Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes

[War_lord]

I'm surprised no one has made a thread about this. New book coming on May 29th.


Discover the truth about the great conflicts of the D&D multiverse in this supplement for the world's greatest roleplaying game.

This tome is built on the writings of the renowned wizard from the world of Greyhawk, gathered over a lifetime of research and scholarship. In his travels to other realms and other planes of existence, he has made many friends, and has risked his life an equal number of times, to amass the knowledge contained herein. In addition to Mordenkainen's musings on the endless wars of the multiverse, the book contains game statistics for dozens of monsters: new demons and devils, several varieties of elves and duergar, and a vast array of other creatures from throughout the planes of existence.

Looks like all the speculations about the next book being Planes focused was correct.

[the_brazenburn]

That's very interesting.

What do you expect we'll get in it? I've got my fingers crossed for gith races, lots of fluff, and a couple of monster stats. A gazetteer approach to the different planar locations like we got in SCAG would be nice, too.

[Unoriginal]

We're definitively getting the Gith race and the stuff from the Fiendish UA. Maybe also stuff on other planar entities and how they influence the world (Boons from Modrons or Slaadi might be fun, but who know).

I'm surprised about the title, though. It makes it sound like this:


https://youtu.be/WyYGFoVkFNM

Moerdenkainen's Enemy List

[Millstone85]

The cover is cool.http://images.randomhouse.com/cover/700jpg/9780786966240 Is it an observatory of the Great Wheel, somewhere within Mechanus, currently focused on Mordenkainen?

On the other hand, the description sounds more Monster Manual III than Manual of the Planes, and the latter is what I wanted.

[War_lord]

That's very interesting.

What do you expect we'll get in it? I've got my fingers crossed for gith races, lots of fluff, and a couple of monster stats. A gazetteer approach to the different planar locations like we got in SCAG would be nice, too.

I'm 99% sure that it's another Volo's guide. So one fluff section detailing "conflicts", a few guesses I'd throw out would be "Gith vs Githyanki", "The Blood War", "The Greyhawk wars", "Surface Elves vs Drow" and perhaps the "War of the Lance". People better versed in the lore of the official settings can probably come up with more possibilities. Note that I think they'll steer clear of Eberron because there's enough demand there for it to get its own "[insert marketable character]'s Guide to Eberron" in the future.

Then there's going to be a player race section. I know the press release doesn't say that, but it fits their strategy of trying to make every addon book appeal to both DM and player. I'd say the Elf subtypes and the Gith are both going to be in there. Possibly the Duergar as an OP always evil race, similar to how Volo's added playable Yuan-ti. I'm not going to guess past that, since the "Multiverse" being inherently part of the book's flavor means that they can get as wild as that want with what else they want to make playable. Just that I don't think it'll be Warforged, because again, Eberron will probably get its own book.

And then there's going to be a Monster section, if I had to put some names forward it'd be Wrackspawn (Mearls has said he likes them), expanded Duergar. More Devils and Demons have obviously been advertised, but I'd not going to speculate since I'm a D&D newb compared to most around here.


On the other hand, the description sounds more Monster Manual III than Manual of the Planes, and the latter is what I wanted.

I'm pretty certain the days of 200+ page Lore manuals on a specific subject are gone due to changes in D&D marketing and design philosophies.

[Grod_The_Giant]

I'm 99% sure that it's another Volo's guide.
That's what it sounds like. "The book contains game statistics for dozens of monsters: new demons and devils, several varieties of elves and duergar, and a vast array of other creatures from throughout the planes of existence."

[Daithi]

The Warlocks and Wizards taking the summoning spells from XGtE will be looking forward to a few more devils and demons they can control.

I'm assuming no mystics/psionics in this one.

[War_lord]

I'm assuming no mystics/psionics in this one.

Probably not, both because it doesn't fit the format and because that's the sort of thing they'd put in the blurb.

[Spamotron]

The youtube version of the Fireside Chat (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2GsBra3Z2M&feature=youtu.be) that announced the book went up about an hour or two ago for those who are interested.

[Luccan]

Cool. I wonder if they're doing the Volo's thing, where we'll get new player races as well (not just subraces). If they do, it might be where they finally put Genasi in a physical book. Other than Gith/Githyanki, what other planar player races might be cool?

[Grod_The_Giant]

Cool. I wonder if they're doing the Volo's thing, where we'll get new player races as well (not just subraces). If they do, it might be where they finally put Genasi in a physical book. Other than Gith/Githyanki, what other planar player races might be cool?
Hmm. I'm pretty sure we'll see Eldarin in, given that they popped up in UA recently.

[Unoriginal]

The youtube version of the Fireside Chat (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2GsBra3Z2M&feature=youtu.be) that announced the book went up about an hour or two ago for those who are interested.

Thanks for the video.

[Millstone85]

Possibly the Duergar as an OP always evil race, similar to how Volo's added playable Yuan-ti.The duergar is already playable as a dwarf subrace in SCAG.

But the blurb does mention "several varieties of elves and duergar", so now I am confused.


I'm pretty certain the days of 200+ page Lore manuals on a specific subject are gone due to changes in D&D marketing and design philosophies.Nothing stops a Manual of the Planes from having DM tools and player options, including but not limited to monster stat blocks and playable races/subraces.

[War_lord]

The duergar is already playable as a dwarf subrace in SCAG.

But the blurb does mention "several varieties of elves and duergar", so now I am confused.

I wouldn't be surprised if they reprint it.


Nothing stops a Manual of the Planes from having DM tools and player options, including but not limited to monster stat blocks and playable races/subraces.

A Manual of the Planes would have to go into much more detail then can be fit into the fluff section of a Volo's layout book.

[Kuulvheysoon]

Honestly, what I’m really hoping for is Inevitables. I much preferred them to the (rather silly, IMHO) Modrons. And this book, if nowhere else, is the place to put them in.

[JackPhoenix]

Hmm. I'm pretty sure we'll see Eldarin in, given that they popped up in UA recently.

Considering the blurb mentions more elven variants, it would make sense.

{Scrubbed}

[War_lord]

Clearly things are worth your money if you're going out of your way to steal it instead.

[JackPhoenix]

Clearly things are worth your money if you're going out of your way to steal it instead.

Worth my money? Perhaps. The options are nice. Deserving my money? Nope, I refuse to support WotC in releasing more FR material.

[War_lord]

Worth my money? Perhaps. The options are nice. Deserving my money? Nope, I refuse to support WotC in releasing more FR material.

It clearly deserves your money if you're willing to engage in theft to get access to it.

[Trippic]

maybe a decent selection of familiars or more summoning options
not just heres a goblin archer! look its different...this one has a bow in its hand

[JackPhoenix]

{Scrubbed}

[Unoriginal]

Maybe repeating several time how you're doing it on this forum is not the best idea, you know

[Finlam]

Maybe repeating several time how you're doing it on this forum is not the best idea, you know

Declarations of immaturity are never a good idea unless you're in a rock band.

[Shadow_in_the_Mist]

The duergar is already playable as a dwarf subrace in SCAG.

But the blurb does mention "several varieties of elves and duergar", so now I am confused.

Nothing stops a Manual of the Planes from having DM tools and player options, including but not limited to monster stat blocks and playable races/subraces.

Well, in 3e, there was a unique half-fiend duergar called the Durzagon, and this was the inspiration for 4e's revamping of duergar in the Nentir Vale setting as descendants of dwarven slaves who turned to Asmodeus for the strength to overthrow their illithid masters, ultimately interbreeding with devils. So, maybe it's a nod to them?

[Desteplo]

Here’s hoping for a few more 1/4 medium beasts

[mephnick]

This is the place to finally add some high CR stuff.

[Regitnui]

*insert Eberron rant here* I don't expect Eberron here because they hinted at a book being worked on by Keith Baker.

Now that said, I'm probably going to buy this book. Not for the Great Wheel conflicts, but for the various celestials and fiends. I also hope there are inevitables and different chaotic exemplars. I mean, slaad are fine, but I find it hard to believe that the plane of chaos is inhabited by only one kind of creature.

[Arkhios]

Worth my money? Perhaps. The options are nice. Deserving my money? Nope, I refuse to support WotC in releasing more FR material.

Mordenkainen is/was an Archmage from Greyhawk. Not Forgotten Realms.

(And Gary Gygax's own player character no less!)

[Regitnui]

Mordenkainen is/was an Archmage from Greyhawk. Not Forgotten Realms.

I'm going to be the grouch here and say the only difference between FR's planes and Greyhawk's are the "gods" living there. This is a step away from FR, but it's the nervous shuffle of a teenage boy towards the totally-out-of-his-league-but-awesome girl he wants to (and should) ask to prom.

[Arkhios]

I'm going to be the grouch here and say the only difference between FR's planes and Greyhawk's are the "gods" living there. This is a step away from FR, but it's the nervous shuffle of a teenage boy towards the totally-out-of-his-league-but-awesome girl he wants to (and should) ask to prom.

Sure, but it's still a step away from FR, however minimal it is.

[War_lord]

Sure, but it's still a step away from FR, however minimal it is.

It's not a step away from anything, it's a multiverse book, same as Volo's, same as Xanathar's. The gnashing of teeth and wailing over something as minor as a book title, something which is decided by the marketing department, is just sad. VGTM was not an FR book, it was a D&D book.

[Arkhios]

It's not a step away from anything, it's a multiverse book, same as Volo's, same as Xanathar's. The gnashing of teeth and wailing over something as minor as a book title, something which is decided by the marketing department, is just sad. VGTM was not an FR book, it was a D&D book.

Mordenkainen is an iconic character from the World of Greyhawk, not from the Forgotten Realms, therefore it is a (definitely small) step away from Forgotten Realms "hype". Why is that so difficult to accept? Whether or not the book and its content is related to any specific setting is irrelevant on this matter.

[War_lord]

Mordenkainen is an iconic character from the World of Greyhawk, not from the Forgotten Realms, therefore it is a (definitely small) step away from Forgotten Realms "hype". Why is that so difficult to accept? Whether or not the book and its content is related to any specific setting is irrelevant on this matter.

It is relevant, because it was only ever FR hype in the mind of the Eberron mafia. Everybody else knew and accepted that it was a matter of FR being the only setting with a large number of characters that were recognizable to the general public. Throwing the most recognizable Greyhawk character in there isn't a step away from anything.

Forgotten Realms is still the moneymaker, it still sells novels and other tie in tat and so long as that remains the case, they're naturally going to focus their marketing on that, even if it doesn't reflect the actual contents of the book much.

[Regitnui]

It is relevant, because it was only ever FR hype in the mind of the Eberron mafia.

You're the only person who thinks there's "Eberron mafia". Calm down.

I actually like this idea, but I'm still iffy on how usable most of this material will be outside of FR and Planescape. Greyhawk, as has been said, is almost interchangeable with FR. But putting Mordenkainen's name on this book gives me hope that we'll see other settings later this year, in those other two books. One will probably be a classic Greyhawk adventure updated and tuned, of course, but the rumours of Keith Baker working with WotC may bear fruit after all.

[Scots Dragon]

I actually like this idea, but I'm still iffy on how usable most of this material will be outside of FR and Planescape.

I'm going to let you in on a little secret that many people outside of Forgotten Realms fans probably haven't realised but...

Very little of the current material is actually especially strongly tied to the Forgotten Realms itself. In some cases it's actively using elements of other settings that are newly added and introduced to the Realms but don't really have any major business being there, such as the highly Greyhawk-specific elements in Princes of the Apocalypse, Tales from the Yawning Portal, and Tomb of Annihilation. Not to mention that Curse of Strahd pretty explicitly doesn't even take place in the Realms to begin with.

Volo's Guide to Monsters and Xanathar's Guide to Everything at most use the Forgotten Realms as a framing device, and in some cases contradict earlier Forgotten Realms material when it comes to certain races and monsters. Or are entirely whole-cloth additions that were not originally in the Forgotten Realms. In fact, let's go through some of them.

Aasimar? A Planescape race that can appear in basically any campaign setting that features celestial creatures and planar travel. They do not explicitly appear in the Forgotten Realms prior to the campaign setting book for D&D 3.0E, and even there are explicitly called out as extremely rare. Prior to that the Realms had been a major campaign setting for around fourteen years.

Firbolgs? An old monster race that does appear in the Forgotten Realms, because it precedes most of the published Realms by way of turning up in one of the early monster books, as far back as 1983's Monster Manual II for AD&D 1E. The Forgotten Realms wouldn't be in wide publication until 1987, so... yeah. Also it should be noted that the firbolg in D&D 5E in no way resembles the earlier giants, and at most shares a name and a slight nature focus in common.

Goliaths? Those are a D&D 3E generic race that was introduced in Races of Stone and was not even mentioned as having a Forgotten Realms presence whatsoever until an entire edition later.

Kenku? Are barely described in any Forgotten Realms specific sources, and at most were given a brief paragraph describing their potential appearances in the Forgotten Realms in the Monster Manual III for D&D 3.5E, and once again barely resemble their previous incarnations.

Lizardfolk? Those have been in Dungeons & Dragons since Supplement I: Greyhawk under the name 'lizard men', and thus can be called a core monster race.

Tabaxi? Those are similarly something that's been in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons since the early days, first appearing in the Fiend Folio released in 1981.

Tritons? Those were introduced in the same supplement as the lizardfolk above and can similarly be called a core monster race.

Outside of that, the book is literally just generic monster information that's been circling around since the early ecologies in Dragon Magazine, and a bestiary of common old-edition monsters that are pretty popular but weren't included in the Monster Manual. Are you going to try and tell me that none of this material can be used in Dragonlance or Eberron? How utterly divorced from the ideas of Dungeons & Dragons do you think those settings are?

If anything, I'd have trouble fitting some of this in with the Forgotten Realms. It's obviously the case that firbolgs and goliaths as presented are entirely new and don't really fit into established Realmslore without a bit of shoehorning. The same is of course true of core races such as the Dragonborn, since those don't turn up prior to D&D 4E.


Xanathar's Guide to Everything basically has a Forgotten Realms character as a framing device at most, and he's portrayed very differently to how he is in his earlier appearances where he was a menacing and calculating mastermind, instead being more of a comedic figure.

Everything else? It's a bunch of subclasses, some random background generation, some variant rules, and a list of new spells, with the appendices including stuff like character names.

None of the subclasses or spells link to any Forgotten Realms specific concepts, and if a Forgotten Realms character being used as some minor flavour almost entirely divorced from their original context is too much of a hurdle for you, I seriously don't know what to say to that.

[Arkhios]

it was only ever FR hype in the mind of the Eberron mafia.

Whoa... That was a bit uncalled for. Are you really accusing someone (me) who you don't know for being part of an "Eberron Mafia" only because they have voiced their concern for the lack of non-FR-specific material?

It's honestly a bit troubling that so far WotC haven't acknowledged the fans of different settings apart from few sidenotes here and there. Those other settings are as much their property as FR is. Neglecting them is only doing harm to them, not benefiting them. Currently they're basically keeping all of their eggs in one basket labeled with FR.


I'm going to let you in on a little secret

-snip-

Condescending much...?

[Requilac]

I am just hoping that they actually try to detail their great old ones in this book, mainly for the use of GOOlock patrons but also so I can create some weirder BBEGs too (is anyone sick of fiends yet?). It was especially odd as a new player to discover that D&D old ones bared minimal resemblance to their Lovecraft counterparts. I know that SCAG had a page that gave a paragraph for six different old ones, but this ultimately raised more questions than they did answers. Honestly though, I want to at least have some ideas as to what my GOOlock’s patron can be. Fey are so iconic that it is quite obvious to tell what they are like and fiends are highly fleshed out in many different modules and lore, but we are kind of left in the dark scrabbling for what precisely a D&D old one is. Perhaps it makes more sense to older players but to newbs like me who started in 2014 it is very confusing.

[JackPhoenix]

Outside of that, the book is literally just generic monster information that's been circling around since the early ecologies in Dragon Magazine, and a bestiary of common old-edition monsters that are pretty popular but weren't included in the Monster Manual. Are you going to try and tell me that none of this material can be used in Dragonlance or Eberron? How utterly divorced from the ideas of Dungeons & Dragons do you think those settings are?

None of that material is usable in Dragonlance, because Dragonlance isn't using the kitchen sink approach where everything must be shoved in just because it exists. While it does have its problematic elements (kenders...), I find the restraint welcome, even though I'm not really a fan of DL.

As for Eberron, while one the things to know from 3.5 ECS is "if it exists in D&D, it has a place in Eberron" you can pretty much throw away all the fluff in Volo's and keep only the stat blocks. Goblinoids, orcs and gnolls being just the most glaring examples.

[Unoriginal]

Speaking of Eberron, Mearls talked about it in the video where they made the Tome of Foes spoiler.

Apparently, it's so far away compared to other Material Plane worlds and so difficult to reach even seasoned multi-world travelers often think it's just a myth.

[War_lord]

Whoa... That was a bit uncalled for. Are you really accusing someone (me) who you don't know for being part of an "Eberron Mafia" only because they have voiced their concern for the lack of non-FR-specific material?

It's not FR specific, Scots Dragon literally just tore down that claim.


It's honestly a bit troubling that so far WotC haven't acknowledged the fans of different settings apart from few sidenotes here and there. Those other settings are as much their property as FR is. Neglecting them is only doing harm to them, not benefiting them. Currently they're basically keeping all of their eggs in one basket labeled with FR.


Mordenkainen showed up in CoS, ToA literally revolves around a scheme of Acererak's.

They've openly referenced Greyhawk several times. Is that the same as a setting book? No, but a setting book isn't likely to happen, because there's no real market for it. Eberron has been all but confirmed to be getting a book in the future. And I think that's because A. there's a sizeable number of Eberron fans who'll buy anything related to the setting and (perhaps more importantly) B. They can market it to newer fans with no prior knowledge of Eberron as something that's genuinely different to the assumed Greyhawk/FR inspired "regular" D&D.

At the end of the day there's no money to be made in releasing Dragonlance stuff, because you can't market a setting that requires knowledge of tie-in novels that are older then most of your customer base.

[Millstone85]

A Manual of the Planes would have to go into much more detail then can be fit into the fluff section of a Volo's layout book.4e's MotP has about 110 pages of lore and 50 pages of more crunchy elements. 5e's VGtM has about 100 pages of lore and 120 pages of more crunchy elements.

Not a big difference in the lore department.

It is possible you do not regard 4e's as a proper MotP, but I was happy with it.

Now, best case scenario, the conflicts described by Mordenkainen will have something for every part of the 5e Great Wheel:
* The Blood War between devils, yugoloths and demons.
* A reintroduction of archons, guardinals, (greater?) eladrin, and their politics toward each other and the Blood War.
* The Great Modron March and how it is received in each of the Outer Planes, notably in Limbo.
* Some new general canon regarding the Dawn War and other elemental conflicts.
* Seelie and unseelie fey.
* The Raven Queen versus Orcus.

In which case it will effectively be a MotP.

[Regitnui]

I'm going to let you in on a little secret that many people outside of Forgotten Realms fans probably haven't realised but...

Very little of the current material is actually especially strongly tied to the Forgotten Realms itself.

Hey, look, FR Mafia!

The problem is not these all being setting books for FR. The problem is that FR is painted over everything. In 3.5, Greyhawk was bland enough in the core books to get out of the way. I didn't have a list of Greyhawk nationalities to choose from if I wanted to be a human. I didn't have FR lore called out in the Monster Manual. And the adventures, if you go back and read them, were set in "Generical Land", not "this is in Forgotten Realms, here, join a faction from the setting."

I don't have a problem with Forgotten Realms. What I do have is a severe irritation that comes from having to cut Forgotten Realms lore from my players' expectations when we're playing anything else. Gnolls are not (all) slavering demon-possessed locusts in every setting. Goblins and orcs aren't Evil-by-default bags of XP. The books until now could have had a lot less setting-specific material painted on them. I'd be saying that if it was Eberron as the paint. I'd be saying that if Dragonlance was the paint. Forgotten Realms just got painted on a little too thick, and I want to come up for air now.

And CoS doesn't count for much, when it begins, ends, and involves the Forgotten Realms.


Now, best case scenario, the conflicts described by Mordenkainen will have something for every part of the 5e Great Wheel.

And there are three settings that use the Great Wheel; Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, and Planescape.

[Unoriginal]

Just to say, but Gnolls being demon-infused beasts and goblinoids or orcs being mostly terrible people following evil gods isn't setting specific. It's how 5e defines what a Gnoll/Goblinoid/Orc is, in general.

Changing them is what is setting specific.

[Naanomi]

And there are three settings that use the Great Wheel; Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, and Planescape.
Well... and Spelljammer, Darksun, Ravenloft, some versions of Mystara, Birthright, Council of Wyrms, 2.5+ Dragonlance, Ghostwalk, Kingdoms of Kalamar... just not so tied into Planar Lore, but definitely placed in that Cosmology

For example, there are four Gods from Toril, Cerilia, Oerth, and Krynn that share a Divine Realm together in the Outlands: each confirmed by their own setting materials and the Planescape books themselves

[Knaight]

Just to say, but Gnolls being demon-infused beasts and goblinoids or orcs being mostly terrible people following evil gods isn't setting specific. It's how 5e defines what a Gnoll/Goblinoid/Orc is, in general.

