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No, they are just providing review copies to reviewers which is pretty standard for a small press, as an even smaller press myself, I simply request state at the beginning of the review that they received a review copy.
The reason is, if you have a small group of dedicated customers its harder to find someone with the free time to do a review. If you do find someone willing to do a relevant review, you will give him a review copy because reviews are worth their weight in gold.
They probably should have said "we are looking for a few good reviewers" not a few good reviews.
Steve Russell
Rite Publishing
No, they are just providing review copies to reviewers which is pretty standard for a small press, as an even smaller press myself, I simply request state at the beginning of the review that they received a review copy.
The reason is, if you have a small group of dedicated customers its harder to find someone with the free time to do a review. If you do find someone willing to do a relevant review, you will give him a review copy because reviews are worth their weight in gold.
They probably should have said "we are looking for a few good reviewers" not a few good reviews.
Steve Russell
Rite Publishing
Thanks for the clarification, Steve.
Which reminds me (thread jack)
Rite Publishing is always looking for a few good reviewers :)
as we have 5 products that don't have reviews up on rpgdrivethru/rpgnow (they are reviewed elsewhere but I would like to get them up there).
So I would provide a free copy via rpgdrivethru/rpgnow, and you would post your review there (stating you received a review copy of the product).
I would prefer to read a review you have posted of another product elsewhere.
I can be contacted at stevendrussell (at) ritepublishing (dot) com
End thread jack.
I do not think it appropriate for me to give an opinion on the quality of WotBS since I am doing The Rituals of Choice Adventure Path, I read them while doing research on what designer's do right and wrong when producing an adventure path, and hindsight is 20/20.
I certainly did. Twelve adventure path PDFs for a lower price than a single Paizo adventure path PDF? Sold!Makes sense...I understand now.
I'm looking at the $1 each sale right now... I will probably pick these up to add to my read stack.
I just bought the whole lot for $1, they have the subscription for $1 in the sale.
I just bought the whole lot for $1, they have the subscription for $1 in the sale.
You're a lucky guy! That's a mistake that RPGNow made, and a bunch of people got all twelve adventures for a total of $1. They were supposed to be $1 each for GM's Day, but the 12-adventure subscription wasn't supposed to be $1 also. RPGNow corrected it after a day.
So, for less than the price of a bit of lettuce that fell off a Big Mac, you got the entire campaign saga! Even if you hate it*, you got a good deal there! $1 for twelve adventures! That's like 50 pence in my money! :)
*I really hope you really enjoy it! That's why we do it, after all! :)
Psst...I assume you meant to write lucky girl....
I have been thinking of buying it so when the sale came round I had a look...$1 per adventure was/is a great deal, and then I saw the subscrition there as well...my initial reaction was that surely this is a mistake. I would have been more than happy to pay the $12. I have so far read the first adventure (I hate reading PDFs so print them off at work) and it looks like something I would like to run one day.
I bought the whole lot in January, read through them, and thought it to be a solid enough product that I started a new campaign to run my players through it.
It appears that the strength of WotBS is the evocative scenes: wonderful places, terrific riffs on fantasy tropes, lengendary battles. The weakness seems to be the railroady narrative that gets the PCs from A to B to C to ...
(But I've just begun the campaign, so that may be a feature of the first chapter, but future chapters may fix that.)
Five bonus sidequest adventures:
- More Spies in the Steam Tunnels
- Moral Dilemmas
- A Harvest of Hope Forlorn
- The Old-Fashioned Way
- Dreamcatcher
A short section covering Ragos, the capital city of Ragesia
I wish there were some way for me to pick this up, but a few side quests really isn't worth paying another $60 for material I've already bought. Does anybody know if there's any way to buy just the new stuff?
I played this campaign for the 3 first adventures and I agree with Chris.
The wordd is really classic fantasy but with some nice implementations sometimes. Some encounters are really cinematic and really interesting but the overall plot is too linear and railroading. I even found some parts of the adventures awkward, as if they were written by beginners.
Another flaw of WotBS is the ilustrations : not only is the quality poor, but the portraits of some NPCs left no doubt on what they are (bad guys infiltrated or innocent citizens), forcing my DM to not show them to us to avoid ruining the plot.
The worst cases I remember are :
When you are with the faeries in the burning forest,
Then in Seaquen, while the party
I'll be the first to admit that the writing has some flaws, since I was the main editor, and did a bunch of writing myself. It was my first foray into adventure writing, and I learned on the job.
I am curious what aspects you felt were railroady, and if they seemed more restrictive than what you'd see in other adventure paths.
