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DragonWing Games

Lore of the Gods (PFRPG) PDF

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DWG5500E

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Add some new deities to your Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. Lore of the Gods: PFRPG Edition introduces four new pantheons to your game. Choose from Egyptian, Greek, Mesopotamian, and Norse mythologies to broaden your game. Learn the histories behind each god profiled. Learn what it takes to be a devout follower rather than just a worshiper. Face the monsters of mythology and seek out the artifacts and magic items of the gods. Included in Lore of the Gods: PFRPG Edition are:

- Deity profiles that include favored classes and races

- Rules for creating avatars, demigods, deities and even designing your own pantheon
- New feats, skills, domains, spells, and magic items

- New prestige classes and templates that are directly influenced by certain deities
- Creatures, beasts and heroes drawn directly from mythological lore

Whether it's Odin, Zeus, Amon, or Ishtar, show your players that there are reasons why the gods grant boons and bring dooms.

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Are there errors or omissions in this product information? Got corrections? Let us know at store@paizo.com.

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Big and Beautifully Dense, and an Unfortunate Maze

3/5 —

That moment when you write your piece, misclick, and watch your whole review get sucked into the aether

T-T

But, I've got a book to review and things to say, so lets try this again.

Big, Beautiful, and Tragically Baroque, Dragon Wings' Lore of the Gods is an amazing tome that is a good book so close to being great that it almost kills me. A conversion of their 3.5 book of the same name, Lore of the Gods is an awesome book that is hamstrung by amazing content that is attached to what appears to be old production decision on information layout, art, and pdf design that don't destroy the book but do keep it from being the absolutely amazing piece it should be. This leaves you with an amazing pathfinder pdf that feels trapped in a web of layout and design decisions that are left over from the maelstrom of the old 3.5 days and in ways that don't help the book.

The book itself is broken into 10 chapters which can really be broken into about 4 sections the pantheons and all their ephemera (including artifacts associated with them), prestige classes, the bestiary, and Avatars. To start, the pantheons, the thing I assume a lot of you are here to see are, to be blunt, f&+!ing fantastic. Each pantheon gets its own chapter and each chapter feels like a boulder of information that could literally kill someone if you smacked them across the head with it. Each god gets an information block so dense that it puts everything even Paizo's put out on their pantheons to shame, giving you everything from their portfolio, alignment, and holy symbols to things like sacred colors, allies, true form, forms most associated with them, sacred animals, enemies, and even things like SACRED MINERALS. In all my years I would have never thought that Amon thought Nile River Clay would be something special, or that Nergal loved fungus and obsidian. Now, I know that might sound dumb but it gets me excited, it gives me ideas on how to design their temples, how to use sacred animals as omens and signs with the faithful, what colors the clerics wear and how to use that to code scenes so that players can know which NPCs are allied with who just by telling you what colors their clothes are, and gives me a rubric on what offerings someone would have to give a Hound Archon working for Anubis to show them devotion and fealty to the judge of the dead by looking at that list of sacred animals, minerals, and plants (p.s. the answer is dogs/jackals, natron, and gum myrrh). And I wouldn't know any of that, let alone think to even look for some of that stuff like sacred minerals without this book. In this way, Lore of the Gods sets the bar for what to expect when a publisher wants to release a comprehensive guide to their religions of choice and I want to see others follow suite.

Unfortunately, though this stuff is great and trust me, I could sit here and GUSH about this level of minute and absolutely laudable detail I feel like I'd be doing the reader both as customers and designers of tabletop content themselves a disservice if I didn't talk about some of the real issues this book has.

