Failed promises

[Agamon]

Lords of Madness. I was very happy with Libris Mortis, and can use that book a lot with my homebrew. I thought Lords of Madness was like Libris Mortis and could use the crunchy bits to mix things up a bit in my RttToEE game. Sadly it's 70% fluff, which is usually not a bad thing, but these creatures don't exist in my homebrew and fluff is pretty much useless in a massive dungeon crawl like RttToEE. And a huge chunk of the book going to the Neogi? What the hell?

Unearthed Arcana. Reading the book, I was all, "cool!" Trying to impliment some of the rules in it was a pain in the you-know-where, though. I no longer own it.

Epic Level Handbook. Ugh, what was I thinking? This game gets clunky over L10, why in the world would I want to try and play over L20?

 

[WampusCat43]

Lords of Darkness...

Talking about Lords of Madness here? LoD was a (pretty good) FR book about evil organizations like the Zhents.

The book I absolutely hated was (dammit, I can't remember the title) red-bound book of encounters that were supposed to start at level 1 and take you from one to the next. It was done by one of the original D&D contributors (Pope? I humbly apologize if that's wrong). The maps were supposed to be linked, and they weren't. The keys to the maps were all off, just totally unusable...

It was just an unbelievable example of "who playtested this thing?"

 

[Particle_Man]

Usagi Yojimbo was somewhat disappointing, as the main combat mechanic was rock-paper-scissors, with a mod that made one of the options (say, rock) either win or else have nothing bad happen to you. So what was the point of doing the other two options, again?

 

[Agamon]

Talking about Lords of Madness here? LoD was a (pretty good) FR book about evil organizations like the Zhents.

Whoops, yes, Madness, my bad.

 

[Yeoman]

For me, it was the Path of X books from Fantasy Flight Games. I got all 4 for $10 when wizards closed their retail stores. The writing style was very dry, and the classes, feats and options were really bland and uninspired.

If you had asked me 3 months ago, I would have said that Arcana Unearthed was a near regrettable purchase, as I thought it didn't live up to all the hype. But when a friend of mine got me Arcana Evolved and I was able to see the Diamond Throne setting along with the rules it really stood out as a nifty campaign setting. Well that, and the Ritual Warrior Class.

 

[slaunt]

Draconomicon. Horrible horrible book. Did not do dragons justice.

Slaunt

 

[Felon]

The Realms is a high power, high level world. The PC's are not the only heroes running around, and even a 20th level party aren't the biggest guns on deck, each kingdom probably has at least one near-epic or low-epic level adventuring group. Just because you're 20th level does not mean you get to start saving the entire world, defeating ancient monsters born at the dawn of time, and kill gods left and right.

Sure it does. The PC's are the stars of the campaign.

It is not just "the Gods would have killed them by now", it's that there are a fair number of 30th+ level NPC's who have been around for centuries or millennia (Larloch, The Symbul, Elminster, ect.)

Oh, I also mentioned high-powered muckity-mucks as well as gods. It's all six or a half-dozen. The PC's are the stars. They are not second-string.

The PC's are not the stars of the setting, they are the stars of the campaign within that setting. This is not a bad thing. You don't have to be the most important person in the world to have fun, but you should be the most important people in the adventures your PCs undertake.

Right, and after exploring some ruins and killing lots of critters, at some point those importand PC's need to do something that is actually...important. Something bigger than "save the turnip farm" (although admittedly, that's not nearly as overused as "save the world"). If Elminster or Luke Skywalker get in the way, toss them into a black hole somewhere.

 

[Soel]

for me, it was Ghostwalk. The premise was brilliant, but I couldn't find a way to logicallay build it into a gameworld, without letting it dominate my homebrew or having to rewrite an "official" setting to accomadate Manifest. Plus, I don't think the idea of the ghosts to PC's and back doesn't quite mesh with standard D&D.

So, what about you?

I totally agree with you here. I was expecting something more of a planar nature...I am still trying to eke out something useful from this book.

Lords of Madness also disappointed me a little bit, cause it din't have nearly enough abberations covered inside, and like Agamon said, what's up with the Neogi getting so much attention??

 

[Shemeska]

Sure it does. The PC's are the stars of the campaign.

There's always someone bigger. You can play in your Ptolemic campaign where everything caters to and revolves around the PCs for no reason other than they're the PCs and thus the Stars of it all. I'll go with the Copernican model TYVM.

There's always someone bigger.

 

[The Shaman]

I would say d20 Past, except (1) I didn't buy it*, and (2) it looked like it sucked from the art preview before it was released**.

*I did, however, receive it as a gift.
**It did, in fact, suck worse than the previews suggested.