Jediphile

How come? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Because TOEE (Temple of Elemental Evil) is really just a glorified dungeon-crawl, while B10 and X10 both have potential for genuine plot-building and deep role-playing as well as the mandatory monster-slashing and spelunking.

Oh.. you mean the FR Goddess of Magic.. Mystra? I don't care much for her either, but I do love MystAra. :D <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Yes, the naming of Mystara is unfortunate. They chose it because it was a combination of the term "mystery star" that they liked, but I think they should have chosen somthing else, since it is much too similar to Mystra, the goddess of magic in the Forgotten Realms, who was already well established at the time.

Yes, I know it. We used to have it my old D&D of 15 or so years past, but I hadn't seen it for a long time until recently, so it was sadly lacking in my campaign during WotI events. It is set some 200 years into the future because TSR didn't want to mess around with the Known World continuity at the time, though it was originally intended to take place aournd AC 1000 (which is the year when all the gazetteers are set). When WotI came out, however, they changed their minds again, and there are references to it in the timeline of WotI. I do think it works best if you also have X4: Master of the Desert Nomads and X5: Temple of Death as prequels leading up to it, since they introduce the Master and the danger he poses to the Known World region. In X10 itself, the nefarious Hosadus (aka The Master of the Desert Nomads) finally begins to invade Darokin itself after conquering Sind and rallying the desert nomads in the Great Waste desert areas between Sind and his native Hule. The adventure begins with the PCs in Akesoli as it is invaded and conquered by the Master's forces. The plot the goes on to describe how things go badly for Darokin and how it's losing the war, and the PCs are then assigned to play diplomacy games across most of the Known World in order to enlist allies for Darokin against the Master. This leads to a number of adventures in the various nations, as they try to sway the opinions of the nation's leaders. In Karameikos, for example, they have to save Stefan Karameikos III from a plot by the Black Eagle and then help overthrow him before Duke Stefan will side with Darokin against the Master (yes, this demonstrates the confusion of when the plot actually takes place - are Duke Stefan III and the Black Eagle descendents of Stefan Karameikos and Ludwig von Hendriks? There is no answer to that...) I didn't have the adventure at the relevant point in my campaign, but that didn't stop me from letting the PCs do "diplomatic" missions along the same lines. For example, in Karameikos Stefan wanted to declare independence and so assigned the PCs to escort and help Teldon to Alphatia in order to make a non-aggression pact. Upon returning they then had to save Stefan from being killed by assassins from the Burayas in Sind secretly hired by the thyatian ambassador (I got that idea from a reference to such an attempt in the Karameikos set about that ambassador). There was no proof against the ambassador, though everybody knew he was probably involved. But nobody could do anything and they had to go on living side by side with him. I like that sort of thing - it demonstrates the 'grey' and political nature of Mystara over the cookie-cutter black-and-white of other D&D worlds well. Yes, me too. Even if I do use an official adventure, I usually revise it to the point of being unrecognizable... I am a member, though it's been a while since I've posted anything. I'm in lurker mode now, since nothing particularly interesting is happening at the moment. There was more activity on the Mystara Message Board (MMB) recently, but then I don't post there either due to some personal issues of the past. MMB can be found here

Then why implement overused Kashyyyk and Tatooine? They are out of place. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Don't want any of those either...

As I understand it, the options should still be there as long as you haven't chosen a prestige class - you just have to pass level 15 and be 75% toward either side to be offered the choice. Once you have achieved both, Kreia should make a comment. Not sure, but you should be able to take however many levels of your initial class that you want - it shouldn't affect your ability to choose a prestige class later, unless you're reaching the level cap, but then that's very unlikely.

"Knights of the Old Republic II - Echoes and Wounds of the Force" (ducking for cover...)

The problem is that it works - WotC sell far more rulebooks than adventuring modules or campaign-descriptive material like the gazetteers, so which are people going to buy? In fact, WotC has cut down on the adventures, and fantasy RPG has entered a new dark age, since dungeon-crawls with hack'n'slash rule the day now, while quality like B10 is forgotten. These days half the adventures is reduced to the map of some god-forsaken hole-in-the-ground with treasure and mosnters-to-bash in it When WotC talk of the "good old days" now, they mean dungeon-crawls like "Temple of Elemental Evil" or "Tomb of Horrors" and not rich plot-based adventures like "Night's Dark Terror" or "Fate of Istus"...

