WotC Summer 05 Product Lists

[X-Marks!]

Water-Shallow...?

I am a bit worried about the relatively small size of the Waterdeep sourcebook. It's much smaller than the City of Splendors boxed set, and with the recent trend of not including poster maps with FR sourcebooks, at least 7 pages of the book will be maps (area overview, city overview, five maps for wards).

I agree. There's hesitation here as well.

I am hoping for as complete a FR campaign-setting-in-a-city as we can get. Besides very thorough acountings of politics/laws, businesses, and NPCs of note, I'm really wanting this to include the closest surrounding lands, the sewers & Skullport, plus Undermountain. These are all the things that make Waterdeep a great place to run a campaign in, complete from A to Z, without having to travel to other lands for both intrigue and adventure.

I recall the F.R.C.S. setting this location up as one of the prime locations to begin in, but I've thus far stayed away with too little to go on. I'm just not sure that 160 pages is nearly enough space to cover the three-settings-in-one which are all connected: Waterdeep / Skullport beneath / Undermountain. I mean, where else in 3.x are we going to get this info, other than the Waterdeep Book? I just hope they up this to 180 (or even the more-recent 192) pages as we get closer to the release date.

Am I the only dreamer . . . ?

 

[Buttercup]

I'll be getting the following:

Complete Adventurer
Races of the Wild
Sandstorm
Dungeon Master's Guide II
Battlefield Adventures

I might also get Weapons of Legacy, but I'll have to look at it first.

 

[DungeonmasterCal]

I'll be getting the following:

Complete Adventurer
Races of the Wild
Sandstorm
Dungeon Master's Guide II
Battlefield Adventures

I might also get Weapons of Legacy, but I'll have to look at it first.

I'm less interested in Battlefield Adventures than anything else. I've not bought Frostburn yet, either...so the Sandstorm and Maelstroms are pretty low on my list. DMII and Weapons of Legacy are sure buys for me.

 

[ivocaliban]

I might also get Weapons of Legacy, but I'll have to look at it first.

Yes, this one has great potential. "Regular" magical items with the same sort of backgrounds and histories as artifacts. I've seen it attempted before without much success, but after reading the description it's a definite maybe.

 

[Nightfall]

Gah, no Orcus, please. Except as a passing reference to his debacle in the Bloodstone Lands.

Heretic! Orcus is way cooler than any other undead god. He's da'man! Rappan Athuk proved that!

 

[d20Dwarf]

Because 37 years of Realmslore has generated a different and far richer situation than the Book of Vile Darkness describes.

Precisely. And the focus of this book is on playing evil characters (or morally ambiguous, as the ad text says) in the Realms, it's not a Villain's Lorebook. But don't despair, there are plenty of villains in it. I think this book is going to be useful to DMs as well as players, because there are a LOT of organizations and NPCs in there that can be used to spice things up.

The Realms has been around for a long time. If you still want to play there, but are kinda tired of the same old storylines, then pick up Champions of Ruin and make things fresh again, either by coming at things from the evil perspective, or by using the info to form a campaign with brand new villains.

 

[Vocenoctum]

Heretic! Orcus is way cooler than any other undead god. He's da'man! Rappan Athuk proved that!

Considering how much the overuse of Tharizdun ruined him for me, maybe you should be hoping to see LESS of Orcus.

 

[Nightfall]

Will,

Don't suppose a chapter on Demon Princes is in there...?

Voc,

Maybe. However, so far I've only seen him in a) A few Necromancer Game books and b) vague references in most other books outside of Book of Vile Darkness. And even the stuff in BoVD was too damn short to be much fun. (Well I'm not counting Ghostwalk but still that was the highlight in that one.)

So while less is more in some ways. Less is less in this instance when dealing with the Iconic Demon Prince of all Time. (IMHO of course.)

 

[d20Dwarf]

Don't suppose a chapter on Demon Princes is in there...?

I can't go into specifics about what's in the book. I suppose I can tell you that I didn't write anything for demon princes, though.

 

[Li Shenron]

Precisely. And the focus of this book is on playing evil characters (or morally ambiguous, as the ad text says) in the Realms, it's not a Villain's Lorebook. But don't despair, there are plenty of villains in it. I think this book is going to be useful to DMs as well as players, because there are a LOT of organizations and NPCs in there that can be used to spice things up.

The Realms has been around for a long time. If you still want to play there, but are kinda tired of the same old storylines, then pick up Champions of Ruin and make things fresh again, either by coming at things from the evil perspective, or by using the info to form a campaign with brand new villains.

Heh! I didn't notice you were actually one of the authors of the book, I'm embarassed

My doubts about the usefulness of this title are because of the description:

Everything you need to know to play evil or morally ambiguous characters in the Forgotten Realms setting.

Champions of Ruin is a comprehensive guide to playing evil characters in the Forgotten Realms setting. Many aspects of play are covered: vengeance, ambition, evil vs. evil, corruption and moral failure, loyalty and betrayal. The book also discusses types of evil -- lawful, chaotic, and neutral -- as well as morally ambivalent characters such as anti-heroes and rogues. Elder evils of extreme power are discussed along with tools, feats, spells, evil places and planar touchstones, and guilds and organizations that evil characters can join. Two new races are also introduced.

I thought that the Book of Vile Darkness already had "everything you need to know to play evil characters", and discussions on the nature of evil, different evils etc... since it's a general book, I wonder what else about this can CoR have? How is an evil character it different in FR compared to all the other settings? I can only think of the FR-specific evil organizations, but those were already well treated in Lords of Darkness.

From the description above the only "new" stuff seems to be the usual feats/spells/etc (well ok the planar touchstones are very new), of which I wonder how much is entirely new and how much is just revised.