I have no idea what the sentence above means. Could you do this foreginer a favor and write in a clearer manner?
It's missing a single letter man. 'a'
Items are apparently spread throughout multiple areas of the book. As are monsters. Rather than having a section entitled to 'Monsters' or 'Items". According to the OP, that is.
I have no idea what the sentence above means. Could you do this foreginer a favor and write in a clearer manner?
It's missing a single letter man. 'a'
Items are apparently spread throughout multiple areas of the book. As are monsters. Rather than having a section entitled to 'Monsters' or 'Items". According to the OP, that is.
This.
Rather than have an area specifically for monsters or specifially for items, they are all over the place.
Not to mention, the box is a pain to put back together.
Seriously, chill.
I have no idea what the sentence above means. Could you do this foreginer a favor and write in a clearer manner?
It's missing a single letter man. 'a'
Items are apparently spread throughout multiple areas of the book. As are monsters. Rather than having a section entitled to 'Monsters' or 'Items". According to the OP, that is.
This.
Rather than have an area specifically for monsters or specifially for items, they are all over the place.
Not to mention, the box is a pain to put back together.
It just seems really weird. Are they spread randomly throughout? Or are they arranged by tier, or only listed within the encounters in which they appear? It just seems weird to me, too.
And I saw the box at the store whan I went to play Encounters on Wednesday. Looked TOTALLY flimsy. I could feel it easily bend to the touch, like thick paper... not nearly as stiff as the DM Kit. I hope that saves them a LOT of money in production costs, because it prevented me from buying it right there. (The only box left had a small crease in it. It's new... I want mine to be perfect).
As far as the box, it is the same as the Gamma World boxes. I know collecters keep the stuff in its boxes and some players want to as well, but I reuse most of the boxes as shipping boxes, except for the tile boxes. I use my stuff alot and re-read it often enough that using the box becomes a hassle (but that's just me).
Personally it is a solid DM product. I already ran a couple of the encounters.
The setting is cool, the despair deck is a neat idea, the book of encounters, tokens (with a matte finish instead of the glaring glossy finish of past tokens that makes them hard to distinguish at a game table that isn't in a dark assed basement), and poseter map of Gloomwraught on one side and a battle map of a random Shadowfell city streets are nice extras.
In my opinion the Shadowfell box is exactly what I was hoping it would be and is the most happy I've been with a 4e book since DMG2. It goes a long way towards making up for the huge waste of cash that was 75-80% of Heroes of Shadow.
The only real beefs I have with the product is that it doesn't provide much info for Heroic Tier adventures and I was hoping the token set would include a few yellow/gold border tokens for player characters. The token thing isn't a big issue as I have more than enough tokens/minis, but the lowest level encounter in the encounters book being level 7 and nearly all of the NPCs/monsters being level 10+ makes it a bit difficult if you want to run a heroic tier Shadowfell campaign.
Pages 60-61 have two hazards and a trap.
Page 71 has three hazards.
Page 73 has two magic items.
Page 85 has one magic item.
Page 91 has one monster - on the page just before the monster chapter.
The Encounter book seems to have 2 new traps and possibly some new monsters.
--
Additionally, I'm not a fan of the box - so much wasted space to make it look much larger than it actually use, but too flimsy and weirdly-shaped to use for anything, and the way they layered maps is wasteful - they have this really nice street map and a really nice two layer house... which they basically pasted on top of the street map, so you have an L-shaped piece of city you can use.
But the book itself is fantastic.
But the book itself is fantastic.
And it's the only part of the set that I am interested in. I'd buy it in a hardcover format. But if not, I don't think I'll miss too much with the available information in previous books and modules.
The books don't fit back into the flimsy box easily and by flimsy I mean it will survive about a week then be torn up. It reminds me of a little tuck box for a deck of cards that is half full.
The Despair cards are neat, a nice DM counter to the Fortune Cards if your tables play with them. This would have been better received if they sold the book as a HCover, and packaged the cards separately as another product. Or they could have shrink wrapped the cards/tokens to the HCover.
The thing costs $40, and for that I expect materials meant to last. Paperback format in a flimsy top load box and tokens makes this hard to justify. I hope they change formats to something a little more traditional. I do not use tokens, hate em actually and give mine away since I use minis. But then they cancelled minis also
.Hardcover would be great as I have a bookshelf of 50 some D&D 4e and 3e books, then this one strange little halfling book. Not to mention if you can put a player option book, Heroes of Shadow in hardcover a book which is used in character creation then rarely used, why not put the DM books in hardcover. DM books are used over and over again, to run monsters, to look for magic items, and to read hooks and settings. If any books need to be hardcover, its books with monsters in them.
