First, for you Weye followers, you may find the version 2 beta here. Please note that this is liable to be updated as bugs are found, and if you do find anything busted, please do let me know about it.

On an entirely different note, if you've been following this blog for any length of time, you know that I'm a pretty big fan of S.M. Stirling's body of fiction, but especially the trilogies that start with Island In the Sea of Time and Dies the Fire, and his new one that starts with The Sunrise Lands.

Now, lately I've been doing a reread of those in a sort of bizzare order where I read Sunrise Lands, then went back and did the Dies the Fire stuff, then went back and re-read ISOT for the first time in a few years. And I had a few thoughts on that experience that I'll probably want to come back to later, so let's just blather on that for a bit, shall we.

As a native Oregonian, and, being from Monroe, I've lived most of my life pretty close to the main thrust of the action, I'm pretty well obligated to love Dies the Fire and its successors, because hey, it's set in Oregon, and how cool is that. Furthermore, if the prologue thank-yous are to be believed, Stirling himself relied on other people for the setting stuff, rather than actually going there, though I could be wrong. In either case, he got a lot of our local quirks right, including:

- Portland as the Evil Empire. Being a not-Portlander, that's hilarious.
- Every depiction of the Corvallis city-state ever. Especially the beaver flag. I'm an OSU alumnus, and I find that side-splittingly funny. About the only way to make that particular bit of nationalism more hilarious would have been to use UO and that whole "The Ducks are our civic religion" thing, but you know what? he leveled Eugene. As a Corvallan, I can't do anything but applaud that.
- The whole Eugene coven thing was pretty cool, although I have to alternate between thinking they're enormously annoying and kind of cute, which I guess is fair because I do it with their real life counterparts too.
- Since I pretty much have an inate superiority complex about my native state in any case, the fact that Oregon turns out to be one of the bastions of civilization in the Changed world is pretty awesome. Another is England, which as we know is another of my favorite places. It's hard to argue with that.

I also find it pretty cool that over the course of the books, I've learned quite a bit more about my native state's geography than I knew before, which is cool.

Also the books are flat out awesome, as I've said before. If sometimes we get a little too regional stereotyped, and maybe we're a little too fast on the decay of society thing, well, that doesn't make it any less neat. As I've said before, the whole guys with longbows and chainmail cruising around Oregon thing is great.

As to Island in the Sea of Time, I'm once again remembering how interesting this world would be for some kind of RPG. I'm also reminded that there are plenty of hooks left in the third book to support a bunch of sequels in various ways, and if he doesn't get to it in the current set of books, I sure would like to go back and see if Althea turns out to be awesomely evil like I want her to.

I had also forgotten how great the Babylon parts of the second two books are, and how they made the parts of the book that were NOT Babylon sort of drag a bit. Also, I really, really wish we could have seen more of Egypt, but again with that whole needs-a-second-trilogy thing.

I also forgot how...utterly tacked on the airship crew stuff felt, and how I couldn't care less about them. I realize why they're there, and other minor character couples in the same vein, like the Marine privates, work just fine, and I like them. I wonder if this has anything to do with the fact that Cofflin and Stoddard are generally in the same scenes as other, way cooler characters like the Hollards and Kashtiliash. Along the same lines, the Ranger subplot bored me to tears this time, which I can't figure out because I liked it before.

Now, on a more thematic observation. Somebody, who I suspect is a random Wikipedia editor, said something interesting, to the effect of Stirling's having a strong belief in the inherent goodness of Western civilization or some such. Now, keeping the acknowledgement in the front of Conquistador firmly in mind (and I'm pretty sure I was there for the discussions that provoked that), I find that observation to be pretty true, and you have only to read ISOT through Conquistador to figure that out. There's, for the most part, a sort of attitude to the characters therein that wouldn't be out of place in a late 19th century Englishman. More enlightened, of course, but not out of place.

