Subject: MYSTARA-L Digest - 20 Feb 2002 to 21 Feb 2002 (#2002-52) From: Automatic digest processor Date: 22/02/2002, 19:00 To: Recipients of MYSTARA-L digests Reply-to: Mystara RPG Discussion There are 13 messages totalling 584 lines in this issue. Topics of the day: 1. Reviews (4) 2. Elven battle losses (4) 3. Heldannic Campaign 4. Where have all the almanac downloads gone? 5. NWN Realms of Mystara Chat 6. Psionics (2) ******************************************************************** The Other Worlds Homepage: http://www.wizards.com/dnd/OtherWorlds.asp The Mystara Homepage: http://www.dnd.starflung.com/ To unsubscribe, send email to LISTSERV@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM with UNSUB MYSTARA-L in the body of the message. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2002 11:47:05 +0000 From: Gordon McCormick Subject: Reviews On Wed, Feb 20, 2002 at 05:48:34PM -0500, Gilles Leblanc wrote: > >Another is the reviews at Starflung (http://reviews.dnd.starflung.com/). > > The problem is those reviews are to hard to get to from the main site and > that not enough poeple have reviewed products. I reviewed a couple myself > tough, I suggest everyone to do the same ! Another problem is that it looks horrible, has poor navigation and there isn't much in the way of generic product information. However, if anyone is kind enough to send me generic information on any of the items (not a review, but something saying something like Adventure for character levels 3-5 set in Karameikos, also contains rules for gnomes) then I'll add that in. Hopefully it could become a more useful resource! Thanks to the people who've been adding reviews, a lot of it is really interesting [Jacob Skytte has done a wonderful job on all the gazetteers] If anyone has any comments on the submission system and how to make it better I'd love to hear them. Hopefully if I get the time I'll try and make it look a bit more interesting too! cheers, gordon ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2002 08:42:02 -0500 From: Giorgio Subject: Re: Elven battle losses -----Original Message----- From: Mystara RPG Discussion [mailto:MYSTARA-L@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM]On Behalf Of Jacob Skytte Sent: Wednesday, February 20, 2002 4:54 PM To: MYSTARA-L@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM Subject: Re: [MYSTARA] Elven battle losses > Another is the reviews at Starflung (http://reviews.dnd.starflung.com/). > Jacob Skytte The reviews that you posted in the GAZ series where most the helpful. Even thou I only I have few GAZs, these reviews help to give me an overview of the mayor nations of the Old World by giving me an idea of what these nations are like. Is there any similar treatment of reviews done for the other nations of Mystara that are located on the other continents? George ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2002 09:01:55 -0500 From: Giorgio Subject: Re: Reviews -----Original Message----- From: Mystara RPG Discussion [mailto:MYSTARA-L@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM]On Behalf Of Gordon McCormick Sent: Thursday, February 21, 2002 6:47 AM To: MYSTARA-L@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM Subject: [MYSTARA] Reviews > Thanks to the people who've been adding reviews, a lot of it is really > interesting [Jacob Skytte has done a wonderful job on all the gazetteers] If > anyone has any comments on the submission system and how to make it better I'd > love to hear them. Hopefully if I get the time I'll try and make it look a bit > more interesting too! After having read over half of the reviews, here is what comes to mind: 1- On the main page Id change "Gazetteers and the like" for "Gazetteers and Campaign Sourcebooks" as that is what the link takes you to. 2-On the main page Id change "Everything Else " for "Misc. Accessories, Novels and Games" . 3-It would be nice to have a link on the top of each page that lets you jump to another page in the reviews sections (like the main links found on the majority of the pages of The Mystara Homepage). 4- As for the reviews themselves, Id drop the "ratings" reviews which are not particularly helpful or useful in my view, and leave "product" reviews in their place. They don't have to be extensive as the ones Jacob did, but the should contain something useful for DM and Players besides "Don't buy this, it sucks". Take a look at the GAZ 10 reviews. Out of 9 different "reviews" only the ones by Jacob (a product overview) and Gilles (another product review ; while short it gives two pieces of information useful for a DM , one about the style of the game, and another one about game rules) proved useful to me as a DM. All the other you can delete them and there would be no great loss. Take a look at the Wrath of the Immortals reviews. Three short "product reviews" (not "ratings reviews") all of which where useful to me as a DM. That's what