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.
My key takeaways:
- Mentions a desire to revisiting previous locations and giving them "a new coat of paint"
- They're apparently considering more smaller and niche releases in-between the larger books
- Dig at Gary Gygax: "We're not Gary Gygax. We're not going to tell you the right way to play."
- Says that complex mechanics related to roleplay would be best served in a hypothetical optional "romantasy" supplement and that the core of D&D is more about combat.
0
NipsHe/HimLuxuriating in existential crisis.Registered Userregular
- Says that complex mechanics related to roleplay would be best served in a hypothetical optional "romantasy" supplement and that the core of D&D is more about combat.
I mean, like it or not, at least someone at WotC has an idea as to what they want the game to express as a core conceit and be built toward.
Not that I'm saying D&D 5e and its iteration are anywhere near close to being good at that, especially compared to its competitors.
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.
Mythbusters tested digging a 2 ft grave in 20 minutes. It was busted, it took over 2 hours. So, a 5x5' cube is...wildly optimistic.
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
Judging by the interview he gave with the CR team a few years ago, I was under the impression that Perkins was big cheese lore guy over there. That same interview led me to believe that Perkins has true love for the game and its legacy. Given his position and his love, I'm sure he has his hands into every pile that WOTC produces and maybe not editorial control. But at the very least, in some writers room meeting someone over there should have said, "Werewolves? For our initial/only release in Krynn? Really, guys? Really?"
I'm reading that interview and finding it deeply, deeply concerning.
Like I think having your smaller books being put out to try and cover different niche genres (how to do romance, running buisness, being a band, ect) could be a good thing but I also am knowledgeable enough to know that that's not something that D&D has any really established reputation for as compared to other RPG's that built their games with it in mind (white wolf, Castle Amber, Seventh Sea).
More concerning is the vague Allusions to established settings; I think getting some fresh perspective on parts of the realms that have been pretty much ignored since like 3rd would be nice and s Module with a focus on courtly intrigue in Cormyr could be a banger IMHO... But at the same time WotC has given me zero reason to trust their narrative vision over the last few years and this vague poo pooing over lore isn't exactly engendering confidence. Edit: And this is before this inverview which feels like it's poo pooing on the idea of lore and established settings.
Still waiting for that moment where I see them put out something with the new materials where I go "FUCK YEAH!" as opposed to "ehhhhhhhh...." And I really, really want them to give me the former
Gaddez on
+6
Havelock3.0What are you?Some kind of half-assed astronaut?Registered Userregular
I'm reading that interview and finding it deeply, deeply concerning.
Like I think having your smaller books being put out to try and cover different niche genres (how to do romance, running buisness, being a band, ect) could be a good thing but I also am knowledgeable enough to know that that's not something that D&D has any really established reputation for as compared to other RPG's that built their games with it in mind (white wolf, Castle Amber, Seventh Sea).
More concerning is the vague Allusions to established settings; I think getting some fresh perspective on parts of the realms that have been pretty much ignored since like 3rd would be nice and s Module with a focus on courtly intrigue in Cormyr could be a banger IMHO... But at the same time WotC has given me zero reason to trust their narrative vision over the last few years and this vague poo pooing over lore isn't exactly engendering confidence. Edit: And this is before this inverview which feels like it's poo pooing on the idea of lore and established settings.
Still waiting for that moment where I see them put out something with the new materials where I go "FUCK YEAH!" as opposed to "ehhhhhhhh...." And I really, really want them to give me the former
Honestly the downtime stuff is already better covered by a bunch of third party supplements, and the old Rules Cyclopedia.
It’s something that could just be combined into a single New Rules Cyclopedia for 5E+, but individual smaller books means line go up more so yknow
You go in the cage, cage goes in the water, you go in the water. Shark's in the water, our shark.