The interesting thing, though, is that Dies the Fire onwards is, if not precisely the exact opposite of this view, then pretty damn close. You get the sense that everyone doesn't exactly miss the 20th century like they might, and indeed lots of them are actually pretty happy about it. Certainly they aren't going out of their way to keep bits of it alive, like Nantucket does - the Mackenzies are a moderately representative democracy, but pretty much nobody else is, for example. Maybe I'm reading too much into that, but it'll be interesting to see how, if that whole vision thing turns out like people think, he resolves that dichotomy, or if he does.

And it's midnight and I'm incoherent, so enough of that.

One of those things about me that most people don't actually know is that I'm something of a map geek, especially when it comes to gaming maps. Now, most of you, my faithful readers, pretty much know this - the whole Cartographer's Guild thing for one, and I've posted plenty of Campaign Cartographer doodles up here.

One of the things that really really doesn't get talked about is the fact that, in amongst my D&D things, I have a box that, once upon a time, back when they were the height of technology, contained an external 100 MB Zip drive. Now it contains AD&D poster maps. 81 of them, to be exact, ranging from the 3rd edition FRCS map of Faerun to the Dragonlance maps from Tales of the Lance to maps of Europe from the Historical Reference series. About the only thing missing is my two-poster Greyhawk Wars map, which is still in Oregon.

Totally, they represent much of my spending money from my teenage years. Some kids collect baseball cards. Others clothes. Some people spend it on their cars, or dating. Me? I can recreate most of the Forgotten Realms in 30 miles to the inch poster maps.

With a larger version here.

That includes maps from:

Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting: Revised (1993)
The Horde Campaign Setting (1990)
Maztica Campaign Setting (1991)
Spellbound (1995)
The North (1996)
Vilhon Reach (1996)
Lands of Intrigue (1997)
Empires of the Shining Sea (1998)
Storm Riders (1990)

Not pictured are the two 30 mile to the inch poster maps from the Al Qadim set, which would be somewhere south of the two brown maps from the Horde and Storm Riders, approximately where my kitchen cabinets are. We'll also skip out on the 15 mile to the inch map of Michaca from City of Gold.

Now, while the entire 2nd edition line of FR boxed sets was supurb (culminating in the ridiculously excellent Lands of Intrigue and Empires of the Shining Sea), I actually did a lot of my collecting not for the source material, but for the maps. These are the best sorts of maps, really, because you can point to some ruin on them, look up that ruin, and go imagine yourself having adventures there, which was incredibly important to my teenage self, and I suppose still is. In any event, I have a fair number of maps I've never actually used, such as:

With a larger version here.

You FR savvy types will recognize three of the great cities of the Realms there:

Waterdeep, from the 1994 City of Splendors box
Myth Drannor, from the 1993 Ruins of Myth Drannor box
Menzoberranzan, from the 1992 box of the same name.

Never used a one of them, but they sure are cool, aren't they? City of Splendors in particular was an awesome box for maps - in addition to the two-poster city street layout you see there, there are also maps for Castle Waterdeep, a tavern, and two photographed posters of miniatures layouts of parts of the city. Made of win. Also the books were great.

And this is the sort of thing that, aside from the actual 3rd edition FRCS, which is the best basic set for the Realms to date, is sadly lacking recently. By way of illustration, let's show this picture of my 90 miles to the inch FR poster maps:

With larger version here.

With maps from:

Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting: Revised (1993)
The Horde Campaign Setting (1990)
Al Qadim Campaign Setting
OA6: Ronin Challenge (1990)

By contrast, do you see that sole, single poster, 120 mile to the inch map that's had chunks edited out of it to fit? That's the 2001 3rd edition Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting map, and it's pretty much the only one you're going to get in all of 3rd edition. And that's just sad, now isn't it?

Now, that's not the only thing hard to love about the new map. While, for gaming purposes, 30 miles to the inch is a great scale, and it's pretty much the only one I like to use, 90 miles to the inch isn't a bad scale, and those two FRCS:Revised maps in the northwest corner are pretty well-loved. But 120 miles to the inch? That's unusably small. Which wouldn't be so bad if 3rd edition products had made up for it, but they really didn't. And I for one am pretty sad about that.

