I can't believe I'm saying this, but it finally actually arrived!
Originally slated to reach us way back in Apr 2022, I had written this reward off as a failure over a year ago. I had backed it originally in Sept of 2021, and by the end of 2022 there had been enough issues with the Kickstarter that when it hadn't arrived by about April of 2023, I basically put it out of my mind and chocked that up as my first Kickstarter loss.
So, imagine my surprise when I get an email yesterday saying a package had been delivered. I hadn't ordered anything. My wife hadn't ordered anything. What the heck could be waiting for me?
I was absolutely floored. I hadn't been paying attention to any of the Kickstarter emails about this as I'd gotten tired of reading 'some other problem is setting us back please be patient' - which is on me, I probably should have kept a closer eye on this but hey. It did end up giving me a great surprise!
Also, I have to say - now that I've got it in my hands the quality IS quite good. I'm several years past when I would have run a campaign setting whole-cloth like this, but after leafing through the books I'm quite sure there's a lot of loot in these pages that I can plunder for my own setting.
If nothing else, the art is phenomenal... and I did get a free massive dragon mini, which I'll have to see if one of my buddies can paint for me.
Tanares is also a mini-war game or... something? They've got a product called Arena as well, and one of the reward stretch goals was a free set of miniatures for that game - but they'll work just fine for any grid-based system so I'm sure I'll end up using these for D&D or one of my other games.
So, despite the character cards and move cards being kind of irrelevant to me... these are pretty cool minis! Everyone else that I run D&D for currently are painters - only my wife and I haven't dabbled in 3d printing and painting - and they've said several times that we should set up a paint night... so while they're all basic plastic right now, I hope by the end of summer we can get a splash of colour on these chaps!
The collection also includes a bifold DM's Screen, a gigantic map (which I haven't laid out yet to take a photo of, sorry!) and of course the three books for the campaign setting, an adventure, and... another campaign setting book disguised as a Players Guide to Tanares. The Player's Guide is basically a book of worldbuilding - which you know is entirely my jam.
The DM screen does have some of the more useful content on it - the quick glance info for lodging/food prices, travel pace, typical difficulty classes, and object hit points is useful. Half the time with a WotC official screen you get a random spattering of nonsense, so it's nice to have things on this that will come up in any average game, and definitely would be useful for new DMs or as reference when a new player asks a question you haven't had to think about in a long time!
I haven't had more than a quick thumb-through of the books here, but what little I did read seemed like it'll be something I can pull from and use. The worldbuilding is neat, and the cosmic-horror vibe of 'Adventures in the Realms of Madness' is super cool. I may comment on these more as I actually dig into them deeper, but we'll see.
Overall, this does look like a pretty good product, and I'm very glad it finally managed to arrive!
As always, until next time my friends: Happy Gaming!
