Personally I would like to see a First world AP but a Vudra one would be interesting as well.
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I think we start doing blog previews for this next week.
Other then the horses , I wonder what the other monsters will be like.
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The delay was because Jessica managed to convince the others the book should be 100% horses and had to do some rewrites. No other monsters.
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The Horse With No Name, immune to pain effects, has a Modify Memory SLA, but only to make amnesiacs remember their name.
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Now all we need is an Adventure Path that takes place in Qadira so I can play my geniekin paladin who purposely does everything he can to annoy all the different types of divs (wears a red cloak, has bells on his scabbard, having a ridiculously high CHA, etc...).
It is good thing paladins saves are so high. because he is going to need them.
Favourited this post because I love that character idea!
If there is a Qadira AP I'm going to make a Vlad Tepes inspired character. ;)
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This is the pick of this month's releases for me. Can't wait to dig into it!
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First preview is up! :-)
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Anticipating this release has got me repeating lehibwa'ah fishereqel like it's my mantra.
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What Are the new monsters in this?
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Nightterror,
Slow your roll there! It's not even gotten to people yet I doubt. Maybe by Tuesday...
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Adding the native translations is a VERY nice touch.
Yup, there is stuff about the Cult of the Dawnflower in here.
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Happy to finally get a desert fey.
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Hoping for a camel based monster.
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I mean another one.
I wonder what the desert fey will be like. Will it be based on actual creature from mythology or made up for the setting?
I must be the only person still interested in this product.
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It hasn't been that active lately as well. Now with the Paizo staff not wanting us to not share info early from the PDFs it is becoming a ghost town.
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It hasn't been that active lately as well. Now with the Paizo staff not wanting us to not share info early from the PDFs it is becoming a ghost town.
BOO.
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It hasn't been that active lately as well. Now with the Paizo staff not wanting us to not share info early from the PDFs it is becoming a ghost town.
Seriously, this thread has seen some of the most active input from the writer herself and other Paizo staff, its own blog post and that's not enough? Your turbo hyper emotional attachment to upcoming books clouds your judgement.
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Considering the current state of previews is in limbo, I'll talk about this book a bit differently. No specifics here! Also, this thing is massive, so I'll give a quick summary at the end.
I think this book is wonderfully put together. I haven't read through all of the material yet (about halfway through), but what I have read is great. What I really love about this book, though, is what is chosen as the subject matter and how it is presented.
Let's hop back to a somewhat recent book, Cheliax, the Infernal Empire (mostly as I've read it recently for my Hell's Rebels game.) In essence, this book is a super gazetteer of Cheliax. Sure, there are bits about the history and how the government and society of Cheliax work, but it's mostly a gazetteer. The major sections of the book (Gazetteer and Adventures in Cheliax) primarily present details on geographical locations and some very good adventuring hooks. However, after reading this book, I'm not much closer to knowing what it is like to be an everyday Chelaxian. It's great for the "zoomed-out" approach, but it lacks a lot of the "everyday" knowledge that is great to flesh out NPCs and everyday life.
This book, on the other hand, is filled with lots of cultural knowledge. Based on the blog post alone, you can see that Jessica was concerned less about presenting adventuring sites (of which there are still plenty), but moreso with presenting as much as possible to help a GM bring Qadira to life. She focuses on language, names, Qadira's relationships with other major players, food, courtesy, the military, trade, faith, establishing character classes to better fit Qadira, and so much more. Do each of these subjects get full write-ups worthy of their own two-page spread? No, of course not, that would make a brand new hardback setting book (which I'm sure Jessica has a hardback's worth of material rolling around in her brain). However, it touches on these, even if it's for a paragraph or two. This is more than can be said of a lot of campaign setting books. I wish more books would take the time to touch on these subjects. As a GM, I feel this information is infinitely more valuable in helping run a believable game than knowing about another 30 adventuring sites. (James Sutter's First World book did well at presenting a lot of this material, too, but not at the same level that this book does. Whether that's by choice or due to the nature of the First World material, I can't say.)
Even better, there is plenty of rules material interspersed between all of these subjects. When it's relevant, we see the likes of traits and archetypes, supplementing the flavor of information just presented. This is far better than relegating all game material to its own section. It helps the flavor and mechanics work in tandem to encourage a player or a GM to better create characters and rules that fit within the themes of Qadira. It helps prevent the material from simply becoming "desert crunch." For those looking for the gazetteer-esque material, there is still a section on adventuring in Qadira with a gazetteer/adventure hook presentation. The bestiary is thin, but I can forgive it due to the fact that a lot of other fitting creatures already exist and also because it allows so much of the other material to exist.
Overall, it's just the choice of the material and how it is presented that won me over so much. It's clear that Ms. Price really cares about what shows up here. It feels like a stream of consciousness, but in a good way. When speaking about one subject, she interjects or follows up with other relevant information. It allows for the book to provide similar or related information, keeping all of it together, rather than spreading it out. Things just make sense. It's awesome and I highly recommend everyone to read this book, if only to gain some exposure to this different style of Campaign Setting book. Once you've read it, feel free to make your own decision about whether this format is better or not, but I feel that lot of readers will at least respect the book for presenting so much cultural information.
