Dreadnought wrote:
WodenKrait wrote:
When the Player's Guide was first released I assumed they were including those sections to avoid putting out a ridiculously slender volume, but now that I've seen the generally excellent material in Cadaver Draconis, some or all of which I understand was originally slated for the Guide (Dreadnought can correct me if I've got that wrong), I'm puzzled over why the book was written to include such items of secondary importance. To the uninformed those priorities seem wonky.
The Players Guide contains new information concerning low level Demonologists. This information would have been useless if people didn't also have access to the original demonology material and as there are copyright reasons that prevent 'In From the Cold' being republished at this point, anybody who doesn't already have it would not have been able to get it. There are also other reasons why it was important to get the Demonology material back out there that I don't think should be described at this point. I'm not trying to be cryptic but I will say that I hope will become clear in the relatively near future, and it will also be obvious why I don't think more can be said about that at this point.
About 28% of the Players' Guide content is republished material, so whilst there's some great content in there, for those of us with the original material, it's still quite a slender tome. Yes, there were 4 pages of new demonology spells that would have had to have been snipped, made freely available on the SKG site as a 'web supplemental' (a good PR technique to drive people to your website, but the least said about SKG's website the better!), or saved for a future supplement. Dreadnought is implying (or am I inferring?) that demonologists might be central to a future sourcebook or adventure - to my mind, if that was already in the pipeline then SKG should have saved the reprint of the demonologist for that module (and included the additional spells). At least that way the supplement is more self-contained - as it is now, that future supplement will only be of use if someone additionally owns one or other of the Players' Guide or In From the Cold. Or maybe SKG could reprint it again to pad out their next release
.Dreadnought wrote:
As for why a lot of the material contained in Cadaver Draconis wasn't in the Player's Guide, I can only speculate, but my speculation is that a large part of the reason is one I've aluded to before - the weren't the people available to playtest it and balance it properly.
Paths are a significant departure from the current model of DW professions, and they introduce a large number of new skills and abilities that further muddy what characters can and cannot do - I think it would have been brave of SKG to take Dragon Warriors in that direction. There's some beautiful flavour in Cadaver Draconis, which should be lauded, but the value of Cadaver Draconis to me is in the appendices.
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