Changing them is what is setting specific.

It's setting specific either way - the very inclusion of gnolls, orcs, goblins, etc. is setting specific. These aren't sufficiently generic elements that they're likely to come up in basically every fantasy setting the way that something like stats for a spear are.

D&D has always had a bunch of setting specific material. Almost every class is setting specific, with the possible exceptions for the likes of the Fighting-Man/Fighter and closer spinoffs. The vast majority of the monster manual has always been setting specific, with the exception of the occasional entry for bandits or the like. D&D has always had a setting, it's just usually been a setting by implication - although even there the planar stuff is much more defined and a very specific setting element.

[Tanarii]

Mordenkainen is an iconic character from the World of Greyhawk, not from the Forgotten Realms, therefore it is a (definitely small) step away from Forgotten Realms "hype". Why is that so difficult to accept? Whether or not the book and its content is related to any specific setting is irrelevant on this matter.
Because that kind of thinking seems seems back to front. So long as the book and its content is not related to any specific setting, the name of the title containing a specific character is irrelevant. As well as totally unimportant.

[Arkhios]

Because that kind of thinking seems seems back to front. So long as the book and its content is not related to any specific setting, the name of the title containing a specific character is irrelevant. As well as totally unimportant.

The name of the book implies connection to Greyhawk, whether you like it or not.

[baticeer]

And CoS doesn't count for much, when it begins, ends, and involves the Forgotten Realms.

... are you serious? CoS has literally a page and a half of an optional adventure hook that you can use to get the characters into Ravenloft if they start off in the FR. If that’s too much FR for you, that’s okay. But to suggest it’s enough to make the book “not count” as a non-FR adventure is absurd.

If anything CoS has more Greyhawk in it than it does FR because Mordenkainen is an NPC that the characters can meet and potentially ally with.

[Tanarii]

The name of the book implies connection to Greyhawk, whether you like it or not.
I can see you're going to go to the wall for anything related to your "too much WotC focus on FR" philosophy. :smalltongue:

[Grod_The_Giant]

The name of the book implies connection to Greyhawk, whether you like it or not.
I mean, I suspect that a significant fraction of players wouldn't know who "Mordenkainen" is other than "that guy whose name is on a bunch of spells." Xanathar? Volo? I didn't know who those guys were without google, and I practically live on D&D forums.

[Millstone85]

And there are three settings that use the Great Wheel; Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, and Planescape.
Well... and Spelljammer, Darksun, Ravenloft, some versions of Mystara, Birthright, Council of Wyrms, 2.5+ Dragonlance, Ghostwalk, Kingdoms of Kalamar... just not so tied into Planar Lore, but definitely placed in that CosmologyIt could also be said that the like of Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk are part of Spelljammer, and then Spelljammer and Ravenloft are part of Planescape.

In this tweet (https://twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/885909193718341633), Jeremy Crawford called Planescape the "metasetting" of this edition, so I believe the idea is very much to assimilate Eberron, Dark Sun and more into this one canvas.


Speaking of Eberron, Mearls talked about it in the video where they made the Tome of Foes spoiler.

Apparently, it's so far away compared to other Material Plane worlds and so difficult to reach even seasoned multi-world travelers often think it's just a myth.Which is a way to include it with the rest. It is remote, and maybe cut away by both astral and phlogistic storms, but it is there.

[Arkhios]

I mean, I suspect that a significant fraction of players wouldn't know who "Mordenkainen" is other than "that guy whose name is on a bunch of spells." Xanathar? Volo? I didn't know who those guys were without google, and I practically live on D&D forums.

Probably so. Still, I'd expect that the design & development team would know who they're referring to and why, instead of just "throwing random names around just because a bunch of spells are named after them".

[Naanomi]

In this tweet (https://twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/885909193718341633), Jeremy Crawford called Planescape the "metasetting" of this edition, so I believe the idea is very much to assimilate Eberron, Dark Sun and more into this one canvas
Darksun has been for a long time. The Grey was created to explain the cosmological differences; there are several prominent Darksun NPCs in Planescape; and there is an entire adventure path dealing with a crashed Gith Spelljammer on Athas

[johnbragg]

I mean, I suspect that a significant fraction of players wouldn't know who "Mordenkainen" is other than "that guy whose name is on a bunch of spells." Xanathar? Volo? I didn't know who those guys were without google, and I practically live on D&D forums.

Right. With 5E, WOTC is focusing on the Forgotten Realms as their generic setting. Which is fine with them and with me, because FR is a pretty generic fantasy setting. You can ignore the HArpers and Zhentarim and run your game.

Given the rate at which they (aren't) producing splatbooks, I don't expect a Greyhawk-specific book or a Dragonlance book (much less Mystara or Nentir Vale) for a good long time.

Eberron will happen for a few reasons.
1. There's a sizable Eberron fan base so the book will sell.
2. Keith Baker is alive and well and on good terms with WOTC
3. Eberron is different enough from the generic-fantasy setting that an Eberron book adds value, even if you're not going to run a campaign in Eberron. There's plenty of stuff to plunder for your setting--you get 4 new-to-5E player races, spells, rules for magewrights, artificers, Eberron-specific monsters and/or monster variants.

Planescape might happen, someday. Or it might not--if Starfinder flops, then Hasbro probably says there's no market for D&D-in-space. Or if Starfinder doesn't flop, then maybe Hasbro says the market niche is already filled.

[Millstone85]

Darksun has been for a long time. The Grey was created to explain the cosmological differences; there are several prominent Darksun NPCs in Planescape; and there is an entire adventure path dealing with a crashed Gith Spelljammer on AthasAh yes, it was in your list. My bad.


Planescape might happen, someday. Or it might not--if Starfinder flops, then Hasbro probably says there's no market for D&D-in-space. Or if Starfinder doesn't flop, then maybe Hasbro says the market niche is already filled.I think you mean Spelljammer. And... sound logic, sadly.

[Scots Dragon]

Hey, look, FR Mafia!

The problem is not these all being setting books for FR. The problem is that FR is painted over everything. In 3.5, Greyhawk was bland enough in the core books to get out of the way. I didn't have a list of Greyhawk nationalities to choose from if I wanted to be a human. I didn't have FR lore called out in the Monster Manual. And the adventures, if you go back and read them, were set in "Generical Land", not "this is in Forgotten Realms, here, join a faction from the setting."

I don't have a problem with Forgotten Realms. What I do have is a severe irritation that comes from having to cut Forgotten Realms lore from my players' expectations when we're playing anything else. Gnolls are not (all) slavering demon-possessed locusts in every setting. Goblins and orcs aren't Evil-by-default bags of XP. The books until now could have had a lot less setting-specific material painted on them. I'd be saying that if it was Eberron as the paint. I'd be saying that if Dragonlance was the paint. Forgotten Realms just got painted on a little too thick, and I want to come up for air now.

You do know that the whole always-evil demonic gnolls thing was introduced specifically for D&D 5E and has absolutely nothing to do with the Forgotten Realms, right? Like, I feel that's something that should probably be widely known as a recent retcon.

Also there's literally no Forgotten Realms specific lore in the Monster Manual. None. You might think there is, but basically everything there originated in the 'generic Dungeons & Dragons lore' of older editions.

[RazDelacroix]

First of all, I cannot wait for Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes to be released so I may judge the book on it's own merits and use them to my discretion at the table.

Second of all... Eberron Mafia... Hehehe, first time hearing that and now for fun I have to make more factions...


Faerun Gang
Eberron Mafia
Mystara Legitimate Business Association
Rokugan Yakuza
Oerth Punks
Athas Slumlords
Spelljammer Pirates
Krynn Censorship Bureau
Ghostwalk Spooks
Kalamar... Does anyone know anyone from Kalamar?
Ravenloft Asylum Personnel
Planescape Philosophy Club!

[Tanarii]

Mystara Legitimate Business Association
Not sure if that's scarier as a merchant house out of Darokin, or the name for a bunch of Minrothad Pirates. :smallbiggrin:

[Vaz]

I'm interested for new Duergar stuff, running Out of the Abyss for my players.

[Regitnui]

... are you serious? CoS has literally a page and a half of an optional adventure hook that you can use to get the characters into Ravenloft if they start off in the FR.

Apologies. I've apparently been steered wrong there... Sorry. So there's a non-FR adventure.


It could also be said that the like of Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk are part of Spelljammer, and then Spelljammer and Ravenloft are part of Planescape.

In this tweet (https://twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/885909193718341633), Jeremy Crawford called Planescape the "metasetting" of this edition, so I believe the idea is very much to assimilate Eberron, Dark Sun and more into this one canvas.

If they wanted Planescape to be the baseline, why do we have FR in the Player's Handbook? That just ticked me off. They could have done the "cop-out" option of "you're all humans, you know what sort of names humans get". They did it in 3e.

Again, I'd like to reiterate that I'm not against the Forgotten Realms. I'm against the setting being overused, and, the only one we're "officially" allowed to homebrew for other than Ravenloft. Which I have no interest in or use for.


Which is a way to include it with the rest. It is remote, and maybe cut away by both astral and phlogistic storms, but it is there.

Like I said, Eberron would be worse off if it's forcefully integrated into the greater cosmology. Have it as this, a place locked off or difficult to get to, and I'll be happy. No "spelljammer dropped on Khorvaire" or "Lolth sticking her spidery head in" questlines. DDO has given me low expectations of WotC's capacity for keeping a setting's integrity solid.


You do know that the whole always-evil demonic gnolls thing was introduced specifically for D&D 5E and has absolutely nothing to do with the Forgotten Realms, right? Like, I feel that's something that should probably be widely known as a recent retcon.

Also there's literally no Forgotten Realms specific lore in the Monster Manual. None. You might think there is, but basically everything there originated in the 'generic Dungeons & Dragons lore' of older editions.

No, I evidently don't. What were gnolls before 5e? *Forgotten Realms Wiki* Raiding, vicious, brutal slavers who performed demonic rituals and blood offerings. With a side note of those who aren't that bad. OK. Retconned from brutal scavengers to brutal, near-demonic scavengers.

No Forgotten Realms lore? So Gruumsh, King Obould Many-Arrows, the Demonweb Pits, Kuo-Toa's Blibdoolpoolp, Maglubiyet, the Ordning, Demogorgon, Lolth and the drow culture, elves using blink dogs to hunt displacer beasts, all of the demon lords and archdevils... None of that has anything to do with Forgotten Realms, right? It's all only Greyhawk lore, or Planescape. Nothing to do with Forgotten Realms here.

Forgotten Realms has been thick on the ground from Day One of 5e. We've seen little of any other setting. The classic Greyhawk adventures were updated to FR. All I'm saying is that I'd like to see a setting that builds onto D&D. Planescape is a step in the right direction. I support that. I also support the possibility of shucking off Forgotten Realms for the less intrusive Greyhawk (they've done Greyhawk-as-default successfully before and it worked wonders for a blank slate).

[Naanomi]

You might think there is, but basically everything there originated in the 'generic Dungeons & Dragons lore' of older editions.
Or created/retconned for 5e in a setting altering but neutral way not tied to FR... some of which I personally get upset about and reject as in-game incorrect Lore... (yugoloth we’re not made by night hags...)

[Scots Dragon]

No Forgotten Realms lore? So Gruumsh, King Obould Many-Arrows, the Demonweb Pits, Kuo-Toa's Blibdoolpoolp, Maglubiyet, the Ordning, Demogorgon, Lolth and the drow culture, elves using blink dogs to hunt displacer beasts, all of the demon lords and archdevils... None of that has anything to do with Forgotten Realms, right? It's all only Greyhawk lore, or Planescape. Nothing to do with Forgotten Realms here.

Obould does, and if I remember correctly is the only instance of something that's part of the Forgotten Realms setting specifically, and he's specifically mentioned as such. Literally everything else there comes from Greyhawk or Planescape. It might have been imported into the Forgotten Realms, but it often precedes it.

Here are some examples;

Gruumsh comes from the original Deities and Demigods, which came out in 1980 and precedes the Realms in publication by seven years. As do Bilbdoolpoolp and Malgubiyet, for that matter. They're mostly Greyhawk-specific but were imported to the Forgotten Realms later.

The Ordning is generic giant lore, though I think it dates back to a Forgotten Realms book called Giantcraft. Mostly it was useful enough to be imported elsewhere though.

The Demonweb Pits and Lolth were introduced in the Greyhawk GDQ1-7 adventure modules, which came out in 1978 and preceded the Forgotten Realms in publication by nine years. The drow society as presented was pretty heavily influential to later material.

Demogorgon is in the first Monster Manual which came out in 1978 and precedes the Forgotten Realms by nine years. Also the same applies to any other demon lords and archdevils. By definition the original Monster Manual book should be considered 'generic'.

Elves using blink dogs to hunt displacer beasts is not in any Forgotten Realms source I'm familiar with.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Or created/retconned for 5e in a setting altering but neutral way not tied to FR... some of which I personally get upset about and reject as in-game incorrect Lore... (yugoloth we’re not made by night hags...)

That brings up an interesting thought--since the lore in those books (MM, VGtM, XGtE) are presented as from an in-universe source, are we sure they're actually correct?

Whatever the answer, I only rarely use the fluff parts in any detail. I keep the ideas (orcs get angry easily, devils are contractual/hierarchical while demons are more chaotic, etc), but leave the specific origins behind since my setting is quite a bit different.

[Regitnui]

That brings up an interesting thought--since the lore in those books (MM, VGtM, XGtE) are presented as from an in-universe source, are we sure they're actually correct?

Whatever the answer, I only rarely use the fluff parts in any detail. I keep the ideas (orcs get angry easily, devils are contractual/hierarchical while demons are more chaotic, etc), but leave the specific origins behind since my setting is quite a bit different.

I'm writing some homebrew, and I make it a point to be a little incorrect in the in-universe parts. After all, the writer can't be omniscient. Just very well-informed.


Obould does, and if I remember correctly is the only instance of something that's part of the Forgotten Realms setting specifically, and he's specifically mentioned as such. Literally everything else there comes from Greyhawk or Planescape. It might have been imported into the Forgotten Realms, but it often precedes it.

Here are some examples;

Gruumsh comes from the original Deities and Demigods, which came out in 1980 and precedes the Realms in publication by seven years. As do Bilbdoolpoolp and Malgubiyet, for that matter. They're mostly Greyhawk-specific but were imported to the Forgotten Realms later.

The Ordning is generic giant lore, though I think it dates back to a Forgotten Realms book called Giantcraft. Mostly it was useful enough to be imported elsewhere though.

The Demonweb Pits and Lolth were introduced in the Greyhawk GDQ1-7 adventure modules, which came out in 1978 and preceded the Forgotten Realms in publication by nine years. The drow society as presented was pretty heavily influential to later material.

Demogorgon is in the first Monster Manual which came out in 1978 and precedes the Forgotten Realms by nine years. Also the same applies to any other demon lords and archdevils. By definition the original Monster Manual book should be considered 'generic'.

Elves using blink dogs to hunt displacer beasts is not in any Forgotten Realms source I'm familiar with.

I sit corrected. (because I don't use my computer standing :smalltongue:) I apologise for saying the Monster Manual is overly FR. Still think the PHB's listing of Faerun nationalities was a step too far for a core book.

[Scots Dragon]

I sit corrected. (because I don't use my computer standing :smalltongue:) I apologise for saying the Monster Manual is overly FR. Still think the PHB's listing of Faerun nationalities was a step too far for a core book.

Those are ethnicities, actually, and while I vaguely agree that using a specific setting's ethnicities was probably a bad move, it would still have come off as awkward to use Suel, Flan, and Oerik instead. I think they mostly listed those because the initial adventures were using the Forgotten Realms and it made sense to be appropriate with contemporary material.

I think the PHB does a good job elsewhere of being non-setting-specific, aside from the Dragonborn who don't fit into any setting that isn't Nentir Vale but their hands were somewhat tied there by D&D 4E.

[Regitnui]

Those are ethnicities, actually, and while I vaguely agree that using a specific setting's ethnicities was probably a bad move, it would still have come off as awkward to use Suel, Flan, and Oerik instead. I think they mostly listed those because the initial adventures were using the Forgotten Realms and it made sense to be appropriate with contemporary material.

What's easier?

Listing nine or ten ethnicities a random new player won't understand
"Human names vary greatly. No human names are truly typical." (quote from 3e Player's Handbook)

[Vaz]

What's easier?

Listing nine or ten ethnicities a random new player won't understand
"Human names vary greatly. No human names are truly typical." (quote from 3e Player's Handbook)


Mountain. Molehill.

[Naanomi]

To be honest, I don’t see much more FR focus in 5e than I saw Points of Light focus in 3e (every splatbook added Gods to that pantheon explicitly...) or N. Vale in 4e

In fact, the times they deviate from both FR and generic Lore is what clashes with me the most... who is this Raven Queen and why is Xanathar’s book mentioning her? Doesn’t sound like anything in FR Lore I’ve ever seen

[Mith]

I am always in favour of more options. I hope they do a stylised version of the cover like they did with Volo's and Xanathar's. I have luckily ended up with both stylised versions and enjoy this style more than the standard ones.

[Kuulvheysoon]

I am always in favour of more options. I hope they do a stylised version of the cover like they did with Volo's and Xanathar's. I have luckily ended up with both stylised versions and enjoy this style more than the standard ones.

They actually show both covers on that fireside chat that they announced the book in. It makes heavy use of greens and blacks and actually looks pretty neat.

[MeeposFire]

While in reality the books they put out are really more generic rather than setting specific they do use FR as their lens and view point for this mostly generic information.

That is why I think Mordenkainen is being used here. I have a feeling that they might post it from the view point of a non-FR character looking at stuff that is being used in the generic setting of the realms such as he traveled the planes and is now looking at the realms. The reason being is that this is a planar book so I think they want to have the voice of an outsider to the realms commenting on everything rather than a FR character doing it like Elminster, Volo, or what have you.

Like all the other books the vast majority of the info will be setting agnostic but will be presented form the point of view of the character in question. Having an outsider do it grants a different point of view, expands potential avenues, and if they have that character talking about nominally Realms orientation (as in commenting on stuff supposedly of the realms even if Greywhawk has the same) then they keep the theme of using the Realms as the core setting they write about.

Just my first thought seeing this.

[strangebloke]

TBH I skim through the 'lore' information, take notes about things I like and ignore everything else. I've never played in an official setting anyway, so I'm inevitably going to be redefining the status of Goliath's, Human&Elf relations, etc. I couldn't care less whether something is FR specific or Eberron specific. Even though I dislike the overarching themes of FR, there's still some cool conceptual space there, like the Red Wizards of Thay or the Faceless Lords of Waterdeep.

I also loved a lot of the additions that Ebberon brought to 3e. Golems, airships, Dino-riding halflings, necromancer elves... there were tons of cool concepts that I stole borrowed from their for my own settings.

This book looks fun! More interested than I ever was in Volo's, that's for sure. Volo's had maybe... two points of interest for me? But I like the Gith and I like Aasimaar and more elves and dwarves is always cool. Duergar info is fun. Always felt that they were undeveloped compared to the Drow.

[War_lord]

But neither Volo's or Xanathar's are from the perspective of the book's namesake. It's presented from a neutral viewpoint except for a few sidebar jokes. If the actual meat of a book was written from the perspective of the Volo or Xanathar character I'd be more willing to buy the claims of FR bias. But it's not the case.

[Mith]

They actually show both covers on that fireside chat that they announced the book in. It makes heavy use of greens and blacks and actually looks pretty neat.

Thanks! I hadn't checked at the time due to being busy, but looking at it, I definitely like the stylised cover more. I wish it was more stylised in line of Xanathar's, but I still prefer it over the general run 5e book covers.

[Millstone85]

Thanks! I hadn't checked at the time due to being busy, but looking at it, I definitely like the stylised cover more. I wish it was more stylised in line of Xanathar's, but I still prefer it over the general run 5e book covers.I am the opposite. I think the alternative covers are nice, but they all fail to win me when compared to the main art.

[Scots Dragon]

Or created/retconned for 5e in a setting altering but neutral way not tied to FR... some of which I personally get upset about and reject as in-game incorrect Lore... (yugoloth we’re not made by night hags...)

Oh yeah, there's a lot of stuff that was needlessly altered and retconned in there starting with D&D 3E changing up all of the cosmologies of the existing campaign settings that it bothered to continue with, abandoning all of the campaign settings it wasn't interested in continuing with, and basically replacing Greyhawk with some hyper-genericised setting with none of its actual detail or lore.


And there are three settings that use the Great Wheel; Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, and Planescape.

Also I didn't respond to this yet, so I should point out that the one and only Dungeons & Dragons setting to be entirely divorced from the Great Wheel is in fact Eberron. At least when not counting D&D 3E-era retcons.

The following worlds are listed in Planescape's explanation of the Prime Material Plane in The Planeswalker's Handbook; Aebyrnis, Athas, Krynn, Mystara, Oerth, and Toril. Along with obviously covering the Mystara setting, that covers Birthright, Dark Sun, Dragonlance, Greyhawk, and the Forgotten Realms, all being part of the Great Wheel. It is also mentioned that Ravenloft exists as a demiplane within the Ethereal Plane, albeit with extra weird rules that do not allow someone to depart once they've entered unless the dark powers that rule the place allow it.