Id like to see in all the reviews. George ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2002 14:20:18 +0000 From: Gilles Leblanc Subject: Re: Reviews > > Take a look at the GAZ 10 reviews. Out of 9 different "reviews" only the > ones by Jacob (a product overview) and Gilles (another product review ; > while short it gives two pieces of information useful for a DM , one about > the style of the game, and another one about game rules) proved useful to > me > as a DM. All the other you can delete them and there would be no great > loss. > Thanks, Im Gilles, Gilles and Bleakcabal are the same person btw. Jacob's review are longer and better than mine. But short reviews like mine are still a bit useful and frankly they don't take long to write im sure anyone could write one in 2 minutes. I know im always the optimist, but supposed everyone takes just 2 minutes each day to write a single review ! We could have lotsa of information there. _________________________________________________________________ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2002 15:04:25 +0000 From: Gordon McCormick Subject: Re: Reviews On Thu, Feb 21, 2002 at 09:01:55AM -0500, Giorgio wrote: > > Take a look at the GAZ 10 reviews. Out of 9 different "reviews" only the > ones by Jacob (a product overview) and Gilles (another product review ; > while short it gives two pieces of information useful for a DM , one about > the style of the game, and another one about game rules) proved useful to me > as a DM. All the other you can delete them and there would be no great loss. Most of them were just me testing the system, I've cleaned up the ones that weren't real product reviews. Thanks for the comments, hopefully it's a bit better now with nav bars and stuff. cheers, gordon ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2002 12:36:19 -0500 From: Giorgio Subject: Re: Elven battle losses -----Original Message----- From: Mystara RPG Discussion [mailto:MYSTARA-L@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM]On Behalf Of Ville V Lahde Sent: Wednesday, February 20, 2002 10:18 AM To: MYSTARA-L@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM Subject: Re: [MYSTARA] Elven battle losses > Apart from the briefly mentioned Orcwars of 800- (in which the elves must > have taken part), there isn't knowledge of major wars before the onset > of the "Almanac" and "Wrath of the Immortals" timelines. They, of > course, include lot of wars and the destruction of Alfheim as a > nation. but since I've never even read the stuff (and if you haven't), > I suggest that you look at the compiled timelines and Almanacs at > Vaults of Pandius. In the Atlas section there's a lot of stuff on > Alfheim, anyway. But basically, the 200 las years have been pretty > peaceful. Just finished reading the extensive timeline (took almost 2 hours to read) posted there. I had no idea the history of Mystara was so .....bloody. As for the stuff on Alfheim, most of it relates to post 1,000 AC so I don't understand half of what they are referring to. Found a beautiful jpg map though. > Still, one must remember that a lot of elves see combat during guard > duty by the bad magic points, adventuring and in the fringes of the > forest. Bad magic points? > (Coincidentally enough, your Inhuman Wars seemed to take place right about > the time of the Orcwars, even though they really sounded a lot tougher > than the Orcwars pictured in the tongue-in-the-cheek game in the Orcs of > Thar Gazetteer.) After reading the "The Unofficial Timeline of Mystara" and thinking about my own games history, I believe a little "historical revision" is due. Let me work on it on another email... (snip elven military make up) > (More info on the older D&D products, even summaries, can be found by > searching the web. One example is Marco Delmonte's page at:) > http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Dungeon/2967/ Thanks, they proved very useful. > - The Oenkmarians are a large community of humanoids, who live in an > isolated underground city (it drifts around in a sea of lava, so it IS > pretty isolated). Their society is highly developed and centres around an > evil cult. You can find the stuff in the Orcs of Thar Gazetteer - although > it is pretty hard to find a copy nowadays, I think. Not really. About $30-50 gets you access to most of the GAZs on Ebay. Cheap, eh? > By the way, just to compare you campaign with the "canon" one (which > everyone is of course at liberty to change - like when you included > Warhammer humanoid races), the leader of Broken lands, king Thar, is said > to be able to raise a horde of 20 000 humanoids from the Broken lands and > the surrounding mountain communities. (Mentioned in the Rockhome > Gazetteer) They are however of low quality and training. Doesn't sound like the kind of evil humanoid horde I want. I will come up with something like Drazen's Horde from Dragon Magazine #292. Add