Wizards killing products?

[Mark CMG]

I don't buy books so that I have to do umpteen hours of work to fix them. If I have to do umpteen hours to fix things in a published work, then that means someone screwed up.

And if I could ask you to clarify, am I right thinking you have no problem with supplements that leave open things for expansion, just when there's a mistake that needs correction or an obvious omission of matertial that should have been included, right?

 

[Nightfall]

Vangaurak?! Death on Toast for a 4th level party?! Maybe a very unprepared 2nd level party or already worn out 3rd level but 4th?! No way. Anyway I accept you meant it as an example but the revised version clearly proved it wasn't "Death on toast".

But yeah I agree, there was some EXTREMELY funky/bad mechanics going down initially when the line started and the editors missed a good bit of stuff.

Regarding distances on the Blood Sea, I just gave an "in game" explanation to what obviously is a grand oversight by someone. I still like Blood Sea, but I can understand your gripe with it in terms of the distance thing.

Well probably won't kill Stormwrack, mechanically but I honestly felt flavor wise, they did a decent job, especially with my contribution (admittedly second handed since I didn't write any of this) with Captain Elrick "The Bloody Yardarm" Thesk. He was my ideal for a Blood Sea Pirate.

 

[Hussar]

And if I could ask you to clarify, am I right thinking you have no problem with supplements that leave open things for expansion, just when there's a mistake that needs correction or an obvious omission of matertial that should have been included, right?

Yeah, I could live with that. I have no problems with someone leaving concepts open for a later expansion. Heck, really, that's what module series really are aren't they? Or even settings which add a continent or new country or city here and there. I can live with that. But, blatantly contradictory information, flat out wrong information, and poor mechanics does not make for a good book.

I agree with Nightfall that the fluff from many of the SL books is really first rate. Bloody Yardarm Thresk was great. A number of the ideas were well done. In all honesty, I think that's true of most of the SL books. Fantastic ideas but mindbogglingly bad mechanics.

On a side note, I ran SL campaigns for three years, so, I obviously liked the setting. It's just, as a I said, having to do umpteen hours of work to clean up someone else's mistake is not why I plunk down 35 bucks on a supplement. I did that enough in 2e. With the huge numbers of choices out there now, I refuse to do it anymore. If you can't publish solid crunch with your fluff, I'll go to someone who can. (By you, I don't mean anyone specific, but the generic you of anyone )

 

[Nightfall]

Hussar,

I can certainly understand that but I guess for me is that if the fluff can over come the bad crunch I can live with. Well most of the time.

 

[woodelf]

Most of them are typos, superfluous words and stuff like that. The table of contents and the index are both wrong. Of course, stat blocks and class progression tables are the most important. As I said, I like the book, but 19 pages of errata are no sign of a thorough production process. Which is very sad, because it's a nice book .

Partly a matter of taste. I consider the stat blocks and class tables the *least* important part of the book (or most D20 System books, for that matter). Grammar problems, including missing/superfluous words, bug me the most. But i can read through them. And, like i said, i probably won't even notice the vast majority of stat/mechanics errors, unless there's an internal contradiction (like the class progression table and accompanying text disagreeing).

I agree. The MotP is an excellent WotC book, one of my favourite D&D/d20 books at all. I prefer it over BCD, but this is not really a good comparison. The only thing both books have in common is the use of the word "planes".

Well, it depends which part you're talking about. In terms of the planes presented, i'll take Beyond Countless Doorways. In terms of rules for constructing planes, true, there's nothing else out there for D20 System. OTOH, i honestly don't think what's there of that sort in MotP is worth the paper it's printed on. It's barely the seeds of the skeleton of a system. So, while, strictly speaking, i suppose anything is better than nothing, i'd rather wing it than use those rules. Now, if you want something that actually provides awesome plane-construction rules and suggestions, you need look no farther than WotC: it's call The Primal Order, specifically the Chessboards supplement.

Addendum: apparently i need to take a look at Portals & Planes. See if there *is* a good plane-construction toolkit explicitly tailored for D20 System--i was not aware there was an alternative to MotP.