Post/Author/DateTime	Post
LewisLlynn 07-26-05, 09:19 AM	I just got Five Nations, and really liked it. I think it has a great wealth of fluff (as well as the ever-important crunch) to use in a game in any of the Five Nations. However, one thing that struck me as very odd was the organization and layout of the book. Each chapter had various sections, but not all chapters have exactly the same section. Futhermore, some sections are in different orders in different chapters, and the same section in different chapters might contain different information. This was a little annoying and more than a little puzzling. Why was the consistency of the chapters so poor?
TheRedRobedWizard 07-26-05, 09:30 AM	Because Logic and Order are tools of the matriarchal oppressors and must be stopped at all costs. Also, because they asked me about it, and I said that I didn't care what order they were in. Order is for sukkas. -TRRW
DragonWatcher 07-26-05, 11:38 AM	I agree, it seemed like they just gave each author a chapter to write with little to no guidelines, and then didn't even bother to have an editor to go through it for more than spelling mistakes. The inconsistant style between the chapters seemed lazy and corner-cutting to me, and while I was impressed with the content, I really feel that they need to improve the editing of Eberron books in general.
gaerfindel 07-26-05, 03:32 PM	The differing section ordering would have been less annoying if, as Wizards did with Faces of Evil and The Inner Planes (and for that matter, most of Planescape), they had each chapter told from the point of view of a different character; Aundaire by an Aundairan, Breland by a Brelander, Karrnath by a Karrn, Dal Quor by a Quori, etc.
LewisLlynn 07-28-05, 02:07 PM	Some of the things that particularly bother me: -"Royals of" come before "Postwar" in every chapter except Aundair. -Only three out of the five have organizations detailed with Affiliation scores. -Sometimes the section where they describe locations is called "Adventuring in" and sometimes it's called "Places of Interest" (in Breland, they even divided into "Places of Interest" and "Natural Landmarks"). -Only two sidebars are mentioned in the table of contents. -Only Karrnath and Thrane have "A Day in the Life" And that's just a starter.
Zalaz Mavi 07-29-05, 10:14 AM	Personally, aside from only Breland having a "Regional Education" section, I've enjoyed not having to read cookie-cutter chapters. I find monotony boring — but I'm unique like that...
a_psh 07-29-05, 01:09 PM	What vexed me much more so is that the back of the book has a few pages of ads, but no index. If I bought Five Nations, I probably have the ECS and, most likely, City of Towers as well... reminding me that they go together is pointless. Their similar covers in the store or the fact that Amazon tries to sell them all to me whenever I buy one is enough of that. Also, the RPGA does not need free advertising in every book. The RPGA's well-being will not make or break the franchise. Most people don't care about it, and it's not a major cash cow, nor will it ever be. Why bother advertising it in so many books? At least with CoT they could claim that they ran out of space. Here there's just ads in the back. Sigh. WotC needs to reclaim pages 123-124 / 159-160 from the marketroids and put something useful back there!
cmanos 07-29-05, 01:24 PM	didn't bother me at alll. I enjoyed the fluff ever so much.
Liane the Wayfarer 07-29-05, 03:06 PM	I wonder if it had to do with editing. I believe the different chapters were written by different authors, yes? Maybe they didn't get a guideline, and there weren't enough editing resources to make the chapters the same general layout?
Edymnion 07-29-05, 03:31 PM	I'm going to have to side with the "I'm glad it wasn't a cookie cutter template". It let the sections flow together better, and I didn't have to put up with those dreadful "A day in the life of" sections in every chapter. I have yet to read even one of those things that I found useful, much less interesting. I will agree though that I am getting sick of WotC cutting corners and not giving us a :censored: index! It hasn't been too bad with Eberron before because Keith was kind enough to go out of his way to make an index for City of Towers and put it up on his website. And the advertising in the books themselves has GOT to go. This isn't a :censored: issue of Dragon where they can get away with making every third page an ad, this is a freaking SOURCEBOOK! They didn't used to put ads in their books, and now they're popping up everywhere. I mean, I can see the point of having a page saying "These are the other books in the line, so you know whats out there", but full page graphical ads, thats just going way too far.
