Hello,
Posted by thalmin:
If you have a bloodline (there are 3), you have a score in it that can be increased.
Actually, there are still seven bloodline derivations, based on the old gods of the Birthright world: Anduiras, Basaia, Brenna, Masela, Reynir, Vorynn, and Azrai. There are, as before, four rough levels of bloodline strength (tainted, minor, major, great), though only the last three grant any special abilities.
I'd hoped for a template system for blooded characters, rather than a Feat-based system. Perhaps in the future, the ideas can be combined, with a "blooded" template that grants bonus Feats (in amounts based on bloodline score) from a (much expanded) list of "blood Feats".
The methods given for increasing bloodline score also leave out one of the major paths to stronger bloodline in the original Birthright rules: expending Regency points, which are attained through good rulership of a domain. Instead we get a Feat, and awards for vague "heroic deeds", in addition to investiture and the "quickening" method of slaying other blooded characters (no mention of bloodsilver, either). I realize that the article had no space for full-blown Regency rules, but a simple non-"crunchy" note about the possibility of increase by that method would have been nice.
Posted by thalmin:
There is a sidebar article that explains the design team's creation of Mystara, how it started accidentally.
Yeah, who'd have thought that the map in the back of
Isle of Dread would blossom into 14 Gazetteers, 5 boxed sets, 4 Almanacs, 4 Creature Crucibles, and a long-running series of Dragon Magazine articles...
Posted by johnsemlak:
I'm hoping for a 3.5 update of Mystara someday.
You and me both. Ideally as a single book with the quality and attention to detail lavished on the 3e Realms hardcover. But I'm not holding my breath.
Posted by Ycore Rixle:
I can only speak for the Red Steel article (that's the one I wrote). The material wasn't taken from Vaults of Pandius or any other site.
I have to say I'm glad of this independence from the "official" fan sites; while there's a lot of excellent stuff in Vaults of Pandius, I don't like where they've gone with their post-Wrath timeline. Nice article, by the way; really dealt with the essentials of the setting - the Red Curse, cinnabryl, red steel, and just a taste of the weird races. Much better than the Mystara article, which, alas, was little more than a mini-module. For that, I'd sooner have seen, say, 3.5 rewrites of some of the more famous NPCs (d'Ambervilles, Stefan Karameikos, Bargle, Terari, etc.), or some stuff on Wendar to make up for the Gazetteer teased but never delivered, or perhaps 3.5 versions of goodies like the Radiance or the Seven Secret Crafts of Glantri...
(Nice old-school handle, too. Say hi to Fonkin Hoddypeak and Beek Gwenders of Croodle for me...
)
Posted by Erik Mona:
if I'm going to be doing "cultural" fantasy mini-games (which I've a mind to do) I'd rather focus on something that hasn't really been done before, like India, Egypt, Assyria, Nubia, etc.
"Hasn't really been done before?" You have Mystara and Hollow World articles in the very issue being discussed here. Have you never heard of Sind (based on India, though at last glance more like India in the Mughal period, as they are under foreign domination)? Nithia (based on Egypt)? The Yavldom Divinarchy and Ulimwengu (based very loosely on sub-Saharan cultures, with a strong prophetic component for Yavldom)? You could set your mini-games there, for a change of flavor, and reel in some of the old Mystara fans as well...
I'm quite happy with the issue - it's the first one I've bought in over two years, and more love for the old classic settings (especially Mystara and Birthright), both the stuff that didn't fit in this issue, and all-new material, will no doubt tempt me into further purchases in the future.
Hope this helps!