Well, I wouldn't say I love "Warriors of Heaven", but unlike most Mystara-fanatics I won't be jumping up and down screamy "HERESY!!!" either :D I found it most useful for assigning individual homeplanes for the Immortals. A lot of Mystara-fans seem to think that the Immortals live in Pandius and nowhere else, but I've always seen Pandius a neutral ground where they meet to discuss stuff, not as their homes. That said, I disagree with many of the alignments granted to the various Immortals. Ixion is said to be Lawful Neutral, for example, which I find completely wrong given his description - I'd put him as a chaotic floating somewhere between good and neutral. Generally the D&D->AD&D conversion was awful for Mystara - all characters above level 12 to 14 were toned down, making 36th-level characters like Thincol, Eriadna, Terari, Anaxibius, Demetrion, etc. into 20th-level, thought there is no roof on levels in AD&D (FR AD&D rules go as high as 35 IIRC). If it had at least been consistent that would be one thing, but it wasn't - Prince Jaggar von Drachenfels from Glantri was a 30th-level magic-user in PWA1, but suddenly a 24th-level Invoker in the Glantri AD&D set. Suddenly he had become more experienced than wizards like Eriadna, Terari, or Demetrion. That's inexcusable. The same problem is there for alignments. D&D had only lawful, neutral, and chaotic. But rather than read the descriptions and reassign alignments, they just stuck whatever good/neutral/evil part fit best and let the rest stay as it was, which is utterly stupid. Eriadna is described as just as chaotic as other Alphatians in Dawn of the Emperors (DotE), but is listed as lawful, because she has learned that she needs to think before acting impulsively and understand the consequences of her choices. To then put her as Lawful Neutral in AD&D is to ignore that description completely. Ixion falls into the same category, methinks. :"> Well, I always saw the outer planes as a large, unknown frontier. Each of those planes on the "unity-of-rings" is supposed to be a universe to itself, but we know very little about what is going on on those planes. Even with the plane-sets in Planescape, they still aren't described in any detail going anywhere near the details of even a single AD&D campaign world, so there is more than enough room for it all within the confines of the list planes - in most cases they are still just names and nothing more. The same is true for Mystara's cosmology, which lists only the sphere-relevant planes and Old Alphatia (oh, and the Nightmare dimension). Well, now you've gone and done it - you've made me dig out all my ole Planescape material about the outer planes... And as if that wasn't bad enough, you have thereby reminded me that I really need to clean up my place, and that *IS* bad!! :D Anyway, for something like Old Alphatia, I'd place it inside Draesten, which could be placed somewhere within planes like Limbo, Ysgard, Arborea, or even Pandemonium given the chaotic nature of Energy. Sure local conditions as described in AD&D Planescape might suggest details other than those described for Draesten, but then the various worlds on the prime material also vary a great deal, so we're allowed to make local conditions. The structure of Old Alphatia (before they blew it to bits, that is) might represent the conquest of mind over matter and control over wild energies, for example, and so manifest themselves as local conditions within the general wildness of the plane as a whole. This would also explains the chaotic nature of Alphatians and Flaems, since they do originate from a plane that is chaotic in nature. This would make Draesten a layer of one of the planes the same way you made Pyts a layer on the Abyss. In the same manner Brynn could be placed on Mechanus or similar. In fact, WotI seems to describe Brynn as a "world" rather than a plane, which could mean that it is simply one part of a much larger universe. That would suggest a layer more than an entire plane. Well, since it just says "plane of energy" that can really mean anything. I'd be inclined to just let it be the positive energy plane and let the "plane of energy" be what Mystarans call it. There, problem solved. After all, postive energy is still energy, while few would think of 'negative' energy as energy. Entrem is a bit of a problem, yes, because it really doesn't fit into anything I've noted in the Planescape cosmology. I'd be inclined to make it layer (and a rather large one) of the Beastlands, however, simply because the Beastlands really don't seem as vast and broad as they should be. Otherwise we might place it in the Astral, where time is really strange in any event.

