OSSR: Frostburn

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

So do you think they came up with Rimefire before or after they named the book Frostburn? It is a type of frost that burns, after all.
Speaking of, Rimefire is the kind of fantasy material I enjoy. I will not deny that it's kind of retarded, but rolling up to an iceberg and mining out some glowing ice that you can make weapons out of and catch on fire is really interesting. It's a bit of a mess mechanically, but the concept is cool.

[Prak]

I'm very glad you didn't name any of these books.

I mean, fair. I was spitballing names in a few minutes. I'd like to think that I could come up with better names over the course of book development.

My main point, about books trodding on the identity of the next book, is a thing. Sure, Frost Burn may be an oldtimey term for frost bite. But burn still means, generally, a hot thing, and this book is about cold and the next book is about hot stuff.

Iunno. It's a thing that just bugs me.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Well, if I took a metal rod that was about 20 Kelvins to your bare skin, it would probably feel surprisingly similar to being burned. Then again, Frank probably knows more about this than either of us, so...

[Prak]

I'm not saying that you can't say that cold feels like burning, I'm saying that Frostburn was not the best choice of name due to both common connotations and the next book literally being about hot stuff.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

At that point they should've just turned it into a theme and called Stormwrack fucking Aquacity, then followed it up with Towns & Tombs.

[K]

The various climate-themed sourcebooks probably added a year to third edition, so they deserve some respect.

I mean, Paizo keeps the company in the black by publishing adventures, but Wizards never did find a way to stay alive as a company except through sourcebooks.

[Username17]

As far as the names of the environment sourcebooks go, I would rate them:

Frostburn: A
Sandstorm: C
Stormwrack: A
Dungeonscape: D
Cityscape: F

Frostburn and Stormwrack are good titles because they are appropriately overwrought fantasy names that they are clearly D&D books and also clearly conveying their main concept. Sandstorm is less good in the sense that title could be a dance track or a Pokémon move or something about actual Earth desert environments. The D&D Sandstorm book doesn't even come up on the first page of Google or Bing when searching for it. And I have now learned that there is something called "Warriors" that is apparently pretentiously about literal cats? It gets the "desert environment" theme across, but it's a bit too generic.

Dungeonscape and Cityscape are embarrassing. Those look like placeholder joke names. Cityscape is worse because it's a normal word used for every actual city from Shanghai to Hamburg. Neither are acceptable, but Cityscape deserves especially deep scorn.

Were I to be in charge of an edition, I'd certainly have a Frostburn. I don't know if I'd lead with it, because "It's Cold Outside" seems a little less imperative than "It's Wet Outside" to be honest. In any case, the pieces I'd do would be:

• It's Cold Outside
• It's Hot Outside
• It's Wet Outside
• There are Trees Outside
• It's Inside Outside
• There are Swamps Outside

One thing I would definitely do is to explicitly tie in certain other themes of the game to the various books. The expanded rules for snow hazards and freezing to death take like 25 pages total in Frostburn, you do need to have secondary themes to justify having the rest of the book have text in it.

Book	Core Concept	New Classes	Focus Races	Focus Monsters	Dragon
Frostburn	Mountain Tundra Clouds	Scout Shaman	Goblin Dwarf	Giants	White
Stormwrack	Nautical	Swashbuckler Witch	Hadozee Merfolk	Aquatic	Gyrados
Underdark	Dungeons	Psion	Drow	Aberrations	Red
Sandstorm*	Deserts Hellscapes	Assassin		Fiends	Blue
Feywild	Forests	Warden	Elves Gnomes	Fey	Green
Banemires	Swamps	Necromancer	Orcs Lizardfolk	Undead	Black

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Uh, what's with that asterisk next to Sandstorm?

[erik]

Additional extra environment. Skies. Cloud and storm giants. Rocs. Cloud cities. Airships. Better aerial combat rules? Or would Frostburn be expanded to include that more fully?

And desert halfling nomads make a focus race for Sandstorm*. Jawas.

[Username17]

Additional extra environment. Skies. Cloud and storm giants. Rocs. Cloud cities. Airships. Better aerial combat rules? Or would Frostburn be expanded to include that more fully?

