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Message: <blockquote data-quote="mhacdebhandia" data-source="post: 2557684" data-attributes="member: 18832">Weapons of Legacy seems like a perfect illustration of that dictum they mentioned in the new Design & Development column. To paraphrase:"If you like something, it's because designers came up with a great idea. If you don't like something, it's because developers dropped the ball."The single problem with Weapons of Legacy is the massive negative reaction to the penalties assessed upon characters for using the items. That's a development mistake, pure and simple. The idea is fine; the execution left a lot to be desired, at least as far as most gamers seem to be concerned.To look at the larger picture: Wizards of the Coast now has two strong campaign settings, one catering to "traditional" Tolkienesque pseudo-medieval high fantasy, the other to "modern" fantasy sensibilities and conforming to specific features of the Third Edition system from the ground up.They're now expanding two of their (relatively) successful "base D&D" product lines - the Complete and Races series - into new directions with Complete Psionics (psionics aren't new, obviously, but support for them in a whole book in a major product line is) and Races of the Dragon.There may be more "ecology" supplements such as the Draconomicon and Lords of Madness on the horizon, and Unearthed Arcana and the Dungeon Master's Guide II have a companion in the, hmm, "toolkit" product line coming up in the Player's Handbook II.Magic of Incarnum and Tome of Magic represent modular additions to the game - which could also be considered specifically focused entries in the "toolkit" category - and the current design philosophy of providing official suggestions (either in the book, or in website columns such as Eberron Expanded) on how to include these modular subsystems into either homebrew or official campaigns makes them more palatable to DMs who might be at a loss to figure out what to do with them.The genre series may be off to a shaky start, but then it's hard to say! Heroes of Battle is only one book, and the Complete series might have inspired less confidence if Complete Divine had been first off the blocks (on the other hand, that supplement might have been better-received had it not been immediately compared to the superior Complete Warrior).Wizards of the Coast is also turning back to adventures, and seem to be continuing that philosophy of making it as simple as possible to use "base D&D" supplements in specific settings, what with The Red Hand of Doom, for instance, taking place in the Forgotten Realms' Channath Vale with the serial numbers filed off.While it doesn't look like there are any "solid" product lines like the Complete series on the horizon, that arguably just means a return to the normal course of business.I for one am glad that Wizards of the Coast is taking D&D in more interesting, if not exactly innovative, directions with Races of the Dragon, Magic of Incarnum and the like. I'm intrigued by the possibilities of further entries in the genre series after Heroes of Horror - I can think of several genres that lend themselves well to D&D (Heroes of Intrigue springs first to mind, and wouldn't that be wonderful in organisation-and-conspiracy-laden Eberron and the Forgotten Realms?), but then if you'd asked me I wouldn't have predicted that war and horror would necessarily be the first genres on the company's list.If all else fails, the Complete and Races series don't have to die with their new entries, especially not the latter now that it's broken its core-race mold with Races of the Dragon - though I do doubt that we'll see Complete Incarnum or anything for similar books sooner than the two-year interval implied by the April 2006 release of Complete Psionics.</blockquote>

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