First, as of this writing the pdf version I have downloaded lacks any bookmarks. Now, this might be okay in a small, 5-10 page supplement covering a single topic like say a single archetype or maybe a brief new race with just some stats, art, and a brief description but Lore of the Gods is a 340 PAGE BOOK with 10 chapters, 4 different pantheons, a bestiary, a whole chapter devoted exclusively to the items and artifacts of ALL THE GODS in it, and an opening chapter about designing divine avatars for ANY AND ALL THE GODS HERE AND BEYOND. Having to fish through this monster of a book with nothing but a single table of contents who's page I have to remember and bounce back and forth between in a pdf is unacceptable, and more often than not leaves you forgetting what you were even looking for in the first place. For example, say you flip to the bestiary and find this cool monster called Asag and you want to know more about the gods that made him. Usually, you'd read through is entry, see the name Anu, and be able to just click the bookmark button and be on your way. But instead, in Lore of the Gods you are going to have to memorize the page you found Asag on, fool around trying to find the table of contents again, fish his divine dad out of that list, punch in the printed page number and hope it lines up, and then have to vacillate between the two memorized page numbers until you finally get exhausted and realize you really don't want to keep doing this. And realize that this problem only GETS WORSE the more parts you add, such as needing to look up multiple gods, artifacts, prestige classes, and a couple monsters to understand how they interact. The thing is like a giant chinese finger trap that locks you into basically memorizing every page you think is relevant to whatever you're looking up as a matter of course in order to not have to waste your whole reading section constantly having to bounce back to the table of content and then onto whatever you were looking at. And with how many times a lot of the proper nouns and other key words in this book pop up control f searching it is just not an option, you'll end up searching 55 different references to Anu before you find the one you're looking for that way. This pdf NEEDS bookmarks like a fish needs water, and without it the thing feels way too cumbersome especially considering the sheer density of content it wants to you absorb.

Second is the art. Varying across each chapter as each pantheon is covered by a specific artist and each opening with its own piece from an entirely different artist from the one covering the pantheon in question, the art in Lore of the Gods often comes off as inconsistent both in style and tone. The Egyptian chapter opens with a piece of 3D art that looks like something from a Playstation 2 game that was inspired by Heavy Metal and then slides into black & whites of Amon, Sobek, and the rest of the chapter that look like they were done by Rob Liefeld at the height of the 90's. Seriously, Bes looks like he could bro fist the 90's version Cable a la handshake scene out of the original Predator and the only thing missing would be Bes' color palate. Neither of these things help sell the chapter on what it's about and feel more distracting than evocative of the content, as you find yourself wondering why Horus looks so ripped or completely thrown off by how the Egyptian Priestess in what is basically a slutty Egyptian Halloween costume doesn't match the content that follows it. The later pantheon art gets much better, with the full color Mesopotamian chapter getting some really beautiful and stylized full color art that really sells the world in this thick lined comic book esque way that really works for it, but this inconsistency in the first chapter really does get in the way and the terrible CGI art, which continues throughout. The latter is even worse, as it feels like it not only looks bad, but begins to have less and less to do with the actual content of the book as you read along. One example of this is page 193, when we get what is essentially a naked white lady straight out of the 80's animated movie Heavy Metal in nothing but metal pasties in the middle of the artifacts chapter and 0 context for what item she's even supposed to be showing off. Is it the Garments of Ladyship on that page, the Girdle of Rapture on the other, is it actually the feathered cloak of Journeys and we're supposed to be looking at her red cape?! The image gives no context to what item she's supposed to be showing off and what's worse she doesn't look like she belongs to ANY of the settings any of these pantheons this book is about, so I the reader can't even use the information from previous chapters to help me figure it out. All the CG art comes off like this and it hurts the book, distracting you from the actual mechanics of the book with art that makes no sense with it either in tone or style.

Final for this piece is the general layout of the content. Pathfinder is now nearly a decade old and the 3.5 system it is based on pushing towards two, and both have begun to get us all accustomed to a certain layout for how the content is presented, a format that keeps all the content easy to read and reference because the flow of the content naturally passes from the first line to the next. Dragon Wings unfortunately makes a few decisions though that go against this paradigm and they tend to work against them. One of the biggest ones is the way they handle favored weapons. Generally included in the big block of text at the start of the deity's entry, favored weapons are instead segmented off from the list entirely, wedged into the text fore each individual "Devoted" boon the god offers. Though the Path of the Devout is a really cool idea in concept (basically creating a minor paladin's code for each god that faithful can follow in exchange for some god specific powers) putting favored weapons here buries them in the sea of other content surrounding them, making this often key information for character design almost invisible to anyone looking for it. To make matters worse, the Path of the Devout concept is really only explained in a single paragraph at the beginning of the book and then never again, which meaning the only people who are really going to know where to look for this stuff are going to be those who read this book from cover to cover, something that few really do with a reference book like this that almost begs you to just look up that cool god you just heard about or flip to that cool name you saw in the table of contents. This issue is compounded when you consider the idea of extended use, as even players and GMs alike who would read this thing cover to cover run the risk of forgetting this little tidbit after they sit the thing down for a few months and then return to build that priest of Ishtar only to find they either can't find what her favored weapons are or have to potentially read the thing all the way through to find out where the authors put that information and then get to look it up, and in something as big and dense as Lore of the Gods that fact is a killer.

