I'm a big PF fan, and I own a lot of these materials in print, so I'm excited that we'll see a return. It's a great D&D setting and one of the best D&D settings produced during the 3rd edition era.

Its the last day of the kickstarter today, its made lots of stretch goals and so if you pledge you get the 5th edition (or pathfinder) corebook plus a shed load of Scarred lands PDFs.

Well, damn. A kickstarter I would have backed. I guess I'll have to hope for a reasonable public product, alas.

I hate when I forget about a Kickstarter, but Butcher's right, RQ6 would be a kickass system for Scarred Lands, so fuck it, I already have all the old stuff.

I signed up for the "48 hours to go" alert but ended up not backing it because $20 for a ton of 3e PDFs plus the 5e PDF is not quite what I've been looking for.

And for RQ6 I guess I'd rather run Glorantha, or maybe an ersatz-Scarred Lands with Gloranthan/RQ metaphysics.

When the 5e PDF comes out, if the reviews are good and the price is right, I might get it.

One of the things I liked the most about the setting was its attention to detail and backstory explaining why the world is a D&D campaign setting. Monsters were creations of the titans, the nine gods represented the nine alignments, the world was recovering from an apocalypse, psionics was brought by alien intelligences, events affected one another logically, etc. It was really interesting as far as campaign settings went. I'm glad to see it return and I hope it receives more books in the future.

Yes. Another thing I liked about it is that it gave a reason for non-clerics to care about the gods. Who was patron of what, to whom you might pray to achieve a certain end, and a small, nice, but probably meaningless mechanical advantage in doing so.

It fit together well, even though you had to buy a stack of books to figure things out.

Has the Kickstarter been fulfilled?

If so, what do you think of the final product?

We have the PDF in hand, still waiting on the print copy. The art is incredible and my first pass was "this is spot on for 5e". I would likely run the setting using a different system anyways, so the info within is a fantastic fountain of info.

What was special about the SL setting?

Like Pundit I remember seeing these books around a lot at the dawn of the 3.0 Era but I never read them, played them, or knew anyone who had.

It was a well done version of a fantasy campaign where not-Zeus and his family and friends threw down the titans 100 years ago. It gave reasons for certain races to be enemies, allies, or uncertain, ruins to explore, and cults that you had to openly tolerate.

For example, there was a decent in-setting rationale why in civilization paladins had to tolerate and work with certain evil high priests. In the wilds, well, that was different.

Another fun thing is that the titans deaths actively affect the world. One sea is made of blood, because a wounded titan is buried beneath it. Cultists are also actively trying to free the titans, so that's a fun mystery style adventure ready to go.

Quote from: Just Another Snake Cult;951125What was special about the SL setting?

Their Creature Collection was the best MM in the 3e era. Full of tremendous flavor.

They shit the bed on the setting though.  Different Titanspawn races and some of the more aggressive and evil Divine Races are PC options and are now accepted.  Whether it was due to letting people play the snowflake or the SJW cause of not having an "enemy race", they fundamentally changed the setting.

The Mandrigora, for example, were the creation of Vangal, the C/E God, to fight the Titanswar and are C/E berserking monsters, bred for slaughter.  Called the "Cats of Vangal" they had only a vaguely cat-like face and a mouth full of shark teeth that regrew.  Now they are the Thundercats, full on furry Lion People and accepted in polite society, their blade-like claws gone (in one picture a Lion-chick is wearing a claw gauntlet on her belt.)

The Hollow Knights weren't evil, they were the creation of Corean, the L/G God, who raised up the souls of fallen champions and bound them into armor to fight the Titanswar.  Betrayed by Vangal, Corean was not able to resurrect them as was planned into their human bodies, so they are bound forever into the armor until destroyed.  Since there is no more need to fight the Titanswar, there are no more Hollow Knights left.  So these fallen heroes exist as best they can as their numbers steadily diminish as they fight the remnants of evil in the Scarred Lands.  Now of course, the Hollow Knights found a way to make new ones, called the Hollow Legionnaires, but these aren't the souls of the greatest Paladins, so you can start out at first level.

