Does anyone know what happened to Sword and Sorcery Studios? They produced many good d20 products, including Scarred Lands.
Fiery Dragon now owns the rights to those products and they have released a 4E version of the Creature Collection, I think (but not Scarred lands yet).
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Fiery Dragon now owns the rights to those products and they have released a 4E version of the Creature Collection, I think (but not Scarred lands yet).
Actually, I think White Wolf still owns the rights the the products in general. From the press release I read, Fiery Dragon are only got the license to release 4E Swords & Sorcery products - any Pathfinderised S&S would still need to go through White Wolf.
It was the d20 line for the people who own Vampire. Once Scarred Lands was retired as a setting, it dwindled. Don't hold your breath for Fiery Dragon to produce anything but a counter collection or two for a while, based on things James "Fiery Dragon" Bell has posted. That's all they are concentrating on (even though they seem to have acquired a number of licenses at the final days of D&D 3.5).
Fiery Dragon now owns the rights to those products and they have released a 4E version of the Creature Collection, I think (but not Scarred lands yet).Actually, I think White Wolf still owns the rights the the products in general. From the press release I read, Fiery Dragon are only got the license to release 4E Swords & Sorcery products - any Pathfinderised S&S would still need to go through White Wolf.
I stand corrected - thanks.
It's a shame, because they made some great 3e material. My first 3e game was in Scarred Lands, and I've got a lot of great memories tied to that setting. They also published the 3e Ravenloft books, of which I have the complete set.
Damn, that is a shame. Now I can't stop thinking about 3.P Scarred Lands and especially 3.P Ravenloft. What would bards and paladins in particular look like there...?
Oooh, Clerics of Chardun can be nasty. I rolled up a Ravenloft villain that was a half-fiend Cleric of Chardun, who was banished to the Dread Realms for almost overthrowing (the city name escapes me-it's been too long)the city of Paladins that Corean watched over.
As a PC in Scarred Lands, I was a ranger/cleric of Tanil. We had a cleric of Enkili who was a completely insane, following the CN god of trickery and madness lol.
Anyone else have the Advanced Player's Guide by S&S?
I have it. Picked it up a couple of years ago off Amazon. I haven't used anything out of it yet, though there were a few things that intrigued me. I've been running Star Wars for the last year and a half, and before that Castle's and Crusades, so no opportunities to use any of the variants.
There would be a few things I would allow (some of the classes for instance) though I'd have to take a long hard look at each item before I gave the ok on it.
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What do you think of the Wound Level system starting on page 97?
It's a neat variation on the Unearthed Arcana / Mutants & Masterminds / True20 system (flavored by the Storyteller system, with 'Hurt/Injured/Disabled' categories), but I've never seen how it plays. With M&M, in my experience, that sort of system can get *very* 'swingy,' with a terrible roll utterly wiping out a supposedly tough character, which makes fights with many smaller monsters disproportionally scarier than they should be (or fights with critters that get a ton of attacks, like Grell, Octopi or whatever).
Other random thoughts;
Racial Class Modifiers are kinda neat little perks, similar to Traits. I liked the idea.
The artwork for the Epic Monk rocks on toast. Very Fu Manchu.
Weapon Speed seemed terribly clunky (I liked better the Weapon Speed system they came up with for the Player's Guide to Fighers and Barbarians, where Fast weapons (daggers, rapiers) had an iterative attack number of 4, Medium weapons (swords, axes, maces) had an iterative attack number of 5 (same as normal), and Slow weapons (polearms, crossbows) had an iterative attack number of 6, so that a 9th level Fighter with a Rapier would get *three* attacks at +9, +6 and +3, one with a Longsword would get the usual two attacks at +9 and +4 while one equipped with a Halberd would get two attacks at +9 and +3).
Armor Damage seemed neat, but just too much book-keeping for the versimilitude.
While the Critical Hit charts were fun to read (as they were back in Rolemaster), I think I'd prefer allowing the PC who scored the crit (or myself as DM) to detail the non-mechanical effects of a crit, rather than deal with many odd mechanical effects.
Skill-based Spellcasting and Critical Casting looks *awesome,* but I've never gotten around to trying to sell such a thing to my group (since it would have the downside of always being able to fail to cast a spell, particularly in combat, but the upside of occasionally getting a spectacular level of effect).
Communities as 'characters' with 'community skills' and 'community feats' is whacky. It *seems* like it could be insanely cool, but my mind failed it's grapple check and it slipped away from me before I got a grip on it.
What do you think of the Wound Level system starting on page 97?It's a neat variation on the Unearthed Arcana / Mutants & Masterminds / True20 system (flavored by the Storyteller system, with 'Hurt/Injured/Disabled' categories), but I've never seen how it plays. With M&M, in my experience, that sort of system can get *very* 'swingy,' with a terrible roll utterly wiping out a supposedly tough character, which makes fights with many smaller monsters disproportionally scarier than they should be (or fights with critters that get a ton of attacks, like Grell, Octopi or whatever).
