Well, once i get past the page of signatures, and the fact that tracy hickman drew a sketch of me in the book, we have a book i've waited a long long time to see.
Be warned though. The DLCS is an incomplete book. You cannot play without the AoM. It's just too valuable a resource.
Yeah it says age of mortals, and yeah it focuses on the fifth age, but dude, this book is the detail we've wanted to see in ansalon of any age.
Chapter 1 is over 60 pages in length, and explains a ton about the races and what they are doing, where they are, how they live, etc. The second half is mainly PrCs. Let me say this much. The academy sorceror and the citadel mystic are amazing. Totally capture the flavor of the fifth age AND the SAGA system. I bow down.
Chapter 2 is magic items, and spells. You can really see the synergy between the book dept and the gaming dept here. Especially with cool things from the new linsha book, and from Rise of the Titans and stuff. I'm loving it already.
Chapter 3. Oh My God, chapter 3!
A time line of the fifth age, with more detail than anything but Granak's and with info we never had before. But forget that. There are pages and pages devoted to the climate and terrain and flora and fauna and how races react to each of the above, for every part of ansalon. Plus info on rural and city life, and nobility and stuff. Dude.
Now i was like, damn thats a great chapter.
Then i saw chapter 4 and died.
CITIES, STRONGHOLDS, AND RUINS.
A whole bleedin' chapter on city descriptions! Populations! Government! Religion! Important People! Important Places!
Basically everything i've been begging and pleading for, since FOREVER.
And the kicker? KHUR. He describes huge swaths of KHUR!!
And flotsam, and balifor, and relgoth, and beacon, and other cities. Dude, this is it. Even Terry would like this book.
Mt Nevermind has 50,000 gnomes. Hylo has 19000 kender. And on and on. The geography that wasnt in the DLCS is here, waiting for us.
Chapter 5 also filled me with glee as it deals with religion in the fifth age and what the gods are doing now that they're back. Lots of solid details on the cosmology, and how the gods interact with souls and stuff.
chapter 6? monsters. eh, one is the same as the other.
And then i saw it. TITANS. Alright folks, we have a winner here.
The end of the book is devoted to Overlords, though gellidus is still missing (sorry, terry, but apparently Frost is still in charge of southern ergoth, and highly paranoid).
All in all? Are you a Dragonlance fan? Not a casual i read the novels type, but a real i know the number of scales on the tail of slith type? This book will fill you with glee.
The DLCS is amazing. I was sure nothing could top it. And i was right. this doesnt top it. but i'll be a kender's uncle if this isnt the best supplement to a core campaign i've seen =)
The only downside is that it repeats a lot of stuff (and some of it is propably also mentioned in the DLCS). After you read for the third time that paladine is mortal and takhisis is dead, you get the message and it doesn't need to be repeated a few times more. Although repetition is good to help you remember
I have a few suggestions though.
first, an index. It would be invaluable.
second, a bibliography. I've read every dragonlance book, but it would be nice to have a reminder of where some info comes from, for further reference. Like i cant for the life of me remember where morgan di kyre's story is.
third, MAPS. there were like 2 maps in the whole book. But, this is a horse that died a long time ago, so i'm not going to beat it.
oh, and cam, give your NDA my regards ;)
man, i'm gonna scan in that tracy pic =)
What does the Discipline feat do?
Discipline- +1 will saves, +2 concentration
btw, kai lord, great contest over in enworld. I hope i win =)
Originally posted by talinthas
monsters- bound spirits, titans, advanced dragons, shadow dragons, sea dragons, and a list of overlords, and a few npcs.
Discipline- +1 will saves, +2 concentration
Cool. Thanks.
Originally posted by talinthas
btw, kai lord, great contest over in enworld. I hope i win =)
Yeah it'd be cool to see a DL character win the whole thing. Good luck, man.
All these people with the books, I'm dying with envy!
Who did you order them through? Amazon?
Originally posted by talinthas
second, a bibliography. I've read every dragonlance book, but it would be nice to have a reminder of where some info comes from, for further reference. Like i cant for the life of me remember where morgan di kyre's story is.
His story is in the Heroes of Hope Saga Boxed Set. ;)
And BTW I'm glad you enjoyed Chapters 3 and 4 as I'm kind of partial to them myself.
