I loved EQ growing up. I have the city book for Freeport from this system. I keep an eye out for the other books on the cheap. It would make a nice setting for a game, but it probably didn't need a whole system devoted to it. The fact that each race has a city attached to it was one of my favorite parts of the game. Depending on which race you chose your choices for where to start the game were limited. Some races had multiple options, other only had their ancestral home. This led to the newbie experience not being very diverse. You make a WoodElf, and you start in Kelethin, all of the other newbies you find will be other wood elves, or high elves from Felewithe which was essentially next door. You may run into Dwarves who come from the mountain kingdom of Kaladim but they were in a separate zone and a little bit of a hike away. As you leveled up though you started to find more and more diversity in the higher level areas. It was really neat.
Factions were really important too. Like certain higher level spells could only be found in certain cities.. So if you were an evil race like a dark elf, and needed a spell that could only be purchased in Erudin, the Erudite city, you'd have to find a way to do it. Perhaps have a friend buy it for you, or use an illusion spell to change your appearance.. Or perhaps do enough quests to raise your faction with that city so their guards wouldn't murder you on sight! There's certainly some aspects that could be brought into a game and made pretty fun.
Actually played this for about three months back when it was new. It was pretty damn bad but one of the players in our regular D&D group really, really wanted to try running it. I remember one of the most criticized aspects was the almost total lack of any kind of utility spells, nearly everything just caused or prevented damage or conditions. The closest you got was a floating wizard eye you could send out to a moderate distance and see through, but it was something like three feet in diameter so not exactly a stealthy spying tool. Toward the end of our tolerance for the game we made up a wooden hoop with ten "eyestalks" sticking out of it, all painted to match the wizard eye for use as an absurd "beholder costume" for bluffing enemies. Never fooled anyone, but that didn't stop us from trying anyway. Interesting piece of OGL/d20 gaming history there, but not a very playable game even for a diehard EQ fan. For someone coming from a TTRPG background it feels ridiculously lacking and straightjackets you at every turn. And ye gods, the inventory management and crafting rules sucked.
Cool to hear from someone who’s actually played it. I also wonder whether there would be even less tolerance for it today. It might just be me but I don’t have the time or willingness to wade through that many rules
@@Lo-Fi_Gaming_ It takes 3.0 and ramps up the complexity quite a few notches while also dropping large swathes of non-combat mechanics - which are then partially replaced with an annoying crafting system. Whether that's adeal-killer for everyone I don't know, but I pretty close to hated it, and I consider myself a fan (albeit a lapsed one) of d20/3.0 D&D to this day. The game just went too far trying to slavishly emulate EQ on the tabletop when it would have done better to try to catch the general feel of the setting and retain more of the 3.0 mechanics. IIRC you leveled up pretty rapidly despite the XP chart numbers so the "grind" was fairly quick, at least at low levels. Think we played about weekly for three months and hit 5th, almost 6th before chucking the campaign. My rec is keep it for the quirk value and as something to browse when you want a look at an oddball bit of history, but play actual EQ if you want the nostalgia hit. Probably be happier that way.
the utility spells were included in "Al Khabors Arcana" which also added a TON of new magic items. But yeah most spells are really only "fire ball, fireball but bigger, fireball but REALLY big"
I've held on to this set of books for many years, as I was a fan of the mmo. Interestingly enough, I've never run or played it, although I had always planned to. Subbed.
@@Lo-Fi_Gaming_ As I said in my other comment, it's bad. Real bad. They tried too hard to remain faithful to the PC game without considering that actual TTRPGs can't limit the players the way an eRPG does. Needed more d20 and less EQ to work.