Also they made some odd choices in translating some of the Prestige classes into class options, altering the original intent, which is true of the Pathfinder version as well.


Back in the D20 days there wer two MMOs translated to d20.  Everquest and Warcraft.  Everquest made substantial changes to most things about the 3e system in order to stay faithful to Everquest.  Warcraft was a shoehorned mess that didn't reflect the MMO at all.

AiME 5e is the equivalent of Everquest d20, a translation that alters the rules to fit the setting.
Scarred Lands 5e is the equivalent of Warcraft D20, a conversion that alters the setting to fit the rules.

Quote from: Baron Opal;951449It was a well done version of a fantasy campaign where not-Zeus and his family and friends threw down the titans 100 years ago. It gave reasons for certain races to be enemies, allies, or uncertain, ruins to explore, and cults that you had to openly tolerate.

For example, there was a decent in-setting rationale why in civilization paladins had to tolerate and work with certain evil high priests. In the wilds, well, that was different.

One of the only settings where mixed parties were plausible, even sensible. It was a little like Eberron before we had Eberron.

Quote from: danbuter;951483Another fun thing is that the titans deaths actively affect the world. One sea is made of blood, because a wounded titan is buried beneath it. Cultists are also actively trying to free the titans, so that's a fun mystery style adventure ready to go.

This neatly explained why there was a preponderance of bizarre monsters roaming the land. It feels like real mythology rather than the bizarre unexplained ecology typical of gaming.

Quote from: Spinachcat;951529Their Creature Collection was the best MM in the 3e era. Full of tremendous flavor.

I loved how the entries took pains to explain the origins and motivations of the monsters. Many of them were quite tragic (e.g. everything made by Golthain) or delightful idiosyncratic (the strife elemental was an awesome example of strange but compelling ecologies). The new edition went further and gave playable versions of the snakemen and ratmen.

Quote from: CRKrueger;951638They shit the bed on the setting though.  Different Titanspawn races and some of the more aggressive and evil Divine Races are PC options and are now accepted.  Whether it was due to letting people play the snowflake or the SJW cause of not having an "enemy race", they fundamentally changed the setting.

The Mandrigora, for example, were the creation of Vangal, the C/E God, to fight the Titanswar and are C/E berserking monsters, bred for slaughter.  Called the "Cats of Vangal" they had only a vaguely cat-like face and a mouth full of shark teeth that regrew.  Now they are the Thundercats, full on furry Lion People and accepted in polite society, their blade-like claws gone (in one picture a Lion-chick is wearing a claw gauntlet on her belt.)

The Hollow Knights weren't evil, they were the creation of Corean, the L/G God, who raised up the souls of fallen champions and bound them into armor to fight the Titanswar.  Betrayed by Vangal, Corean was not able to resurrect them as was planned into their human bodies, so they are bound forever into the armor until destroyed.  Since there is no more need to fight the Titanswar, there are no more Hollow Knights left.  So these fallen heroes exist as best they can as their numbers steadily diminish as they fight the remnants of evil in the Scarred Lands.  Now of course, the Hollow Knights found a way to make new ones, called the Hollow Legionnaires, but these aren't the souls of the greatest Paladins, so you can start out at first level.

Also they made some odd choices in translating some of the Prestige classes into class options, altering the original intent, which is true of the Pathfinder version as well.

All of these guys were offered as PC options in 3.x, only now they've been adjusted for game balance. The original versions still exist in the setting.

If you're going to complain about mutilating the setting to fit the rules, that's part and parcel of Pathfinder. The rules are so complex and convoluted that writers really don't have a choice: you either rebuild your setting around the rules or you use a better system like 5e or 13th Age.

That's the reason I abandoned Pathfinder in the first place.