To elaborate on what I said above about 4th ed and "Points of Light", this is what the 4th ed Player's Handbook has right up front. Before character creation or anything else. It sets the tone and expectations of a D&D world.
And is honest with the fact that - whether or not the authors admit it or even realize the fact - game systems are always opinionated about the game themes and settings they work well with. Any game system trying to claim it can work equally well in any context is lying. And, historically, the wider a range a system tries to encompass the greater the burden it puts on the long suffering DM (both 5th ed and GURPS I am glaring in your direction).
A Fantastic World
The world of the DUNGEONS & DRAGONS game is a place of magic and monsters, of brave warriors and spectacular adventures. It begins with a basis of medieval fantasy and then adds the creatures, places, and powers that make the D&D world unique.
The world of the D&D game is ancient, built upon and beneath the ruins of past empires, leaving the landscape dotted with places of adventure and mystery. Legends and artifacts of past empires still survive—as do terrible menaces.
The current age has no all-encompassing empire. The world is shrouded in a dark age, between the collapse of the last great empire and the rise of the next, which might be centuries away. Minor kingdoms prosper, to be sure: baronies, holdings, city-states. But each settlement appears as a point of light in the widespread darkness, a haven, an island of civilization
in the wilderness that covers the world. Adventurers can rest and recuperate in settlements between adventures. No settlement is entirely safe, however, and adventures break out within (and under) such places as often as not.
During your adventures, you might visit a number of fantastic locations: wide cavern passages cut by rivers of lava; towers held aloft in the sky by ancient magic; forests of strange, twisted trees, with shimmering fog in the air—anything you can imagine, your character might experience as the game unfolds.
Monsters and supernatural creatures are a part of this world. They prowl in the dark places between the points of light. Some are threats, others are willing to aid you, and many fall into both camps and might react differently depending on how you approach them.
Magic is everywhere. People believe in and accept the power that magic provides. However, true masters of magic are rare. Many people have access to a little magic, and such minor magic helps those living within the points of light to maintain their communities. But those who have the power to shape spells the way a blacksmith shapes metal are as rare as adventurers and appear as friends or foes to you and your companions.
At some point, all adventurers rely on magic in one form or another. Wizards and warlocks draw magic from the fabric of the universe, shape it with their will, and hurl it at their foes in explosive blasts. Clerics and paladins call down the wrath of their gods to sear their foes with divine radiance, or they invoke their gods’ mercy to heal their allies’ wounds. Fighters, rangers, rogues, and warlords don’t use obviously magical powers, but their expertise with their magic weapons makes them masters of the battlefield. At the highest levels of play, even nonmagical adventurers perform deeds no mere mortal could dream of doing without magic—swinging great axes in wide swaths that shake the earth around them or cloaking themselves in shadow to become invisible.
Attacked by tweeeeeeees!
+6
FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
I'm always interested in some good subclasses and supporting indie stuff. What were some good character option books for 5e? Not ridiculously OP, but stuff that integrated well
I'm always interested in some good subclasses and supporting indie stuff. What were some good character option books for 5e? Not ridiculously OP, but stuff that integrated well
I really enjoyed MCDM’s beastheart. I had an awesome owlbear companion named brookstone. I’m currently playing the revised illrigger.
3rd party content is great and all.... but it doesn't work with D&D Beyond and when the push from WOTC to move everything into D&D Beyond (the character sheet is admittedly great) its hard to justify getting any of it if it becomes hard to use.
I'm building a homebrew setting right now and I'm having a very hard time squeezing my class ideas into subclasses, only because some of my longtime players want to stay in the online character sheet environment. I'd rather just lift whole classes entirely from wherever I want to steal them from (IK Requiem) and drop them into my setting but Beyond won't allow for that.
I imagine the D&D Fight Club app still exists, which allows homebrew stuff to be slotted into it. It was a one time purchase last I checked. Theres probably all sorts of online things better than Beyond.
I pulled the plug from my Beyond account when it turned out that they were effectively punishing you for purchasing the hard copy books by charging you for them again, and at full price, just to have access to their content on Beyond. Basically, hey are you a forever DM who wants to use our product? Fuck you!!
