Sovereign Stone / Weis & Hickman

[Sir Trent]

1st book

I read the first Sov. Stone book and honestly, didn't like it at all. None of the characters were heroic. They were all evil. What was the point? Its cool that its Elmore's world, but what I've seen of it just doesn't do it for me.

Like I said before, the first book was not written to Mr. Elmore's outline. The second is better, by far, if you can overlook the "teems of hideous carnivorous armies living just over the hill without anyone noticing" concept. I agree the first book was weak, but you should read the second one before judging the whole series too harshly. Everyone should realize by now that Margaret Weis does not write happy books. Everyone dies, nobody's happy and everyone's doomed.

And as for the young peasant wizard guy from the first book, I don't believe you can say he's not evil. That may be what Weis tried to say, but it just doesn't work that way. He knew what was going on better than any one, and still supported the evil at every turn. His character was lousy, and very poorly written IMHO. Of course, who's scared of a dreaded "Void" magician that, even though he's the most powerful Void magician in the world, passes out after opening one padlock?

 

[Tsyr]

Re: 1st book

And as for the young peasant wizard guy from the first book, I don't believe you can say he's not evil. That may be what Weis tried to say, but it just doesn't work that way. He knew what was going on better than any one, and still supported the evil at every turn. His character was lousy, and very poorly written IMHO. Of course, who's scared of a dreaded "Void" magician that, even though he's the most powerful Void magician in the world, passes out after opening one padlock?

If he was evil, it was only by virtue of beign too loyal to be good. *shrug* Not saying he was a perfect character, but I, personaly, don't consider him evil. Just weak. Even when he was doing the worst stuff, he knew he really shouldn't be, if I remember right.

I think the whole point that was supposed to be drove home with him being so sick is that he pushed himself waaaay to far to be where he was... I mean, age wise, he was barely, barely out of the stage where one would think an a wizard would be aprenticed by, yet he was fairly powerfull... And if you understand the SS magic system, that works... A minor wizard CAN do a lot, at great personal cost and risk.

 

[TeeSeeJay]

As for the Deathgate Cycle...

There are, what, 5 worlds total? Labyrinth ( plus the city on the outskirts of it), Air, Fire, Earth, Water, right? Of those, by the end of the series ...

*SPOILERS FOR THOSE WHO HAVN'T READ THE SERIES*
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Air is working more or less as intended, Fire is devoid of life and has a necromantic hoard inhabiting it, Earth is devoid of life except for like 2 elves and a dwarf or something like that, Water I'm not sure about, but it's messed up, and Labyrinth... well, it's the worlds biggest dungeon crawl, let's put it that way.

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Sure, the setting is cool, but I'm not sure how well it would do for an RPG world.

Maybe you're right, and I'm just idealizing the setting. I think you've got Fire and Earth mixed up, though. The necromancers were in the Earth world (even though the book was called "Fire Sea"). The Fire world is the one with all the elves and junk that was verdant and on the inside of the hollow sphere. It's been a while since I read the books. Maybe I'll skim the appendix to refresh my memory. It's possible that DG is just as played out as DL.

So how about a Rose of the Prophet campaign setting?

 

[Stormprince]

Am i the only one that would have rather seen Weis & Hickman develop the "Death Gate" worlds as a campaign setting instead of the Sovereign Stone? (edit: Actually, "in addition to" is a much better way to phrase it)

I think DG would have made a very interesting setting, especially with the magic systems -- casting via dancing, and tattoo magic.

One of the reasons that Sovereign Press truly hasn't done much more than plan to create games for "Death Gate," "Darksword," "Mag Force 7/Star of the Guardians," "Rose of the Prophet," etc., is because depending upon the series, you'll discover that certain books are out of print...and while it's great to develop the world based upon those books, it's one of those things that we also have to look at from a company view-point: we could not afford to create all those worlds, without a strong, self-supporting fan base (i.e, one that can be drawn in by books on the shelves & the promise of new books to come).

That said, it is something that we have considered, and we have even approached the publishing companies to see about getting the books back into print...but right now, we are going to focus on the two product lines we have going now: Dragonlance & Sovereign Stone. In the future, we might put out one-shot sourcebooks, self-contained worlds based on the novels, we just need to find the time

Christopher

 

[Starman]

Here's one fan

I would love to see rulebooks put out for Death Gate and Rose of the Prophets. I'd pick them up in a heartbeat. I have also purchased most of the Sovereign Stone books and I intend to pick up the Dragonlance book when it comes out.

Don't worry, I'll support you guys at SP. I'll tell my friends to as well.

Starman

 

[fett527]

Re: 1st book

Like I said before, the first book was not written to Mr. Elmore's outline. The second is better, by far, if you can overlook the "teems of hideous carnivorous armies living just over the hill without anyone noticing" concept. I agree the first book was weak, but you should read the second one before judging the whole series too harshly. Everyone should realize by now that Margaret Weis does not write happy books. Everyone dies, nobody's happy and everyone's doomed.

And as for the young peasant wizard guy from the first book, I don't believe you can say he's not evil. That may be what Weis tried to say, but it just doesn't work that way. He knew what was going on better than any one, and still supported the evil at every turn. His character was lousy, and very poorly written IMHO. Of course, who's scared of a dreaded "Void" magician that, even though he's the most powerful Void magician in the world, passes out after opening one padlock?

I'll throw in a dissenting opinion about the novels. I actually liked the first book, but not the second which means I have no plans to pick up the third. The second book just didn't flow for me. The style is obviously different and there were just some paragraphs that had me in the What the F*** phase. I'm sorry I can't remember those off the top of my head to give specific examples. The first book was more interesting and actually held my attention whereas I was struggling to get through the second like I struggled getting through the Tom Bom parts in Fellowship of the Ring. For example comparisons I enjoyed the original Dragonlance trilogy, have read all Salvatore's Dark Elf novels, love the Wheel of Time (but not addicted) and can't get enough of David Gemmel and the Drenai.