World's Largest Dungeon?

[Jim Hague]

AEG sells 3/4 of a ton of WLD at GenCon!

Gah, double post!

 

[Jim Hague]

AEG sells 3/4 of a ton of WLD at GenCon!

*puts on the freelance shill hat*

Woohoo!

Just got off the line with jim pinto, and The World's Largest Dungeon sold 3/4 of a ton's worth of books. Yikes. When we said it'd be a monster book, we had no idea. And there's more regions left to explore...

jim'll be back tomorrow, once he's recovered from GenCon.

*off comes the hat*

- The Jim that's not actually named Jim -

 

[Psion]

Looking forward to it. WLD's my first major project (though I contributed some nifty stuff to 7th Sea's Rapier's Edge book), so I'm eager to see what people think of it, good or bad.

Ah, a contributor!

Yeah, I talked to AEG's marketing guy and the con hoping he would let me leave with a copy. (For some reason I have only been getting stargate stuff in the mail lately). He said no.

But... there was a copy waiting for me when I got home. Yay AEG marketing guy!

I just started poring though it. As long as we have some contributors here, can you explain the blurb on page 14 to me? It speaks as if monster summoning was permanent or something? Even if you count the anti-teleportation wards, I would assume it doesn't apply to summoning spells (being that they are essentially summoning an astral projection) or are blocked entirely. To assume that if they weren't blocked they would be permanent seems a little odd to me.

 

[DaveMage]

Congrats to AEG!

I'm guessing that 3/4 ton means a couple hundred copies.

Nice.

I'd love to hear your experiences, AEG staff!

 

[Psion]

Ack! Just learned that my FLGS will detail it at 133 $CAD + taxes. That's a lot of money for a book. Actually, if I buy it at that price, it'll be the single most expensive book I will have bought in my life (counting school books)...

Not me. I regularly purchased school books over $100 US. $160 sticks out in my mind as a particularly annoying book I had to purchase new.

 

[Jim Hague]

Ah, a contributor!

I just started poring though it. As long as we have some contributors here, can you explain the blurb on page 14 to me? It speaks as if monster summoning was permanent or something? Even if you count the anti-teleportation wards, I would assume it doesn't apply to summoning spells (being that they are essentially summoning an astral projection) or are blocked entirely. To assume that if they weren't blocked they would be permanent seems a little odd to me.

Take this with a grain of salt - I didn't get a chance to look at the proofs before they went to press. But if I recall correctly, WLD presents several options for summonings:

*You can summon in, but not out, and the creature vanishes into aether when the duration ends.

*You can summon in but not out, and the creature is trapped in the dungeon with you.

*Since you'll likely be summoning using the standard lists, you transpose a creature from another part of the Dungeon to you, it doesn't go away, and may have an agenda of its own. (Very shaky on this one, as it may have been tossed later on).

*Summoning simply doesn't work. (Unlikely, since we tried our damndest to make the WLD work across the board for the standard classes).

jim pinto ought to be on tomorrow, so he can answer the question with a little more surety than authority than I as a freelancer can.

 

[Psion]

Take this with a grain of salt - I didn't get a chance to look at the proofs before they went to press. But if I recall correctly, WLD presents several options for summonings:

*You can summon in, but not out, and the creature vanishes into aether when the duration ends.

*You can summon in but not out, and the creature is trapped in the dungeon with you.

*Since you'll likely be summoning using the standard lists, you transpose a creature from another part of the Dungeon to you, it doesn't go away, and may have an agenda of its own. (Very shaky on this one, as it may have been tossed later on).

*Summoning simply doesn't work. (Unlikely, since we tried our damndest to make the WLD work across the board for the standard classes).

jim pinto ought to be on tomorrow, so he can answer the question with a little more surety than authority than I as a freelancer can.

Cool. Too bad I didn't get a chance to say hi to him at the con.

I'll check and see if said passage exists, but I'll try and see if it is there. That would be convenient, and the first option would be my choice. The passage in question sounds like it assumes #2 would prevail if you allowed it, but for PCs, the last prevails.

 

[mearls]

It was pretty interesting watching the reaction the World's Largest Dungeon at GenCon. It was easily the talk of the show - you couldn't ask anyone about what they saw in the convention hall without it coming up.

I haven't picked up a copy yet - it literally was too big to fit into the bags I brought with me, and I would've flipped if it got damaged during the baggage handling process. From what I heard from people who bought it, though, it's pretty cool. I was looking through a friend's copy, and I really, really wanted to knock him over the head with it and run off with WLD in my clutches. I don't normally try to use my professional reputation (such as it is) to get swag, but I was really, really tempted to in this case.

The interesting thing is that a lot of people were talking about how d20 is on the way out, yet this is the second consecutive GenCon where the most buzz-worthy RPG product was for d20. Everyone was talking about AU last year, and this year I heard more about WLD than the Vampire reboot or GURPS 4e.

 

[JoeGKushner]

I still haven't had a chance to do more than glance through the book. Art seems solid, layout seems solid. The text is small, and there is a lot of it. This is a good thing for those who want more text in their adventurers.

I've looked over the introduction and while it gives a background, it almost comes out and admits that it's there to give you the dungeon as opposed to being ten pages of detailed information. Same thing with the ecology and other 'realistic' aspects of a dungeon.

 

[DaveMage]

It was pretty interesting watching the reaction the World's Largest Dungeon at GenCon. It was easily the talk of the show - you couldn't ask anyone about what they saw in the convention hall without it coming up.

The interesting thing is that a lot of people were talking about how d20 is on the way out, yet this is the second consecutive GenCon where the most buzz-worthy RPG product was for d20. Everyone was talking about AU last year, and this year I heard more about WLD than the Vampire reboot or GURPS 4e.

Excellent - thanks for sharing this, Mike!

I hope the product does well. I personally would like to see more (although not too many more) high-end products like this. I mean, if AEG can do this for a dungeon, certainly other companies, like, say, Malhavoc, could do something like this for their next Beyond Countless Doorways book.