Wolfgang Baur (1) (1968–)

This is a fantastic successor and tribute to the old Planescape boxed campaign setting. Basically, a number of the contributors to that AD&D 2nd ed campaign came up with unique planes for your characters to visit. It's highly entertaining and fun to read, and has plenty of plot seeds. It introduces a cosmology much more organic than the Great Wheel of core D&D, but the planes can be used as locations or demiplanes in the standard cosmology as well. I was inspired to blend elements of the two show more for my home brew campaign. The idea of planar conjunction is especially intriguing and can make for more adventure and uncertainty when traveling across the multiverse. The only drawback to this book is that it contains very little "crunch", and basically no options for characters. But as a DM's muse, this is a great book. show less

This book covered a lot of ground, and though it was kind of an "anthology" style with a bunch of authors, Wofgang Baur wrote about 75% of the essays. So if you're looking to write an rpg accessory, create a board game or even just write a short article for some online zine, there's definitely a bunch of instruction here that could help. I like how honest he is about it being tough and not always fun and he warms people up to the idea of their writing being changed before publication. I show more remember when that happened to me and it was a huge deal to me, I felt personally slighted. I also enjoyed the "peek behind the scenes" type of stuff as to how the industry works for different types of companies. show less

Pretty rough. Typos abound, there are errors in maps and descriptions, and the art is just bad, with a few exceptions. I looked up Bryan Syme (the illustrator) and a lot of his stuff is quite good, so I'm guessing that panicked deadlines had a lot to do with all these issues. Perhaps these issues have been resolved in later editions than I had. The core adventure is quite good, but a DM would need to do a lot of heavy lifting here.

My feelings about this adventure path are...mixed. There is definitely a lot of potential here, and I have enjoyed running it for my game group. At the same time, it really feels like it was rushed to production as the first adventure path for D&D 5th Edition. I noticed a number of omissions and errors (incorrectly labeled map areas, unlabeled areas, labeled areas with no corresponding descriptions, etc) that I think would have been caught had there been more time available in the show more publication cycle.

In hindsight I think I would have been better served by choosing something else for my first experience as a GM/DM. Now that I have run it once I think I have a better handle on it, and I do want to run it again for another group. With additional preparations on my part. show less