Well to some extent some extent, I feel like I have been waiting forever and a day for it and....
It was GREAT! Much better than I expected. It was a little light in some ways, but he Druid and Old faith Bards were fantastic. I'm starting to see why it took so long.
I'm not so sure about the AD&D broad sword thing, I was kinda glad that people moved away from that. But in a way it was cool to see it again.
I was interested to see that you kept the old style requirements in 1e style. That had me scratching my chin. Im sure that would have alot of 3e DM's perplexed, but I kinda like it.
And since the levels will take the Bard into epic levels, I guess I would like to see some epic level feats that they can take advantage of. Since the Bard is created to go into Epic levels at varing levels I can see why you left off epic powers tied to specific levels. I'm interested at what this works out to compared to other epic level characters.
The requirement I could do without is the race restriction. But it works in a Greyhawk game.
Paul's article on the Old World Bards was well worth the wait. It very much paralelled what I had scribbled down(in its basic structure at least) just prior to the announcement that the article would be coming along soon, so I decided to wait for it instead of finishing my version. Very nice indeed! It is well put together and evokes the feel of the original without being overpowering.
I also enjoyed the portions on the locations and descriptions of the Bardic Colleges.
The article on Norebo was good as well.
The article on the Druidic orders was very good.
The...you get the idea.
It was all good!
This issue covered a portion of the D&D world(druids/bards) that doesn't seem to get a lot of print, which is very good in my book.
Great job by everyone, including the illustrators!
*************************************************************
As to what direction OJ should go in, I would very much like to see a collection of articles similar to this issue, but focusing on the various monk orders around the Flaness(another subject which is not often written about, excepting the Scarlet Brotherhood of course). Everyone is somewhat familiar with the Scarlet Brotherhood, but not very much with the monks of Xan Yae/Zuoken. Psionics would seem to factor in greatly with the monks of these orders. But what of Herironeous, St. Cuthbert, Rao, Diabolic orders(oh yes! these could be fun!!!), and others?
The difficulty of this project would be to create a Flan or Oeridian monk that didn't feel like a variant copy of the already existing style of monk. I can see Llerg and Kord having monks unique to the barbaric physicality of these two gods(wrestling holds, bear hugs and such). Sure, a lot of the descriptive aspects of martial arts styles can be taylored to suit a style of fighting from monk to monk, but some uniqe rules/abilities would serve to better delineate the differences between monkish orders and/or monks of different deities/alignments/cultures. Perhaps giving them structured fighting styles would be a step in the right direction. The 3rd Ed. Unearthed Arcana will have some variant styles, which may present some other ideas.
Hope I didn't just make anybody's brain hurt too much.
Well, at last! First of all, 18 months are WAY too many! Is it possible to change from 18 to, say, 12 months?
Anyway, the articles are all excellent, just like the previous issues. Only one complaint: in the era of 3.5, there is still someone who sticks with AD&D. A specialty priest of Norebo? Why wasn't it a prestge class?
Rules and mechanics apart, I thoroughly enjoy the vision you give us all of the societies and cultures of the Flanaess. Keep up the excellent work!
Great work guys! Like everyone else I have been waiting for the latest OJ to come our way. Well worth the wait! I love this kinda stuff and CanonFire is the BEST for Greyhawk material these days.
Would love to see OJ coming out more regular with good strong Greyhawk themes like in this edition.
I'm one of those perplexed DMs though, wondering why the material is 1E/2E and not at least 3E.
Otherwise, stellar stuff! Love the colour artwork and layout.
· Do submissions need to be grounded in a particular set of rules?
No. There are Greyhawk fans who role play in the setting but do not use Dungeons & Dragons rules -- people use GURPS, Hackmaster, Heroic Fantasy, Lejendary Adventures, Rune Quest, etc. to adventure in the World of Greyhawk. However, if you intend to produce an article as a playing aid, then it helps to specify a rules system and utilize its conventions.
Makes some sense -- I use a lot of Harn stuff in my D&D 3E game. Maybe I should have said it would be helpful if OJ material was d20.
In anycase, I think OJ is a great fan-based product.
OJ 15 is excellent, and 18 months is far too long between issues (although it's worth the wait)!
The article on bards was the first rendition I've seen that made sense of a bard's progression from fighter to thief to druid.
I think turning the best CF postings into e-books is a great idea. Personally, I would start with The Duke's Admiral postings. Re-edited, they'll make a great novella.