I recommend this product to anyone whos looking for a dark path for adventurers.
But the campaign book is fantastic! And the city map is beautiful!!! And more pogs is always nice. I don't know how much of the Encounters books I will use, though. My one major issue is lack of HoS hero pogs on the pog-sheets. I want pogs depicting Vrylokas, Shades, Revenants, Blackguards, Executioners, Binders, Vampires, Gloom Hexblades, Death Warpriests, Necromancers, and Nethermancers.
Just saiyan.
They are turned a rather boring city into one of the most richly detailed ones in 4th.
I could give two flying rats that the monsters are in the order they are in. Actually- the order is damn fine. You have monsters and then power players. Wow. So scattered being right next to each other at the end of the book.
What a stupid thread/complaint.
They did the same thing to Heroes of Shadow – left out a generic item (the tomb lock) and all the magic items promised in previews (such as the Mace of Disruption). And the chapter contents even says that at the end of the chapter they'd feature magic items, where there are only four generic ones.
Why couldn't these books just have large page counts and increase the cost by $5 dollars or something?
Here's a tip, buyers: Ditch the box. Save some shelf or pile space. Put the counters with your other counters. Then you've got books, and a map. Much slimmer profile, the real meat of the product, etc. The box is a display box, for in-store sales, not for storage. That's my two bits.
If this is the route they're going with on future box sets, this might work: use extra space in your good-quality Essentials boxes to hold the new boxed set material, and toss the flimsy packaging.
My only concern is if they do this for the Monster Vault - Nentir Vale set. Sure, I can slip 8 pages of unused tokens/pogs into my Monster Vault box, but will I have room for the 128-page Monster Vault book itself? I liked the (smaller) portable, softbound cover format of the first Monster Vault, and would prefer that anything named "Monster Vault" uses that same format. I'm concerned that I'll get a "Monster Magazine" instead of a Monster Manual or Monster Vault. I guess we'll see...
So whether or not it works, you can't blame WotC for trying.
oh I'm sure it works, I just dont want a box or the cards that comes with it.
just the book.
oh I'm sure it works, I just dont want a box or the cards that comes with it.
just the book.
You buy the box set and then put the cards and tokens up for sale on ebay. Lots of people are looking for doubles but don't need a second book. In the end, your new books cost less. Win-win.
I also find it interesting that the designers seem to have been freelancers. The last time WotC used freelancers in its primary products was in the waning years of 3.5 when the house designers were doing 4e.
The book looks too flimsy to survive DM perusing its monsters on the table on a prolonged basis. Monster books should be hardcovers!
I also find it interesting that the designers seem to have been freelancers. The last time WotC used freelancers in its primary products was in the waning years of 3.5 when the house designers were doing 4e.
WotC has made heavy use of freelancers since the beginning of 4e.
The book looks too flimsy to survive DM perusing its monsters on the table on a prolonged basis. Monster books should be hardcovers!
I also find it interesting that the designers seem to have been freelancers. The last time WotC used freelancers in its primary products was in the waning years of 3.5 when the house designers were doing 4e.
WotC has made heavy use of freelancers since the beginning of 4e.
Oh? Can you name other D&D RPG core products that had only freelancers as head designers?
The book looks too flimsy to survive DM perusing its monsters on the table on a prolonged basis. Monster books should be hardcovers!
I also find it interesting that the designers seem to have been freelancers. The last time WotC used freelancers in its primary products was in the waning years of 3.5 when the house designers were doing 4e.
WotC has made heavy use of freelancers since the beginning of 4e.
Oh? Can you name other D&D RPG core products that had only freelancers as head designers?
Psionic Power is credited to Robert J. Schwalb; that's the only exclusive one I can think of off the top of my head. However, if you look at the various books you'll see major contributions by Ari Marmell, Keith Baker, Ed Greenwood, Brian R. James, Owen K.C. Stephens, Eytan Bernstein, Robin Laws, Steve Townsend, and Kolja Raven Liquette (on many of these books, there's only one official WotC staffer credited as a main author).
seriously, wtf ? soft binding has to have been the worst idea ever for this product. the 32 page adventure booklet will probably last longer. hell, the flimsy ass BOX will last longer than the binding on the book.
color me extremely pissed off.