Named worlds of the Sith Empire in the EU would seem to have some relevance, since that is presumably where Revan and later the Exile went to find the true Sith. So Ziost, the central world from which the Dark Lord of the Sith reigns, and Khar Shian, where Naga Sadow had his secret base, would seem quite relevant. Sure, a lot of worlds will be chosen arbitrarily. For example, I want Alderaan simple because we've never seen it and Myrkr because the force is suppressed and so would make a nice twist in the game. But I think that the Sith worlds and Coruscant seem to be essential to the sort of epic conclusion to the threat of the true Sith that should be in KotOR3.

Yeah, which makes me disinclined to agree with seeing them - seem more like someone wants to see them because they're in Episode III than because they would add anything to the plot. Not that their presence in Episode III counts against them, but it's a weak basis for putting them in a game, where they serve no apparent function in the plot. Worlds of the true Sith would be much more appropriate. We do need to see where Revan and the Exile disappeared to, don't we?

Bao-Dur: "General, I've been wondering about something..." Exile: "What is it?" Bao-Dur: "Well, we've been to three planets and in several space combats since we boarded this ship, and in all that time, we haven't serviced it..." Exile: "Your point being?" Bao-Dur: "Well, that must have consumed rather a lot of fuel. Don't you think we should refuel the Ebon Hawk soon?" Exile: "Don't worry - we haven't crashed for a while now, so we're bound to do so soon anyway." Bao-Dur: "Oh..."

Well, I did say it was supposed to be more balanced, not that it was It is more polished, though - the way they let modifiers from different areas stack for attack bonuses are good, for example - that was a nightmare in 2e with players always moaning if the DM said something wasn't cumulative. The multi-class options are also much better. 2e multi-classes were a god-awful mess, and dual classes were huge loopholes wide open for exploitation of the rules. So yes, more polish, but no more than that. In fact, some the classes are totally unbalanced. Rangers have probably had the hardest history in D&D - they were powerful in 1e, but have been steadily dropping in potential for each incarnation of D&D since...

The burrowers aren't actually Thanatos', he has just tried (and failed) to use them on occasion. In truth they are remnants of the nefarious 'Outer Beings', who are supposed to be dark and evil gods now entrapped beyond the universe. Sound familiar? They're supposed to be kept in check by the 'Old Ones', who are the gods of the Immortals. Next to nothing is known about the Old Ones, though one does appear briefly at the end of WotI (so my players have actually met one...). For truly Lovecraftian-style Mystara, you really need to use the Carnifex, however. For that I'd direct you to the adventure M3: Twilight Calling. There are people in the Mystara community dedicated to exploring use of the Carnifex and Outer Beings in subtle ways that will enrich Mystara without taking away the mystery. In fact, the list moderator on the Mystara Mailing List (MML) is one of them. True enough. I just mentioned it as an example of a gazetteer that's not so interesting and one of the least used nations. Ierendi is just a vacation spot where nothing happens. There are some interesting areas, if you look around, though. The potential for pirate-stories is great, and there is that elusive Honor Island where those strange wizards live... "Wariors of Heaven" seems to be universally hated by Mystara-fans (though not me), so I'd be wary of mentioning it to them... I agree with you, but I've given up trying to define the core of the problem, since it always causes dissent and sore feelings, making it very difficult to establish a constructive dialogue. I guess it's just a case of people not liking having Mystara made into 'just another AD&D world' and then growing angry when they cannot find hard evidence against that being a possibility. The same goes for Spelljammer even though there are conversion guidelines for it in the Champions of Mystara set, which is the only D&D product to ever deal with space travel in any way. In fact, we know nothing about Mystara's space except what is described in relation to Haldemar's travels on the Princess Ark, yet many vehemently oppose the notion that spelljamming might be used for Mystara. They cite that Mystara's space is too cold and have no air, but actually there is nothing in Spelljammer rules preventing that as a local possibility - Krynn's space (that the Dragonlance world) is also very cold, for example. In fact, I think it was mentioned as such in the Monstrous Compendium supplement for Mystara under the entry for diabolus. Still, I'd be just as inclined to put the Nightmare dimension among the outer planes, but then it doesn't really matter. Incidentally, that compendium is about the only AD&D Mystara product to receive some grudging general approval among Mystara's fans. They don't love it per se, but I rarely see it flamed either. Here we would disagree some, since they are all described as outer planes in WotI. Old Alphatia isn't, but it's said to have ties to Draesten, and so would be in the outer planes as well. I'd much rather place these somewhere among the AD&D outer planes. Each of those is supposed to be as big as the universe, so there should be more than enough room. Well, not that it matters so much... I guess I just like the idea that the Alphatians and Flaems originate from an outer plane - it somehow fits their arrogant superiority in a strange way. But it makes little true difference. That would be my choice as well. The spheres of Mystaran cosmology are more problematic, since they're tied to the power of the Immortals. I tend to view them as 'sources of existence' that exist on a different level than the inner or outer planes and yet exist on all of them. I'd see them as more philosophical and so have little need to represent them with actual planes. That said, the red sun of the Hollow World is supposed to be a permanently opened gate to the sphere of energy (set up by Ixion), so I guess I need to accept it in some form. Besides, Entrem is also described as an outer plane in WotI, though I'd admit that I have no idea where to put it - it's pretty strange compared to the other outer planes.