Along with Spelljammer technically also covering the same worlds albeit from an alternative perspective of travel, that literally covers every major Dungeons & Dragons campaign setting worth mentioning except for Eberron. And you really shouldn't complain at fans of the Realms, Greyhawk, and Planescape just because your favourite setting is the odd one out.

[Tanarii]

Putting Mystara in the Great Wheel is a 2e recon. The Known World (aka Mystara) was part of BECMI, which has its own planar layout. One the Immortals Set goes in to at length. Revised somewhat in Wrath of the Immortals.

[Scots Dragon]

Putting Mystara in the Great Wheel is a 2e recon. The Known World (aka Mystara) was part of BECMI, which has its own planar layout. One the Immortals Set goes in to at length. Revised somewhat in Wrath of the Immortals.

True, though that still leaves a considerably long list of other settings.

[Nifft]

I'm annoyed by the setting-specific book names.

If I'm not currently playing a game set in Greyhawk, why must Mordenkeinen be relevant to my game?

I guess it's slightly better than making everything be about FR, which is generally even less relevant to my games than Greyhawk, but I dislike this 5e tradition.


That's one thing the 3.x SRD got right -- they removed the setting-specific flavor from items and even the spell names, for use in settings that didn't include Otiluke or Ehlonna or Heward.

IMHO what Gygax did was excellent, in terms of tying his setting's lore to the details of what the players interacted with -- the idea that you're a Wizard and you're building on the past successes of other Wizards was great -- but those lore details need to be tied to each setting in different ways.

Smearing any particular setting's lore over all the core rules of the game is a mistake.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I'm annoyed by the setting-specific book names.

If I'm not currently playing a game set in Greyhawk, why must Mordenkeinen be relevant to my game?

I guess it's slightly better than making everything be about FR, which is generally even less relevant to my games than Greyhawk, but I dislike this 5e tradition.


That's one thing the 3.x SRD got right -- they removed the setting-specific flavor from items and even the spell names, for use in settings that didn't include Otiluke or Ehlonna or Heward.

IMHO what Gygax did was excellent, in terms of tying his setting's lore to the details of what the players interacted with -- the idea that you're a Wizard and you're building on the past successes of other Wizards was great -- but those lore details need to be tied to each setting in different ways.

Smearing any particular setting's lore over all the core rules of the game is a mistake.

I just use the SRD versions of those spells and items (which strips the names off of them). Mordenkeinen's Sword become Arcane Sword, etc. In universe, those are known by other names (even between different magic schools).

[furby076]

I'm going to let you in on a little secret that many people outside of Forgotten Realms fans probably haven't realised but...

Very little of the current material is actually especially strongly tied to the Forgotten Realms itself. In some cases it's actively using elements of other settings that are newly added and introduced to the Realms but don't really have any major business being there, such as the highly Greyhawk-specific elements in Princes of the Apocalypse, Tales from the Yawning Portal, and Tomb of Annihilation. Not to mention that Curse of Strahd pretty explicitly doesn't even take place in the Realms to begin with.

Volo's Guide to Monsters and Xanathar's Guide to Everything at most use the Forgotten Realms as a framing device, and in some cases contradict earlier Forgotten Realms material when it comes to certain races and monsters. Or are entirely whole-cloth additions that were not originally in the Forgotten Realms. In fact, let's go through some of them.

Aasimar? A Planescape race that can appear in basically any campaign setting that features celestial creatures and planar travel. They do not explicitly appear in the Forgotten Realms prior to the campaign setting book for D&D 3.0E, and even there are explicitly called out as extremely rare. Prior to that the Realms had been a major campaign setting for around fourteen years.

Firbolgs? An old monster race that does appear in the Forgotten Realms, because it precedes most of the published Realms by way of turning up in one of the early monster books, as far back as 1983's Monster Manual II for AD&D 1E. The Forgotten Realms wouldn't be in wide publication until 1987, so... yeah. Also it should be noted that the firbolg in D&D 5E in no way resembles the earlier giants, and at most shares a name and a slight nature focus in common.

Goliaths? Those are a D&D 3E generic race that was introduced in Races of Stone and was not even mentioned as having a Forgotten Realms presence whatsoever until an entire edition later.

Kenku? Are barely described in any Forgotten Realms specific sources, and at most were given a brief paragraph describing their potential appearances in the Forgotten Realms in the Monster Manual III for D&D 3.5E, and once again barely resemble their previous incarnations.

Lizardfolk? Those have been in Dungeons & Dragons since Supplement I: Greyhawk under the name 'lizard men', and thus can be called a core monster race.

Tabaxi? Those are similarly something that's been in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons since the early days, first appearing in the Fiend Folio released in 1981.

Tritons? Those were introduced in the same supplement as the lizardfolk above and can similarly be called a core monster race.

Outside of that, the book is literally just generic monster information that's been circling around since the early ecologies in Dragon Magazine, and a bestiary of common old-edition monsters that are pretty popular but weren't included in the Monster Manual. Are you going to try and tell me that none of this material can be used in Dragonlance or Eberron? How utterly divorced from the ideas of Dungeons & Dragons do you think those settings are?

If anything, I'd have trouble fitting some of this in with the Forgotten Realms. It's obviously the case that firbolgs and goliaths as presented are entirely new and don't really fit into established Realmslore without a bit of shoehorning. The same is of course true of core races such as the Dragonborn, since those don't turn up prior to D&D 4E.


Xanathar's Guide to Everything basically has a Forgotten Realms character as a framing device at most, and he's portrayed very differently to how he is in his earlier appearances where he was a menacing and calculating mastermind, instead being more of a comedic figure.

Everything else? It's a bunch of subclasses, some random background generation, some variant rules, and a list of new spells, with the appendices including stuff like character names.

None of the subclasses or spells link to any Forgotten Realms specific concepts, and if a Forgotten Realms character being used as some minor flavour almost entirely divorced from their original context is too much of a hurdle for you, I seriously don't know what to say to that.


Well said. You brought tears to my eyes. The naysayers will say you are wrong, with no evidence. Bonus xp to you.

[Beechgnome]

Monsters I am hoping/expect will be in the book, going around the wheel:

Celestia: Archons, maybe Zoveri (octopus centaurs)
Bytopia, Elysium, Beastlands: Guardinals, Phoenix, maybe Quesars?
Arborea, Ysgard: Some higher planes elf to replace Eladrin, Bacchae, maybe Lillends?

Limbo: Chaos imps, more Githzerai/Slaad options
Pandemonium: Howlers, Murska (insects that wear the skin and inherit intelligence of last creature they killed. They are awesome).

Abyss: Uh, more demons?
Carceri, Hades: Demodands?
Gehenna: More yugoloths please. Many more.
Hell: You don't suppose we'll get Asmodeus and the gang, do you? The strategy seems to be to reward purchasers of adventure will give them, just as Out of the Abyss/Prince of the Apocolypse had demon lords and princes of elemental evil. I guess more devils then.

Acheron: Bladelings, Achaerai, maybe more planar duergar.
Mechanus: I like to believe it's possible to have both more modrons and the inevitables. And gear spirits.
Arcadia: Formions would be nice (maybe as a playable race??. I really like the black oily morphing of the Busen, too.

For player races, we'll get elven variants, gith, tiefling variants and I guess duergar variants. But maybe we'll also get formion, bladeling and some of the weirder player options too.

I am excited.

This also answers the question I asked earlier, about what book 'Marathon' would be.

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?548966-2018-books-what-will-they-be

Broadway and Catacomb still to be resolved.

[War_lord]

I don't think it's going to be that structured. I mean nothing about the title "Volo's guide to monsters" hinted at Grung and lots of Fey. I think they have a certain group of big enemies they want to add with each book and then the rest is just what the team is interested in.

[Slayn82]

That cover is totally riffing on Doctor Strange's style. And I love it.

From the title and the cover, maybe it will be written in a investigative report, conspiracy theorist feel, with several speculations that may or may not be true (the lore part), with some verified information along (rules on races, items, feats and spells).

[Scots Dragon]

That cover is totally riffing on Doctor Strange's style. And I love it.

I don't quite like that they've gone once again with the D&D 3E-era Ming the Merciless version of Mordenkainen, though, personally.

[vicente408]

I don't think it's going to be that structured. I mean nothing about the title "Volo's guide to monsters" hinted at Grung and lots of Fey. I think they have a certain group of big enemies they want to add with each book and then the rest is just what the team is interested in.

Volo’s guide had a lot of inclusions informed by the then-unreleased Tomb of Annihilation, so I bet that in addition to the multiversal conflicts mentioned we’ll also see potential hints at things included in the next module currently being developed.

[KorvinStarmast]

Demogorgon is in the first Monster Manual which came out in 1978 and precedes the Forgotten Realms by nine years. Also the same applies to any other demon lords and archdevils. By definition the original Monster Manual book should be considered 'generic'.
Demogorgon and Orcus were first put into D&D in 1976, along with Type I-VI demons, in Eldritch Wizardry before AD&D was a thing. Same with Vecna and Kaz. (Hand and Sword respectively).
Elves using blink dogs to hunt displacer beasts is not in any Forgotten Realms source I'm familiar with. I think that was in a Greyhawk or AD&D 1e thing, memory foggy...might have been in a Dragon Magazine article.

[Clistenes]

Bring back the true Celestial denizens! Archons, Guardinals, the true Eladrin (Coures, Bralanis, Firres, Ghaeles, Novieres, Shieres, Shiradis, Tulanis...).

Give them a different name if you must! Call them Eladrin Azata, if necessary, but bring them back!

[kingheff1]

From the tone of the blurb I wonder if they could throw in racial variants from different settings? Grugach and valley elves from greyhawk, half dwarves and half giants from dark sun, for example.
After looking through my planescape monstrous compendium I think it would be a crime if they didn't get some artwork commissioned in that style for a planar themed book.

[KorvinStarmast]

Some planescape stuff would be good.

[Waazraath]

Bring back the true Celestial denizens! Archons, Guardinals, the true Eladrin (Coures, Bralanis, Firres, Ghaeles, Novieres, Shieres, Shiradis, Tulanis...).

Give them a different name if you must! Call them Eladrin Azata, if necessary, but bring them back!

+1 to this!

[Kane0]

Looking forward to some expanded outsiders, need some more villain fodder.

[Beechgnome]

If they go the straight Volo's route and highlight 9 monsters/races for further delving...and they want to touch on the inner and outer planes, I can see the nine being something like:

Angels, Demons, Devils, Duergar, Elves, Genies, Gith, Modrons, Vampires.

Volo's intro, you might recall, asked something like 'What about Gith? Undead? Dragons? These will be covered in later books.' Dragons I think might be worthy of their own book.

Elves are the only one not technically in the Monster Manual (beyond Drow), but an extended entry could encompass Drow, Feywild and Outer planes elves and open the door for more Feywild, Arborea, Beastlands creatures.

Similarly Angels would be a jumping off point to delve into their relationships with other creatures like Archons and Guardinals.

We've only got the weakest five Modrons, so it seems inevitable we'll get the rest.

Duergar, though not really a planes creature (outside of Acheron), would give another opportunity to explore a deep dive of a playable race. And if the November release (codenamed Catacomb) is really an Undermountain adventure, it would be a good fit.

If they feel Demons was already done in Out of the Abyss (and the five demons in Volo's) they could sub in Yugoloths. But two lower planes races would greatly expand adventures in those realms.

Vampires could be subbed for another Shadowfell undead, though lorewise they are probably the best choice.

Genies would open the door to the elemental planes and more varied elementals. And like Vampires, they have great lore, lots of minions and make excellent villains.

We know the Gith are coming, they are awesome, and they open the door to more creatures of the Astral Plane and Limbo.

[Beechgnome]

On second look they call out Slaad as well, so maybe elves would appear just in player section.

[Millstone85]

We now have a product page (http://dnd.wizards.com/products/tabletop-games/rpg-products/mordenkainens-tome-foes) and some new informations (http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/news/mordenkainens-tome-foes).

Confirmed conflicts:
* drow vs. rest of elfkind
* duergar vs. rest of dwarfkind
* githyanki vs. githzerai
* the Blood War

Confirmed player options:
* something for elves
* something for tieflings
* playable gith

[Tanarii]

* drow vs. rest of elfkind
* duergar vs. rest of dwarfkindThanks. For some reason I had gotten the impression it was a planar book, not a book about infamous conflicts. Probably from everyone talking in this thread about it being a planar book. :smallwink:

[Vaz]

Welp, that's put me running Out of the Abyss back until June at least then.

[samcifer]

Hopefully it'll add a few more beast forms for Druids to Wild Shape into.

[Beechgnome]

Thanks. For some reason I had gotten the impression it was a planar book, not a book about infamous conflicts. Probably from everyone talking in this thread about it being a planar book. :smallwink:

I admit the mention of Gith, devils, demons, and likely appearance of Feywild and Shadowfell elf races, plus all of those Mechanus-like gears on the cover had me thinking it had a planar bent. But yes it appears to be focused on endless wars, with planar locations secondary, if at all.

[Millstone85]

Thanks. For some reason I had gotten the impression it was a planar book, not a book about infamous conflicts. Probably from everyone talking in this thread about it being a planar book. :smallwink:I thought it was a book about the infamous conflicts of the planes. I guess that includes the Material. :smallannoyed:

Though maybe they will go into details about what the eladrin and the shadar-kai think of the drow. I hope they don't use the words Feydark and Shadowdark anymore. :smallbiggrin:

Speaking of what made us think it was a planar book, I just now realize that the Great Wheel on the cover is all wrong. Hades next to Mechanus? Gehenna next to Pandemonium? What is going on here?

[Sigreid]

I thought it was a book about the infamous conflicts of the planes. I guess that includes the Material. :smallannoyed:

Though maybe they will go into details about what the eladrin and the shadar-kai think of the drow. I hope they don't use the words Feydark and Shadowdark anymore. :smallbiggrin:

Speaking of what made us think it was a planar book, I just now realize that the Great Wheel on the cover is all wrong. Hades next to Mechanus? Gehenna next to Pandemonium? What is going on here?

I'm sure a properly uptight scholar would say the wheel is a tool for visualizing the difficulty of accessing the planes from each other and should not be taken as a literal physical map. 😁

[Unoriginal]

Thanks. For some reason I had gotten the impression it was a planar book, not a book about infamous conflicts. Probably from everyone talking in this thread about it being a planar book. :smallwink:

"rhe book contains game statistics for dozens of monsters: new demons and devils, several varieties of elves and duergar, and a vast array of other creatures from throughout the planes of existence."

I think we get a lot of planes.

Also, Mike Mearls talking about it here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r93sKXCvXQ4) :

Notable things:

-Similar to the Volo's in structure: lore + a big chunk of monters
-More higher level monsters
-Treat of cosmic matters and the multiverse
-Mordenkainen focused on the concept of balance, especially in the ongoing conflicts
-Will have chapters on Dwarves, Gnomes, and Halflings

[War_lord]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r93sKXCvXQ4


As we suspected it's "structurally close to Volo's Guide to Monsters"
While Volo focused on cultures, Mordenkainen writes about planer conflicts.
Confirmed articles are Elves vs Drow, Blood War, Gith vs Mind Flayers, Githyanki vs Githzerai. Focuses on the "big picture".
The goal was for half of the monsters in the book to be CR 10 or higher.
Mordenkain was chosen because he's focused on the idea of cosmic balance.
Around 6:50 Mearls lets it slip that Dwarves vs Duergar is also featured.
Apparently Gnomes and Halfling come into it somewhere. It appears that the design team agrees with my stance on Halflings (they're always out of place.)

[Millstone85]

I'm sure a properly uptight scholar would say the wheel is a tool for visualizing the difficulty of accessing the planes from each other and should not be taken as a literal physical map. 😁That dial is still wrong, unless it was forged at a time when Pandemonium shared more portals with Carceri and Gehenna than with Limbo and the Abyss.

Orbiting planes à la Eberron? Drifting planes à la Nentir Vale?

[Sigreid]

That dial is still wrong, unless it was forged at a time when Pandemonium shared more portals with Carceri and Gehenna than with Limbo and the Abyss.

Orbiting planes à la Eberron? Drifting planes à la Nentir Vale?

The experts are still debating the proper relationships. It's unfortunate that a bunch of half educated con men have tried to sell one of the theories as fact. 😜

[Unoriginal]

Wonder if there will be more humanoid NPC statblocks, like "Planar Mage", "Astral Pirate", or the like.

[PhoenixPhyre]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r93sKXCvXQ4


Apparently Gnomes and Halfling come into it somewhere. It appears that the design team agrees with my stance on Halflings (they're always out of place.)


Funny, I've always thought that it's gnomes that are out of place. Halflings make sense to me.

[War_lord]

Funny, I've always thought that it's gnomes that are out of place. Halflings make sense to me.

Halflings never have any political entanglements. They never have any sort of detail beyond "jolly and found wherever humans are". They're still a pretty obvious Hobbit knockoff. With Gnomes I can just yell FEYWILD

[Kane0]

Gnomes and halflings are like the smaller, more chill versions of dwarves and humans. They need a solid identity, and a good conflict is a sure way to get one.

[RickAsWritten]

Gnomes and halflings are like the smaller, more chill versions of dwarves and humans. They need a solid identity, and a good conflict is a sure way to get one.

Introducing...The War for Fourth Breakfast. The epic, centuries long battle between Halflings and Gnomes over who can make the perfect cup of tea. The Halflings insist that their all-natural, down-homey way of brewing is superior. The Gnomes harness the powers of magic and alchemy to create their perfect brew. Many lives have been lost slightly inconvenienced during this terrible, terrible conflict.

[Luccan]

Honestly, I was fine with their established characterizations. Halflings travel around in caravans and try to avoid notice. Yeah, some groups settle down, but I always got the impression that since, like, 3e, they were largely nomadic. I'll admit, they still have some similarities to Hobbits, but if you're going to change them completely, you might as well change the name. Like if you made Orcs nature spirits or something instead of brutish, fanatical humanoids, why call them Orcs? I feel like having a race that doesn't have a personal conflict with another is actually a good thing, too. It'd be kinda dull if almost everyone who wasn't a human had a blood-sworn enemy.

I always felt gnomes had a fairly strong identity, though. They don't usually get into conflict because they aren't particularly expansionist and tend to hide their dwellings. They also tend to get along with anything that treats them well and doesn't end in "-obold". They're inventive, which can mean different things depending on setting, but means they tend toward arts or sciences. They even have a racial preference toward a particular type of magic, which I don't think any of the other standard races do. I suppose if this focuses on their war against kobolds and expands that, it could be good. I like the idea that there are gnomish armies, but they're fighting a literal underground guerrilla war against the little lizards, so you never see them, just the bright surface-dwelling communities.

[Jama7301]

Introducing...The War for Fourth Breakfast. The epic, centuries long battle between Halflings and Gnomes over who can make the perfect cup of tea. The Halflings insist that their all-natural, down-homey way of brewing is superior. The Gnomes harness the powers of magic and alchemy to create their perfect brew. Many lives have been lost slightly inconvenienced during this terrible, terrible conflict.

A culture war over tea? Sounds delightful. Gnomes could think the ceremony that Halflings surround their tea parties with get in the way of enjoying the drink, and the Halflings could be offended at the Gnome's maverick attitude over what you have alongside a cup of tea.

[Luccan]

A culture war over tea? Sounds delightful. Gnomes could think the ceremony that Halflings surround their tea parties with get in the way of enjoying the drink, and the Halflings could be offended at the Gnome's maverick attitude over what you have alongside a cup of tea.

Halfling tea ceremony?

I take it back, if they want to turn halfling culture into a feudal Japan expy, they have my blessing and all my money.

[Envyus]

From the currently going Dragontalk. We are getting the Archdevils in this book. Probably Demonlords too.

[the_brazenburn]

From the currently going Dragontalk. We are getting the Archdevils in this book. Probably Demonlords too.

Do you think they'll reprint the ones in OotA, or make some new ones, or both?

Personally, I'd love to see stats for Lolth and Kostchetchie. Maybe Pazuzu, too.

And the archdevils will obviously be nice.

[Envyus]

Do you think they'll reprint the ones in OotA, or make some new ones, or both?

Personally, I'd love to see stats for Lolth and Kostchetchie. Maybe Pazuzu, too.

And the archdevils will obviously be nice.

I am hoping they reprint them and give some of the other ones like Lolth, Pazuzu and Koschetchie.

[Envyus]

Demon Lords are in the book but what kinds is not known.

[Kane0]

Gnomes waging a protracted underground/guerrilla war against kobolds does sound good, especially since it would explain the ingenuity of both as a sort of arms race between gnomish inventions and kobold traps.
Halflings however sadly just seem too averse to conflict. If their nomadic ways had more backbone and purpose it would shine a nice light on them, or at least provide some information on how that nomadic lifestyle became prevalent and how they deal with life on the road.

[Jama7301]

Gnomes waging a protracted underground/guerrilla war against kobolds does sound good, especially since it would explain the ingenuity of both as a sort of arms race between gnomish inventions and kobold traps.
Halflings however sadly just seem too averse to conflict. If their nomadic ways had more backbone and purpose it would shine a nice light on them, or at least provide some information on how that nomadic lifestyle became prevalent and how they deal with life on the road.