Kaverael 07-29-05, 05:50 PM	Maybe WOTC is in cahoots with the U.S. Postal Service. You see if a book contains any advertisement at all, the usps cannot send it media mail, it has to go parcel post (more $). I got a long lecture at the post office when I tried to mail some Dragon magazines and they made me use parcel post. Rick
Sarlax 07-29-05, 05:57 PM	I'm likewise glad that the authors weren't bound to a particular format. I think that this relatively free format produces a better product. When everything's laid out in one way, it might force authors into a Mad Libs mode in which they're just looking for ways to fill space - or to cut things when they write too much. On the subject of advertisements, I don't mind at all. They're in the back. Big deal. I can understand the rancor that'd arise if they were in the middle of the book, but the back? Eh. It's probably good for the game. Ads encourage purchases, and purchases are the lifeblood of Eberron.
LewisLlynn 07-29-05, 08:13 PM	I'm going to have to side with the "I'm glad it wasn't a cookie cutter template". It let the sections flow together better, and I didn't have to put up with those dreadful "A day in the life of" sections in every chapter. I have yet to read even one of those things that I found useful, much less interesting. I agree wholeheartedly with your assessment of the "days in the life" sections. So why not cut them all out? I like consistency, not monotony. Categorization. Don't get me wrong, I loved the book; it's fluff was fantastic. If they mixed up the order/content of EACH chapter, I'd have no problem with it. When three out of the five have something and the other two don't? Doesn't work so well. When they give a "names" sidebar to EVERY COUNTRY EXCEPT CYRE? Unh-unh. When the EXACT SAME THING is called "Points of Interest" in two chapters and "Adventuring in" in three chapters? What the heck is that supposed to be about? In conclusion, I was also disturbed by the lack of an index. Ads too, though not quite as much.
a_psh 07-29-05, 08:26 PM	And the advertising in the books themselves has GOT to go. This isn't a :censored: issue of Dragon where they can get away with making every third page an ad, this is a freaking SOURCEBOOK! They didn't used to put ads in their books, and now they're popping up everywhere. Not only ads, but an order form... does WotC suddenly have a booming mail-in order business? Last I checked, everyone on Earth used gaming/bookstores or the Internet to buy D&D books. Is the 10 possible orders you'll get with that page really worth the hundreds of people (myself proudly included) whining about the index?
Psionycx 07-29-05, 11:56 PM	I only just got mine (finally!), but it also appears to suffer from at least one case of a writer that didn't read the source material for the setting. The plot hook on page 20 involves a courtship between a member of House Orien and House Cannith which apparently the Orien patriarch approves of. This is stock "aristocratic intrigue" except for one problem: According to the Eberron Campaign Setting there's a ban on breeding between dragonmarked houses going all the way back to the War of the Mark to prevent such mingling from producing aberrant or mixed dragonmarks. It should be a major uproar at the least for members of two Houses to be courting. It's a little thing but it makes you wonder.
Edymnion 07-30-05, 02:55 AM	Yes, but if memory serves, its also a Delkyr plot, so who knows what kind of strings he's pulling to make it happen.
a_psh 07-30-05, 07:01 PM	It should be a major uproar at the least for members of two Houses to be courting. That was one of the more egregious examples of out-of-place things. I found Arcanix to be rather overblown, too. When your best mages are going to be levels 7-13, all the rearranging rooms and high-powered magical effects seem rather overdone, in my opinion. Who's crafting all these golems and summoning all the pitfiends, anyway? More importantly, why do they bother? A bit of variation is fine, but I think two rules need to apply: - if four out of five chapters have a section, they all should have it - identical sections should have similar format: e.g. similar names, or give affiliation charts for all five nations if you've decided that each has a special organization entry The Day in the Life bits seemed forced, as usual.
