D&D products in early 2005

Nothing that new here (I'm still waiting for the product announcements for the second third of the year), but I thought I'd arrange the upcoming products into some sort of order.

Core Dungeons & Dragons
* Complete Adventurer (hero series): January
* Races of the Wild (races series): February
* Sandstorm (environment series): March
* Codex Anathema (monster series): April

D&D Miniatures
* Set 6: Deathknell: March

Eberron
* Grasp of the Emerald Claw (adventure): January
* Races of Eberron (race series): April
Novels:
* The City of Towers by Keith Baker: January
* Marked for Death by Matt Forbeck: March

Forgotten Realms
* Ancient Empires (region): February
Novels:
* nine, including several reprints

also various DL novels & reprints of novels.

Well, Wizards continue their post-3.5e policy of having slightly more releases per month, as well as having books in various series. Some of the series I've named above aren't explicitly defined as such, but it's fairly obvious what they are. Interestingly, the advertising material for Races of Eberron describes it as a "race series" book; something not in the description of Races of the Wild. ;-)

The miniatures releases have slowed now to three per year; though there's a big (five-month) gap between Set 5: Aberrations and Set 6: Death Knell. Fine by me! I might just be able to get my finances into order...

With Complete Adventurer and Races of the Wild, the obvious books in the Hero and Races series have been completed. What next? Does the Planar Handbook qualify as a Hero series book? Possibly. If so, it might give some hints for the topic of future books.

The Environment line of books still has a way to go, however, and is something I'm very much looking forward to. The Monster books don't interest me quite as much, though I probably should get Libris Mortis, for undead are a big part of any campaign I run...

With Grasp of the Emerald Claw, the initial run of Eberron adventures comes to its end. With releases of July 2004, September 2004 and January 2005, that's been fairly quick going for a series of adventures I consider fairly memorable. (Certainly they've gotten me interested in Eberron! ;)) There have been comments that Wizards will be making more adventures, but we don't have any idea what form they might take - certainly not in the first four months of 2005!

Forgotten Realms remains on the slow release of material (not counting the novels, which are springing up everywhere!) As I'm no longer a FR fan, this doesn't affect me - and I don't know if it worries those still playing FR, because there's certainly a lot of material already available for them.

So, that's the near future for D&D, as revealed by the Wizards Product Pages. Lots of things I'm interested in: basically all the core and Eberron releases, excepting Codex Anathema, so I'm looking forward to 2005. I'm also looking forward to seeing what they have planned for the later part of the year.

What makes a great Campaign setting?

I have happily been running my current Greyhawk campaign for the last four years, and hope to do so for the foreseeable future.

However, I've become interested in Eberron, and doing so has made me aware of what really "sells" a campaign setting.

One thing I can assure you it's not: It is not the core campaign setting book! No, I find the ECS to be rather dull. I prefer reading other sorts of game books. (Complete Warrior makes me very happy. Go figure).

No, instead there are two elements that can make a campaign setting stand out and really make me want to play it:

* Novels
* Adventures

Looking down the list of campaign settings I find interesting (and have run games in), I find the following:

The World of Greyhawk - the granddaddy of settings, the WoG is rather unprepossessing with respect to its core books. However, when it originally was created, it had great adventures. Vault of the Drow? White Plume Mountain? The Slavers? Very, very cool.

Greyhawk never had a coherent novel line - I have Gygax's Gord books, but they're minor and late compared to the setting.

Forgotten Realms - Back when the FR came out, TSR was producing some rather substandard adventures. On the other hand, it coincided with TSR's discovery of some good authors. The FR novel line has always been one of its stronger points; and some of the early novels (especially Azure Bonds) were very evocative. So, the FR interested me, and I ran a campaign there for two years.

Unfortunately, then The Horde and Maztica came out, and TSR lost their way with the setting. :(

Dragonlance - This is a world built on the novels. It also has some fine (and not so fine) modules in the original series. Unfortunately, I don't like the world beyond the original storyline that much... but for a while, I was rapt and very interested in the setting.

Eberron - As I said, the main campaign book doesn't interest me that much, but the adventures (Shadows of the Last War, Whisper of the Vampire's Blade) are fantastic. Well, they are to read. I'll be very interested to see how they play, sometime in the near future.

The other thing which has helped "sell" Eberron to me is the short story included in the first adventure module - I love that story. Very evocative and makes me fascinated by the setting.