in the humanoids ability to quickly reproduce, a vast track of fertile grass land being used as a mayor food source, a territory rich in minerals and natural defenses, and a strong leader capable of forming a disciplined and organized army, and you got a real threat to civilizations everywhere. > - Ethengar is mostly hostile to the humanoids, but one of the Khans has > been working secretly with the humanoids. Such "traitorous" plans might be > a good way to explain the food trade - or, the Ethengarians may just > decide to help the humanoids in order to "soften" the other countries for > their future invasion plans... ...or better yet: For the last 192 years a "cold war" state has existed between the Broken Lands and the Khante. All of the grasslands north of the Broken Lands are under humanoid control, being worked by humanoid slaves. The humanoids don't want to launch a mayor war to take any more Khanate territory, and the humans don't want to launch a mayor war of re-conquest to take their lands back. With neither side willing to commit the amount of troops it would take to change the situation, for the last 2 centuries the border has been characterized by short violent border skirmishes and low level raids by both sides. The Humanoids are saving their strength for their war in the fall of 1,000 AC , and the Khante is building its strength for its coming wars with the Freehold and the Vestland. Thus neither side is in any hurry to change the situation over a large track of empty grasslands. > Hope this helps, > Ville Aye it does. George ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2002 18:28:48 +0100 From: =?iso-8859-1?q?Havard=20Faanes?= Subject: Re: Heldannic Campaign Thanks, These are great! This is exactly what I was looking for. Havard --- Kar Ess skrev: > Here are a few websites > Teutonic knights > > http://kuhttp.cc.ukans.edu/kansas/orb/encyclop/religion/monastic/opsahl1.html > http://orb.rhodes.edu/encyclop/religion/monastic/opsahl2.html > http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14541b.htm > http://www.ChivalricOrders.org/vatican/teutonic.htm > http://jeru.huji.ac.il/ef37.htm > http://www.dtorden.or.at/e/geschichte.htm > > > Their home page > http://www.dtorden.or.at/ > > The first site, ORB is a great place, useful for > lots of background. > > KS > --- Havard Faanes wrote: > > Hello, > > I am thinking about starting a new campaign, this > time > > set in the lands of Heldann. Has anyone else used > > Heldann in their campaigns? Has anyone run, or > thought > > about running a Heldannic Knights campaign? > > > > Im looking for campaing ideas, adventure hooks etc > > that could be useful in starting such a campaign. > > Thanks! > > > > PS: Any good websites on the Teutonic Knights or > other > > historical info that could be used as background > for > > Heldann is appreciated. > > > > Havard > > > > > ______________________________________________________ > > Sjekk snørapporter... > > fra 500 ski-destinasjoner i Europa > > på http://no.snow.yahoo.com/ > > > > > ******************************************************************** > > The Other Worlds Homepage: > http://www.wizards.com/dnd/OtherWorlds.asp > > The Mystara Homepage: > http://www.dnd.starflung.com/ > > To unsubscribe, send email to > LISTSERV@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM > > with UNSUB MYSTARA-L in the body of the message. > > > > > __________________________________________________ > Do You Yahoo!? > Yahoo! Sports - Coverage of the 2002 Olympic Games > http://sports.yahoo.com > > ******************************************************************** > The Other Worlds Homepage: > http://www.wizards.com/dnd/OtherWorlds.asp > The Mystara Homepage: http://www.dnd.starflung.com/ > To unsubscribe, send email to > LISTSERV@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM > with UNSUB MYSTARA-L in the body of the message. > ______________________________________________________ Sjekk snørapporter... fra 500 ski-destinasjoner i Europa på http://no.snow.yahoo.com/ ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2002 09:41:43 -0800 From: Herve Musseau Subject: Re: Where have all the almanac downloads gone? From: "Roger Winter" > I have been looking at the almanac site, and trying to download some of the additional stuff, but these are all unavailable: > THE ALFHEIM WARS (circa AC 1007) > THE EMPIRE OF SELHOMARR > THE HISTORY OF LITTONIA > ZOLTAN THE TREEKEEPER > Will these be reappearing anytime soon? > I've read them some time ago, and I was planning on using some of this stuff in my own campaign. I'm glad you find them useful. Apparently they are still present on the old almanac website, which is located at http://www.geocities.com/gallidox/ . They are not on the new website (almanac.starflung.com) yet because I uploaded the MA1018 and the most important file of the older MAs last month and I didn't want to exceed my max monthly upload. Someday everything will be there. Hope you can retrieve them now, if not ask me again. ===== ___________________________________________________________ Herve Musseau http://www.geocities.com/hmusseau/ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Sports - Coverage of the 2002 Olympic Games http://sports.yahoo.