Did you buy Dryden or Valley of Frozen Tears? Tell me what you thought about them.
- Thread starter FoolishFrost
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FoolishFrost
Hero
Two down, one to go.
Somebody go kick Man-thing for me and send him here.
Yes, I want YOU to get his attention. Now go on... Don't be lazy now.
Somebody go kick Man-thing for me and send him here.
Yes, I want YOU to get his attention. Now go on... Don't be lazy now.
arwink
Clockwork Golem
Better late than never I guess...
I picked up Valley of Frozen Tears a few weeks ago, just before I moved, and only recently got around to printing it out and reading through it. On the whole, I'm impressed with the product - it has a lot of ideas, and it makes me actually want to use it in my game. I'm a sucker for cool fey, and this has it in spades.
For me, it took the product to long to get to the parts that really interested me. While the human history was interesting, the parts of the valley that really stood out for me where the unsteady detente between the fey and the druids/rangers. With a modular product like this, I'm really searching for the cool sources of conflict and advice on how to use them - the other details are secondary.
Another minor concern was the size of the valley - I like the idea, but sliding in a location several hundred miles accross can be a bit tricky. When I eventually use it I'll be keeping it withing the region of twenty or thirty miles at most, and toning down the numbers of fey and orc tribes to make it a localised source of conflict.
I like the adventure hooks attached to the monsters, but would prefer to see more spread throught the product. The setting has a really strong cultural feel, but doesn't have an accessable guide on how to use it and maintain the players immersement. You've got some nicely established sources of conflict, but no guidelines regarding where it could go. The introductory guide to the valley is a little dry - again, more detail on what characterises the place and how it can be used would have been nice. As it is, it builds a mental picture of the place but no strong sense of potential stories.
I picked up Valley of Frozen Tears a few weeks ago, just before I moved, and only recently got around to printing it out and reading through it. On the whole, I'm impressed with the product - it has a lot of ideas, and it makes me actually want to use it in my game. I'm a sucker for cool fey, and this has it in spades.
For me, it took the product to long to get to the parts that really interested me. While the human history was interesting, the parts of the valley that really stood out for me where the unsteady detente between the fey and the druids/rangers. With a modular product like this, I'm really searching for the cool sources of conflict and advice on how to use them - the other details are secondary.
Another minor concern was the size of the valley - I like the idea, but sliding in a location several hundred miles accross can be a bit tricky. When I eventually use it I'll be keeping it withing the region of twenty or thirty miles at most, and toning down the numbers of fey and orc tribes to make it a localised source of conflict.
I like the adventure hooks attached to the monsters, but would prefer to see more spread throught the product. The setting has a really strong cultural feel, but doesn't have an accessable guide on how to use it and maintain the players immersement. You've got some nicely established sources of conflict, but no guidelines regarding where it could go. The introductory guide to the valley is a little dry - again, more detail on what characterises the place and how it can be used would have been nice. As it is, it builds a mental picture of the place but no strong sense of potential stories.
FoolishFrost
Hero
I understand what you're saying, but consider these points:
It may have been secondary, I agree, but you need the basic history of the valley to understand that. Also, it was written in a way that you could hand a large background section to the players without having to blackout every other line. First you get the part everybody knows, and then the GM secrets in a new section.
And that's fine. If you notice, it was made for you to do things like that. Notice the number of villages only fill 1/4 of the valley.
That's because it's a setting, not a module. It was made so you can add in whatever conflicts you like, without preset issues getting in your way. I'm still considering setting up a series of three modules for the VoFT, but I'm not sure if they would sell well...
And if you can tell me a way to make pages of history anything but dry, I'll be glad to learn. I've always just found them a needed evil of setting books.
Thanks for the thoughts! I will definatly keep them in mind for future setting books.
Later,
John Bowden
"For me, it took the product to long to get to the parts that really interested me. While the human history was interesting, the parts of the valley that really stood out for me where the unsteady detente between the fey and the druids/rangers. With a modular product like this, I'm really searching for the cool sources of conflict and advice on how to use them - the other details are secondary."
It may have been secondary, I agree, but you need the basic history of the valley to understand that. Also, it was written in a way that you could hand a large background section to the players without having to blackout every other line. First you get the part everybody knows, and then the GM secrets in a new section.
