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Dante's Divine Comedy for 5e – The Straight Way Lost: An Interview With Melina Sedó (Vortex Verlag)
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<blockquote data-quote="Uta-napishti" data-source="post: 9220083" data-attributes="member: 7026422"><p>I can tell you! </p><ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">It's a beautiful, thick book. The art is great. Although we saw some of the MOST amazing pieces in the marketing, the standard is high everywhere, and there is a lot of art, especially in the heaven and hell parts of the adventure. The printers and binders did a fine job, and the paper quality is good, perhaps even a bit too heavy and too shiny in parts given that some text is reversed white on dark.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">There is some nice 5E design of two new classes ( Artist and Philosopher ). These both affect reality in spooky probability-bending ways rather than big magical evocations. I.E. they are appropriate in pseudo-historical settings. I was impressed with the class design generally.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Pretty much all the 5E canon is worked over, races, faiths, and skills all get modded to work in a historical magical setting. Everything has been adapted, much more than most setting books, but on the other hand far less radically than say Adventures in Middle Earth, Lord of the Rings Roleplaying or Brancalonia, in each of which the core classes were all replaced.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">There are a lot of flavorful low to mid CR monsters and NPCs in the heaven and hell chapters. These monsters are more impressive for their flavor and place in the story than for their mechanics, which-- with one or two exceptions-- are fairly unexciting. Spellcasters follow the older style of spell lists only rather than the newer WoTC monster design of placing spell like abilites in the stat block. As I am fine with the old style, this did not bother me.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">The English is excellent almost everywhere, not a given.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">The cartography is very stylish, and mostly clear.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">The book calls itself an "Adventure and Sourcebook" for "Adventuring between Heaven and Hell in a Fantastical Rennaisance Italy". It achieves both adventure and sourcebook with partial success. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">The adventure / campaign is a bit more of a metaphysical romp than I was hoping for, a real grand tour of hell and heavens in the meaty middle chapters. <strong>I appreciated this part as more of a setting book than as a runnable adventure.</strong> For me the links to Florence politics / corrupt church figures were a bit thin on character motivation to get people diving into Hell. The book has about 6 (great!) pages about how to design characters that would be intrinsically motivated to follow the adventure arc, and a Dark Secret mechanic to try to give characters some hooks the story can pull on, but I think that all of that kind of betrays a weakness in the adventure structure that we have to rely on building characters in a certain way. I suspect playtesting revealed these problems, and resulted in the discussions of motivation that are interspersed. I think these guidance still doesn't really cover for the weaknesses though. Basically instead of a grand tour of Hell and Purgatory and Heaven with sequential scenes, the material would play better at most tables broken up into pieces usable in other stories a la carte or as a sandbox. I.E as a sourcebook. The series of scenes on a timeline format also felt pretty old-school predetermined as well. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Other people might love the adventure, and I haven't run it, just read it. Take my criticism with a grain of salt.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Even though I wasn't crazy about the adventure structure, the quality of the pieces is high. The scenes of the adventure are vividly and clearly presented, with strong NPCs and locations. <strong>The GM guidance about how to approach and run chapters or scenes of the adventure throughout is exceptional and feels very modern.</strong></li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">There is definitely a lot of Renaissance Magical Florence sourcebook material in the beginning and ending that I would also use as a setting for my own adventures. One warning: you will have to be able to keep straight dozens of italian human nobles, artists, thinkers with minor variations in haircut (+ facial hair for the men). The adventure freely mixes the historical figures, with made up NPCs, and mostly notes which is which. If you have a graduate student of rennaisance art or philosophy in your gaming group, they are gonna love it <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite7" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue :p" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":p" /> Clearly the adventure authors know their stuff.