Help us with the Avadnu Primer get free stuff!!!

[JVisgaitis]

I'll answer more after additional people chime in, but I want to put in here instructions on getting your swag so you don't think I'm a lying SOB. Drop me an email at: jvisgaitis at icirclegames.com and just tell me what product you want and what email you want me to send it to. I'll just send comp copies from RPGNow. Thanks for the great feedback!

 

[afreed]

A few comments from someone else who's worked on the Primer, here...

To my mind, there are three main varieties of d20 rules material:

1) New material using existing templates. e.g., new races, classes, feats, spells, magic items, and so on. The Primer covers this territory, focusing on Violet Dawn-specific bits. You won't see 'generic' feats, for example--the feats tie pretty closely to the setting. That doesn't mean you can't use them elsewhere, but you'd need some new fluff justification. The new races, of course, are tied to the setting pretty heavily.

2) Rules expansions--subsystems which either further develop existing systems or which describe entirely uncovered areas. The Primer has a few of these--rituals and taint come to mind--but it's not the focus of the book, and none of these systems are required to jump in and play.

3) Rewritten and modified rules--that is, new rules for existing gameplay elements. The Primer shies away from this overall--it doesn't rewrite the skill or combat systems. It does tweak things here and there--mainly class abilities--but it's still clearly working off the basic d20 rules.

One of my hopes for the book is to minimize the learning curve. In theory, the only new rules one has to learn are for the races. As you explore the setting, though, all the other rules--the new classes, the regional and racial feats, the faith rituals, and so forth--can be brought into play.

I suspect Jeff's unspoken concern is that, by retaining so many of the standard d20 rules, we're setting up people to inherit certain preconceptions. For instance, druids and bards are two of the most important classes in Violet Dawn. They're significantly different in style and flavor than, for example, Forgotten Realms or Eberron druids and bards, but their rules are mostly the same.

Is there a danger, then, that people will tend to gloss over the flavor changes and assume that druids and bards are the same as in more 'baseline' D&D worlds? Sure there is. But we decided to trust that people would get a feel for Violet Dawn druids and bards from the 'fluff' and mechanical tweaks in the book, instead of writing two completely new classes that fill the same roles but don't carry the same preconceptions.

Hopefully, it's a balance that'll work.

Also--in response to earlier posts, the Polyhedron version of Gamma World and Oriental Adventures are two of the best d20 products out there. I'm just sayin'.

 

[Infernal Teddy]

I can only second what's been said here before:

Base it on the Arcana Unearthed / Evolved model, and go from there. But go more Evolved than Unearthed. What I mean? Give us a world to play in with your stuff. Give us Monsters. Give us Fluff. I bought AU when it came out, and it took me ages to get it to run, because I didn't have a context.

So give me a context, give me crunch, give me critters, and I'll play with you... errrrr... with your setting. Don't give me a pure setting - I have enough generic settings to last me a lifetime. Don't give me pure rules - got enough of them too. But give me an interesting Setting with some cool rules, and I'm hooked!

-The Infernal Teddy

 

[Alzrius]

So what I need feedback on is the approach of the crunch portion of the book. To survive as a campaign setting, we initially planned on making it somewhat generic to fit easier into an existing d20 System game. What we are thinking of now is because it will be a PDF we can make it longer and take a bit more liberty with the product as we would prefer, but this would take it further away from the core ruleset and possibly alienate some people from the product.

What I want to know is what would you rather see? A campaign setting developed which introduced more rules sub-systems, base classes, and other tidbits or should we keep it as close to core as possible and leave all of the cool bits for a later product? Personally, I'd rather do all the cool bits upfront, because if we don't we kinda set a precedent as a generic setting book using the core rules.

I don't know how much help this will be to you, but here's my take on it.

I think it depends on the nature of the sub-rules and tidbits you want to introduce. If they're easy to remove for people who don't want them, then you most likely won't have a problem. If, however, they're too thematically or mechanically tied to the work in question, to the point where removing them alters parts of it to the point of no longer plug-and-play, then you may have a problem.