Oh yes - d20 is much better designed than the old D&D stuff, but.. 1. The games are ancient - I cannot blame a game that is 20 to 30 years old and made during the infancy of role-playing for being inferior in design and consistency to a new game that is supposed to be current and balanced. Of course a game that's more than a quarter of century old is going to show its age - especially for RPGs - but d20 is new and yet enforces aspects that are really just as old. That's poor and disappointing. 2e Player Option rules were more 'advanced' and 'progressive' than 3e, even though they were spread out over a gazillion books. That's also true for 3e now, though 2. They were complete systems, whereas 3e is intentionally lacking. Monte Cook once said that people often ask him why there are no mass-combat rules in the 3e books, and his reply was that they weren't allowed to do it - WotC wanted to hold aspects of the game off for future products. You don't have that in the old D&D stuff - if you buy the D&D Rules Cyclopedia, then you buy a complete game in one book. Mass combat, dominion management, Immortal rules, usable descriptions of the nations (though not as extensive as the gazetteers, of course) and maps of them - it's all there in one book, and the rest is just expanding on that.

You wouldnt in the traditional sense, just reseal him. You would probably have to fight him, but it would be something along the same lines as the cave on Korriban, It would be more about your will overcoming his. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I'd still cast my vote against Yavin IV because it can mess with continuity. If there was a truly valid reason for it, then I might feel differently, but I just don't see what plot can be served on Yavin IV that cannot be served on Sith worlds like Korriban, Ziost, Khar Delba, or the others we know of.

Btw, I mentioned Monte Cook doing a harsh review of D&D 3.5 Some might disbelieve or disagree with me on it being harsh, and in any event it is always best for people to judge for themselves. So I looked for the link and found it. Just click to find the review at montecook.com Now back to our regularly scheduled Mystara rant... :D Glad to hear someone finds it interesting. May I ask what interests people about Mystara? For me it's the 'grey' political scene and the never-all-black-or-all-white tone fo the setting, and the ridiculous power of the Alphatians (I like Alphatians, though they can be utter bastards), but I'd like a look with different eyes.

Not sure if anyone's mentioned this, but David Gaider described a lot about Bioware's plans for Sleheyron over on their boards. Restoring it would be impossible, since they never even fleshed it all out. They had some ideas, but cut Sleheyron before ever making any final decisions on what to do on Sleheyron. Still, the basic idea was a power struggle between four competing Hutts with different interests and methods. It all sounds pretty interesting, so you might want to take a look at it here Personally I vote for having Sleheyron in KotOR3 (even included it in my own suggestiosn). I think it sounds like an interesting place.

