Xamusel said:

Business days are Monday to Friday (also excludes public holidays). So you order on Friday at 2-3 Business Days and you can expect it Tuesday or Wednesday of the following week.

Ah... no wonder.

Thanks for the clarification.

Maelstrom said:

Cool, so when you said Amazon, you were referring to pretty much any internet store using Amazon's marketplace and not Amazon specifically.

Given you are buying from Canada, you really should check out Noble Knight Games. Its has one of the best reputations in this hobby.

I thought he lived in Chicago?

I also thought he got it from a Lady Friend...

I live in chicago. The person who bought the book from me is in Canada.

I will personally never, ever, ever support NobleKnightGames! Without going into details, I met a couple of the employees and/or owner(s) a few years back. The experience was not pleasant.

Uh-oh...

Well, I'm not going to pry, Maelstrom.

Fair enough. That's a shame. I don't know the owner personally, but the store and its staff are nothing but superb IME.

So, anyone have the book yet?

Not yet, my folks were the ones to pay for it, and I don't have an Amazon account (or a way to pay for the books).

Besides, I moved out of my parents home a while ago, so they have to hand-deliver it to me.

I love these books and all, but I find that no one (at least in my area) ever seems to carry them, which only leaves me ordering from Amazon, or any other location I can find that happens to carry it beforehand. I live in Alabama and we don't have any REAL game shops in our city, and the few that are close have a whole one shelf of pen and paper RPGs, which means I'm never going to find something like Anima just sitting on the shelf without a special order.

for once i don't feel so bad about living in ohio, where i am we have game shops in every other city and just as many book stores. but funny enough i still order all my stuff from drive-thru rpg for the convenience.

SafireDeluge said:

In this day and age, I think you would be the rule not the exception. I expect that internet purchasing accounts for the bulk of RPG buying.

my friend just got his copy yesterday, and i have to say: F---K the vetala, or whatever they are, those poor excuses for vampires.

plenty playable and rounded, but for the love of [your deity here] why did they do that, i was so looking forward to vampires and now i'll have to make my own (no big deal, i will enjoy it even more now). but seriously, the vetala (i think thats correct) will never find their way into any game i run. the one saving grace is it isn't any twilight BS.

just to clarify; i am a vampire purist, to me vamps are undead, corrupt, gahstly, monsters. the vetala/whatever are a blight in my eyes, with their being alive, and reproduction, and all that having souls crap.

now that the rant is over, i must say that despite the lack of run-of-the-mill and garden variety type monsters save for the skeleton; those who walked among us has been everything i had hoped, i will be sure to pick up vol 2 when it comes out.

That is one nice thing about Anima. It does not use any base monsters (save apparently Skeletons). Vetala are not vampire, they are mearly vampire-like. Really they are more like Dhampir from Balkan folklore than an actual vampire, and for the setting that's fine. They are not our current idea of vampires, but they do not fall outside the realm of possibility. Save the whole "not being evil" thing. I don't like that.

I am a vampire enthusiast, and through my research I have seen many different ideas of vampires from many different time periods, be they living or dead, drink blood or pure life essence, being demons, a virus, created through a deal with the devil, etc. I find Twilight vampires do not so much ruin vampires, as merely to be a book with poorly written internal continuity. I hope that the Twilight thing ends soon because I dislike the meaning behind the books and the internal consistency (seriously it makes all fantasy literature look bad). However, the change to vampires is no different than any change in the past, and it will not stick. There are too many of us who dislike this incarnation of vampires for it to last longer than Twilights popularity.

There is loads of Vetala like inspiration in Anime; Vampire Hunter D, Records of Lodoss War to name two. Both of which are also inspiration for Anima.

So, it's cool you don't like them. Vampire purists anime fans do have a difficult road but it's hardly something new.

Wait, what's the problem with them? Is it that they're not inherently evil? I don't have a copy of Those Who Walked Amongst Us yet, so I don't really get what's un-vampire-like about them.

i was just being hurt, there really isn't anything wrong with them gameplay-wise its just not my idea of vampires. they are effectively psuedo-classical vampires except they are alive and their nephelim are a strange way of putting in damphirs.

I guess the Nephilim concept wouldn't really work if they didn't have souls, anyway.

Can we have a detailed list of the contents of this book?

what happened to my post, dang it. well what i was trying to say was.

i can't give a detailed run down but i can give a decent summary

-lots of nice supernatural creatures to toss at players

-more creature creation rules, you will still need the core book, but constructs get some special attention.

-the new races: daeva = third eye like jayan, but frail and normal sized, have natural summoning abilities. vetala = stupid excuse for vampires. tuan duhala-whatever = non-playable, special species, i can't recall much but they are pretty cool, they don't have eyes or something.

-mass combat and dramatic combat rules are definitely worth a try in high level campaigns.

-tons of adventure seeds, almost every other monster has its own adventure seed

-omega, dear lord omega, a whole campaign in and of himself.

my vampires don't have souls, sorry for the double post, my internet is acting up.

Fair enough. But thats based on real world myths of certain types of European Vampires, right? For example, Chinese Vampires have half souls or can even be from spirits possessing dead bodies (which isn't that far removed from Nephilim). Looking elsewhere in Anima, we see similar differences. Christian Angels don't have souls either and are thought to be a being of pure spirit, unlike Ebduan. Sylvans lack the true immortality of Elves.

I understand you are a Vampire purist and it's cool that you don't like Vetala. No one likes everything My point is that Anima draws on a wide range of inspiration and the Vetala are not inconsistent with what we have seen elsewhere in the game. It's a fantasy game with it's own mythology, not slavishly copying any one mythology.

FWIW this may be of interest - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vetala. Vetala is the name of a Hindu vampire. This is caused by an evil spirit possessing a dead body (ike some Chinese Vampires).

As such, Vetala show the Anima writer has a broad understanding of the myths of many cultures when he goes about creating the mythology for Anima.

dude, sweet, thanks for that one sky.

Since I don't have the book yet just wondering if Deva's are mentioned in Those Who Walked Amongst Us?