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Using this as a sourcebook also has some weaknesses. There is a lot of history, lots of rules, and lots of cool places, monsters, and personages, but because they are supporting one specific adventure, there aren't a lot of loose adventure seeds and hooks lying around to start your own stories, like you might expect in a true setting book / sourcebook. There also aren't a lot of descriptions of daily life, locations, places to eat etc in the sourcebook parts -- you will have to pull the best locations out of the adventure parts and scrub off the plot to reuse them.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">The price is fair</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">A promising start for this publisher!</li> </ol></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Uta-napishti, post: 9220083, member: 7026422"] I can tell you! [LIST=1] [*]It's a beautiful, thick book. The art is great. Although we saw some of the MOST amazing pieces in the marketing, the standard is high everywhere, and there is a lot of art, especially in the heaven and hell parts of the adventure. The printers and binders did a fine job, and the paper quality is good, perhaps even a bit too heavy and too shiny in parts given that some text is reversed white on dark. [*]There is some nice 5E design of two new classes ( Artist and Philosopher ). These both affect reality in spooky probability-bending ways rather than big magical evocations. I.E. they are appropriate in pseudo-historical settings. I was impressed with the class design generally. [*]Pretty much all the 5E canon is worked over, races, faiths, and skills all get modded to work in a historical magical setting. Everything has been adapted, much more than most setting books, but on the other hand far less radically than say Adventures in Middle Earth, Lord of the Rings Roleplaying or Brancalonia, in each of which the core classes were all replaced. [*]There are a lot of flavorful low to mid CR monsters and NPCs in the heaven and hell chapters. These monsters are more impressive for their flavor and place in the story than for their mechanics, which-- with one or two exceptions-- are fairly unexciting. Spellcasters follow the older style of spell lists only rather than the newer WoTC monster design of placing spell like abilites in the stat block. As I am fine with the old style, this did not bother me. [*]The English is excellent almost everywhere, not a given. [*]The cartography is very stylish, and mostly clear. [*]The book calls itself an "Adventure and Sourcebook" for "Adventuring between Heaven and Hell in a Fantastical Rennaisance Italy". It achieves both adventure and sourcebook with partial success. [*]The adventure / campaign is a bit more of a metaphysical romp than I was hoping for, a real grand tour of hell and heavens in the meaty middle chapters. [B]I appreciated this part as more of a setting book than as a runnable adventure.[/B] For me the links to Florence politics / corrupt church figures were a bit thin on character motivation to get people diving into Hell. The book has about 6 (great!) pages about how to design characters that would be intrinsically motivated to follow the adventure arc, and a Dark Secret mechanic to try to give characters some hooks the story can pull on, but I think that all of that kind of betrays a weakness in the adventure structure that we have to rely on building characters in a certain way. I suspect playtesting revealed these problems, and resulted in the discussions of motivation that are interspersed. I think these guidance still doesn't really cover for the weaknesses though. Basically instead of a grand tour of Hell and Purgatory and Heaven with sequential scenes, the material would play better at most tables broken up into pieces usable in other stories a la carte or as a sandbox. I.E as a sourcebook. The series of scenes on a timeline format also felt pretty old-school predetermined as well. [*]Other people might love the adventure, and I haven't run it, just read it. Take my criticism with a grain of salt. [*]Even though I wasn't crazy about the adventure structure, the quality of the pieces is high. The scenes of the adventure are vividly and clearly presented, with strong NPCs and locations. [B]The GM guidance about how to approach and run chapters or scenes of the adventure throughout is exceptional and feels very modern.[/B] [*]There is definitely a lot of Renaissance Magical Florence sourcebook material in the beginning and ending that I would also use as a setting for my own adventures. One warning: you will have to be able to keep straight dozens of italian human nobles, artists, thinkers with minor variations in haircut (+ facial hair for the men). The adventure freely mixes the historical figures, with made up NPCs, and mostly notes which is which. If you have a graduate student of rennaisance art or philosophy in your gaming group, they are gonna love it :p Clearly the adventure authors know their stuff. [*]Using this as a sourcebook also has some weaknesses. There is a lot of history, lots of rules, and lots of cool places, monsters, and personages, but because they are supporting one specific adventure, there aren't a lot of loose adventure seeds and hooks lying around to start your own stories, like you might expect in a true setting book / sourcebook. There also aren't a lot of descriptions of daily life, locations, places to eat etc in the sourcebook parts -- you will have to pull the best locations out of the adventure parts and scrub off the plot to reuse them. [*]The price is fair [*]A promising start for this publisher! [/LIST] [/QUOTE]
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