Dragon Warriors

Ha ha - I'm not sure whether to be complimented because it's nice to know my opinion is valued, or insulted because you think I'm a bit of an ogre.

If it wasn't for Section 5, the new material would have scored a 10 - it's solidly written, distinctive enough to feel like Dragon Warriors, and is going to keep me busy updating the apps and downloads in the Forest for a while (and, more importantly, good enough for me to bother!) I've deliberately avoided discussing the professions because my overarching opinion of DW professions would probably colour my review of what are otherwise well-themed (if not well-executed) professions.

I think you (and the other contributors) should feel proud to have your names associated with the Players' Guide.

_________________
Cobwebbed Dragon (Lee)

https://www.cobwebbedforest.co.uk/
https://www.dragonwarriors.uk/
https://twitter.com/CobwebbedDragon
Now on YouTube!

The former

Basically, what matters to me most in terms of the game is what I think you rightly call the 'feel' of Dragon Warriors, and that was the bit I was most worried about all of us getting right. You're one of the few people who I know also regards that as important, and whose opinions on that seem to broadly match mine, who was not actually involved in writing the new book, so knowing that you think we've got that right makes me more confident that we succeeded in that. I thought we had, but it's hard to judge from the inside.

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Life and Death Are Only a Dice Roll Away!

Shaun Hately
co-author A Weak Pleasure
co-author Friends or Foes
co-author Dragon Warriors Players Guide

I would go further and say it's not only important, but paramount, and the thing I struggle the most to recreate in my own writing. I don't think Friends or Foes managed it particularly well, but it seems the Players' Guide has learnt from that, getting the balance right between anecdotes, narrative and game information - and not just in the obvious way, like in the Barbarian backgrounds, but throughout the book there is an emphasis on cultural diversity across Legend (something that was missing, for example, in the treatment of Algandy in A Knight's Tale - an otherwise good adventure, but squandered its opportunity to make Algandy feel distinct from Ellesland).

If SKG can keep up that level of quality (and not take 4 years to do it), maybe we'll start to get some new blood interested in Dragon Warriors after all .

_________________
Cobwebbed Dragon (Lee)

https://www.cobwebbedforest.co.uk/
https://www.dragonwarriors.uk/
https://twitter.com/CobwebbedDragon
Now on YouTube!

Not sure if its the best time for me to post my views after a few drinks and its 0041am on Saturday right now....

Hm...

No female centaurs? I mean, think of the excellent emphidian artistic impressions you can have.....


Horse section was informative. Something I was looking for but I had no idea.. Good, so much personality, more personality that some npc descriptions I read about.

Not sure what the problem was about the previous demonologist supplement.

Those fighting poses had me very anxious. just me. I realize that the warriors need something more interesting but my first impression was it was cumbersome.

I realize, if you want to improve on the system, you need to streamline it. Seeing a lot of looks vs horses rolls really bothered me. I appreciate that the looks score was under representative, but I do have simpler, quicker rules similar to the climbing rules in mind. More on that.

No female centaurs? I thought this was a great opportunity to cater to readers expectations...

And I see the trend, new character classes need to look better than older ones. Appreciate the efforts to improve on them, but its taking on a certain superhero role where everyone has special powers to play. It sort of departs from an honest chess game where suddenly every piece acquires a few more 'movement options'....



Aside from that, great work. More imaginative art work would've been nice, but hey, that's niche....

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Speech!





And so the show begins!!!
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My impressions so far are I think similar to others on this forum.

Professions:
I have mixed feelings about this section. I like the choice of new professions (although I would have preferred an Archer profession to Hunter) because they avoid the common pitfall of creating yet another fighting or magic using profession and have new abilities that look like they will be useful without being gimmicky; I must disagree with my esteemed colleague Kharille about the trend here being a negative one.

However I feel like an opportunity has been missed. I know this will be controversial, but right now I think a new rule set for social interaction should have been introduced here. This would have made the rules for Knaves and (to a lesser extent) Priests more distinct; at the moment (and this is still first impressions, so I might be wrong) I think a single Guile/Judgement skill pairing could tie together the different rules for Infuriate/Pacify, Distract, Magic Hands, Gossip, Presence, Hypnotic Suggestion, and Words are Power, and Sermon skills. Likewise its a shame the opportunity was not taken to fix the Archery rules with the introduction of the Hunter.

Organisations:
This section I haven't absorbed properly yet, but it very well written with the Dragon Warriors feel to it.

Living in Legend
A wonderful section, which almost matches the best writing from Dave Morris in the original paperbacks (a near impossible feat in my mind). In particular I think this does a fantastic job of striking the balance between modern gaming expectations (complete with high fantasy trappings) and the distinctive world of Dragon Warriors; for example in the sections on Gender Roles, the Church, and Barbarian Cultures

The section on horses, although written in a slightly different style to the rest of the book, is new to me and clearly comes from somebody with real practical knowledge of the subject. I found it very interesting and it injects some much needed personality into these animals which so often are little more than props within the game.

