Thoughts on Book of the Righteous

[baseballfury]

It's more than worth $40!

I totally agree. I haven't been so blown away by a d20 book since Legions of Hell (and I love the way Book of the Righteous ties in so nicely with Legions and Armies of the Abyss). The myths are great, I love the holy warrior class, and the art is stupendous. I am more than happy that I passed up the Epic Level Handbook to get Book of the Righteous instead. Way to go, Green Ronin!

Now the tough question: do I play a holy warrior in my friend's game or start a new game myself using this mythology? Playing is fun, but there's so much good DM material here. Hmmmmmm.

 

[AaronLoeb]

Hey all!

Thanks for the kind words.

The link Furn dropped goes to the Tree of Life support site. The plan is to add new myths, churches, cults, and more as time goes on -- including stuff submitted by folks who are using it in their campaigns.

I'm really excited to see how the mythology organically grows and changes as gamers like me who are nuts-o about myths start tinkering under the hood.

Anyway, we've got the first update of the Tree of Life coming up with a church for Baal, lord of the first circle of hell, and a new myth (by ENWorld's own Joe G Kushner) that offers one way of introducing the Unspeakable One from the Freeport books into the mythos.

Thanks again for the support!

Aaron

 

[Reynard]

I am more than happy that I passed up the Epic Level Handbook to get Book of the Righteous instead.

Arrg. I knew I made the wrong choice!

 

[Crothian]

Arrg. I knew I made the wrong choice!

Actually, both are good and I'm happy I have both. It's not like they are two books of elves or something. What one book does, the other does not, and vice versa.

 

[Nightfall]

Yeah I mean one gives you some great depth to a campaign, either using the gods in that book or not. Even if you don't some great ideas for churches, devotions and other things. Aaron you did a great job. Too bad I'm poor.

 

[Buttercup]

I've got Dieties & Demigods, Faiths & Pantheons, Divine & the Defeated, Gods and now Book of the Righteous. This is the best of them all, by a long shot. I'm really savoring everything in this book, and it makes me want to start a new campaign just so I can use that pantheon.

It's one righteous book!

 

[Psion]

[devil's advocate]

So Nightfall, if Divine & Defeated is so great, why did you feel the need to rewrite the deities per Deities & Demigods?

[/da]

At any rate, I think that DDG screwed the proverbial pooch by going with the old school approach of "monster books for gods." The immense popularity of the 2e FR deity book (even beyond FR fans) should have demonstrated to TSR WotC that you should focus on mortal implications, priesthoods, etc. I think books that do so will be leaps and bounds ahead of DDG in utility for the garden variety D&D group.

 

[Nightfall]

[devil's advocate]

So Nightfall, if Divine & Defeated is so great, why did you feel the need to rewrite the deities per Deities & Demigods?

[/da]

Simple. While Div&Def gives me great gods, I want the Scarred Lands gods to be the MOTHER of all Bad asses in godly play. I mean come, you must have a SEMI-Hungering to see Vangal and Ethrynal go at it, only to have Vangal slaughter that guy. Basically this way I can take Epic to a whole NEW extreme.

 

[AaronLoeb]

The book is so good, I almost got rid of my Homebrew gods. Almost.

As someone who takes homebrew mythologies VERY seriously (obviously), I take this as sky-high praise. Thanks, Crothian...

I am really interested to know something, though. I was striving with BotR to provide material that was useful if you wanted to incorporate it whole cloth (complete detail on all things religious), but I also really wanted it to be useful to folks like you with an established cosmology and religion, providing extra detail in as broadly accessible a way as possible. Idea being, you likely have a god of war, now you have lots more detail about the ethos of a church of a god of war that you can include under your god's name and with additional ties to your god as you've established him throughout your campaign.

So, my question: did it work? Have you found the stuff in BotR useful for your Homebrew? Are you finding ideas and material that will be directly useful to you?

AJL

 

[Crothian]

So, my question: did it work? Have you found the stuff in BotR useful for your Homebrew? Are you finding ideas and material that will be directly useful to you?

AJL

First off, I want to thank you for participating in the thread. Having an author around to discuss his work will only increase my opinion of the author and the work in general.

I've got one cleric and unfortuantely the god of the cleric doesn't fit anything you have. I would have been surprised if it did. The god is a neutral goddess of disease. She uses disease to kill the beings that it is time for death. But enough the homebrew stuff.

I've gotten some great ideas for religions just reading the book. I don't have the gods to well defined until I need them. However, with this book it will much easier for me to define things when the time comes. Many of the gods I use and the gods presented here are close enough that all I'll need to do is add some campaign flavor.

And my next character is going to be Reborn. That is a great prestige class with a very interesting concept.