Based on this, I could see a world where Halflings travel because they wear out their welcome fairly quickly. Sure, they may stay in a place for a year or three, but nothing long enough to establish roots. They keep cheerful because it helps drive them on. The alternative is to mope at the lack of a stable home.

Hooray for alternative readings of things!

[Rickety Stick]

Jeremy confirmed during dragontalk that shadowfell elves, eladrin and sea elves will be playable in the new book. He also said that the eladrin have been changed from how they were in ua based on feedback.

[Rickety Stick]

Book will also have gnome constructs (apparently smaller than golems), cambion variants, yugoloths, shadowfell creatures(no names mentioned) and elder elementals (leviathan mentioned) as monsters.

Most of the cult stuff and Tiefling variants from that ua will be in the book with some changes.

[Kane0]

If I see the words 'clockwork' and 'horror' in the same sentence I will nope out SO HARD.

Edit: Leviathan sounds very intriguing however.

[Tetrasodium]

Worth my money? Perhaps. The options are nice. Deserving my money? Nope, I refuse to support WotC in releasing more FR material.
The statblocks will be useful, ossibly races as well. it depends on how thick they paint the lore of faerun & other great wheel cosmology settings onto the player targeted options as an excuse to loredump faerun where it has no business being.


I'm 99% sure that it's another Volo's guide. So one fluff section detailing "conflicts", a few guesses I'd throw out would be "Gith vs Githyanki", "The Blood War", "The Greyhawk wars", "Surface Elves vs Drow" and perhaps the "War of the Lance". People better versed in the lore of the official settings can probably come up with more possibilities. Note that I think they'll steer clear of Eberron because there's enough demand there for it to get its own "'s Guide to Eberron" in the future.

Then there's going to be a player race section. I know the press release doesn't say that, but it fits their strategy of trying to make every addon book appeal to both DM and player. I'd say the Elf subtypes and the Gith are both going to be in there. Possibly the Duergar as an OP always evil race, similar to how Volo's added playable Yuan-ti. I'm not going to guess past that, since the "Multiverse" being inherently part of the book's flavor means that they can get as wild as that want with what else they want to make playable. Just that I don't think it'll be Warforged, because again, Eberron will probably get its own book.

And then there's going to be a Monster section, if I had to put some names forward it'd be Wrackspawn (Mearls has said he likes them), expanded Duergar. More Devils and Demons have obviously been advertised, but I'd not going to speculate since I'm a D&D newb compared to most around here.



I'm pretty certain the days of 200+ page Lore manuals on a specific subject are gone due to changes in D&D marketing and design philosophies.
Mearls explicityly said that even though elves in darksun are extremely different from faerun, tome of foes does "not really get into that" in the video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r93sKXCvXQ4) today. Eberron is almost certainly not going to be mentioned much if at all in a book mostly about the great wheel cosmology & honestly that is fine... but it also talks about the races & if it does not admit the fact that certain settings are very different with at least a sentence or two of summary it abandos XGtE'd generally setting neutral format as a fluke by turning it into a book I (as a gm not running a game in "say... faerun") not only need to ban as a waste significant amounts of time unteaching my players disruptive faerun stuff that was presented as absolute & always applicable.


Honestly, what I’m really hoping for is Inevitables. I much preferred them to the (rather silly, IMHO) Modrons. And this book, if nowhere else, is the place to put them in.
I hope they at least have a stat block as well. There have ben a few times where I wanted a marut or Kolyrut(sp?) but did not want to homebrew one together.

Mordenkainen is/was an Archmage from Greyhawk. Not Forgotten Realms.

(And Gary Gygax's own player character no less!)
While certainly true the fact that both worlds are practically the same in everything but people change their name & maybe wear a very slightly different hat when presented on the other side makes the distinction pretty meaningless. both of those settings have things that conflict with other settings & wotc in 5e shows a tradition of presenting faerun as absolute always applicable to every setting. It would be very difficult to import something from greyhawk to faerun that could dusrupt the rotting midden heap of tolkien's rancid flesh like some of the absolutes presented can disrupt those other settings.


I'm going to be the grouch here and say the only difference between FR's planes and Greyhawk's are the "gods" living there. This [I]is a step away from FR, but it's the nervous shuffle of a teenage boy towards the totally-out-of-his-league-but-awesome girl he wants to (and should) ask to prom.


You're the only person who thinks there's "Eberron mafia". Calm down.

I actually like this idea, but I'm still iffy on how usable most of this material will be outside of FR and Planescape. Greyhawk, as has been said, is almost interchangeable with FR. But putting Mordenkainen's name on this book gives me hope that we'll see other settings later this year, in those other two books. One will probably be a classic Greyhawk adventure updated and tuned, of course, but the rumours of Keith Baker working with WotC may bear fruit after all.
in mearl's ama he said this[url] "Hoping to get something out by mid-year, using Eberron as more of an inspiration for the next draft. Tested well, so more refinement than wholesale reinvention." in regards to a question about artificer


Hey, look, FR Mafia!

The problem is not these all being setting books for FR. The problem is that FR is painted over everything. In 3.5, Greyhawk was bland enough in the core books to get out of the way. I didn't have a list of Greyhawk nationalities to choose from if I wanted to be a human. I didn't have FR lore called out in the Monster Manual. And the adventures, if you go back and read them, were set in "Generical Land", not "this is in Forgotten Realms, here, join a faction from the setting."

I don't have a problem with Forgotten Realms. What I do have is a severe irritation that comes from having to cut Forgotten Realms lore from my players' expectations when we're playing anything else. Gnolls are not (all) slavering demon-possessed locusts in every setting. Goblins and orcs aren't Evil-by-default bags of XP. The books until now could have had a lot less setting-specific material painted on them. I'd be saying that if it was Eberron as the paint. I'd be saying that if Dragonlance was the paint. Forgotten Realms just got painted on a little too thick, and I want to come up for air now.


And CoS doesn't count for much, when it begins, ends, and involves the Forgotten Realms.

And there are three settings that use the Great Wheel; Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, and Planescape.

This completely and absolutely nails the problem with faerun over everything in 5e so far.


Because that kind of thinking seems seems back to front. So long as the book and its content is not related to any specific setting, the name of the title containing a specific character is irrelevant. As well as totally unimportant.


... are you serious? CoS has literally a page and a half of an optional adventure hook that you can use to get the characters into Ravenloft if they start off in the FR. If that’s too much FR for you, that’s okay. But to suggest it’s enough to make the book “not count” as a non-FR adventure is absurd.

If anything CoS has more Greyhawk in it than it does FR because Mordenkainen is an NPC that the characters can meet and potentially ally with.
You might have a point! perhaps you can point me to the adventure hook for starting in barrovia?... oh wait... you can't.... it is relevant and CoS does not count for much because there is no page space devoted to starting or ending anywhere except faerun as if the very idea were unthinkable



Protip - your players are the problem if they're unable to disassociate metagame knowledge from in game knowledge. Alternatively, it is you as a DM who has the problem if you are expecting players to jump out of the pool they are comfortable and happy with, and they don't want to.

How dare they do something like read the book something they are playing is printed in.... but you know what?... bleep that!


[url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r93sKXCvXQ4"]8:10 (https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/7kuzsa/ama_mike_mearls_dd_creative_director/drhjl0g/) for somebody new to d&d entirely. This is one of the first books where you can just hand this to them and be like this is the d&d multiverse -> Yea... and that's one of the things that we wanted was to create something where a new player or dungeon master could read cghapter on dwarves if the are playing a dwarf and really understand what it means to be a dwarf in dungeons & dragons. Now, the background definitions we give don't determine all dwarves, you know there are always exceptions. we wanted to give a good starting point to really let you get inside their pasychology. How do dwarves think? How do they see the world. Applying that to elves, halflings, gnomes, gith, demons & devils too, bloodwar gets similar .... [snip long demon stuff] ... You dont get into the deities? Not so much here. we do get into some of them though. for instance morden for the dwarves, koralon the elves rather than say here are the gods abilities & powers we focus a lot more on the cultural & mythic influence that these figures have since they tower over the folk they created & have an enormous direct influence over them. They really shape their culture, their attitudes, their viewpoints. so we really want to illuminate what that would mean for paying a dwarf or using dwarves in your campaign.

For everything write, this is more sort of for a sort of typical world. We know for instance in darksun, elves are incredibly different tham in say.. faerun we also have some ideas on why that ism but we don't really touch on that so much

don't you dare tell me & others annoyed by having to waste inordinate amounts of time strippiing out faerun to step up our game as a gm when wotc is billing this kind of stuff as something a player should read to understand $topic. it's too early to say if tome of foes actually admits settings like darksun & eberron are extremely different from faerun in relevant sections or if those sections will present faerun/nearly entirely faerun compatible greyhawk stuffas the absolute & always relevant truth while excluding mention of anything elseor not. Until we have it in our hands, people who are skeptical have every reason to be skeptical

[Vaz]

Protip - your players are the problem if they're unable to disassociate metagame knowledge from in game knowledge. Alternatively, it is you as a DM who has the problem if you are expecting players to jump out of the pool they are comfortable and happy with, and they don't want to.

[Tetrasodium]

I'm annoyed by the setting-specific book names.

If I'm not currently playing a game set in Greyhawk, why must Mordenkeinen be relevant to my game?

I guess it's slightly better than making everything be about FR, which is generally even less relevant to my games than Greyhawk, but I dislike this 5e tradition.


That's one thing the 3.x SRD got right -- they removed the setting-specific flavor from items and even the spell names, for use in settings that didn't include Otiluke or Ehlonna or Heward.

IMHO what Gygax did was excellent, in terms of tying his setting's lore to the details of what the players interacted with -- the idea that you're a Wizard and you're building on the past successes of other Wizards was great -- but those lore details need to be tied to each setting in different ways.

Smearing any particular setting's lore over all the core rules of the game is a mistake.
The name is fine because it means they can extend that copyright/trade,ark/whatever without dumping too much of that setting.... however there damned well better be some sorcerer kings, Siberyis marked heirs, nations of khorvaire, etc rather than more names from faerun & greyhawk once they start getting to those settings. I might strangle someone after forcing the book into their rear (sideways!) if I see things like Eliminster's guide to Athas, Drizzt's guide to Xen'driik, or something along those lines.


Honestly, I was fine with their established characterizations. Halflings travel around in caravans and try to avoid notice. Yeah, some groups settle down, but I always got the impression that since, like, 3e, they were largely nomadic. I'll admit, they still have some similarities to Hobbits, but if you're going to change them completely, you might as well change the name. Like if you made Orcs nature spirits or something instead of brutish, fanatical humanoids, why call them Orcs? I feel like having a race that doesn't have a personal conflict with another is actually a good thing, too. It'd be kinda dull if almost everyone who wasn't a human had a blood-sworn enemy.

I always felt gnomes had a fairly strong identity, though. They don't usually get into conflict because they aren't particularly expansionist and tend to hide their dwellings. They also tend to get along with anything that treats them well and doesn't end in "-obold". They're inventive, which can mean different things depending on setting, but means they tend toward arts or sciences. They even have a racial preference toward a particular type of magic, which I don't think any of the other standard races do. I suppose if this focuses on their war against kobolds and expands that, it could be good. I like the idea that there are gnomish armies, but they're fighting a literal underground guerrilla war against the little lizards, so you never see them, just the bright surface-dwelling communities.

Nahhh..... Halflings come in three types:
The carnivorous blood drinking ones (http://dfds.wikia.com/wiki/Halflings)
The badass dinosaur riding barbarian tribes[/i] that sometimes settle down to print money by [url="http://eberron.wikia.com/wiki/House_Jorasco"]healing people (http://eberron.wikia.com/wiki/Halfling) & such, or run extremely nice hotels (http://eberron.wikia.com/wiki/House_Ghallanda).
The legally distinct hobbits you described.

[Envyus]

I don't have a problem with Forgotten Realms. What I do have is a severe irritation that comes from having to cut Forgotten Realms lore from my players' expectations when we're playing anything else. Gnolls are not (all) slavering demon-possessed locusts in every setting. Goblins and orcs aren't Evil-by-default bags of XP. The books until now could have had a lot less setting-specific material painted on them. I'd be saying that if it was Eberron as the paint. I'd be saying that if Dragonlance was the paint. Forgotten Realms just got painted on a little too thick, and I want to come up for air now.



This completely and absolutely nails the problem with faerun over everything in 5e so far.


This is a dumb complaint as this has nothing to do with Faerun. This is generic D&D. Faerun is just a setting that uses most Generic D&D stuff.

Gnolls are by default slavering Demonic locusts and Orcs are savage brutes by default in D&D. Settings that change that are the exception. Books and such should use their generic D&D portrayal. Any changes are up to the DM or setting, if they want to lean away from the default.

I also really dislike the claims that we should remove stuff like names and history of D&D from the core. D&D has basic assumptions, and I would enjoy it a lot less if stuff like that was removed. It's pretty much just saying only my personal setting matters, screw people who like D&D lore and such.

Assuming a particular setting in the core is not a mistake as it's nice to have a core and a backdrop to build upon and change rather then just a toolbox.

[War_lord]

I'm going to let you in on a little secret that many people outside of Forgotten Realms fans probably haven't realised but...

Very little of the current material is actually especially strongly tied to the Forgotten Realms itself. In some cases it's actively using elements of other settings that are newly added and introduced to the Realms but don't really have any major business being there, such as the highly Greyhawk-specific elements in Princes of the Apocalypse, Tales from the Yawning Portal, and Tomb of Annihilation. Not to mention that Curse of Strahd pretty explicitly doesn't even take place in the Realms to begin with.

Volo's Guide to Monsters and Xanathar's Guide to Everything at most use the Forgotten Realms as a framing device, and in some cases contradict earlier Forgotten Realms material when it comes to certain races and monsters. Or are entirely whole-cloth additions that were not originally in the Forgotten Realms. In fact, let's go through some of them.

Aasimar? A Planescape race that can appear in basically any campaign setting that features celestial creatures and planar travel. They do not explicitly appear in the Forgotten Realms prior to the campaign setting book for D&D 3.0E, and even there are explicitly called out as extremely rare. Prior to that the Realms had been a major campaign setting for around fourteen years.

Firbolgs? An old monster race that does appear in the Forgotten Realms, because it precedes most of the published Realms by way of turning up in one of the early monster books, as far back as 1983's Monster Manual II for AD&D 1E. The Forgotten Realms wouldn't be in wide publication until 1987, so... yeah. Also it should be noted that the firbolg in D&D 5E in no way resembles the earlier giants, and at most shares a name and a slight nature focus in common.

Goliaths? Those are a D&D 3E generic race that was introduced in Races of Stone and was not even mentioned as having a Forgotten Realms presence whatsoever until an entire edition later.

Kenku? Are barely described in any Forgotten Realms specific sources, and at most were given a brief paragraph describing their potential appearances in the Forgotten Realms in the Monster Manual III for D&D 3.5E, and once again barely resemble their previous incarnations.

Lizardfolk? Those have been in Dungeons & Dragons since Supplement I: Greyhawk under the name 'lizard men', and thus can be called a core monster race.

Tabaxi? Those are similarly something that's been in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons since the early days, first appearing in the Fiend Folio released in 1981.

Tritons? Those were introduced in the same supplement as the lizardfolk above and can similarly be called a core monster race.

Outside of that, the book is literally just generic monster information that's been circling around since the early ecologies in Dragon Magazine, and a bestiary of common old-edition monsters that are pretty popular but weren't included in the Monster Manual. Are you going to try and tell me that none of this material can be used in Dragonlance or Eberron? How utterly divorced from the ideas of Dungeons & Dragons do you think those settings are?

If anything, I'd have trouble fitting some of this in with the Forgotten Realms. It's obviously the case that firbolgs and goliaths as presented are entirely new and don't really fit into established Realmslore without a bit of shoehorning. The same is of course true of core races such as the Dragonborn, since those don't turn up prior to D&D 4E.


Xanathar's Guide to Everything basically has a Forgotten Realms character as a framing device at most, and he's portrayed very differently to how he is in his earlier appearances where he was a menacing and calculating mastermind, instead being more of a comedic figure.

Everything else? It's a bunch of subclasses, some random background generation, some variant rules, and a list of new spells, with the appendices including stuff like character names.

None of the subclasses or spells link to any Forgotten Realms specific concepts, and if a Forgotten Realms character being used as some minor flavour almost entirely divorced from their original context is too much of a hurdle for you, I seriously don't know what to say to that.

I'm just going to quote this, because it exposes Tetra's nonsense way better then anything else I or anyone else could say. We get it, you only like Eberron, and the existence of settings that aren't Eberron is deeply offensive to you. I'd tell you to give it a rest but I suppose the four month span was the best we could hope for. As Scots Dragon's dissection shows, complaining about "Forgotten Realms" is actually a sleezy cover for complaining about D&D, which relies on people's ignorance of the actual FR setting, which is not the same thing as the generic lore presented in the "guide" series.

[Typhon]

Setting specifics and use of the great wheel or not, covering higher level play and planes outside of the prime sounds cool. I agree with the previous sentiment of limiting player options in book and mostly expanding more DM options and tools.

New and varied NPCs of note across the planes, higher level hooks and story paths, ideas for rewards and punishment beyond standard magic items and curses.

I would like a one to two page write up on different planar settings, effects of planar travel, and other cool oddities. Nothing heavy handed, just basic fluff and maybe a chart that lists differences in an easily referential way afterwards.

But, that is what I am hoping for.

[Tetrasodium]

Setting specifics and use of the great wheel or not, covering higher level play and planes outside of the prime sounds cool. I agree with the previous sentiment of limiting player options in book and mostly expanding more DM options and tools.

New and varied NPCs of note across the planes, higher level hooks and story paths, ideas for rewards and punishment beyond standard magic items and curses.

I would like a one to two page write up on different planar settings, effects of planar travel, and other cool oddities. Nothing heavy handed, just basic fluff and maybe a chart that lists differences in an easily referential way afterwards.

But, that is what I am hoping for.


agreed. there's nothing wrong with oresenting it & it can be useful... but I'm tired of having discussions where all I can do is sigh & shake my head while saying things along the lines of "dude, I'm not even sure where to begin on how wrong that whole thing is because not only do those creatures not exist here in eberron/dark sun, neither do the planes they supposedly rule & your whole position depends on importing them wholesale into a setting that would be extremely disrupted by it" only to hear stuff along the lines of "wow, really? I had no idea there were other systems that even existed. what does darksun/eberron use instead?" -> "sure, emme learn you a whole flipping book in the next 5 minute break to get drinks & stuff because wotc doesn't like to even mention it in the books that should at least have a sidebar or something".

[Tetrasodium]

This is a dumb complaint as this has nothing to do with Faerun. This is generic D&D. Faerun is just a setting that uses most Generic D&D stuff.

Gnolls are by default slavering Demonic locusts and Orcs are savage brutes by default in D&D. Settings that change that are the exception. Books and such should use their generic D&D portrayal. Any changes are up to the DM or setting, if they want to lean away from the default.

I also really dislike the claims that we should remove stuff like names and history of D&D from the core. D&D has basic assumptions, and I would enjoy it a lot less if stuff like that was removed. It's pretty much just saying only my personal setting matters, screw people who like D&D lore and such.

Assuming a particular setting in the core is not a mistake as it's nice to have a core and a backdrop to build upon and change rather then just a toolbox.


the problem is not that those settings are exceptions. The problem is that by treating those exceptions like the Voldermort's name in harry potter it presents the very strong appearance that the "default" faerun way is always applicable & always relevant because contradictions to faerun are not printed.

[Vaz]

agreed. there's nothing wrong with oresenting it & it can be useful... but I'm tired of having discussions where all I can do is sigh & shake my head while saying things along the lines of "dude, I'm not even sure where to begin on how wrong that whole thing is because not only do those creatures not exist here in eberron/dark sun, neither do the planes they supposedly rule & your whole position depends on importing them wholesale into a setting that would be extremely disrupted by it" only to hear stuff along the lines of "wow, really? I had no idea there were other systems that even existed. what does darksun/eberron use instead?" -> "sure, emme learn you a whole flipping book in the next 5 minute break to get drinks & stuff because wotc doesn't like to even mention it in the books that should at least have a sidebar or something".

We have this wonderful thing called Whatsapp, where we talk things out with players over cool ideas they have and want to plan things out, and if they have questions over stuff, you can yay or nay it, and "yes, but"

[War_lord]

agreed. there's nothing wrong with oresenting it & it can be useful... but I'm tired of having discussions where all I can do is sigh & shake my head while saying things along the lines of "dude, I'm not even sure where to begin on how wrong that whole thing is because not only do those creatures not exist here in eberron/dark sun, neither do the planes they supposedly rule & your whole position depends on importing them wholesale into a setting that would be extremely disrupted by it" only to hear stuff along the lines of "wow, really? I had no idea there were other systems that even existed. what does darksun/eberron use instead?" -> "sure, emme learn you a whole flipping book in the next 5 minute break to get drinks & stuff because wotc doesn't like to even mention it in the books that should at least have a sidebar or something".

