Is Ptolus living up to the hype?

amaril said:
They can typically afford the campaign setting book (e.g. Forgotten Realms CS, Eberron CS, Player's Guide to Greyhawk [2e, but enough fluff for a 3e campaign]). These campaign setting books typically have some nominal amount of crunch, such as feats, domains, prestige classes, spells, equipment, races, etc., with which players can immerse their characters into the setting.


When you pre-ordered the book, they gave us 5 players handouts, that easily let players know whats what. I'm sure you can aquire them for youself if you need them. Or get someone who has it make a copy for you to make your own copies.


Having pre-ordered it, I liked the look of it. I'm still reading it. Overall its much like many have already said: its a fantasic setting, rich in detail and crossed referenced to the max. Easily the best game book I own to date. Its the only one since pretty much the release of 3.0 that I havent bought through Amazon(which usually has a 30-40% discount) because I didnt feel the game book was worth the cover price of $30-$40. I got my money's worth on this one(even discounting the free goodies you got with pre-order).
 

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The Player's Guide actually has a few deliberate misunderstandings for the players to chew on. (Hence the periodic complaints about how unrealistic the Vai are, because the Player's Guide has a semi-hysterical version of the truth printed.) It and the Savage Tide Player's Guide are pretty much perfect for giving to players in the respective campaigns, IMO. (The Savage Tide has full color, which some will likely prefer. ;))
 

amaril said:
It's pretty obvious.
1. I can fit the PDFs on my thumb drive.
2. I can create a search index of the PDFs using Windows Desktop Search or Google Desktop. If I want to find every instance of a specific name across all of the PDFs, I can.
3. The collection of PDFs that make up Ptolus is cheaper than the book.
4. Buying and reading one PDF at a time is easier to budget.
5. Digesting Ptolus one book at a time is seemingly less daunting.

You'll find (2) to be much less useful than you expect with the Ptolus PDFs compared to the paper. The paper copy of the book is extensively indexed at all the right places in the margins, so it turns out that I haven't felt the need for an electronic index.

In any case, I definitely think I like having the paper copy. My Ptolus campaign resumes next week. (My players were so impatient to play it that they wrapped up RHoD early to get to it :)
 

I purchased the book (the physical, heavy, sexy tome) last Saturday.

I haven't been able to put it down. I am really absorbing it and for the first time ever, considering actually running a group through some in town adventures. (In the past, town was handled in a more mail-order fashion). For the first time, I really "get" the setting. It is laid out very very well, and it is also quite interesting to read.

And since there aren't huge deviations from D&D Core Rules, I don't feel lost keeping up with what "this faction" does and "that faction" represents and "those classes" are built for, etc.

It's D&D. I don't care about volume, it's just plain D&D. Forgotten Realms is Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance is Dragonlance, Grayhawk is Grayhawk. Each have their own flavor that make them their own campaign world. Overall, Ptolus is just plain D&D.

And for me, that works and works well. =)
 
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Hi,

I have Ptolus and really like it, so IMHO, it lives up to the hype! I'm using it in the Forgotten Realms with some tweaks to stand in for Zazesspur in Tethyr where my campaign was already set. Since we'd already started The Banewarrens, this made things pretty straightforward. I'm about halfway through reading the book cover to cover but have been jumping around following the numerous cross references.

I'd buy it if I were you.

Cheers


Richard
 

amaril said:
2. I can create a search index of the PDFs using Windows Desktop Search or Google Desktop. If I want to find every instance of a specific name across all of the PDFs, I can.

Maybe I'm technologically ignorant, but why do you need to do that? Isn't every word of the PDFs searchable through the Adobe Reader feature anyway? Or do those searches let you search when the PDFs are closed, whereas Reader requires all the PDFs to be open at once to search them all simultaneously?
 

Mark Plemmons said:
Maybe I'm technologically ignorant, but why do you need to do that? Isn't every word of the PDFs searchable through the Adobe Reader feature anyway? Or do those searches let you search when the PDFs are closed, whereas Reader requires all the PDFs to be open at once to search them all simultaneously?
It allows you to search when they are closed. In fact, I can search across all files, not just PDFs. Additionally, the search tool sits in my Taskbar at all times and displays results as I type.

Trust me; I know how to use technology optimally.
 
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It definitely lives up to the hype. I did a review of it over at The RPG Site which goes into some detail about it. It's a richly detailed book, with campaign hooks on just about every page. Years of material. People have said they don't want to get it because Monte won't be supporting it, but man oh man, there's something like close to, what, 1500 pages of material if you include the material on the CD. It's pretty much self-supporting.
 
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Part of the point of the book is IT DOESNT NEED SUPPORT. You dont need another book, ever. Between the book, disk and adventures....I dont need a single thing ever.

What support are people grumbling about? Its not needed.

I looked at the shelf next to it and Ebbrron or however its spelled, I cpounted 7 hardcovers.....and who knows how many more will come. $30 x 7 =$210...your getting towards double the cost....
 

ColonelHardisson said:
It definitely lives up to the hype. I did a review of it over at www.therpgsite.com/node/405 which goes into some detail about it. It's a richly detailed book, with campaign hooks on just about every page. Years of material. People have said they don't want to get it because Monte won't be supporting it, but man oh man, there's something like close to, what, 1500 pages of material if you include the material on the CD. It's pretty much self-supporting.
Hey Colonel, your link is broken. I fixed it for ya.


Peace and smiles :)

j.
 

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