:) i never played the MMO Back then but i got interested after watching a german RPG collector talking about "TTRPGs based about Videogames" and while i knew Everquest from "back then" i couldn't play it (bad internet connection and the price" so i tried to get the rulebook just for fun.... well now i have the players handbook, the GM handbook, the Monster Manual, several of regional supplements (far noth, the elven region, Freeport) as well as both books fur Lucelin :) (and i have almost every book as PDF) also the "city maps" almost match 1:1 the ingame ones :D but yeah without "Al Khabors Arcana" the spells are basically just "fireball1, fireball2 and fireball3". What's interesting with this game: you don't get multiple attacks just by leveling up... the Weapon and the weapon speed decides WHEN you get a second attack (at whcih level) meaning lighter weapons give you more and quicker multiple attacks than heavy weapons. They even included a bug in the game as a game mechanic. A bard could play up to 5 songs one after another and his allies would benefit from all 5 which was actually NOT intended (you had to be very specific in the casting order and precise in the timing) and this "song twisitng" is a feature for bards where they can sing up to 5 songs with increasing DC
@@Lo-Fi_Gaming_ sadly not yet i was trying to start a campaign based on the "Befallen" Dungeon and background woven into with the "Realms of Norrath: Everfrost peaks" supplement (since both supplements mention a questline) which then either gets into "Red Hand of doom" or the "Tyranny of Dragons" campaign (adapted to norrath of course)..... but then came the Shadow of the Demonlord rulebook and we jumped into dark grim fantasy :D
Project 1999 is essentially the videogame version of this immortalized from the same era; classic through Velious. Still thousands of people playing it and easy enough to install and get going if you'd like to check out what the greatest MMO was (and still is) like. The art did a great job of capturing the spirit of the locations. Races are very wary of each other in EQ, factions are very tight-nit even among humans (the most adventurous and tolerated race). That's why they all have their own areas that they are constantly battling to keep. Sometimes there will be a bad egg that abandons their people and you'll find them drunk in some human bar or something but that's about the extent of it. The EQ world is too brutal for multiculturalism.
I was just searching UA-cam for reviews of this game less than a week ago! There's not a ton of info out there for this. I had a friend who had a couple of the books, but we never ended up playing it. We were probably too busy playing actual EQ, lol. Thanks for posting this!
@@DJMicroNaught That is definitely the best reason to get these books. It's not at all fun to play as a TTRPG, but is a nice historical curiosity for a gaming collection.
It was a well-defined campaign setting. A role-playing game set in that world would have a greater degree of freedom than the mmorpg. I’m sitting here playing the mmorpg as I watch this.
I have the entire collection from this book and was an old-school avid ever request player in the MMO days. I played it for about six years. The role-play game I ran a year and a half long campaign for which I actually prefer it to regular 3.0 and 3.5 There are parts of it that are obviously a little bit more rules crunchy, but it adds so much flavor to it. It’s crazy. Some of the arguments that people had when the book 1st came out are the first players handbook was that the magic users did not have utilities, spells available in normal dungeons and dragons However, they did put out a book called Al Kabor’s Arcana, which gave the DND spells man points and categorize them into the different casting classes that could cast them. Some of them had a few slight modifications, but overall stayed the same. Now, one of the crunchy aspects of it that some people loved, and some people hated the weapon speed system in the game. You almost had to keep a separate page for a combat log for different weapon speeds for your character. Because of the way the haste system , this is where some of the people said it became too much I would play it over fifth edition any day. And I absolutely love the setting. Norrath holds a special place in my heart, and is probably one of my favorite classic fantasy settings. I’m actually gearing up to run a savage world riffs game. But seeing this video makes me want to pull out my books I haven’t played it in years.
I tghink its a miss for me, I mean I play D&D too, so if i want to role play I pull out my D&D stuff and if I want to play in the EQ world, I just play the mmo. Also I left 3.5 behind for both 4e and 5e. Wouldnt go back just for a different flavor of fantasy
That’s pretty much my position too. I wouldn’t run this any time soon. However, there’s something about it that makes me want to keep it in my collection - it’s cool to look at
I loved EQ growing up. I have the city book for Freeport from this system. I keep an eye out for the other books on the cheap.
It would make a nice setting for a game, but it probably didn't need a whole system devoted to it.
The fact that each race has a city attached to it was one of my favorite parts of the game. Depending on which race you chose your choices for where to start the game were limited. Some races had multiple options, other only had their ancestral home.