Geography was a really interesting section to work on. We had to meet at least a certain word count on each one. On Lacynos (Nethosak), I turned in around 1,500 more words than the minimum required. There was just so much info in DL16 World of Krynn. At the same time, we had a few that didn't have much info on them, so we were able to expand. Beacon was a fun example of this. There wasn't much on Beacon, so I had to add a bit of "local flavor".
Prestige classes were also quite fun to work on. I was quite impressed with the job on the Citadel Mystic and Academy Sorcerer myself. I thought they worked well to capture that SAGA feel.
Anyway, glad you're enjoying the book.
Oh well. There's always the nexus and the Tobril =)
Be warned though. The DLCS is an incomplete book. You cannot play without the AoM. It's just too valuable a resource.
I immediately got a rather wary feeling as soon as I read that comment.
Is the AOM truly necessary to play a DL campaign in 3e regardless of the age you intend to set the campaign in?
I have little interest in playing a 5'th age campaign, my primary interest in adventuring within 4'th age 15-20yrs post WoTL.
Given the above is it really necessary that I purchase the AOM supplement, or is it trully impossible to play without having both books?
I'm understandably reluctant to spend to spend the $55 on the AOM unless I'm absolutely certain that I will get my useage out of it.
Up until now I was working on the assumption that the DLCS alone would be quite adequate for campaigning within DL regardless of the chosen era.
I'll probably purchase the Towers of High Sorcey and 4'th age supplemental materials when their released but I'd prefer not to have to buy the AOM just to play within DragonLance as I have no intention of utilizing any 5'th age specific material.
Think of it like this. The DLCS is the baseline of krynn. you can look at it and know what an elf is, or when an event happened, or what the gods are. Its a history book, a compilation, a guideline to build off of. You get a ton of bare info, compiled from everywhere, but have to do all the work detailing it yourself.
AoM calls itself fifth age, but the bulk of the book spends time actually filling out details, actually building cities and ruins and plot hooks and back story and gives life to the races and classes and gods. You don't need it, really, and you wouldn't miss it if you didnt have it, but you'd seriously enrich your game with it.
Originally posted by talinthas
Dude, this is it. Even Terry would like this book.
Cool. I've always wanted to like a dragonlance book.
I've said before I'm still looking forward to the Age of Mortals, even if I'm not too keen on the DLCS anymore. There are several reasons for this. The prestige classes are newer, so I knew they wouldn't be so keen on trying to replicate 1e rules. So what you've got, for example, for the WoHS is a very clumsily implemented prestige class (you need alternate rules for generalist wizards to apply for example) and is almost a base class (since you apply for it at 3rd level... and it is mandatory if you don't want to look over your shoulder for assassins the entire campaign). Thus, it looks almost exactly as it did in DLA. Good for those that want it, not so good for those of us who don't really want to play 1e. I myself want to multiclass.
From what I've seen of the rules for the Knights and Mages I'm not particularly impressed. The Legion of Steel is fine in the DLCS, because it is 3e and thus works well. I assume that the new classes will be more 3e in style.
If what you are telling me is true, and the new geography chapter in the Age of Mortals makes up for the short and lackluster DLCS information in regards to the politics of the places and the feel for their cultures... then I am indeed pleased. Since I know we got a political map and a climactic map, I only need one more thing to stop my complaints. I need a population figure for each region, and to know what % of the population is of what specific race. (ie. Minotaurs 56%, Humans 18%, Kyrie 22%)
If someone could post it on dragonlance.com I'd have everything I need. The reason I need it... is so I can judge the military strength of each region. Please do not put it in Games Unplugged... this is something that should have been in the DLCS in the first place.
Oh, and um... please? ;)
(sorry, terry, but apparently Frost is still in charge of southern ergoth, and highly paranoid).
The lucky thing is, his cave just collapsed on him because he was too dumb to know what a support beam is for. :D
Sorry, unless Chris and Jaimie kill him in the adventures, he is never coming into my campaign. Ever.
and guess what? there is a sidebar explaining how to play WoHS as generalist wizards, with Dalamar as the example =)
As much as I would enjoy telling you that you must purchase Age of Mortals this very moment, I must say that the DLCS by itself can serve as the basis for an entire campaign. The DLCS is the toolbox that gives you pretty much everything you need to run a Dragonlance game set in the most familiar eras of play. If you're already very familiar with the world through the novel line (and/or old game products) then the DLCS can get you started right away.
(My wife and I saw just that at GenCon, with groups playing the very NIGHT they purchased their copies!)