And that's WoTC fault how? Sounds like you're just a bad DM. If you're going to play in a highly specific setting that is completely different to mainline D&D in almost every way, it's YOUR responsibility to inform them of that, it's YOUR responsibility to give them the information they need to play in that world. If you're needing to break the session to infodump them about some obscure point of Eberron lore, that's a failure on the part of you, the DM.


the problem is not that those settings are exceptions. The problem is that by treating those exceptions like the Voldermort's name in harry potter it presents the very strong appearance that the "default" faerun way is always applicable & always relevant because contradictions to faerun are not printed.

Faerun is not the default, this has been explained in this very thread.

[Naanomi]

Generic western fantasy (with mostly setting neutral historical DnDisms added) is the default, of which Faerun (and Mystara, Greyhawk, Dragonlance, most of Birthright, etc) is an example

[Tetrasodium]

We have this wonderful thing called Whatsapp, where we talk things out with players over cool ideas they have and want to plan things out, and if they have questions over stuff, you can yay or nay it, and "yes, but"

stop right there. go back and look at how this particular tangent started People grumbled displeasure at having to unteach faerun's always applicable presentation from players, to which you said

Protip - your players are the problem if they're unable to disassociate metagame knowledge from in game knowledge. Alternatively, it is you as a DM who has the problem if you are expecting players to jump out of the pool they are comfortable and happy with, and they don't want to.


so apparently... you believe the players are the to blame for wotc treating anything in conflict with faerun as the hogwarts staff treat Voldermort's name (you know, the thing originally being complained about) & the solution is to tell those gm's tired of needing to untrain faerun is always accurate to just find spend more time & find new ways of untraining faerun is always accurate(again, that was the original complaint).... The player cannot be blamed because Wotc refuses to even mention that those differences simply exist in a setting like darksun or eberron.

What color is the sky in your world?

[War_lord]

Generic western fantasy (with mostly setting neutral historical DnDisms added) is the default, of which Faerun (and Mystara, Greyhawk, Dragonlance, most of Birthright, etc) is an example

Right, but there's enough subtle differences between those settings and between those settings and say, Monster Manual fluff, that I don't think it's right to say Faerun is the default.

[Naanomi]

Right, but there's enough subtle differences between those settings and between those settings and say, Monster Manual fluff, that I don't think it's right to say Faerun is the default.
Faerun is the default in a very limited way in that it is the primary cited example... like 3e had ‘points of light’ and 4e had ‘nentir vale’... but the monster manual fluff would (with perhaps a few specific exceptions) fit any of those ‘generic western fantasy settings’ that make up most DnD settings

[War_lord]

stop right there. go back and look at how this particular tangent started People grumbled displeasure at having to unteach faerun's always applicable presentation from players, to which you said

The only people complaining are a small minority of Eberron players who have a hate on for anything that isn't Eberron.


so apparently... you believe the players are the to blame for wotc treating anything in conflict with faerun as the hogwarts staff treat Voldermort's name (you know, the thing originally being complained about)

Is that utterly tortured reference an attempt at a joke? Anyway, as we've covered in this thread, THE MM CONTRADICTS FR ON SEVERAL POINTS.


& the solution is to tell those gm's tired of needing to untrain faerun is always accurate to just find spend more time & find new ways of untraining faerun is always accurate(again, that was the original complaint)....

If you're going to run a highly specific setting that departs from mainline D&D in most ways, it's absolutely on you to make sure players have bought in to that and understand the differences. That's part of being a DM.


The player cannot be blamed because Wotc refuses to even mention that those differences simply exist in a setting like darksun or eberron.

It's on the DM to explain differences, ideally at session zero, not the middle of session three. If you run Eberron or Darksun, it's on you to let your players know how that's different to the style of game they're used to.


Faerun is the default in a very limited way in that it is the primary cited example... like 3e had ‘points of light’ and 4e had ‘nentir vale’... but the monster manual fluff would (with perhaps a few specific exceptions) fit any of those ‘generic western fantasy settings’ that make up most DnD settings

Really? I thought Points of Light and Nentir Vale are just the nickname and offical name of the 4e setting. I thought 3.0 and 3.5 were technically set in a (deliberately bland version of) Greyhawk, with FR and Eberron emerging as the actually played settings?

[Unoriginal]

I wonder if they're going to stat some of the minor divine figures mentioned in the other books. Like the Troglodytes' lizard-toad demon-god, or the Xvarts' creator.

[Vaz]

stop right there. go back and look at how this particular tangent started People grumbled displeasure at having to unteach faerun's always applicable presentation from players, to which you said



so apparently... you believe the players are the to blame for wotc treating anything in conflict with faerun as the hogwarts staff treat Voldermort's name (you know, the thing originally being complained about) & the solution is to tell those gm's tired of needing to untrain faerun is always accurate to just find spend more time & find new ways of untraining faerun is always accurate(again, that was the original complaint).... The player cannot be blamed because Wotc refuses to even mention that those differences simply exist in a setting like darksun or eberron.

What color is the sky in your world?

Yes, protip. Do a better job of describing the setting as the person involved as the person creating the setting for the players, or get your players to learn what you have available for them. If only we were connected to this big worldwide internet thing where we could quickly type into it what we wanted to look for and find out information on it.

So, either;
- play within the Forgotten Realms to keep things comfortable to players
- play within a setting that's not yet been published by WotC, but you'll need to use 3rd party or previous edition content
- play within a homebrew setting and explain to the players through exposition or out of character discussion

Be tired of the Forgotten Realms all you want, but they're not going to start talking about you can reskin a Yugoloth into an Oni from the Lying Darkness from Rokugan.

[War_lord]

- play within a homebrew setting and explain to the players through exposition or out of character discussion

Based on my interactions with Tetra I suspect that A. They never run anything but Eberron and B. They have no understanding of how to convey world details and exposition surreptitiously, instead halting the entire game to give a literal lecture on some obscure point of House Cannith's internal bickering. They consider this very important, meanwhile the players are bored, confused and frustrated.

Just a hunch.

[Kane0]

I can understand the Eberron fans who just want some acknowledgement. It's a neat setting, and it has been touched on in UA, they just want to see it become official. SCAG is a thing after all, an Eberron equivalent isn't entirely out of the question.

No need for us to fight over preferences, eh?

[Regitnui]

Based on my interactions with Tetra I suspect that A. They never run anything but Eberron and B. They have no understanding of how to convey world details and exposition surreptitiously, instead halting the entire game to give a literal lecture on some obscure point of House Cannith's internal bickering. They consider this very important, meanwhile the players are bored, confused and frustrated.

Just a hunch.

"The goblin grins at you over its shabby stall, pointing at various pieces of junk it strongly hints you should buy before it helps you."
"I kill the goblin!"
"Why?"
"It's a goblin." (Said as if it explains everything)
"The goblin is a shopkeeper, he's willing to help, he just wants you to buy something first. Would you kill him if he were human?"
"But he's a goblin."
"Goblins are considered people in this setting. Poor people, second-class citizens, but you don't go around trying to kill poor people, do you?"
"No...?"

That above conversation I've had hundreds of times, because WotC's generic Western Fantasy (of which FR is a version) encourages players to kill things that aren't PHB races on sight. Heaven forbid the goblin help you get to your actual quest target. And that's explained to my Lawful Good players!

You get Eberron infodumped at you because you intentionally misunderstand it. Players are usually more receptive, because I give them the short version when they ask a question. They ask "can i play a drow?" I answer "sure. But tell me how you came to this continent when all your people live to the south." And they usually come up with good answers for being the equivalent of an Arab in 1300s England.


I can understand the Eberron fans who just want some acknowledgement. It's a neat setting, and it has been touched on in UA, they just want to see it become official. SCAG is a thing after all, an Eberron equivalent isn't entirely out of the question.

No need for us to fight over preferences, eh?

I'll admit there have been fights over this before. Certain members of this forum, myself included, get rather passionate on the subject. But this is really all I want. Give me a 30-page, pdf-only book with the official versions of the Eberron UA races, a map of Khorvaire, enough setting background that I can give it to players and fans of other settings, and unlock it for DMs Guild so we can share our homebrew without resorting to back alleys and shadowy car parks, and we will be happy. We don't ask for much. Just some continuation/an update on that first, seemingly forgotten UA so many years ago.

[Naanomi]

I'll admit there have been fights over this before. Certain members of this forum, myself included, get rather passionate on the subject.
When I see people get their dander up over the subject, I’m always tempted to chime in with something like ‘who cares if goblins are inherently evil or not, why are we even talking about a race that hasn’t existed on Athas for several ages at least!?!’; but then realize it probably wouldn’t be helpful

[Regitnui]

When I see people get their dander up over the subject, I’m always tempted to chime in with something like ‘who cares if goblins are inherently evil or not, why are we even talking about a race that hasn’t existed on Athas for several ages at least!?!’; but then realize it probably wouldn’t be helpful

It would be funny. I'd actually like to see that; three "fans" talk about the differences between the Big Three in-character, and then a Planescape or Spelljammer bloke shows up to the debate.

[Tetrasodium]

When I see people get their dander up over the subject, I’m always tempted to chime in with something like ‘who cares if goblins are inherently evil or not, why are we even talking about a race that hasn’t existed on Athas for several ages at least!?!’; but then realize it probably wouldn’t be helpful

It's relevant for the same reason I so often mention darksun. Prior to some of these types of debates my experience with darksun was reading the back cover of the dark sun book in a booksamillion back in the 90's & saying "ugh, sounds harsh" before setting it down. through them I actually learned a lot about darksun & its fairly interesting world where water is pretty much more of a currency than gold. Oddly enough, they made me more likely to buy a darksun book when wotc gets around to it in 5e. athas faces a lot of the same kinds f problems that eberron does where certain low level thing as have a different baseline that throws the whole "generic western fantasy (read:tolkein's warmed over corpse twitching from decades of continued ocular cavity thrusting)". People standing up to say "hey wait wait wait darksun does it like x"



"The goblin grins at you over its shabby stall, pointing at various pieces of junk it strongly hints you should buy before it helps you."
"I kill the goblin!"
"Why?"
"It's a goblin." (Said as if it explains everything)
"The goblin is a shopkeeper, he's willing to help, he just wants you to buy something first. Would you kill him if he were human?"
"But he's a goblin."
"Goblins are considered people in this setting. Poor people, second-class citizens, but you don't go around trying to kill poor people, do you?"
"No...?"

That above conversation I've had hundreds of times, because WotC's generic Western Fantasy (of which FR is a version) encourages players to kill things that aren't PHB races on sight. Heaven forbid the goblin help you get to your actual quest target. And that's explained to my Lawful Good players!

You get Eberron infodumped at you because you intentionally misunderstand it. Players are usually more receptive, because I give them the short version when they ask a question. They ask "can i play a drow?" I answer "sure. But tell me how you came to this continent when all your people live to the south." And they usually come up with good answers for being the equivalent of an Arab in 1300s England.



I'll admit there have been fights over this before. Certain members of this forum, myself included, get rather passionate on the subject. But this is really all I want. Give me a 30-page, pdf-only book with the official versions of the Eberron UA races, a map of Khorvaire, enough setting background that I can give it to players and fans of other settings, and unlock it for DMs Guild so we can share our homebrew without resorting to back alleys and shadowy car parks, and we will be happy. We don't ask for much. Just some continuation/an update on that first, seemingly forgotten UA so many years ago.


agreed on the goblin example, there is a certain level of complete setting incompatibility where you can't just roll with it & because so much of faerun's assume always applicable only this will be presented stuff falls into that particular basin it continually & regularly causes a screeching halt. so much so that I think all of my players in one game have history & in my other game more than half of them have history(one of them an effing barbarian with 8 int!) because they don't know any of the baselines & "here is a list of like 15 eberron books, they all cover different stuff & you will probably need to read them all because I can't really give you a good intro to eberron for faerun natives type book".


You cut the example drow conversation short though...


"can i play a drow?"-> "sure. But tell me how you came to this continent when all your people live to the south."
"$stuff the underdark $stuff" ->There is actually no underdark, I mean there is khyber but that's pretty different & where the demon overlords/daelkyr are imprisoned/bound
"ok I left my people to spread lolth's".... -> lolth doesn't exist & the drow actually worship a few different things... unfortunately phb295 does not mention any of those & um.. no 5e book does as far as I know. Basically you have the the (sulatar) I think who worsghip fire... The Umbragen, who revere the power of the darkness/shadows.... and the rest who worship vulkoor along with a bunch of other animalistic totems.
cool who is Vulkoor? -> He's kind of a paternal hunter figure thattakes care of his people & the drow worship him by doping the same. He's a scorpion/man thing
Great, there was some treacherous plotting from one of the drow nobles who betrayed my character & set them up to take the fall for $horrible thing so I ran noth. -> ok but umm... you heard the part where he is a hunter who cares for his people & they worship him by doing the same
oh... so.. what about drizzt dud he convert all the drow in xen;driik? -> here is a spoon... stab me in the bleeping brain... The drow were fey creatures known as eldarin who were captured, tainted with mortality, & forced into slavery by the giants of xen'driik umm... maybe 100-200 thousand years ago? After the giant empire fell, the drow & elf slaves escaped some of the destruction & continued on some of their beliefs.
oh... so the drow rebelled & killed the giants? -> no there was a war between the giants & invaders (quori) from the plane of dreams (dal quor). The giants were losing until they sacrificed a ton of their slaves to destroy a moon & throw dal quor into an orbit where it can't really reach here anymore.
so the remaining elves rose up or broke free on their own in the chaos? -> no... the dragons were so horrified by what the giants did with magic that they destroyed the empire, cursed the giants as a race, & cursed the entire continent of xen'driik
which dragons... good ones or bad ones?... -> all of them
wow are dragons like a big concern I should worry about if I'm a necromancer? -> no there are other things like the arenal elves or anyone who fought against karrnath during the last war. the dragons were pissed because it put the pro[hecy in danger of bad outcomes & they had tought their own magic to the giants
The last war with the giants?.. -> no that was more like an extermination
ok.. so if I'm a dragonborn instead, can I worship tiamat or bahamut like it mentions on phb34 -> *facepalm* does not exist here. The main faiths are the church of the silver flame (there is also an orcish version called kalak shash & wayy older), the sovereign host, the dark six, & the blood of vol. really the others are super crazy niche or going to take too long to get you a baseline understanding of where that comes from. But if you are willing to look it up & do the research we can talk
ok cool. Dol Arrah looks like Pelor can I be a paladin of pelor? - > you mean dol arrah?
oops yea -> well yea, but she's more diplomatic & less detect evil smite evil. Pelor is light sun strength & healing. Dol Arrah is Glory, Good, Law, Sun, and War but most likely you would worship the entire pantheon like it mentions on xge18... unfortunately they didn't bother to mention that kinda stuff in the phb where they talk about religions & to be honest the eberron section of phb293 is pretty misleading to the point that pelor might as well be named as the patron deity of serial killers given the history of detect evil>smite evil. Anyways, I'm really tired & I;m not against letting you play a paladin of Dol Arrah.. but why don't you read through some stuff about her & the other sovereigns & get back to me


I'm actually too tired to continue, but in my experience it tends to eventually work it's way around to things like "I'm going to be a human fighter named john doe"

[Ronnocius]

"The goblin grins at you over its shabby stall, pointing at various pieces of junk it strongly hints you should buy before it helps you."
"I kill the goblin!"
"Why?"
"It's a goblin." (Said as if it explains everything)
"The goblin is a shopkeeper, he's willing to help, he just wants you to buy something first. Would you kill him if he were human?"
"But he's a goblin."
"Goblins are considered people in this setting. Poor people, second-class citizens, but you don't go around trying to kill poor people, do you?"
"No...?"

That above conversation I've had hundreds of times, because WotC's generic Western Fantasy (of which FR is a version) encourages players to kill things that aren't PHB races on sight. Heaven forbid the goblin help you get to your actual quest target. And that's explained to my Lawful Good players!

You get Eberron infodumped at you because you intentionally misunderstand it. Players are usually more receptive, because I give them the short version when they ask a question. They ask "can i play a drow?" I answer "sure. But tell me how you came to this continent when all your people live to the south." And they usually come up with good answers for being the equivalent of an Arab in 1300s England.



I'll admit there have been fights over this before. Certain members of this forum, myself included, get rather passionate on the subject. But this is really all I want. Give me a 30-page, pdf-only book with the official versions of the Eberron UA races, a map of Khorvaire, enough setting background that I can give it to players and fans of other settings, and unlock it for DMs Guild so we can share our homebrew without resorting to back alleys and shadowy car parks, and we will be happy. We don't ask for much. Just some continuation/an update on that first, seemingly forgotten UA so many years ago.

If your players are killing unarmed goblin shopkeepers who are presumably in the middle of a settlement, that is more of a player problem rather than anything else. In my opinion, making all races non-evil just takes away some of the unique identity of the race. If orcs are all peace-loving benevolent farmers, or even if they are a misunderstood warrior race, what makes them different from humans or lizardfolk? Minor physical differences aren't enough.

I don't like Always Chaotic Evil races. No race in my game is always evil. However, most of the time their culture is evil and they are born and raised to be evil (or in cases such as gnolls they are innately evil). My players are deep in enemy orc territory, and they don't always outright slay any orcs they meet. Some orcs stopped them at a checkpoint and they tried to negotiate with them. In the end their bribe wasn't sufficient so they decided to give them steel instead of silver. I've run cowardly gnolls that just want to survive rather than kill anything, I've run orc deserters fleeing their tribe, I've run hobgoblin merchants, the whole nine yards.

Basically the point I'm trying to make is: most of the time the members of monstrous races your players encounter are meant to be fought and killed. If they aren't, it should A) be made obvious, or B) be explained in session 0 or by an NPC beforehand that not all members of X race are X alignment, etc. The example you used is pretty ridiculous, obviously the players are murder hobos if they kill (presumably unarmed) goblins who are not actively fighting them.

EDIT: I agree that more attention should be given to settings other than Forgotten Realms, in fact I despise Forgotten Realms (all of the place names are stupid for one. Waterdeep? The name makes no sense (at least not to me, but I haven't read many novels/don't know much about the lore, and is also pretty uninspired and lame). Still, in the Monster Manual they are going to call the monsters out on how they are expected to be, not some rare benign peace-loving variant.

[Regitnui]

agreed on the goblin example, there is a certain level of complete setting incompatibility where you can't just roll with it

I cut most of those questions short by explaining what's necessary. In the case of the drow, I say "your people live on the continent to the south, in jungle tribes. There are two other options, or do you like being Tarzan or Pocahontas?" "There's the firebinder drow who think the gnomes stole their magic techniques, or the umbragen who are being killed by aberrations in a shadow war." "Drizzt, Lolth and all that doesn't exist."

I am, however, blessed with a couple of very flexible veterans who adapt quickly to different settings (and like the roleplay aspect of Eberron, if not the whole thing). DMing isn't a single man's game, especially when you're adapting stuff from two editions ago with only the slightest support from the official stuff. Playable orcs and goblinoids were a great help for my players getting that they're not "xp bags" anymore.


. In my opinion, making all races non-evil just takes away some of the unique identity of the race. If orcs are all peace-loving benevolent farmers, or even if they are a misunderstood warrior race, what makes them different from humans or lizardfolk? .

Eberron doesn't make them all non-evil. It just makes them more complex than "kill me for xp". You can, and indeed do, have the kill-on-sight goblinoids. But they're goblinoid supremacist bigots who want to take back the world by force and subterfuge. You have a culture of druidic orcs dedicated to saving the world from aberrations, and a orcish culture of zealot barbarians who kill anything trying to escape the local demonic wasteland. However, there are also aberration-worshipping orcs, and the above two cultures are just as likely to hinder players as help them.

On top of that, the main Good church has Evil cardinals at the top of its hierarchy. The reason goblins aren't meatsacks of xp is because they're not any worse than the humans, elves and gnomes you can meet walking down the street. That doesn't make goblins Good. It makes them just as likely to be Evil as the average human.

[Tetrasodium]

I cut most of those questions short by explaining what's necessary. In the case of the drow, I say "your people live on the continent to the south, in jungle tribes. There are two other options, or do you like being Tarzan or Pocahontas?" "There's the firebinder drow who think the gnomes stole their magic techniques, or the umbragen who are being killed by aberrations in a shadow war." "Drizzt, Lolth and all that doesn't exist."

I am, however, blessed with a couple of very flexible veterans who adapt quickly to different settings (and like the roleplay aspect of Eberron, if not the whole thing). DMing isn't a single man's game, especially when you're adapting stuff from two editions ago with only the slightest support from the official stuff. Playable orcs and goblinoids were a great help for my players getting that they're not "xp bags" anymore.

Yea. some will get it a lot more easily than others. In my experience, the grognards who remember playing ad&d and sometimes early 3.5 tend to fall into this category. newer players who started with 5e are well and truly screwed though & their enthusiasm to dive into the lore presented works against them because they don't have a clue when they are going the wrong way at 90mph & helping to get them rolling can maim their enthusiasm in the process. :( I blew up the drow example because drow mentioned by them almost always seems to be the thing to eventually kill it with that kind of rambling conversation. I got to the point with drow where I just say something like "yes they exist, but assume they don't. I'm already having to homebrew too much stuff into 5e just for khorvaire where we are playing & trying to add one of the other three(?) majot continents with their own stuff going on on top of that would blow the whole thing up. if you want to use the drow stats & just say you are an elf that's probably for the best" - >"cool ok I'm going to be an elf(drow) rogue" -> "great!"

