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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JohnNephew" data-source="post: 194315" data-attributes="member: 2171">At the moment, we don't have any plans for sequels or expansions.  In any case, it would not hinge upon Occult Lore.  (I would like to do it someday, if only so I have an impetus to finish a couple entries I was working on...)Fundamentally, while it contained a lot of useful stuff for players, TBTG was still a basically GM-oriented book, loaded with what amount to NPC groups, adventure seeds, etc.  In retrospect, while it did very well (and was our top seller in dollar sales last year), I think it would have done even better if we had explicitly aimed it more at players in addition to GMs.  (Though if it were, I think it would have been a really different product, and I frankly like TBTG the way it is for what it is, even if it has a smaller market than something like Occult Lore or other publishers' books like Traps & Treachery.) One of the fundamental design goals of Occult Lore was to make a book that players would be interested in buying for their own use, a quality that has honestly been lacking in Penumbra to date.  There are a couple of TBTG-like things included (NPCs, groups that prestige classes belong to, etc.), and some sections that are a bit more GM-oriented (the Dream Magic, for example, is written more with the GM in mind, since it requires a lot of cosmological decisions about the game universe), but it's far outweighed by the real thrust of the book, which is dense crunchy bit content.The whole concept of TBTG limits its value to players; how many of the cabals can a PC belong to?  In contrast, if you buy Occult Lore, you're not only getting options in terms of new classes and prestige classes that your character might branch into, you're also getting new skills and skill rules, feats you might pick up, spells for existing classes, new adventuring environments to explore (such as dreaming minds), new kinds of equipment and useful materials (herbs, herbal concoctions, magic items), and whole new kinds of magic that might be turned to your uses.  For example, even if your PC has no interest in becoming an astrologer, she may learn the value of hiring one to compute an inception horoscope for the most auspicious time to embark on a major project.  Or, she may hire a geomancer to discern or create fields of amplified or suppressed magic, like feng shui, to serve her needs -- perhaps to find a magic-dampened location to build a strongholds, or an amplified location for a wizard's tower and laboratory.</blockquote>

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