Just got Dragon 315 - Campaign Classics

[megamania]

Erik,

Great issue, so good that rather than waiting the usual three months before I email the Customer Service guys to get them to send me my subscription copies I went and bought it (I wait three months so as to save Paizo some postage... nice, eh?). BTW, you guys really need to sack your mailing house....

Question: are there any plans to sell the Dark Sun rules for 3.5E next year as a download? I would really love to have a copy of the DS3.5E rules without advertising. Can this be done? Nevertheless, I think your DS3.5E article is now my most anticipated product for 2004.

ditto here

 

[tsadkiel]

"Hasn't really been done before?" You have Mystara and Hollow World articles in the very issue being discussed here.
>>>

Mmm hmmm. Real popular, that Hollow World.

Very true, though I've always been absurdly fond of. (It's one of the two pre-d20 settings I still own.) But I don't think there's any real need to tie cultural-based d20 minigames to the Hollow World setting whether they've covered the culture in question or not.

I confess that "fantasy India" has been done before, but I'd like to try to take a more modern approach. Oh, and tie it into Greyhawk, of course.

Better. The rest of the Greyhawk world needs more coverage, if you ask me. Which you didn't.

Hasn't Mystara been liscenced by Kenzer, or something?

No. Or not exactly. kenzer has a very all encompassing license for old D&D stuff, but it's strictly limited to Hackmaster, IIRC.

Was there an ancient Nubia analogue in the Known World?

--Erik

There was in the Hollow World. Sort of.

 

[johnsemlak]

Hasn't Mystara been liscenced by Kenzer, or something?

As mentioned above, Kenzer owns a licence to do Mystara for Hackmaster. They are planning to release a setting book (Mystarihack or something?) next year, though the project has had some problems. Still, I've resigned myself to the fact this is the best treatment Mystara is gonna get for a while

I probably won't be doing much with it in the magazine, although I do confess a certain fondness for some of the original basic D&D adventures and Dave Arneson's Blackmoor stuff.

It's obviously Paizo's prerogitive to not do Mystara stuff in the magazines if the setting is not popular, but I'll offer my individual opinion that I would buy any issue containing Mystara stuff sight unseen.

I agree completely several of the later Mystara supplements, particularly the Hollow World line, were real bombers (sales-wise). I think the Known World might have a slightly larger resonation with D&Ders than you're giving it credit for though. Surely, a large amount of gamers entered D&D via the red/blue boxed sets and saw the Known world in some from there.

Regarding the GAzatteer line, I have no idea how popular it was, but I feel strongly it was one of the best overall product lines TSR ever did (though like anything, the quality got dodgy towards the end). I absolutely pored through the first one, and eagerly awaited the next ones, and bought nearly every one sight-unseen, and devored them with great excitement. They contained so many new options for D&D at the time, and IMHO, really revitalized the Basic/Expert D&D line as a playable alternative to AD&D. Whether it actually worked out that way in terms of sales, I don't know. Mystara died shortly after so probably not.

BTW, I am in no way unappretiative of the Mystara lore contained in Dragon #315.

 

[johnsemlak]

Have you never heard of Sind (based on India, though at last glance more like India in the Mughal period, as they are under foreign domination)?

Hmm, where was the Sind culture detailed? All I remember is the Sind Desert in the module X4, which lay west of the Known World. I don't remember it being that 'Indian'.

Classic Modules, X4-X5. That is the kind of Mystara material that deserves being revisited.