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I've got a pile of gaming stuff lately. I went in to Gav's shop two weekends in a row, looking for the Expanded Psionics Handbook, and each time came out with something else, since it wasn't in. The first thing was a/state, which ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
natural20 has been recommending to me for some time, and the second was Talislanta, 4th edition. I also recently acquired the Dark Sun issues of Dragon and Dungeon, and PDFs of The Book of Hallowed Might II, Cry Havoc, and Chaositech. And then I went and looked into the Tekumel setting, and started to drool a bit, but it's not in print, so I can stop getting things now, no, really. I have enough to read.
There's an awful lot of good gaming stuff out there at the moment. Wizards of the Coast are pumping stuff out, and yet it remains - the things I've seen, at least - decent quality. I'm rather impressed. And the Malhavoc Press stuff... well, everyone knows I think Monte Cook is secretly a deity, put on Earth to show us how to produce really good gaming material. And a/state is excellent, even if the interior illustrations could be a touch less same-y.
There's one thing I'm looking at with some mixed feelings, though, and that's Wizards' new setting, Eberron. It looks like it should be pretty cool. The style of the drawings is good, the premise of a world where the consequences of magic are fully worked out is one I like, and work on a lot myself, and it even has golem-like things as PCs. But something about it is not grabbing me, and it's not just because it arises out of the setting competition I didn't win. It seems like something that was put together artificially. Not that someone had a good idea, and brought it to Wizards, or that it's someone's home campaign, cleaned up and published, but because it was made for publication. Publication first, idea second. It seems to show, from what I've seen in Dragon; it's all "Look how cool this is, how different!"
natural20 has been recommending to me for some time, and the second was Talislanta, 4th edition. I also recently acquired the Dark Sun issues of Dragon and Dungeon, and PDFs of The Book of Hallowed Might II, Cry Havoc, and Chaositech. And then I went and looked into the Tekumel setting, and started to drool a bit, but it's not in print, so I can stop getting things now, no, really. I have enough to read.There's an awful lot of good gaming stuff out there at the moment. Wizards of the Coast are pumping stuff out, and yet it remains - the things I've seen, at least - decent quality. I'm rather impressed. And the Malhavoc Press stuff... well, everyone knows I think Monte Cook is secretly a deity, put on Earth to show us how to produce really good gaming material. And a/state is excellent, even if the interior illustrations could be a touch less same-y.
There's one thing I'm looking at with some mixed feelings, though, and that's Wizards' new setting, Eberron. It looks like it should be pretty cool. The style of the drawings is good, the premise of a world where the consequences of magic are fully worked out is one I like, and work on a lot myself, and it even has golem-like things as PCs. But something about it is not grabbing me, and it's not just because it arises out of the setting competition I didn't win. It seems like something that was put together artificially. Not that someone had a good idea, and brought it to Wizards, or that it's someone's home campaign, cleaned up and published, but because it was made for publication. Publication first, idea second. It seems to show, from what I've seen in Dragon; it's all "Look how cool this is, how different!"
