Kalamar losing popularity?

[sword-dancer]

Do I think its falling from popularity? I would think that it would have to be popular in the first place. I go to my LGS's and they same Kalamar stuff thats been on the shelf for months is still there and all the ones I hear about or may take an interest in looking at aren't there.

Depending of my FNLGS KoK Stuff is reasonable admitted.
1 had absolute problems with the c"local" Distributor, another has other problems.
2 Have reasonable to good collection of KoK stuff.

The book is really boring, and not because its a deep read. It has no soul, no spark that makes it special or dynamic.

IMPOV that isn`t so.
I read the first KOKCS Review on this board a few years ago.
It`s points were really related to these, and the reviewer graded it down for it. but i like to read history books, cramped with datas not with storytale.

As has been said there are logical social structures a plenty, the migration of humans is interesting but ultimately gave me little reason to care. Sure the book tells you what kind of society lives where and does what but there is no flavor, or feel of how it is. Again no spark, no soul nothing there to make it a living breathing world for me.

I feel it is a living world, and the writing style add to this for me.
I couldn`t remember a RPG Supplement give me adventure seeds Spinning than Geneavue.

Other faults that I've found; (and this again is all personal pref) too many names for the gods.

Again this IMPOV a pro, that different cultures etc revere the "same" gods under different names and attitudes.
This is one of the things it has with midgard in common.

 

[johnsemlak]

THis poll I did on campaign settings had Kalamar running neck-and-neck with Greyhawk as the 2nd most popular setting, and it was easily the most popular third party setting.
http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=29248

It was done last year. Might be time for another poll

Of course, such polls don't mean that much

 

[Dristram]

I use the term "illogical" to describe any setting that has 1) dozens, if not hundreds, of human, non-human and monster races all sitting side by side (many in harmony, such as the thousands of gnomish defenders of the human city of Geanavue)

Well, the way I see it, sometimes they do, and sometimes they don't. And KoK reflects that. For instance, the dwarves of Iron Top have been at war, peace, and political, economic connections with the humans of Kalamar to the west of their mountain home. Currently, Kalamar has invated and taken over Iron Top, and so the dwarves of that clan are at war with the humans of Kalamar. While at the same time, they are at peace with the humans on the east side of their mountain domain, the Reanaarians. So, it's not a humans and dwarves are at war. It's an Iron Top dwarves are at war with Kalamar, not at war humans.

just because the PHB and MM say they exist in D&D so therefore they "must" exist in Kalamar;

Well, that's because it's a D&D setting. As a core D&D setting, it must include certain things.

I think others have commented more than I can really add anything to. I will end this by saying that KoK is a wonderful setting, but will not be to everyone's tastes. Which is fine and acceptable

 

[DaveMage]

I enjoy the Kalamar line.

One thing that I thought was interesting, though, if you look at "Dangerous Denizens", the fact that it's a Kalamar book isn't indicated on the front cover or the spine.

It may seem like a D&D book to the uninitiated (although, of course, it has info on Tellene all through it). It's a great book, though.

I really like the style of the Kalamar adventures, especially the illistrations that appear in each one.

 

[NewJeffCT]

I agree with what GrimJesta said above. It is not easy to read straight through. I have had the Kalamar stuff since 1998 or so back in 2E days and still have not done it. However, if you flip through the book, as Mark said above, and look at a page, you will almost always find a spark that can lead to adventure. There are so many little hooks that can lead to a great adventure. I have been stuck for a while on the Duchy of Dodera, a nation where the position of Duke is very tenuous indeed – I think a good half dozen Dukes in the past 15 years or so, each having been ‘replaced’ by Emperor Kabori for lack of success against both dwarven insurgents and in the ongoing war with the nation of Tharggy (a nation so devastated by war that the women have taken up arms, but that is another story...or is it?). With just that, I can see several possibilities – a starting adventure to scout out camps of dwarven insurgents who turn out to not be so evil after all; maybe a scouting mission into Tharggy and some run-ins with their female military; maybe the latest Duke has hatched a desperate plan to either conquer Tharggy or wipe out the dwarves; maybe a huge horde of orcs is gathering in the mountains near both nations and threatens both unless the PCs can unite the defenses of both nations?

