Do me a huge favor, give me the table of contents and a quick summary of each chapter. (For both books)
Sorry for the delay, but a lightning storm last night crashed one of my HDDs so i was tripping out all day =)
DLCS-
The introductory section is pretty much what you would expect- a brief rundown of dragonlance, the planet, the continent, and the base ideas of the campaign. Nothing spectacular here, but still, its nice to see Dragonlance back in action =)
1- Races. Building block of the campaign, this chapter has 2 human races (civilized and nomad [mainly flavor differences in the two]), 4 dwarven types (hill, mountain, dark, and gully), 6 elven types (three land elves, two sea elves, and half), an awesomely huge write up on gnomes (with nifty guild bonuses and a cool favored class concept), the requisite kender, centaurs (ECL 6, so i dont know who is gonna play one..), two types of draconians (baaz and kapak), and the four ogre races (irda, ogres, half ogres, and minotaurs).
2- Classes. Mostly a write up on how core classes interact with Dragonlance, notable for finally allowing monks and paladins into the setting. Also, two new classes are introduced here, the spontanious divine casting mystic (cleric bab/hit die/skills with sorc spells per day/known) and the roleplaying oriented noble class. The second half of the chapter deals with prestige classes, including three each for the Knights of Solamnia and the Knights of Neraka, an introductory Legionnare PrC (which looks totally useless until you realise that it serves as a gateway to more specialised PrCs in the AoM book), Wizards of High Sorcery (one PrC with three branches pending your alignment), and four 'generic' PrCs: The Dragonrider (gets his own draconic cohort), the Inquisitor (good at finding info and stuff), The Legendary Tactician (mainly for NPC generals and stuff), and the Righteous Zealot (this is dragonlance. gods are important).
3-Magic of Krynn. This chapter mainly deals with the differences between the structure of wizards and clerics vs the freeform nature of sorcerors and mystics. Its mainly a flavor thing dealing with the intricacies of the setting, and the timeline of the game. There is a sidebar explaining why sorc/wiz and myst/cleric multiclassing can not happen. Basically, this chapter explains how magic works on krynn. There are thirteen new domains introduced, including four that are mystic only (mystics are divine casters not associated with dieties). The chapter is rounded out with about 9 pages of new spells, and a note on special materials for magic weapons on krynn (dragonmetal, ironwood and star metal), and a writeup on dragonlances themselves.
4- dieties. Lots and lots of flavor here, as the dieties are one of the major focuses of the campaign world. Also, this is the first time that anyone's actually diagrammed out a cosmology for the setting. Of course, there really isnt much to see, as there are only three outerplanes =) Its important to note though, that this is for the gods post the war of souls. Paladine and Takhisis have separate writeups in the back of the book.
5- Geography of Ansalon. A good solid overview of the various countries and groups of the continent, with 4 maps detailing various quadrants. The big mistake of this book is that wotc took out the poster map without telling SovPress, so we never get a good look at the continent as a whole (unless you have older material). Also missing are population numbers.
6- The Dragonlance campaign. My favorite chapter in the book, this one provides motivations on what to run and why PCs are doing what they do. Also included is a great section on Languages of Krynn (my pet peeve for years was that no one had any cultural data at all...), an explanation of the coinage, and the calendar. Oh, and the single best part of the book for a true DL fan- THE TIMELINE. Super comprehensive, incredibly detailed, and covers pretty much every major event in the setting. This is the compilation of 20 years of novels and games right here in one source.
7- Monsters of Krynn. This chapter is pretty short, as the bestiary is coming soon. It features a cool new death knight template, draconians, dragon spawn templates, fetches, fireshadows, minotaurs, shadowpeople, skeletal warrior templates, spectral minions, tarmak (the brutes of summer flame) and thanoi. good stuff.
8- Dragons. You'd think there would be more here, but its just a chapter explaining how they act, not stats. sticking with default MM dragons, i guess. Also, a short chunk on overlords with beryl as example. More is in the AoM. The highlight is the 8 page section on arial combat, currently seeing use in my spelljammer campaign.
9- Other eras of play. This final chapter sits and briefly goes over the war of the lance period and the early fifth age pre war of souls. Surprisingly, they manage to provide a bunch of new info here, like what the gods did once they returned after the war of the lance, and how politics worked out, and the various classes and such. Paladine and Takhisis are detailed here. The early fifth age part explains how to play the saga era with 3e, and more detail on how to roleplay the loss of magic and gods and such. This is notably skimpy because of the amount of detail it is given in Age of Mortals.
The end of the book has two intro adventures, one in the fourth age and one in the fifth.
I'll detail Age of Mortals later =)
Also, is Righteous Zealot in the same book I'm guessing?
