Important Ravenloft news!

[Tobias Blackburn]

I was thinking., I wish WOTC would publish a book on Dreams and nightmares, so we would have the basic rules for the Nightmare Lands.

All you really need is the Dreaming skill from the Manual of the Planes. Assign the dream powers a DC and an amount of non-lethal damage to use it.

[midnightcat]

I there's stuff in the Manual of the Planes on the dream plane, which you can easily use with the Nightmare Lands boxed set.

All you really need is the Dreaming skill from the Manual of the Planes. Assign the dream powers a DC and an amount of non-lethal damage to use it.

WOW..I didn't know that. I will have to pick up that book. Thanks youn two.

[Tobias Blackburn]

I there's stuff in the Manual of the Planes on the dream plane, which you can easily use with the Nightmare Lands boxed set.

All you really need is the Dreaming skill from the Manual of the Planes. Assign the dream powers a DC and an amount of non-lethal damage to use it.

WOW..I didn't know that. I will have to pick up that book. Thanks youn two.

It's listed under the Plane of Dreams varient in the back, which only describes the plane and the skill. It doesn't list any actual powers though, I was refering to the Nightmare Lands boxset for that.

[Scede]

WotC could very well publish 3 books more in a year. Meaning that WotC could easily publish the Core Rule book with Players/DM's info about the abandoned campaign worlds. Just one book for each setting.

Judging by what they've done with the Ghostwalk campaign, I doubt that will ever happen.

[ZombieTonyBlair]

I'm really upset that Wizards now has control of Ravenloft. I shuder in horror at how the planescape setting was butchered by wizards, and I almost hope they don't print ravenloft stuff for fear of what they would do to it.

They haven't printed any Planescape stuff. They've printed planar stuff that uses some of Planescape as a basis, but they aren't doing the setting. So I wouldn't worry about them butchering Ravenloft. The closest they might come will be some Monsternomicons and Heroes of Horror, neither of which are meant specifically for Ravenloft, though they would have uses.

Wizards printed a book, can't remember what it was called, that adapted a lot of planescape stuff, like different factions and information on Sigil, to 3rd Ed. They decided, however, to completely strip said book of all of the flavor and style that made Planescape fun to play, and instead just printed the bare bones of a once great setting. I don't want the same to happen to ravenloft.

[Tobias Blackburn]

I'm really upset that Wizards now has control of Ravenloft. I shuder in horror at how the planescape setting was butchered by wizards, and I almost hope they don't print ravenloft stuff for fear of what they would do to it.

They haven't printed any Planescape stuff. They've printed planar stuff that uses some of Planescape as a basis, but they aren't doing the setting. So I wouldn't worry about them butchering Ravenloft. The closest they might come will be some Monsternomicons and Heroes of Horror, neither of which are meant specifically for Ravenloft, though they would have uses.

Wizards printed a book, can't remember what it was called, that adapted a lot of planescape stuff, like different factions and information on Sigil, to 3rd Ed. They decided, however, to completely strip said book of all of the flavor and style that made Planescape fun to play, and instead just printed the bare bones of a once great setting. I don't want the same to happen to ravenloft.

That was the Planar Handbook. It was meant to touch on things that you might see in the planes, not update Planescape. They mentioned a few factions and Sigil because they were things that existed in the old version. It was never meant to be a full update or return of Planescape and should not be seen as such.

[Catman Jim]

No so, TB, I believe he's talking about the "Planeswalker's Handbook" from 1998, not the "Planar Handbook". WotC bought TSR in what, about 1997? Following that they published the PwH, Uncaged: Faces of Sigil, Dead Gods, Tales from the Infinite Staircase, Faction War, The Inner Planes, Guide to the Ethereal Plane, Planescape Monstrous Compendium 3, and related works not distinctly labeled Planescape: Vortex of Madness, Warriors of Heaven & Guide to Hell.

[Tobias Blackburn]

No so, TB, he's talking about the "Planeswalker's Handbook" from 1998, not the "Planar Handbook". WotC bought TSR in what, about 1997? Following that they published the PwH, Uncaged: faces of Sigil, Dead Gods, Tales from the Infinite Staircase, Faction War, The Inner Planes, Guide to the Ethereal Plane, Planescape Monstrous Compendium 3, and related works not distinctly labeled Planescape: Vortex of Madness, Warriors of Heaven & Guide to Hell.

Really? Because ZombieTonyBlair was talking about a product that updated Planescape to 3e.

Wizards printed a book, can't remember what it was called, that adapted a lot of planescape stuff, like different factions and information on Sigil, to 3rd Ed.

None of the products that you listed are from the third edition. The only two 3e books that come close to Planescape are the Manual of the Planes and the Planar Handbook, neither meant to be updates to the campaign setting.