I don’t know if that’s changed, and frankly I don’t care. It was such a shit and greedy af business model.
Havelock2.0 on
You go in the cage, cage goes in the water, you go in the water. Shark's in the water, our shark.
I pulled the plug from my Beyond account when it turned out that they were effectively punishing you for purchasing the hard copy books by charging you for them again, and at full price, just to have access to their content on Beyond
I don’t know if that’s changed, and frankly I don’t care. It’s such a shit and greedy af business model.
they weren't owned by WOTC when they did that, now you can buy both and its like $10-$20 for the D&D beyond version if you buy the hardcover
How is it greedy for (the at the time) D&D Beyond to not just effectively give you free product? The reason you can't get existing content you own on there before any scheme like that existed is because then... I mean pretty much everyone would just claim the content for free on D&D Beyond using books sitting on store shelves, buy them from amazon claim the content and return them, etc
3rd party content is great and all.... but it doesn't work with D&D Beyond and when the push from WOTC to move everything into D&D Beyond (the character sheet is admittedly great) its hard to justify getting any of it if it becomes hard to use.
I'm building a homebrew setting right now and I'm having a very hard time squeezing my class ideas into subclasses, only because some of my longtime players want to stay in the online character sheet environment. I'd rather just lift whole classes entirely from wherever I want to steal them from (IK Requiem) and drop them into my setting but Beyond won't allow for that.
Putting so much 3rd party content on D&D beyond was a great decision by whoever makes decisions in a long line of terrible decisions, its great for the third party creator and great for WOTC that any third party publisher can pretty much publish on there now
you can get Flee Mortals! on D&D beyond and the dungeon supplement Where Evil Lives now and it made me very happy, I had to buy Flee Mortals a second time but being able to import it into foundry with the D&D Beyond importer saved me many, many hours of work and my time is worth a lot more than $30
D&D beyond is slowly accumulating vast amounts of third party content and I think that was a great decision, https://marketplace.dndbeyond.com/
The main reason I don't use D&D beyond anymore other than as a vector to import content is that I cant make custom classes on it and we play with A5E mostly now, and making all the changes required would be too much of a headache
I was using them when they were owned by WotC and it was a problem, I very much remember it. They were still charging full price for the digital books without having a means to check if you had already purchased a physical copy and providing a reduced price.
If it’s changed good on them, I guess. It’s still a shit business model in what was effectively double charging you.
It’s not like they’re hard up for money, so you’ll have to forgive me if I seem unsympathetic
You go in the cage, cage goes in the water, you go in the water. Shark's in the water, our shark.
0
joshgotroDeviled EggThe Land of REAL CHILIRegistered Userregular
I was using them when they were owned by WotC and it was a problem, I very much remember it. They were still charging full price for the digital books without having a means to check if you had already purchased a physical copy and providing a reduced price.
If it’s changed good on them, I guess. It’s still a shit business model in what was effectively double charging you.
It’s not like they’re hard up for money, so you’ll have to forgive me if I seem unsympathetic
How do you imagine they would check if you already have a physical copy?
Apparently the PHB2024 has rules for mundane items, including a shovel that lets you excavate a 5 foot by 5 foot cube per hour.
this is exactly what the game needs.
That is...a lot of volume for one hour's work. I'm not saying it's not possible, but I'm a relatively healthy middle-aged six-foot-tall man and I think I'd have trouble managing both to move that much earth in an hour and somehow managing not to get trapped in the hole/buried by a collapse in the process.
Guess I'll find out this fall, I have a small tree I have to dig out of my front yard when the seasons change.
3rd party content is great and all.... but it doesn't work with D&D Beyond and when the push from WOTC to move everything into D&D Beyond (the character sheet is admittedly great) its hard to justify getting any of it if it becomes hard to use.
I'm building a homebrew setting right now and I'm having a very hard time squeezing my class ideas into subclasses, only because some of my longtime players want to stay in the online character sheet environment. I'd rather just lift whole classes entirely from wherever I want to steal them from (IK Requiem) and drop them into my setting but Beyond won't allow for that.