Yeah, it seems being a sentinel is far more advantageous in KotOR2, since skills are now much more important. In KotOR1 my 'optimal' combination was to begin as scout and advance to level 5, then not advanced further until I made him/her a jedi guardian. Done right that allowed me to complete all quests in the game, including full repairs to HK-47. In KotOR2 skills are far more important in general, so the sentinel becomes attractive, since you can switch to somthing else later. Heck, my first feats usually go toward turning the cross-class skills into class-skills for my sentinel. I lack force jump, but I don't need it as much as I thought I would.

Yeah, seems we've gone way off topic and turned this into a Mystara topic... Sorry if it bores the crap out of people.

Better than getting involved in a flame war... And I will not believe that expressing my thoughts is futile. Nor should I hope anyone else does. Yes, little is likely to come from it, but it's still better than having ideas and saying nothing. We have been asked to voice our ideas here - that's what I'm doing. At least I'll know that I have tried to contribute in some way, no matter how pathetic others might think it is. So if KotOR3 sucks and I criticize and talk about what should have been done, nobody can tell me that I didn't speak up earlier.

In the interest of doing something more positive, I shall now post the final part of my own plot idea for KotOR3. Sorry, but it's a very long post. The earlier parts can be read in previous parts of this topic, if anyone's interested. It's been a while, so I'll start with a short outline... The story so far... The new main character has come across Bastila while the few remaining jedi have lived in fear of the returned Darth Nihilus. Fleeing Coruscant with his master, he came across Bastila, but lost his master in battle with the Sith. Through various events they have met old friends like Jolee on Sleheyron and Mission and Zaalbar on Myrkr, where the force is suppressed by the native Ysalamir, and eventually they found the flagship of Darth Nihilus. Joining all of the Exile's old friends, who now form the basis of the struggling jedi ranks trying to rebuild the order, they confronted Nihilus only to find out that the new Nihilus was really the Exile. Following Revan, the Exile had entered the Sith empire, where he found Revan. Revan had reverted to the dark side, however, and turned to the Exile to the dark side as well, thereby making him the new Darth Nihilus. With their combined powers and friendship for the Exile, they are able to turn him and learn of Revan's whereabouts in the Sith empire. Though Revan has turned to the dark side again, he continues his cause to destroy the true Sith by creating a civil war among their ranks and challenging the rank of current dark lord. The main character, Bastila, the Exile and a few others decide to find Revan and see if they can aid his cause and, perhaps, turn him back to the light side as well. They enter Sith space and look for Revan on Khar Shian, where Revan has turned the old base of Naga Sadow into a training ground for his own Sith. After many struggles the group learns that Revan has been betrayed and captured by the true Sith on Ziost, and that the true Sith are planning a final assault on the Republic soon. They travel to Ziost to find and free Revan. They don't know that the true Sith have manipulated Revan into thinking that the jedi, some of them his old friends, have come to kill him before he can become too great a threat. This results in a battle between Revan and the group, but they are eventually able to turn Revan and flee Ziost. The dark lord of the true Sith, Taras Hassek, has now begun his invasion of the Republic by performing a preemptive strike on Coruscant to both topple the Republic and kill the few remaning Jedi and younglings struggling to rebuild the order there... Part 5: For the endgame, the group is returning to the Republic to stop the Sith attack and confront Taras Hassek, the dark lord of the true Sith. There is a good deal of uncertainty, though, because Revan is still marked by the ties to the dark side, and the rest of the group are uncertain of where his/her loyalties lie. But they have little choice but to trust Revan, since they cannot fight the final battle without him/her. Even if reverted toward the light side, Revan will show flashes of the dark side at times. The group is split into three with each of the protagonists of the games leading one. While they do, Carth leads the Republic forces in a major space/air battle - KotOR games are not starfighter games, so we should leave that to characters outside the player's control. Besides, it will finally give Carth a true moment of glory to shine in rather than just being a supporting character in the overall plot. Note that in the endgame there will be more companions to choose from if Revan, the Exile, and the new main character are all light side, since this is the advantage of the jedi. After all, Sith lords have no friends to help them out when things get tough - they have "friends" only for as long as these are convenient, so there will be fewer people to help them. For example, Jolee will make an appearance if Revan and the main character are both light side, but he'll have no replacement if one of them was dark side, because either the Revan or the main character will have killed Jolee by then. If you're dark side, then the main character takes the mission to confront Taras Hassek described for Revan belong - you want to replace him and become the new dark lord, after all. As a Sith, you really couldn't care less whether the true Sith destroy the Republic forces or whether the remaining jedi and the padawan children are killed. Those issues might be important, but not until you've taken the throne of dark lord from Taras Hassek. Then you can sit down and begin structuring your empire and planning your resources... Revan's group has Bastila in it (rest is optional) and goes to confront Taras Hassek and his companion Sith Lords on their capital ship. This will be an epic battle of force powers and lightsaber duels at the top of the power-scale available. This will be a tough endfight, where the player will need to use every advantage. This should actually be played last, but I describe it first, because the companions in this group should be chosen first. The Exile's group should have Mandalore/Canderous in it (rest is optional) and represents the group forces that go to fight the invading Sith. This will be a bit like the clone attack at the end of Episode II with the Exile leading the Mandalorians like Mace Windu led the clone troopers, except that the only jedi will be those in the group. This should be done a bit like the Sith attack on the Mandalorian camp on Dxun in KotOR2, except there will be constant respawns on when troops go down. However, the Exile has unique abilities. If he is light side, for example, his Force Enlightenment (as learned in KotOR2) extends his level of Force Valor not just to the group but to his entire platoon of ground forces! This is a bit of a fake, of course, since only the group's actions will really matter - the rest is just active background - and the group needs to find and defeat the enemy commanders, led by Taras Hassek's apprentice Del Gor-Ulm, as well as kill a set number of enemy soldiers, but the player should be able to note that the Exile's use of group-affecting force powers has an effect on the battle field. It would also be nice if, at the end of the battle, the game awards bonus xp and influence with Mandalore based on how many Mandalorians survived - that would be a nice reward for taking out the enemy leaders quickly rather than rewarding senseless monster bashing... (Or even better, the Sith leaders will appear after the required number of enemy soldiers have been killed and automatically attack the group, so that abusing the respawn is impossible. Also, the bonus xp for the battle beyond the enemy commanders is based on the number of allies left rather than the number of enemy soldiers killed when the Sith leaders fall - that way you're rewarded for taking out the Sith leaders quickly). The main character's group is chosen freely from any remaining companions. This mission should actually be played first. The group's task is to save the remaining jedi students - younglings - by rushing to the jedi temple and helping them. This will be a bit like the way Padm