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
Judging by the interview he gave with the CR team a few years ago, I was under the impression that Perkins was big cheese lore guy over there. That same interview led me to believe that Perkins has true love for the game and its legacy. Given his position and his love, I'm sure he has his hands into every pile that WOTC produces and maybe not editorial control. But at the very least, in some writers room meeting someone over there should have said, "Werewolves? For our initial/only release in Krynn? Really, guys? Really?"
Alas.
Perkins is one man, he seems to be the lore guy, but that's the problem, you need more than one lore guy especially since he's credited with a huge amount of writing in the new phb, mm, and dmg which have likely been consuming virtually all of his time for the last 18 months
+5
Havelock3.0What are you?Some kind of half-assed astronaut?Registered Userregular
You’d think they’d have a dedicated lore/story team
You go in the cage, cage goes in the water, you go in the water. Shark's in the water, our shark.
Since it was mentioned by myself the other day, I read through kinks and cantrips again, and impressed that the literal D&D kink book's warlock subclass is a better fiend warlock than the real one
One of its central mechanics is dealmaking, deals have a points value, and you have to assign penalties to yourself and the other party for breaking terms, and I like it a lot. So much I might steal it and just make it so any dealmaking person (any character with strong fiend or fey associations) could access it
I love the idea of a party promising an NPC something in exchange for the player Doing A Thing, and actual mechanical consequences for failing to do The Thing (although, obviously, half the consequences in that book are kink related, such as turning into a statue of pain and suffering constant agony for 30 days before you get your first opportunity to break free, but creating new consequences that are neutral bad instead of kinky bad shouldn't be hard)
Maybe I'll just make my own similar thing, I like fidly point systems that add extra work to myself who is already full of shit needing done as a DM
Edit: as an example, you can make a deal with an NPC that they will obtain an item worth 3000 gold pieces for you, in exchange you can offer to give them 2 points of your intelligence for 30 days, and assign the penalty that if they fail to bring you the item that they renumerate you with equally valuable item or gold and until they do so they will have disadvantage on all checks and saving throws not directly related to obtaining it for you (which honestly would be nice if Geas worked this way, it's extremely anemic as is)
override367 on
+4
NipsHe/HimLuxuriating in existential crisis.Registered Userregular
"If you're looking for what's official in the D&D roleplaying game, it's what appears in the products for the roleplaying game," Crawford said. "Basically, our stance is that if it has not appeared in a book since 2014 [the year that Dungeons & Dragons' Fifth Edition core rulebooks came out], we don't consider it canonical for the games."
And yes, I bring this up as a little tongue-in-cheek, but it feels like the D&D team want to be able to play a bit of jazz with the D&D lore. Get weird with it and whatnot, without being held to the five decades of written materials that came before.
Whether that's "good" is left as an exercise for the observer. I know where I stand, and because of that I'm running a homebrew world and stealing liberally from the few good bits of content I see WotC proper put out.
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.
Alternately, Like I've been saying for a couple of months now: I'd rather they make a whole new setting so that they have the freedom to do whatever they want and I don't have to watch as they mutilate settings I actually care about with horrendous writing.
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.
Alternately, Like I've been saying for a couple of months now: I'd rather they make a whole new setting so that they have the freedom to do whatever they want and I don't have to watch as they mutilate settings I actually care about with horrendous writing.
If they aren't able to do justice to properly documented, and even relatively simple and coherent settings like dragonlance, I bet any new property they'd come up with would contradict its own lore every other book
+8
Havelock3.0What are you?Some kind of half-assed astronaut?Registered Userregular
edited August 2024
Yeah I get wanting to play jazz with prior settings but there’s a difference between riffing and completely missing the point of the original piece
Planescape being a good example of the latter
Havelock3.0 on
You go in the cage, cage goes in the water, you go in the water. Shark's in the water, our shark.
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.
Alternately, Like I've been saying for a couple of months now: I'd rather they make a whole new setting so that they have the freedom to do whatever they want and I don't have to watch as they mutilate settings I actually care about with horrendous writing.