[Scots Dragon]

EDIT: I agree that more attention should be given to settings other than Forgotten Realms, in fact I despise Forgotten Realms (all of the place names are stupid for one. Waterdeep? The name makes no sense (at least not to me, but I haven't read many novels/don't know much about the lore, and is also pretty uninspired and lame).

Waterdeep is based in a harbour which has unusually deep water, thus... Waterdeep. This is how places in the real world tend to get named.

I live in a town called Blackburn, the latter half of which is derived from an old alternative word 'burn' in older dialects of English which meant 'river' or 'creek'. The reason my town is named that is because it is situated around a dark river known as the River Blakewater.

[Rickety Stick]

During dragontalk 2/5/18 Jeremy Crawford confirmed a few things that will be in Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes.

Playable races that he confirmed was:
Eladrin(changed a bit from their ua), Shadar Kai(shadowfell elves), sea elves, Tiefling variants(from october ua), Githyanki and Githzerai.

Monsters he confirmed was:
Archdevils, Gnome constructs (most of them about the size of Dwarves, a mechanical frog mentioned), Cambion variants, Duergar variants, Yugoloths, shadowfell creatures (no specific names, but he did say that some of them are fiends) and elder elementals (Leviathan mentioned to be in).
The Lich queen of the Githyanki was talked about but it wasn't clear if she will be a monster or not.

Most of the cult based stuff from the october ua is confirmed to be in the book.

[Unoriginal]

Mike Mearls also confirmed there will be chapters on Dwarves, Gnomes and Halflings.

[Oramac]

I remember he said one goal was for roughly half the monsters to be at or over CR10 as well.

[BLC1975]

I think the majority of new people coming to D&D 5E don't have any idea what the other settings from previous incarnations are all about, I read this thread with interest and didn't understand most of what was being discussed in relation to older editions.

For me, and I suspect most of the new players coming into D&D, if they start introducing all this weird stuff which we can't/won't use in our games we just won't buy into it. Looking at the sales of 5E books to date I wonder if newer players outnumber older players with prior experience of the game. From the publisher's point of view making niche content, which won't make sense for so many new players who are used to the Forgotten Realms setting, is surely a bit of a gamble?

[DanyBallon]

Can someone care to explain me what's the problem with the book released not covering the specifics of Eberron or Darksun? D&D always have been a fantasy game close to Tolkien mythology.
When you want to play in a setting that is far from tolkienish fantasy, the specifics should belongs to a setting book. And as much I do not like when someone says that Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms are the same, I must admit that mechanically they are effectively identical, with a very few minor exceptions. So when WotC decided to focus on FR for their 5e default setting, I was at first frustrated, and converted everything to Greyhawk, until the day I realised that my players didn't cared at all about the specifics of the setting, as long as they were adventuring and fighting monsters, it didn't matter that they were visiting Greyhawk city, Waterdeep, or Generic Big City A.

When you want to play in a setting that diverge from the standard, it's up to the DM and the players alike to make the effort to immerse themvelves in the seeting and follow it's code. You can't just blame WotC to sticking to their standard, if your player don't care that in your setting the goblins aren't eveil, but just second-class citizen. It's neither WotC fault if you fail to explain to your players that gnomes don't exist in Darksun, and that halflings are cannibals.

The fact that WotC don't release specific Campaign setting books is a totally different matter though.

[Rogerdodger557]

-snip-

That above conversation I've had hundreds of times, because WotC's generic Western Fantasy (of which FR is a version) encourages players to kill things that aren't PHB races on sight. Heaven forbid the goblin help you get to your actual quest target. And that's explained to my Lawful Good players!



Or maybe it's because in almost every case of western, and some eastern fantasy, goblins are portrayed as monsters that get killed on sight? Perhaps it has to do with the goblin of European folklore, which is described as an evil creature. Have you thought about having that conversation at session zero?

[Naanomi]

How does a player who has never heard of any non-FR setting have detailed knowledge about Drizzt? Most younger players I know are more likely to know about Eberron than know that name at all...

[Unoriginal]

Can someone care to explain me what's the problem with the book released not covering the specifics of Eberron or Darksun?

Essentially "I like those settings, why aren't they being talked about?"


D&D always have been a fantasy game close to Tolkien mythology.

This is not correct, however.

Tolkien had a big influence on fantasy, to be sure, but D&D has always been very different from Tolkien's work, be it in the themes, the nature of the world and beings, the typical adventure, the setup of a party, or even the expected equipment.

The most influence Tolkien had on D&D is on an handful of concepts for the species, which are still very different from the ones in his work (in general), and as a source of inspiration for what could be done in term of world-building.


So when WotC decided to focus on FR for their 5e default setting

They didn't, though.

5e's default setting is just that: a default, generic setting. It's true FR is the backdrop for most of their published adventures, though.

[Vaz]

How does a player who has never heard of any non-FR setting have detailed knowledge about Drizzt? Most younger players I know are more likely to know about Eberron than know that name at all...

A NYT Best-selling author might have something to do with it.

[Naanomi]

A NYT Best-selling author might have something to do with it.
A lot of younger, post-Eberron DnD players reading those these days? Of my table of teens/twenty-somethings, only one would know who he is; and only then because he played Baldur’s Gate on Steam

[Millstone85]

Speaking of Drizzt, do you think that's him at the bottom of the alt cover?

https://www.bleedingcool.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/DnD_Mordenkainen_alt.jpg

[strangebloke]

Speaking of Drizzt, do you think that's him at the bottom of the alt cover?

Looks like his kitty, anyway.

[Unoriginal]

Pretty sure that this kitty is a Displacer Beast. Because some of those tentacles don't belong to the Mind Flayer.

[War_lord]

Drizzt makes sense when one of the conflicts covered is Drow vs Elves.

[Naanomi]

Speaking of Drizzt, do you think that's him at the bottom of the alt cover?

https://www.bleedingcool.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/DnD_Mordenkainen_alt.jpg
Looks like him. He is a reasonable (secondary) poster boy for a book exploring drow VS surface elf wars, even without a specific FR bent

[Zanthy1]

How does a player who has never heard of any non-FR setting have detailed knowledge about Drizzt? Most younger players I know are more likely to know about Eberron than know that name at all...

I work in a middle school, and have recently started an after-school DnD club to teach the students how to play and how to DM, and also run small sessions. All of them know who Drizzt is, because he is essentially a staple DnD trope. I personally have never read any of the books nor have I played any of the older stuff, but I now Drizzt. He is the poster boy of a character who acts differently than anticipated in a fantasy setting.

[strangebloke]

Looks like him. He is a reasonable (secondary) poster boy for a book exploring drow VS surface elf wars, even without a specific FR bent

Ooh, does this mean we can start setting wars again?

As a young twenty-something, the only reason I know about Drizzt is because of Order of the Stick. I know of exactly one non-grognard who's read exactly one of the books.

That said, I'm sure most know about him now... He's in the PHB!!

In any case, I'm seeing a bit more underdark than I expected at the bottom of the alt-cover.

[strangebloke]

I remember he said one goal was for roughly half the monsters to be at or over CR10 as well.

This is very good news, since Volo's was focused on lower-level threats like goblins and bugbears.

...I mean, a bugbear army can technically still be a threat to a 13th level party, but not for very long, unless the bugbears have 13th level casters of their own.

[Tetrasodium]

Can someone care to explain me what's the problem with the book released not covering the specifics of Eberron or Darksun? D&D always have been a fantasy game close to Tolkien mythology.
When you want to play in a setting that is far from tolkienish fantasy, the specifics should belongs to a setting book. And as much I do not like when someone says that Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms are the same, I must admit that mechanically they are effectively identical, with a very few minor exceptions. So when WotC decided to focus on FR for their 5e default setting, I was at first frustrated, and converted everything to Greyhawk, until the day I realised that my players didn't cared at all about the specifics of the setting, as long as they were adventuring and fighting monsters, it didn't matter that they were visiting Greyhawk city, Waterdeep, or Generic Big City A.

When you want to play in a setting that diverge from the standard, it's up to the DM and the players alike to make the effort to immerse themvelves in the seeting and follow it's code. You can't just blame WotC to sticking to their standard, if your player don't care that in your setting the goblins aren't eveil, but just second-class citizen. It's neither WotC fault if you fail to explain to your players that gnomes don't exist in Darksun, and that halflings are cannibals.

The fact that WotC don't release specific Campaign setting books is a totally different matter though.

It's not a matter of the fact that they don't cover its specifics. The problem is things like phb24(drow), or phb42(tiefling) where they actively make it difficult shifting stuff from greyhawk<-> to faerun is generally not too difficult for the reasons you stated. in both eberron & darksun, elves are very different & the drow in eberron would look at the drow from faerun like we might a civilization made of people like of jeffery dahmer/Lorainna bobbit (ie stunned horror, followed by a guilt free murder spree & nightmares over the initial horror. in the phb drizzit has two sidebars (drow & phb124) and the drow entry is pretty much entirely structured as a setup for him. The problem is how thick & carelessly they paint faerun over everything. Compare the tieflings in the multiverse (https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=YU30or6znuQ) video to the asmodious & great wheel cosmology dependent phb42. The video description of tieflings fits any setting (including darksun where they don't even have other planes but it's easy enough to say "one of my ancestors was tainted by the destruction of a plane/tainted by magic" or any number of things) You can fit it to eberron without even justifying it. You can fit it into faerun & greyhawk just by saying your ancestors were tainted by a plane or the 9 hells.... the phb equivalent depends on both the great wheel cosmology and asmodious, both of which have []url="http://savethecape.org/stcwp1/wp-content/uploads/PDFs/ShipSize.pdf"]boatloads[/url] of lore. pretty much any time they have a choice like that in the core books, they choose th paint on an extra couple coats of faerun. Introducing dragonmarks to other settings would be a pretty trivial thing "it's a magical tattoo-like birthmark that ties you to a prophecy & gives you some special magic powers!" introducing dragonmarks and the 1000+ year old megacorp like dragonmarked houses would be difficult for any setting where cultural stasis is important would be a disaster because they actively advance civilization on top of the fact that they have a lot of lore to themselves & a lot of that lore is tied to the last war (http://eberron.wikia.com/wiki/The_Last_War) & a lot of their megacorp-like status is because of it so separating them is not an easy thing.



I think the majority of new people coming to D&D 5E don't have any idea what the other settings from previous incarnations are all about, I read this thread with interest and didn't understand most of what was being discussed in relation to older editions.

For me, and I suspect most of the new players coming into D&D, if they start introducing all this weird stuff which we can't/won't use in our games we just won't buy into it. Looking at the sales of 5E books to date I wonder if newer players outnumber older players with prior experience of the game. From the publisher's point of view making niche content, which won't make sense for so many new players who are used to the Forgotten Realms setting, is surely a bit of a gamble?


it's not that simple. Take my earlier example (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=22818141&postcount=148) about how I handle the "can I play a drow" where I mention ignoring the other continents. even back in the 3.5 days when me & my (then) players were really into it & would all agree that the history & current status of xen'driik/arenal/argonessen/sarlona continents were important to the state of various things in khorvaire where we pretty much never left.. but those continents were simultaneously irrelevant to our game & thus diving into them would be both disruptive & boring. The various planes in the great wheel & activities of mystara's chosen lay the groundwork for a lot of stuff in faerun/greyhawk (to the point where we are on page 6 of a thread devoted to a book seemingly/likely about those) even though they almost never come up in a game. If a player was somehow immersed in a version that was entirely antithetical to the baselines they setup it would be difficult to right their disruptive ship as it continually veers into regitnui's goblin shopkeeper example (]example[/url].




Or maybe it's because in almost every case of western, and some eastern fantasy, goblins are portrayed as monsters that get killed on sight? Perhaps it has to do with the goblin of European folklore, which is described as an evil creature. Have you thought about having that conversation at session zero?

The problem is that the faerun is painted on so thickly in so many layers that trying to give a quick baseline in 5e goes like my drow [url="http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=22818097&postcount=145) earlier. You can't just adjust one baseline because to explain why X is different you need to get to why these other two or five things are different or you need to explain how this one or two things changed these 47 other things& it's just not possible to do easily.





How does a player who has never heard of any non-FR setting have detailed knowledge about Drizzt? Most younger players I know are more likely to know about Eberron than know that name at all...
phb18, phb24, phb124, scag4, scag107, scag139, pota256, ee players companion 25. not to mention... possibly the alt cover of Mordenkeinen's tome of foes (https://www.sageadvice.eu/2018/02/02/mordenkainens-tome-of-foes-and-drizzt/). He's just one very visible symptom of the excessive faerun coats of paint thrown over everything. I'm sure he's been mentioned in tons of the 5e videos & podcasts wotc has put out too but I can't just grep a folder of ocr'd pdfs for those. I didn't mention the drizzt books because unlike at the time they got published there is an unreadably large selection of fantasy books set in unique settings including quite a few tv shows/series & anime that do similar.

[Unoriginal]

The only thing that makes the pic looks like him is that the drow is dual-wielding scimitars.

Sure, it could be him, hell, he could even be stated in the book, but the pic isn't enough to confirm that.

Though it could be hilarious if WotC is just making fun of the "generic Drizzt's expy" trope.

On other subjects, anyone know who the three-faced skeleton warrior is? I think I saw him elsewhere.

...

Man, that alternate cover makes me want to call it Mordenkainen's Tome of Dark Souls Bosses

[War_lord]

I think the level of Underdark comes from so many D&D conflicts coming down to "surface dwelling good race vs their evil Underdark counterpart". D&D's Underdark is THE place for exiles. The displacer beast is interesting, conflicts in the Feywild?

[Regitnui]

I think the level of Underdark comes from so many D&D conflicts coming down to "surface dwelling good race vs their evil Underdark counterpart". D&D's Underdark is THE place for exiles. The displacer beast is interesting, conflicts in the Feywild?

If I see the word "feydark" in this book, I'm buying a plane ticket just so I can yell at Mearls in person for that incredibly silly idea being carried over.

[Vaz]

Ooh, does this mean we can start setting wars again?

As a young twenty-something, the only reason I know about Drizzt is because of Order of the Stick. I know of exactly one non-grognard who's read exactly one of the books.

That said, I'm sure most know about him now... He's in the PHB!!

In any case, I'm seeing a bit more underdark than I expected at the bottom of the alt-cover.

Oddly, I've got 3 players at my table who read Salvatore before they got into D&D. There were a selection of books sent to this Polish PMC-type we were working with in ghanners, who got pretty badly gibbed up, and rushed off for critical care back home. Left a load of gucci kit; I still have his Gerber, and the 2nd Witcher book, but he also had a couple of Salvatore books that got pilfered by a couple of my guys. A few years later, one of them's a regular, and the other two join in whenever they can.

[Luccan]

I think I heard of Drizzt originally from Baldur's Gate too (although I learned more about him as time went on). Specifically, it was the PS2 Baldur's Gate game, in which he was unlockable and better than all the other characters :/

Of course, I think how much you know about any setting depends on your exposure to D&D in general. I was certainly much easier to get information about FR when I was growing up, than it was to get info about Dark Sun. Not that the info wasn't there, but Neverwinter Nights and all those games were pretty influential

[War_lord]

If I see the word "feydark" in this book, I'm buying a plane ticket just so I can yell at Mearls in person for that incredibly silly idea being carried over.

Yes, we agree on something, symmetry for the sake of symmetry in D&D needs to die.


It's not a matter of the fact that they don't cover its specifics. The problem is things like phb24(drow), or phb42(tiefling) where they actively make it difficult shifting stuff from greyhawk<-> to faerun is generally not too difficult for the reasons you stated. in both eberron & darksun, elves are very different & the drow in eberron would look at the drow from faerun like we might a civilization made of people like of jeffery dahmer/Lorainna bobbit (ie stunned horror, followed by a guilt free murder spree & nightmares over the initial horror.

First of all, stop trying to make references, you very clearly don't understand how those work. Second, as we've already covered, yes Eberron and Dark Sun are two settings that are completely different. Which is why they don't get mentioned because it's needlessly confusing for the vast majority who don't use Dark Sun or Eberron and might not even know what they are. People keep countering your arguments and you keep responding by just repeating the same crap, but louder. What's your goal here when you clearly aren't interested in a discussion?


in the phb drizzit has two sidebars (drow & phb124) and the drow entry is pretty much entirely structured as a setup for him.

What? They mention Drizzt once in the Drow subrace, in a side bar that's about how Drow are usually evil. He's brought up because he's a good example of an atypical Good Drow. It's weird how Eberron fans hit out at Drizzt so much when he's one of the first and most prominent examples of a character from an "always evil" race in D&D being presented as Good and conflicted about his role in the world.


The problem is how thick & carelessly they paint faerun over everything..

This has already been disproved.


Compare the tieflings in the multiverse (https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=YU30or6znuQ) video to the asmodious & great wheel cosmology dependent phb42.

The video description of tieflings fits any setting (including darksun where they don't even have other planes but it's easy enough to say "one of my ancestors was tainted by the destruction of a plane/tainted by magic" or any number of things) You can fit it to eberron without even justifying it. You can fit it into faerun & greyhawk just by saying your ancestors were tainted by a plane or the 9 hells.... the phb equivalent depends on both the great wheel cosmology and asmodious, both of which have []url="http://savethecape.org/stcwp1/wp-content/uploads/PDFs/ShipSize.pdf"]boatloads[/url] of lore. pretty much any time they have a choice like that in the core books, they choose th paint on an extra couple coats of faerun.

Forgotten Realms was published in 1987, Asmodeus first appeared in the original monster manual, which was published in 1977, a full decade before the release of Forgotten Realms and a full two years before Ed Greenwood started writing articles for Dragon magazine. The Great Wheel in some form also dates back to 1977, in an article by Gygax himself called "Planes, The Concepts of Spatial, Temporal and Physical Relationships in D&D". So Asmodeus and the Great Wheel date back to 1977, two years before Greenwood came to work for TSR on Dragon magazine, and a decade before the Forgotten Realms was published. So it's literally impossible for either element to be considered "Faerun" when the guy who created Faerun didn't even work for the company at that point, and wouldn't be approached to publish his home setting for another eight years after that.


Introducing dragonmarks to other settings would be a pretty trivial thing "it's a magical tattoo-like birthmark that ties you to a prophecy & gives you some special magic powers!" introducing dragonmarks and the 1000+ year old megacorp like dragonmarked houses would be difficult for any setting where cultural stasis is important would be a disaster because they actively advance civilization on top of the fact that they have a lot of lore to themselves & a lot of that lore is tied to the last war (http://eberron.wikia.com/wiki/The_Last_War) & a lot of their megacorp-like status is because of it so separating them is not an easy thing.

Yes, so we agree that Eberron is a very unique and interconnected setting that doesn't even remotely fit with D&D as a whole and is very complex to explain to a non-fan. And that's exactly why it's barely mentioned, because to the vest majority of gamers it would be needlessly confusing.


it's not that simple. Take my earlier example (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=22818141&postcount=148) about how I handle the "can I play a drow" where I mention ignoring the other continents. even back in the 3.5 days when me & my (then) players were really into it & would all agree that the history & current status of xen'driik/arenal/argonessen/sarlona continents were important to the state of various things in khorvaire where we pretty much never left.. but those continents were simultaneously irrelevant to our game & thus diving into them would be both disruptive & boring.

You realize WoTC have other customers to appeal to then you, right?


The various planes in the great wheel & activities of mystara's chosen lay the groundwork

"Mystara" was the default campaign setting for D&D basic. Mystra is the Goddess of Magic in Forgotten Realms. She's not even in Greyhawk. Mystra's chosen is only a concept in the world of Forgotten Realms. Technically Mystra isn't even FR specific, she predates FR as a setting by five years.


for a lot of stuff in faerun/greyhawk (to the point where we are on page 6 of a thread devoted to a book seemingly/likely about those) even though they almost never come up in a game.

Just because you don't use planer conflicts in your game doesn't mean others don't find that content useful. The game isn't about appealing your your interests only. Vote with your wallet.


If a player was somehow immersed in a version that was entirely antithetical to the baselines they setup it would be difficult to right their disruptive ship as it continually veers into regitnui's goblin shopkeeper example (").

Regitnui's Goblin shopkeeper scenario can only exist when the DM does a poor job of explaining to their players ways in which their home setting deviates from the norm. You're effectively complaining about a problem you've caused.

[Unoriginal]

If you want to be 100% accurate, in the default 5e setting goblins do sometime trades with other humanoids.

[Scripten]

I run a homebrew setting which features:

a totally homebrew pantheon
Tieflings without fiendish heritage and Dwarves that live in glaciers
no Underdark
an entirely different planar setup than anything else D&D
plenty of other crap I'm forgetting

I've never once run into a situation where explaining a perception discrepancy with my players would take more than a minute or two. Is this really such a huge problem in other games?

[PhoenixPhyre]

I run a homebrew setting which features:

a totally homebrew pantheon
Tieflings without fiendish heritage and Dwarves that live in glaciers
no Underdark
an entirely different planar setup than anything else D&D
plenty of other crap I'm forgetting

I've never once run into a situation where explaining a perception discrepancy with my players would take more than a minute or two. Is this really such a huge problem in other games?