This led to the newbie experience not being very diverse. You make a WoodElf, and you start in Kelethin, all of the other newbies you find will be other wood elves, or high elves from Felewithe which was essentially next door. You may run into Dwarves who come from the mountain kingdom of Kaladim but they were in a separate zone and a little bit of a hike away.
As you leveled up though you started to find more and more diversity in the higher level areas.
It was really neat.
Good to hear from someone who played it! I suppose if you ran a campaign you could place races how you like to give a more diverse experience
Factions were really important too. Like certain higher level spells could only be found in certain cities.. So if you were an evil race like a dark elf, and needed a spell that could only be purchased in Erudin, the Erudite city, you'd have to find a way to do it. Perhaps have a friend buy it for you, or use an illusion spell to change your appearance.. Or perhaps do enough quests to raise your faction with that city so their guards wouldn't murder you on sight!
There's certainly some aspects that could be brought into a game and made pretty fun.
Actually played this for about three months back when it was new. It was pretty damn bad but one of the players in our regular D&D group really, really wanted to try running it. I remember one of the most criticized aspects was the almost total lack of any kind of utility spells, nearly everything just caused or prevented damage or conditions. The closest you got was a floating wizard eye you could send out to a moderate distance and see through, but it was something like three feet in diameter so not exactly a stealthy spying tool. Toward the end of our tolerance for the game we made up a wooden hoop with ten "eyestalks" sticking out of it, all painted to match the wizard eye for use as an absurd "beholder costume" for bluffing enemies. Never fooled anyone, but that didn't stop us from trying anyway.
Interesting piece of OGL/d20 gaming history there, but not a very playable game even for a diehard EQ fan. For someone coming from a TTRPG background it feels ridiculously lacking and straightjackets you at every turn. And ye gods, the inventory management and crafting rules sucked.
Cool to hear from someone who’s actually played it. I also wonder whether there would be even less tolerance for it today. It might just be me but I don’t have the time or willingness to wade through that many rules
@@Lo-Fi_Gaming_ It takes 3.0 and ramps up the complexity quite a few notches while also dropping large swathes of non-combat mechanics - which are then partially replaced with an annoying crafting system. Whether that's adeal-killer for everyone I don't know, but I pretty close to hated it, and I consider myself a fan (albeit a lapsed one) of d20/3.0 D&D to this day. The game just went too far trying to slavishly emulate EQ on the tabletop when it would have done better to try to catch the general feel of the setting and retain more of the 3.0 mechanics.
IIRC you leveled up pretty rapidly despite the XP chart numbers so the "grind" was fairly quick, at least at low levels. Think we played about weekly for three months and hit 5th, almost 6th before chucking the campaign.
My rec is keep it for the quirk value and as something to browse when you want a look at an oddball bit of history, but play actual EQ if you want the nostalgia hit. Probably be happier that way.
the utility spells were included in "Al Khabors Arcana" which also added a TON of new magic items. But yeah most spells are really only "fire ball, fireball but bigger, fireball but REALLY big"
I remember when this came out. EQ was crack. I really cant believe this didn't take off.
I've held on to this set of books for many years, as I was a fan of the mmo. Interestingly enough, I've never run or played it, although I had always planned to. Subbed.
If you ever run it, let me know how you get on. Would be interested to hear how it actually plays!
@@Lo-Fi_Gaming_ As I said in my other comment, it's bad. Real bad. They tried too hard to remain faithful to the PC game without considering that actual TTRPGs can't limit the players the way an eRPG does. Needed more d20 and less EQ to work.