Putting so much 3rd party content on D&D beyond was a great decision by whoever makes decisions in a long line of terrible decisions, its great for the third party creator and great for WOTC that any third party publisher can pretty much publish on there now
you can get Flee Mortals! on D&D beyond and the dungeon supplement Where Evil Lives now and it made me very happy, I had to buy Flee Mortals a second time but being able to import it into foundry with the D&D Beyond importer saved me many, many hours of work and my time is worth a lot more than $30
D&D beyond is slowly accumulating vast amounts of third party content and I think that was a great decision, https://marketplace.dndbeyond.com/
The main reason I don't use D&D beyond anymore other than as a vector to import content is that I cant make custom classes on it and we play with A5E mostly now, and making all the changes required would be too much of a headache
I'm kind of hoping that seeing the relative popularity of 3rd party options is the kick in the pants WotC needs to step up their quality.
+3
FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
3rd party content is great and all.... but it doesn't work with D&D Beyond and when the push from WOTC to move everything into D&D Beyond (the character sheet is admittedly great) its hard to justify getting any of it if it becomes hard to use.
I'm building a homebrew setting right now and I'm having a very hard time squeezing my class ideas into subclasses, only because some of my longtime players want to stay in the online character sheet environment. I'd rather just lift whole classes entirely from wherever I want to steal them from (IK Requiem) and drop them into my setting but Beyond won't allow for that.
Putting so much 3rd party content on D&D beyond was a great decision by whoever makes decisions in a long line of terrible decisions, its great for the third party creator and great for WOTC that any third party publisher can pretty much publish on there now
you can get Flee Mortals! on D&D beyond and the dungeon supplement Where Evil Lives now and it made me very happy, I had to buy Flee Mortals a second time but being able to import it into foundry with the D&D Beyond importer saved me many, many hours of work and my time is worth a lot more than $30
D&D beyond is slowly accumulating vast amounts of third party content and I think that was a great decision, https://marketplace.dndbeyond.com/
The main reason I don't use D&D beyond anymore other than as a vector to import content is that I cant make custom classes on it and we play with A5E mostly now, and making all the changes required would be too much of a headache
I'm kind of hoping that seeing the relative popularity of 3rd party options is the kick in the pants WotC needs to step up their quality.
I mean, I think the problem is Hasbro more than WotC, but you never know
3rd party content is great and all.... but it doesn't work with D&D Beyond and when the push from WOTC to move everything into D&D Beyond (the character sheet is admittedly great) its hard to justify getting any of it if it becomes hard to use.
I'm building a homebrew setting right now and I'm having a very hard time squeezing my class ideas into subclasses, only because some of my longtime players want to stay in the online character sheet environment. I'd rather just lift whole classes entirely from wherever I want to steal them from (IK Requiem) and drop them into my setting but Beyond won't allow for that.
Putting so much 3rd party content on D&D beyond was a great decision by whoever makes decisions in a long line of terrible decisions, its great for the third party creator and great for WOTC that any third party publisher can pretty much publish on there now
you can get Flee Mortals! on D&D beyond and the dungeon supplement Where Evil Lives now and it made me very happy, I had to buy Flee Mortals a second time but being able to import it into foundry with the D&D Beyond importer saved me many, many hours of work and my time is worth a lot more than $30
D&D beyond is slowly accumulating vast amounts of third party content and I think that was a great decision, https://marketplace.dndbeyond.com/
The main reason I don't use D&D beyond anymore other than as a vector to import content is that I cant make custom classes on it and we play with A5E mostly now, and making all the changes required would be too much of a headache
I'm kind of hoping that seeing the relative popularity of 3rd party options is the kick in the pants WotC needs to step up their quality.
I mean, I think the problem is Hasbro more than WotC, but you never know
and I think the problem with hasbro is that it's run by a bunch of elder capitalist ghouls that are so far divorced from the products their company sells that nothing will penetrate
3rd party content is great and all.... but it doesn't work with D&D Beyond and when the push from WOTC to move everything into D&D Beyond (the character sheet is admittedly great) its hard to justify getting any of it if it becomes hard to use.