Now, all of these critiques aside, what works in this book f#*+ing works. You have never had a book that so meticulously details every little thing you ever wanted to know or didn't know you needed to know about these ancient pantheons or really ANY pantheon quite like LotG does and that detail will set an expectation bar that others will have a hard time leaping over. But, when you have a book this big, with this much technical and minute detail for us as GMs and Players to pour over, the layout, structure, and navigation needs to be tight, otherwise people will get too frustrated navigating your product to ever use it, and that's the biggest tragedy here. If they clean up the layout of some of this information, maybe change or pull some of this art like the CG work to help each chapter at least have a uniform artistic aesthetic, and DEFINITELY PUT IN A BOOKMARK SYSTEM this monster might actually be able to really sink its teeth into the audience that really wants it. But until then, I feel like Lore of the Gods will be relegated to only the smallest list of consumers who are willing to overlook these problems.

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Scarab Sages Webstore Coordinator

Now Available!

Everything you need to expand your Pathfinder mythology options. Print copies will be available in November at your local gaming stores or here at your friendly goblin store. :)

--
Steve Creech
DragonWing Games
Dark Archive

Print/per combo option at some point?

You will have to ask the powers to be here if they plan on it.

--
Steve Creech
DragonWing Games
Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber

So here in lies my question.

How much of each pantheon does this cover?

The reason I ask is $27.99 is not chump change for a pdf, so more information would decide my willingness to purchase it.
The Exchange

As much as I like the subject this book covers I am very unlikely to pay $27.99 for a PDF. This price would be more in line with a hard copy version.
2 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Maps, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Maps, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
Malik Doom wrote:

So here in lies my question.

How much of each pantheon does this cover?

The reason I ask is $27.99 is not chump change for a pdf, so more information would decide my willingness to purchase it.

Take a look at the full-size preview here.

That preview includes the table of contents, which should give you an idea just how much meat this book contains.

337 pages does make the cost a little more reasonable. I will have to consider if it would make sense in my campaign.

Tomorrow I will post a preview that contains chapters 1 and 2. That ought to give everyone a good true sense of what the book is about and how it looks more than the preview at Drivethru. This is the first supplement for the Pathfinder game (that we know of) that provides alternative deities for the Golarion setting (or maybe your own setting). The mythologies are in-depth and cover a lot of deities for each of the pantheons. We've already received positive comments from our Kickstarter backers that are very encouraging.

I know the price is a sticking point for some, but considering the amount of content and work put into the book, it is well worth the price (both pdf and print).

The print copy comes as a full-color softcover and will retail at $49.99. It will be on store shelves early to mid-November.

If you want a hardback, very limited edition version, you'll have to order from the DragonWing online store. All orders for the limited edition will have to be placed by October 31st. It retails for $70.00 and will not be available for purchase through distribution/retail channels due to the small number being printed (we're talking less than 25 copies most likely). There will only be one and only one printing of the limited edition. Once they are sold out, it will not be available again. And before anyone scoffs right away, we have already received several purchases/orders so we're not completely out of our minds.

If you liked the original Deities & Demigods, odds are you will enjoy this book.

--
Steve Creech
DragonWing Games
The Exchange
Steve Creech wrote:

Tomorrow I will post a preview that contains chapters 1 and 2. That ought to give everyone a good true sense of what the book is about and how it looks more than the preview at Drivethru. This is the first supplement for the Pathfinder game (that we know of) that provides alternative deities for the Golarion setting (or maybe your own setting). The mythologies are in-depth and cover a lot of deities for each of the pantheons. We've already received positive comments from our Kickstarter backers that are very encouraging.

