Throwing Dice Games Presents

[jmucchiello]

Throwing Dice Games Presents Itself!

Demonstrating true marketing savvy, Throwing Dice Games would like to announce their first release not at GenCon where thousands and thousands of gamers could hear about it. No, instead they announce to a bulletin board which while popular is not the largest gathering of gaming fans in the world. But at least they did it in nearly the same week. So much for savvy.

New to the gaming industry. Throwing Dice Games has finally released its first electronic gaming product: Joe's Book of Enchantment. Joe's Book of Enchantment is a 66-page electronic download available now at RPGNow.com. It is a book about the much maligned Enchantment school of magic, covering arcane, divine and mundane uses of charms and compulsion.

Throwing Dice Games has a website at http://www.throwingdice.com. President and CEO, Joe Mucchiello, commented about the launch of their first title, "Why am I writing this in the third person? Shouldn't I use the royal we? My name is even on the book after all." Once he realized this was for the press release, he continued, "After months of saying we were d20 publishers, it's great to actually have a product out there."

Thanks for listening.

 

[jmucchiello]

Forgive me oh lords of marketting

My partner pointed out that by using my flippant style in the above press release that people might assume that the work is humorous. I told him if he didn't like an irreverant styled press release he should write it himself and he returned to being a silent partner.

But he had a point. I want to confirm that nearly 100% of Joe's Book of Enchantment is a standard serious d20 supplement that will work right along side all of your other d20 supplements. Truly, aside from the awakened, baby purple worm named Wubbly on page 56, all of the classes, feats, npcs, etc are all serious stuff.

Hopefully, I've gotten my point across and no one noticed that this is just a bump.

Joe Mucchiello
President and CEO
Throwing Dice Games

 

[Krug]

Great job!

Take a bow Joe. This is in fact, very good. I'll put up a review for it soon. What qualifies as an exceptional product? Something that makes me want to play or use the material contained therein, and Joe's Book of Enchantment is definitely one such product.

 

[jmucchiello]

Throwing Dice Games now bows

With a hearty "Thank you", Throwing Dice Games was humbled deeply by the use of the words exceptional product in a pre-review of the product. Looking into the actual review, President and CEO, Joe Mucchiello was heard to say, "You mean people actually use this stuff? I thought we wrote it for our own enjoyment."
----
Seriously. Thanks a lot, Krug. If you enjoyed reading and using it half as much as I enjoyed writing it, then I enjoyed it twice as much as you.

Well, that second bit wasn't too serious but the thanks certainly was.

Joe Mucchiello
President, CEO and lead humor monger (images of a prestige class flash for a moment then fade)
Throwing Dice Games
http://www.throwingdice.com

 

[angramainyu]

I bought it last night, and I love it! I think it will be an invaluable resource for my telepath character, and is a must-buy for a DM looking for ideas or a player with an enchanter or a telepath.

 

[jmucchiello]

I bought it last night, and I love it! I think it will be an invaluable resource for my telepath character, and is a must-buy for a DM looking for ideas or a player with an enchanter or a telepath.

Should I have included psionics in the book? The only reason I didn't is because I'm less familiar with it. The first review for the book on RPGNow indicated there was a lot of material for Telepaths as well so I've been considering a web enhancement. In addition to converting some of the spells to powers I would add some psi items, feats and a class or two.

So I guess there'd be interest? I have a question though. Are telepaths popular among psions? Has there been a poll?

Joe

 

[angramainyu]

Converting a spell to a power is pretty trivial, so I had little problem imagining the new spells as powers. Any extra stuff for psonics would certainly be nice, but for the most part switch a magic item to a psionic item is quite simple.

I couldn't tell you how popular telepaths are, though.

I had a bit more time to go through your book, today, and I kept finding more and more stuff I want to use. I did have two questions for you: Is there a reason you opted to give the prestige classes limited spells per day instead of using a "+1 caster level" at certain levels?

The other thing is why the fey advancement is by size instead of character class... any reason in particular?

 

[jmucchiello]

Converting a spell to a power is pretty trivial, so I had little problem imagining the new spells as powers. Any extra stuff for psonics would certainly be nice, but for the most part switch a magic item to a psionic item is quite simple.