[Catman Jim]

Agreed, there has been no official 3e Planescape. Those are just things that must have been made by WotC, not TSR. The closest 3E that I'm aware of is the 'Reunion' piece here: http://paizo.com/store/brand/d20System/ ... 48btpy7c6o

[Tobias Blackburn]

Agreed, there has been no official 3e Planescape. Those are just things that must have been made by WotC, not TSR.

And I wasn't saying that Wizards had put out Planescape products, only that none of their 3e books were meant as updates.

[Catman Jim]

I'm really upset that Wizards now has control of Ravenloft. I shuder in horror at how the planescape setting was butchered by wizards, and I almost hope they don't print ravenloft stuff for fear of what they would do to it.

They haven't printed any Planescape stuff. They've printed planar stuff that uses some of Planescape as a basis, but they aren't doing the setting. So I wouldn't worry about them butchering Ravenloft. The closest they might come will be some Monsternomicons and Heroes of Horror, neither of which are meant specifically for Ravenloft, though they would have uses.

I was replying to your first post, not the later one.

[Tobias Blackburn]

I'm really upset that Wizards now has control of Ravenloft. I shuder in horror at how the planescape setting was butchered by wizards, and I almost hope they don't print ravenloft stuff for fear of what they would do to it.

They haven't printed any Planescape stuff. They've printed planar stuff that uses some of Planescape as a basis, but they aren't doing the setting. So I wouldn't worry about them butchering Ravenloft. The closest they might come will be some Monsternomicons and Heroes of Horror, neither of which are meant specifically for Ravenloft, though they would have uses.

I was replying to your first post, not the later one.

Ah. Even there I was refering to 3e. Glad we got that cleared up.

[Smeazel]

Replying belatedly to a few somewhat old posts that don't seem to have been specifically addressed yet:

Wasn't something up with Planescape and dark Sun?

No. At least, with Planescape, I can say it's a definitive no, because I'm fairly heavily involved with the (fan-run) official Planescape website, http://www.planewalker.com, and I'm in a position to know something about what's going on with the setting, and right now, and for the foreseeable future, as far as published materials that's precisely nada. Some time ago, a company did approach WotC to purchase the rights to produce Planescape products. The price WotC named to open discussions (not to actually purchase the rights, but to even open discussions on the matter) was severely prohibitive.

And WotC shows no inclination to do anything with Planescape itself either. As others have mentioned above, WotC has released some products about the planes that used some Planescape material (and they've reused a lot of monsters that were introduced in 2E Planescape books), but those aren't really Planescape products. (The 3E Manual of the Planes wasn't bad, but I loathe, loathe, loathe the Planar Handbook. It would be difficult to get farther away from the feel of Planescape if you tried.)

As for Dark Sun, I have no inside information there, so I can't say for sure whether anything's up with it or not, but I seriously doubt it. It too has a fan-run not-for-profit official website (http://www.athas.org), but I don't think there's any prospect of anything actually being published.

Dragon Magazine has already stated that they received good response to a yearly issue of revisiting old settings, they plan on making the January 2006 issue the next one. We can hope there will be some Ravenloft article then.

Apparently not. According to a post on the Spelljammer discussion list, it's been revealed that the "campaign classic" focus in January 2006 will be on the Spelljammer setting.

[Joël of the FoS]

Apparently not. According to a post on the Spelljammer discussion list[/URL], it's been revealed that the "campaign classic" focus in January 2006 will be on the Spelljammer setting.

From a recent (during the last week) Erik Mona interview: (http://www.gamingreport.com/article.php?sid=18275)

Issue 315 was a campaign classics theme - tried to do article for every campaign settings TSR had done. Frequent letter/message boards request is about canceled campaign settings. Now the answer is every Jan. will do campaign classics (not going to be as exhaustive/pervasive as issue 315 was.) In upcoming Jan. issue have Spelljammer, Planescape, and Ravenloft all in the works.

Spelljammer might have a larger part, but it won't be alone

Joël

[Smeazel]

In upcoming Jan. issue have Spelljammer, Planescape, and Ravenloft all in the works.

Hm. Honestly, I'm not sure whether to consider this good news or not. If it's not going to do something major with the settings, I'd almost rather WotC kept its hands off them entirely than published little snippets that may contradict how they're being developed on the official websites...

(Well, technically I know Paizo is a separate entity from WotC, but the principle's still the same.)

[EDIT: Actually, come to think of it, the fact that Paizo is a separate entity from WotC might sort of be part of the problem. Although technically www.planewalker.com is considered the official Planescape site and its (free) products are considered canonical (though that's not to say that would necessarily be honored in the unlikely circumstance that some company did buy the rights to the setting), nobody involved with planewalker.com was consulted at all the last time Dragon ran Planescape material, and it doesn't seem likely to happen this time either (certainly no one at the site had been informed of the decision to run Planescape material in the upcoming January issue, or I'd have heard of it). Either Paizo doesn't know about the official websites, or it doesn't care. Then again, I suppose WotC probably doesn't care much either, actually. Eh, I'm rambling at this point, and I don't know that I'm making much sense, so I guess I should probably shut up now.]