Rich Baker posts Lost Empires of Faerun Contents pages

[ruleslawyer]

Not quite. Inside there is a Mulhorandi fighter PC, with khopesh, bronze breastplate, and crocodile-hide trimmings. He's devout, dynamic, charismatic and cultured, and the men he leads would follow him into the fires of the Thaymount if he asked. And he's screaming to get out. But he can't unless I get a book cool enough to convince my DM to run something somewhere near Mulhorand. And this won't do it. *sigh*

Well, for some fun goodies, you can always check out the following (in .pdf, so be careful downloading!):

www.hallofhero.com/sand/FR10_oe/oeprint.pdf

I actually think that there are some good reasons for exercising restraint on the Mulhorandi/Untheric portion of this book. First off, on the flavor side, these empires resemble real-world cultures enough that you've got a wealth of history sourcebooks and 3rd-party game supplements to draw on anyway. Second, they have been detailed to good effect in FR10 Old Empires, and to some extent in the FRCS, as well as in the above pdf (written by Scott Bennie, the author of Old Empires). The other territories described in LE haven't had a 3e treatment at all. Finally, this seems like a book of things past; Mulhorand and Unther are still living empires, and as such may make it into a region book in the future. Personally, however, I think that the motivation for Mulhorand's change from a slumbering giant to a vigorous theocracy is pretty well explainable by the Time of Troubles and the realization of the god-kings that the world can come to crashing change around them.

 

[Mean Eyed Cat]

Sweet! This looks great. I'm currently running a campaign in the Silver Marches so the stuff on the High Forest will come in handy-

 

[Ferret]

Lost Empires of Faerun is listed for a Feb 2005 release on Wizard's Website.

Just in time for my birthday.

Yup, prime B-day fodder.

 

[BOZ]

OK, i totally want this.

and is it me, or are they reprinting about half of Monsters of Faerun in this book? but 3.5 conversions will be hella nice for them...

 

[MulhorandSage]

Well speaking as someone for whom Mulhorand is very to dear to his heart, this book looks like it's going to (as the kids say) rock hard.

I'm flattered that people care enough for the Old Empires that they want to see more (and I'd like to see the current creative team at WotC get their hooks into it too), but it's also good to get more information on the cultures in this book, especially the Imaskari.

There's a lot of third party material on the Earth cultures that inspired the Old Empires that a GM can draw from (a lot of the Egyptian and Babylonian magic spells and items in Testament are an easy port, as well as some of the cultural and religious information; a GM might also look at some of the classes in OGL Ancients). And, particularly for Mulhorand, there's probably material in Hamunaptra that'd work well there too.

I understand it's not the same thing as having an updated book, but there's support out there if someone running in the Old Empires wants it.

 

[Kalothagh]

Wow. Even after the name change, people still thought that this book would be about Chessenta, Unther, and Mulhorand?

I am pretty excited about the book's contents. If anything, it seems that it will nicely sum up a lot of info from a number of 2E books.

The monsters are from MoF and were originally going to be reprinted for 3.5 in PGtF.

Are they going to bring out a book about the above mentioned lands?
Oh, please say yes

 

[Kalothagh]

Wow, this is going to fit in beautifully with my campaign, when's it out, does anyone know?

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

Wow, this is going to fit in beautifully with my campaign, when's it out, does anyone know?

I believe the release date is February.

 

[Kalothagh]

Cheers for that.

 

[Cernunnos]

Now, if they'd just do update books on Kara-Tur (we can at least get the rules from the Oriental Adventures HC), Al-Qadim, and Maztica, I'd be happy. Maztica in particular could show promise if they seriously reworked the classes (i.e., made plumaweavers and hishnashapers NOT suck), went into the brewing conflicts between Mazticans vs. Faerunians, monsters vs. humans, New Waterdeep vs. New Amn, the avian creator race, etc. Al-Qadim would require its own HC with lots of new crunch, but I'd at least like something like the FRCS for Kara-Tur (and maybe Al-Qadim too... the area to be covered is less, so they could sqeeze in more rules).