Re: (TFT) Land Beyond the Mountains Thoughts

[pvk@oz.net]

Without any basis other than imagination and impressions from reading the
two LBtM modules, my guess is that they didn't have much more than got
published, and if they had been funded to develop the other two nations,
they would've just made up the details to fill in.

I was mostly underwhelmed by the LBtM modules. I thought they were some of
the weakest TFT materials, and were terribly incomplete as far as being
complete nations for roleplaying in. A GM like me or my friends would want
to do a LOT more work to feel like they had much of a grasp of what was
going on. The maps in particular seemed highly lame, with their great lack
of detail or terrain information.

The best aspects of those books seemed to me to be the handful of detailed
situations and characters they described, some of which were interesting,
imaginitive and detailed. But then there was almost nothing else of
substance, that I recall.

On the other hand, it leaves more room for GM's to customize the nations,
or import characters and situations to their own developed worlds, and/or
to avoid players gaining too much information on the world their GM is
using by buying the books. But from that perspective, I wonder why even
bother forming them into books in that style.

As for the specific reason why the strongest nation would have no
fortifications, several things come to mind. Firstly, I expect it's
probably the same reason that the map for FOREST Lords of Dihad shows no
forest terrain - lazy lack of detail and/or authors who didn't see the
point in detailed maps, or who thought it was more valuable to "let" GM's
map their own details so the players won't know if they buy the books. To
be my own devil's advocate, however, one might argue that the strongest
nation in the area didn't see a need for fortifications because it tended
not to suffer outside attacks, or for some other thematic reason.

PvK

On Tue, May 29, 2007 1:54 pm, Marc Gacy wrote:
> Resurrecting a long-dead topic, here, to jump start the list again.
>
> Many know the history that there were two books put out about The Land
> Beyond the Mountains, Forest Lords of Dihad and Warrior Lords of Darok.
> many also know that the two cities in the works from those two lands were
> later converted to "In the Tyrant's Demense" for "Intrigue in Plaize" and
> "City of the Sacred Flame" for "Soldier City - Shaylle"
>
> I just recently broke out my copies of same and was thinking about the
> future products. I find it interesting that the Muipoco map, if published,
> would only have two small towns and its capital city Balka on the main
> map, while Soukor would only have its capital Dibrey. Both Dihad and Darok
> have a number of castles and roads on their maps.
>
> Clearly it seems that Darok and Dihad were always well planned compared to
> Muipoco and Soukhor. Soukhor is easy enough to devise as they gave enough
> hooks about their secretive nature, but Muipoco doesn't make any sense.
> For the strongest of the three combatants, they have no fortifications at
> all, just a trade road monitored by centaurs.
>
> Does anyone think they really had something planned or did it all just
> sort of peter out at an opportune time?
>
> Just wondering,
>
> Marc
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