I know the price is a sticking point for some, but considering the amount of content and work put into the book, it is well worth the price (both pdf and print).

The print copy comes as a full-color softcover and will retail at $49.99. It will be on store shelves early to mid-November.

If you want a hardback, very limited edition version, you'll have to order from the DragonWing online store. All orders for the limited edition will have to be placed by October 31st. It retails for $70.00 and will not be available for purchase through distribution/retail channels due to the small number being printed (we're talking less than 25 copies most likely). There will only be one and only one printing of the limited edition. Once they are sold out, it will not be available again. And before anyone scoffs right away, we have already received several purchases/orders so we're not completely out of our minds.

If you liked the original Deities & Demigods, odds are you will enjoy this book.

--
Steve Creech
DragonWing Games

Thank you.

As promised, here is the link to the first two chapters that you can download and peruse. I will stop back a little later today to answer questions.

http://dragonwing.net/downloads/LotG_Chap1-2.pdf

--
Steve Creech
DragonWing Games
Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

I bought this for the avatar information alone. This is a great resource. Good job, fellas :)
1 person marked this as a favorite.

Thank you. Justin Sluder gets all the credit for converting just about anything with a stat block to Pathfinder.

I really hope that it becomes a staple in many gamer's library shelves.

--
Steve Creech
DragonWIng Games
The Exchange
Steve Creech wrote:

As promised, here is the link to the first two chapters that you can download and peruse. I will stop back a little later today to answer questions.

http://dragonwing.net/downloads/LotG_Chap1-2.pdf

--
Steve Creech
DragonWing Games

Impressive preview. I’ll certainly be getting this.

Thank you, Shazz. Once you actually get a look at the preview it is easy to understand just exactly how much work went into it and why $27.99 is a fair price.

For folks that may still be on the fence or saying no strictly because of cost, I urge you to take the time to see the preview and then hopefully reconsider.

The print copy will be $49.99 so you also understand why the pdf is priced at $27.99.

Steve Creech
DragonWing Games
1 person marked this as a favorite.
Steve Creech wrote:

If you want a hardback, very limited edition version, you'll have to order from the DragonWing online store. All orders for the limited edition will have to be placed by October 31st. It retails for $70.00 and will not be available for purchase through distribution/retail channels due to the small number being printed (we're talking less than 25 or so copies most likely). There will only be one and only one printing of the limited edition. Once they are sold out, it will not be available again. And before anyone scoffs right away, we have already received several purchases/orders so we're not completely out of our minds.

Throwing this out just once to remind anyone wanting the LE hardcover they have less than 24 hours to preorder.

Now, having said that, I have no qualms that the standard softcover will hold up in gameplay. I received a print proof copy over the weekend and there were minor issues that indicates it was just a bad printing and not something in the file itself. A second copy is being rushed to me to see if it really was a bad print copy. Regardless, any issues will be fixed and we are still on track to a November release date.
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Steve Creech
DragonWing Games
Steve Creech wrote:
Steve Creech wrote:

If you want a hardback, very limited edition version, you'll have to order from the DragonWing online store. All orders for the limited edition will have to be placed by October 31st. It retails for $70.00 and will not be available for purchase through distribution/retail channels due to the small number being printed (we're talking less than 25 or so copies most likely). There will only be one and only one printing of the limited edition. Once they are sold out, it will not be available again. And before anyone scoffs right away, we have already received several purchases/orders so we're not completely out of our minds.

Throwing this out just once to remind anyone wanting the LE hardcover they have less than 24 hours to preorder.

Now, having said that, I have no qualms that the standard softcover will hold up in gameplay. I received a print proof copy over the weekend and there were minor issues that indicates it was just a bad printing and not something in the file itself. A second copy is being rushed to me to see if it really was a bad print copy. Regardless, any issues will be fixed and we are still on track to a November release date.
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Steve Creech
DragonWing Games

I look forward to seeing this in my FLGS.

Is there any further news about the expected release date?

The books are in the hands of the printers. As soon as they come back, they will be shipped to distributors, which then are shipped to retail stores.