And desert halfling nomads make a focus race for Sandstorm*. Jawas.

As far as the skies goes, I think you could easily make a whole book around the skies, but you wouldn't want to make it a regular terrain book because there aren't any 1st level cloud island adventures (well, there's Jack and the Beanstalk, but that's a story about running away). And I do think there's room for a 12 page chapter about cloud islands and sky boats in the cold book.

The historical Frostburn handled all the advanced freezing and snow falling and such rules as well as giving an actually decent enough primer on seasons and elevations and shit in 25 pages. The entire equipment chapter is only 8 pages and hits most of the needed points. All told, the entire "exploring the frozen wastes" portion of the book calls dibs on about 40 pages, leaving you about 180 pages to play with. If you had a more space economical means of presenting new magic (which you'd want to anyway because holy shit does 3.5 waste my time with these spell entries), you could save a lot of space there as well.

Anyway, I'd present that book with a "Hazards of Winter" chapter of about 20 pages, followed by some smaller chapters about specific circumstances under which things are cold. So you'd have a chapter on mountains, a chapter on winter, a chapter on polar latitudes, a chapter on Cocytos, and you could have a chapter on cloud islands as well. Those don't really have to be long chapters, ultimately you're going to have whole books about Fiendish hellscapes so you don't need to go all-in on Cocytos. But let's assume all those get 10 pages each, which now brings us up to 70 pages.

We're going to want a bunch of pages of monsters, because of course you are. And also you're going to want a few pages telling you where to find all the other cold monsters and giants. So like, Winter Wolves are in the Monster Manual and the Frost Salamander is in the Monster Manual 2 and so on. And this book has a special focus on Giants, so you want to give 10 pages to that, and a few pages ranting about how cool white dragons are. All told, this in another 70 pages or so.

Which leaves you still 80 pages for player-facing material. You want some writeups of player races that people might conceivably want like Snow Goblins and not like Tundra Halflings, and some brand new classes like the Scout and Shaman and a few pages of focusing on classes that have obvious tie-ins to the colder regions (mostly Berserker and Ranger). And you also want to make sure you give some kind of "It's Cold Outside" ability package for all the classes that currently exist. But considering that this can average half a page per class, you're only penciling in 10 pages to do that. Throw down another 15-20 pages of more extensive than Frostburn equipment lists and you're good to go.

-Username17

[GnomeWorks]

races that people might conceivably want like Snow Goblins and not like Tundra Halflings

I'm not sure why one option is superior to the other? Is it because halflings are thoroughly examined in a bunch of different books, while goblins aren't?

[ColorBlindNinja61]

races that people might conceivably want like Snow Goblins and not like Tundra Halflings

I'm not sure why one option is superior to the other? Is it because halflings are thoroughly examined in a bunch of different books, while goblins aren't?

Could also be that you fight Goblins more often than not and having a nice variety of monsters is important in TRPGs.

[Ancient History]

Cold Magic by itself is not a hard sell. The hard sell is coming up with a reason to go to somewhere it is cold. D&D3.x was basically not set up for pumping out GURPS-style books. It wanted to be, but as the prestige classes show, it just wasn't able to pump out generic enough fantasy pablum that could go in any campaign. Hell, how much of this book is incompatible with Eberron without some serious work? You think they got fucking Rimefire eidolons in Dark Sun or Dragonlance? Fuck no!

[DrPraetor]

I think adding new base classes is probably a mistake.

You're going to be adding new content for various base classes across expansion books, so new base classes are basically wasted space. EDIT: because they will get progressively smaller in the pants vs. the basic classes in the base book as more expansion material comes out.

This means that the basic book should ship with 40 base classes and the Banemires book should have more Necromancer love

The "ring of Liche control" is a magic item that enables liches to control you. This is what the rings in LOTR do so you can hardly complain.

than other sourcebooks, sure, but there should be mummies for Necromancers to make in Sunspear* and new poisons for Assassins to put on arrows in Feywild, and so on.

Dark Sun can have Rimefire eidolons. Dark Sun can't have hleid (since it doesn't have a pantheon), but there are Fire/Water clerics in Dark Sun who basically worship Rimefire eidolons already.