A lot of people (myself included) scavenge bits and pieces from various books to use in their campaigns. I'd say that so long as the parts of what you display can all stand on their own, you'll be fine. People like icing on their cake, but people just as often like to take the icing from cake A and put it on cake B, since they like that combination the most. If they can't remove the icing without making a mess, then they can't get the kind of cake they want.

That's my two cents anyway. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go eat some cake.

 

[Soel]

What I want to know is what would you rather see? A campaign setting developed which introduced more rules sub-systems, base classes, and other tidbits or should we keep it as close to core as possible and leave all of the cool bits for a later product? Personally, I'd rather do all the cool bits upfront, because if we don't we kinda set a precedent as a generic setting book using the core rules.

I am going to get this either way, but I would prefer the pdf to have all of the alternate and new rules, classes, and bits intact. Like many dm's, I pluck and scrape bits from material I use for my campaigns, (and have the urge to change them as well sometimes.) I take inspiration from these exact sorts of things, so the more, the merrier!

I really like the idea of racial feats, allowing players to determine just how close to the standard of the race, they will appear. More player options are wonderful!

 

[Turanil]

What I want to know is what would you rather see? A campaign setting developed which introduced more rules sub-systems, base classes, and other tidbits or should we keep it as close to core as possible and leave all of the cool bits for a later product? Personally, I'd rather do all the cool bits upfront, because if we don't we kinda set a precedent as a generic setting book using the core rules.

What I want to see is "added material". For example I have and much like AU by Monte Cook, but had to tweak it so it would mesh perfectly well with D&D 3.5. The fact is, that I don't want to choose either D&D 3.5 or AU. I want both of them at the same time!

So with your additional crunch: great idea! I like additional crunch. If I remember well, by the way, there is a great divine-like class available on your website. Hey! This class must make it into the setting book, but clerics and druids must still be allowed. I don't mind that the setting says that clerics and druids have dwindled so there is only a handful of them on the entire world now. But I nonetheless want the option of having clerics and druids (as well as everything of basic D&D) available in the campaign. It could be a nice idea to say that very few remain, so players choosing the class would be "rare" characters. So, I want new material, and I want new material that doesn't invalidate anything out of the three rulebooks. Well, as far as I am concerned, I was speaking about classes (Now, I would like to see a section detailing how all the classes fit in the setting, not just see that explained only for new classes.), feats, skills, etc. But not about races. I don't mind that dwarves, elves, etc. are no more available. In fact I will greet a world where actually gnomes DON'T exist!

Like someone else said, I also want it to be easy to remove some new rules out of this setting if I don't like them.

In any case, I would like your setting better, if indeed it brings new crunch to the game.

And to encourgage people to give me their opinions, I'll throw in a free PDF of either Legends of Avadnu or Digital Denizens: Challenge Rating One. Your choice.

I was already thinking of my answer before I did read this part. You see, I need to increase my postcount on Enworld! But if you offer a free stuff no problem!! Since I already have Legends of Avadnu, I choose Digital Denizens: Challenge Rating One.

Thanks. (my email: dominique.crouzet@libertysurf.fr)

 

[Aus_Snow]

What I want to know is what would you rather see? A campaign setting developed which introduced more rules sub-systems, base classes, and other tidbits or should we keep it as close to core as possible and leave all of the cool bits for a later product? Personally, I'd rather do all the cool bits upfront, because if we don't we kinda set a precedent as a generic setting book using the core rules.

I can only give you my heavily biased, subjective opinion.

Basically, given that the corebooks are a bit on the Greyhawk side, meshed with a dash of Realms, I favour settings that do it their own way, only using whatever parts of the core RAW are appropriate, as per AE ("yet again?" as you hear those two letters again, I imagine.)

Seeing that you'll be adding in rules changes somewhere along the line anyway, I'd imagine it would be better sense to have them 'up front', for the reason given, if for no other.

 

[Infernal Teddy]

Other thoughts would be:

1.) Pay attention to what other designers have been "copying". Racial feats (I saw them first in dragon, but I've seen a few flying around somewhere...); Racial Levels (I'm thinking Arcana Unearthed here, which apparantly has been ported to World of Warcraft d20); Spell templates (Once again AU, but also Unearthed Arcana if my memory serves me right).

