Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Drammattex" data-source="post: 5577776" data-attributes="member: 55363">That is exactly what he is saying!(Designer comment!)Not a defense (I'm satisfied with the entry), but rather an FYI for all those interested in the designer take:Indeed, the material in the entry is essentially all the info on the Mages of Saruun gathered from Thunderspire Labyrinth and a few other sources and compiled in one place. I think the only authorial invention here is some speculation on what's happening to the mages. The place where the mages got some expansion is in the mechanics section (you're only getting the first page in this preview). I imagine you'll see a couple more of the creatures from the illustration in the print version, and mechanically they should work well together to make neat encounters. Ordinarily I might write a monster around a mood or theme, but my larger concern here was to make sure all the important info made it into the entry, and then expand on the creatures mechanically. I'd do the same thing if, for instance, I was tasked with creating an entry for the Zhentarim. Since I haven't run Forgotten Realms since 1993, my knowledge of those guys is pretty dated, and there are LOTS of people who know and care a lot more about them than I do. In that instance I'd try to make certain that the entry had the facts straight and then I'd get more inventive in the mechanics, which was the tack I took here with the Mages of Saruun. When dealing with established lore, the designer has to figure out where to get crazy with "interesting new ideas" and where to be more conservative and just report the facts. In my experience, people tend to hate it when you change the mythology without good reason. Han shot first. So I tended to be more conservative with this entry.That said, it's a lot easier for me to be excited about the weirder stuff, like the wandering tower, the boggle, hounds of ill omen, penanggalan, etc... I wonder how the other humanoid groups in MVNV will be received. I believe some are founded on existing lore, and others were just names/ideas given to the designers to develop. I tend to get more excited about MONSTER-monsters, but there are a couple humanoid groups I worked on that I'm pretty keen to see.</blockquote>

Verification