Magic and Society in the Lands of Legend
My favorite section of all! I particularly love the background information (and I'm intrigued by Ibrith and his abode) and the new spells are almost universally excellent, adding both variety to the magic users and texture to the world

Skills and War
A comprehensive skill section for DW is long overdue, and I I think the solution here will do the job, although I was never much of a fan of the language rules that these are clearly based on. If nothing else, it definitely avoids adding too much additional complexity to the game.

The Art of Combat

The new combat rules for guards have left me scratching my head. I like the basic idea, but to me the rules as written are complicated and will require too much reference to the books during combat for little advantage. I will be surprised if they see much use. Someting more abstract would I think have worked better.

Demons
This section is a little quixotic. For a newcomer to the game, it will seem strange that the demonologist profession is in an entirely separate section of the book to the rest of the professions and to the demonologist minor spells in the magic section. Veterans of the game, on the other hand, will probably already have this information from In From The Cold. Leaving that aside, it remains one of my favorite supplements of all time for Dragon Warriors.

Despite all my carping from the cheap seats, I give the guide 8 out of ten for players who already have the information that is repeated from elsewhere, and 9 for total newcomers.

Cheers,

-Kyle

Yeah, i suppose I shouldn't complain. Something new instead of the same old tank and heavy hitting short range artillery professions. In the same way I envisage the sapper profession as one who interacts with their environment more, and that environment to be somehow implemented in an easy non cumbersome way in the future. An archer/hunter profession would be a master of the open world, above ground and I suppose being a hunter makes it that much more unique, as opposed to another 'generic warrior' profession.

I do feel that a lot of skills and features should be implemented at higher levels. I get this fear that a whole horde of npcs will suddenly be doing all sorts of weird things, imaging running into a party of 6 sorcerors and seeing the fireworks... why can't people just be 'normal'.

Will need to spend some more time reading it rather than skimming through the pictures.... Takes an effort to ready anything except summer beachwear magazines....

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And so the show begins!!!
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I couldn't agree more:
http://cobwebbedforest.co.uk/library/ab ... p?qs=guile

Despite what I wrote on the Wiki when I shared this idea there, I have subsequently playtested thise rule and it works very well in a range of situations where the PCs are attempting to deceive or manipulate (or be deceived/manipulated).


The article was written by Dave's wife, who owns a horse herself. The original article is available on the Wiki:
http://dragonwarriors.wikifoundry.com/p ... vely+Horse

Whilst it is an interesting article, authenticity can interrupt the flow of play and there's always that balance to be struck between accuracy and fun. For example, armour will start to rust very quickly, but it's convenient to ignore for the sake of the game. Playing horses as NPCs might suit some GMs, but I find I have enough to keep track of with everything else going on in a game - I might make a horse lame as part of a plot device (especially if the character has angered the fae), but not as a random event (same goes for colic). Players, rightly or wrongly, will have expectations for horses based on films and previous sessions of play, and whilst you as the GM can probably have a little bit of fun with that, you could easily find that your players get put off using horses at all because of the continuous (and potentially tedious) dice rolling required to control a horse, the extensive considerations that have to be taken into account to look after them, and/or frustrations that they can't use their horse for what they thought they could.

It's an enlightening article, but I'd suggest implementing it with caution...

_________________
Cobwebbed Dragon (Lee)

https://www.cobwebbedforest.co.uk/
https://www.dragonwarriors.uk/
https://twitter.com/CobwebbedDragon
Now on YouTube!

I know we're getting off-topic here, but I always had a problem with female centaurs. Presumably, before they evolved to the point of wearing clothes, galloping must have been a serious challenge to them. And whilst I can't speak from experience, I have been told that when (human) women run without adequate support, it can be quite uncomfortable (to the point of being painful), and that's just at normal human running speeds - galloping probably puts all kinds of stresses on all the wrong sorts of places.

Perhaps the hybrid phenotype follows the male line only, and female centaurs just look like normal horses?

_________________
Cobwebbed Dragon (Lee)

https://www.cobwebbedforest.co.uk/
https://www.dragonwarriors.uk/
https://twitter.com/CobwebbedDragon
Now on YouTube!

Based on what I read about Heracles, Centaurs might be male only. Oh damn, need to read up on the ... book 4 entry. Maybe the females are just human women. Or just horse females.

Ah support, always good to wear that armour factor 4 chainmail support structure...

_________________
Speech!





And so the show begins!!!
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/dwp ... ssages/640

Ah but they didn't evolve. Enough people believed in them that they sprang into existence, probably complete with support undergarments.

Cheers,

-Kyle