Other random thoughts;
Racial Class Modifiers are kinda neat little perks, similar to Traits. I liked the idea.
The artwork for the Epic Monk rocks on toast. Very Fu Manchu.
Weapon Speed seemed terribly clunky (I liked better the Weapon Speed system they came up with for the Player's Guide to Fighers and Barbarians, where Fast weapons (daggers, rapiers) had an iterative attack number of 4, Medium weapons (swords, axes, maces) had an iterative attack number of 5 (same as normal), and Slow weapons (polearms, crossbows) had an iterative attack number of 6, so that a 9th level Fighter with a Rapier would get *three* attacks at +9, +6 and +3, one with a Longsword would get the usual two attacks at +9 and +4 while one equipped with a Halberd would get two attacks at +9 and +3).
Armor Damage seemed neat, but just too much book-keeping for the versimilitude.
While the Critical Hit charts were fun to read (as they were back in Rolemaster), I think I'd prefer allowing the PC who scored the crit (or myself as DM) to detail the non-mechanical effects of a crit, rather than deal with many odd mechanical effects.
Skill-based Spellcasting and Critical Casting looks *awesome,* but I've never gotten around to trying to sell such a thing to my group (since it would have the downside of always being able to fail to cast a spell, particularly in combat, but the upside of occasionally getting a spectacular...
The wound level system I'm going to have to look at. It's been too long since I've read the book. It sounds like something I might use with certain campaigns, but not likely with the current group of guys I game with.
My main interest in the book was the Skill based spellcasting. A friend of mine was working on a campaign setting in which that was part of the flavor. We haven't done much with it lately (the setting that is) but part of the intention is to use a skill based system instead of the Vancian system. I'll try to remember to grab the book off the gaming shelf tomorrow and give it a look through. I'll get back to you on my thoughts about the wound levels then.
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What do you think of the Wound Level system starting on page 97?It's a neat variation on the Unearthed Arcana / Mutants & Masterminds / True20 system (flavored by the Storyteller system, with 'Hurt/Injured/Disabled' categories), but I've never seen how it plays. With M&M, in my experience, that sort of system can get *very* 'swingy,' with a terrible roll utterly wiping out a supposedly tough character, which makes fights with many smaller monsters disproportionally scarier than they should be (or fights with critters that get a ton of attacks, like Grell, Octopi or whatever).
that's my experience with the savage worlds rpg. makes it much more difficult to min-max against which adds, to me, a little bit more spice to games.
thanks for the reminder about the UA system. i'll have to check it out again. i remember its issue was its reliance on fort. saves: i agreed with the authors' assessment that min-maxers/rules lawyers would multi-class to max their fort saves. ugh. i like how true20 and the apg's deals with that with separate stats.
I am a big fan of the Scarred Lands getting hooked first with the City of Hollowfaust. I have since been buying up the various books they have put out. Using RPG online to purchase some of the pdf files for a bunch of the books.
I am curious what particular ones people like best of the series?
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I am a big fan of the Scarred Lands getting hooked first with the City of Hollowfaust. I have since been buying up the various books they have put out. Using RPG online to purchase some of the pdf files for a bunch of the books.
I am curious what particular ones people like best of the series?
I think Edge of Infinity was the best Scarred Lands book and frankly one of the best rpg books for any system. It took the cosmology of D&D and tilted it so it was familiar and different all at once. And they made it specific. Lots crammed into that book. It is really wonderful!
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I am curious what particular ones people like best of the series?
The five Players Guides were pretty awesome. Many of the PrCs made for fascinating looks at the cultures of the setting, and I'd love to play a Nine-Stings Master or a Master Cabalist or whatever.
For city-books, Hollowfaust was my favorite, although Shelzar had some appeal as well.
Vigil Watch: Secrets of the Asaatthi had some brilliant stuff (locus feats, some of the PrCs, etc.), and some stuff I'd skip for balance reasons (many of the technique feats, which were a bit too Book of Nine Swords for my taste). It's a very schizophrenic book, in that sense, as the Locus feats are much weaker version of Reserve Feats (created a couple years before Reserve Feats), and the Technique Feats are probably as good as, or better than some of the Tome of Battle stuff, making it freaky to try and convert, since some stuff is 'weaksauce' and other stuff is 'OMG, OP!'
The Ghelspad and Termana setting books were both amazingly cool. The Broken Lands / Asherak / etc. setting book was a hodgepodge of everything left, it seems, and had monsters, PrCs, etc. scattered about willy-nilly.
The only books I'd consider just avoiding flat out are Warrens of the Ratmen (not a bad book, just written so early in the release cycle that most of the crunchy stuff is just scary bad, although some of the flavor stuff is fun), Penumbral Pentagon and the one about the Slarecians. I have all of them, being a compleatist, but they are the ones I use least often.
I need to line up all my books by publisher and see what books of theirs I actually have. I know I grabbed at least one creature collection, but I'm pretty sure I have some of their other stuff, too. If Relics & Rituals was theirs, that's one I *still* want to work into a campaign.