I'm building a homebrew setting right now and I'm having a very hard time squeezing my class ideas into subclasses, only because some of my longtime players want to stay in the online character sheet environment. I'd rather just lift whole classes entirely from wherever I want to steal them from (IK Requiem) and drop them into my setting but Beyond won't allow for that.
Putting so much 3rd party content on D&D beyond was a great decision by whoever makes decisions in a long line of terrible decisions, its great for the third party creator and great for WOTC that any third party publisher can pretty much publish on there now
you can get Flee Mortals! on D&D beyond and the dungeon supplement Where Evil Lives now and it made me very happy, I had to buy Flee Mortals a second time but being able to import it into foundry with the D&D Beyond importer saved me many, many hours of work and my time is worth a lot more than $30
D&D beyond is slowly accumulating vast amounts of third party content and I think that was a great decision, https://marketplace.dndbeyond.com/
The main reason I don't use D&D beyond anymore other than as a vector to import content is that I cant make custom classes on it and we play with A5E mostly now, and making all the changes required would be too much of a headache
I'm kind of hoping that seeing the relative popularity of 3rd party options is the kick in the pants WotC needs to step up their quality.
I mean, I think the problem is Hasbro more than WotC, but you never know
and I think the problem with hasbro is that it's run by a bunch of elder capitalist ghouls that are so far divorced from the products their company sells that nothing will penetrate
last night in our game the DM restocked the vendor in the village outside of drakkenheim that was buying our Delerium meteor fragments, revealed he was an efreeti, and had a much larger inventory. One item I saw, a staff of power, for 70,000 gold, was more money than our party had. We sold some things, and with a correct check I managed to get more money for a super large delerium fragment and adamantine plate for 10k, and said I wanted the staff of power, DM said "you guys dont have enough money", and I said I'll give him the delerium fragment, the adamantine plate, 25,000 gold pieces, and the 50% off for "One Item from Aldor's Shop" he gave me in the first session after I gave him a birthday present just to be nice
I got inspiration and the coupon I got in session 1, which the DM probably expected to be used on a pearl of power, was worth fully 35k hehehe
So a buddy of mine has been going over the Vecna Module and he's had... gripes about how he needs to fill shit in or in some instances completely rework whole chapters, and this has led to some interesting conversations about how to procede and him picking my brain about setting history.
Regarding a helper side NPC:
Alustriel's wife is apparently a person who acts as some kind of assistant to the characters but beyond apparently having a name and some art of her she seems... bereft of any actual details about her personality or relationship... beyond being a lesbian and married to one of the 7 sisters (Indescribably powerful magic users and chosen of Mystra). There was so little about her apparently, that he had apparently been planning to replace her with some new NPC when I proposed a better idea: Making her weird and obtuse in ways that leave the players increasingly confused as to just what the hell Malaina van Talsiv actually is:
Slav Squatting on the top of a chair without tipping it over or falling.
her emerging through a portal from the #4 reactor chamber chernobyl reactor through a portal because thats where she stored something for them.
T-posing through a wall
Cooking dinner by screaming at a chicken until it achieves perfect internal temperature.
Reference things from the character's backgrounds that she couldn't possibly know about.
Alustriel telling them after introducing her "Don't feed her after midnight, Don't say her name three times in the dark, Don't touch her when she's smiling and most important don't get between her and whatever she's eating. Other then that you... should? be fine."
Regarding the module that needs to be reworked:
Apparently the creator decided to make the Dragonlance module about werewolves. Like... of all the things you could have used for a high level campaign set in Dragonlance why in the name of fuck would you ever pick werewolves... which I don't even know are a thing in Krynn.
So now he's going out of his way to rebuild the entire chapter to try and draw on elements of Krynn that people would think of that you would want to have in a high level module (IE having fights from dragon back) as part of a greater narrative dedicated to stopping Vecna.
3rd party content is great and all.... but it doesn't work with D&D Beyond and when the push from WOTC to move everything into D&D Beyond (the character sheet is admittedly great) its hard to justify getting any of it if it becomes hard to use.
