat only mods out there ... it's almost sickening..give us LA guys a break,we'd like to have some suport too!

Kudos to Troll Lord for the dual stats, I'll be picking it up.

 

[Golem Joe]

Setanta,

I suggeted you had answered your own question because, yes, it is nice to have all the conversion work done for you and see things in print. How much nicer do such things look in a shiney book as opposed to a scattered notebook of ink jet print outs.

Now, you asked would I drop $25 on a 128 page sourcebook that was half and half stats? That depends. As you may have gathered by now, I'm not extremely interested in stats, or crunchy bits, or whatever you want to call them. When I pick up a sourcebook for 7th Sea, I'm looking for info on the world and on NPCs, organizations, storyhooks I can integrate into my campaign. NONE OF WHICH require stats or mechanics or rules. So if 7 pages of rules becomes 14, and the content doesn't suffer enormously, then I'll likely still be happy with the product. If that 7 pages of stats balloons into 50 pages, with all 43 of the extras devoted to d20 fluff, then yeah, I would have a problem, as it would definately cut into the content.

Not having looked at any of AEG's, PEG's or Holistic's dual stated books, I don't know what the ratios are.

Having followed the big Forgotten Rums thread here, its pretty clear a big percentage of the d20 audience is primarily interested in more rules. So I can see where dual-stated books cause a problem for this crowd. After all, 15 pages of rules dedicated to (insert system here) cuts into space that could be spent on more feats, prestige classes, spell stats, magic item stats, monster stats, DC trees, and other niggling minutia. And if that's what you are looking for, then I can't argue with you turning away from said product.

 

[Vocenoctum]

So is everyone glad that this is a joint product? I have to admit that I'm not too fond of dual stated books. Has little to do with the quality. I thought Way of the Ninja was great but I don't like them because they're taking space away from D20. Now it's mentioned that it's 5 pages taken out to make room for Lejendary. Good. But 5 pages out of 64 is way too much for my personal taste.

How about everyone else? Has anyone written to any of the companies doing dual-statted books to tell them to stop or does everyone think it's cool?

I bought Way of the Samurai, and found that the dual stat's did greatly reduce the "value" of the book for me. It wasn't even that there were a lot of "crunchy bits" for d20. There wasn't enough setting material to make the lack of other stuff worthwhile for me.
Very disappointing.

 

[Henry]

Re: DUAL SYSTEMS

...curiously enough, part of the adventure as conceived by Gary was difficult to work the 3e mechanics out. Our play testers, editors and Gary and TLG wrangeld over how to do this for quite some time and came up with a good solution (thanks to Larry Herzer) . . . at least we hope it is. I'm sure we'll get hammered some, some will like it and some won't even care. Come by the booth and check it out.

Leave it to Gary to stump the 3E rules...

I look forward to the product, if for nothing else than having a new "module" published by Gary.