If they aren't able to do justice to properly documented, and even relatively simple and coherent settings like dragonlance, I bet any new property they'd come up with would contradict its own lore every other book
See heres the thing though: If they're doing it with a new setting that I don't have any investment in I'm not going to have to care.
And in a more optimistic light: maybe if they have the freedom to build the foundation of a new setting they'll actually make something coherent and compelling.
I expect a lot of the long-timers at WotC are jaded by necessity by now. The corporate world does terrible things to passion and dedication.
I doubt anyone who truly cares about the integrity of the game is left. Like If you told me that Chris Perkins was a sociopath on prozac who was just effecting warmth and happiness in order to get people to buy the product theat Hasbro is going to do a "Lucy and the football" with I'd believe it.
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.
Alternately, Like I've been saying for a couple of months now: I'd rather they make a whole new setting so that they have the freedom to do whatever they want and I don't have to watch as they mutilate settings I actually care about with horrendous writing.
If they aren't able to do justice to properly documented, and even relatively simple and coherent settings like dragonlance, I bet any new property they'd come up with would contradict its own lore every other book
The 4E default setting (why didn't they ever give it a proper name...) got around this at least by often giving multiple possibilities for the truth without committing to one.
Regarding Dragonlance, did anyone have problems with the Shadow of the Dragon Queen adventure, or is the main sticking point that the new Vecna book put werewolves in a setting where they weren't before (and is that really such a horrible change to the lore?)?
Honestly, outside of this thread the only setting releases I've seen a lot of negativity about for 5E were Spelljammer and Ravenloft, though I mostly look on ENWorld for D&D nowadays so maybe I'm not looking in the right places.
0
AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
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.
Alternately, Like I've been saying for a couple of months now: I'd rather they make a whole new setting so that they have the freedom to do whatever they want and I don't have to watch as they mutilate settings I actually care about with horrendous writing.
If they aren't able to do justice to properly documented, and even relatively simple and coherent settings like dragonlance, I bet any new property they'd come up with would contradict its own lore every other book
Writer 1: "Wait, your module says Fantaria has two moons? But we established it has only one!"
Writer 2: "Oh shit, but Kingdoron is still the largest nation right?"
Writer 1: "That's Ymperiis!"
Writer 3: "Hey guys, they just sent my new campaign to print! Cal'trax and the Three Moons of Fantaria!"
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
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.
Alternately, Like I've been saying for a couple of months now: I'd rather they make a whole new setting so that they have the freedom to do whatever they want and I don't have to watch as they mutilate settings I actually care about with horrendous writing.
If they aren't able to do justice to properly documented, and even relatively simple and coherent settings like dragonlance, I bet any new property they'd come up with would contradict its own lore every other book
The 4E default setting (why didn't they ever give it a proper name...) got around this at least by often giving multiple possibilities for the truth without committing to one.
It did have a name: the nentir vale and it was basically a greyhawk setting.
Regarding Dragonlance, did anyone have problems with the Shadow of the Dragon Queen adventure, or is the main sticking point that the new Vecna book put werewolves in a setting where they weren't before (and is that really such a horrible change to the lore?)?
Yeah, I had problems with how the Shadowof the dragon Queen just didn't really feel like DL; like We have a lance, Lord soth is around and the knights of solamnia... exist, but there wasn't anything that really grabbed me as "This is Krynn" and the whole thing felt like it could have easily been dumped in FR or Eberron with some name changed and nobody would have noticed any differences.
Also Further investigation into the DL chapter from vecna reveals that
There is a Dragon in the adventure... and it's a lunar dragon... which is just... why not just use a chromatic dragon for your villain in the module instead of one that's from fucking Spelljammer and typically lives on moons.
Honestly, outside of this thread the only setting releases I've seen a lot of negativity about for 5E were Spelljammer and Ravenloft, though I mostly look on ENWorld for D&D nowadays so maybe I'm not looking in the right places.