I'm one of those perplexed DMs though, wondering why the material is 1E/2E and not at least 3E.
Speaking as a Canonfire staffmember, not directly involved with OJ, it's basically the policy of CF and OJ (and Greytalk too) to be edition-less, and open to all versions of the game and setting. Greyhawk and its fans transcend trivial things like whatever version of the game is being churned out of WotC's grinder these days. _________________ What would Raxivort do?<br />
Hey TheWave and others. It's great to hear fan feedback on the OJ. You should know that several fans have answered the call in OJ 15's editorial, and that we'll announce shortly our new Editor in Chief, who's planning to launch a new website for the OJ.
On the idea of the d20 and Open Gaming license:
THIS IS NOT LEGAL ADVICE. I AM NOT AN ATTORNEY.
The Oerth Journal, and any fan expression that utilizes Greyhawk "product identity" cannot use these licenses. Wizards owns the copyright and trademarks for Greyhawk and does not permit anyone to use its "product identity" under these licenses. While fans may use Greyhawk under fair use and noncommercial use doctrines, the aforementioned licenses create binding contracts that preclude fan use of "product identity."
THIS WAS NOT LEGAL ADVICE. I AM NOT AN ATTORNEY.
Only one complaint: in the era of 3.5, there is still someone who sticks with AD&D. A specialty priest of Norebo? Why wasn't it a prestge class?
Well, I for one write for myself. My campaign is AD&D and thus my material is AD&D. Converting to the edition DuJour is extra work that I am doing for someone else - and a lot of bloody work it is to convert to 3e!
It was GREAT! Much better than I expected. It was a little light in some ways, but he Druid and Old faith Bards were fantastic. I'm starting to see why it took so long.
Those articles were long in coming! Rejected by Dragon Magazine (twice), Polyhedron (twice), Greyhawk Journal, and, yes, even the Oerth Journal under a previous editor! Grinding out the 3e portions of the article were the hardest and most laborious. I play AD&D and I had to intensely study the 3e rules just to write certain portions of the articles.
Herald wrote:
I'm not so sure about the AD&D broad sword thing, I was kinda glad that people moved away from that. But in a way it was cool to see it again.
The bard article was all about the restoration of an archetype from the AD&D game. Naturally, other things needed to be restored as well!
Herald wrote:
I was interested to see that you kept the old style requirements in 1e style. That had me scratching my chin. Im sure that would have alot of 3e DM's perplexed, but I kinda like it.
Those 3e DM's need a little quirkiness in their lives :)
Herald wrote:
And since the levels will take the Bard into epic levels, I guess I would like to see some epic level feats that they can take advantage of. Since the Bard is created to go into Epic levels at varing levels I can see why you left off epic powers tied to specific levels. I'm interested at what this works out to compared to other epic level characters.
I think that epic level feats would be overkill. The bard as written has a whole bunch of tricks. To be honest, I haven't a fig how this class would compare or even if it would work in a 3e game. I read the 3e books and I made the class using my best judgement. It hasn't been "field tested".
Herald wrote:
The requirement I could do without is the race restriction. But it works in a Greyhawk game.
My AD&D roots showing again but then it's all about the restoration of archetypes.
Herald wrote:
All in all. Very good work.
Thanks much! I hope you enjoyed the read and are able to employ the material in your campaign.
I loved the Old Faith and bard articles! Thanks so much Paul!
Great! Always good to receive praise. I really think the articles will add to almost anyone's Greyhawk campaign. They are my campaign currently. The party has druids from different orders supporting them and attacking them alternately.
The druids attacking them are so much fun to use in ambushes. To wit, the party is terrified of travelling overland during cloudy days!
Without an ocassional nod to the OOP versions of the game, there are some fans, me included, who would disregard the OJ completely. OJ is about Greyhawk, not any specific game, let's keep it that way. Any decent DM can handle converting the ideas (which are, IMO, the important part of an article anyway) to whatever game system they use. _________________ What would Raxivort do?<br />
I think it might be a good idea to possibly make an "All Editions" policy. But I wouldn't foce all the conversions at once. If someone made up some 2e material, maybe someone could later comeup with a 3e version that could be posted up here at Canonfire as sort of a web enhancement.
I'm sure that sound pie in the sky as I feel that most of the contributers of the last issue were up to thier eyes in work from the sound of it, and you have to draw the line somewhere. But if a concept is good for 2e, chances are that it very well might work for 3e.
