Arkobla Conn
Mongoose
Sigh...
How can a book so carefully written, with such wonderful attention to detail, with nice layout, excellent NPC's, and very nice maps, actually fall short?
Well, I supposed that's when you compare it to ultra high expectations.
The first hint was a few months ago when we heard that this book was not a 'Campaign book' the way much of us thought it would be. I certainly thought, due to some posts I read, that it was indeed such a book.
Alas, it is not. Now, mind, I think it succeeds in what the author's intended - to be an excellent sourcebook about Picts, the lands about them and the motives of the peoples there. Where I'm disappointed initially is in the campaign...but then again, I figured I would be.
I was breezing through this book today and found hordes of adventure ideas. An unbelievable amount. If I were still in college, this would be great fodder for creating the mother of all campaigns, and I'd be as happy as a pig in a slop field.
But it is today...and as I turned to the back to review the 'campaign' I found the following paraphrased comments...
"This can be easily modified for higher characters...just add more..."
and
"This campaign does not feature 'read the text box material'
sigh...
This means alot more reading to do before I can jump in. Reading that is going to have to wait until I finish this silly proposal writing class I'm taking....(dang paper is due in 3.5 weeks!). This means I'm going to have to work with the mod .... It means my impression of the 'campaign' is that it was added as an afterthought...
That might be a mean thought, especially since I haven't "read" all the text....but I do wonder if the discussion we had a few months ago about what this 'book' was going to be might have been heard and an attempt was made to do something about that. And the campaign *might* be excellent...but I've got to slough through columns of text until I get the gist of it....well, the overview sounded ok...
to Vincent, who has painstakingly given us the absolute best Conan RPG products we've ever seen - I'm sorry. Again I state, your book DOES come though as you intended it....but it's not the book I was looking for. Please speak to the folks at Mongoose and tell them that the folks who can buy these books (50 bucks for the core book, + more for the sources) are not young, still in school, folks. The demographics, I'd wager, are closer to between 30-40, most of whom are established members of society (IE careers and families) and we don't all have the time to turn the hordes of wonderful adventure hooks into adventures.
You've got the best damn RPG running Mongoose...Please Please Please - Dedicate MORE of your sourcebooks into a series of adventures that can be used with little preperation, within hours of purchasing. If you want to see a good example of the type of stuff we like, go to the Wizards website and visit the d20 modern and D&D websites for adventure downloads. They are FREE, Formatted in a similiar, understandable, fun, and easy to use format and take 1-3 sessions to run. While I'm not asking for free stuff, I am asking for all of the other criterial.
I should be grateful, because the Pirates book, the Scholar book and the Road of Kings book had nothing in it by way of set adventure, and I am happy that we got something. Next time, consider a different format...(ala your PDF adventures...)
Disappointedly frustrated,
Arkobla Conn
How can a book so carefully written, with such wonderful attention to detail, with nice layout, excellent NPC's, and very nice maps, actually fall short?
Well, I supposed that's when you compare it to ultra high expectations.
The first hint was a few months ago when we heard that this book was not a 'Campaign book' the way much of us thought it would be. I certainly thought, due to some posts I read, that it was indeed such a book.
Alas, it is not. Now, mind, I think it succeeds in what the author's intended - to be an excellent sourcebook about Picts, the lands about them and the motives of the peoples there. Where I'm disappointed initially is in the campaign...but then again, I figured I would be.
I was breezing through this book today and found hordes of adventure ideas. An unbelievable amount. If I were still in college, this would be great fodder for creating the mother of all campaigns, and I'd be as happy as a pig in a slop field.
But it is today...and as I turned to the back to review the 'campaign' I found the following paraphrased comments...
"This can be easily modified for higher characters...just add more..."
and
"This campaign does not feature 'read the text box material'
sigh...
This means alot more reading to do before I can jump in. Reading that is going to have to wait until I finish this silly proposal writing class I'm taking....(dang paper is due in 3.5 weeks!). This means I'm going to have to work with the mod .... It means my impression of the 'campaign' is that it was added as an afterthought...
That might be a mean thought, especially since I haven't "read" all the text....but I do wonder if the discussion we had a few months ago about what this 'book' was going to be might have been heard and an attempt was made to do something about that. And the campaign *might* be excellent...but I've got to slough through columns of text until I get the gist of it....well, the overview sounded ok...
to Vincent, who has painstakingly given us the absolute best Conan RPG products we've ever seen - I'm sorry. Again I state, your book DOES come though as you intended it....but it's not the book I was looking for. Please speak to the folks at Mongoose and tell them that the folks who can buy these books (50 bucks for the core book, + more for the sources) are not young, still in school, folks. The demographics, I'd wager, are closer to between 30-40, most of whom are established members of society (IE careers and families) and we don't all have the time to turn the hordes of wonderful adventure hooks into adventures.
You've got the best damn RPG running Mongoose...Please Please Please - Dedicate MORE of your sourcebooks into a series of adventures that can be used with little preperation, within hours of purchasing. If you want to see a good example of the type of stuff we like, go to the Wizards website and visit the d20 modern and D&D websites for adventure downloads. They are FREE, Formatted in a similiar, understandable, fun, and easy to use format and take 1-3 sessions to run. While I'm not asking for free stuff, I am asking for all of the other criterial.
I should be grateful, because the Pirates book, the Scholar book and the Road of Kings book had nothing in it by way of set adventure, and I am happy that we got something. Next time, consider a different format...(ala your PDF adventures...)
Disappointedly frustrated,
Arkobla Conn