2.) Don't give us even more Prestige Classes. If prestige classes were sugar, we'd all be diabetic by now. And don't do new base classes unless you absolutely HAVE to. New feat-categories will also not be appreciated.

3.) Maybe make your ajustments to the "Basic races" racial levels. Now that would be a change, wouldn't it?

4.) Do steampunk. I love Steampunk

 

[Turanil]

I've got my copy of Digital Denizens, thanks very much. I unfortuantely cannot a comment (on rpgnow.com) because as I got it directly, the system didn't take me into account (or so I guess) so I cannot add a comment. But here I can:

Digital Denizens is really an excellent PDF. It is 39 pages and present two dozens of new creatures, mainly of low CR, many of which are also PC races. All of them are fully detailed, with suggestions of plots to use them in games. For those who already know of Legends of Avadnu, this PDF is visually stuning. Of all the PDFs I've got from RPGnow, it's probably the one with the best layout and art, and an original one at that. The whole conveys very well a grim ambiance. Also, the nice thing is that there is a print version all in black and white, with its own layout for simplicity of reading. In addition, there is another PDF with racial feats, two of them really nice (one of memory and one of scent) because they give you tables so you know how to use them.

 

[CRGreathouse]

Just so you know, I wasn't ignoring your questions, I just wanted to take the time and devote a whole response to this as it will give people a better idea of what we are doing. I don't mind telling anyone what we are going to have in the Avadnu Primer. I was going to save this for an official Avadnu Primer preview thread, but I'll start it off here.

Heh. I thought you were just being careful in what you announced.

All in all, your post made me very excited about this product. Particular commentary follows:

-All New Races. The core races are not part of the Violet Dawn setting (humans withstanding) and we introduce our own races. Ones appearing from Denizens of Avadnu are the mistji, mi'thu, ngakoi, skarren, sulwynarii, and zeidians. A new one introduced in the Primer called the vulnar. We only have one or two subraces (and they are pretty much their own races) so no crazy half this and half that.

For any other product with any other publisher, I'd be wary about this -- it's a fair amount of work for less benefit than other changes, and it can put people off. After seeing some of your other work, though, I have to say I'm fairly excited to see what the new races are like. I think in particular of Legends of Avadnu's true mistiji vs. the Avadnu Primer's mistiji.

-Racial Feats. Each race has a selection of feats to augment existing powers or give them new ones. We also worked really hard on our racial mechanics so each offers something new and exciting. I personally am not a fan of new races with just skill bonuses and attribute modifiers.

Yet again, proof that the way you're doing this is the 'right' way to do something hard....

-Specific Items and Equipment. We have all new armor, some new mundane pieces of equipment, and racial weapons. We also have some new special materials. You can still use D&D armors if you like, but we do have our own.

Interesting; good. Easy to integrate, flavorful, but also easy to ignore for those who don't want to bother.

-Slight changes to some of the classes ala Iron Kingdoms. Just slight tweaks to special abilities or spell lists. Nothing major, but we do have some cool changes like signature items for wizards and sorcerers, and new bard songs.

Is this similar to the core class changes in Unearthed Arcana (WotC's book, not MCAE)?

-Removing the Cleric as a core class and replacing it with the Devout. More on this is in a preview download of the Devout on our Violet Dawn website. Here's a link.

I wasn't a fan of the class, as I recall. :\

-Rules for faith based rituals for all classes that allow PCs to gain benefits for devotion to their religions.

Excellent! These are always good.

-Feats dealing with the Green River, the source of natural magic.

-Rules for incorporating taint into Violet Dawn games.

-Special rules for enviromental conditions in various regions.

These sound good. I'll wait to see the tain system before I pass judgement, but the others should be really good. (The last may be competing with WotC's Environment series books, but as I don't own them, it seems good to me!)


All things considered, I think that you should put the setting rules material in the Primer. It looks good, and I don't think it will alienate your core audience. The most contraversial parts seem easy to drop, if one is so inclined. For the most part, I think people who would buy your product are tired of "same old, same old" and the new mechanics to fit the setting will be good.