Folks-
I did pass this up at GenCon, admittedly twinging at the price tag. But, I do plan to buy it albeit from a discount vendor rather than full list price. Either way, you do get an incredible amount of gaming goodness for your dollar- I think that is easy to forget without really seeing the size of this book. It literally looks like a hardback phonebook...
Where I was on the fence before talking to the AEG folks at the Con, I am sold now. Let me share a few points which swayed me:
1. The AEG guys realize that most folks will not play this all the way through. They have figured out about how long it would take (over 2 years weekly sessions) but do not expect most groups to do this, rather, to pick out useful sections or encounters. That makes me happy, because that is what I expect to do. It also allows future re-use for as long as you want to pick out pieces.
2. Big sections of the book encounters are grouped thematically (e.g. undead, water encounters, and so on) by area/level of the dungeon. Also, the encounter levels are controlled the same way. To get to the higher difficulty encounters, you need to find keys in the easier areas- that controls the deadliness somewhat without having to constantly juggle encounter levels- which would suck. I am already planning on pulling out the water section for our group as we begin our pirate game.
This book is very cool. Make of that what you will.
