If so, would you care to share your thoughts!!!?? And how it could fit with a Darksun setting.
But I'll try and get it and report to you.
In the mean time my local store is trying to obtain for me a copy of Unveilled Masters: The Essential Guide to Mind Flayers and The Complete Book of Eldritch Might.
I have the originals that comprise the latter in electronic form, but the new compilation is v3.5 while the old versions were 3.0. Plus I get to have a nice paper book!
Its very short at 32 pages, but at only 10 USD, its also a cheap book. The art is decent, and a good amount of it too (which means less information overall, but its a trade-off). You'll notice from the first page or two the heavy oriental feel that has been given to the yuan-ti (names like Empress Wu, Po Jian, Dai Sun). The physiology section is nice, discussion their 'warm-blooded' nature, heat and tremor senses, how they shed their skin, etc. Having had over 23 snakes in my house at one time (breeding and selling to a wholesaler in Cleveland), I think I can say I know a little about snakes and didn't find any kind of glaring discrepancies. The habitat and Society sections go on to talk about life both inside and outside of the Serpent Empire (damn them for stealing the name I was going to use in my setting), a large yet secret nation in a humid tropical jungle (with few references to anywhere else, it is a nice insert for a standard or oriental setting). The history start with how Bai Su-Zhen, the white snake maiden seduced a rice farmer named Bo Li. They had a few kids (one pureblood, two halfbreeds, and one abomination) who started the whole yuan-ti race. Its got a definate chinese feel to the myth. The empire is described as a class-less fuedal society that favors intelligence and cunning over brute nautre (making the warrior the lowest on the ladder of respect). Lastly, it follows up with a look at Po Jian, a yuan-ti infiltration group that has spent the last 80 years in a large human city (adventure seed/plot hook).
The good and bad points are actually the same. History and depth. The history is very detailed and shows how the yuan-ti have slowly become what they are (devious and cunning enemies of humans), but the problem is there is no simple history section. Instead, its scattered throughout the book and flip flops back and forth, making it quite confusing and convulted.
Can it be used for Dark Sun? Probably. The history doesn't fit, that's for sure. Unless DS has serpent faeries comming down and getting fresh with farmers. Some things may fit (a nice little section on gods that talks about how yuan-ti once worshiped the human gods, but the gods saw the yuan-ti as an abomination of nature and struck every snake priest in the land with a deadly plague; the yuan-ti then turned to ancestor worship, mostly of former Emperors, I've stolen this idea for my DS). Most of the info deals with life within the Serpent Empire itself, which could fit outside the known regions of Athas.
At 10 bucks, its worth buying. I wanted something with less oriental overtones myself, and probably a lot bigger, but all in all I can't complain too much about it.
Thanks again.I'll definately be adding this to my list of buys then
I'd recomend the Oriental Adventures Way of the Naga instead. Much bigger and much better look at yuan-ti (err, naga). Course, you have to tweak it just slightly to incorporate the different aspects of yuan-ti (purebloods, abominations, half-breeds) since that's not in there.
Originally posted by Mach2.5
I'd recomend the Oriental Adventures Way of the Naga instead. Much bigger and much better look at yuan-ti (err, naga). Course, you have to tweak it just slightly to incorporate the different aspects of yuan-ti (purebloods, abominations, half-breeds) since that's not in there.
Yeah, parsed through that, not liking the layout and it seems to be too much work to make the translation. Spending enough time on other things as it is, heh.
Since I planned to have both on Athas anyways I'll probably just end up with both books.
Its not everything in life, but hey, this is D&D!
The real deal is Plot & Poison: A Guidebook to Drow (Green Ronin), the best d20 book I've seen out there outside of Malhavoc Press publications.
Sorry to say all books are not like that
Since I planned to have both on Athas anyways I'll probably just end up with both books
I wanted to as well, but I kept drifting off into this 'bad guy yuan-ti against the good guy nagas (with naga being a little more akin to the feathered serpent/coatle). In the end, I just lumped the naga sections onto the yuan-ti. I use a port of the stats from Way of the Naga and mix in the different breeds on top of that. It really fit together better than I thought.
Originally posted by Mach2.5
I wanted to as well, but I kept drifting off into this 'bad guy yuan-ti against the good guy nagas (with naga being a little more akin to the feathered serpent/coatle).
Yeah, I was thinking about that too.
In the end, I just lumped the naga sections onto the yuan-ti. I use a port of the stats from Way of the Naga and mix in the different breeds on top of that. It really fit together better than I thought.
Hmmmm.
I'll look into it, that's down the road yet though.
Thanks!