Well they wouldn't be direct conversions and I have a few things that fit a telepath a lot better than an Enchanter lying around.

I had a bit more time to go through your book, today, and I kept finding more and more stuff I want to use. I did have two questions for you: Is there a reason you opted to give the prestige classes limited spells per day instead of using a "+1 caster level" at certain levels?

Only the Animal Tamer, the Charlatan and the Fear Eater have their own spell lists. The other five advance existing spellcaster levels. (Actually, two of them grant the spellcaster ability if you didn't have the ability before.)

The animal tamer I always viewed as a guy who trains gryphons for a king. He's a physical worker not a spellcaster. His spell list is very focused on animal spells: even more so than the druid. An early version of the class had granted use of some of the listed spells a number of times per day as supernatural effects. But as the number of abilities grew the more unwieldy the class chart became. So I turned him into a limited spellcaster.

The charlatan is even less learned than the sorcerer. He just gets diverse set of abilities over time that work well as a spell list. If you wanted to give them +1 caster level, they both probably only grant that ability at 3rd, 6th and 9th level.

The fear eater is an experiment in point based magic.

The fey disciple has +1 caster level as an option if you read the spells per day section. The chart might be confusing.

The other thing is why the fey advancement is by size instead of character class... any reason in particular?

None of the SRD fey advance by character class: dryad, nymph, grig, pixie and nixie. The true question is why does the half-fey template advance as the base creature type since that allows a potential fey critter to advance by class.

Joe Mucchieloo
Throwing Dice Games

 

[angramainyu]

Ah, okay, it all makes sense. I'm not a fan of the limited spells-per-day, but I can see how using that instead of a mess of spell-like abilities is much better.

I'm still a bit surprised with the fey, since given the nature of the book I was expecting them to advance by class and have enchanter as favoured class, but I'm probably biased since I much prefer the ability class levels gives me in customizing NPCs.

Great book, Joe! Do you have plans for an more rules supplements after you do The Tree of Knowledge?

 

[jmucchiello]

I'm still a bit surprised with the fey, since given the nature of the book I was expecting them to advance by class and have enchanter as favoured class, but I'm probably biased since I much prefer the ability class levels gives me in customizing NPCs.

I'm embarassed to say that I didn't think of this. Oh well. And I thought I was clever noticing that none of the other fey advanced by class.

I also didn't want the book to become a fey book since there were a bunch of fey books coming out or out while I working on it. I was worried that if I focused on them more than I did people would complain it was too dominant in a book about Enchantment. As it is, 9 pages of the book are fey monsters or the fey disciple class.

Actually the Book of Challenges really turned me on to advancing by Hit Die. After I read that my home campaign became littered with advanced critters. For me it makes combats last a couple rounds longer making them only slightly more deadly and a lot more memorable.

Great book, Joe! Do you have plans for an more rules supplements after you do The Tree of Knowledge?

Thanks.

I have a directory full of half complete rules supplements. (In Eric's Take a Bow thread on the general board I mentioned an 18 year timespan between submitting an article to Dragon and self-publishing.) But seriously, yes, I do plan to do more rules supplements. They may or may not push the adventure back in the schedule depending on my inspiration and the playtest schedule for the module.

I have half of a superhero game written but the ship has sailed on that one. And, yes, it is class based.

I have a class toolkit idea that would be a set of class templates (like monster or feat templates) that would make it easy to convert a PrC with a limited set of spells into an existing class advancing PrC. It also has a different take on ECLs.

Then there's the file full of Feats. Everyone must have one of them. That could turn into a training book if it weren't for the dozen other books just like it.

I'll probably do another odd-ball magic school eventually: Abjuration or Illusion or maybe Divination.

My partner (he really exists) is working on his secret project at the moment. That will be far less crunchy than my book.

I also have a secret project. Kind of an organization book combined with a grab bag of topics. I don't know how to describe it. It's different.

Anything interesting in that list?

Joe Mucchiello
Throwing Dice Games

BTW, none of these notes constitutes an announcement of a new product.