In which I, having not done so previously, shortly review the downloadable content for Oblivion. I'll go through each one, then I'll talk about the series as a whole.

DLC1: Horse Armor

Which gives you the ability to buy armor for your horses, allowing them to live longer in combat, and also look cool. Which is fine, and all, if you want your horse to look cool, but considering it's more expensive than all but two of the other DLCs (Mehrunes Razor and Knights of the Nine, both of which are very large), I'd expect more, and do anyway. Let us be clear, here: Oblivion's mount system stinks. It's a gimmick, and with the exclusion of actual mounted combat, a poorly executed one at that. Considering that you get leaped by enemies every five seconds in the wild, better armored horses is nice and all, but fails to address how annoying it is to have to hop off the horse and fight constantly.

Which explains why I don't use horses (multiple characters don't even have the free one), and why I've never used the horse armor, though I paid my $1.99 for it.

DLC2: Orrery

I wasn't particularly thrilled with this second entry in the DLC series, either, considering that it was so blatantly and obviously cut from the game in the first place, whether because of lack of time, or specifically to make it a DLC, who knows. Again, for the money I pay for the thing, even $1.89, I wish the quest was a little bit more substantial than "Go chase down bandit camps in the wild. Repeatedly." That aside, the orrery itself looks great, and the powers are kind of neat. I just wish that the quest weren't so completely uninspired.

DLC3: Frostcrag Spire

Finally, a DLC I can really get behind. This is a house mod, and a fairly well done one at that. There are a lot of good gimmicks in it, and some really great and useful stuff for wizards, like summoning altars, spellmaking and enchanting altars, an alchemy garden, and teleporters to the mages' guilds. Also, it looks awesome, and when the view from the spire is present, it's fantastic. The only thing I can really think to say negatively is that if there was ever a place to put display cases, boy that entry hall area is it. For $1.89, it's worth having.

DLC4: Spell Tomes

I love the idea of this mod, which is to insert spellbooks with learnable spells into the loot lists. I kind of wish you could just do this with scrolls in the first place, but what the hell. On the other hand, the execution is...flawed. Firstly, they're...reasonably rare, which may be me looking in the wrong spots, but even Alera, world traveler, hasn't found more than a few, and very few of the good ones. Secondly, it's hard to tell which spell you're getting, because of the annoying "Do you want to learn this spell?" popup. Yes, I probably do, but I can't tell what it does, so who knows? Given the inability to clean out your spellbook in Oblivion, this can get annoying. Thirdly, all things considered, if I'm going to find rare spells, I'd like them to be worth having, as opposed to "not quite as good as the ones you can make yourself", which is what they are in reality, and as opposed to sigil stones, which really ARE better than you can make on your own.

That aside, for $0.99, I don't see why you wouldn't just run out and get the thing. I nitpick, but it's still cool.

DLC5: The Vile Lair

As houses go, this one isn't precisely bad, exactly, but it's definitely not Frostcrag, and it's a little too 14 year-old Goth munchkin for my taste. The layout? Cool, especially the shrine. Secret hidden loot? Cool. Not so secret loot that rivals the best stuff in the game? Munchkin as hell. An altar that prevents you from needing to do the vampire cure quest? Probably ok, because that quest is fucking annoying, but still munchkin as hell. Also, I don't really feel EVIL in my evil lair. Just sort of misunderstood and on the run. The Dark Brotherhood sanctuary? Oh, now THAT place is evil. The Vile Lair just sort of plays it on TV every so often.

Go spend the $1.89 on one of the other house mods. You'll love yourself more.

