Midnight: First Impressions of Campaign Book

[gambler1650]

Yay, yay, YAY!!! Thank you for listening to your customers FFG (or anticipating their desires if you'd already planned both - especially the map).

 

[gambler1650]

Suggestions for character sheet

Hmmm... Couple of suggestions if y'all feel like changing the character sheet... It's nice enough certainly.

Well, first.. One question. Why have the Spells Per Day and Bonus Spells columns on the back (lower right) if characters aren't limited except by their spell points and constitution scores? Is it just if the character happens to be a Legate (NPC in most cases)? If it's mainly useless, it might be fun to replace that column with a "Covenant Item" area where a player can mark down the abilities of any Covenant Item he might receive.

Also, I can't find a box for "Spell Energy". Might be useful to have (and if I'm just missing it, lemme know .

 

[FFG Greg]

Re: So Aryth rotates opposite Earth's rotation?

Just a note for any future information created for Midnight, Aryth rotates in the opposite direction of Earth if you didn't realize. I assume the authors realized it, but one never knows.

The author responds:

"[The poster] is thinking that the oceans are large and unobstructed. I assumed an ocean gyre interrupted by a
significant land mass and therefore deflected off a normal coriolis path - think the Indian Ocean and the effect India has on the gyre there. An equatorial countercurrent south of Eredane is split by a large landmass "off the map" and the climatic effect creates the Aruun and the warmer coast. East is still east and the planet rotates like Earth..."

Greg
FFG

 

[d20Dwarf]

Re: Re: So Aryth rotates opposite Earth's rotation?

The author responds:

"[The poster] is thinking that the oceans are large and unobstructed. I assumed an ocean gyre interrupted by a
significant land mass and therefore deflected off a normal coriolis path - think the Indian Ocean and the effect India has on the gyre there. An equatorial countercurrent south of Eredane is split by a large landmass "off the map" and the climatic effect creates the Aruun and the warmer coast. East is still east and the planet rotates like Earth..."

Greg
FFG

Man, what a nerd! That guy should write for Blue Planet!

 

[NewJeffCT]

Well, the positive comments in this thread swayed me, and while I was waiting for a prescription for my sick wife last night, I ran across the street to one of my local gaming stores and bought the “Midnight” campaign setting book. But, with an ill wife and a 9 week old daughter in the house, I literally did not get past the first page of Chapter 1. The books looks good, though, and I love the dark fantasy premise behind the book (my own setting proposal submitted here on enworld was a bleak fantasy – humans and demihumans have been pushed to the brink by ravaging hordes of hobgoblins and orcs and other foul beasts, but have not yet been defeated.) The group DM seems to like the idea behind Midnight as well, but will probably wait for me to go over the book more thoroughly, as he does not trust online reviews. However, with my group DM having health problems, me having a new baby, and another group member’s wife expecting twins next month... it may be a while before I actually get to game in the Midnight setting.

I now own three 3E/d20 campaign settings – Forgotten Realms (never used), Kalamar (used frequently, when I get time to game) and Midnight.

 

[gambler1650]

Ah ha! Thanks, that makes sense then. Sorry if my comments came off too strong, this is what happens when one thinks they know more than they really do about a fantasy world they didn't create.

Hey.. any chance of getting a version of the character sheet PDF in color (at least the logo)?

 

[Legion]

My two cents worth

Just picked this up yesterday and finished reading these threads.

I, too, am a fan of dark fantasy (WFRP is still my all time favorite campaign world - other than my homebrew. ) That said, I'm really very intrigued by this and so far find the writing and the tone handled quite nicely.

I'm especially enamoured with the take on magic. Charms, talismans, and magic items being rare I like very much how the game handles this. I've been tinkering with a homebrew rule of my own to do this well but it looks like I may be able to chuck that and borrow whole hog completely from Midnight. It makes magic dangerous (especially with rituals) and rare. Nicely done.

The only disappointment I've had so far, and I believe this was alreayd mentioned, is the two different types of paper. Having just a taste of the nice glossy stuff only made me want it more throughout the rest of the book. I'd LOVE to see how some of the artwork looked in full glossy living color. But, that said, it's purely aesthetics and doesn't remove from the quality of the content in the slightest.

Well done all around!

 

[danbala]

The group DM seems to like the idea behind Midnight as well, but will probably wait for me to go over the book more thoroughly, as he does not trust online reviews.

I understand you suspicion of online reviews. In my opinion, the favorable online reviews I've seen have been accurate. (Gambler gave a long (and mostly accurate) review on this webite.) Midnight is a good campaign setting.

From my perspective, if there is a drawback to the world its that it strongly parallels Tolkien in some places where I would have preferred some divergence. (Which is not to say that it steals from this source, as Midnight also has allot of creative and original work.) The problem that I have with these frequent parallels is that they provide players with a basis to make certain conclusions simply by their knowledge of LotR when they might not otherwise have a reason to know such things.

For example, I prefer elves to be mysterious and aloof to other races with their ways and customs to start out as a mystery. In Midnight, the elves live in the forest -- in a forest city, in fact -- and are ruled by a "witch queen." Many other details of elf life are very similar to Tolkein. For me, this makes the elves less mysterious to the new players as they could pretty much guess these things from the outset. Likewise, the dwarves are pretty much in a situation identical to the Moria dwarves in LotR.

This is a particular problem with Izrador, imho. As the mysterious Big Bad behind the scenes his name should be well known but his nature and workings should be a mystery. However, he is very similar to the Big Bads of Tolkein and the players will be able to make a lot of correct of assumptions about him based on that source. (The authors did create a unique motivation for him though, that I won't ruin here).

Personally, I would have preferred a few more curve balls being thrown to confound player assumption. The halfling slaves are a good example. Orcs relationship to dwarves (rather than elves) is another example.

But again, this is more of a minor quibble than a serious flaw. I like the setting and will probably be running it soon (albeit with a few twists, of course).

 

[Toric_Arthendain]

Wow, it's cool to see all this interest developing in the new Midnight setting!

I bought it exactly a week ago and I have to say that I absolutely love it! The similarities to Tolkien, Martin and many other fantasy authors and series are one of the things that I find appealing about the setting. In my opinion, it succeeds because it is so much different from the other D&D settings on the market.

Midnight is the first gaming sourcebook that I have read cover to cover over the course of a week. Usually when I buy a new book it takes longer to get through it. The writing in Midnight is consistently good and there are very few editing problems, which makes reading the book a pleasure. I love the "new" concepts like spell energy, barter system with gold being nearly worthless, ritual magic and spell talismans, and things of this nature. The setting itself is awesome. As I said before, the similarities to the settings created by several modern fantasy authors make Midnight even more appealing to me.

I started a new Midnight campaign this past Sunday for my regular group and they seemed to enjoy it. One wants to buy the book himself and another likes the idea of a rare magic/barter economy setting. The players started at first level and we played the adventure in the back of the book. In a five hour session, part of which was spent finalizing characters, we got about halfway through the adventure. I had three players (two other regular players were unable to make it but should be at future sessions). One played a dwarven fighter, another was a jungle elf channeler and the third was a Erenlander assassin (the class created by Green Ronin and published in one of their master class books, which I decided to allow in the Midnight setting with some modifications). They made good decisions through the first half of the adventure and seemed to enjoy themselves. They also got a taste of what the setting is like and got to do some bartering, which helped set the mood.

Anyway, Midnight has quickly become my favorite D&D 3e setting and is easily the best book I have purchased in the last year. Kudos to the design team, excellent work!

Toric

 

[Toric_Arthendain]

This topic is too good to let it fade away. Bumping this back to the top!

Toric