Psionycx 07-30-05, 08:45 PM	Yes, but if memory serves, its also a Delkyr plot, so who knows what kind of strings he's pulling to make it happen. Considering that interbreeding between Houses is an absolute taboo, those would have to be some pretty impressive strings the fiend has got. Basically every House member knows they're not supposed to get romantic with the other Houses (which doubtless leads to lots of Romeo & Juliet scenarios). So the fiend would have to have mental influence over all the members of Houses Orien and Cannith in Aundair at least to keep this running. Like I said, it just looks like sloppy writing without reviewing the background to me. Arcanix is a little over the top, although I suppose you could argue that a lot of the magic built into the towers was done over the course of generations by great wizards and the current occupants are just playing with all the switches and levers. It could get like Dee-Dee in Dexter's lab: "Ooooooo...what does this one do?" Still, it does seem rather odd some of the creatures they have running loose in the place and why they're allowed to have such creatures. More annoying to me is the lack of any serious detail about what the Arcane Congress really does other than running a magical extreme home makeover show. I would expect more of Queen Aurala's military agenda to be playing out in Arcanix and for some detail on that. Not obvious standard old hat information like the obvious notion that the towers have a library (duh!) and that the librarian is a trifle territorial (never met one that wasn't). It was hard, from chapter to chapter, to really get any solid stuff out of the book. It's frustrating in the way a lot of Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms products have become. Really just a rehash of stuff with already knew with just slightly more detail than the general stuff we already had. But for a "definitive" guide to the Five Nations I think it is lacking.
a_psh 07-30-05, 09:50 PM	But for a "definitive" guide to the Five Nations I think it is lacking. Yup. I think the book has a lot of useful content, but it could've easily been twice, or at least one-and-a-half-times, as long. I would have liked to see more than just the capitals get a good write-up... not something nearly as big, but like 4 or 5 paragraphs for some of the major cities. Also annoying is that the towns directly mentioned in the ECS largely didn't get mentioned again (e.g. Starilaskur in Breland), meaning that there's more stuff on a random village than there is on some very important cities, simply because those cities were more important in the first place, and thus got a cursory treatment in an earlier book. It's sort of broken logic. A general discussion on the climate and resources of each country, the most important events of the Last War for each nation, and a bit more about the infrastructure (e.g. how lightning rails and airships work with regard to the number in operation and how often they run), and some other stuff like that. Some of that will appear in the Explorer's Handbook, I know, but, really, if we're talking about the common means of travel, they should be elaborated upon in the book that deals with the areas where airships, lightning rail coaches, &c. are actually accessable. Breaking down the countries into smaller regions (counties, provinces, whatever) would've been nice, too. Generally, while I don't think the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer has the most useful format ever, it is a much better example of what sort of information to put in for each nation. Seems like Five Nations leaned a bit too much in the direction of trying to provide specifics on a few areas instead of a good detailed overview of each country. For example, there's several pages dedicated to random crap I might find in Arcanix. And unlike things like city details, which often are politically relevant even if the PCs don't visit the city (e.g. knowing about the ruined temple in Fairhaven says a lot about Thrane/Aundair relations and gives me some useful ideas about how interactions with criminals anywhere in Aundair would work), all of this stuff is completely worthless unless the PCs are actually in Arcanix. Most of it only really applies if they're trying to ransack the place and kill everyone in there, actually. That would be kind of like City of Towers having a huge section devoted to the physical layout of the mayor's house and how to kill him. (I also don't like Arcanix because they went all Tower of High Sorcery with it: I pictured the Arcane Congress as people smart enough not to build in a Maze of Shadowy Terror.) Improved consistency and editing (chapters can be different, just not illogically different or different in ways that confuse without adding to the content) would be nice. Overall, though, a lot of the book is useful. I really like the new NPC format, in particular, and it seems that they did finally fix the PrC presentation issues that popped up when they changed the format in Races of Eberron.