This next bit is about the nature of the Campaign Setting line. It's not entirely relevant to the book at hand, so I will place it in spoilers. For those wanting to continue this discussion, we can do so in another thread.
This brings me to a thought on the Campaign Setting books themselves. (Quick disclosure: I'm a Paizo freelancer myself so I have a bit of insight on the process for these books.) There have been so many different kinds of books in the setting line. A lot of these, such as the Monsters Unleashed or the Realms books, are broken into multiple small articles. It has a new monster or a new location with each section. This is a great format for making use of multiple authors. Each author can get their own section or two, make it their own, and not really interfere with the rest. The books are still cohesive, fit their theme, and usually complete the task they set out to do.
The region books don't benefit from the same format.
In my opinion, breaking a country or a region into rearrangable pieces detracts from the overall potential of such a book. Using the Cheliax book as an example again (which, mind you, is still a good book, but obviously I feel could be better) the book has obvious pieces (cities, adventuring sites) that can be handed off to authors to work on. The reason for this is usually logistics. It takes a long time and a lot of work for one author to produce an entire softcover's worth of material. When you break it down into pieces, it's much easier to divvy out and get the work done within a manageable time frame.
However, this book shows how valuable having just one or two authors can be. The book can focus on what is important to an author who is passionate about the material. The book flows better together, has one voice, and feels less like pieces brought together in editing. It's great. However, the nature of the business means that Paizo can't really always afford (in time or money) to have just one author work on such a big book. If it were up to me, every regional book would have two authors at most, but that would also mean planning for such books well in advance, which might not be reasonable. The rest of the books in the line can continue the same process, but these books need care and nurturing to meet the potential they really need. This long spiel is essentially me just saying, "This book was awesome! Can we get more books like this, please?"
Jessica Price does great work here and should be very proud of the book. Kudos to her and everyone else that worked on the book!
Also, now that I'm done with all of this, I most likely will refit this giant post into a proper review once the book is officially released.
tl;dr This book drips with culture and flavor which is really great for GMs, as well as plenty of thematic rule content, which is great for PCs. Check it out and compare it to other Setting books. You might like the format better!
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It hasn't been that active lately as well. Now with the Paizo staff not wanting us to not share info early from the PDFs it is becoming a ghost town.Which is downright stupid to enforce after letting it go for almost a decade. Their loss.
They're enforcing it cause it was getting worse, not more people talking about the book, but on the last releases people were just a hair shy of copy-pasting everything and posting. So yeah it had gotten out of hand, they even deleted the posts they were that blatant.
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Yes, it was getting bad, you could almost put a whole book together with how much people were copying.
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Yes Gorbaz, the thread was active until the week of the PDF release and now that I said something about it.
Then why punish everyone else for something a few people did. We have been doing Q&A for the PDFs for several years. It has been a great deciding factor for if I want to buy a product.
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Yes Gorbaz, the thread was active until the week of the PDF release and now that I said something about it.
Then why punish everyone else for something a few people did. We have been doing Q&A for the PDFs for several years. It has been a great deciding factor for if I want to buy a product.
Because it got out of hand.
I loved having the Q&A, I loved doing the Q&A the couple of times I got my stuff early. But it got completely out of hand and so now they've asked us to dial it back.
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Yes Gorbaz, the thread was active until the week of the PDF release and now that I said something about it.
Then why punish everyone else for something a few people did. We have been doing Q&A for the PDFs for several years. It has been a great deciding factor for if I want to buy a product.
If the stuff that Jessica wrote already combined with the blog post and the upcoming product reviews are not enough, well, you can hop over to your local FLGS or book store and browse the book once it's out, as can anybody who really really REALLY wants to know what's inside.
Besides, you're getting it anyway since you're a subscriber, so it's a moot point ;-)
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This isn't the only book I am talking about G. I don't have the money to subscribe to every item and every product line. I am getting more and more picky on what I get.
Rysky, they didn't just dial it back, they nullified it.
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Folks, I don't care if you discuss/preview what's in the book.
If someone wants to talk about specific feats/traits, feel free. All I ask is that instead of giving every detail about it (this option gives you a +2 bonus to these six skills), you talk about it a little more generally (this option gives you a bump to CHA-based skills).
Essentially, if someone wants to use that option for their character, they should still need the book rather than being able to run it from a preview on the forum. :-)
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And thanks, donato. That's really kind of you. <3
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Folks, I don't care if you discuss/preview what's in the book.
If someone wants to talk about specific feats/traits, feel free. All I ask is that instead of giving every detail about it (this option gives you a +2 bonus to these six skills), you talk about it a little more generally (this option gives you a bump to CHA-based skills).
Essentially, if someone wants to use that option for their character, they should still need the book rather than being able to run it from a preview on the forum. :-)
Okies!
Can anyone say if there are any cool wizard options? (Without giving stats of course)
Nothing for wizards, unfortunately. However, it does point you towards the Qadira Player Companion for some wizard support.
Nothing for wizards, unfortunately.
Awe. Well it still looks like an amazing book. I think Qadira sounds amazing.
So people now own it? Monsters list if you pleaseeeee!
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Genie-touched horse: CR6 horse that comes with four variants (acid, cold, electricity, and fire) each with their own abilities
Rabisu: CR11 fey who like the taste of blood
Shissah: CR4 golden horse with animal companion stats