:) i never played the MMO Back then but i got interested after watching a german RPG collector talking about "TTRPGs based about Videogames" and while i knew Everquest from "back then" i couldn't play it (bad internet connection and the price" so i tried to get the rulebook just for fun.... well now i have the players handbook, the GM handbook, the Monster Manual, several of regional supplements (far noth, the elven region, Freeport) as well as both books fur Lucelin :) (and i have almost every book as PDF) also the "city maps" almost match 1:1 the ingame ones :D but yeah without "Al Khabors Arcana" the spells are basically just "fireball1, fireball2 and fireball3". What's interesting with this game: you don't get multiple attacks just by leveling up... the Weapon and the weapon speed decides WHEN you get a second attack (at whcih level) meaning lighter weapons give you more and quicker multiple attacks than heavy weapons. They even included a bug in the game as a game mechanic. A bard could play up to 5 songs one after another and his allies would benefit from all 5 which was actually NOT intended (you had to be very specific in the casting order and precise in the timing) and this "song twisitng" is a feature for bards where they can sing up to 5 songs with increasing DC
Nice collection. Have you played it much?
@@Lo-Fi_Gaming_ sadly not yet i was trying to start a campaign based on the "Befallen" Dungeon and background woven into with the "Realms of Norrath: Everfrost peaks" supplement (since both supplements mention a questline) which then either gets into "Red Hand of doom" or the "Tyranny of Dragons" campaign (adapted to norrath of course)..... but then came the Shadow of the Demonlord rulebook and we jumped into dark grim fantasy :D
Project 1999 is essentially the videogame version of this immortalized from the same era; classic through Velious. Still thousands of people playing it and easy enough to install and get going if you'd like to check out what the greatest MMO was (and still is) like.
The art did a great job of capturing the spirit of the locations.
Races are very wary of each other in EQ, factions are very tight-nit even among humans (the most adventurous and tolerated race). That's why they all have their own areas that they are constantly battling to keep. Sometimes there will be a bad egg that abandons their people and you'll find them drunk in some human bar or something but that's about the extent of it. The EQ world is too brutal for multiculturalism.
I was just searching UA-cam for reviews of this game less than a week ago! There's not a ton of info out there for this. I had a friend who had a couple of the books, but we never ended up playing it. We were probably too busy playing actual EQ, lol. Thanks for posting this!
Glad it was helpful! As a veteran EQ player does it look like it’s worth grabbing?
Yeah, for sure! If for no other reason than being an interesting piece of EQ and 3e history.
@@DJMicroNaught if I can find the GM and Monster book I’d defo do a vid for them too. Would be interested to see what they’re like
@@DJMicroNaught That is definitely the best reason to get these books. It's not at all fun to play as a TTRPG, but is a nice historical curiosity for a gaming collection.
It was a well-defined campaign setting. A role-playing game set in that world would have a greater degree of freedom than the mmorpg.
I’m sitting here playing the mmorpg as I watch this.
I have the entire collection from this book and was an old-school avid ever request player in the MMO days. I played it for about six years.
The role-play game I ran a year and a half long campaign for which I actually prefer it to regular 3.0 and 3.5
There are parts of it that are obviously a little bit more rules crunchy, but it adds so much flavor to it. It’s crazy.
Some of the arguments that people had when the book 1st came out are the first players handbook was that the magic users did not have utilities, spells available in normal dungeons and dragons
However, they did put out a book called Al Kabor’s Arcana, which gave the DND spells man points and categorize them into the different casting classes that could cast them. Some of them had a few slight modifications, but overall stayed the same.
Now, one of the crunchy aspects of it that some people loved, and some people hated the weapon speed system in the game. You almost had to keep a separate page for a combat log for different weapon speeds for your character. Because of the way the haste system , this is where some of the people said it became too much
I would play it over fifth edition any day. And I absolutely love the setting. Norrath holds a special place in my heart, and is probably one of my favorite classic fantasy settings.
I’m actually gearing up to run a savage world riffs game. But seeing this video makes me want to pull out my books I haven’t played it in years.
Awesome - cool to hear from someone who's played and enjoyed it so much. Thanks for sharing
I tghink its a miss for me, I mean I play D&D too, so if i want to role play I pull out my D&D stuff and if I want to play in the EQ world, I just play the mmo. Also I left 3.5 behind for both 4e and 5e. Wouldnt go back just for a different flavor of fantasy
That’s pretty much my position too. I wouldn’t run this any time soon. However, there’s something about it that makes me want to keep it in my collection - it’s cool to look at