I will say this, however: While the DLCS lays the "bare bones" of Dragonlance out, Age of Mortals takes the first steps towards really fleshing it out. We wrote it to be both an excellent game resouce and a companion to the Fifth Age novels (especially War of Souls). It's a full-color, pretty book, with lots cool content both for players and Dungeon Masters.
My advice, if you're sitting on the fence, is wait until the book is available in your local game store (or if a friend gets a copy) and thumb through it. Check it out, and then see if it seems worth your hard-earned money. It is an oft-consulted resource in my home Dragonlance campaign, and it could be in yours as well!
Thanks for all the feedback, everyone! We can't wait until the book hits mass release and even more of you can comment.
Jamie Chambers
Sovereign Press, Inc.
Originally posted by RandPC
I immediately got a rather wary feeling as soon as I read that comment.
Is the AOM truly necessary to play a DL campaign in 3e regardless of the age you intend to set the campaign in?
[snip]
I'm understandably reluctant to spend to spend the $55 on the AOM unless I'm absolutely certain that I will get my useage out of it.
Up until now I was working on the assumption that the DLCS alone would be quite adequate for campaigning within DL regardless of the chosen era.
Originally posted by ferratus
Can I please, please have the population numbers for the various regions of Krynn (Blood Sea, Southern Ergoth, etc.) on Dragonlance.com? Plus, the percentage of the population which consists of each race? Pretty, pretty please? I mean, you don't want a grown man begging forever do you? ;)
Given how much in flux the setting is currently, what figures did you want? Pre-Cataclysm? Pre-WotL? Post-WotL? Chaos War era? Early Age of Mortals? Pre-War of Souls? Post-War of Souls? The shift in population caused by a massive invasion of Silvanesti by the minotaur empire, coupled with an exodus of elves, pulling back of Dark Knight forces, waves and waves of refugees from all over Ansalon, an insurgence of goblins and hobgoblins in Qualinesti, the rise in power of Tarsis and Kharolis, potential fallout from the deaths of Khellendros, Malys and Beryl in their regions....
Even I have no idea how to determine those figures at this point. A snapshot of that period would be helpful, I suppose, but honestly I think the utility of a set of percentages for each region when those places are as likely to shift and alter their demographics with each new season would be like conducting a reliable census in Liberia at the moment.
Cheers,
Cam
Now THAT is a powerful weapon. And I think the stats definately did the books justice. :D
Originally posted by Cam Banks
Given how much in flux the setting is currently, what figures did you want? Pre-Cataclysm? Pre-WotL? Post-WotL? Chaos War era? Early Age of Mortals? Pre-War of Souls? Post-War of Souls?
Post War of Souls of course.
Even I have no idea how to determine those figures at this point. A snapshot of that period would be helpful, I suppose, but honestly I think the utility of a set of percentages for each region when those places are as likely to shift and alter their demographics with each new season would be like conducting a reliable census in Liberia at the moment.
Cheers,
Cam
Perhaps, but luckily, (since this is a fictional setting) we don't have to worry about actually counting people. We can just make up a number that seems reasonable.
It is because of the massive changes and upheaval to the setting that such numbers are important. Is an ambush of several hundred dark knights a major disaster, or a minor inconvenience for that order? Do the minotaurs have enough numbers that a conquest of the entirety of Ansalon is possible?
I'm not just being petty here, I need this information to play the game.
Originally posted by ferratus
Post War of Souls of course.
Perhaps, but luckily, (since this is a fictional setting) we don't have to worry about actually counting people. We can just make up a number that seems reasonable.
It is because of the massive changes and upheaval to the setting that such numbers are important. Is an ambush of several hundred dark knights a major disaster, or a minor inconvenience for that order? Do the minotaurs have enough numbers that a conquest of the entirety of Ansalon is possible?
I'm not just being petty here, I need this information to play the game.
The way I figure it, best place for this is in the book on geography, the Atlas... ;)
Christopher
I need this info to play now, if you please, not next year. It will just be a general guideline, but it will suffice.
We especially need this new information with that new "noble" class you've given us, coupled with the leadership feat for the Knight of the Rose prestige class. Playing at politics and war at a national level is now a mainstay of dragonlance gaming.
Originally posted by ferratus
I need this info to play now, if you please, not next year. It will just be a general guideline, but it will suffice.
This may be crazy talk, but can't you just wing it? Will your players notice?
