Last week my copy of Points of Light II: The Sunrise Sea arrived at my friendly local game store. The first volume of Points of Light stands out as one of the great game books to come out in '08. Which really says something given that '08 was a banner year for neat-o gaming stuff. Rob Conley improves on the basic sandbox formula so excellently employed in the first volume.Once again, the game mechanics are treated with a light touch. For benefit of 4e players the monsters are described as things like "4d12 giant crayfish (level 4 skirmisher)". I don't know what mechanically distinguishes a skirmisher from a controller or a brute, but it's no harder to ignore than similar oddness in old crap I use all the time, like the Arduin Grimoires. If you can't figure out on your own that Level 4 Skirmisher probably 4 Hit Dice then you should probably steer clear of third party materials in general.
In addition to PoL II have just plain more material (64 pages worth, up from 48 in the original), I'm really digging on the diifferent settings. The first one works as a fantasy version of the colonization of the New World, while another has a great potential for chopping through lost jungles with machetes, and a third is a bunch of islands begging for maritime adventure in the vein of Sinbad or Odysseus. And holy crap! The final setting is a giant ass volcano full of evil. It's almost like Conley wrote that one just for me.
So I give Points of Light II a heart recommendation. Not only is the material excellent but it looks just as easy to drop into a campaign as the original volume. I plan on using at least two of the PoL II sandboxes in my own home campaign.
You can get your copy of Points of Light II: The Sunrise Sea from your local game retailer or at the Goodman Games online store.
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similar oddness in old crap I use all the time, like the Arduin Grimoires.
ReplyDeleteColor me appalled. You just compared challenge levels to Hargrave? Dude.
:-)
Thanks Jeff :). Also there are now player maps at this link.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.goodman-games.com/downloads/PoLII_PlayerMaps.pdf
The final setting is a giant ass volcano full of evil. It's almost like Conley wrote that one just for me.
ReplyDeleteI can't say that I created it for you. But while writing it I remember reading one of your posts and thinking "I better make this a damn good giant ass volcano for Jeff."
If you had to choose between them, which of the PoL products would you buy/keep? I'm thinking of buying one for an upcoming sandbox/public pickup game, so a compare & contrast review would be useful.
ReplyDeleteBoth books are excellent, so for me it comes down to a right tool for the right job issue. If you want to focus on exploration then PoL II is clearly your huckleberry. All you need is an excuse to get the party onto the map (ship blown off course, a treasure map, searching for a lost city of gold, etc) and the campaign practically writes itself.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, if you need a sandboxy context to drop your adventures into, then I think the first volume is the way to go. Looking at the two of them together the first couple of sandboxes in the original look a little more vanilla. Some people use that term as a criticism, but it's really a strength. Goodman Games has a made a lot sales by making sure their Dungeon Crawl Classics were vanilla enough to drop into anyone's campaign. That's why I used them extensively in my 3.5 campaign.
Didn't know the second one was out, time to make a trip to FLGS, I got some good use out the first one and being my campaign has taken to the high seas of late the island setting seems like it may be useful.
ReplyDeleteI've also been toying, in a back burner way, with a colonization idea off and on for years now so perhaps that setting might prove useful as well.
I just picked this up and am very much looking forward to reading it. I loved PoL1, and this looks even better! Good stuff, Rob.
ReplyDelete