"Another minor concern was the size of the valley - I like the idea, but sliding in a location several hundred miles accross can be a bit tricky. When I eventually use it I'll be keeping it withing the region of twenty or thirty miles at most, and toning down the numbers of fey and orc tribes to make it a localised source of conflict."
And that's fine. If you notice, it was made for you to do things like that. Notice the number of villages only fill 1/4 of the valley.
"I like the adventure hooks attached to the monsters, but would prefer to see more spread throught the product. The setting has a really strong cultural feel, but doesn't have an accessable guide on how to use it and maintain the players immersement. You've got some nicely established sources of conflict, but no guidelines regarding where it could go. The introductory guide to the valley is a little dry - again, more detail on what characterises the place and how it can be used would have been nice. As it is, it builds a mental picture of the place but no strong sense of potential stories."
That's because it's a setting, not a module. It was made so you can add in whatever conflicts you like, without preset issues getting in your way. I'm still considering setting up a series of three modules for the VoFT, but I'm not sure if they would sell well...
And if you can tell me a way to make pages of history anything but dry, I'll be glad to learn. I've always just found them a needed evil of setting books.
Thanks for the thoughts! I will definatly keep them in mind for future setting books.
Later,
John Bowden
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arwink
Clockwork Golem
TheFool1972 said:
This may just be me, but I don't tend to look at setting and story as being mutually exclusive. Look at any good story, and the setting is as interesting as the conflict that drives it. Often, the two are fundamentally linked in some way. Themes and conflicts that drive the story are often reflected in where they take place.
The same tends to apply to the RPG products that I've gotten the most use out of. I'm not looking for fully-fleshed out adventures (although I'll take them if they show up - the fundamental premise of VoFT is *Cool*), but when I look at a campaign setting I'm trying to work out the kinds of adventures that suite that area. More importantly, I'm looking for hooks that take my adventure planning in directions it wouldn't ordinarily go. The Compact resonated strongly in this respect, the other aspects of the setting not so much.
History is just a story based on something that's already happened. I'm a big fan of getting history delivered in character, supplemented with a timeline or DM notes after the story
FoolishFrost
Hero
Please, Expand on your views. I'm trying to see it your way, but don't think I'm there yet.
I've always seen a setting as much more static than dynamic. Adventure modules, on the other hand, were always the movers of a setting.
Looking at the setting material from dragonlance, forgotten realms, and greyhawk, it would seem that the setting portion of each world did lack dynamics. It was the modules (including the ones with the setting) that gave a sense of movement.
What are other's views on this? I'm always open to changing my writing style.
I've always seen a setting as much more static than dynamic. Adventure modules, on the other hand, were always the movers of a setting.
Looking at the setting material from dragonlance, forgotten realms, and greyhawk, it would seem that the setting portion of each world did lack dynamics. It was the modules (including the ones with the setting) that gave a sense of movement.
What are other's views on this? I'm always open to changing my writing style.
Man-thing
First Post
I like products like the Poor Wizards' Almanac to move a campaign along.
An accessory though not necessary precise chronicled adventure hook after adventutre hook that could chang the world.
I found modules to be a poor method of adjusting a campaign because my players always "turn left" literally and figuratively. I remember reading in RttTTE that the temple (previously destroyed) and I thought damn, it never even occured to my party to destroy the original temple and now the new incanation is based from events then never happened.
9 times out of 10 if my "turn left" group was in a world changing module it will result in failure.
In fact they have asked in the hiring process on a number of occassions, "what should we done if perhaps ... (we can't rescue the princess, we fail to protect the kings, et cetera)
So we kind of shy away from world affecting modules
(I think I lost my train of thought in there somewhere)
An accessory though not necessary precise chronicled adventure hook after adventutre hook that could chang the world.
I found modules to be a poor method of adjusting a campaign because my players always "turn left" literally and figuratively. I remember reading in RttTTE that the temple (previously destroyed) and I thought damn, it never even occured to my party to destroy the original temple and now the new incanation is based from events then never happened.
9 times out of 10 if my "turn left" group was in a world changing module it will result in failure.
