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<blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 8642238" data-attributes="member: 18">Definitely, and it reeks of haste, as per Sam Clemens/Mark Twain - “I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.&quot;In this case stuff that should have been edited down, revised, or removed just wasn't, and as you say, there's a surprising paucity of material for two of the pillars.I'd also say that 5E's post-core setting books in general suffer by comparison with the best non-5E setting books of the current era. Spire's Strata and Sin for example are absolute masterworks of building totally playable lore and embedding hooks constantly (without even having to call them out). Sin is particularly remarkable in how often authors forgo ego and ensure the lovingly constructed NPC they have made has flaws and idiosyncrasies the PCs will be able to take advantage of, should they discover them. That the elite organisation of badasses has problems and is misguided in certain ways, rather than just being awesome. Such a stark contrast to the omni-competent villains/organisations one sees in so many RPGs. And closer to 5E, PF2 has some pretty great setting books, like The Mwangi Expanse, which whilst it occasionally falls into the failure to &quot;kill your darlings&quot; trap Strata/Sin largely avoids, just provides a tremendous amount of really playability-focused stuff that it doesn't feel like, say, SCAG or Theros really manages.(NB the same adage re: length applies to about 90% of my posts, but hey I'm not being paid for them, nor published!)</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Ruin Explorer, post: 8642238, member: 18"] Definitely, and it reeks of haste, as per Sam Clemens/Mark Twain - “I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead." In this case stuff that should have been edited down, revised, or removed just wasn't, and as you say, there's a surprising paucity of material for two of the pillars. I'd also say that 5E's post-core setting books in general suffer by comparison with the best non-5E setting books of the current era. Spire's Strata and Sin for example are absolute masterworks of building totally playable lore and embedding hooks constantly (without even having to call them out). Sin is particularly remarkable in how often authors forgo ego and ensure the lovingly constructed NPC they have made has flaws and idiosyncrasies the PCs will be able to take advantage of, should they discover them. That the elite organisation of badasses has problems and is misguided in certain ways, rather than just being awesome. Such a stark contrast to the omni-competent villains/organisations one sees in so many RPGs. And closer to 5E, PF2 has some pretty great setting books, like The Mwangi Expanse, which whilst it occasionally falls into the failure to "kill your darlings" trap Strata/Sin largely avoids, just provides a tremendous amount of really playability-focused stuff that it doesn't feel like, say, SCAG or Theros really manages. (NB the same adage re: length applies to about 90% of my posts, but hey I'm not being paid for them, nor published!) [/QUOTE]

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