As for non-TSR/Wizards settings: I haven't been looking for them so much over the past few years. Maybe other people can chime in.

Too many games...

I've been paid, thank goodness! (Not that it's going to last too long, alas...) I've been catching up on a few gaming products that have been released over the last few months.

* Monster Manual III
* Eberron Campaign Setting
* Whisper of the Vampire's Blade
* Pirates of the Spanish Main
* Star Wars Miniatures

Starting with the last, I now have bought exactly one starter and one booster of SWM. The booster had a VR Boba Fett! I think I can stop buying that game now - obviously that's as lucky as I'm going to get. :) I really don't have the time to play it, anyway.

Pirates of the Spanish Main is being played a little on Friday afternoons by my friends, so I've bought just enough to play myself (and to allow someone else to play me): 6 packs. Interesting game, nice little models. Not sure about the gameplay, though, so I'll see how it goes tomorrow.

Eberron has been interesting me for months. I'm not convinced by the format of the Campaign Setting: I don't find it as stunning as the two adventures, but I'm going to run a mini-campaign set in Eberron and see what my friends make of it.

Monster Manual III is just one of those books that I have to have. New monsters can be a real thrill for my players: they know the ones in the MM quite well, so new challenges can really make them pay attention.

Ant Brooks has finally received the minis I sent him: a Gauth, Thri-Kreen Ranger, Hill Giant and Bone Devil. I think he liked them. :^) They took about three weeks to reach him.

Tomorrow evening I've been invited to play some Car Wars with people I met at the RPGA Game Day I organised a few weeks back. It's been ages since I last looked at that game - this will be the first chance I have to play it seriously. Well, semi-seriously, anyway. ;-)

Life ongoing...

Well, it's been quite a while since I've added anything to this section of the site, so I guess that now is as good a time as any, yes?

Life has been interesting of late. Mostly for gaming reasons.

A post I made on ENworld was grabbed by Erik Mona and published in the latest issue of Dungeon Magazine (#115). I'm normally pretty optimistic and polite about everything, but this one was a rant about the quality of maps. In particular, the way the grid and the walls wouldn't line up...

It bothers me. I hate it when the artistry of the map is considered superior to the actual purpose of the map - to provide the DM with an adventure locale. We have to be able to read the maps! So, I ranted, it was picked up, and it got published in Dungeon. Oh, and it's likely that Erik will pay attention, because he's a great guy.

Meanwhile, I've started running RPGA adventures for my friends. One of my local FLGS is called Card Crazy. The building it's in used to be a bank - now it's a collectible store which also sells games. And it has three rooms at the back people can use for gaming. I've been playing Magic: the Gathering and other games there for years, and for the past year I've been playing the D&D Miniatures game there with my friends.

Now, I'm running RPGA-sanctioned D&D RPG events - Living Greyhawk, mainly. Partly because I want to meet new players, and partly because I want some of the promotional miniatures they give away as a reward for participating...

The RPGA have also added Dungeon Magazine adventures to the list of things they're sanctioning, so this Sunday I get to play through Torrents of Dread by Greg A. Vaughan with my friends. The party is of slightly higher level than it was designed for, so I've been adapting it. I mentioned this on the Dungeon boards, and Greg popped in to give some advice. How cool is that? Very. It looks like it'll be a fun (if dangerous) adventure.

Frostburn, Monster Manual III and a few other nice RPG products came in this month, but I only had the money to get Frostburn. I'm struggling financially, I regret. I only work part-time, and I don't really get enough money. I'm not the best at keeping money around, either, which just makes things worse.

Julian G. is back from his trip to the States - I think he was gone about four months. How time flies! So, he's back playing miniatures with me and will be back in the D&D game this weekend. Heh.

This Saturday, a painful period of Australian life will draw to a close: the federal election will finally occur. The election campaign has been utterly boring - and I'm interested in politics! (My step-mother doesn't want anyone to win... oh, dear).

Ant Brooks sent me the miniatures I needed to finish my collections of the first three D&D Miniatures sets. I'm extremely grateful to him. I sent him a few interesting minis that I had extras of (including a Gauth), but I don't know if they've arrived yet - I was later sending them than I had hoped, and then there is the Post to contend with. It's been a little over two weeks since I sent them (by AirMail), so hopefully Ant won't have to wait that much longer before they arrive.

I've been considering a few possible article submissions to Dungeon magazine, but I'm not sure yet. It's not something I've done before. Hopefully I'll get the courage to write and submit something soon!