the music's started I try not to think

[enthusiastick]

I had a very uneventful weekend. My half-hearted cold turned into full-blown misery, so I spent most of the weekend lying on my bed watching Buffy and drinking Vitamin Water. I did manage to get out Friday night and head over to human_typhoon & dippy423's place, where I ate Chinese food and thablueguy began the process of assembling the armor he's making for me and actually fitting it to my person. I am, if I have not mentioned this before, really super psyched about this armor, which continues to look more and more awesome. I'm starting to think I like playing more than I like staffing, which is ultimately unfortunate, as I have my doubts about Legends being as good this coming Spring as it was this past Fall.

Battlestar Galactica was new last night, and good, although my affection for the series has plateau'd somewhat. I don't get nearly the same geeky butterflies in my stomach feeling from BSG as I do from say, Doctor Who or Heroes (which is back tonight, huzzah!) Anyway. The supposed cliffhanger from December's episode resolved more or less as expected, and as ever teasing hints about plot development failed to bear any fruit whatsoever in the form of actual revelations. The Starbuck/Apollo tension that was theoretically brought to a crux will also apparently be serving as the A-plot for the coming episode, but I don't have any special hope that it will be resolved in a meaningful way either. I'm not as bitter as I sound, I just wish they didn't feel the need to stretch things out so damn much. It seems like things only happen on this show on the seasonal scale, as if I could watch one episode in four and know just as much about what's going on. Not that I ever would, of course, because I'm addicted.

Also it causes a little bit of cognitive dissonance that the Cylons I had been referring to in my head as the "single-run models" have subsequently been semi-officially termed the "final five." I suppose that appellation is more mystical-sounding, as well as being shorter, but its less descriptive. I got completely used to the term I made up in my mind for my own discussions, and having to relearn it as something else is a minor irritation.

On an entirely different note I bought the Eberron corebook from Amazon.com via Christmas gift certificate. It shipped this morning and should arrive by the end of the week. It was largely purchased on a whim; I've thought the setting was cool ever since I first perused it, and was struck recently with a yen to pore over a sourcebook containing just that sort of well-developed 'fantasy with a smidge of horror for good measure' world. The trouble is that since Eberron was first released in 2004 Wizards of the Coast has annoyingly gone ahead and released supplements for it, in their usual money-grubbing fashion. Some of these can obviously be ignored but others (Races of Eberron, Magic of Eberron, Faiths of Eberron) have the unfortunate distinction of looking both interesting and useful. So this is my appeal to the D&D nerds in the crowd: are the ancillary books worth buying?

Comments

Eberron core book

[celeloriel.livejournal.com]

I have the core book, and the only supplement I'm planning on buying is Faiths of Eberron, simply because faiths and clerics in the setting work so differently than the other settings. I own a lot of other books about magic and races in D&D, and I find that I don't really need to get more prefabbed magic items in 34.95 form. :)

Re: Eberron core book

[pooka-madness.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Its clear to me we are of largely the same philosophy, which is why I said that a number of the Eberron supplements can happily be ignored. Faiths and clerics do indeed seem to function very differently, which would make Faiths of Eberron a theoretically good purchase. But by the same logic the unique races of Eberron appear to be relatively complex things, and so I am equally tempted by Races of Eberron. It claims to have new feats. I am a sucker for new feats. As someone who already has the corebook in hand, what say you?

Re: Eberron core book

[celeloriel.livejournal.com]

So sorry that I didn't respond earlier.

Well, if you're a sucker for feats, I highly suggest that you hie yourself over to wizards.com - they have a section where they put up articles about Eberron for FREE, and some of those will include new feats. :)

I really do not know what races are truly significant enough to make me buy another book. In the core book, we have the parameters for the shifters, the kalashtar, and the warforged, who surely are unique - but truthfully, they're really not THAT odd, and they're very runnable without any special focused feats/stuff. The Dragonmarked are templated humans, just like the kalashtar and the shifters; the warforged are 'living constructs', but they too are a rather more extreme version of templated humans, stat-wise.

I'm not going to buy another book about Eberron until and unless they come out with something about The Evils Of Eberron. The villains that make me adore Eberron are the quori. I absolutely love the idea of running a campaign in which the masters of Riedra are seemingly unstoppable and lurking in every shadow. There're some great free articles about that very topic, called "The Reach of Riedra", on the wizards site, IIRC.