Cheers,
Cam
Originally posted by Cam Banks
This may be crazy talk, but can't you just wing it? Will your players notice?
Cheers,
Cam
Blasphemer! How dare you recommend someone use their creativity and imagination!! ;)
I was also wondering if it would be possible to have an AoM online art gallery posted at the Sovereign Stone site? Seeing all the art that didn't make the final cut would be cool.
Originally posted by Mucknuggle
I ordered both the DLCS and AoM through Amazon.ca and they are supposed to ship together so that I can get free shipping, so I would like to know what the release date of the AoM book is. DLCS is Aug 22, I hope that AoM isn't much later.
I was also wondering if it would be possible to have an AoM online art gallery posted at the Sovereign Stone site? Seeing all the art that didn't make the final cut would be cool.
Pretty much every piece of art we get, we tend to use in one way or another ;) However, I am looking at putting together small art galleries for each of the books and putting them up on Dragonlance.com around the time that each book is due out. However, I'm afraid that I'm going to have to hold on that idea as I'm eyeball deep in finishing up Key of Destiny and I have to complete that before I do anything else ;)
So, back to writing for me!
Christopher
Originally posted by Cam Banks
This may be crazy talk, but can't you just wing it? Will your players notice?
When it is contradicted next year they will. ;) Yeah, I know you've spent a year helping the various elves find new homes in the various nations of the world, but it turns out there was only a 1000 left. Or, I know you helped the Kyrie overthrow the Minotaurs on Mithas, but it turns out the Minotaurs outnumbered then 10 to 1. etc.
What about climactic battles? What do I need to cripple the minotaurs and the dark knights? How many people does Gellidus rule over? Does he have a fairly powerful kingdom, or have most of the people starved? Do the minotaurs have the numbers to walk over all of Ansalon? We can't talk about this, because only the people at Sovereign Press really know.
As like I've said many, many times before, most of the fun of the dragonlance setting is discussing it online. The lack of population numbers, and the corresponding % belonging to a racial demographic severely limits our ability to do so if we don't have good, solid, numbers. It wouldn't be that much work for anybody, you wouldn't be releasing information that belongs in another sourcebook, and I did say please.
Of course, if you just want to annoy or frustrate me... Otherwise I don't understand the hesitation. It is only 24 regions or so, right? That's 48 lines of text, but 48 lines which would make all the difference. After all, I've said it would pretty much end my complaints about Krynnish geography.
Oh, and Iltharos, don't accuse people (particularly me) of being uncreative, unimaginative, or unintelligent. It isn't a particularly good idea if you don't want such random insults being tossed back at you. Besides, do I look like I need help coming up with story seeds or developing things? The only thing I need help with is deadlines. ;)
Originally posted by ferratus
When it is contradicted next year they will. ;) Yeah, I know you've spent a year helping the various elves find new homes in the various nations of the world, but it turns out there was only a 1000 left. Or, I know you helped the Kyrie overthrow the Minotaurs on Mithas, but it turns out the Minotaurs outnumbered then 10 to 1. etc.
How many times does a person run a game, only to have it contradicted by a book, movie, etc. that came out? Does it make the game any less fun? Are your memories of the game any less, 'cause canon was changed?
What about climactic battles? What do I need to cripple the minotaurs and the dark knights?
Hope.
How many people does Gellidus rule over? Does he have a fairly powerful kingdom, or have most of the people starved?
There are as many as you need, and in whatever condition you need in order to have an epic story.
Do the minotaurs have the numbers to walk over all of Ansalon?
Ansalon, and the world!
We can't talk about this, because only the people at Sovereign Press really know.
Do they? Or do they not worry about numbers, for the benefit of the story?
Ask yourself a question. What is most important in a role-playing game?
For me, the two most important things are story and fun. The DM's job isn't 100% accuracy, or to abide wholly by canon.
The job of the DM is to paint a scene within which the players can interact. There should be a good story, and above all, it should be fun.
The job of the game designers is to give you the tools with which to paint that scene, and to not provide so much info, that creativity and imagination are lost in the process.
Personally i disagree with that philosophy, because then you'll never play a game for fear of contradiction. I never played my games that way (and it helps that i don't believe if "canon"). During the War of the Lance, I know I broke the mold by letting players play the dragonarmies, or even letting Raistlin and Laurana get together and fall in love. (Now THAT was some interesting role-playing. Raist betrays Tak for laurana's love while killing two rivals Ariakas and Tanis in one blow. :-) ) I've come up with rules for playing draconians way before they were made playable in DLCS.
