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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DragonShadow" data-source="post: 2015224" data-attributes="member: 16918">Greetings.This the guilty writer/editor in the geeks cubed crew, since I'm the first one here, I'd like to take this time to respond to the review. Primarily, I am going to own up, and keep the "it's not my fault" crap to the minimum. I will not be contrary to the reviewer, because frankly, he has struck some points with uncanny accuracy. Rather, I wish this to continue the review in a way, providing the reader with responses for some magnificent flaws.The cover is not great. we werent happy with it, but when your budget rides the minimum that we were coasting, we couldn't turn back. I won't knock the guy for painting it, it is far more than I can lay claim to. The backs of the covers were intended as a cross-over tie to the other book, but obviously it didn't carry the message anywhere.the maps. sigh. Yes, Clayton Bunce did a magnificent job, and frankly he was beyond anything out there to be found. He actually did the region maps for us also, so I wouldn't bear those down with the rest of the maps. Our intentions for the smaller "blown up" maps was for everyone to be able to flip back to the region map and correlate each reference. Again an idea that didn't carry the message we wished to provide. Retrospectively, yup! Those one city maps provided nothing for our content and the player.Artwork. Come on guys. we know this artist, and the others who contributed were amazing. Honest truth though? we took nearly 13 years of Jason Vandenberg's work, from sketch, concept, and completed work. We weren't out to make filler, we wanted everything that evinced a good fantasy idea in this book. It may be pencil sketches, but everyone who sees the book must admit, some of those pics would fit perfectly somewhere, be it on a character sheet or decoration. If anything, we've both sullied a magical artist, and also forced him to make leaps and bounds in his skill. The work he did directly for the book is better than he's ever done.Now for the real dive. grammer, punctuation, and spellcheckers. I would love to explain the whole story, but frankly I don't blame anyone beyond myself for not catching it all. I am the primary editor for every person who has written for the book, and each mistake I take to heart, especially since my efforts seem to shift dramatically from one section to the other. This is my fault, and i am taking steps to remedy every single buggering error in the bloody mess. With a vengeance.Yes, I have asked the reviewer for his notes.Organization. The concept does stink but we maintained one overriding rule. We did want to keep some similarity to the genre, providing the character content first, then going into the world. Yet another badly executed tie to the rest of the book. It was our hope that, upon reading the references in the prestige classes, the player would be drawn automatically to read the later chapters of the book.Deities. Ouch. This really tears into the pervading concept, and the reviewer did catch it, even under the shreds of material he hated. The gods are dead. Here is where I and the other main conceptionist come to conflicts. There is a vast underlying story butressing the whys and hows. Not in the book is it. It was to be an expanded story for a following book, but here's a synopsis.The gods are an integral part of the world itself, not extraplanar beings toying with man, the planets, and a thousand avatars. Their divinity and omnisience is limited to the planetary environs. One of the gods had shielded the existence of the meteor, and he in turn was duped by his cohorts. Since they're not looking a thousand directions at once, they sometimes must bring thier entire beings to focus. This especially occurs when three deities are about to come to blows together. The meteor was foreign to their realms of influence, and dispersed their beings to "non-sentience" becoming once again the primal forces they were formed to control.enough on that. And you can say frikkin, although if you are as frustrated as you imply, freely use the proper word and hope the filter catches it, *chuckles*. we will not hold it against you.Names and naming conventions. Lets just say that alot of thought was put into it, perhaps sending it beyond conventional. The apostrophe was actually used to separate a syllable referencing the type of city, a key factor we had left out.Chill shield was one of our disgustingly magnificent errors. should have been removed completely in my opinion, simply because it was in the SRD, and covered. Again this one goes up on my personal Kick Me list. I heartily apologize to player, GM, and previous spell owners. It's already gone.Spells and Spellcasting. Thir'Galhorn was intended to represent a magic-inundated society that suppressed the freedoms of the spells through their governing and lawmaking. The kingdom is supposed to come across as overbearing for anyone except those working within the system. Prestige classes. I have no right to comment on any of it, so I will pass. But! There is a detailed section that such items listed do not exhibit magical auras unless they are activated. the logic makes sense. The way the mage sight works, one must be capable of seeing the object normally, and we had to limit the ability that way simply because; a darkvision creature is capable of seeing everything no matter what light conditions. We thought that was far too much power over other character races, and as such, would lead to Min-Maxers abusing the race/prestige combo (come one, some of you wouldn't hesitate.)The elemental switch was intended for the other "type" spells, and have nothing to do with fire type spells. It was the theme of the elemental prestige. Ok, I'm guilty, I did have something to say. Repetition was allowed, since we didn't expect people to read straight through the classes, but skip to the one's they were interested in.The Flayed were our major warm fuzzy, even if it is a contrary concept. Drow, drow, drow, drow. My gods, they are not the only ones capable of evil. Anyways, we all know what people want to play with drow now. They've been neutered. I actually send much kudos for what it's worth to Master Salvatore for drawing the race back to its original ideals with his lates series. but i digress. The person responsible deserves all the credit for the concept. Way to go, man.The way the reviewer nails it on the head with the basement thing, that's scary. What can you expect from three guys with full time jobs, school, and families.Hope? There may seem to be none in this, and the knife has been twisting in my gut since the first letter of this response, but I don't wish anyone to doubt that it is there by my own hand. Our release was premature. the work was intended to be released before eberron, since a number of similar ideas were popping up in you-know-who's magazine, and we didn't wish to compete word for word with their material. Other circumstances apply, but I do not deign to dignify them. It's an old and pointless argument. The book was rushed, there is no denying that, and what we did was actually a small part of the time spent on the whole.As our funds dribbled away from us, we saw only one chance, to lunge for an interest base, in hopes of furthuring our new artwork(we wished to draw in more artists into our next books)and spurring a number of modifications. We jumped too soon, and we now pay for it.Do not lose hope folks, I haven't. We just have to go back a few steps and make it perfect for the player. I want to write for you, and I know everyone else at G3 does also. We must learn and move on.hmmmm. where's my antacid, and where's my editing book.</blockquote>

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