If no one is being critical of the last few years of content then the people you're listening to either do not have enough expierience with the game to make a comparative judgement or they're rubbernecking for the company.
Also Ravenloft was great even with some of the confusing and pointless changes they snuck in there.
tell me about ravenloft, ancient ones
I remember it being advertised in AD&D 2nd ed. stuff I looked at as a wee baby child
along with like, dark sun and planescape
It did have a name: the nentir vale and it was basically a greyhawk setting.
Nentir vale was just a place where they were writing adventures in the official setting, which was not basically a Greyhawk setting, it was "Points of Light" which was cosmologically very different than Greyhawk. Points of light didn't have an official map (it was created as the Nentir vale was created) and the planes were literally intermixed with the prime material (basically as you got further from civilization the world became more wild, but not just in like "ruins exist" but in the sense that reality warped. This made the setting a very closed and contained world where only adventurers would wander outside of settlements and something was always happening.
tell me about ravenloft, ancient ones
I remember it being advertised in AD&D 2nd ed. stuff I looked at as a wee baby child
along with like, dark sun and planescape
Ravenloft is a gothic horror setting that seeks to emulate classic stories and monsters (Dracula, the Dulahan, Werewolves, the Frankenstein monster, Doctor Moreau, Lovecraft...) with new twists; Players who wind up in the domains of dread will find themselves having an inversion of the Typical D&D campaign in that it doesn't empower them so much as it shows how small and vulnerable they are in this place that actively seeks to torment them. In a ravenloft campaign, survival and escape are considered far more critical then being big god damn heroes who kick ass and take names.
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webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
I also think ravenloft works best with newer players. Like folks who have maybe done lost mines. Before they learn all the trappings and tropes of the game.
I also think ravenloft works best with newer players. Like folks who have maybe done lost mines. Before they learn all the trappings and tropes of the game.
I disagree on this one. Ravenloft is a good module/campaign yes. But the world (demi-plane) of Ravenloft is not something that heroes can make better. You can kill the BBEG, sure. But you can't fix anything. You can't save anyone. There won't be any statues erected in your honor or celebrations to be had. You, maybe, get to go home and not live in a world empty of joy.
Which is very on brand for Ravenloft, but maybe not so much for the big damn hero types that populate most of that fantasy tropes that I would think that newer players have in their minds.
It did have a name: the nentir vale and it was basically a greyhawk setting.
Nentir vale was just a place where they were writing adventures in the official setting, which was not basically a Greyhawk setting, it was "Points of Light" which was cosmologically very different than Greyhawk.
In 4E every setting (other than Eberron, which did at least have the Nine Hells added) had a World Axis cosmology, though they didn't share the same one like how 5E has everything in the same Great Wheel cosmology. The later supplement Mordenkainen's Magical Emporium has him talking about the World Axis cosmology and the primordials as if they'd always been around. The 4E Forgotten Realms had Asmodeus somehow move the Abyss to the Elemental Planes, turning them into the Elemental Chaos just so the 3E World Tree cosmology could become the 4E World Axis cosmology. 4E Dark Sun also mentioned the primordials and added a Feywild counterpart called the Land Within the Wind.
I know we all liked 4E here, but we can't pretend it didn't make big and sometimes arbitrary-seeming changes to established settings and lore to a greater extent than anything 5E has done so far.
It did have a name: the nentir vale and it was basically a greyhawk setting.
Nentir vale was just a place where they were writing adventures in the official setting, which was not basically a Greyhawk setting, it was "Points of Light" which was cosmologically very different than Greyhawk.