So, Terry, make up the numbers the way you need them. And if your numbers contradict later stuff like AoM, then create an adventure where the consequence is that the numbers eventually match up. For example, I'd personally assume 50000 elves on Ansalon. If the number turns out to be 10000 or even 1000, Well, I'd have an adventure where 40000 elves die. Or maybe start an expedition to Taladas, where the Armachnesti elves have enough forest space to house 40000 elves, (minus those lost at sea). Or the 40000 elves are magically transformed into trees, ala Ayana from the elven nations. And that could be nasty if the minotaurs decide they need more trees for their war machines. :-)
likewise, if I assume 10000 elves, and there are actually 50000 elves on Ansalon, then i'd have an adventure where Gilthas asks the heroes in my game to take a census (and to let them know of elven events and royal decrees as their king). That census adventure in itself could mean invading Qualinesti forests, hiding from Minotaur invaders, Sneaking into Bloten and Kernen for elves captured by Titans, and maybe even going to Taladas where the Armachnesti elves have housed a great great number of elves in their forests.
Like I said, i believe you have to play dragonlance your own way, and then use official game material as dramatic story suggestions, which can spawn adventures while re-aligning your dragonlance with TSR/WotC/SP's Dragonlance. IN my mind, it's better to make dragonlance *My* version of dragonlance, otherwise I'd be forced to play dragonlance where characters are ineffectual.
Originally posted by Dragonhelm
Or do they not worry about numbers, for the benefit of the story?
Ask yourself a question. What is most important in a role-playing game?
For me, the two most important things are story and fun. The DM's job isn't 100% accuracy, or to abide wholly by canon.
The job of the DM is to paint a scene within which the players can interact. There should be a good story, and above all, it should be fun.
The job of the game designers is to give you the tools with which to paint that scene, and to not provide so much info, that creativity and imagination are lost in the process.
Okay....I want to start off this post by saying that I have the utmost repect for the people at Sov. Press and you, Dragonhelm.
Okay, now my reaction to this post.
First off, there are DM's who would like to truly run the campaign that they find in the books. Which means %100 accuracy and wholly abiding by canon. This touches on a sore spot with me. Because to my knowlegde, when a company, such as Sov. Press is developing a setting for publication, their job is to provide the world. Such as populations for regions. This is important, or at least a very decent generalization. And maps (however to my knowledge that was just plain out of the area of Sov.Press' control) The thing is, I can see it from both sides of the fence here. I can see your point DH, the setting loses sight of the creativity when it becomes overdeveloped (like Forgotten Realms)
But...there are specific details which are very important, like the number of people in a specific region, or the minotaur population, especially if one would like to run a campaign where the players want to eventually free Silvanesti.
On a side note.....I thought the DL campaign was becoming much more detailed....that's the idea I got from the products in the pipeline for DL. Is this the way of things?
Once again, at the end I would like to reiterate. I have nothing but respect and admiration for you DH, and those at Sov. Press.
First of all, I do believe in a certain amount of detail, yes. Detail can give both realism and the tools to work with.
I also think there can be overdevelopment, and too much detail. The DM should be allowed to have some flexibility.
I don't think that details on population and population breakdown are necessary for running games, as most games don't cover an entire area or region. Maybe such details can give guidelines or help, but they are not necessary.
*shrugs*
I don't recall in my gaming experience a time where a really great game was disolved by an additional rulebook which was released and said the annual rainfall of the continent of Blah-di-blah was 6 inches and the city of tinkerholm has 110,000 gnomes. It's all just material for generating ideas, to stimulate your own creative purposes. If it wasn't for generating our own ideas then all we would have was pre-generated scenarios where you had to play set characters and were handed the scenario as a script.
Sorry if I offended anyone just venting my view
Arandur, Lord Knight o' the cantankerous senior citizens
I know that I can write up anything I want to for the dragonlance campaign!
There, hopefully that will finally get noticed. In fact, I'm planning to move the dragonlance campaign forward twenty years myself, just to avoid conflicts with the novel and game materials Sovereign Press is coming out with, though I will certainly use both in order to add detail and richness to my own campaign.