In fact they have asked in the hiring process on a number of occassions, "what should we done if perhaps ... (we can't rescue the princess, we fail to protect the kings, et cetera)
So we kind of shy away from world affecting modules
(I think I lost my train of thought in there somewhere)
arwink
Clockwork Golem
TheFool1972 said:
I'm not so much looking for a setting that moves forward as a setting that implies movement. Man-Thing nails the problem with advancing things via adventures, but I have to agree that the Poor Wizards Almanac for the Known World/Mystara setting was perhaps one of the best ideas supplements I've ever come accross.
The easiest metaphor I can think of regarding the importance of setting is to try changing locations in classic fantasy books. Put Conan in the World of Lord of the Rings, for example. Although there are ways you could make the character and the setting work in tandem, the initial contrast doesn't make for a terribly cohesive picture. The dynamics of the world is wrong - Conan is grim and relatively amoral solo hero, while the LotR is all about clashing armies and the corruption of good.
RPG settings tend to work in the same kind of way - they prevelidge certain kinds of conflict and characters. I'm not all that familiar with the newer incarnations of the worlds, but looking back at the older incarnations of those campaigns, there is a sense of campaign dynamics being pushed forward.
Looking back at the 1e Dragonlance Adventures hardcover, the first two pages of the product are all history and explaining the laws that govern the universe. There is good and there is evil, and these two aspects must sit in balance. The history lets us know where this comes from, and how mankind (read: player characters) fit into the situation. That same tone tends to pervade much of the book, and the kinds of adventures the campaign and rules encourage you to run - big, epic, good vs evil struggles in the vein of early fantasists and the dragonlance novels.
If you look at more recent products like Eberron, the same kind of setting up is there. Big war, fragmented states, espionage and pulp stories set into a fanatasy tone. Theres a lot of coverage of power groups and goals, setting up the ways in which they struggle against one another. While the mechanics of DnD are altered to fit them into this kind of feel, its also there in the setting. The player who initially sold me on Eberron did so on the promise that you can delve into any aspect of the setting and find a story, and he's just about right. This is part of the whole feel of the setting - "in the big city, everyone has a hard luck story, this is just one of them."
I don't have a copy of my early realms products handy at the moment, but my main memory of them is that they set up the feel of adventurers as a force for good and evil that serves to change the fate of the world. The size and scope of the world is huge, but there is always the feeling that the individual can get into trouble and have an effect on the way the world is run. Single people change the fate of towns, cities and countries. Arguably, this tone is what led to the problem of realmsian uber-characters - the kind of stories it encouraged writers to create is entirely based around the cool individual rather than the works of nations. Heroes tend to be small and opperate on their own (see Harpers, Knights of Myth Dranner), while Evil tends to be organised and based in groups (see Zhentil Keep, Cult of the Dragon, Etc). It's not a hard and fast rule, particularly with the modern realms, but it was there once. It's even possible that now these aspects are broken down on a region by region basis.
The key to these settings is that I can pick up the rule book, quickly flick through them, and pick up an idea of what they're about and the kinds of adventures they're encouraging the DM to think about. They're dynamic in the sense that they create a space where certain kinds of conflict are pushed to the fore. Its the same reason why the Wizards setting search asked for big concepts as the introduction to the synopsis - it answers the key question of "What kind of story is this setting about?"
I didn't get that kind of feel when I first read Valley of Frozen Tears. I know that when I use it, the key idea will be "Keeping the fragile peace between man and fey intact," but that was the key phrase I found towards the end of the book rather than something that pervades the setting as a whole. I'd actually be very interested in a series of modules using the setting, if only to see how you envisage the setting being used.
In essence, I don't think a campaign world can be static. It needs to have some source of conflict, otherwise there is nothing for adventurers to do there. The DM can add this themselves, sure, but I tend to buy supplements to ease the burden of doing it all myself. A static world that I can create conflict for is something I will use eventually, but a world with a dynamic sense of conflict built into its write-up is something that will catch my attention and make me want to use it right away.
That being said: VoFT is a very nice product, and if I wasn't in the midst of two campaigns its the kind of place that I'd use as a starting point for low-level adventurers. It'd make a nice change from your typical "Fight the kobolds and goblins" approach to low level adventuring, offering low-level players the chance to have a meaningful impact on the compact and the state of the valley in general. I actually think that if the advertising for it pitched it as such, I would have picked it up much earlier than I did.
I think I kind of lost sight of mentioning that in making my responses
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