EN Arsenal: It's ALIIIIIIIIIIIVE!

[HellHound]

Joe - have I mentioned that you are the inspiration for this series, with your Dagger obsession?



It's coming.

 

[Dextra]

No seriously now, how about daggers. Heck, I could probably coallate some of the OGC out therei nto a book on daggers. We need Knife Fighters I tell you!

You get started on that, and I'll make sure that between Hound and I we come up with some original material. Heck, if you have an idea for a basic concept of prestige class or feat chains or magic items, let us know, and we'll work on it!

 

[DanMcS]

Oy, Hellhound, I think you already have some people writing things for ENA products, so I thought maybe a pre-query query: Do you have anyone working on spears?

Also, how tightly focused are these products? Spiked Chain seems to only cover one thing; Sticks and Stones would cover quite a lot. A spear book could hit only spears, or it could do shortspear, spear, longspear, dart, javelin, siangham, trident, and at the outside a lance and bayonet. I'm trying to figure out what I should be thinking here.

 

[RangerWickett]

Dan, I'm pretty sure someone else has already called spears, but I'm not sure how wide a range of weapons he's gonna go for.

Me, I just had a bit of a revelation reading *sheepish grin* a dark Elf novel last night. I've got to put those nifty snake-headed whips in EN Arse: Whips.

 

[Dextra]

Oy, Hellhound, I think you already have some people writing things for ENA products, so I thought maybe a pre-query query: Do you have anyone working on spears?

Also, how tightly focused are these products? Spiked Chain seems to only cover one thing; Sticks and Stones would cover quite a lot. A spear book could hit only spears, or it could do shortspear, spear, longspear, dart, javelin, siangham, trident, and at the outside a lance and bayonet. I'm trying to figure out what I should be thinking here.

I lost track of whether or not someone has secured dibs in spears or not, but to answer your question about the focus of the products, I'll use the spear example.

If you feel that you could do justice (ie. 10-20 pages) to just Spears, then do just spears. I feel that the trident could probably warrant its own treatment, definitely, since there could be a lot of aquatic references for it. I suspect that shortspear, spear, longspear and javelins could be combined into one entity, but if some weapon expert feels that each deserve their own special treatment and can deliver the material, then by all means, write about them separately. Eventually we'll combine the whole lot into one big chapter in a book we'll release next year, anyhow.

So the answer, basically, is "it depends".

By the way, while you're writing, don't forget to look at non-combat, or kewl moves or combat styles for the weapon- spears could be used for pole-vaulting, for example...

 

[HellHound]

Spears is being covered by Joe from Throwing Dice Games, as one of a few products we are releasing in cooperation with other publishers in this series (expect ENArsenal Spears and ENArsenal Staves to be cooperative ventures - and then who knows?).

Spears is curently covering (correct me if I'm wrong, Joe) Spears from Short to Long as well as javelins and atlatls. I don't believe it will be covering lances as lances open up a whole other jar of beans with jousting and so on.

Other examples of inclusivity / exclusivity are Axes. An Axe book would cover throwing axes, battle axes and great axes, but the Orcish Double Axe would probably get its own book (exotic weapons tend to score their own books, fictional iconic d20 weapons like the spiked chain and orcish double axe especially).

 

[BrooklynKnight]

Wouldnt En Arsenal: Polearms be a better name for that book?

I did a few small peices for Spiked Chain, I hope to contribute in small amounts to ALL the books, if i'm permitted to do so. :-D

 

[HellHound]

I don't think so, since it actually doesn't cover any of the classic polearms besides the simplest (the spear, only one that can be wielded with a simple weapon proficiency instead of martial). It doesn't cover halberds, guisarms, bills, glaives, poleaxes and so on.

 

[BrooklynKnight]

I'd say "expand it" but i'm sure you already have what you're planning worked out.

 

[HellHound]

The goal of the E.N.Arsenal series is to produce short products focused on a single weapon or class of weapons. As the spear is significantly different than the other polearms (lacking any type of blade in most cases for one, and being the only such weapon that can be used with a simple weapon proficiency), it is appropriate for a short book. By adding in the massive plethora of polearms to the content, we'd definitely be stretching the book to Three Arrows size instead of Arsenal size.

But don't worry, I'm sure that polearms will get their own book in the series in time.