New FFG Sale

[Fishbone]

Anybody play Spellslinger, Virtual, Dawnforge or get the Giants book? I'm very much interested in those.
Edit: And the Monster's Handbook. And Dungeoncraft. And Wildscape. And and and. I want pretty much ever Legends and Lairs product they put out.
Why do I have the feeling my Paypal account is going to take a not-too-minor hit over this?

 

[Psion]

Anybody play Spellslinger, Virtual, Dawnforge or get the Giants book? I'm very much interested in those.

I've put together a game for Spellslinger. I'm not wild about the mini-setting, but the game's pretty cool mechanically.

 

[Treebore]

I keep going to these sales in hopes that they've discounted Midnight 2E. I'd really like to get my hands on it, but I'm just in a position where I'm willing to spend $50 on it.

Well, spending $5.00 on the 1E version is a darn good preview of whether or not you'll like the $50.00 book, et al.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Well, spending $5.00 on the 1E version is a darn good preview of whether or not you'll like the $50.00 book, et al.

Yep, but I've already owned the 1E book. (It fell apart.) I liked it, but I also had problems with it, so I'd really like to take a look at 2E.

 

[Treebore]

No reviews of how 2E improved on 1E?

 

[JustKim]

Anybody play Spellslinger, Virtual, Dawnforge or get the Giants book? I'm very much interested in those.
Edit: And the Monster's Handbook. And Dungeoncraft. And Wildscape. And and and. I want pretty much ever Legends and Lairs product they put out.
Why do I have the feeling my Paypal account is going to take a not-too-minor hit over this?

I have all the books, I'm a fan of FFG and it's exciting to see some of their board games included in a new sale.
Spellslinger I flipped through when I was looking for a system combining guns and spells for a character. Though the title suggests this, there is not really such a system and the magic system is in fact not really compatible with core D&D. When they say it's an enclosed game system, they mean it.. I wish it had been more modular. I haven't really looked through Virtual, as I haven't had a chance to use it. Out of all the Horizon books I'd say Grimm is the best, but it's not on sale, unfortunately.
Dawnforge is higher powered on a Midnight scale, but instead of beating your head against the brick wall of evil you're shaping a D&D world's history and becoming a mythical figure. It's received some criticism for presenting a pre-mythology D&D world but advancing the mythology through eras a lot of people would want to play- the fall of Lolth, for example. Personally, I don't think 3 books (One an adventure and one crunch) were enough to really flesh the setting out enough.
Giant Lore was a disappointment, there are only a few new monsters (as opposed to the other Lore books). Most of it is templates that aren't particularly giant-themed. I felt like the material was pretty weak.
Monster's Handbook is a great book. It says it's for advancing monsters, so you might think it's simply a lot of lizardfolk or harpies with class levels, but it actually has a point system for building monsters from the ground up, or switching out monster abilities.
Dungeoncraft is half assorted crunch, half advice on building and running dungeons. I don't run a dungeon heavy game, so I haven't used it much.
Wildscape is terrific. I don't agree with the folks who suggest Wildscape does a better job than WotC's environment series, because they're different products, but if I had to choose for some reason I'd take Wildscape over any of them. It has both general qualities of the various adventuring environments, and neat "advanced" locations like deserts made of rust or mountains haunted by the remains of ancient evils. There were also some variant ranger combat styles that're worth looking at.

No reviews of how 2E improved on 1E?

It collected material from more than one book (hence the higher price) and made it prettier. I don't believe there were significant changes to warrant buying both.

 

[Cthulhu's Librarian]

But I might be interested in Dawnforge - I heard some good but vague stuff about it. What it is like and would you recommend it or its supplements?

Dawnforge is a very cool setting, and all 3 books are worth picking up. Well worth more than $5 for each book.

 

[Fishbone]

JustKim thank you thank you thank you.
Just a bit more questioning...
The Legends and Lairs books about magic and "swordery", they any good?
And the races book. Gah, 35 bucks and shipping here I come.

 

[Treebore]

Dawnforge is a very cool setting, and all 3 books are worth picking up. Well worth more than $5 for each book.

I agree. Even though it is "high powered" I still like it. A lot. Well worth $5.00 each.

 

[JustKim]

JustKim thank you thank you thank you.
Just a bit more questioning...
The Legends and Lairs books about magic and "swordery", they any good?
And the races book. Gah, 35 bucks and shipping here I come.

The Path books are like the Complete books or their earlier 3E incarnations, almost entirely crunch. Each one has a few new base classes, a whole lot of PrCs, and some legendary classes (High-level PrCs), feats, equipment and rules for roles such characters might play in the world. Path of Magic has an option for bards called performances that greatly increase their versatility. If you like the Completes, yes, they are very good. There are two others- Path of Shadow and Path of Faith- that aren't on sale.

Mythic Races is an old one. It's probably still usable, but some of the concepts have since been covered by other companies. It's also a grab bag of authors, so the quality varies. One of the races, luminous, I liked enough to feature in an early 3E campaign. They're beings made of positive energy, enclosed in transparent skin. I thought they were a much more evocative planetouched race than the "Holy means slightly better looking" aasimar.