(as a side note ... the content's pretty decent ...)
just picked this up today. the binding on my shadowfel book is absolutely atrocious ... it feels like it's going to fall apart already and it's brand new!
seriously, wtf ? soft binding has to have been the worst idea ever for this product. the 32 page adventure booklet will probably last longer. hell, the flimsy ass BOX will last longer than the binding on the book.
color me extremely pissed off.
(as a side note ... the content's pretty decent ...)
I've seen more softcover gaming books than I have hardcover... and in 15 years of buying up every book for every game I even remotely like, I have seen exactly 1 lose its binding... and that was due to it being a roughly 400 page book, which soft-binding just isn't built to handle.
I've got softcover books that have seen heavy use since the early nineties that are still in the binding and looking only slightly used... seriously, all this "oh my god softcover" really sounds like "oh my god I have to take care of something I purchased" and it confuses me.
Softcover is good. It lets the book stay reasonably priced.
nowhere did i say "oh my god (..putting words in my mouth..)" and i fail to see why you singled me out for such.
what i DID say, is this -particular- shadowfel softbound book has THE WORST BINDING of any softcover rpg book ive ever owned in my entire 25 year history of gaming. period.
i dont have a problem with softbound ... i have a problem with the way this particular book was bound. its absolutely atrocious.
ive owned dozens of softcovers over the years, going back to the old ad&d2e complete series (which i still own 4 or 5 of) and various other 2e books, to the 3.0 softcovers (sword&fist, etc), and many others. i still have a number of mid '80s battletech softcovers (note: these are now ANTIQUES) which i still get out to read every now and then, and many more.
nowhere did i say "oh my god (..putting words in my mouth..)" and i fail to see why you singled me out for such.
what i DID say, is this -particular- shadowfel softbound book has THE WORST BINDING of any softcover rpg book ive ever owned in my entire 25 year history of gaming. period.
i dont have a problem with softbound ... i have a problem with the way this particular book was bound. its absolutely atrocious.
I apologize for wording my previous post in such a way that you were singled out... I was really meaning to address the general poster that I see complaining of soft cover, and not any single poster directly.
As for the worst binding you've seen... perhaps yours is flawed in some way? Mine seems just as sturdy as most of the other softbound books I have (not quite so solid as the AD&D Complete Handbook series... which the cover can come off of and the pages still stay together).
I've read through it, layed it out flat on the table, and it still closes up nicely... and there are no signs that the binding has suffered any trauma.
to Thunder_Dragonbane: I hope you aren't implying that I am an "apologist" as you like to call people that enjoy stuff you do not - I weigh every product on its invidual merits, and happen to end up liking (or at least finding that one of my group likes) each of the products printed thus far by WotC.
So it's not in a traditional format with monsters and magic items etc.. in their own sections, but it works really well as it's done.
Only negative really is having monster names on the reverse of the tokens, because I often use tokens for a variety of monsters.
Looking forward to the Nentir Vale set now- I think it's similar.
dont have a problem with softbound ... i have a problem with the way this particular book was bound. its absolutely atrocious.
Its ok man the ones who are 110% apologists will never understand the diference between your problem and bad mouthing their faviorite design team. Poor binding is the reason no one buys the Wheel of time in paperback. The books fall apart before your done reading them. Tor doesn't get it either.
What do you do to your books, man?
my paperback copies of the WoT books have gone through at least 7 readings, between me and various friends and family members. None of them is falling apart.
Weird.
What do you do to your books, man?
my paperback copies of the WoT books have gone through at least 7 readings, between me and various friends and family members. None of them is falling apart.
Weird.
What can I say; I have big hands.
I think book six was the worst. I took it back to the store I got it from five days later in a box. I think at that point I was only 300 pages in and pages were falling out nearly as fast as I was reading them.
Yikes. :P
Yikes. :P
It may not be readily apparent, but that is a quarter sitting on the inner edge of the ring I wear. If it was any larger that quarter would fall thru instead of just sit there.
I don't get it
Yikes. :P
It may not be readily apparent, but that is a quarter sitting on the inner edge of the ring I wear. If it was any larger that quarter would fall thru instead of just sit there.
I don't get it
Big hands break books better.. bbbbbbbbbbbbb