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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Darrin Drader" data-source="post: 1864177" data-attributes="member: 7394">I've done quitea bit of work on Oathbound, as some of you know, so here's my two or twelve coppers. Love for Oathbound? There's lots of it out there, you just need to know where to look. I've got a slightly different take on the setting. I'm not going to comment on Todd's art, and I'm not going to try to tell anyone that they must play furries. If you don't dig it, you don't dig it, and that's fine. Aside from the original module by Tracy and Luara Hickman, I never dug the Ravenloft setting, and there's nothing anyone can say that will convince me to give it a try. That's just the way personal preference works, and I respect that. As a designer, Oathbound took my designer virginity. Before the adventure I wrote for Plains of Penance, I had never been paid for anything larger than a magazine article. I'm not dissing articles, but they are often shorter and easier to write than material that ends up in a book. Anyway, Todd Morrasch was thrilled with the way the ulatra was used in the adventure since he thought this creature up way back in highschool, and even made a custom plastic figure of it at one point. In many ways, this was probably the same thrill I get any time I see a character I thought up appear on the page with some kick-butt artwork. Of course I've also seen some characters that weren't done justice on the page, but I try not to dwell on those. One of the things I do when something I've written gets published is I give a copy of it to my younger brother. I wrote about thirty pages worth of material for Oathbound: Arena, and of course my younger brother was given a copy. One night we were talking on the phone about the pros and cons of the mass combat system in the Miniatures Handbook, and he said something to the effect of "I think the system in Arena works extremely well. Why not use that one?" He had no idea that I was the one who had designed that system. He had no idea that I was the one who wrote that. One of the things I love about Oathbound, as a designer, is that I was given the license to be as creative as possible on my sections. Keep in mind that my RPG history involved a lot of the Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, and other more traditional medeivel homebrew settings. I wasn't a big Darksun fan and I really felt (still feel) that Planescape was taken in the wrong direction in so many ways. So when I came to Oathbound, I was given the challenge and the task to create some really cool and bizarre stuff. In essence, I was told to throw Tolkein out the window and change my way of thinking about heroic fantasy. I rose to the challenge and really got into the setting, and I'm proud of the work I've done on it. The arthrigyle (a monster) from Arena, remains one of the pieces of design work I am the most proud of because of its strangeness (ahem... I still wish those eyes hovered around its head like they're supposed to, Jim). Add the errata to the mass combat section that I posted to the Bastion boards, and that also ranks pretty high on my list of material I am the most proud of. This was the chance to let that strange highschooler with the off-the wall sense of humor which still resides inside of me (though securely locked in a padded room) out of my subconscious to wreak havoc upon the printed page. The more I designed for the setting, the more I became comfortable with pushing the boundaries, and I think that this has had a positive effect on everything else I've designed since then. So I guess that to me, the love of Oathbound has been in the making of it. The fact that Wrack and Ruin received an honorable mention for an Ennie this last year shocked and thrilled me to no end, given the fact that it was the first book to bear my name on the cover. I am frequently amazed when people still bring it up as one of their favorite setting books, and it makes me happy that some people have gotten so much use out of it. As for the criticisms I've read on this thread, I can understand and appreciate the feedback, both positive and negative, that has been left here. No product is perfect. No product will appeal to every gamer. No art will appeal to everybody. In some cases, like the art, steps were taken some time ago to remedy the situation. In other cases, like the weird races complaint, that just comes down to personal preference, and I echo Psion's comments that this is really more of a selling point of the setting. I'm really too close to the setting to tell people how awesome it is and that they should go out and buy it. I just hope that people have tried to see some positive in it, maybe used it in their games, and have looked at the last two or three books.</blockquote>

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