Like I said, there are several instances where you can accuse GL and LA for that. The problem is that you chose to make that accusation on a subject it just wasn't relevant because no such inconsistency or unraveling of continuity exists. I'm not sure why they dropped the idea of using Vima, but surely that choice doesn't constitute a breach of continuity. On the contrary, it avoids such a breach like the plague. Well, you certainly aren't shy on dealing it out yourself, so I thought you could take a dose of your own medicine. Obviously I was mistaken. My apologies to the list. I shall, which is why I have omitted the abuse of the rest of your post. I shall do so because Calax asked me to, however. That way you can rest secure that you don't owe me any favors.

Yes. I even planned to use those stats to run mass combat during the upcoming civil war in Rockhome (one of the PCs is a dwarf), but I might not get around to it now, since I'll have to close my campaign sooner than I hoped. Shame really... Yup, definitely more complex than 'advanced' D&D, which never had details like that. AD&D had only rules for dungeon-crawling PCs, but in the old rules you could actually build and run your own dominions and so. Never got around to actually doing it myself, though. True, but it's a sore point to mention in the Mystara community, because many hate the Planescape cosmology with a vengeance. Personally, I never quite understood why, since Planescape cosmology looks remarkably similar to that of OD&D. The old rules had a few more planes in there, but I never understood why there wasn't room for those in AD&D - the Planescape setting certainly didn't prohibit it, so the two are not mutually exclusive IMHO. Same goes for Spelljammer btw, but it remains a sore subject for some reason.