Euangelion 07-30-05, 09:52 PM	Yes, but if memory serves, its also a Delkyr plot, so who knows what kind of strings he's pulling to make it happen. Lords of Dust actually, but hey, same result. Though, come to think of it, it's just crazy enough to be a daelkyr plot! On the larger topic, I also noticed that there was a summary of various services/merchants found in certain cities (Korth, Fairhaven) but not Flamekeep, the 2nd largest city in Khorvaire. Also, the Places of Interest section of the Thrane chapter listed only forts and/or settlements, but not forests or other natural features. Not every chapter had random encounter tables. Finally, I'm still waiting to see information on the Knights of Thrane beyond a couple of paragraphs here and there. Now, on the other hand, I'm sure that T5N is meant as a starting point for DM's, not as an comprehensive description of every possible thing in the Five Nations. I wouldn't be surprised if someone from WOTC would respond by saying "Well, use the descriptions of the forests in the Breland chapter as guides for the ones in Thrane. Use the Royal Eyes as a guide for Cyre's intelligence agency. Use S:CoT and the Korth/Fairhaven tables as guides for Flamekeep" and so on. Sure, I'd like more official stuff, but somewhere there's the place where the DM's own imagination takes over. I believe in Eberron that's going to be a lot sooner than in, say, FR. Also, bear in mind that one of the authors had a death in the family, which more than likely limited the time that the team as a whole had to make everything mesh.
Psionycx 07-30-05, 10:03 PM	The Maze of Shadowy Terror is definitely over the top. Especially in a world where magic has come to occupy the role of technology in the world and has been fully commericalized and integrated into society and economy. This isn't Krynn and most graduates of the school at Arcanix are going to be manufacturing trade goods, not playing Merlin. But again, the Arcane Congress appears to be made up of drama queens with way too much time on their hands and a penchant for interior design, which is apparently the "liberal arts" degree of Arcanix. I would have liked more page space spent on the nations with an eye to understanding what's going on there, how they are impacted by the Last War, etc... Arcanix would have made more sense if instead of pages of random magical encounters we got details of secret labs cranking out new weapons for Aurala's war effort. They also, in my opinion, poured way too much page space into focusing on every conceivable detail of the new prestige classes and organizations. This is what most Forgotten Realms geographic sourcebooks have devolved into as well. Quick summaries of the countries the book is supposedly about followed by pages and pages of PrC's, new spells and new magical items! In the end you end up with lots of information you will probably never use and not enough information about what you thought the book was about.
ussie 07-31-05, 04:04 PM	i had some major issues with the 5N despite my overall liking of the book. Firstly it wasnt consistent, i like free flow, u dont have to cookie cutter everything but some nations had really paltry development of foriegn relations while others had detailed ones. Some had day in the life of some didnt (okay like keep it in or keep it out) titles of sections wasnt kept consistent (okay i understand keeping education in Breland and not being relevant to others, i think that made sense). i did feel certain countries got underhanded (cyre and Thrane, and this is the second time thrane has been wronged; ECS was the first time, 4 pages for a major kingdom while Breland and others got 6 plus) i aint even going to go into the whole House Orien and House Cannith romeo and juliet thing, someone CLEARLY didnt know nothing abt the ECS in detail. some things clearly lacking: 1) a general timeline of the war. it so shaped the past, it would have been nice to see how different countries changed alliances and stuff, a lil more detailed than the ECS. 2) if u mention haydith also give some info abt her bro in Thrane, (again thrane is evil ugly stepsister who no writer loves in the Eberron world) 3) what are Karranth -Arenal relations? one is undead oriented, the other deathless, positive vs. negative., how does this impact relations, does Eterangi being queen help this, or is she looked down upon. and those are just some of the things, there is so much more missing
Junkyard Dog 07-31-05, 04:38 PM	What vexed me much more so is that the back of the book has a few pages of ads, but no index.I have to agree. Let's look at the number of pages in the last, say, ten D&D books I've bought: Eberron Campaign Setting, $39.95, 320 pages. Monster Manual III, $34.95, 224. Races of Stone, $29.95, 192. Sharn: City of Towers, $29.95, 192. Complete Arcane, $29.95, 192. Complete Adventurer, $29.95, 192. Races of the Wild, $29.95, 192. Lords of Madness, $34.95, 222 (plus an RPGA ad). Races of Eberron, $29.95, 192. Five Nations, $29.95, 157 (plus an ad). For those of you keeping score at home, Five Nations finishes butt-naked last in terms of content. Thanks for ripping out 25 pages and charging me the same price, Wizards. Maybe that's why there wasn't enough room for an index.