It's probably the Sinister Raised Eyebrow (tm). ;-)
Hehe. Well, it's unintentional. I sent out the art request for that picture:
"Slender and muscular, like a fisherman or a martial artist, this bald man wears sailors pants and a sleeveless vest, with a variety of small implements held on his left forearm by leather cords. He moves with a swimmer's grace. He carries no visible weapons, but has pouches on a belt for spell materials."
No mention of him being a villain. The artist added the sinister raised eyebrow himself. ;)
As for the evil fey . . . you're supposed to know he's a bad guy. He's just a bad guy who makes a really logical suggestion: kill a bunch of people so that you can escape. It's the easy solution, and the ignoble one.
And now I'm suddenly curious how I phrased the art call for him:
"Another fey man, with dark hair and dark clothes, even black wings. He is a deceptive being, and should look like he's considering a plot or conspiracy or something. I envision him turned to look away from the reader, so his face is nearly in profile."
I hope people are still enjoying the adventures, and can forgive some of the rough spots. If anyone has any stories to share from their games, I'd love to hear them.
carmachu
(Pathfinder Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Roleplaying Game, Campaign Setting, Companion, Modules Subscriber)
Ryan,
I'm beginning the first actual game session tonight.
I've fused the WotBS subcontinent with the "Sundered Empire" CHAINMAIL setting, which is now north of the Ragesian Empire.
This means that, if the players want a change of pace, I know what's going on north of Ragesia. It also means that the command structure of large armies breaks down. Part of the genius of the Ragesian battle plans is that they address the fact that a field general is limited to moving squadrons in place and giving them orders before the combats start.
I've clothed the Sundered Empires lands and peoples in Indian/Tibetian/western Chinese motifs. so the elves up there are Mongol analogues.
I asked you previously about the deities for the campaign.
What this means: there were originally twelve Great Servants, who incarnated as:
The Turtle (the oldest and wisest): Plant Domain, Protection Domain
The Owl (the most perceptive): Healing Domain, Knowledge Domain
The Mole (or Worm): Death Domain, Earth Domain,
The Bear (who has become diseased in recent years): Protection Domain,
The Dragon: Fire Domain,
The Eagle: Air Domain, Sun Domain,
The Hare: Luck Domain, Travel Domain,
The Panther: Trickery Domain,
The Crab (or Kraken) (the keeper of secrets): Water Domain,
The Fox: Magic Domain, Trickery Domain,
The Cobra (or Scorpion): Death Domain, and
The Bull: Destruction Domain, Strength Domain,
The Dragon chose to set its own agenda, and removed itself from the others. In response, it was locked into its incarnation. It was replaced by The Horse, who knows the mind of the people of the lands.
The Great Servants don't have alignments; those are reserved for true gods. (Indeed, the Dragon fell from grace precisely because it did take an alignment.) All the Servants act to support the integrity of the demiplane.
Seperate from all of this is Karusk, a godling of the orc pantheon, who --with one other-- snuck "aboard" the continent as the gods sealed it off. He acts as the patron of the Orcish Folk.
As it turns out, the Great Servants have not shown themselves to be up to the task of maintaining order. Some force or being from outside has begun to exert a corrupting influence, through great magic and hidden agents. The sun no longer reliably rises in the east and sets in the west. Time has begun to unravel; twice portals have opened up to the future or to the past, allowing people to re-write their recent history. Once in a while, a town or village will greet a morning hundreds of miles away from where it was the evening before.
One of my players asked what this means in terms of domains.
Most clerics draw power from the Great Servants as an undifferentiated pantheon. Their domains relate more to their own convictions and personalities than to the gods they worship. If a player want to run the kind of person who has access to the Death and Good domains, it's that simple.
The Great Servants do have agents and followers among the mortal races. If you want to follow that path, choose one of the Great Servants and write two folk tales about it, characterizing its attributes. So, if you wanted the benefits of Protection and Mind, choose a likely Servant and write a tale about its role as protector, and another tale about its influence over the mind. (These don't have to be long. A couple paragraphs is fine.)
Again, the Servants are none of them good, evil, lawful or chaotic, and can't grant those domains, although their followers might manifest them, the same as any other clerics.
Perhaps out of respect, none of the Great Servants can grant access to the War domain. They each grant access to the Animal domain.
I've always wanted to start a campaign with the words, "Roll for Initiative".
I'm running a short battle between three orc / half-orcs on one side, and three fugitives, including Rivereye (the gnome sorcerer spy) on the other. The fugitives start out in a rope trick pocket dimension that's minutes from expiring. The orcs have been pulled off their normal military escort duties and have orders to find the fugitives, recover some military plans, and bring the captives' severed heads back for questioning. They've tracked the fugitives into this area. If it comes down to a toe-to-toe fight, the orcs should win.
