Top 10 Reasons Why I Think Dawning Star is Awesome

[Red Baron]

I don't know Jeff Bezos from Adam (though he's a fellow Princetonian), but if he turned out to be a raging ass-jacket, I'd still buy from Amazon as long as the service they provided did the job.

Hm. That's where I disagree. Fortunately, I've never seen any first-hand evidence that Jeff Bezos is a raging ass-jacket. (Consider that term swiped, BTW.)

FWIW, Justin, just so you know, I've looked through Dawning Star, and it is a great-looking product. I wish BDG the best of luck with it.

 

[Justin D. Jacobson]

I can attest to that, Justin. I've heard of Dawning Star on several message boards, many chat rooms, people talking at my FLGS and at an RPG club meeting.

Unfortunately, I'm afraid you are fighting against a resurgence of Star Wars... and for some reason a lot of sci-fi players I know have broken out Classic Traveller or MegaTraveller in tha past few months.

True. I'm counting on our continued product support to build a customer base over time, as opposed to, e.g., SWd20, which appears to be pretty well dead in the water. It's not so much a direct assault on SW as a year-long siege.

 

[Crothian]

How is the product support coming? I was amazed out howe many books you had planned for and advertised in the back of the book.

 

[Justin D. Jacobson]

Well, that's the problem with listing an entire year's worth of products in advance. Our second book is Helios Rising and was supposed to be out this month. Of course, it was supposed to be 208 pages too. As we waded into the material, it became clear that 208 pages would not allow us to do justice to the scope of the book. As it stands now, HR will be 350+ pages and will be released at Gen Con. This also pushed back the other products we had in mind. We are planning on producing all the other products mentioned, with the possible exception of the GM's screen, which I'm having second thoughts about. The next book will be Silver Eclipse, which is our take on creating a totally new d20 starship creation and combat system and will now be released after Gen Con. I think there's an outside chance we could still get Shadow Falling (adventure module) out for Gen Con, since it's considerably shorter, but we'll see.

 

[Crothian]

Are you going to be doing them as PDFs and as print?

 

[BSF]

Ed is a good guy, from what I know of him. I think his passion sometimes seems off-putting to different folks. But back to Dawning Star.

The setting is a good setting! One of it's strengths is the flexibility in genre you can apply to it. Whether it is a western feel, exploration, whatever. However, I think that can also be construed as a possible disadvantage for some people. One thing that might be really helpful would be one page descriptions on how to adapt specific campaign flavors to the setting. You could do them as web downloads.

I do think there are people that are wondering how well the setting flexibility will be adapted through the rest of the sourcebooks.

I find the Dawning Star setting to be filled with wonderful potential. My 'problem' is that I need to get some players interested and set aside time to put together a mini-campaign to run through. It would be a lot of fun, if I can find the time to do it right.

I do like the overall logo for Dawning Star. Heck, I have it as my background for my laptop. I see what you mean about the ad banners being a branding effort. I just think it would be cool if there were a little more buzz in the banner.

 

[Justin D. Jacobson]

Are you going to be doing them as PDFs and as print?

Yes to both.

The setting is a good setting! One of it's strengths is the flexibility in genre you can apply to it. Whether it is a western feel, exploration, whatever. However, I think that can also be construed as a possible disadvantage for some people. One thing that might be really helpful would be one page descriptions on how to adapt specific campaign flavors to the setting. You could do them as web downloads.

Yoink!

I do think there are people that are wondering how well the setting flexibility will be adapted through the rest of the sourcebooks.

That's definitely one of the challenges, but one I'm confident we'll be able to meet. All I can say is that it's something we're keeping in mind as we put Helios Rising together and will continue to keep in mind for future supplements.

I do like the overall logo for Dawning Star. Heck, I have it as my background for my laptop. I see what you mean about the ad banners being a branding effort. I just think it would be cool if there were a little more buzz in the banner.

Now that's an excellent idea. In retrospect, I definitely should have had Danilo put the DS logo in the banner. Oh well, next time.

 

[Wycen]

I had intented to include these earlier, but here we go, more reasons why Dawning Star is awesome:

11) I helped write it (does that count?)

12) Gyro-jet weapons.

13) Don't think d20 Modern has enough Talent trees? Dawning Star has added a ton.

14) You can use the xenomorphs for your d20 future or fantasy game.