In 4E every setting (other than Eberron, which did at least have the Nine Hells added) had a World Axis cosmology, though they didn't share the same one like how 5E has everything in the same Great Wheel cosmology. The later supplement Mordenkainen's Magical Emporium has him talking about the World Axis cosmology and the primordials as if they'd always been around. The 4E Forgotten Realms had Asmodeus somehow move the Abyss to the Elemental Planes, turning them into the Elemental Chaos just so the 3E World Tree cosmology could become the 4E World Axis cosmology. 4E Dark Sun also mentioned the primordials and added a Feywild counterpart called the Land Within the Wind.
I know we all liked 4E here, but we can't pretend it didn't make big and sometimes arbitrary-seeming changes to established settings and lore to a greater extent than anything 5E has done so far.
My Assumption with the planes in 4e was that they got "simplified" into 4 components (astral sea, elemental chaos, shadowfell and faewild) in order to make the game faster and simpler to process which... is a choice; I'm inclined to dislike it because I feel like it (along with alignment being a sliding scale between most good and most evil... with almost nothing actually being good?) removed a bunch of depth and nuance from the game but at the same time I can look at it from the perspective of someone new to D&D having less information that they need to process particularly in a system which was I'd argue much more about fast paced strategic combat then a more generalized system like what 3rd or 5th focused on.
As to My assertion that the Nentir vale was Greyhawk: It literally used the same pantheon of gods. You might be able to argue for a few that might be present on more then one world/setting (Your Bahamut, Moradin, Corellon, Tiamat or even Vecna these days) but all of them? Kind of a stretch, particularly when we don't see other gods like Torm, Avani, Marduk, Silver Flame or Morgion that would imply that this was either a melting pot or a crossroads or such.
I also think ravenloft works best with newer players. Like folks who have maybe done lost mines. Before they learn all the trappings and tropes of the game.
I disagree on this one. Ravenloft is a good module/campaign yes. But the world (demi-plane) of Ravenloft is not something that heroes can make better. You can kill the BBEG, sure. But you can't fix anything. You can't save anyone. There won't be any statues erected in your honor or celebrations to be had. You, maybe, get to go home and not live in a world empty of joy.
Which is very on brand for Ravenloft, but maybe not so much for the big damn hero types that populate most of that fantasy tropes that I would think that newer players have in their minds.
Like this is the other thing with Ravenloft that elevates it to another level: the Darklords aren't the BBEG. Like don't get me wrong: Strahd von Zhavoritch ~nuanced as he may be~ is a legit villain who Has done horrible, irredeemable things and there is a reason he is regarded as the First and Best vampire in D&D. But when you look deeper under the surface you realize that Strahd (for all of that power) is on the same level as the citizens of Barovia in that he is tormented and abused by entities that are so far beyond him in power and standing that he pretty much just has to sit there and deal with the fact that the things he wants most (to be with the woman he loves and to be able to leave Barovia) are things he will be desperately clawing at forever because the Dark powers will always keep them just out of reach.
And there are *dozens* of other realms that they've created for the campaign setting with no less then 17 being explored in terms of themes, topography, dramatis personae and history while 22 more give you a notion of what else exists.
And like Steelhawk said, this isn't what I would call a new player experience or something to just casually throw around. It's the kind of thing you keep on your shelf like a fine bottle of liquor, to be shared with ypur friends on a quiet night around the fireplace.
It did have a name: the nentir vale and it was basically a greyhawk setting.
Nentir vale was just a place where they were writing adventures in the official setting, which was not basically a Greyhawk setting, it was "Points of Light" which was cosmologically very different than Greyhawk.
In 4E every setting (other than Eberron, which did at least have the Nine Hells added) had a World Axis cosmology, though they didn't share the same one like how 5E has everything in the same Great Wheel cosmology. The later supplement Mordenkainen's Magical Emporium has him talking about the World Axis cosmology and the primordials as if they'd always been around. The 4E Forgotten Realms had Asmodeus somehow move the Abyss to the Elemental Planes, turning them into the Elemental Chaos just so the 3E World Tree cosmology could become the 4E World Axis cosmology. 4E Dark Sun also mentioned the primordials and added a Feywild counterpart called the Land Within the Wind.
