Rerun week
continues here at The Daily
Bestiary, with a “Best of” list I submitted to Reddit’s r/rpg subreddit last
March. We’re almost at the end, so
please enjoy Part 4!
4) Oriental Adventures James Wyatt
Maybe one day, we’ll get a Dragon Empires hardcover. Until
then, Oriental Adventures is a
must-read.
This is a Core +1 book without a doubt—with all the new
races, classes, feats, gear, spells, and monsters you need to run
Asian-inspired adventures all in one place, including a setting in which to put
all of them to use. (Although you’ll probably want Ultimate Combat for the Pathfinder-standard samurai and ninja, and
the Dragon Empires Gazetteer or the Advanced Races Guide for races like the
kitsune and tengu.)
What’s weird about this book is that the setting is a
borrowed one—they teamed up with the Legends
of the Five Rings folk to license Rokugan, which at the time Wizards also
owned. This ends up being a good thing, though, as it lends the setting an
automatic richness and loved-in-feel.
But it also contains plenty of races and classes that don’t
belong in Rokugan. And that’s even more fantastic. It’s a book that encourages
you to tinker under the hood—and then models how to do it for you: “We’re going
to set aside all these demihuman races and just use the humans and rat
creatures. And we don’t need all these spellcasters. Shugenjas will do, plus
shamans for this one branch of the Lion Clan for a touch of mystery, and forget
the wu jen entirely. But that’s just us—here’s the tool box; which ones do you
want to use?” So if you want to recreate Kara-Tur, you can. You want to work
the nezumi and korobokuru into Golarion, no problem.
Role-playing is constantly giving us more rules and monsters
and goodies to put in our games. This is the rare case of a book encouraging us
to play around and take a few things out—and making us feel empowered and
excited for doing so.
Further reading: For best results, dig up Dragon #318 to convert the 3.0 OA to 3.5, which brings you a little
closer to the Pathfinder standard. Then look for the compatible Rokugan books
from AEG if you want to see the setting fleshed out some more. [Edit: One of them is sitting 75% read next
to my bed. Are we noticing a theme?
Middle school me would be horrified to learn that adult me has so little time
to read, and high school me would be horrified at the number of books I’ve only
half-read. Sigh.]
3) Eberron Campaign Setting Keith Baker
Raiders of the Lost
Ark meets The Maltese Falcon
meets The Mummy meets The Name of the Rose. Wasn’t that the
original pitch? [Edit: I still need to
read/watch The Name of the Rose. And I can’t remember if I ever saw all
of The Mummy, though The Mummy
Returns was surprisingly delightful.]
Aside from perhaps Dark Sun, no setting completely upended
our expectations about what D&D could feel like than Eberron. Eberron was
pulp adventuring. Eberron took magic seriously and combined it with technology
for a steampunk (or at least spellpunk) feel. Eberron upended our expectations
for D&D races and classes, added new concepts like the warforged and
dragonmarks, and offered a whole world of adventure, not just a continent.
But why do you need this book? You have Golarion, right?
There’s a reason every major Pathfinder book has Wayne
Reynolds on the cover. So did every major Eberron book. Eberron was about
action and possibility—same as Golarion. Eberron promised, “If it exists in
D&D, it exists in Eberron.” Golarion bills itself as “The best of all
possible worlds.” So Eberron is Golarion’s spellpunk twin. The Eberron Campaign Setting is 300 pages of
the same spirit, just at a different level of technology and with a slightly
different rule set. Even if you never use a single feat or secret society or
airship design from Eberron (but you will), you should read it for its spirit
alone.
Further reading: As I said above, the Eberron books are
uneven. Unlike the Forgotten Realms, which settled into three very comfortable
rhythms for its sourcebooks (gazetteers, detailed exploration of a single
theme, and linked adventures with some setting background), Eberron authors
seemed to invent a new style for each book—from gazetteers (Secrets of Sarlona) to public and secret
society write-ups (Dragonmarked) to in-depth
city sourcebooks (Sharn: City of Towers)
to little more than fleshed-out encounter options (Secrets of Xendrik). So browse before you buy, and see what books
fit your gaming needs and reading style.
My original version of
this entry was Books #3–#1 on the countdown, but I wanted to make this a
five-day thing, so I did some reorganizing so that we’d have something to read
tomorrow. But that doesn’t mean
I’m leaving you with a short entry!
Let’s ditch the italics and talk about some reader comments…
All of the books so
far are great. I would have probably listed Stormwrack in place of Frostburn
myself, but I’ve always loved
seafaring adventures, even if I’ve never been able to maintain a sea game as a
DM.
I can totally see that! With some of the environment books, personal preference is
definitely going to come into play—if you’ve been itching for a sea campaign, a
book on alpine and polar adventures isn’t going to be as motivating. In the end, I went with FB because I just thought it edged out SW in several categories: more
compelling PC races and classes, a wider variety of monsters, more interesting
encounter locations, etc. But as a
lover of Norse myths and saga, I’m also biased. Stormwrack was
certainly solid, and I’d recommend it for anyone who liked FB (whereas I’m more hesitant about recommending the rest of the
environment-themed books, unless like me you’re a pretty diehard completist).
And filbypott had several thoughts, including:
Creature Catalog
was actually the very first 3E-compatible
book I encountered in a bookstore, before I even ran across Wizards’ core
rulebooks, and I’m still sorry that I never got into Scarred Lands.
Like I said, I can’t recommend the Ghelspad and Termana
gazetteers enough, especially in concert with the Creature Collections.
(Also, the fact that the gazetteers have largely held their value even
used tells you something about their worth.) Go look for them.
Also, the final gazetteer, Strange
Lands: Lost Tribes of the Scarred Lands has been in my to-read pile since I
finally tracked it down last year—if it’s good you’ll be the first to know.
Finally, dr-archeville wrote a pretty comprehensive response
(which you can check out here), including this line I wanted to spend some more
time with:
[M]y group never
played in Eberron (though we did use some stuff from it, like the Renegade
Mastermaker prestige class from Magic of Eberron), and I was burned by too many early Eberron books that, as you say,
were far too dry for what had been advertised as a noir/pulp/steampunk take on
D&D.
Hopefully my suggestions encourage you to take another
look. After that, here’s where I’d
go next: Sharn: City of Towers is
pretty much a must-read too, though it may take you more than one read-through
to find all the good stuff buried inside because of how it’s organized. City
of Stormreach is also great.
Originally I was worried it would tie too closely to the Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach
game (which terrified me because I don’t game the video at all), but it ended up being quite a nice stand-alone book—one
that made sure all the juicy fun was front and center, having learned from S:CoT. Adding that to the books I’ve mentioned previously, that’s a
total of eight Eberron books, which should keep you busy for a while.
After that, see my above warning to browse before you buy. The Eberron books lean heavy toward
encounter sketches, drop-into-play NPCs, and role-playing prompts—which is
great if that’s what you’re looking for, but can be jarring for anyone
expecting a more traditional sourcebook.
I have more to say
about the Eberron line—2+ single-spaced pages more, in fact, covering everything
from setting philosophy to font choice—but I think that’s a conversation for
another day. I’ll see you the rest
of you here tomorrow for Part 5!
No comments:
Post a Comment