I'm building a homebrew setting right now and I'm having a very hard time squeezing my class ideas into subclasses, only because some of my longtime players want to stay in the online character sheet environment. I'd rather just lift whole classes entirely from wherever I want to steal them from (IK Requiem) and drop them into my setting but Beyond won't allow for that.
Putting so much 3rd party content on D&D beyond was a great decision by whoever makes decisions in a long line of terrible decisions, its great for the third party creator and great for WOTC that any third party publisher can pretty much publish on there now
you can get Flee Mortals! on D&D beyond and the dungeon supplement Where Evil Lives now and it made me very happy, I had to buy Flee Mortals a second time but being able to import it into foundry with the D&D Beyond importer saved me many, many hours of work and my time is worth a lot more than $30
D&D beyond is slowly accumulating vast amounts of third party content and I think that was a great decision, https://marketplace.dndbeyond.com/
The main reason I don't use D&D beyond anymore other than as a vector to import content is that I cant make custom classes on it and we play with A5E mostly now, and making all the changes required would be too much of a headache
I'm kind of hoping that seeing the relative popularity of 3rd party options is the kick in the pants WotC needs to step up their quality.
prediction: the only reaction it gets is "how do we leech money out of third party products" and we get the OGL fiasco part 2
Apparently the creator decided to make the Dragonlance module about werewolves. Like... of all the things you could have used for a high level campaign set in Dragonlance why in the name of fuck would you ever pick werewolves... which I don't even know are a thing in Krynn.
So now he's going out of his way to rebuild the entire chapter to try and draw on elements of Krynn that people would think of that you would want to have in a high level module (IE having fights from dragon back) as part of a greater narrative dedicated to stopping Vecna.
werewolves?? wow you werent kidding what a random dragonlance choice
At least make them weredragons or something! Relate it to the draconic blood line getting mixed into ancestries in a weird way... or blame it on the bad guys and their draconian experiments thats always reliable
Apparently the creator decided to make the Dragonlance module about werewolves. Like... of all the things you could have used for a high level campaign set in Dragonlance why in the name of fuck would you ever pick werewolves... which I don't even know are a thing in Krynn.
So now he's going out of his way to rebuild the entire chapter to try and draw on elements of Krynn that people would think of that you would want to have in a high level module (IE having fights from dragon back) as part of a greater narrative dedicated to stopping Vecna.
werewolves?? wow you werent kidding what a random dragonlance choice
At least make them weredragons or something! Relate it to the draconic blood line getting mixed into ancestries in a weird way... or blame it on the bad guys and their draconian experiments thats always reliable
Re: Dragonlance wierdness
As near as either of us can figure the person who came up with he module didn't actaully know anything about Krynn (Impressive, considering the war of the lance trilogy is in like every library I've ever been to and is like... 40 years old) and while they were scanning the cliff notes saw that the planet had 3 moons (and somehow missed that they were associated with the forces of magic). Like... I'm not even sure I can conceive of how you could get another setting this fundamentally wrong; the only thing I could come up with is how Ebberon is actually a Dieselpunk setting where everyone wears tattooos to signifiy their role in society and political affiliation.
Apparently the creator decided to make the Dragonlance module about werewolves. Like... of all the things you could have used for a high level campaign set in Dragonlance why in the name of fuck would you ever pick werewolves... which I don't even know are a thing in Krynn.
So now he's going out of his way to rebuild the entire chapter to try and draw on elements of Krynn that people would think of that you would want to have in a high level module (IE having fights from dragon back) as part of a greater narrative dedicated to stopping Vecna.
werewolves?? wow you werent kidding what a random dragonlance choice
At least make them weredragons or something! Relate it to the draconic blood line getting mixed into ancestries in a weird way... or blame it on the bad guys and their draconian experiments thats always reliable
Re: Dragonlance wierdness
As near as either of us can figure the person who came up with he module didn't actaully know anything about Krynn (Impressive, considering the war of the lance trilogy is in like every library I've ever been to and is like... 40 years old) and while they were scanning the cliff notes saw that the planet had 3 moons (and somehow missed that they were associated with the forces of magic). Like... I'm not even sure I can conceive of how you could get another setting this fundamentally wrong; the only thing I could come up with is how Ebberon is actually a Dieselpunk setting where everyone wears tattooos to signifiy their role in society and political affiliation.