a_psh 07-31-05, 08:27 PM	Quick summaries of the countries the book is supposedly about followed by pages and pages of PrC's, new spells and new magical items! In the end you end up with lots of information you will probably never use and not enough information about what you thought the book was about. Exactly! In terms of cultural and geographic information, the ECS has about as much actual info per nation as 5N. The rest of it is PrCs, encounter tables, and lots of detail about veeery specific locations (I don't mean Wroat: I mean Arcanix or a Blood of Vol temple laid out as an adventure/random-encounter-slog). Is some of the stuff good? Sure. Does reading this book leave me still wanting a book about the actual Five Nations? Yes.
The Dreaming Duck 07-31-05, 09:29 PM	Maybe that's why there wasn't enough room for an index. Sure, but what WAS the last WotC book that had an index? Sharn? Oh, wait, that only has an index because Keith wrote one on his own... :rolleyes:
Edymnion 07-31-05, 10:55 PM	Sure, but what WAS the last WotC book that had an index? Sharn? Oh, wait, that only has an index because Keith wrote one on his own... :rolleyes:Heh, you see, WotC doesn't WANT it's books to have indexes! If they had to make an index, that means somebody would actually have to go through and READ the book, and they might catch all of the editing errors that the books have these days. And then they would have to delay the book, pay people to go back and fix it, and it all gets nasty! No indexes means WotC can claim it just didn't catch the errors instead of saying "yeah, we saw 'em, we just didn't want to fix 'em." :P
ekomega 08-01-05, 12:15 AM	Heh, you see, WotC doesn't WANT it's books to have indexes! If they had to make an index, that means somebody would actually have to go through and READ the book, and they might catch all of the editing errors that the books have these days. And then they would have to delay the book, pay people to go back and fix it, and it all gets nasty! No indexes means WotC can claim it just didn't catch the errors instead of saying "yeah, we saw 'em, we just didn't want to fix 'em." :P As funny as you are trying to be, I bet they seriously had this conversation in a meeting.
a_psh 08-01-05, 01:50 AM	As funny as you are trying to be, I bet they seriously had this conversation in a meeting. Probably right between the one about how people buying Five Nations should definitely be told about how there's also an ECS and a Sharn book, so there should definitely be an ad for them in the back to spread the word about this new Eberron thing in the back of their latest Eberron book, and the one about how people want to rip out or photocopy pages from books to be able to order things directly from the publisher. The day before, they drafted a memo about how at least 10% of the book should be made up of encounter tables and area-by-area descriptions for a few particularly nutty spots, and that those spots should be as similar to the generic wizard's tower, evil temple, and evil forest as possible; but I think it got lost by one of the secretaries and only hit the writers' desks on the following Tuesday. The above, though hyperbole, was, honestly, mostly serious. Now, however, it's... Tin Foil Hat Time!! Personally, I think it's all a scheme to distract me from the fact that my copy of Five Nations kind of smells weird. Probably some new stuff they put into the ink to make me want to buy things. (And, even with all that going against it, I still do rather like the book... go figure.)
