As many people did, I purchased the Dragon Empire's Gazetteer and simply ate it up, loving every plot, mechanic, race variant and expansion it had to offer and thoroughly pleased. It left me wanting even more of the oriental flavour still lingering in my mouth. My intrigue towards the mystical land of Tian Xia now peaked, I eagerly anticipated the release of the Dragon Empire's Primer a month or so later.
Inside I found about 60% of the content in the Dragon Empire's Primer was available in the Gazetteer. Now I know that the Gazette is suppose to be bite sized chunks of the deliciousness that is the Campaign Setting and Primer, but I couldn't help but feel a little underwhelmed. I liken the experience to a man going to a fancy diner and sifting through the mountains of salad to try to excavate his steak dinner, only to find it in disappointingly small proportions. That said this is of course the view at first glance, after having some time to, chew the fat as it were, I found a plethora of engaging and alluring concepts, the new regional traits in particular give the once unknown Tian Xia almost as much character and depth as the Inner Sea which we have known and love.
The new archetypes, Sword Saint, White Haired Witch, Lotus Geisha and Yokai Hunter gave new scope to having a rich oriental feeling character. Though, I found that none of the above archetypes were unable to be created from creative character building with the existing content. Sure they tidied it up, wrapped a ribbon around it and made it so we wouldn't sacrifice a limb to make them. But there is a crumb of disillusionment when one is looking for the "new" content and finds the polished old stuff. That said, what's "new" is highly over rated and polishing existing concepts and ideas is a need that will always want satisfying.
As for Magic expansion the Void School and Moon Domains seem interesting, but I personally haven't gone into them enough to really elaborate more. While play testing the Oni Bloodline I defiantly felt it had a Chilaxian feel to me. This is good in a way, and bad in others. One new spell that's it, and a Samurai Order that outline's the edicts but no new abilities.
The new playable races are enthralling, though I am literally pulling hairs out trying to find miniatures for them, the Kitsune(fox people), Nagaji(snake people), Tengu (crow people) *note who don't say "Doom Doom", Wayang (Shadow Goblins) and Samsaran (Living Reincarnated people) are all very tempting to play. However at the end of it, I wanted that little more, a few more Race Traits for any of the aforementioned races or favored class options, Racial feats for someone other than the Kitsune. But alas I suppose we shall wait to see if Advanced Race Guide has anything on the matter.
While loosely on the topic of Feats, the feats available from this book seemed really, really geared towards monks. A smorgasbord of monk ki feats, Stunning fist feats, Quivering Palm feats. Don't get me wrong monks don't get enough love, what with their bonus feats, unarmed strike tree, combat manoeuvre specialties, style feats...-_- I would love to have seen a lot more geared towards either the social, religious or magical eccentricities of Tian Xia shown through the feats rather than the 2.5 non monk feats. Even more stuff expanding on the Honor System would have been great.
Somewhat of a recent development, there are a lot of errors in the actual rules for the Dragon Primer. I strongly recommend checking the boards while using this book.
The last point of mention is the honor system, which I look forward to trying outside of a play test environment very soon. Fundamentally you earn honor, while levelling and performing honorable deeds in game. You then spend those points like gold on boons and favours from the NPCs, great concept but when you hit 0 you take a -2 on your Will and on all Charisma based checks. What really happens with that? Honor, the new credit system, this guy overdrew on honor so here is a 10% fine on all your charisma and will based assets and we expect your honor to rise within the next 5-10 business days or else we'll send a Nagaji honor collector.
In summary, Buy the Dragon Primer, but if you have the Dragon Empire Gazetteer don't break the bank over it. The Dragon Primer as a Player Companion falls short of its distant cousin the Inner Sea Primer in terms of social, magic, faith traits and features, it is still a delicious and succulent second appetizer for the Tian Xia setting, it has a lot of inspiring ideas that players and GMs alike can use to bring the magic of Tian Xia to your table. Even if you're still left wondering where are my steak and mash potatoes.