You should be able to go to your local store and preorder it to ensure that they are getting a copy.

--Steve Creech
DragonWing Games
Steve Creech wrote:

The books are in the hands of the printers. As soon as they come back, they will be shipped to distributors, which then are shipped to retail stores.

You should be able to go to your local store and preorder it to ensure that they are getting a copy.

--Steve Creech
DragonWing Games

I shall begin nagging them mercilessly until they acquiesce.

Books should be shipping from the printers around the end of next week. Distributors should be seeing them the week after that. :)

--
Steve Creech
Steve Creech wrote:

Books should be shipping from the printers around the end of next week. Distributors should be seeing them the week after that. :)

--
Steve Creech

So... should we gather with torches and pitchforks at the printer? Or the distributor?

Pagan priest wrote:
Steve Creech wrote:

Books should be shipping from the printers around the end of next week. Distributors should be seeing them the week after that. :)

--
Steve Creech

So... should we gather with torches and pitchforks at the printer? Or the distributor?

Well, I guess the pitchforks have to go back into the shed. I just got an e-mail saying that my copy is ready to pick up.

Hooray!

Glad you got your copy. Let me know how you like it.

From now until Feb. 18th, all DragonWing products are 50% off (including Lore of the Gods PFRPG Edition). Now is the time to grab a copy.

--
Steve Creech
Head Dragon
1 person marked this as a favorite.

Lore of the Gods has been updated and is fully bookmarked.

Love the book, it is exactly what I was looking for. However, is the errata available yet? I have noticed a few mistakes, like the feat Pantheistic Blessing, I cannot find the spell-like ability mentioned as the benefit anywhere in the book.

ok i bought the Lore of the Gods book and I like it ALOT BUT there is a chapter or two missing. I read that there was supposed to be a chapter for the gods of Pathfinder AND a chapter 11 where the listed the rules on giving mortals power to become gods. In the paragraph on page 9: Creating an Avatar it speaks of empowered mortals using an avatar template found in chapter 11. So where is the template? the book only goes to chapter 10 and the pathfinder gods chapter which was supposed to be chapter 6 is missing.
Silver Crusade
Makadawias wrote:
ok i bought the Lore of the Gods book and I like it ALOT BUT there is a chapter or two missing. I read that there was supposed to be a chapter for the gods of Pathfinder AND a chapter 11 where the listed the rules on giving mortals power to become gods. In the paragraph on page 9: Creating an Avatar it speaks of empowered mortals using an avatar template found in chapter 11. So where is the template? the book only goes to chapter 10 and the pathfinder gods chapter which was supposed to be chapter 6 is missing.

Don't know about the Creating an Avatar rules so can't comment but they don't have the rights to the Pathfinder gods so they were never going in.

so then bad editing because the paragraphs that reference pathfinder gods and avatar templates is still in the book.
Makadawias wrote:
ok i bought the Lore of the Gods book and I like it ALOT BUT there is a chapter or two missing. I read that there was supposed to be a chapter for the gods of Pathfinder AND a chapter 11 where the listed the rules on giving mortals power to become gods. In the paragraph on page 9: Creating an Avatar it speaks of empowered mortals using an avatar template found in chapter 11. So where is the template? the book only goes to chapter 10 and the pathfinder gods chapter which was supposed to be chapter 6 is missing.

There was never going to be a chapter about the Pathfinder gods. I'm not sure where you read that. The rules for mortals becoming gods are included in chapter one. The Avatar template is in chapter ten. There was originally eleven chapters but we combined two of them and I missed that in editing. D'oh!

--
Steve Creech
Head Dragon
Pagan priest wrote:

Love the book, it is exactly what I was looking for. However, is the errata available yet? I have noticed a few mistakes, like the feat Pantheistic Blessing, I cannot find the spell-like ability mentioned as the benefit anywhere in the book.

Yeah, this one vanished in the ether. In a nutshell, the spell-like ability is dependent upon the deity being worshiped. I would suggest that the domains be used as a guideline and GM be the arbitrator of the spell-like ability. For example, a worshiper of Hermes could gain Haste 1/day.

--
Steve Creech
Head Dragon
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