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Screensize: 640 x 480 800 x 600 1024 x 768 1280 x 1024 UserName: Password: Format Mode: Basic  Help  Prompt  Format: Font Andale Mono Arial Arial Black Book Antiqua Century Gothic Comic Sans MS Courier New Georgia Impact Lucida Console Script MT Bold Stencil Tahoma Times New Roman Trebuchet MS Verdana   Size 1 2 3 4 5 6   Color Black Red Yellow Pink Green Orange Purple Blue Beige Brown Teal Navy Maroon LimeGreen Message: * HTML is OFF * Forum Code is ON Smilies [quote][i]Originally posted by Delwa[/i] [br]Was able to pick up a copy of the campaign in question yesterday. I've thumbed through it, and I'm going over it in a little more detail today, but my first impressions were as follows: 1. The first thing I noticed is that the [url="http://media.wizards.com/2015/downloads/dnd/EE_PlayersCompanionv2.pdf"]free pdf[/url] has more PC races in it than the actual print book. Unless I missed it, only the Genasi are printed in the tome. That was a little bit of a disappointment, as if I want a "doesn't need electricity to read" copy of the Deep Gnome, Goliath, or Aaracocra, I'll need to shell out extra cash to Kinko's, unless I want to settle for an inkjet "print will run if the pages get sneezed on by a passing cat" copy printed at home. But, then again, I guess I shouldn't complain about free material too much. 2. Magic items. This was kinda nice. Magic items are the one thing I don't like creating on my own if I don't have to. There are a few creative little ideas in here. I like the Balloon backpack. 3. Lore layout. As the title of chapter two indicates, we are given a brief history of the Dessarin Valley. Without pouring over tomes for any possible lore inaccuracies or clarifications, this looks kind of nice. You're given a brief update on the "state of the Realms" post-Sundering that pertains to this region. You're also given a very brief history of the area. The text repeatedly emphasizes that the common adventurer has little knowledge of the rich and detailed history of the region, and leaves any further delving into the area's history up to the DM. I kind of like this approach. It means all of my older books are still useful for fleshing out details. The chapter shows what cities and locales are of note in the area, and if I want to flesh it out more, I can use books I already own. For newcomers to the Realms, this also will make the pdf store at DnDClassics relevant to them. As a new comer, you are given just what you need to run the campaign. You're given an idea of where to start digging if you want to flesh out the history of the Realms a little more for your players, but if all you want to do is a beer and pretzels kinda run through, you've got what you need to get through. Contrary to my complaint in other threads here at the Keep, the campaign book makes it easy to find lore in the module. Most of it is right in this chapter. My experience with the Tyranny of Dragons book was less user friendly. I felt like I had to dig through the whole book to pull a few pieces of lore. But as both of those books are on loan to a friend who's running the campaign, I can't go back and review the layout to see if I need to rethink my position. 4. Artwork. Love it. I really want to find out who did the art on pages 18 and 37. I'd love to have a print of those to hang in my game room. One is a scene of adventurers in some ruins with the countryside behind them, the other is a depiction of the Stone Bridge crossing the Dessarin River. 5. Monsters. Always love me some Monster Stats. Gives me crunch that I can just pull up and use rather than tweak something to suit my needs. Not that customizing monsters is hard in 5E, at least not to me, but if my work is already done for me, I'm not going to quibble. In this section, I've got various flavors of cultists that can easily be re skinned as npc mages with different talents and focuses. I've got a Medusa that is a little tougher than the one in the Monster Manual, and it also gives me an example of how they add abilities to a base creature so when I begin fiddling with that, I have examples to check my work against. And I've got some powerful NPCs that can, again, be tweaked and re skinned to use against my PC's in other, higher level games. The last thing of note is the way the Campaign's encounters are laid out. At first glance, it doesn't look like it's quite the same as Lost Mine of Phandelver. That's kinda sad, because LMoP was laid out in such a way I could almost just follow along the booklet as my PC's went, using monster stats I'd written out on 3x5 cards as needed. This layout looks like I'll have to do a lot more page flipping. Seeing as it is more of a campaign than a mere adventure, I guess I can understand that, and my first impression may be wrong. But, anyway, those were my first impressions. I'll revisit here when I've looked at it in more detail. [/quote]   Check here to include your profile signature. Check here to subscribe to this topic.