Same (except my differences are different--my halflings are mutated goblins, nothing has alignment (including outsiders)). As a result I use very little of the direct fluff of creatures/races--it's similar (orcs are warlike, goblins are craven), but the historical parts and the origins are all different. And it's easy enough to describe.

It's not new players that suffer--it's those who are steeped in lore of other settings and can't (or won't) put that aside. And that's a flaw on their part, not the designers' part.

[Millstone85]

If I see the word "feydark" in this book, I'm buying a plane ticket just so I can yell at Mearls in person for that incredibly silly idea being carried over.I find the name unfortunate, especially when it comes along the "shadowdark".

On the other hand, I like the idea of the Feywild and Shadowfell's nature as echo planes working at the geographic level. The PHB example of a specific volcan having a more crystalline counterpart in the Feywild is neat. And so if the world is full of caverns, that too carries over in the echoes. Just keep calling it the Underdark.

[Zanthy1]

I run a homebrew setting which features:

a totally homebrew pantheon
Tieflings without fiendish heritage and Dwarves that live in glaciers
no Underdark
an entirely different planar setup than anything else D&D
plenty of other crap I'm forgetting

I've never once run into a situation where explaining a perception discrepancy with my players would take more than a minute or two. Is this really such a huge problem in other games?

Unrelated to your question, but I would like to hear more about these glacier dwarves please

[Malifice]

Unrelated to your question, but I would like to hear more about these glacier dwarves please

They're small, hairy and cold.

[JackPhoenix]

They're small, hairy and cold.

Lies! I bet they are actually medium!

[Scripten]

They're small, hairy and cold.

I mean, yes. This. Also fairly traditionalist. Mechanically, they get cold resistance but have weakened (but flavorful) weapon proficiency lists. They do more with spears, tridents, and nets than they do with hammers.

They're also the basis for one branch of magical currency in the setting, due to their proximity to the triplicate moons (the world is tidally locked, essentially) that act as a filter to the realm of the gods. Their society is primarily a highly devout banking priesthood. Actually, that reminds me: I have a homebrew spell classification system that goes on top of the different spell schools which divides them into Light and Dark, requiring currency to cast. It adds a resource for spellcasters and also forms the basis of the society and economy.

Again, none of this has been difficult to explain to my players, even though I have a mix of people who started with the OD&D all the way to people who've never played an RPG before.

[ZorroGames]

Ooh, does this mean we can start setting wars again?

As a young twenty-something, the only reason I know about Drizzt is because of Order of the Stick. I know of exactly one non-grognard who's read exactly one of the books.

That said, I'm sure most know about him now... He's in the PHB!!

In any case, I'm seeing a bit more underdark than I expected at the bottom of the alt-cover.

This Grognard has not read a single page of the setting with “Drizzle Drip” in it. Not bragging just a statement that not all gorognards have the same interests/experiences.

[ZorroGames]

I am just hoping that they actually try to detail their great old ones in this book, mainly for the use of GOOlock patrons but also so I can create some weirder BBEGs too (is anyone sick of fiends yet?). It was especially odd as a new player to discover that D&D old ones bared minimal resemblance to their Lovecraft counterparts. I know that SCAG had a page that gave a paragraph for six different old ones, but this ultimately raised more questions than they did answers. Honestly though, I want to at least have some ideas as to what my GOOlock’s patron can be. Fey are so iconic that it is quite obvious to tell what they are like and fiends are highly fleshed out in many different modules and lore, but we are kind of left in the dark scrabbling for what precisely a D&D old one is. Perhaps it makes more sense to older players but to newbs like me who started in 2014 it is very confusing.

Dark Secret time - I yearn for adventures where high level humans are, the paraphrased words of Gary Gygax, “The worst monsters.”

[Regitnui]

I find the name unfortunate, especially when it comes along the "shadowdark".

On the other hand, I like the idea of the Feywild and Shadowfell's nature as echo planes working at the geographic level. The PHB example of a specific volcan having a more crystalline counterpart in the Feywild is neat. And so if the world is full of caverns, that too carries over in the echoes. Just keep calling it the Underdark.

I like the idea of an echo as well. Heck, make the elemental planes echoes as well. It just sounded incredibly silly that the Underdark was a physical link between three different planes. The whole "dark mirror of the sunlit world" works fine. I'm even happy for the Underdark* to technically be a separate dimension of its own. But having a "feydark" and "shadowdark" implies that neither of those planes (feywild and shadowfell) can be dangerous or sinister, because all the bad stuff is obviously in the Xdark.

*I'd also like to express my amazement that nobody's ever changed the name of the "underdark" to something that sounds less like it was made up on the spot. I can't picture drow and duergar referring to where they live as the "underdark". Uneducated surface dwellers, yes. The cultures who live there, no.


Dark Secret time - I yearn for adventures where high level humans are, the paraphrased words of Gary Gygax, “The worst monsters.”

Having the intelligent Material Plane monsters able to make moral choices helps. To paraphrase Paarthunax; "Which is worse: to be born evil, or sink onto depravity of your own free will?"

[ZorroGames]

I guess after having to make your own world (twice) in the beginnings of D&D I like the established default world for it just “being” because the alternative for me is not Spelljammer, God knows it is not Dark Sun, and definitely not Ebberron but would be a fantasy based setting in the American Southwest around 1680 +/- a few decades with Europe doing an “Atlantis” thing.

Edit: too much work.

[Scots Dragon]

Lies! I bet they are actually medium!

Fun fact; in earlier editions, arctic dwarves actually were small-sized, being considerably shorter and less hefty than their cousins, and the same is true of wild dwarves.

Arctic dwarves are 2'8" or 2'4" +2d4" in height according to Races of Faerûn.

[Scripten]

Fun fact; in earlier editions, arctic dwarves actually were small-sized, being considerably shorter and less hefty than their cousins, and the same is true of wild dwarves.

Arctic dwarves are 2'8" or 2'4" +2d4" in height according to Races of Faerûn.

See, this is just ridiculous! If 5E actually cared about their FR playerbase, they'd have given me an arctic dwarf subrace for 5E instead of forcing me to make my own!

:smallbiggrin:

[MaxWilson]

Looks like his kitty, anyway.

"Tome of Foes." Looks like players will now be encouraged to kill Drizz't and his kitty.

[JackPhoenix]

"Tome of Foes." Looks like players will now be encouraged to kill Drizz't and his kitty.

Drizzt's foes, presumably. Although lot of players would be cool with that interpretation too.

[strangebloke]

Dark Secret time - I yearn for adventures where high level humans are, the paraphrased words of Gary Gygax, “The worst monsters.”
In every game I've ever run, this has been the case.

Simply put, modern egalitarianism is built on the fact that all humans are within a few standard deviations of each other. In DND this isn't remotely the case. Sorcerer kings and divine emissaries and even just a really Swol barbarian have personal power on a level no one in the modern world can fathom. This means that if you're a badass you get all kinds of free goodies as the local lord tries to court your favor. You straight-up rob and murder a peasant for no reason? Honestly the local lord, unless he's a saint probably doesn't make a big deal about it. One level five fighter is worth a dozen other men. (not in a 1v12 kinda way, more in a long-term value kinda way.) With that kind of superiority complex, your adventurers become kindly dictators at best, and awful tyrants at worst.


Oddly, I've got 3 players at my table who read Salvatore before they got into D&D. There were a selection of books sent to this Polish PMC-type we were working with in ghanners, who got pretty badly gibbed up, and rushed off for critical care back home. Left a load of gucci kit; I still have his Gerber, and the 2nd Witcher book, but he also had a couple of Salvatore books that got pilfered by a couple of my guys. A few years later, one of them's a regular, and the other two join in whenever they can.

Huh. Yeah not my experience. Although I did read a Salvatore book a few years back... just not one with Drizzt in it.

[Scots Dragon]

"Tome of Foes." Looks like players will now be encouraged to kill Drizz't and his kitty.

In my experience, the more immature members of the fanbase have needed little encouragement on that front.

[Millstone85]

I like the idea of an echo as well. Heck, make the elemental planes echoes as well. It just sounded incredibly silly that the Underdark was a physical link between three different planes. The whole "dark mirror of the sunlit world" works fine. I'm even happy for the Underdark* to technically be a separate dimension of its own. But having a "feydark" and "shadowdark" implies that neither of those planes (feywild and shadowfell) can be dangerous or sinister, because all the bad stuff is obviously in the Xdark.This edition doesn't seem to be approaching the Underdark from the angle that it is akin to a separate plane. It is a terrain, fantastical for sure, but listed alongside mundane ones for PHB druids and rangers. We are to accept that the default D&D world has a megadungeon below its surface.

I don't even remember 4e going for the plane approach. Nentir Vale had some lore about Torog going back and forth between the mortal world and its echoes as he dug, but that would just give the Underdark an abundance of fey and shadow crossings. Of course, 4e Eberron was another story.

In any case, it doesn't have to be this "physical link" in every setting. The Underdark can exist in the Feywild, the Material and the Shadowfell the same way mountains and bays do.

Regarding levels of danger, I imagine it goes something like this, from bad to worse:
* Material's surface
* Material's underdark / Feywild's surface
* Feywild's underdark / Shadowfell's surface
* Shadowfell's underdark

http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Scarytown_3037.jpg

And I agree it would be fun to treat the elemental planes as echoes too, at least in their innermost regions. The Feywild and the Shadowfell can even be the innermost regions of the energy planes, if we move the latter back among the Inner Planes.

[Unoriginal]

That above conversation I've had hundreds of times, because WotC's generic Western Fantasy (of which FR is a version) encourages players to kill things that aren't PHB races on sight

No it doesn't.

Pop culture stereotypes of D&D do that. If you read the D&D rulebooks and the like, you see it's a question of context.

A player who decides to go "I'm killing the shopkeeper" for no reason is just asking for troubles. Even if the shopkeep happens to be an Illithid or a Devil.

Beside, your own example disprove that: the PC didn't kill the goblin shopkeeper on sight, the player decided to kill the goblin only after they interacted with him and he showed them his wares.

So, not kill-on-sight in a context of expected hostility. Just cold blooded murder.


"Tome of Foes." Looks like players will now be encouraged to kill Drizz't and his kitty.

Nah, he just owe Mordenkainen money.

Also, it's not his kitty, it's a Displacer Beast.

[Knaight]

Or maybe it's because in almost every case of western, and some eastern fantasy, goblins are portrayed as monsters that get killed on sight? Perhaps it has to do with the goblin of European folklore, which is described as an evil creature. Have you thought about having that conversation at session zero?
The vast majority of western fantasy doesn't include goblins at all. The same can be said of most stuff in D&D, which is why the whole argument that it's a generic system really doesn't hold (although if the player base saw those more as options to plug into individual settings that did have them and not standards it would at least hold better).


A lot of younger, post-Eberron DnD players reading those these days? Of my table of teens/twenty-somethings, only one would know who he is; and only then because he played Baldur’s Gate on Steam
I can't speak for a lot of people, but at least in my case I read them because my middle school library's fantasy section was basically tiny, and these happened to be there. Tiny libraries storing popular shlock from decades ago is hardly an isolated phenomenon, nor is the sort of people who play RPGs blowing through large swaths of the fantasy sections in said libraries.

[Unoriginal]

The vast majority of western fantasy doesn't include goblins at all. The same can be said of most stuff in D&D, which is why the whole argument that it's a generic system really doesn't hold (although if the player base saw those more as options to plug into individual settings that did have them and not standards it would at least hold better).

There is a difference between "generic system", "generic fantasy", and "generic D&D setting".

D&D is not a generic system, no matter how much 3.X wanted the contrary.

D&D is not generic fantasy, despite what many people think and the inaccurate stereotypes they ascribe to D&D lore.

Each edition of D&D, however, does have a generic, implied setting, which is not Greyhawk, or FR, or Eberron, or anything. It's the "basic" lore of the edition, and each particular setting deviate from it in some ways or others.

[Millstone85]

On other subjects, anyone know who the three-faced skeleton warrior is? I think I saw him elsewhere.I remember the 4e MM having a "skull lord".https://i.pinimg.com/originals/c3/d0/a5/c3d0a522fb605f46c0d1ec4f4d2f4fcc.jpg
And Google tells me that Drizzt fought one from Daggerdale.https://i.pinimg.com/736x/30/2a/77/302a77aa3f16f1e628c79c9a06f0ba54--sci-fi-fantasy-dark-fantasy.jpg
Maybe they walked together on the alt cover of Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes?

[Kane0]

Reminds me of an Ettin lich I fought once.

[Temperjoke]

https://youtu.be/r93sKXCvXQ4

More direct interview about the book with Mike Mearls, talking about some of the stuff in it.

[Knaight]

There is a difference between "generic system", "generic fantasy", and "generic D&D setting".

D&D is not a generic system, no matter how much 3.X wanted the contrary.

D&D is not generic fantasy, despite what many people think and the inaccurate stereotypes they ascribe to D&D lore.

Each edition of D&D, however, does have a generic, implied setting, which is not Greyhawk, or FR, or Eberron, or anything. It's the "basic" lore of the edition, and each particular setting deviate from it in some ways or others.

I'm pretty much on board with all of that, but I wouldn't call the implicit setting generic. It's not necessarily named, but there's still a specific setting there mostly painted in broad strokes but with some very setting specific detail work (planes).

[Rickety Stick]

Mike mearls mentioned the Idolon (the statue on the ad&d players handbook cover) is in the book as a monster.

[Unoriginal]

Mike mearls mentioned the Idolon (the statue on the ad&d players handbook cover) is in the book as a monster.

What.

This one?

https://geotrickster.files.wordpress.com/2017/10/players-handbook-small.jpg?w=1040


...I mean, a bugbear army can technically still be a threat to a 13th level party, but not for very long, unless the bugbears have 13th level casters of their own.

You're not going to defeat an actual army with one lvl 7 and one lvl 6 spell.

[Millstone85]

The dragontalk with Jeremy Crawford and Kate Irwin is on Youtube.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AO0f3G4hu30

As a helpful comment warned me, it really starts 16 minutes and 39 seconds in.

I am still watching it, but Crawford already said something very interesting.

Apparently, eladrin are now like pokémon, with several phases of development:
* humanoid (elf)
* fey
* fey (arch-)
* celestial

Or so I am guessing the last one from "invited back to Arvandor" and what exemplars used to be.

[Tectorman]

So, will they also be reprinting the Shadow Sorcerer in this book, too? Or will AL players be unable to play the immensely intuitive combination of a Shadar-Kai Shadow Sorcerer because, oh scandal, they were printed in two different books, neither of which was the PHB?

[Daithi]

I'm still hoping for some lower level demons/fiends that could be an option for the summoning spells in XGtE.

Since they mentioned the Shadowfell, I wonder if we'll see any of the Raven Queen warlock patron stuff.

[Millstone85]

Alright, I made it to the end of the video.

MToF apparently has this story where elves used to be able to switch between different forms, like they could grow wings, gills and so on. Then they were seduced by Lolth's strong leadership and, even though most eventually turned back to Corellon, it caused them to fall and become stuck in one form or another. That's how we got avariel, sea elves, wood elves and so on.

That's probably very different from old school lore (or not, you tell me) but I think I dig it. I am also okay with the aforementioned connection between Feywild eladrin and Arborea eladrin.

On the other hand, they seem to be very insistent on tieflings being of infernal origin only. It was painful to watch the Tito guy be amazed that tieflings could be linked to another devil than Asmodeus, and mention abyssal tieflings as a wild idea.

[Naanomi]

That's probably very different from old school lore (or not, you tell me) but I think I dig it.
Very different. I wonder where that leaves Morwel and the Court of Stars, since it appears as though they are writing the Seldarine to supplant them

[Slayn82]

You're not going to defeat an actual army with one lvl 7 and one lvl 6 spell.

You are more right than you think. Druid's spell list has Call Lightning (lvl 3) and Insect Plague (lvl 5). That's some crazy heavy artillery right there. It's the D&D equivalent to mortar fire and machine gun emplacement. Fighting a party of mid level adventurers is like going against special forces. Specially Druids.


Any creature that enters the area of Insect Plague takes 4d10 damage, half on Con save. The area is so large, you can cover a bottleneck. It also becomes difficult terrain, and lightly obscured. It also lasts 10 minutes. Ouch.

If the enemy is attacking, this will hurt them, badly. Specially if you are behind a wall, behind a moat, maybe created by successive uses of Mold Earth cantrip. Or a Wall of Stone, if you are in a hurry. Until the enemies jump over the obstructions, they are stuck on the area of the insect plague.

[Regitnui]

See, this is just ridiculous! If 5E actually cared about their FR playerbase, they'd have given me an arctic dwarf subrace for 5E instead of forcing me to make my own!

:smallbiggrin:

It's more like getting glacial dwarves in a UA and not seeing anything else for years because the devs seem to have more love for halflings.


"Tome of Foes." Looks like players will now be encouraged to kill Drizz't and his kitty.

He's still alive? That's one of the few things I do encourage the "kill-on-sight" reaction to. "It's a rampaging cliché! Sic 'em!" [/sarcasm]


This edition doesn't seem to be approaching the Underdark from the angle that it is akin to a separate plane. It is a terrain, fantastical for sure, but listed alongside mundane ones for PHB druids and rangers. We are to accept that the default D&D world has a megadungeon below its surface.

And I agree it would be fun to treat the elemental planes as echoes too, at least in their innermost regions. The Feywild and the Shadowfell can even be the innermost regions of the energy planes, if we move the latter back among the Inner Planes.

I was saying how far they could push the idea of the Underdark being different without heading back to 4e silliness.

I definitely back the idea of mirror planes. Can you imagine the variations you could come up with when plane shifting to the Elemental Planes if they came up as mirrors?


Apparently, eladrin are now like pokémon, with several phases of development:
* humanoid (elf)
* fey
* fey (arch-)
* celestial

That sounds like a neat way to reconcile the 4e "high-high elves" with 3e's "celestial embodiments". At the risk of letting my reputation as a useless, attached-to-Eberron-by-umbilical-cord, waste of everyone's time and reading speed on this forum go, I support this idea. Also, it lets me tell people who think eladrin are playable because of unfitting aspects jammed retroactively into a setting that they can go plink their superelves off a feywild cliff.

[Tetrasodium]

"Tome of Foes." Looks like players will now be encouraged to kill Drizz't and his kitty.

Thank god, I can't wait, let me build a cleric of asmodious or something so we can make a living blood eagle followed by gentle repose/revivify to force him back to life so we can repeat it each day for a while. if not for a good part of the day at worst. We can celebrate across every one of the realms as they day they stopped needing to talk about some guy named drizzt from bizarro world. Maybe if we get enough of us we can stagger it so one of us is always finishing a long rest before the active cleric's spell slots are extended.... 9th level revivify forced back to life?... bleep yes! :smallbiggrin:



Alright, I made it to the end of the video.

MToF apparently has this story where elves used to be able to switch between different forms, like they could grow wings, gills and so on. Then they were seduced by Lolth's strong leadership and, even though most eventually turned back to Corellon, it caused them to fall and become stuck in one form or another. That's how we got avariel, sea elves, wood elves and so on.

That's probably very different from old school lore (or not, you tell me) but I think I dig it. I am also okay with the aforementioned connection between Feywild eladrin and Arborea eladrin.

On the other hand, they seem to be very insistent on tieflings being of infernal origin only. It was painful to watch the Tito guy be amazed that tieflings could be linked to another devil than Asmodeus, and mention abyssal tieflings as a wild idea.

It's not a bad idea & potentially interesting, but I hope to hell that it mentions the style of elf you see in places like darksun & eberron, or at least something close so we can say "look at the whatzit elf, elves here are kind of more like that but a little more $whatever"


Dark Secret time - I yearn for adventures where high level humans are, the paraphrased words of Gary Gygax, “The worst monsters.”

I'm pretty sure that at least some/most of the sorcerer kings in athas (dark sun) are/were human or at least demihuman. eberron is chock full of humans & demihumans who are scheming and plotting in self serving ways that more than fits that mold & monstrous races are mostly just (poor) people with no hope of any real wealth or poor people with powerful abilities that signed on as mercenaries to send money back home. Pretty much, the less compatible with faerun a setting is, ther more likely you have your desire.
You are right about the painful bit. Often the most painful stuff printed was seems to have been written by someone with no clue what he or she was stabbing... That or, it was done deliberately (with malice) rather than accidentally (negligence).

I sincerely would love to open up/read through mtof & get the feeling thatsomeone actually looked over early drafts & used a red pen to write angry lore dumps on stuff that actively makes other setting baselines difficult... I'm not holding my breath there, but I'm more optimistic than I was at this point in the runup to XgE

[Naanomi]

I'm pretty sure that at least some/most of the sorcerer kings in athas (dark sun) are/were human or at least demihuman.
They were all explicitly humans (though most were at least part way to transforming into dragons when the main setting started), tasked with killing all the other races except Halflings and Humans (lots of them failed). Their old boss, Raajat, was a Pyreen (a kind of Ancient Halfling)

[Regitnui]

They were all explicitly humans (though most were at least part way to transforming into dragons when the main setting started), tasked with killing all the other races except Halflings and Humans (lots of them failed). Their old boss, Raajat, was a Pyreen (a kind of Ancient Halfling)

If I recall my lore correctly, if you practiced defiling magic and psionics you would eventually be able to become an Athasian dragon, but if you practiced preserving magic and psionics you eventually became an Avangion. The latter would, if it survived longer than however it took the sorcerer kings to kill it, eventually heal Athas of its post apocalyptic desert.