So while numbers are not absolutely necessary, they are wonderful. They are wonderful because I can feel like I'm in the flow of the campaign. So if I know that the minotaur empire has a standing army of 200,000 citizen soldiers and each of the Knighthoods has 50,000 soldiers, obviously I can put in adventure seeds involving the upcoming continent-wide war. If the elves have 50,000 people, and the minotaurs have 20,000 soldiers occupying Silvanesti, it profoundly alters the strategy the elves will employ to retake Silvanesti (if they ever do). I'd like to have a few sneak peaks, so that when the elf-minotaur war begins, my players can say "I laid the groundwork for that". That's what would make dragonlance truly a shared world, rather than a just a templated homebrew one.
The other half of shared worlds, is the ability to talk about the shared world and its future in meaningful terms. If everyone has a common understanding of the basics (and population numbers are about as basic as you can get) then you can share story seeds, new organizations, new NPC's, etc. etc. etc. The ability to share is extremely limited, if each person has a different understanding of the state of affairs. If the elves are a dying species of a few hundred, then obviously the methods, means, and attitudes about how to go about restoring their lost glory will be somewhat different then if they number in the hundreds of thousands.
Finally, it is fun to wager on the odds of future storylines of DL. It is fun to play the odds of whether or not the elves will reclaim Silvanost. I know I can simply make any ending I want... but it is fun to talk with other people about what could happen, and brainstorming on new ideas. If we aren't doing that, what is the dragonlance community for? Gushing over which DL novel character or DL novel author we like the best?
In the end, like I said, it all boils down to me wondering what there is to be so hesitant about. It would take a half an hour to write up. Heck, even if you put the disclaimer "population figures may be contradicted in the Atlas in 2004" at least I would have enough of a general idea to "wing it" as Cam says.
Originally posted by ferratus
I know that I can write up anything I want to for the dragonlance campaign!
I'm glad we're all on the same page, then.
I do sympathize with you on some levels though, Terry. It's nice to have some rough idea of how many kender there are in a given city or how many ogres. If we gave you a figure like 15,000 population with 80% human you'd know that 12,000 were humans. However, I don't know that anybody's able to specifically state the numbers here in any meaningful sense unless we just make it up, and you can do that just as easily as somebody who writes the gaming materials.
Here's an interesting point, too - at the time of the War of the Lance, there were only 63 Knights of Solamnia. Tracy gives this number in the Annotated Chronicles. I think this is significant, since folks may have had this idea that there were hundreds or even thousands of them, when in fact they were quite few in number and relied heavily on their footmen and infantry.
I imagine that by the end of the War of Souls, there may only be a couple hundred Knights, if we assume their influence was such in the years after the War of the Lance that they swelled in numbers. The Dark Knights may not have had all that many, either, or if they did they were Knights of the Lily for the most part and bolstered by their own contingents of foot and horse.
Cheers,
Cam
Originally posted by Cam Banks
However, I don't know that anybody's able to specifically state the numbers here in any meaningful sense unless we just make it up, and you can do that just as easily as somebody who writes the gaming materials.
Hmm... unless the Atlas comes out first, that's gonna be messy when we run into Living Dragonlance. My advice would be to avoid getting the "Living Dragonlance" campaign going until at least a month or two before the Atlas comes out.
Here's an interesting point, too - at the time of the War of the Lance, there were only 63 Knights of Solamnia. Tracy gives this number in the Annotated Chronicles. I think this is significant, since folks may have had this idea that there were hundreds or even thousands of them, when in fact they were quite few in number and relied heavily on their footmen and infantry.
Well, there are obviously more now, given that you can qualify to be a Knight of the Crown at a relatively low level. However, we also know that there are not enough of them to qualify as a standing army in and of their own.
But yeah, population is not only important for gamers, but novel authors as well. Hundreds upon Hundreds of Dark Knights keep getting slaughtered, and I no idea where they are all coming from. ;)
But anyway, if nobody knows what the population is, I guess I will do it myself. It also means however, I'm going to be blindsided with what happens next. I like surprises as much as the next guy, but planet-busting forces of evil appearing out of nowhere is getting kind of old.
I guess that it was designed that way to deal with the extraordinary way it could cut through armor and weapons.
It doesn't ACTUALLY ignore armor. But when attacking an object with hardness (A door, a table, a chain) the Glaive ignores 20 points of Hardness. This means the glaive ends up doing more damage, because the object isn't soaking up that extra damage with its hardness.
It doesn't make it easier to hit an AC, cutting through armor has no interpretation in DnD. It just makes it easier to hit things that rarely hit back.