A Few Kind Words

My friend Bruce and I were talking a while back about human nature and praise. We both agreed that it seemed like most people -- including, at least at times, ourselves -- were reluctant to give praise to their peers. It was as though, deep down, we feel as if we're giving away some amount of our own power by praising others. As though telling someone they did a good job somehow diminishes us. It's silly. It's a foolish and incorrect way to think, and I believe it's at the root of our culture's negativity complex.

So Bruce and I agreed, since it was silly, that we would attempt to give praise where praise is due. I've been trying to keep to that, and today I was thinking, "What better way to praise someone than publicly?" So I'm going to do just that, and praise some of my worthy peers:

Draconomicon
To all the folks who worked on the Draconomicon, the new big sourcebook from Wizards of the Coast: good job. Very, very good work. First off, it doesn't have one of those "It's a book that looks like a book" covers that are really wearing thin. Instead, we get a gorgeous cover painting by Todd Lockwood. Draconomicon is a beautiful tome inside, too, chock full of terrific and useful illustrations and maps. The book takes on a single topic and covers it thoroughly and elegantly. We get cool new types of dragons and a few old ones updated to the new rules. We get dragon spells, dragonslayers, and dragon magic items. Perhaps best of all, we get a detailed write-up of every kind of dragon, at each age, including lair maps, illustrations, diagrams, and all sorts of goodies. You gotta think that someone, somewhere in the process said, "Wait a minute... isn't this a waste of space? A waste of design time? Do we really need every type of dragon? Shouldn't we put in some more prestige classes instead?" I don't know that it happened, but I wouldn't be surprised. Somebody else, though, stuck to their guns and realized that a sample dragon of every type and age category is exactly what we need.

I have run six 3rd Edition D&D campaigns* over the past five years, and each has had anywhere from one to six dragon encounters. And that's not counting half-dragons, dragonnels, dragon turtles, and so forth. In any one of these campaigns, I'd have been thrilled to have this book. A customer who buys this book not only gets great material and cool new ideas, but he'll never have to make up a dragon on his own again (until 4th Edition, anyway).

Verocithrax
To Ron Hawkins and all the guys at Reaper Miniatures: I just put together the dragon Verocithrax, and I have to say, well done. I got it probably over a year ago and looked at it, but never put it together. I was daunted. It was so big, and in a fair number of pieces, and it looked really unstable. I finally decided to give it a try, and I was amazed. The thing went together like a dream. Each piece fit together like a glove. It almost didn't need glue. Reaper minis that need assembly are always a joy to piece together, but this one really makes me say, "Wow." I can't wait to paint it up and put my players up against it -- in about 15 levels or so.

Toolbox
To AEG and specifically Jeff and Dawn Ibach, who designed the book Toolbox: I use this book all the time. It's one of my most used d20 books, actually. This is another book that I suspect a lot of people thought was unnecessary -- but they were wrong. It's a book of lists -- lists of names, encounters, magic item backgrounds, room furnishings, pouch contents, personality types, NPC groups... everything. No DM is prepared for absolutely everything that comes up in a game, and even if you're pretty good at making stuff up on the spot, it's great to have something like this to give you a whole new look at things. Sure, when a player uses legend lore on an item you might be able to come up with some interesting backstory, or when the group goes into a town to hire a taxidermist to stuff the monster they just killed, you can come up with an interesting shop and personality for him, but this book provides a few ideas that you might not have thought of, which can inject all new vitality to your game.

World Builder's Guidebook
Similiarly, to Gary Gygax and the guys at Troll Lord: Good job on World Builder's Guidebook. This book is also a wealth of ideas. Much like Toolbox, it's a book of lists -- names, personality traits, furnishings, and so on. It takes a different enough tack from Toolbox and contains enough divergent ideas that it's worth having both books. I find myself flipping through World Builder's Guidebook as I'm getting ready for a session (Gary's great at providing archaic names for things, so it helps for naming new magic items, groups, and so on) and having Toolbox at my side while I'm running the game. Good stuff.

Tome of Horrors
To everyone that worked on Tome of Horrors: Darn good monster book, guys. As I got ready to launch my new campaign, I recently went through every monster book for d20 fantasy that I own (and I'm fairly certain I have them all) and I put Post-Its on the pages that held a monster I wanted to use at some point. Every book had at least one note, but Tome of Horrors was ridiculously full of them. Almost every page was noted (making the process kinda worthless, but oh well). The real kick I get from the book is that there are some monsters that I didn't like in their original 1st Edition form that I'm happily using in my 3rd Edition game, like the skulks, the forlarren, and the mobat. I don't know if the monster changed or if I changed, but either way, it's both nostalgic and fun.

MasterMaze
To Stefan Pokorny at Dwarven Forge: I use MasterMaze stuff almost every week in my D&D game. It's totally transformed my game into a visual experience. I almost never draw on my battlemat anymore. (The only time I don't use it is when the action isn't inside, obviously, in which case sometimes I use the buildings from Miniature Building Authority.) I have a ton of this stuff -- it's overtaking my game room. Now I see that the company's come out with some cool cavern passages. Gonna have to get them too.

*In case you're curious, the first was my 3rd Edition playtest game, Praemal, which all took place when the world was only about 100 years old and everything was new -- an age of mythic heroes kind of game. Then, of course, there are the three different Ptolus games (one still ongoing). The Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil playtest comes next, and there's the Arcana Unearthed playtest as well. This doesn't count one-shots, two-shots, and non-D&D d20 games I've run.