I have 0 desire to turn this into an edition war, but 1st and 2nd Ed. are already red headed step childs of 3rd Ed, can't us old timers be allowed exclusives once in awhile?
We already have to convert EVERYTHING that we purchase these days. _________________ Kneel before me, or you shall be KNELT!
Being an old timer myself and still playing in the 2e system (although very modifed), I write what I know and play. I haven't had an opportunity to convert anything I've written to 3e, which is quite a lot of material. I don't know the "new" rules (read the rules books once 3 years ago) so I would do an article a great injustice by trying to create material around the unfamiliar.
Other than the 2e stuff, what are peoples impressions of the Norebo article? Thus far I haven't heard if the material is valuable, useless, totally off base, good or just plain bad. Thoughts? Thanks.
Though it might seem blasphemy to some, you might want to do away with the class requirements altogether, which is the case with nearly all prestige classes. The requirements for prestige classes revolve around having skill levels, ability scores, certain feats, a required base attack bonus, and/or access to a certain level of arcane or divine spells ffor the most part. To be fair, the list of required skills is HOOGE!!!, and should be pruned down to a list of neccessities. A prospective bard should have decent skill levels in Listen, Perform, Diplomacy, Knowledge, and Gather Information, while it is not really neccessary to be good at Hide, Move Silently, Open Lock, and Decipher Script(this last is more sensible however). To be very in line with the basic levels of most other prestige classes, I suggest the following requirements:
Race: Elf or 1/2 Elf
Alignment: NG, N, LN, CN, NE
Base Attack Bonus: +6
Skills: Listen 6, Perform 6, Knowledge(any) 6, Diplomacy 3, Gather Information 3, Decipher Script 3, Craft: instrument 3.
These requirements make having levels of rogue almost essential, while fighter levels are required more for the base attack bonus, if a character wants to be elligible for the bard class when acquiring enough experience to jump to being 7th level overall(having at least 6 levels of other classes + 1 level of bard). In this case, the best means of becoming a bard is by being a fighter 3 and rogue 3, for starting levels of F3/R3/ Brd1 at the beginning of the character's new career as a bard. These levels also perfectly meet the minumum level requirements you set and doesn't use nearly all of the charcter's skill points, allowing the player to build their bard a bit more how they want to. Maybe they want to play a bard with more martial skills than sneaky skills. The unused skill points allow for this. I didn't put any Feats down as requirements for becoming a bard due to the fact that none of them struck me as being"must haves", though many certainly would be useful/applicable.
The fighter levels could well be replaced with ranger or barbarian levels instead for even more variant backgrounds for the bard character. The rogue levels still remain mostly essential however due to the basic skill level requirements. You'd otherwise have to be a 9th level fighter,ranger, or barbarian just to gain the skill levels neccessary to qualify for bardic training.
The bardic knowledge skill is also somewhat subpar to the current version, considering it functions at 1st level of ability for a 7th level character in the above case. I'd suggest having all previous class levels stack with bard levels for purpose of this check(ie., the bard has picked up a variety of info from his days gaining levels in his other classes) or instead give a +2 bonus on these checcks for EACH knowledge skill of 5 or more ranks that applies to the subject matter(subject to the DM's approval of course), rather than just knowledge: history. In effect, a bard with 5 ranks in knowledge history, local, the planes, and arcana would get a +8 bonus to see if they knew anything about a magical arch that funtioned as a planar gateway and which had been used by demonic forces to invade the surrounding(local) area 500 years previously. Or something to that effect. Simpler might be better.
All in all, a nice median. Plus, the lower requirements would make the class more attractive in campaigns that don't see rapid advances to higher levels(usually due to time constraints, family responsibilities, work schedules, etc.).
What do you all think???
---Cebrion
Last edited by Cebrion on Thu Feb 19, 2004 12:43 am; edited 2 times in total
Re 1e/2e/3e... It's always been my opinion that the OJ is and should be open to material of every edition. That said, most people do play 3e nowadays (according the recent CF! poll, 2/3rds of the respondents played 3e/3.5e). I'm working on converting the specialty priest classes from Oerth & Altar to 3e prestige classes, and I may take a look at the bard class as well (though it won't get published without the author's permission). I don't do this to assert the superiority of one system over another, but as a simple matter of convenience.
My intent is to publish the conversions through the Oerth Journal, since that's where the articles were originally published.
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