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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Messageboard Golem" data-source="post: 2011186" data-attributes="member: 18387">First things first.  What you have to realize about this book is that it is meant to be a loose gazeteer, not an in-depth campaign sourcebook with all the details explained.  I will therefore review the book for what it is stated to be.Following in the themes of Arcana Unearthed in giving more power to the DM, The Diamond Throne lays out the world with broad strokes, giving you the history up to now, the current political structure, some geography, and several city descriptions (complete with plot hooks and NPC descriptions) and location descriptions.  Many things are purposefully not described, in order to let the DM make their world as they see fit.  While this might drive some people nuts, for others it is very liberating.  There are few constraints in making the Lands of the Diamond Throne your own.  You are given tidbits of common expressions and slang, common ceremonies, some of the more common gods, but not every town is detailed.  One DM's Diamond Throne campaign will be very different from another DM's DT campaign, as it should be.  I find this loose approach to be really inspiring.  I often DM on the fly due to time constraints, and with a few broad guidelines I can make a pretty good gaming session.  This books suits my DMing style really well.Other things in this book include several prestige classes, some new magical items, and new monsters.I'm a big fan of prestige classes, and the ones here do not disappoint.  Continuing on with the racial levels, the giant paragon allows giant players to reach Huge size.  Crystal Reavers infuse their bodies with crystal from the Crystal Fields, while Sonomancers invade people's dreams.  There's lots of potential for fun here.The new magical items show the versitility of the AU item creation rules and magical flexibility, as well as some of the other themes.  For example, a new wepons quality (preserving) is one that can do positive energy damage, great against undead, in addition to healing one person it touches once per day.  Other magical items allow one to use certain spells a number of times per day (allowing more flexibility).  Several of these items are elemental themed (ring of fire and heat, coat of cold and frost).  Other items allow access to certain spell templates or the like.The new monsters provide a way to get a bit more of the AU flavor into your game.  There's a lack of the typical evil humanoids (orcs, ogres, goblins, hobgoblins, etc.), aside from trolls, in AU, so the Diamond Throne provide rhodin.  A race of feral beast-men with goat-like horns, these are this world's more common mauraders.  Chorrim, green-skinned militant giants with a hatred for the more typical giants provide an orgaized threat to adventurers, while hoards of the mutated frog-like inshon will make PCs fear the swamps.Overall this book provides the broad outlines of a million and one campaign ideas, and gives the DM plenty of freedom on how to make his/her world.</blockquote>

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