DLC6: Fighter's Stronghold

Now THIS is a house mod. Every time I walk into some noble's castle in Oblivion, I say to myself "I gotta get me one of THESE!" And now I can. And while I have a couple of nitpicks that are common to all the DLCs, this is about as perfect as it gets. We have display cases. We have secret passages and rooms and enemies. I can watch the sunsets from the roof. Spar with my trainer, and take my men at arms to go hunt bandits. There's even a taxidermist to make awesome stuffed versions of wildlife. Run, do not walk, to buy this. Even if you aren't a fighter, Battlehorn Castle is worth it.

DLC7: The Thieves' Den

There's a lot of pretty intriguing stuff about this house mod, like it's location (which is kind of a pain to get to, but interesting), and things like the lock training chest and the trainers and the fence. Pirates are cool. What's not cool is that it's a little hard to actually store your stuff in what little room your personal cabin has. And that's the whole reason for house mods in the first place. That having been said, it's still a whole lot better than the place you get as part of the Thieves' Guild.

DLC8: Knights of the Nine

To borrow a phrase, this mod is so perfect that any possible nitpicks are nullified. A temple faction (which was the best faction in Morrowind, or near enough, and it's better here)? Great. Awesome quests? Well...awesome. Fantastic new gear and abilities? Hot. One of the single best cinematic views of the entire game (which has some awesome views, let me tell you?) Icing on the cake. Knights of the Nine is so good, I like it even more than the actual expansion pack, and there are even more factions (like the Imperial Legion) which could have used the same treatment.

At $9.99, it's the most expensive of the DLCs, but it's by far the best, and considering the amount of content and the scope, it's hard to see why you wouldn't put down the money. Stop reading here, and just go get it.

DLC9: Mehrunes' Razor

This is basically a $2.99 dungeon crawl with an artifact at the end, which I assure you you've done previously in Oblivion. If you haven't, are we even playing the same game? But I feel pretty confident in saying you've never experienced one quite this cool. Mehrunes' Razor takes cave scenery about as far as you can take it - cities, ruins, a little dash of Oblivion itself, combined with interesting enemies and some good loot. It's worth doing.

DLC Series

And now the series as a whole. On the whole, I feel like this series was weaker than what we got with Morrowind. Things like the Seige at Firemoth, the archery shop, and adamantium armor plugins were cooler and probably more useful than almost any plugin here, and they were free.

For things I had to pay for, there were some noticable clunkers here - the horse armor was pretty offensive, especially as a first plugin. So was the Orrery, which had a quest that was wildly inferior to almost any Oblivion quest, more on par with some of the ones in Morrowind - good at the time, but we're _better_ than that now.

On the other hand, some of them are quite superior. Frostcrag Spire. Battlehorn Castle. Mehrune's Razor (number last, but actually one of the earlier plugins) showed us that the DLC series could actually be quite good if we and they let it. And Knights of the Nine is clearly a superior work, giving a faction that is immediately in the top tier of faction quests, vying with the Dark Brotherhood and Thieves' Guild. Most of the house mods are generally better than the houses you have to pay for (which except for the Skingrad and Anvil ones, probably aren't worth it).

One more nitpick, however. The practice of having a huge quest dump upon exiting the sewers after chargen, or upon loading your game, is atrocious, and decidedly Not the Way To Go. Most of them could have been done better easily, ala Knights of the Nine and its rumors. I know they wanted people to be able to immediately use their new stuff, but it breaks immersion and gives you massive quest clutter, which is a lot worse than waiting around to hear a rumor.

Related to that, there were opportunities for quests, especially in the house mods like Frostcrag or Battlehorn, that, had they been expanded on, could have been quite good. Battlehorn came closest to this, but ultimately failed (that was a pretty weak ass bandit seige), and seriously, what was with the guy who just gave you Frostcrag? A missed opportunity, I feel. For the price, I suppose I get what I pay for, but I wouldn't have minded a few cents more for a little more polish.

All in all, though, most of these are worth having, and a couple of them make the Oblivion experience so much richer, it's hard to understand not having them.

How do you know cataloging is pain?

Notice, if you will, the multitide of 2" thick books, the 2" binder that's full, and yes, that's so totally a flowchart there.

Yes, I AM crazy, why do you ask?