One of the first third party OGL books that came out was a peculiar sort of monster Manual from, of all people, White Wolf. In it were some good, and some not so good, critters all from a somewhat fantastic sounding setting called the "Scarred Lands".
I still have that book, somewhere. What I don't have is any other Scarred Lands books to make use of it. It remains a source of oddities to pull upon hapless players if I ever remember to flip through it and find something suitably... different.
Why don't I have any other Scarred Lands books? Is it because they didn't make any? No, there are currently 36 seperate books for sale on WW's website.
Is it because I didn't like the premise? What is not to like! Recent gods vs titan war, a city built on a gigantic mithril golem, general freaky shit...
No. I'll tell you why I didn't buy it. Because there is not, to my limited knowledge, a single book that gives you a playable overview of the setting. I found half a dozen 'region' gazateers.
Lets say I offered you a game on some mythical place called.... Earth. Now, I can't tell you much about the Earth, but I want you to pick one of the five region/contients to chose from. Now, in real life you already have an idea what to expect in an 'Asia' Gazateer. Why? because you are FROM EARTH. You already have a great deal of knowledge and expectation about the region, that going into greater detail, via a Gazateer, isn't a bad idea.
But you know what? I don't know a single player from the Scarred Lands. No one I know has that lifetime of absorbed knowledge about any of the settings. Gazateers are meaningless to me until I know more. Do I want X? maybe I'd be happier with Y? How the fuck should I know?
I could analyze this in relation to the company; suggest WW's history of making 'modern world' games has blinded them to this simple fact. Players don't know the setting, and don't want six or more books to learn it in. They want one, at least just to start.
Maybe, just maybe, in 36 books, one of them functions as a 'intro to the Scarred lands'. Maybe, maybe not. I do know not a fucking one of them leaps out and says 'Hey, fucknut! Over here, start here!'. So I close the link to WW's catalog with a sigh of only mild regret for the campaigns I might have played. And when I see that white cover Monster Manual I shake my head for all the slightly pretentious, and totall awesomely different, critters that might only make guest appearences, and I move on.
I agree. This is a very backward and stupid way to sell a setting.
RPGPundit
Scarred Lands: Ghelspad
I think they did it like that to keep the more useful for any campaigm instead of just for the line
We used to have 6 or 7 Scarred Lands books on our shelves in the early days of the Game Store.
It never sold that well.
- Ed C.
I used to use the Titans in Ghelspad for the Primordials in Exalted until those kind of books started coming out. I think it was a well written book, but I (like you) only got that first book. It seemed complete in many ways, so there seemed no reason to buy anything else (especially since I wasn't going to get my group to play D&D for most anything).
The Gazetteers were supposed to be the intro books and they functioned pretty well on that level. This was not obvious from the back cover blurbs.
The main campaign setting books each covered a continent approximately the size of the Forgotten Realms, so they are basically complete no matter which one you pick. You know which one you want by the setting blurb. They're both dark fantasy settings and quite damn good as they don't fall into the "it's futile we're all going to die" dark fantasy pit trap and also avoid the "don't worry there's plenty of good guys around to save you" dark fantasy poison dart trap. The Scarred Lands is a damn good dark fantasy setting because things are bad but if we had some hot-cha heroes in ridiculous looking armor, things might start looking up. The world, in short, needs the PCs. Bad.
As for which one you pick, Ghelspad is what you pick if you want to fight oppression, Termana is what you pick if you want to fight corruption. Termana is also gross-er. You can also tell this from the back of the books.
I should also note that if you liked the monster books from the Scarred Lands, the class books will knock your socks off. They were way better than the 3.0 WOTC class books. I know this is setting the bar low.
I am pretty sure you can get a crapload of Scarred Lands stuff super-cheap through the White Wolf website, it's well worth it.
Much better than the official class books, with relatively balanced prestige classes
there are only two gazetteers, one for ghelspad and one for termana. what you must be thinking of are the different region or city books, like hornsaw forest or hollowfaust. in that respect, the SL are no different from FR releases, really.
definitely worth picking the stuff up on the cheap. good sourcebook and adventure material. i would have loved to dm'ed or played in the SL. :(
Spike, I agree. I found the situation very confusing as well. Maybe it's simple minded of me, but if you have a setting called X then I really want to be able to by a book called X that gives an overview of the whole shebang.
It sounds like there was a lot of good material there that didn't get across to some people due to a lack of a general overview. That's a pity.
What other games do that, though? As far as I can recall, just about every official D&D setting went with the corebook/supplement model, while most other games I can think of at least have a general setting overview in the core.
I think the line suffered from being dual-purpose: trying to be both setting and general d20 rule supplements at the same time. I got the DM Screen to get a screen for D&D3E and got the stats for the setting's races in the booklet in the screen. :confused: The S&S spell and monster books were also for the setting, not just general d20 books. I stopped around the time of the class books and understand things got worse after that. Very unfocused and scattered past the initial run.
But the early books are very good IMO. I still have the Ghelspad Gazetteer (never got beyond that continent so no need for the other one) and some of the city books like Hollowfaust. And that GM Screen and booklet. :raise:
There may have been an expanded setting book for at least Ghelspad in hardcover (I have a saddlebound slim book for the Gazetteer) but I'm not sure.
(catching up on threads)
I have the monster book. I also think it is pretty groovy. As a matter of fact i need to pull it out and convert some of it over to True20. How can you not like a book that has a monster called a fatling?
Quote from: beeberdefinitely worth picking the stuff up on the cheap. good sourcebook and adventure material. i would have loved to dm'ed or played in the SL. :(
:hmm:
(After briefly flirting with the notion of a SL PbP, CS returns to sanity realizing he's already in 2 other PbPs.)
There was an expanded Ghelspad book, but it didn't add a lot to the gazetteer.
And yeah, the Scarred Lands was really confusingly published. It was kind of a blah setting, which didn't help matters much either.
Personally, I'm a tremendous fan of boxed sets, and failing that, one big (hardcover) book with supplements to taste. I don't need every last little detail of the setting in that book, but I find it useful to have a clearly marked starting point to introduce myself to the setting, with just enough other material to clearly distinguish it from other settings on the market, and to give me an idea of the kinds of thing this setting is ideally used for.