I know we all liked 4E here, but we can't pretend it didn't make big and sometimes arbitrary-seeming changes to established settings and lore to a greater extent than anything 5E has done so far.
I liked those changes, myself, but then I have ADHD so novelty is my lifeblood (and I have no taste when it comes to whether a thing is good or bad, I just like newness).
Posts
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.
My key takeaways:
- Mentions a desire to revisiting previous locations and giving them "a new coat of paint"
- They're apparently considering more smaller and niche releases in-between the larger books
- Dig at Gary Gygax: "We're not Gary Gygax. We're not going to tell you the right way to play."
- Says that complex mechanics related to roleplay would be best served in a hypothetical optional "romantasy" supplement and that the core of D&D is more about combat.
I mean, like it or not, at least someone at WotC has an idea as to what they want the game to express as a core conceit and be built toward.
Not that I'm saying D&D 5e and its iteration are anywhere near close to being good at that, especially compared to its competitors.
Mythbusters tested digging a 2 ft grave in 20 minutes. It was busted, it took over 2 hours. So, a 5x5' cube is...wildly optimistic.
Make sure to call diggers hotline first so you don't accidentally pierce a hole to the abyss.
Judging by the interview he gave with the CR team a few years ago, I was under the impression that Perkins was big cheese lore guy over there. That same interview led me to believe that Perkins has true love for the game and its legacy. Given his position and his love, I'm sure he has his hands into every pile that WOTC produces and maybe not editorial control. But at the very least, in some writers room meeting someone over there should have said, "Werewolves? For our initial/only release in Krynn? Really, guys? Really?"
Alas.
Like I think having your smaller books being put out to try and cover different niche genres (how to do romance, running buisness, being a band, ect) could be a good thing but I also am knowledgeable enough to know that that's not something that D&D has any really established reputation for as compared to other RPG's that built their games with it in mind (white wolf, Castle Amber, Seventh Sea).
More concerning is the vague Allusions to established settings; I think getting some fresh perspective on parts of the realms that have been pretty much ignored since like 3rd would be nice and s Module with a focus on courtly intrigue in Cormyr could be a banger IMHO... But at the same time WotC has given me zero reason to trust their narrative vision over the last few years and this vague poo pooing over lore isn't exactly engendering confidence. Edit: And this is before this inverview which feels like it's poo pooing on the idea of lore and established settings.
Still waiting for that moment where I see them put out something with the new materials where I go "FUCK YEAH!" as opposed to "ehhhhhhhh...." And I really, really want them to give me the former
Remember if you hit adamantine you should probably stop digging any further.
Honestly the downtime stuff is already better covered by a bunch of third party supplements, and the old Rules Cyclopedia.
It’s something that could just be combined into a single New Rules Cyclopedia for 5E+, but individual smaller books means line go up more so yknow
Perkins is one man, he seems to be the lore guy, but that's the problem, you need more than one lore guy especially since he's credited with a huge amount of writing in the new phb, mm, and dmg which have likely been consuming virtually all of his time for the last 18 months
One of its central mechanics is dealmaking, deals have a points value, and you have to assign penalties to yourself and the other party for breaking terms, and I like it a lot. So much I might steal it and just make it so any dealmaking person (any character with strong fiend or fey associations) could access it
I love the idea of a party promising an NPC something in exchange for the player Doing A Thing, and actual mechanical consequences for failing to do The Thing (although, obviously, half the consequences in that book are kink related, such as turning into a statue of pain and suffering constant agony for 30 days before you get your first opportunity to break free, but creating new consequences that are neutral bad instead of kinky bad shouldn't be hard)
Maybe I'll just make my own similar thing, I like fidly point systems that add extra work to myself who is already full of shit needing done as a DM
Edit: as an example, you can make a deal with an NPC that they will obtain an item worth 3000 gold pieces for you, in exchange you can offer to give them 2 points of your intelligence for 30 days, and assign the penalty that if they fail to bring you the item that they renumerate you with equally valuable item or gold and until they do so they will have disadvantage on all checks and saving throws not directly related to obtaining it for you (which honestly would be nice if Geas worked this way, it's extremely anemic as is)
This coming from the company/division, from not that long ago and famously in that moment, declared that most D&D products are not canon for the purposes of 5e.
