Dragonlance: Age of Mortals [ハードカバー]

I am planning on running a DL campaign using 3e rules but after reading the campaign setting book, I had a lot of questions. One example - do all wizards of high sorcery have to specialise?

This book answered all the questions. It is quite literally an extension of the campaign setting book (think of it as book 2).

More classes, races, prestige classes, etc More magic items, more history, more info in general, FANTASTIC art (MUCH better than the art served in the campaign setting). Infact the art is the best I've seen in any Dungeons and Dragons (3rd edition) book to date.

I loved this book more than the campaign setting itself and it was this book which really sold me on the idea of a Dragonlance under the 3rd edition rules.

Highly recommended. Especially so if you buy the DL Campaign setting.

Dragonlance is my favorite campaign setting. I have read the Dragonlance Campaign Setting d20 manual, and despite its poor reviews, I thought it was still useful, and was not sadden by the loss of money. This book is completely different.

The biggest problem with the Age of Mortals, is the constant repetition. The book relates the history of the Dragonlance setting from the end of the Chaos War to the death of Takhisis, and the sacrifice of Paladine. The story itself is rather interesting, but it was already written in the main Dragonlance Campaign Setting book. As if repeating it once was not enough, the authors decided to place the story in several places of the book. The story is written in the introduction. The story is repeated in the beginning of the chapter on religion. The book also has a time table of events, which tells the same tale with the slight difference of separating events by the years on which the event took place. Further, on almost every character profile presented in the book, parts of the story were repeated again.

The art also is in need of repair. It isn't so much that the quality of the drawings is poor, as the quantity is. There are very few pictures compared to that of a typical roleplaying manual. This wouldn't have been a big deal, but there is obvious room for the pictures in the book. There are huge gaps at the end of each chapter, where there is nothing but blank page. This space could have easily been occupied by a picture or two. Had the book cut down on the repetitive story, even more room could have been made for art work. To top the space issues, the problem of the first d20 Dragonlance book was not corrected. This book still has inch thick margins.

The meat of the book lies in the few prestige classes presented. There is also a page of feats, and a couple pages of spells. The balance of the spells and feats is in question, but since I have not yet gotten a chance to use any of them, it would be unfair of me to grade them on their usability. Still even if all the spells and feats were the best feats and prestige classes ever written, this one chapter would not be enough to make up for the poor planning of the rest of the book.

There is a chapter on towns, cities, and strongholds. This is by far the best chapter in the book, but a few of the descriptions of the cities repeat larger parts of the main story. This wouldn't be so much of problem if it weren't for the boredom of having read the story several times already. This chapter had a major flaw. It doesn't have enough maps. Only three cities, or so, actually had a map of the city. Further, this chapter would have been helped greatly had it contained a map of the world, which showed the location of each city in the chapter. The only world map in this book contained directions of seasonal winds, followed by a small description of weather and climate.

There is a chapter of descriptions, which seems to say that the Dragonlance setting has the same main qualities of any other Dungeons and Dragons setting. This Chapter talked about the weather and the people. The only thing new was a small description of a few plants, and their nativity in Dragonlance. It isn't really important to the average gamer, but to someone who likes the poetry of Dragonlance, they might have some uses.

The religion Chapter describes each deity and their new role in the world. The Dragonlance Campaign Setting book already listed the deities. Thus, it was another disappointment that the deities were described again. Luckily a few of the descriptions had insight into what the deities planned for the future, instead of just telling who the deity was.

The structure of the book was also poor. It was rather annoying reading about a race description or a city description and then moving strait into a character profile. Why put Goldmoon's profile in the introduction of the religion Chapter? There really should have been a "Hero" chapter of the book, which contained all the character profiles instead of plugging them into random sections of the book.

By eliminating the unused space, and the repetition of this book, the publishers could have made a decent soft cover book, and lowered the price by a good 10 to 15 dollars. Even with Amazons low prices, this book isn't worth the money.

So, I liked the idea that Dragonlance uses all the 3.5 manuals already printed by Wizards, that way you can use all those books you've already purchased with Dragonlance instead of replacing one or the other. I've played Eberron, Pathfinder and Forgotten Realms, but I'm liking the Dragonlance (with additions from Pathfinder) to be the best. I always thought it dumb to print books to be used with a particular backdrop of rules, but not to incorporate those rules into your world, but Dragonlance did it, and did it well. Very great products and I am excited to start my own campaign before too long!