Customer Reviews

Shining South (Dungeon & Dragons d20 3.5 Fantasy Roleplaying, Forgotten Realms Supplement)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I have to wonder why Wizards keeps publishing books about areas that almost no one has any interest in playing in. Shining South continues this trend. Wouldn't a book about the Old Empires, the Vilhon Reach, Chondath or the Tethyr/Amn/Calimsham region be far more interesting?

Shining South is fairly well done for what it is, but unless you plan on using Halruaa, Dambrath, or Luiren in a campaign, its not terribly useful. Dambrath is an interesting nation, run by half-drow priestesses of Loviatar, but it is so remote from the rest of Faerun, you'd have to set your campaign here to use this information.

I will also say that Wizards now provides far less detail on these new nations than the FRCS provides. There is no over-all national population breakdown and not every city receives a write-up, making the usefulness of the book even more questionable.

In summary, the book reads well, but its of almost no utility to the general FR player or DM.

Beautifully drawn, mapped and written this is a fine addition to the sourcebooks on Faerun. The lands and peoples are a mix of mages, 1/2 drow, corsairs, halflings, thri keen, dwarves, elves (both civliized and wild) and a new race:the Loxo (basically bi-pedal elephants). The lands range from mtns, african savannahs, heavy woods, swamps, waste lands and a warm ocean. Their are ancient civilizations and sites that hide secrets and threats from the past, beast chieftains who control towns and cities along trade routes, hordes of gnollish tribes, yuan ti in neighboring jungles and a lizard king in a huge swamp kingdom to test PCs. Want to go chaotic? Play a 1/2 drow shadow marauder, loooking new type mage to play? how about Haluraan elder or magehound? New warriors include the Maquar Crusader, Drift Defender and the halfling Marchwarden. Pirate towns, mage cities, elven and halfling communites are mapped out nicely in the book. Their are plenty of new spells and monsters as well. This is a very nice looking and written book worth picking up and I highly recommend it

This book is excellent. It gives you all the information you need to flesh out a campaign set in the Shining South.
There is the usual classes, feats, spells, adventures etc. All at least to a reasonable standard.
I found the magic item chapter very good.
There's a chapter on organisation of the south. And included encounter tables. All good.
Six Chapters on the people and lands. All terrific information . Although The Shaar and the Great Rift gets one chapter together . And the Gold Dwarves get a bit short changes. The Half drow get more coverage than the Gold dwarves! Todd Gambles maps are great, one for each chapter as well.
Wayne Englands and Carl Franks, illustrations are also terific.
If your looking for information about the Shining South, this book is full of it. And well worth the price. And certainly on of the better region books, wizards have brought out.

This book is well written and is well worth the money. The only flaw I could find was that the Dwarves in the Great rift got a bit short changed for spce and were not as well documented as they should have been. Good work all around though. I have wondered what the next region would be in the FR series...Dalelands or maybe the Moonsea?