I didn't know that. That's just embarrassing on WOTC's part to let that slide. C'mon Perkins! You can do better than that. You worked with Weis and Hickman as a young'un!
Apparently the creator decided to make the Dragonlance module about werewolves. Like... of all the things you could have used for a high level campaign set in Dragonlance why in the name of fuck would you ever pick werewolves... which I don't even know are a thing in Krynn.
So now he's going out of his way to rebuild the entire chapter to try and draw on elements of Krynn that people would think of that you would want to have in a high level module (IE having fights from dragon back) as part of a greater narrative dedicated to stopping Vecna.
werewolves?? wow you werent kidding what a random dragonlance choice
At least make them weredragons or something! Relate it to the draconic blood line getting mixed into ancestries in a weird way... or blame it on the bad guys and their draconian experiments thats always reliable
Re: Dragonlance wierdness
As near as either of us can figure the person who came up with he module didn't actaully know anything about Krynn (Impressive, considering the war of the lance trilogy is in like every library I've ever been to and is like... 40 years old) and while they were scanning the cliff notes saw that the planet had 3 moons (and somehow missed that they were associated with the forces of magic). Like... I'm not even sure I can conceive of how you could get another setting this fundamentally wrong; the only thing I could come up with is how Ebberon is actually a Dieselpunk setting where everyone wears tattooos to signifiy their role in society and political affiliation.
I didn't know that. That's just embarrassing on WOTC's part to let that slide. C'mon Perkins! You can do better than that. You worked with Weis and Hickman as a young'un!
Perkins is not a writer on that book, he only made the new mechanical elements like backgrounds
Since they never replaced Mearls, Perkins is doing his job too, which is insane - I get ditching Mearls, but you're tellin me they can't find another D&D lore nerd in the whole of the world to take his place? Greenwood would probably do it for some pot and free snacks if you let him broadcast his workflow to his youtube channel
Nah, they dont give a shit, they're riding the shit tsunami that is windfall from unrelated products (stranger things, critical role), events (covid) and now that its coming down they're blaming the employees who they've already pared down to the bone
WOTC should have multiple times the staffing for D&D that they do based on its sales and amount of product it creates
Now, To be clear I'm hearing this stuff through a friend who's being vague about certain things because it's hypothetically possible I get to join as a player and he has had... issues with the direction the game has gone with some of the new material that I don't agree with but like, this is the image he sent me:
Which... Like... It appears to be a magic werewolf so that kind of has something to do with the moons since they're tied to the gods of magic and the ways people would use magic (To protect and nurture, To domiinate and control or something somewhere inbetween)... but the character isn't wearing robes that would associate them with any of the given orders and none of this clarifies why they're a werewolf in a setting that is about the balance between good and evil, striving to uphold ideals in a world which is jaded and knights fighting each other on the backs of fucking dragons!
For those who are curious about how all this makes me feel in a TLDR post with no spoilers:
Perkins is not a writer on that book, he only made the new mechanical elements like backgrounds
Since they never replaced Mearls, Perkins is doing his job too, which is insane - I get ditching Mearls, but you're tellin me they can't find another D&D lore nerd in the whole of the world to take his place? Greenwood would probably do it for some pot and free snacks if you let him broadcast his workflow to his youtube channel
Nah, they dont give a shit, they're riding the shit tsunami that is windfall from unrelated products (stranger things, critical role), events (covid) and now that its coming down they're blaming the employees who they've already pared down to the bone
WOTC should have multiple times the staffing for D&D that they do based on its sales and amount of product it creates
More then just more staff (although that wouldn't hurt) they need people who can look at the lore, find things that are worth exploring and a guy who can turn around and say "No, that's dumb" when they go off the rails.
But if there was a guy that they could tap to make sure that they were keeping in the spirit of a given setting I'd point out that Ed Greenwood is right there, and even if he didn't have a hand in making other settings I imagine he'd be able to talk to their creators and get them to share their insight.
