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Originally posted by George Krashos

Hey Faraer, great to have you here!

Why am I 'so' hard on Slade? Mainly because he was lead designer on a couple of headline FR products (Netheril and The North boxed set) and didn't do a particularly good job on either. The North is pretty much just a re-hashed FR5 and Volo's Guide to the North (really the only new stuff was on Silverymoon), and Netheril was what I would consider to be a lazy product. Lots of filler, useless stuff like lists of Netherese spells and their modern equivalent, a history that is out of kilter with the previously published Realms, an emphasis on 'overkill' (let's have the first orc horde to hit Netheril number a 100,000 orcs! Good idea, Slade! ...), and a failure to capture Netheril as envisaged by Ed Greenwood (and he has no excuse for this one: I have the Netheril hand-out he sent Slade before he started writing up the boxed set. He practically ignored the whole document!). Essentially, I thinki that Netheril has wonderful potential but was poorly done - and greatly contributed to the demise of the Arcane Age line - one of my favourites thanks to Steven Schend. 'Nuff said.

-- George Krashos

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THANK YOU FOR SAYING THIS!!! I was not sure that anyone else realised this and it was Frustrating.

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Originally posted by George Krashos

Hey Faraer, great to have you here!

Why am I 'so' hard on Slade? Mainly because he was lead designer on a couple of headline FR products (Netheril and The North boxed set) and didn't do a particularly good job on either. The North is pretty much just a re-hashed FR5 and Volo's Guide to the North (really the only new stuff was on Silverymoon), and Netheril was what I would consider to be a lazy product. Lots of filler, useless stuff like lists of Netherese spells and their modern equivalent, a history that is out of kilter with the previously published Realms, an emphasis on 'overkill' (let's have the first orc horde to hit Netheril number a 100,000 orcs! Good idea, Slade! ...), and a failure to capture Netheril as envisaged by Ed Greenwood (and he has no excuse for this one: I have the Netheril hand-out he sent Slade before he started writing up the boxed set. He practically ignored the whole document!). Essentially, I thinki that Netheril has wonderful potential but was poorly done - and greatly contributed to the demise of the Arcane Age line - one of my favourites thanks to Steven Schend. 'Nuff said.

-- George Krashos

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Originally posted by George Krashos

No, the handout isn't available generally. In a nutshell, Ed noted that the Netherese wizards all formed "enclaves" (i.e holdings) where they did what they wanted (rainbow colored waterfalls, reverse gravity effects, climate anomalies - unmelting snow in a hot desert environment, etc.). Those enclaves were not flying upside down mountain tops. He also stressed the importance of "mantle" magic to the Netherese. Between these enclaves were the forest domains of the "Free Folk" who traded with the wizards, hunted, farmed and generally co-existed, save where they were hunted or persecuted themselves by the wizards. There were no mythallars mentioned in the (short, one page) handout.

-- George Krashos

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Originally posted by George Krashos

Hey Faraer, great to have you here!

Why am I 'so' hard on Slade? Mainly because he was lead designer on a couple of headline FR products (Netheril and The North boxed set) and didn't do a particularly good job on either. The North is pretty much just a re-hashed FR5 and Volo's Guide to the North (really the only new stuff was on Silverymoon), and Netheril was what I would consider to be a lazy product. Lots of filler, useless stuff like lists of Netherese spells and their modern equivalent, a history that is out of kilter with the previously published Realms, an emphasis on 'overkill' (let's have the first orc horde to hit Netheril number a 100,000 orcs! Good idea, Slade! ...), and a failure to capture Netheril as envisaged by Ed Greenwood (and he has no excuse for this one: I have the Netheril hand-out he sent Slade before he started writing up the boxed set. He practically ignored the whole document!). Essentially, I thinki that Netheril has wonderful potential but was poorly done - and greatly contributed to the demise of the Arcane Age line - one of my favourites thanks to Steven Schend. 'Nuff said.

-- George Krashos

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Originally posted by George Krashos

No, the handout isn't available generally. In a nutshell, Ed noted that the Netherese wizards all formed "enclaves" (i.e holdings) where they did what they wanted (rainbow colored waterfalls, reverse gravity effects, climate anomalies - unmelting snow in a hot desert environment, etc.). Those enclaves were not flying upside down mountain tops. He also stressed the importance of "mantle" magic to the Netherese. Between these enclaves were the forest domains of the "Free Folk" who traded with the wizards, hunted, farmed and generally co-existed, save where they were hunted or persecuted themselves by the wizards. There were no mythallars mentioned in the (short, one page) handout.

-- George Krashos

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Originally posted by sleyvas

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Originally posted by George Krashos

No, the handout isn't available generally. In a nutshell, Ed noted that the Netherese wizards all formed "enclaves" (i.e holdings) where they did what they wanted (rainbow colored waterfalls, reverse gravity effects, climate anomalies - unmelting snow in a hot desert environment, etc.). Those enclaves were not flying upside down mountain tops. He also stressed the importance of "mantle" magic to the Netherese. Between these enclaves were the forest domains of the "Free Folk" who traded with the wizards, hunted, farmed and generally co-existed, save where they were hunted or persecuted themselves by the wizards. There were no mythallars mentioned in the (short, one page) handout.

-- George Krashos

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You hit on the one thing there that I would have love to have seen some serious info on... Netherese Mantle Magics.... I remember looking at the "magic of incarnum" book and thinking that conceptually it was a system that might have worked towards a "mantle bearer" concept... granted a baby version in the making... but there's a nice "idea" in there. That's not to say of course that I don't love the concept of using contingent spell affects with mantles like what was done with Lost Empires of Faerun, but I think there should be some mixing of the two concepts.

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Originally posted by George Krashos

I did a write-up of my take on mantle magic using 3E Epic magic and that's in my thread here at the 'Keep.

Doesn't really work in 5E so haven't bothered updating it.

-- George Krashos

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Originally posted by George Krashos

Those enclaves were not flying upside down mountain tops. He also stressed the importance of "mantle" magic to the Netherese. [..] There were no mythallars mentioned

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Originally posted by cpthero2

Master Krashos,

Revitalizing this for another question: any chance you might consider updating it to the older 3.5/PF 1st systems? Some of us are still never-adopters. haha

Best regards,

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