Brastan 08-01-05, 08:02 AM	Every misprint and cut bit of info means that the greater powers that be at WotC could republish the entire line after the setting has been fat-tend up a bit. They need to pull the aids for the RPGA until they make an online D&D that even people with a 56k or lower dial up can access to play in sanctioned events. I briefly joined the RPGA back in '00, got one of the nifty little cards. Unfortunately the organizer of the local chapter holds meetings and events just far enough outside of my normal travel zone and schedule to make it not worth going. But enough bagging on the vagaries of WotC top management, ;) well one more jab. At least it hasn't quite gotten to the point M:tG has reached. I suspect we have now entered the terrible twos of the settings publication. Remember we(as a fan community) lag behind the actual production of the setting and thus have much less of an impact on content than we would like to believe. What is probably unprecedented for this settings development is the rather active online community. Were world wide reaction to a product is nearly immediate after it's release. What would have happened in the early days of FR or Grayhawk if internet discussion sites had been as easily accessible, and used, as they are now. Even the tiniest candle(single person) can draw almost the whole communities attention to misprints, incorrect information, and conflicts with our collective view about intent. We're worse then a three headed Ettin. :D I think one more Eberron book will help illuminate how things are being handled. Explorer’s is up coming and Magic to much further down the line. I indented to give round 1 Eberron Expansion(EE1) the same time to ferment as the ECS. From my point of view the setting has take some dramatic twists from what I had built up in my own mind when I read that first Eberron snippet in Dragon. Once the world is done being reshaped around us let us consider were we go from there. :plotting:
Majorafire77 08-01-05, 08:22 AM	Heh, you see, WotC doesn't WANT it's books to have indexes! If they had to make an index, that means somebody would actually have to go through and READ the book, and they might catch all of the editing errors that the books have these days. And then they would have to delay the book, pay people to go back and fix it, and it all gets nasty! No indexes means WotC can claim it just didn't catch the errors instead of saying "yeah, we saw 'em, we just didn't want to fix 'em." :P :( Wrong. WotC wants their books to have an index because that'll give someone a reason to actually go to the back of the book, where they jump you with ads. :plotting:
a_psh 08-01-05, 08:50 AM	:( Wrong. WotC wants their books to have an index because that'll give someone a reason to actually go to the back of the book, where they jump you with ads. :plotting: But, even that aside, why are the ads so incompetently chosen? How many people with Five Nations don't have an ECS? Ten, maybe? How many people with Five Nations don't know about the ECS? I'm thinking 0. They'd have made much more money advertising the novels or upcoming products than books that they've already published and sold to nearly everyone who bought Five Nations. That's what really gets me: how ineffectual the advertising is.
Atlictoatl 08-01-05, 07:20 PM	Some folks have commented on the inconsistent titling of the 'Adventuring In' and 'Places of Interest' sections. If you look closely, however, you will note that these two differently titled sections are actually quite different. 'Places of Interest' lists a moderately large number of locations on the nation map, and gives a paragraph or three of brief description about the place. 'Adventuring In' selects a small handful of places within the nation along with a few pages of somewhat indepth description, to better allow a DM to set something therein. You'll note that no nation has both types of article -- thus, Aundair has somwhat indepth descriptions of a few places, but no short descriptions of locations on the map; whereas Breland has the short descriptions, but no indepth adventuring description. I personally feel ripped off that the book was an unprecendented 30 pages shorter than other WotC sourcebooks, and that every nation article didn't contain both types of information. Personally, the 'Places of Interest' sections are of more use and interest to me, and I don't have them for Aundair and Karrnath, the two regions I most want them for. Had that 30 pages been there, we could have an additional 6 pages for each nation, including more info on pre-Mournland Cyre. Ripoff. As a hobbies store retailer, I'm going to remove Five Nations from my recommended titles section, and point prospective buyers to better books. We really have to get WotC to sit up and take notice that we aren't happy with this book. Eberron supplements are starting to go the way of core D&D material -- poorly edited, mishandled, devalued crap.