And yes, I bring this up as a little tongue-in-cheek, but it feels like the D&D team want to be able to play a bit of jazz with the D&D lore. Get weird with it and whatnot, without being held to the five decades of written materials that came before.
Whether that's "good" is left as an exercise for the observer. I know where I stand, and because of that I'm running a homebrew world and stealing liberally from the few good bits of content I see WotC proper put out.
Alternately, Like I've been saying for a couple of months now: I'd rather they make a whole new setting so that they have the freedom to do whatever they want and I don't have to watch as they mutilate settings I actually care about with horrendous writing.
If they aren't able to do justice to properly documented, and even relatively simple and coherent settings like dragonlance, I bet any new property they'd come up with would contradict its own lore every other book
Planescape being a good example of the latter
See heres the thing though: If they're doing it with a new setting that I don't have any investment in I'm not going to have to care.
And in a more optimistic light: maybe if they have the freedom to build the foundation of a new setting they'll actually make something coherent and compelling.
I doubt anyone who truly cares about the integrity of the game is left. Like If you told me that Chris Perkins was a sociopath on prozac who was just effecting warmth and happiness in order to get people to buy the product theat Hasbro is going to do a "Lucy and the football" with I'd believe it.
The 4E default setting (why didn't they ever give it a proper name...) got around this at least by often giving multiple possibilities for the truth without committing to one.
Regarding Dragonlance, did anyone have problems with the Shadow of the Dragon Queen adventure, or is the main sticking point that the new Vecna book put werewolves in a setting where they weren't before (and is that really such a horrible change to the lore?)?
Honestly, outside of this thread the only setting releases I've seen a lot of negativity about for 5E were Spelljammer and Ravenloft, though I mostly look on ENWorld for D&D nowadays so maybe I'm not looking in the right places.
Writer 1: "Wait, your module says Fantaria has two moons? But we established it has only one!"
Writer 2: "Oh shit, but Kingdoron is still the largest nation right?"
Writer 1: "That's Ymperiis!"
Writer 3: "Hey guys, they just sent my new campaign to print! Cal'trax and the Three Moons of Fantaria!"
It did have a name: the nentir vale and it was basically a greyhawk setting.
Yeah, I had problems with how the Shadowof the dragon Queen just didn't really feel like DL; like We have a lance, Lord soth is around and the knights of solamnia... exist, but there wasn't anything that really grabbed me as "This is Krynn" and the whole thing felt like it could have easily been dumped in FR or Eberron with some name changed and nobody would have noticed any differences.
Also Further investigation into the DL chapter from vecna reveals that
If no one is being critical of the last few years of content then the people you're listening to either do not have enough expierience with the game to make a comparative judgement or they're rubbernecking for the company.
Also Ravenloft was great even with some of the confusing and pointless changes they snuck in there.
I remember it being advertised in AD&D 2nd ed. stuff I looked at as a wee baby child
along with like, dark sun and planescape
Nentir vale was just a place where they were writing adventures in the official setting, which was not basically a Greyhawk setting, it was "Points of Light" which was cosmologically very different than Greyhawk. Points of light didn't have an official map (it was created as the Nentir vale was created) and the planes were literally intermixed with the prime material (basically as you got further from civilization the world became more wild, but not just in like "ruins exist" but in the sense that reality warped. This made the setting a very closed and contained world where only adventurers would wander outside of settlements and something was always happening.