And, while I do think there are too many deities, I can see the points of other that it is comparable to our own world back in the old days when there were Roman, Greek, Norse, Indian, Chinese, etc pantheons. Heck, I used to love my 1E Deities & Demigods book (with Cthulu, by the way) – and a lot of the gods there are just similar aspects of the same god across religions. Well, those Cthulu guys were a bit different.

BTW, my local gaming store has been doing better lately in carrying Kalamar product. It took months for them to get "Fury in the Wastelands" onto their shelves last year, while I picked up "Secrets of the Alubelok Coast" recently right after it came out...

 

[Treebore]

Haven't the FR fans noticed that the newest Kalamar product is written by the father of the FR's?

 

[Kichwas]

Well arc any replies to MM? I think he makes a cogent arguement. But hey for the record KoK is a good setting, just not one I'm that interested in.

Now see...

Everything MM said in his first post is an opinion of the flavor of the setting. He's not attacked the facts like the first idiot to post here.

So I can agree to disagree with him, but that's about it. He's had the decency to keep to things he can validly judge for himself.

The book -does- read bland. At least it does for me as well, and that's been one of my chief complaints over it. The thing is, when I make myself get through it I find it amazing in the wealth of ideas it contains and how 'solid' of a world it turns out to be. Once I understand what's going on in it, I find it very easy to put together complex plots that interact on so many levels without breaking down and without the world ever once 'showing it's seams'.

And in later product, the writing has been less difficult to get through, but the quality has stayed just as high.

Reading Kalamar is a little like reading Gygax. It's hard to do, but David Kenzer and Gary Gygax are two people in a world apart from a lot of these 'young kids' writing today - they have integrity to what they write. They have the decency to make sure they do solid research and can vouch for every word they put down.

I think that's why Kalamar also gets a lot of people who like 'old school' Greyhawk - the two worlds stand out as the only ones in the DnD world to seem to have research done on them to ensure good solid maps, cultures, and political histories.

They and their authors have integrity, and that really counts for something. David Kenzer & co aren't as hard to read to as Gygax (who I joke with my group - suspecting he keeps a theasuarus in his pocket just to find the longest word or phrase to use for any possible thing he may write), but he's not writing at the third grade level seemingly used by so many oher authors today either.

 

[Kichwas]

I bought into Kalamar because it was originally billed as a low magic setting. Unfortunately, Kalamar's level of magic struck me as no different from that of Greyhawk.

But, now that I've spent some (a lot of) time with Midnight, I could definately see using it's magic system in a Kalamar game.

One of the major goals of Kalamar -as far as a fan can tell from the commentary- has been to make sure you jcould just grab your PHB, DMG, MM, and the core Kalamar book and run a complete game. Kalamar was meant to be a setting book, not a rule book.

For that reason they did not make an entire new magic system or anything like that. Instead they presented a world that tries to work given what's in the DnD rules, and leaves it open enough that you can scale it up or down to taste.

Kalamar is often called low magic because it doesn't add a lot of new packages of this or that special super power to the game... These days, given many of the published settings, using the core rules as is is often low magic and low power...

 

[Kichwas]

Have errata/3.5 conversions been released for the KalPHB (which I do have), and how difficult is it to grok the names (which I'm told are consistent and linguistically logical, but strike me as hard to get used to).

Yes:
http://www.kenzerco.com/rpg/kalamar/
Scroll down to the bottom.

 

[Brennin Magalus]

Nightfall, I'm specifically *not* going to buy any Scarred Lands stuff - ever, because you pimp it all the time.

That's your loss, not his.