15th Anniversary of the Book of Souls Netbook!

[Matthew L. Martin]

Speaking of which: Mangrum, would you retain Knowledge (the planes) being cross class for all or go with the core rules?

Core rules. Really not a fan of any of the new rules added in the 3.5 Ravenloft Player's Handbook.

Is there any Clarification of that.... I think I got the 3.5 but curious as to what the changes were.

Weaknesses, Realm Magic Ratings, and the revised Monster Hunter were all developer additions. I'm not sure if there were any other changes.

[Zilfer]

Magic Ratings I'm eventually going to use... but not for the whole domain. Just to mix a few things up or use it as a plot device. Most of my game won't use it like it suggests, it's just a side add on thing according to the book. Weakness' I havent used them either yet. I'm still thinking about that one. I wonder how the monster hunter was different though.

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

Is there any Clarification of that.... I think I got the 3.5 but curious as to what the changes were.

If you have a "Ravenloft Player's Handbook", it's 3.5. The 3.0 version is called "Ravenloft Campagin Setting".

[Mangrum]

Point 10: Andrew Wyatt's suggestion: Streamline technology levels. Boil 'em down to something like Savage, Ancient, Medieval, Enlightened.

[Zilfer]

Yeah Ron, I have 3.5 then because it's players handbook. Even though it has some DMing stuff in there i thinks.

[brothersale]

Each of the Kargatane actually has a CD archive of the whole site, including the messageboards, as it was at the end of Halloween 2003 - I still occasionally have a browse when I'm feeling nostalgic.

Stu

Does that mean that its possible that the reviews and messageboards could be added in some fashion to the FoS' Archive? I for one would love to mine the messageboard for what every nuggets of information I could find

[Joël of the FoS]

I remember the K's message board being prunned regularly, IIRC, for server space reason, so this memory, while surely extremely interesting, would not be as immense as you think.

Here, after 2004, we chose to never prune the boards, but that option was perhaps difficult in the early K years.

Why the difference? Message boards software got less space expansive, or server space got cheaper, I don't know!

Joël

[brothersale]

still if the information is available, even if older topics have been pruned, that still leaves months of threads and as I said the reviews, so we would be fools not to ask.

[alhoon]

Point 10: Andrew Wyatt's suggestion: Streamline technology levels. Boil 'em down to something like Savage, Ancient, Medieval, Enlightened.

If I may say about this (and other suggested changes) I prefer things as they were in the 3E book. 9 CLevels, Suggestion to keep the setting low magic at least as far as Magic items go, NPCs not following exactly the same rules for PChecks as PCs etc.

[Ryan Naylor]

Point 10: Andrew Wyatt's suggestion: Streamline technology levels. Boil 'em down to something like Savage, Ancient, Medieval, Enlightened.

If I may say about this (and other suggested changes) I prefer things as they were in the 3E book. 9 CLevels, Suggestion to keep the setting low magic at least as far as Magic items go, NPCs not following exactly the same rules for PChecks as PCs etc.

Why?

[alhoon]

Personal preference.
For the CLevels: For example, Chivalric CL 8 means that there is heavy plate armor and gunpowder cannons. CL9 means a shift towards muskets, less armor, pikes etc. I wouldn't call them both "enlightment" on the other hand CL8 is not too Medieval either, since there is some gunpowder and heavy plate.
CL7 is heavy chain, many weapons, not very good long bows etc. Yet this is different from the early medieval age of 800-1000 both in mindset and equipment.

So when we say Martira bay is CL8, I can picture more accurately what's in there it's like the armor and dresses and all we see in Jan D'arc, war of the Roses and similar films or books. Saying Dementlieu is enlightened (which is CL9) that's ... 3 musketeers era.
They can't IMO be combined adequatedly in 1 era.

As for low magic item/low magic:
For settlements (I use a modified settlement generator from DMG) I roll less wizards and clerics. For magic item price, I double cost and market price (and at lvl 8-9, I consider the PCs to be 1 lvl less because of lack of equipment).
So it's not easy to implement and it's one of the things that make Ravenloft special in a way for me and my players.

For NPCs not following the same path as PCs:
Settingwise: Different labrats, different set of tests.
Game enjoyment side: Because with using the same set of rules for PCs and NPCs, Toben the many would become Darklord very fast. The same with that vampire under the hill, since every time he/she feeds, it's a "grevious assault". The same the bandit lord that has kept his place for a couple of years.

Some times I want NPC bandit lords etc that are ... not cursed. A bandit that has led others to kill, rape, steal for a couple of years, would earn a domain. If the rules are such that the "default" bandit lord doesn't get a domain after 10 murders, 20 robberies, causing 20 injuries and torturing 4 people to have them tell him where they have their money... then the rules don't work since the PCs have more or less free reign.
You can't use the same rules for NPCs (many of which are monsters) and PCs IMO.

[brothersale]

Know they didn't appear in the Book of Souls but in the later Book of Sorrows and Book of Secrets, but this seem like the best place to ask.

Did Joe Bardales ever finish the third Sherlock Holmes and the Red Death?

I enjoyed the first two and know that the final part was not released in the BoS series, but I was wondering if it was finished or abandoned

[The Giamarga]

So if anyone of the Kargatane still reads this: a questions about obscure RL trivia:

Hoelgar Arnuttson. Who put him in the Darkon chapter of the Gazetteer ? Why did he loose 2 levels compared to his 2E incarantation? Where any of you aware that there's a TSR collecting card of him that details an interesting backstory for him ? (... the Golden Eyed Youth with the Silver Blade)

[Mangrum]

I wrote the Darkon Gazetteer, and I think I can answer the rest of the questions by asking you to ponder just how obscure and hard to obtain trading cards are in the grand scheme of a published line of books. I consider those cards to be on the barest fringes of canon, along with RPGA modules, the video games, and basically anything else that years down the line only the most obsessive collectors are likely to own.

So I guess my answer boils down to "I didn't consider trading cards canon." Even if I thought they were, they were too much trouble to track down.

[Matthew L. Martin]

Supporting John's position is that the AD&D trading cards reportedly have a dubious relationship with canon themselves--the DRAGONLANCE cards, as I understand it, mess up backgrounds for major characters.