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2002 12:21:53 -0600 From: John Polacek Subject: NWN Realms of Mystara Chat Hey everybody, Just a friendly reminder that there will be a chat tonight at Realms of Mystara at 7 PM CST (about 7 hours from the time you get this email!). Feel free to stop by, even if you're just curious - lurking is encouraged! http://www.mystaranet.com/chatmain.htm On IRC: Server: chat.planetz.net port: 6667 channel: #Realms_of_Mystara Hope to see you there! Ashlander, Producer Realms of Mystara http://www.mystaranet.com _________________________________________________________________ Send and receive Hotmail on your mobile device: http://mobile.msn.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2002 11:15:05 -0800 From: Chris Furneaux Subject: Re: Elven battle losses > >Still, one must remember that a lot of elves see > combat during guard > >duty by the bad magic points, adventuring and in > the fringes of the > >forest. > > Bad magic points? Covered in the Alfheim gaz, bassically what I remember of it is there are good and bad magic points which are bassically points of strong magical energys. However each one does a different thing, the good have varying abilities for example some aid healing, some offensive spells, others defensive spells, etc. The bad ones do different things too, such as random summoning of monsters and other bad stuff. Each is also prone to movement and are different sizes so sometimes can be found where they normally aren't. Minor good and bad magic points appear from time to time so one must be carful in the woods of alfheim as these can lead to unexpected happenings. However these usually dissappear quickly too so there is not allways time to exploit them or discover all their properties. Thats most of what I can remember, although there is more but I don't have the gaz on me. Chris. P.S. Welcome if I haven't said so already. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Sports - Coverage of the 2002 Olympic Games http://sports.yahoo.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2002 22:55:46 +0100 From: Jacob Skytte Subject: Re: Elven battle losses Giorgio wrote: > The reviews that you posted in the GAZ series where most the helpful. = Even > thou I only I have few GAZs, these reviews help to give me an overview = of > the mayor nations of the Old World by giving me an idea of what these > nations are like. Thanks, I poured a bit of hard work into them. I also reviewed most of = the high-level adventure modules (CM and M series), but this might not = be as useful to you. > Is there any similar treatment of reviews done for the other nations = of > Mystara that are located on the other continents? Unfortunately not. Official products do not detail much beyond the Known = World. I have a review of Champions of Mystara, which explores the = western half of the same continent. Dawn of the Emperors has info on = lands to the east (and a little to the south) of the Known World. The = Savage Coast supplements also explores the west. I believe that the rest = of the world is explored solely in fan material. Jacob Skytte scythe@wanadoo.dk ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2002 20:27:42 -0500 From: Giorgio Subject: Psionics Before I go posting anything about using psionics in my Mystara campaign, is there anything I should know about with regards to any "group consensus" on the topic? I ask because I am currently reading some old mailing list topics (back in Oct 99) and it seem to be a hot topic back then.... George ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2002 08:47:06 +0100 From: Giampaolo Agosta Subject: Re: Psionics Giorgio wrote: > Before I go posting anything about using psionics in my Mystara campaign, > is there anything I should know about with regards to any "group consensus" > on the topic? I think most people agree that Mystara has either no psionics at all, or that psionics are limited in power and restricted to special areas like Yavdlom or the Savage Coast. Some reasoning as been done about the possibility of psionics emerging when (and if) magic will disappear as a consequence of NoS draining, IIRC. Anyway, this obviously doesn't mean you should restrict yourself to any of these hypothesis. I, for one, would be interested in reading about psionics in Mystara campaigns. -- Giampaolo Agosta agathokles@libero.it agosta@elet.polimi.it http://digilander.iol.it/agathokles ------------------------------ End of MYSTARA-L Digest - 20 Feb 2002 to 21 Feb 2002 (#2002-52) ***************************************************************