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Message: <blockquote data-quote="humble minion" data-source="post: 8739385" data-attributes="member: 5948">I haven't read the adventure because at some point I might play it, but I read the other two books this weekend.Short review - it's about two thirds of a really good book, which is being sold for a third above the price of a book.  Even though it claims to be, it's not a setting book, which takes some adjusting for those of us accustomed to setting books like Rising from the Last War or even VRGtR or SCAG.  There's no gods, no organisations, no locations (other than an overview of the Rock of Bral that's really abbreviated to the point of uselessness) and not really even any plot hooks or 'how to run a Spelljammer campaign' advice.  It's a toolkit which leaves almost everything for the GM to do - a bit like if WotC published the bits of VRGtR about different horror genres and the monsters in a skinny overpriced hardback, and then dumpstered the rest.  The art is gorgeous and is without doubt the best aspect of the product (I love that there are three pics for each playable race, to give an idea of variety within each race), with the strange exception of Minsc's face on the front cover and the odd choice to leave ship deckplans uncoloured.  And this 100% cannibalises a cancelled 5e Dark Sun book for its monsters, and anyone who tells you otherwise is a liar.Regrettably, on balance I can't really give this a good overall verdict, and that's entirely down to the poor editorial choices.  A three-book set might be a decent format that allows GMs to give player material to players without spilling the beans on other stuff, but if it means gutting the pagecount to the point of minimum functionality like this then they're far better off sticking to conventional big books.  Significant rules issues with hadozee and plasmoids that were raised extensively during the UA feedback phase went to print unaltered.  Too much of the monster book was taken up with Dark Sun monsters, these should wait for their own product and be replaced with more ships, and preferably some useful Volos' Guide-style ecology material which gives newbie DMs at least some implied setting material to work with.  Also, on the hadozee illustrations the patagium just looks appallingly wrong and biologically non-functional from a gliding-creature point of view (Australian wildlife rescuer speaking here, I've had a bit to do with various gliders, and every time i see the huge holes between the hadozee wings and arms it just hammers on my berserk button...), and an art manager really should have jumped on this early at the concept sketch stage.I suspect it's too late to avoid Planescape going to print in the same awful format, but fingers crossed that after that they learn their lesson.</blockquote>

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