Posts
And is honest with the fact that - whether or not the authors admit it or even realize the fact - game systems are always opinionated about the game themes and settings they work well with. Any game system trying to claim it can work equally well in any context is lying. And, historically, the wider a range a system tries to encompass the greater the burden it puts on the long suffering DM (both 5th ed and GURPS I am glaring in your direction).
The world of the DUNGEONS & DRAGONS game is a place of magic and monsters, of brave warriors and spectacular adventures. It begins with a basis of medieval fantasy and then adds the creatures, places, and powers that make the D&D world unique.
The world of the D&D game is ancient, built upon and beneath the ruins of past empires, leaving the landscape dotted with places of adventure and mystery. Legends and artifacts of past empires still survive—as do terrible menaces.
The current age has no all-encompassing empire. The world is shrouded in a dark age, between the collapse of the last great empire and the rise of the next, which might be centuries away. Minor kingdoms prosper, to be sure: baronies, holdings, city-states. But each settlement appears as a point of light in the widespread darkness, a haven, an island of civilization
in the wilderness that covers the world. Adventurers can rest and recuperate in settlements between adventures. No settlement is entirely safe, however, and adventures break out within (and under) such places as often as not.
During your adventures, you might visit a number of fantastic locations: wide cavern passages cut by rivers of lava; towers held aloft in the sky by ancient magic; forests of strange, twisted trees, with shimmering fog in the air—anything you can imagine, your character might experience as the game unfolds.
Monsters and supernatural creatures are a part of this world. They prowl in the dark places between the points of light. Some are threats, others are willing to aid you, and many fall into both camps and might react differently depending on how you approach them.
Magic is everywhere. People believe in and accept the power that magic provides. However, true masters of magic are rare. Many people have access to a little magic, and such minor magic helps those living within the points of light to maintain their communities. But those who have the power to shape spells the way a blacksmith shapes metal are as rare as adventurers and appear as friends or foes to you and your companions.
At some point, all adventurers rely on magic in one form or another. Wizards and warlocks draw magic from the fabric of the universe, shape it with their will, and hurl it at their foes in explosive blasts. Clerics and paladins call down the wrath of their gods to sear their foes with divine radiance, or they invoke their gods’ mercy to heal their allies’ wounds. Fighters, rangers, rogues, and warlords don’t use obviously magical powers, but their expertise with their magic weapons makes them masters of the battlefield. At the highest levels of play, even nonmagical adventurers perform deeds no mere mortal could dream of doing without magic—swinging great axes in wide swaths that shake the earth around them or cloaking themselves in shadow to become invisible.
I really enjoyed MCDM’s beastheart. I had an awesome owlbear companion named brookstone. I’m currently playing the revised illrigger.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
I'm building a homebrew setting right now and I'm having a very hard time squeezing my class ideas into subclasses, only because some of my longtime players want to stay in the online character sheet environment. I'd rather just lift whole classes entirely from wherever I want to steal them from (IK Requiem) and drop them into my setting but Beyond won't allow for that.
I don’t know if that’s changed, and frankly I don’t care. It was such a shit and greedy af business model.
they weren't owned by WOTC when they did that, now you can buy both and its like $10-$20 for the D&D beyond version if you buy the hardcover
How is it greedy for (the at the time) D&D Beyond to not just effectively give you free product? The reason you can't get existing content you own on there before any scheme like that existed is because then... I mean pretty much everyone would just claim the content for free on D&D Beyond using books sitting on store shelves, buy them from amazon claim the content and return them, etc
Putting so much 3rd party content on D&D beyond was a great decision by whoever makes decisions in a long line of terrible decisions, its great for the third party creator and great for WOTC that any third party publisher can pretty much publish on there now
you can get Flee Mortals! on D&D beyond and the dungeon supplement Where Evil Lives now and it made me very happy, I had to buy Flee Mortals a second time but being able to import it into foundry with the D&D Beyond importer saved me many, many hours of work and my time is worth a lot more than $30
D&D beyond is slowly accumulating vast amounts of third party content and I think that was a great decision, https://marketplace.dndbeyond.com/
The main reason I don't use D&D beyond anymore other than as a vector to import content is that I cant make custom classes on it and we play with A5E mostly now, and making all the changes required would be too much of a headache
If it’s changed good on them, I guess. It’s still a shit business model in what was effectively double charging you.
