Dragonmarked Review

[Destil]

Excelent review.

Eberron is a great setting from a flavor standpoint. Sometimes the need for rules rules rules in books really annoys me, and it sounds like this will be one of thoes times...

I'll most likely pick it up for the info on the various houses, keep the 2-3 good PRCs and house rule the feats into something more consistant along with making a generic Mage of the 12 PrC....

 

[Glyfair]

Nightfall, WTH are you talking about?

I think he's talking about the Eberron article in the most recent Dragon by Keith.

 

[Graf]

The Sharn book had a quill that lets Sivis imprint an Arcane Mark on living flesh that's used to mark criminals. That's a great plot hook with a lot of uses. The Shadow Eye in this book that acts as a hidden spy camera is also good for that. I would rather have had more of those than a lot of PrC that will never see use.

I agree that this was a missed chance, a few good paragraphs about cool magical effects can give DMs the gensis of hours of fun. Expecially since two of the items were scrying related for a house that already has scry as a spell like ability.
As for dooming-dragonmarks-to-NPC-dom...
Obviously most dragonmarked are going to be behind-the-scenes NPCs. At the same time it's easy to imagine PC-type roles in each of the houses (even the weaker ones like the Halfling houses).
But making it a solidly NPC oriented book would have been an interesting (if commercially unattractive) option.

Graf, your review was great! It dealt with the underlying design issues of the product, instead of a page-by-page analysis of the book's contents.

I appriciate the complement, and I am pleased that you, and others, liked the review.

Of course, when other reviewers - including staff reviewers - demonstrate repeatedly that they don't understand those issues.

I'm not sure that this is true. Or particularly fair. Reviewers write to share their impressions of a book; someone who isn't into design shouldn't have to write about it if it's not their bag.

And staff reviewers have their own set of responcibilities.
I had a bit of an axe to grind; I could talk about what I thought should have been done, rant about unrelated books, etc. etc.

A staff reviewer is going to be read by a lot more people and has to provide a neutral, unbiased opinion.
Many of the reviews do address substantive design issues. However for other people there are other things art, fluff, etc. that are equally, if not more, important. The staff reviewer (I expect) is trying to get the major points for everyone; doing that while staying concise is very tough.

How does one get on the staff reviewers list? Graf should be there.

You write a lot of thoughtful, unbiased, reviews.

I -do- appreciate the complement, but I'm not the sort of person who would make a good staff reviewer and I think that the existing reviewers do an excellent job.

Thanks again for the complements though!

 

[Mechanurge]

Wow, that was one of the longest, and most useful, book reviews I have ever read. Good job, Graf. The only thing you should change is the formatting and sentence structure, as it's currently a little hard to follow.

Personally, I like a little bit of ranting in my reviews. Unbiased, perfectly objective technical reviews are often dry as dust and some degenerate in little more than laundry lists of nitpicks and rules mistakes, which is not that useful to me (though it may be to others). You've addressed fundamental design decisions and problems and tied them into the Eberron line as a whole so that people can see the value of the product in relation to the campaign and all other books, not just this one. Keep writing more Eberron reviews, mate.