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Lords of Madness: Came out Today!!

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Fri, 2005-04-08 17:19
#1
bonemage
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Lords of Madness: Came out Today!!

Or at least my local gaming shop got their copies in today. Sadly because of repairs I had to make on my car it will be about 2 weeks until I can pick up my copy. However the book looks truly awesome. I was only looking at it for about 5 minutes but seems to be lots of detail background info to add the crunchy stuff. There are lifestyle notes, Behavior information, pages on bodily structure, bones, organs etc. not to mention abnormal variations in styles/behavior. It all looks really cool and likely drop well into any Planescape campaign.

I will get the book and do a full review before the end of the month hopefully. Laughing out loud

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Sun, 2005-04-10 11:55
#2
Krypter
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Apart from the Illithid, does this have a lot of material for Planescape? Are the gith races going to be detailed in this book?

Mon, 2005-04-11 18:45
(Reply to #2) #3
bonemage
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The main sections are on aboleths, beholders, mind flayers, neogi, grell, and Tsochari. I would say all of these are likely to drop fairly easily into planar campaigns as on prime worlds they are "abberations" kind of lovecraft style outsiders or otherworldly being. I mean the beholders and mind flayers especially get my attention and I will give the other major chapters a read as well. There is apparently some other add on material but they decided to focus the vast majority of the book in those sections detailing a few extremly well rather than giving us little detail on lots of races.

Mon, 2005-04-11 19:00
(Reply to #3) #4
Nemui
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"bonemage" wrote:
aboleths, beholders, mind flayers, neogi, grell, and Tsochari.

Anything on tso?

Tue, 2005-04-12 10:42
(Reply to #4) #5
jordarad
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I looked through it as well, nothing on the Tso I could Tsee.

Fri, 2005-06-24 20:05
(Reply to #5) #6
SurlyPilferNymph
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'bonemage' wrote:
Or at least my local gaming shop got their copies in today. Sadly because of repairs I had to make on my car it will be about 2 weeks until I can pick up my copy. However the book looks truly awesome. I was only looking at it for about 5 minutes but seems to be lots of detail background info to add the crunchy stuff. There are lifestyle notes, Behavior information, pages on bodily structure, bones, organs etc. not to mention abnormal variations in styles/behavior. It all looks really cool and likely drop well into any Planescape campaign.

I will get the book and do a full review before the end of the month hopefully. Laughing out loud

I'm thinking about picking this up, I've only given it a few cursory glances at the bookstore so far but there are nuggets to be mined from it. My on again, off again love affair with Beholders seems to be on again, I'm thinking of expanding the number of subraces in my writings and fleshing out the Lawful Good, Silvery Beholder spawn that I sketched out many moons ago. This book looks like a decent update of some of what we already know about the mentioned races with a few things thrown in to build off of.

Sun, 2005-09-04 19:31
(Reply to #6) #7
bonemage
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I have now purchased this book and will be getting a review written up within the next few weeks if the powers will it.... In short its an excellent supplement overall and great for Planescape. Especially if you want to either 1) Mess with their minds or 2) bring alien minded creatures with bizarre and/or confusing mindsets/idealodgy.

Tue, 2005-09-06 21:40
(Reply to #7) #8
Surreal Personae
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It's a pretty good book. The one problem that I have it is that it takes the traditional BEM (Bug-Eyed-Monster) approach to aberrations: that they are inherently evil or antithetical to the existence of the known, rational universe and therefore must be destroyed. It creates a role of the abberration as a another thing that must be killed, which to me is much too predictable and paradoxically gives them a recognizable niche of sorts within the multiverse.

Fri, 2005-09-09 20:42
(Reply to #8) #9
bonemage
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Well in the nature of the creatures they picked they tend to be hostile type encounters towards "normal" races. These aren't the leave me alone and forget about me and your fine "outsiders".

I think they did play up the alien reasoning and therefore you can can bargin with them aspect alot but even that isn't really true with later creatures once you get past the Mind Flayers (want and will rule the multiverse) and Beholders (insane).

A creative DM can certainly twist any of the information in there a little bit to add more of a grey area. But as for adding sourcebook material on that level I don't know... I mean what do you think is missing and could have easily been added?

Fri, 2005-09-09 22:11
(Reply to #9) #10
ripvanwormer
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'Surreal Personae' wrote:
that they are inherently evil or antithetical to the existence of the known, rational universe and therefore must be destroyed.

One of the things I love about Planescape is the potential to invert that; to have neh-thalggu, tso, psurlons and the like interacting with the other people of Sigil in a nonhostile situation, in a city of weirdness reduced to the status of ordinary citizens.

Of course, it's still perfectly possible to run a campaign where illithids or whatever are the primary bad guys.

Wed, 2005-10-26 17:17
(Reply to #10) #11
Nemui
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'ripvanwormer' wrote:
One of the things I love about Planescape is the potential to invert that; to have neh-thalggu, tso, psurlons and the like interacting with the other people of Sigil in a nonhostile situation, in a city of weirdness reduced to the status of ordinary citizens.

Not with the Lords of Madness psurlon illustration you can't... Must've been titled "Snarling Tanar'ri, Slightly Worm-like" before someone decided to use it for the psurlons... Puzzled

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