[Ancient History]

If a glacier existed in Dark Sun, then one of the Sorcerer-Kings would have hauled the damn thing to their city-state and melted it down for precious water at this point.

[Wiseman]

Is there reason the trees and swamps books have to be separate?

[Foxwarrior]

Forests and swamps are different land types .

[Zaranthan]

I think adding new base classes is probably a mistake.

You're going to be adding new content for various base classes across expansion books, so new base classes are basically wasted space. EDIT: because they will get progressively smaller in the pants vs. the basic classes in the base book as more expansion material comes out.

If we're publishing 3.Y, we can avoid making this mistake as well. Each expansion book can have a web supplement that adds its spells to wizard-fraction classes like the Dread Necromancer and Beguiler. The main book adds alternate class features to the PHB classes, the web supplement can do the same for your Duelist, Swashbuckler, Totemist, etc.

Yes, that means you've got a lot more writing to do once you've published a dozen of these books, but the supplement doesn't have to be available when the book hits shelves, nor does it have to remain static once you DO put it up. It's the 21st Century, people are accustomed to content patches.

[Foxwarrior]

Release a book, and then release a supplement that takes more work to write online?

[Username17]

This means that the basic book should ship with 40 base classes

This right there is why it's an impractical idea to want all the base classes in the base book. There isn't room in the base PHB for 40 classes and it would be both overwhelming and underwhelming if you made room for that much. Think Feng Shui 2, most of the "extra" classes are going to be under developed and unplaytested and just be garbage if you try to have them all at launch.

Now there are a lot of expansion classes that have been... not good. The classes in Tome of Magic and Magic of Blue are crimes against humanity and should be prosecuted in The Hague. The Samurai and Swashbuckler in The Complete Warriors are concepted as uncustomizable Fighters in an edition where Fighters were already unacceptably bad. And so on.

But recall that there are classes like the Beguiler, Dread Necromancer, and Warblade that do basically carry their weight and people like. And I've personally made classes like the Dungeonomicon Monk and the Fire Mage that people have liked using.

When you add a class like Wu Jen or Scout, you'll want to have them hit the ground running with a comparable amount of material to what the Paladin and Ranger have after the books like Sword & Fist come out. And you have to accept that some of the future expansion books are going to ignore the expansion classes from other books while still expanding core classes. But in most cases whether a class gets more or less expansion options doesn't make a titanic difference to how it plays at a specific table. More options is better at the limit of infinite character optimization, but often this is theoretically superior rather than functionally superior.

Further, what you think the game needs when you're designing it and what you find out about what the game needs after a few years of people playing the thing are going to be pretty different.

Bottom line is that I don't think Dread Necromancers or Beguilers got any expansion material in Dungeoscape and also too I don't care because those classes were searing rails of awesome as printed in their original context.

Is there reason the trees and swamps books have to be separate?

Because Ravenloft is different from Arcadia.

Beyond the It's Cold Outside and the It's Hot Outside, the environment books aren't really going to be about environments that are inherently threatening so much as environments that have threatening things in them. Forests and Bogs are places you can actually just stand in the mud and nothing bad happens to you unless and until the local wildlife comes and starts some shit. So the reason they have books at all is that you want to rant about monsters and high level locations.

So when you have two very different sets of monsters you want to have chapters about, those should probably go into different books. Your forest book has some rants about various jungles and old growth forests and stuff, but the thing that drives the book is the monster chapter about Fairies. And the swamp book can have moors and bogs and shit, but the real draw of the book is the monster chapter about Undead. And for a D&D branding thing in particular, the forest book gets a Green Dragon and the swamp book gets a Black Dragon.

So consider how much of the book is taken up with divergent material:

Chapter	Forests	Swamps
Plane	Arcadia	Ravenloft
Dragon	Green	Black
Monster Focus	Fey	Undead

And that's more than half of the DM-facing material. Which you could kind of argue against if you didn't have enough player facing material for each book, but you totally do. The forest book has an Elf focus, which as we know is enough to fill a book by itself (plus whatever other forest races you feal like using), and we can throw in the classes of Warden, Seeker, and Bladesinger. The swamp book can have Orcs, Bullywugs, Vampires, and Lizardfolk as well as classes like Witch, Blighter, and Deathknight. The magic in the forest book can have an illusion/charm focus while the magic in the swamp book can have a necromancy focus.

