Arnwyn
First Post
Yes.The Grumpy Celt said:
Some of it; I've skimmed the whole thing.
Unlike others here, I give it a firm "meh". I'm not terribly impressed, but it certainly isn't awful or anything.
There are are too many possible issues with this book for me to recommend buying it at full price, but it would probably be worth it if you could buy it as some sort of deep discount (50% or so).
I found this book to be far too niche-y to be of much use, unless you really have an unhealthy "thing" for dragons and the Draconomicon wasn't enough for you. The first thing it starts talking about, for example, was the "Dracorage Campaign". Uh-huh. Other issues for me included (as is typical for a Boyd book) far too many non-FR, non-core references; more shove-us-down-your-throat [color]spawn creatures make an appearance; there are loads of new spells and magic items, with many items simply being 2e retread conversions; and this is one of the extremely few books that makes direct references to the crappy FR novels (which continue to wreak havoc on the game world). The lack of the FR draconic deities, domains, etc was a noticeable omission, and somewhat jarring considering this book is called "Dragons of Faerun". About 1/3 of the dragons are from the Wyrms of the North Dragon mag articles (and also freely available on the WotC website), and the Cult of the Dragon stuff was done better and in more detail in the 2e Cult of the Dragon book. (Though there was a feat, "Follower of the Scaly Way", which is a nice touch - I like that sort of thing. Unfortunately, the poor organization of the book/table of contents buries this in the middle of the book.) As well, the insertion of the "Dragonfall War" introduced in the incredibly lame generic splat Races of the Dragon into FR lore was a questionable decision. Finally, the FR lore is, as always, reasonably good - but, as I noted above, very niche.
And, on a purely insignificant minor note that likely no one else cares about - who's bright idea was it to turn Velsaert (the sage) into a dragon? Weird. (Can anyone correct me if this was noted anywhere before this book?)
Highlights include the 3e conversions of (finally!) the Mercury Dragon and the Steel Dragon (as well as the 3.5 version of the Mist Dragon, which first appeared in its 3e version in the Tome of Horrors). And better yet - they're in classic (read: proper) Monster Manual format! Woo!
The book includes 2 mini-adventures, one for mid-level (9th) and one for kind-of-higher-level (13th), which makes me happy (yay higher-level adventures!).
Also, the inclusion of the Threskel geographic region was really appreciated, as this is one of the (relatively) "untouched" areas of the Realms throughout all editions. Good stuff!