Well, to be perfectly blunt, it depends a lot of how much the players know about the HW. To those who don't know Mystara (and are still reading this...), I should explain that the HW was set up by the Immortals (i.e., gods) as a sort of museum for extinct cultures i the outer world - if one was destroyed by catastrophe or conquest or whatever, the Immortals would take a token few of the people in question and move them to the HW, then alter their memories so they'd think they had always lived there. That way all cultures of the world would be preserved in some form in spite of potential distinction. The Immortals also set it up so that the cultures they had saved would not destroy each other. To that end they created a spell called the Spell of Preservation (or just SoP), which affects the entire HW. It basically enforce a cultural bias on the people of the HW so that they cannot evolve further for any reason - they cannot learn superior technology from other nations or gain greater strategic insight from fighting wars with each other. They can conquer land from each other, but not all of it - no culture can ever be destroyed there. In some sense this makes the HW a little boring since the cultures cannot evolve and the HW will always be static - there can be no real change there. Lots of things can happen, but there will be no genuine growth. So while I like that as an opportunity for the PCs to explore, I would not want to play a PC from such a setting myself. It also limits the political potential a lot, since it can only ever go so far before the Immortals' fail-safe kicks in. Well, that's true... Most, yes, but not all. The Ierendi gaz follows the gaz format rather closely, but nobody ever uses it - it's just plain dull and doesn't inspire much interesting role-playing. Some say it's because Ierendi is an island nation cut off from the continent of Brun (where most of the Known World lies), but that is also true for the Minrothad Guilds, and they are far more interesting (though also lacking in NPC descriptions...) It would definitely have helped. I would have liked to read more about those ghastly Shattenalfen, for example... The Blacklore elves could also have been rather interesting. Yeah, I always found Bargle more interesting than von Hendriks. They are very typical villains, all black and nasty, though. The Heldannic Knights have more potential, since they are heroes or villains depending on your point of view. My players hate them, so it was a joy to have them come to the rescue against Thar's orcish hordes when Darokin was under siege in WotI. I played it right, too - the PCs were defending peace-loving Darokin from the orcs, but the forces were being pushed back, and just as things looked really dire, there were horns in the distance and the Heldannic Knights circled the defenders camps, making the players go, "Oh crap - not the HKs as well...", and then they saved them instead of invading. The looks on my players' faces was most satisfying, though strangely they didn't thank me... No, I don't think anything like that was written elsewhere. If there was, I certainly haven't seen it. We can thank Allston for that stroke of genius too, since he wrote the first one. Sure, that was in some part inspired by the timeline of WotI, but then that was also written by Allston.

I think the biggest gripe with it was that some of the nations did really stupid things. I've heard Mystara-fans say that the nations involved showed less sense of strategy and tactics than three-year-olds playing RISK - ouch! There's even some truth it. I mean, Glantri is hated by its neighbours in Ethengar, yet when Alphatia decides to go to war with Glantri, they never seek alliance with Ethengar toward that end. That's pretty silly, and people are right to point that out. Some of the fanmade almanac has since mentioned that this was because the Alphatians did approach Ethengar, but were pretty arrogant about the whole thing by treating them as stupid savages, and so the potential for an alliance ended before it began, because Ethengar saw no difference between Glantrian wizards and Alphatian wizards. That makes perfect sense, but Allston should have mentioned that in WotI - it's a very convenient excuse for not using an obvious point of attack. The real problem with WotI is that it only has three well-described adventures and then a timeline to describe six years of war. They should have done it as a stand-alone box instead of trying to sell revised Immortals-rules with the same product. Obviously Allston is not going to be able to write adventures spanning six years of war, but three is very little, and each GM is left to fill in all the blanks (and there are many) for himself. Still, I guess I just like that myself - it sparks idea and gives me room to maneuver my plots. Doing the same is far more difficult in the PWA series, where the dates are specific. You don't have to follow them strictly, of course, but they do constitute canon, and so subsequent events will be based on them... I must say that I like the fact that the rules are there more than I like the rules themselves. I like that I can tell my players, "Yes, you can become Immortal - there are extensive rules for that", but in the end the chances are slim to none that I'll ever use them - mortal PCs are much more interesting than Immortal ones, if you ask me.