It seems real easy to fill both books with DM-facing and player-facing material. Much more so than like, a book about grasslands or a book about rivers.

-Username17

[DrPraetor]

Further, what you think the game needs when you're designing it and what you find out about what the game needs after a few years of people playing the thing are going to be pretty different.

If you're doing a new edition of basically 3rd edition (ala 5th edition), you no longer have that excuse, and your game should ship with:

(Mundanes)
~Tome Soldier
Barbarian
Ranger
Rogue
Assassin
Scout (Wilderness Rogue)
Courtier
Crusader

(Hybrids)
Psychic Warrior
Paladin
Hexblade
Ninja
~Tome Monk
Druid
Dusk Blade
Bard
Runecaster

(Cloth Wearers)
Artificer
White Mage
Necromancer
Beguiler
Illusionist
Magic User (Conjurer)
Shaman
Warlock
Fey Sorcerer
Draconic Sorcerer
Psion
Witch (Transmuter)
Wu Jen (Evoker)
Sha'ir (Summoner)

But if you then say, "let's add a swashbuckler/warden/samurai/archivist", I say, "that's just a few customization levels for rogue/ranger/soldier/white mage, not a different class." This has the big advantage than an existing rogue who had a swashbuckling character concept can take the new material.

And, if the Ranger is underperforming, you release Ranger substitution levels or whatever in your Ranger book, rather than trying to start over from scratch with a Warden.

Seriously - from that list - find me something from this list:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_a ... ns_classes

that isn't covered.

Or - from that list - find me something that shouldn't be in the basic book. You might find some redundancy in the cloth wearers, maybe hex blades and dusk blades should be the same class with different class feature selections, but if you're taking something out for that reason, don't then add it back in an expansion book.

More to the point, find me at least six that shouldn't, because I think it's much better to ship with 31 than to ship with 25 and have to release expansion classes that people will forget to give epic items, or stuff to do in the swamp, or a guild house in the council of Waterdeep, or whatever.

Put another way - if I open the 6th edition PHB and it doesn't have Necromancers, Warlocks and Beguilers in it, I feel ripped off.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Beyond the It's Cold Outside and the It's Hot Outside, the environment books aren't really going to be about environments that are inherently threatening so much as environments that have threatening things in them. Forests and Bogs are places you can actually just stand in the mud and nothing bad happens to you unless and until the local wildlife comes and starts some shit. So the reason they have books at all is that you want to rant about monsters and high level locations.

Really? Wouldn't the forest book be a great place to throw down rules for sentient forests that try to kill any intruders inside of it? Giant bogs that overflow with poisonous bubbles? Obviously you could only do a few pages on magic forests and death swamps, but I couldn't think of any better place to detail that sort of stuff.

[GnomeWorks]

Could also be that you fight Goblins more often than not and having a nice variety of monsters is important in TRPGs.

The context there though was that you'd want Snow Goblin as a PC race as opposed to Tundra Halflings.

I get wanting to include palette swaps for monsters, that makes sense.

[Prak]

Probably niche, but given the online circles I run in, I would expect goblins to appeal to a lot more people than halflings.

But then, I suppose we could get into demographics. Are we writing a game for Boomers who grew up worshipping Tolkien and want to be Bilbo, or are we writing a game for millennial trans, and specifically trans feminine, people who, for a lot of social reasons, relate to the much maligned living disasters that are goblins?

[Foxwarrior]

If you're doing a new edition of basically 3rd edition (ala 5th edition), you no longer have that excuse

The process of designing new and interesting games is a type of research project. If you know how all the pieces will interact before you've put them together, the game is either simple and boring, or a stale clone of something that already exists.

If, say, you add Domain Rules to the game, lots of subtle things will change in ways that aren't necessarily easy to predict. For one, you're adding the idea that high levels should be actually playable rather than decoration, a concept that hasn't been explored very much by 3rd or 5th edition.