Under the Dark Fist

Hi all,
    I've got a question about Under the Dark Fist, now quit all that
groaning :o) I can hear you :o)
    Not being on the list for a great deal of time I've missed out on a lot
of the complaints and what-not about the various SJ products. I have
garnered a bit of info about how folks feel about various things, Athas used
to cause massive flame wars, Astromundi Cluster while it was a good start,
but left most feeling it was rushed and half-done, ect., ect.
     Under the Dark Fist is what I want to know about, I've seen references
to it in the past and the overwhelming majority IIRC have been negative.
Why? While I didn't care for some of the aspects of it, and I'll list what I
don't like. I found overall that UtDF was a well done skeleton that a DM
could use to run an epic campaign from, and isn't that what most want from a
product, a skeleton that they can flesh out to the ideals of their own
campaign.
      Things that I didn't like and would most likely change should I ever
want to use UtDF would be...
Vulkran's palace/ship, I didn't like the "dungeon" that's big enough to fly
your ship around in in Wildspace and I don't like it here either.
The Vodoni ship designs, I didn't care for they way they looked. I had no
problem with the extended range weapons, after all it wasn't that big of a
stretch for me to imagine that someone could come up with a more advanced
version of them.
Crystal spiders didn't care for them at all and I can't say for sure why, I
just took a dislike to them.
The gnomish ambassadors names, why is it that every freakin' gnome has to be
comedy relief?
The Vodoni themselves I like the wolf-like humanoids, but I'm not sure I
care for the lycanthropy bit I've never been able to decide how I feel about
this for sure. It sure makes them scary as hell, but I think if it came down
to it I'd keep them and lose the lycanthropy and just give them beserking
tendencies.
    There may be a few other tidbits that I've missed, but I haven't looked
at it in quite some time, but the fixes for my dislikes are easy enough and
don't bother me that much.
    So I ask what specifically didn't you like about it? Was it the whole
intestellar war thing? To grand of a scope? Were the things you found wrong
with it to great to fix so it wouldn't be worth the time to do?

    Along the same vein, what was your favorite published SJ product outside
the core box? Mine I think would have to be Skulls and Crossbones, I have
found memories about that one. I used it for a long time dropping an
encounter here and there. The players really enjoyed it as well and it's the
groups favorite as well. They hated Cain and loved the Barre Sinster after I
fleshed it out.

I look forward to reading your comments.

Terry
(ICQ#59496435)

"Imagination is more important than knowledge." - A.Einstein

Visit my Spelljammer page at http://www.geocities.com/ahzad  Home of the
Guide to the Known Spheres.