It’s not like they’re hard up for money, so you’ll have to forgive me if I seem unsympathetic
this is exactly what the game needs.
How do you imagine they would check if you already have a physical copy?
I mean, from books purchased before WOTC owned D&D Beyond
Sorry if it wasn’t clear I was agreeing with you. There isn’t a good way really.
That is...a lot of volume for one hour's work. I'm not saying it's not possible, but I'm a relatively healthy middle-aged six-foot-tall man and I think I'd have trouble managing both to move that much earth in an hour and somehow managing not to get trapped in the hole/buried by a collapse in the process.
Guess I'll find out this fall, I have a small tree I have to dig out of my front yard when the seasons change.
Minecraft campaign setting incoming!
a fighter with action surge at level 20 digging a perfectly rectangular 40 foot deep hole in one round
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
I'm kind of hoping that seeing the relative popularity of 3rd party options is the kick in the pants WotC needs to step up their quality.
I mean, I think the problem is Hasbro more than WotC, but you never know
Don't ever dig straight down, what is wrong with you! Next thing you know you fall into lava and there goes all the diamonds you've mined smdh
and I think the problem with hasbro is that it's run by a bunch of elder capitalist ghouls that are so far divorced from the products their company sells that nothing will penetrate
A shovel would
in MinecraftD&D
I got inspiration and the coupon I got in session 1, which the DM probably expected to be used on a pearl of power, was worth fully 35k hehehe
Regarding a helper side NPC:
Regarding the module that needs to be reworked:
So now he's going out of his way to rebuild the entire chapter to try and draw on elements of Krynn that people would think of that you would want to have in a high level module (IE having fights from dragon back) as part of a greater narrative dedicated to stopping Vecna.
prediction: the only reaction it gets is "how do we leech money out of third party products" and we get the OGL fiasco part 2
At least make them weredragons or something! Relate it to the draconic blood line getting mixed into ancestries in a weird way... or blame it on the bad guys and their draconian experiments thats always reliable
You vastly underestimate corporate brainrot. Those bumbling idiots could fuck up a wet dream
Re: Dragonlance wierdness
I didn't know that. That's just embarrassing on WOTC's part to let that slide. C'mon Perkins! You can do better than that. You worked with Weis and Hickman as a young'un!
Perkins is not a writer on that book, he only made the new mechanical elements like backgrounds
Since they never replaced Mearls, Perkins is doing his job too, which is insane - I get ditching Mearls, but you're tellin me they can't find another D&D lore nerd in the whole of the world to take his place? Greenwood would probably do it for some pot and free snacks if you let him broadcast his workflow to his youtube channel
Nah, they dont give a shit, they're riding the shit tsunami that is windfall from unrelated products (stranger things, critical role), events (covid) and now that its coming down they're blaming the employees who they've already pared down to the bone
WOTC should have multiple times the staffing for D&D that they do based on its sales and amount of product it creates
Which... Like... It appears to be a magic werewolf so that kind of has something to do with the moons since they're tied to the gods of magic and the ways people would use magic (To protect and nurture, To domiinate and control or something somewhere inbetween)... but the character isn't wearing robes that would associate them with any of the given orders and none of this clarifies why they're a werewolf in a setting that is about the balance between good and evil, striving to uphold ideals in a world which is jaded and knights fighting each other on the backs of fucking dragons!
For those who are curious about how all this makes me feel in a TLDR post with no spoilers:
More then just more staff (although that wouldn't hurt) they need people who can look at the lore, find things that are worth exploring and a guy who can turn around and say "No, that's dumb" when they go off the rails.
But if there was a guy that they could tap to make sure that they were keeping in the spirit of a given setting I'd point out that Ed Greenwood is right there, and even if he didn't have a hand in making other settings I imagine he'd be able to talk to their creators and get them to share their insight.