Dragon 334, Malhavoc's Surprise = Ptolus

[Arbiter of Wyrms]

In coming months, Monte-bashers will call this project self-aggrandizement.

And it begins. . .

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

I'll give Monte the benefit of the doubt on this one, though, simply for the stuff I quoted above. Well, that, and the fact that I think most of his stuff is great - When the Sky Falls and Requiem for a God are, in my opinion, two of the finest RPG books ever published.

Aren't those written by Bruce Cordell though?

 

[Brother Shatterstone]

My copy of Dragon hasn't come yet, so I will try to reserve judgment, but I was expecting something more… Something close to ground breaking instead of a CS that I will probably never get to play in even if I buy the book.

Oh well I guess I will save some money in the long run...

 

[ColonelHardisson]

Aren't those written by Bruce Cordell though?

When the Sky Falls was. My mistake. Substitute any number of books Monte actually wrote - say, any of the Eldritch Might books, or the Banewarrens. Or the DMG, for that matter.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I suspected that we'd see Ptolus in print at some point. It was almost inevetible that he'd want to publish it at some point. I mean, it's his baby after all isn't it?

Any DM with his own publishing company would. Unlike most of those DMs' homebrews, though, Ptolus sounds interesting.

 

[Mouseferatu]

See, to me, this is one of the best things the product could have been.

I don't really need more brand new rulebooks, and I'm not playing in the AE setting. However, I'd very much love to see Ptolus and environs examined in detail--even though I'll never likely use the campaign as is. It's the same reason I purchased the core books for Morningstar/Forgotten Realms/Codex of Erde/Codex Arcanis/Legends of Excalibur, and a whole mess of others. I don't tend to play campaign settings "out of the box." The only campaigns I've run straight out of the "world book" are Eberron, Ravenloft, Scarred Lands, and (to an extent) Planescape. (And I'd be happy to do so with Dawnforge). Most of the time, I buy campaign settings in order to mine them for ideas, plots, entire locations, NPCs, and inspiration for my own ideas.

The fact that Ptolus and the 3E rules were built around one another suggests, to me, that the setting and its options should have a lot of good ideas, and--even more importantly--present at least some amount of insight into why things are as they are, and how they could instead have been.

Monte, for what it's worth, I'm looking forward to this more than anything Malhavoc's done in a good long while.

(Though personally, I'm still waiting for a Book of Countless Doorways II, as well. )

 

[Arbiter of Wyrms]

I want to know what classes will be represented. Will there be akashics? Magisters? Warlocks? Fighters?

How 'bout races? Litorians? Dwarves?

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

I want to know what classes will be represented. Will there be akashics? Magisters? Warlocks? Fighters?

How 'bout races? Litorians? Dwarves?

If you look on the site you can find some of this information already, though who knows how it's been changed as the campaign morphed into a product.

The classes seem to be mostly standard DnD though with a very high level of flexibility.

Some of the AE races were originally a part of the campaign. The Faen are the only ones I can remember playing an important role.

 

[Shemeska]

It's just backlash, when the fan's scream too loudly, it draws out detractors in equal measure. For instance, in this thread Monte was compared to Christ, and people suggested his secret project was that Malhavoc was producing 4e.

So, on both sides, the issue is silly.

No no, only if the secret project had been Planescape. As it's not, I will not be referring to Monte as Jesus Cook or Monte Christ. I'm ambivalent on the Ptolus thing. No opinion really till I've seen it.

 

[Matrix Sorcica]

It's just backlash, when the fan's scream too loudly, it draws out detractors in equal measure. For instance, in this thread Monte was compared to Christ, and people suggested his secret project was that Malhavoc was producing 4e.

So, on both sides, the issue is silly.

What he said