Ravenloft is a gothic horror setting that seeks to emulate classic stories and monsters (Dracula, the Dulahan, Werewolves, the Frankenstein monster, Doctor Moreau, Lovecraft...) with new twists; Players who wind up in the domains of dread will find themselves having an inversion of the Typical D&D campaign in that it doesn't empower them so much as it shows how small and vulnerable they are in this place that actively seeks to torment them. In a ravenloft campaign, survival and escape are considered far more critical then being big god damn heroes who kick ass and take names.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
I disagree on this one. Ravenloft is a good module/campaign yes. But the world (demi-plane) of Ravenloft is not something that heroes can make better. You can kill the BBEG, sure. But you can't fix anything. You can't save anyone. There won't be any statues erected in your honor or celebrations to be had. You, maybe, get to go home and not live in a world empty of joy.
Which is very on brand for Ravenloft, but maybe not so much for the big damn hero types that populate most of that fantasy tropes that I would think that newer players have in their minds.
In 4E every setting (other than Eberron, which did at least have the Nine Hells added) had a World Axis cosmology, though they didn't share the same one like how 5E has everything in the same Great Wheel cosmology. The later supplement Mordenkainen's Magical Emporium has him talking about the World Axis cosmology and the primordials as if they'd always been around. The 4E Forgotten Realms had Asmodeus somehow move the Abyss to the Elemental Planes, turning them into the Elemental Chaos just so the 3E World Tree cosmology could become the 4E World Axis cosmology. 4E Dark Sun also mentioned the primordials and added a Feywild counterpart called the Land Within the Wind.
I know we all liked 4E here, but we can't pretend it didn't make big and sometimes arbitrary-seeming changes to established settings and lore to a greater extent than anything 5E has done so far.
My Assumption with the planes in 4e was that they got "simplified" into 4 components (astral sea, elemental chaos, shadowfell and faewild) in order to make the game faster and simpler to process which... is a choice; I'm inclined to dislike it because I feel like it (along with alignment being a sliding scale between most good and most evil... with almost nothing actually being good?) removed a bunch of depth and nuance from the game but at the same time I can look at it from the perspective of someone new to D&D having less information that they need to process particularly in a system which was I'd argue much more about fast paced strategic combat then a more generalized system like what 3rd or 5th focused on.
As to My assertion that the Nentir vale was Greyhawk: It literally used the same pantheon of gods. You might be able to argue for a few that might be present on more then one world/setting (Your Bahamut, Moradin, Corellon, Tiamat or even Vecna these days) but all of them? Kind of a stretch, particularly when we don't see other gods like Torm, Avani, Marduk, Silver Flame or Morgion that would imply that this was either a melting pot or a crossroads or such.
Like this is the other thing with Ravenloft that elevates it to another level: the Darklords aren't the BBEG. Like don't get me wrong: Strahd von Zhavoritch ~nuanced as he may be~ is a legit villain who Has done horrible, irredeemable things and there is a reason he is regarded as the First and Best vampire in D&D. But when you look deeper under the surface you realize that Strahd (for all of that power) is on the same level as the citizens of Barovia in that he is tormented and abused by entities that are so far beyond him in power and standing that he pretty much just has to sit there and deal with the fact that the things he wants most (to be with the woman he loves and to be able to leave Barovia) are things he will be desperately clawing at forever because the Dark powers will always keep them just out of reach.
And there are *dozens* of other realms that they've created for the campaign setting with no less then 17 being explored in terms of themes, topography, dramatis personae and history while 22 more give you a notion of what else exists.
And like Steelhawk said, this isn't what I would call a new player experience or something to just casually throw around. It's the kind of thing you keep on your shelf like a fine bottle of liquor, to be shared with ypur friends on a quiet night around the fireplace.
I liked those changes, myself, but then I have ADHD so novelty is my lifeblood (and I have no taste when it comes to whether a thing is good or bad, I just like newness).