Edymnion 08-01-05, 07:26 PM	:( Wrong. WotC wants their books to have an index because that'll give someone a reason to actually go to the back of the book, where they jump you with ads. :plotting:No, they put several pages of ads in the back of the book, and no index, so anybody that turns back there LOOKING for an index is going to flip through all of those pages of ads trying to find it. How else do you get somebody to keep turning the page once they know they've hit the ads?
ekomega 08-02-05, 04:37 AM	We really have to get WotC to sit up and take notice that we aren't happy with this book. Eberron supplements are starting to go the way of core D&D material -- poorly edited, mishandled, devalued crap. I like to put them all in one big category called "wotc products in general". Can you name one single book produced by wotc since 3.0 came out that didn't have more errors than you can remember? I'll grant that the 3.5 Core books strike me as well edited, especially for their size, but maybe it's because of their size that I don't notice as much. Even then they still have errors. And Errata? Come on. Get it right the first time. I can understand the rules FAQ, since people have questions. But errata? An editor's job is to read the text and clarify it if there's problems. You know, editing. What an editor does? Wotc acts like they're a newspaper occasionally misinforming the public about some news. 63 errors of the monsters in MM3? That's unacceptable, and why I refuse to buy that book. Merging with the thread topic, after reading 5 Nations again, it's bugging me more now. I read it once when I first bought it, and I was excited and not thinking clearly. I read it again later, and was busy trying to get campaign ideas. I finally read it a third time, and got a little ****** off. The book is really inconsistent. What really bugged me is that despite printing maps of the five nations, and naming some locales that were unlabeled in the ECS, they proceeded to label and name even MORE new locations, and not give any descriptive text. Now I'm all for leaving places on the map blank. I like that. But to take the blank places in the ECS, make them unblank, and then to add more new blank places? Why didn't they just leave the ECS ones blank in the first place? I'm never going to use 50 unnamed places in one country, and to me all that effort could've been spent on doing other stuff like adding 32 pages to the book. Also, the Arcanix section is ridiculous. Okay, it's a wizard's tower, great. In S:CoT, there are supposed to be 4 9th level casters in the two wizards circles, which are ancient, and only one is probably in town at a time. Granted, this doesn't count the other handful of 9+ level casters. But Arcanix has a hojillion casters of 9th level, who are all just messing around and chasing various powerful monsters through their tower. Huge difference in vision, and I attribute that to Keith not working on 5N. There's just so much that I could go on and on. Good thing I got it at a discount, and not for the ridiculous $29.95. I know it's hard for people to change their views, especially when they make DnD products. But that's why they had the campaign setting search, right? to get new ideas and fresh air? And then to ruin it all and go back to the same stupid things that people didn't like... well, that's a huge waste. If Wotc doesn't mind throwing money out the window and angering their fans, well, that's their business. But they have shareholders, and maybe someone needs to send their dissatisfaction to them (or Hasbro).
Euangelion 08-02-05, 08:20 AM	Some folks have commented on the inconsistent titling of the 'Adventuring In' and 'Places of Interest' sections. If you look closely, however, you will note that these two differently titled sections are actually quite different. 'Places of Interest' lists a moderately large number of locations on the nation map, and gives a paragraph or three of brief description about the place. 'Adventuring In' selects a small handful of places within the nation along with a few pages of somewhat indepth description, to better allow a DM to set something therein. You'll note that no nation has both types of article -- thus, Aundair has somwhat indepth descriptions of a few places, but no short descriptions of locations on the map; whereas Breland has the short descriptions, but no indepth adventuring description... But when dealing with Breland, one must also factor in S:CoT. I'm particularly disappointed that the largest city on Khorvaire has a whole sourcebook dedicated to it, but the second largest city doesn't even rate a "buying in" guide (unless that's something that was dropped due to the delays caused by the death of Scott Gearin's father). I don't pretend to know exactly why T5N is short ~30 pages (apart from the above mentioned death), but I guess the best I can hope for is a very generous web enhancement for the book. They could have a least charged a lower price for the book than the same price for a 188 page book. Like I said in my "Anyone else nervous about 5 Nations" thread, I'd have preferred that they delayed publication until it was complete rather than rushing it out before Explorers Handbook.
