Diamond Throne Setting, so whats cool about it

[I'm A Banana]

So really what I'm getting is "There's no big flag of awesome, but there are a few little flags."

It appears that one of the main advantages of the world is that it's portable/shapable. So if you're in the market for a campaign setting instead of just a few envinroments, you may want to look elsewhere. Sounds so far to me like DT is great if you just want a lot of seeds, but if you prefer your worlds to be at least budding, it's not for you.

 

[Thrommel]

Enough detail to guide you, not so much it binds you.

The thing to keep in mind is that the Diamond Throne is a gazetteer-style campaign guide. It's 96 pages, not a 240 page hardcover. So it's more useful to think of it as a campaign framework than a detailed world-spanning travel atlas.

Now personally, I'm a DM who likes to wing it a lot. Which means I steal bits and pieces of adventures, characters, items, etc. from all over the place. The setting is detailed enough that I have a good idea how things work ("Let's see, every city has a Speaker who represents the non-giant races and a Steward who really runs the place. Ok, cool.") while being open and flexible enough that I can drop in whatever I want to adapt. ("We'll put the Banewarrens in Ka-Rone and the Temple of Elemental Evil needs to be close to the verrik lands. Done.")

So if you're looking for something that's open-ended and suitable for a lot of tweaking and adaptation, it's worth checking out. In fact, if you're going to DM a game of pure AU, I'd say it's mandatory reading. It does a great job of fleshing out lands and monsters and giving you a better grasp of the world style. There's a lot of interesting racial dynamics to AU that are a lot deeper than "We live in the mountains, you live in the trees. Now we fight!"

But if you like a super-detailed setting that includes chronological org charts of who's living and who's dead in Gyre Gymblecutty's Giant Toad Riders, then maybe DT isn't for you.

Personally, I pick up those books thinking that I will read them cover-to-cover and steal all kinds of great nuggets hidden in the various chapters when in fact I invariably wake up at 1:30am with the light on wondering why I was having dreams about being chased by gnomes on giant toads.

-Thrommel

 

[John Q. Mayhem]

I like how all the races have their own different histories of how the world was made.

 

[Wombat]

Diamnond Throne, as a setting, does not float my boat. OTOH, there are some great PrCs that are made to work with AU, so I think the work has its uses.

 

[Derulbaskul]

I find DT to be fairly uninspiring. It's well written etc... but there is nothing there that grabs you enough where you go, "Yep, I can run a campaign all the way to Epic levels with this".

There are lots of little hooks but I like mine big, more like themes than hooks, themes that inspire whole campaigns. That way I always have a strong sense of backstory even when I "wing it" which I tend to do a lot.

Personally, as much as I think AU is a pretty solid and high quality publication (as were the modules... but, again, relatively bland), I would prefer to satiate my appetite for not-so-core D&D with either (or both) Midnight and Dawnforge both of which have fairly different and innovative rules but where there seems to be a deeper well of inspiration for the DM to draw from.

I also seem to recall that Monte himself doesn't use AU that much in his home games. Is this correct?

Notwithstanding these comments, I bought the Legacy of the Dragons PDF today and am pleased with what I have read so far, even though I will simply be using it in other non-AU games.

 

[Wrath of the Swarm]

I also seem to recall that Monte himself doesn't use AU that much in his home games. Is this correct?

The simplest answer to this question is 'no': Monte used his home games to test aspects of AU. His online campaign stories were also taken from games started well before AU even existed.

 

[Monte At Home]

I also seem to recall that Monte himself doesn't use AU that much in his home games. Is this correct?

No.

For whatever it's worth, I ran a purely AU campaign for many months, while writing and developing (and playtesting) the rules. My current game is a D&D/AU blend (it has a litorian bear totem warrior, a litorian unfettered, a sibeccai cleric/rogue, a giant champion of freedom, and a human magister as well as a human urban ranger, a human wizard). It's arguably more AU than D&D, actually.

I love AU, and that should come as no surprise.