ImmortalBlueMage 08-02-05, 10:36 AM	Personally, I think it's all a scheme to distract me from the fact that my copy of Five Nations kind of smells weird. Probably some new stuff they put into the ink to make me want to buy things. And, even with all that going against it, I still do rather like the book... go figure. Proof! :D
Atlictoatl 08-03-05, 02:49 PM	I don't pretend to know exactly why T5N is short ~30 pages (apart from the above mentioned death), but I guess the best I can hope for is a very generous web enhancement for the book. They could have a least charged a lower price for the book than the same price for a 188 page book. Like I said in my "Anyone else nervous about 5 Nations" thread, I'd have preferred that they delayed publication until it was complete rather than rushing it out before Explorers Handbook. If you look at upcoming releases, you'll notice that 160 pages is becoming the norm for this kind of sourcebook.
Roxlimn 08-06-05, 12:19 PM	As incredible as it may seem, I think that T5N is actually a decent book. Comparing it with City of Splendors, which I also recently bought, I found more ideas and blanks to fill in in T5N than in City of Splendors. The problem with Waterdeep is that it posits an extremely small location and proceeds to stat the heck out of anything exciting you might begin to think about. Metal Mage? Statted out. Dragon Mage? Statted out, too. I rather like the fact that they chose to outline broad strokes in the book and then left well enough alone, aside from some hints as to how to do things. I would greatly have wanted a layout of the Knights Arcane rather than the Royal Eyes (we already have the Dark Lanterns as a model), but that's not much of a bad showing. About the worst I can say about it is the painful inconsistencies with some content. Obviously, some people haven't been doing their homework. I've been thinking about doing Princes of Wind and Flame - a thread for sourcing ideas about how the naval scene is like in Eberron, but with the announcements of Explorer's Guide and Stormwrack, I could help but wait for the juicy ship stats and rules. I've been typing stuff about how the spells and class distributions could affect naval warfare in Eberron, but I would still rather wait for the sourcebooks for more material. The Pirate Brig and the Elven Wingships sound really exciting. Anyways, instead of whining and complaining about the lack, does anyone want to post ideas about how they think things should be? I've been itching to do stuff on Shifters, but now I'm thinking about doing an Organizational Profile on the Knights Arcane. What about you? What do you think the Arcane Congress should be like?
Orion Polaris 08-06-05, 08:27 PM	I've grown to not care about the inconsistencies with the setting in Eberron books. It seems to be a problem that WOTC doesn't want to fix. But when the ****ing Buy/Sell guides cut off in mid sentence it shows a total lack of concern for how their products look, and I am feeling insulted that WOTC expects us to keep paying for stuff like this. Please stop being lazy with your products WOTC, if I'm going to be paying the same for a book with 20 pages less than the norm, at least have the decency to double check for errors in the book. I was impressed with the quality of information of this book, but seriously, find a better way to present it. The lack of organization and editing in your recent books is getting out of hand.
Phaseroth 08-06-05, 09:46 PM	How about the illustrations? I see here portraits of King Boranel, Queen Aurala, and King Kaius. There's a rendering of High Cardinal Krozen. And look! A a Whispering Flame cultist! (You can tell he's evil by his long hair and goatee.) But... no portrait of Jaela Daran? She who speaks directly to the deity of a major religion, and who is leader of a nation doesn't warrant artwork? Why not? Because she's eleven? Perhaps they couldn't locate a fantasy artist who knows how to render female characters wearing more than a chain mail bikini, and felt it would be inappropriate to present this young lady in such a state of undress :D
Euangelion 08-06-05, 10:28 PM	If you look at upcoming releases, you'll notice that 160 pages is becoming the norm for this kind of sourcebook. Yeah, I noticed that later. Complete Warrior was only 160 pages as well, but at least they didn't charge $29.95 for it. Inflation, I guess. Anyone else notice that Breyers ice cream is now only 1.75 quarts instead of 2? Same price of course. I suppose that's one way of doing it.