[Naanomi]

If I recall my lore correctly, if you practiced defiling magic and psionics you would eventually be able to become an Athasian dragon, but if you practiced preserving magic and psionics you eventually became an Avangion. The latter would, if it survived longer than however it took the sorcerer kings to kill it, eventually heal Athas of its post apocalyptic desert.
Technically yes, though none existed in the Tablelands or surrounding areas... so it was more of a ‘this is what would happen’ or ‘there may be these somewhere else on the planet’ rather than a real presence in the established setting

[Regitnui]

Technically yes, though none existed in the Tablelands or surrounding areas... so it was more of a ‘this is what would happen’ or ‘there may be these somewhere else on the planet’ rather than a real presence in the established setting

It was an "in theory" sort of thing. A kind of ultimate goal for a PC preserver to aim for, if I'm not wrong.

[Malifice]

See, this is just ridiculous! If 5E actually cared about their FR playerbase, they'd have given me an arctic dwarf subrace for 5E instead of forcing me to make my own!

:smallbiggrin:

Small size instead of medium (usual disadvantage when using heavy weapons)
Cold resistance
Ribbon ability re extreme natural cold
+1 Strength

[Rickety Stick]

What.

This one?

https://geotrickster.files.wordpress.com/2017/10/players-handbook-small.jpg?w=1040



You're not going to defeat an actual army with one lvl 7 and one lvl 6 spell.

Yep, that one.

[Scots Dragon]

In my experience, the more immature members of the fanbase have needed little encouragement on that front.


Thank god, I can't wait, let me build a cleric of asmodious or something so we can make a living blood eagle followed by gentle repose/revivify to force him back to life so we can repeat it each day for a while. if not for a good part of the day at worst. We can celebrate across every one of the realms as they day they stopped needing to talk about some guy named drizzt from bizarro world. Maybe if we get enough of us we can stagger it so one of us is always finishing a long rest before the active cleric's spell slots are extended.... 9th level revivify forced back to life?... bleep yes! :smallbiggrin:

Oh were it that I had a penny for every instance...

[Vaz]

Small size instead of medium (usual disadvantage when using heavy weapons)
Cold resistance
Ribbon ability re extreme natural cold
+1 Strength

Cold Resistance makes you immune to Natural Cold doesn't it?

[Millstone85]

That sounds like a neat way to reconcile the 4e "high-high elves" with 3e's "celestial embodiments".That's what I think, with one correction.

In 4e, eladrin were high elves and high elves were eladrin, the same way drow == dark elves unless you go into minutiae. What the edition did was connect high elves to the Feywild and give them a name from the then non-existent CG exemplars (the alignment itself was gone). 4e also had a habit of referring to wood elves as just elves.

It is actually a 5e innovation to treat Feywild elves as yet another distinct breed with its own racial traits. One I would go from hating to loving if it circles back to the CG exemplars.


Cold Resistance makes you immune to Natural Cold doesn't it?As per the DMG p110, yes. Automatic success on the hourly Constitution saving throw to avoid exhaustion from extreme cold.

[Regitnui]

In 4e, eladrin were high elves and high elves were eladrin, the same way drow == dark elves unless you go into minutiae. What the edition did was connect high elves to the Feywild and give them a name from the then non-existent CG exemplars (the alignment itself was gone). 4e also had a habit of referring to wood elves as just elves.

It is actually a 5e innovation to treat Feywild elves as yet another distinct breed with its own racial traits. One I would go from hating to loving if it circles back to the CG exemplars.

If it really is a fey that matures into a celestial sort of thing, I'll support it. After all, 4e made a lot of odd decisions that can now be "fixed" flavourwise.

[Unoriginal]

Yep, that one.

Truly we live blessed times

Where do you saw him talk about it? I wanna see myself.


You are more right than you think. Druid's spell list has Call Lightning (lvl 3) and Insect Plague (lvl 5). That's some crazy heavy artillery right there. It's the D&D equivalent to mortar fire and machine gun emplacement. Fighting a party of mid level adventurers is like going against special forces. Specially Druids.


Any creature that enters the area of Insect Plague takes 4d10 damage, half on Con save. The area is so large, you can cover a bottleneck. It also becomes difficult terrain, and lightly obscured. It also lasts 10 minutes. Ouch.

If the enemy is attacking, this will hurt them, badly. Specially if you are behind a wall, behind a moat, maybe created by successive uses of Mold Earth cantrip. Or a Wall of Stone, if you are in a hurry. Until the enemies jump over the obstructions, they are stuck on the area of the insect plague.


Dude, it's an army.

Even if it's, say, 130 bugbears, which is more a company than an army, it's more than enough to wait you're out of spells and then still swarm you.

[Regitnui]

Dude, it's an army.

Even if it's, say, 130 bugbears, which is more a company than an army, it's more than enough to wait you're out of spells and then still swarm you.

I'm no military expert, but even in my infinite lack of wisdom, I know the smart thing to do when a mage starts unloading high-level spells is to get the Dolurrh out of the way! Bugbears aren't going to keep charging into an insect swarm, even if it is in a bottleneck. Lob rocks over the swarm, or let ten minutes pass.

[Unoriginal]

I'm no military expert, but even in my infinite lack of wisdom, I know the smart thing to do when a mage starts unloading high-level spells is to get the Dolurrh out of the way! Bugbears aren't going to keep charging into an insect swarm, even if it is in a bottleneck. Lob rocks over the swarm, or let ten minutes pass.

Yes, that's what I said. Wait until the PCs are out of spells.

They might send someone every 10 mins or the like to test it while others are stealthy trying to find a way to go around the PCs' position. Maybe start a fire to try to smoke them out, if they can.

If the bugbears are determined enough to all go and try to kill the PCs, the PCs better get out of dodge than to try fighting them.

[Pronounceable]

How about, get this, how about not having eleventy billion types of ****ing elves? How revolutionary is that?

[Unoriginal]

How about, get this, how about not having eleventy billion types of ****ing elves? How revolutionary is that?

Can't say I like it, but it's a part of the D&D lore. It's legitimate to keep it.

At least we can hope they won't make them bland this time.

[Arkhios]

How about, get this, how about not having eleventy billion types of ****ing elves? How revolutionary is that?
Don't like it? Don't use them. It's just that simple.

Can't say I like it, but it's a part of the D&D lore. It's legitimate to keep it.

At least we can hope they won't make them bland this time.

Indeed. There's always been different kinds of elves in D&D. It'd be odd if there suddenly wasn't. They'd better make them stand out from each other though.

[Waazraath]

Really looking forward to this one, seems great so far! More big monsters, some old school favourite beasties getting stats, some old lore getting a place in 5e, nothing not to like afaic.

[Tetrasodium]

How about, get this, how about not having eleventy billion types of ****ing elves? How revolutionary is that?


You mean they are all just "elf" and the different types are mostly just the result of upbringing/culture/choices in life?.. If only there were a world where that were so.... hmm.... I bet a few people can guess :smallbiggrin:

[Rickety Stick]

Truly we live blessed times

Where do you saw him talk about it? I wanna see myself.



Dude, it's an army.

Even if it's, say, 130 bugbears, which is more a company than an army, it's more than enough to wait you're out of spells and then still swarm you.

Mike was on yesterdays dragontalk (02/06) and spoke about lore within Tome of Foes. He didn't really spoil any unknown content except for said monster. They talked about alot of unrelated stuff in the beginning so you can skip ahead a bit until they actually start talking about d&d.

[Scripten]

Small size instead of medium (usual disadvantage when using heavy weapons)
Cold resistance
Ribbon ability re extreme natural cold
+1 Strength

Oh, I probably wouldn't have used the arctic dwarves anyway, hahaha. Was just poking lighthearted fun.

[War_lord]

As far as the number of elf subraces. I just wouldn't use them. I'm not sure why certain individuals can't grasp that they aren't forced to use every element of every book in their home campaign.

[mr-mercer]

I think it's generally due to the perceived issue of that thing they don't want taking up space where there could otherwise be something they do want. That said, I don't think there's much risk of that here, because if the thing they'd put there is related to the concept of the book then it will probably be there whether elves are around or not.

Personally, I care less about the elves and more about seeing the genasi expanded upon: we got the four base types in that UA some time ago, but I'd like to see some more variation with other elements there.

[War_lord]

I think it's generally due to the perceived issue of that thing they don't want taking up space where there could otherwise be something they do want. That said, I don't think there's much risk of that here, because if the thing they'd put there is related to the concept of the book then it will probably be there whether elves are around or not.

But that comes back to my point about certain players expecting WoTC to cater to them exclusively. I might not have any use for a bunch of elven subraces, but other DMs might. I'm not going to begrudge that and start making a hate fort out of copies of the Eberron Campaign setting book. I'll just deal with it.

[Naanomi]

You mean they are all just "elf" and the different types are mostly just the result of upbringing/culture/choices in life?.. If only there were a world where that were so.... hmm.... I bet a few people can guess :smallbiggrin:
Must be a pretty harsh upbringing that convinces you to grow gills and abandon the world of air

[Regitnui]

You mean they are all just "elf" and the different types are mostly just the result of upbringing/culture/choices in life?.. If only there were a world where that were so.... hmm.... I bet a few people can guess :smallbiggrin:

Aquatic elves are different, and don't forget, we have explicit permission to cross out entire pages if they don't work for us in our home games.


But that comes back to my point about certain players expecting WoTC to cater to them exclusively. I might not have any use for a bunch of elven subraces, but other DMs might. I'm not going to begrudge that and start making a hate fort out of copies of the Eberron Campaign setting book. I'll just deal with it.

Way to read the most negative possible interpretation of every post by one of the Eberron Mafia. I, personally, dislike a lot of this whole "elves are superior" mentality wherever I see it. I mean honestly, humans who live on the sea aren't that different from humans who live in the city, so why do we need sky elves, wild elves, wood elves, high elves, faerie elves, aquatic elves, concrete elves, ninja elves and round-eared tall elves? Only two of those are jokes. Why don't we get sky humans, wild humans, wood humans, high humans (duude), faerie humans, aquatic humans, concrete humans, ninja humans and pointy-eared short humans? Oh, that last one covers like half the Players Handbook races...


Must be a pretty harsh upbringing that convinces you to grow gills and abandon the world of air

I asked. Something to do with those shark people who keep trying to eat your family whenever they visit the beach elves, dune elves and sand elves for a little lighthearted elven frolicking in the waves.

[Scots Dragon]

Way to read the most negative possible interpretation of every post by one of the Eberron Mafia. I, personally, dislike a lot of this whole "elves are superior" mentality wherever I see it. I mean honestly, humans who live on the sea aren't that different from humans who live in the city,

Aquatic elves don't live on the sea, they literally live in the sea and suffocate if they spend too long on land.

On that note, the Stormwrack book for D&D 3.5E has the aventi, a race of mutated humans who dwell underwater, and Pathfinder has the similar gillmen. Not to mention the triton race, which seems to have become the modern version of that.

[mephnick]

We all know these subraces are for munchkins to pick and choose specific stat bumps, no one actually cares about Sea Elves or _____ Tiefling. Just keep them out of your setting like I do.

[Regitnui]

Aquatic elves don't live on the sea, they literally live in the sea and suffocate if they spend too long on land.

On that note, the Stormwrack book for D&D 3.5E has the aventi, a race of mutated humans who dwell underwater, and Pathfinder has the similar gillmen. Not to mention the triton race, which seems to have become the modern version of that.

They aren't sea humans. They're Aventi, gillmen or tritons. The aquatic elves are just aquatic elves. Though they are the most differentiated elf subrace. I don't mind them so much. Their name, again, sounds like a human named them rather than being a name for themselves.

The wild elves I find unnecessary. It's not like the normal elves are incredibly technological people. Heck, wood elves still live in the forests. What are wild elves for, except munchkins? Why aren't they just elvish hermits and mechanically identical to every other sunlight-loving, tree-singing member of their excessively superior race?

[strangebloke]

We all know these subraces are for munchkins to pick and choose specific stat bumps, no one actually cares about Sea Elves or _____ Tiefling. Just keep them out of your setting like I do.

Eyup. Some options should be excluded. If the campaign is: "You're all pirates." a redemption paladin is not a great pick. An aquatic elf in a campaign set in the mountains is stupid as heck.

Also, War_lord, why all the eberron hate? Some players dislike FR, some love Eberron. I'm one of them, but your description of 'hate-fort' is more mean-spirited than anything I've seen from eberron fans. People who dislike FR just want something different for once. Players who like eberron would be overjoyed with a ten-page PDF on the races and maybe a subclass or two.

Granted, the amount of FR-dominance in 5e is overblown.

[Balthasaurus]

Eyup. Some options should be excluded. If the campaign is: "You're all pirates." a redemption paladin is not a great pick.

BUT, a Conquest paladin would be! I've actually just started playing as one for a pirate campaign! :smallbiggrin:
:smalleek: I'm completely aware that this is off topic.

[DanyBallon]

They aren't sea humans. They're Aventi, gillmen or tritons. The aquatic elves are just aquatic elves. Though they are the most differentiated elf subrace. I don't mind them so much. Their name, again, sounds like a human named them rather than being a name for themselves.

The wild elves I find unnecessary. It's not like the normal elves are incredibly technological people. Heck, wood elves still live in the forests. What are wild elves for, except munchkins? Why aren't they just elvish hermits and mechanically identical to every other sunlight-loving, tree-singing member of their excessively superior race?

As far as I remember, each elven sub-race have their own name for their species, and the names aquatic elves, winged elves, wood elves, etc. is from the humans perspective. To humans, all these species are just a bunch of elves.

On the topic of wild elves, I believe they first appeared in the Greyhawk setting as the ferral Grugach which are the real world equivalent of seclusive amazonian tribes. They tried to avoid most contact with the outside world as much as possible, even from the other elves. Thus why they are called wild elves. Now having a elven kind that uses a different stats block, can be a good way to refluff it for elves in a different setting that are very dissimilar with the "generic" fantasy of the PHB.

[War_lord]

Aquatic elves are different, and don't forget, we have explicit permission to cross out entire pages if they don't work for us in our home games.

Whose permission do you need? What, do you think WoTC are going to send a cease and desist letter to your home address if they find out you're using less then ten elven subraces.


Way to read the most negative possible interpretation of every post by one of the Eberron Mafia. I, personally, dislike a lot of this whole "elves are superior" mentality wherever I see it.

Regitnui: You're interpreting our words unfairly because you dislike our fandom.

Also Regitnui: Everyone who plays as an Elf is a fantasy racist.

I frequently play as an Elf or Half-Elf, because I tend to play stealthy, intelligent magic users, and mechanically Elves and Half-Elves fit those roles. Not to mention that, assuming your DM doesn't handwave light levels entirely, a lack of Darkvision is an issue. The one time I played a Variant Human Swashbuckler, a DM screwed me over with the Ghost's bs magic aging attack. That experience has rather soured me on the idea of playing any race that doesn't get a 700 year buffer against DM fiat bull****-fu. In my own games I make a point of telling players I've removed that attack, and I do have players running Human characters.


I mean honestly, humans who live on the sea aren't that different from humans who live in the city, so why do we need sky elves, wild elves, wood elves, high elves, faerie elves, aquatic elves, concrete elves, ninja elves and round-eared tall elves? Only two of those are jokes. Why don't we get sky humans, wild humans, wood humans, high humans (duude), faerie humans, aquatic humans, concrete humans, ninja humans and pointy-eared short humans? Oh, that last one covers like half the Players Handbook races...

Aasimar are angel humans. Tieflings are devil humans. Genasi are elemental humans. Yuan-ti are snake humans. Goliaths are part-giant humans. Because humans are a thing from the real world, we're much less willing to suspend our disbelief if the book were to class humans with snake scales or Devilish horns as merely a sub-category of human than if we're being told that the magical race of fair folk who live in the woods are basically the same as the magical race of fair folk with wings.

[Regitnui]

Regitnui: You're interpreting our words unfairly because you dislike our fandom.

Also Regitnui: Everyone who plays as an Elf is a fantasy racist.

Thank you for eloquently proving my point about taking the worst possible interpretation. There are three (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OurElvesAreBetter) different (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CantArgueWithElves) tropes (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ScrewYouElves) about elves' cultural posturing as the "superior race" in hundreds of works. I didn't say anything about people who play elves.


Aasimar are angel humans. Tieflings are devil humans. Genasi are elemental humans. Yuan-ti are snake humans. Goliaths are part-giant humans. Because humans are a thing from the real world, we're much less willing to suspend our disbelief if the book were to class humans with snake scales or Devilish horns as merely a sub-category of human than if we're being told that the magical race of fair folk who live in the woods are basically the same as the magical race of fair folk with wings.

You had a point up until yuan-ti and goliaths. Those two are monsters and separate races, respectively. As far as I know, a half-giant isn't the same thing as a Goliath. Also, half-breeds aren't the same thing as the 99 elf varieties.

[Luccan]

Thank you for eloquently proving my point about taking the worst possible interpretation. There are three (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OurElvesAreBetter) different (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CantArgueWithElves) tropes (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ScrewYouElves) about elves' cultural posturing as the "superior race" in hundreds of works. I didn't say anything about people who play elves.



You had a point up until yuan-ti and goliaths. Those two are monsters and separate races, respectively. As far as I know, a half-giant isn't the same thing as a Goliath. Also, half-breeds aren't the same thing as the 99 elf varieties.

Are Yuan-ti no longer descended from humans? I haven't paid them much attention this edition.

[War_lord]

Also, War_lord, why all the eberron hate?

It's not Eberron hate, it's "a tiny but vocal minority of Eberron purists" hate. I don't know how you could read the output of Regitnui and Tetrasodium over time and not eventually become as vocally disdainful of it as I am.


Some players dislike FR, some love Eberron. I'm one of them, but your description of 'hate-fort' is more mean-spirited than anything I've seen from eberron fans. People who dislike FR just want something different for once.

See, you're eminently more reasonable then the other two, and you're still stepping into an Eberron fandom rhetorical device I find very frustrating. Most of the stuff being called out as "Forgotten Realms taking over and oppressing everyone" actually predates Forgotten Realms by several years. It's not a conflict between Forgotten Realms and everyone else. It's a conflict between people who seemingly had their introduction to D&D with Eberron and assume that's what it's all about and the actual history of D&D.


Are Yuan-ti no longer descended from humans? I haven't paid them much attention this edition.

Yuan-ti are humans transformed into Snake people through rituals. They're still a Human base with mutations on top.

[Regitnui]

Are Yuan-ti no longer descended from humans? I haven't paid them much attention this edition.

Yeah, but they're a) inhuman monsters and b) very different from their parent race. Unlike wood elves, dark elves, aquatic elves, dead elves, green elves, blue elves, dry elves and goo elves.


Yuan-ti are humans transformed into Snake people through rituals. They're still a Human base with mutations on top.

You might have a case for broodguards and purebloods, but the abominations and anathema? Nope. They're further removed from humans than any elf from the baseline high elf.

Also, may I have an apology for assuming I'm calling elf players racists?

[Whoracle]

Are Yuan-ti no longer descended from humans? I haven't paid them much attention this edition.

According to this (http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Yuan-ti), they aren't now. Just skimmed thorugh the MMs for 2e, 3.5 and 4e, and they haven't been since 4e.

Edit: Strike that, overread the "bred men with snakes". Only in 4e were they their own thing.

[Tetrasodium]

Must be a pretty harsh upbringing that convinces you to grow gills and abandon the world of air

Nahh I could see it happening easily. Lets say you grew up in/moved to an island chain like the polynesian islands, venice, or any sort of coastal/river fishing village where you are going to be frequently going into & under the water. The video thing they did yesterday one of the wotc folks mention that aquatic elves are amphibious & can breathe both growing gills or otherwise becoming amphibious over time would have distinct advantages in collecting clams/checking crustacean traps/etc so you spend more & more time down there, meet the neighbors (http://keith-baker.com/underwater-eberron/) you never spoke to before & decide that they have so much better night life/weekend barbeques/more economic opportunities/whatever so you want to move there. It's really only "harsh" in the context of the pre-eberron style absolute morality (eberron was the first setting to explicitly give the middle finger to absolute morality) where most everything down there is pretty awful.

edit:


Thank you for eloquently proving my point about taking the worst possible interpretation. There are three (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OurElvesAreBetter) different (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CantArgueWithElves) tropes (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ScrewYouElves) about elves' cultural posturing as the "superior race" in hundreds of works. I didn't say anything about people who play elves.



You had a point up until yuan-ti and goliaths. Those two are monsters and separate races, respectively. As far as I know, a half-giant isn't the same thing as a Goliath. Also, half-breeds aren't the same thing as the 99 elf varieties.


Those kind of things are why I love the Monster hunter international[ (https://www.goodreads.com/series/45313-monster-hunter-international) elves (think... rural alabama trailer park as the baseline that taints everything else about them:smallbiggrin:)

[rbstr]

If the bugbears are determined enough to all go and try to kill the PCs, the PCs better get out of dodge than to try fighting them.

Seriously, if the bugbears are smart enough to just spread out the actual effectiveness of most spells (until very high levels) on a battlefield scale is quite poor. 20ft radius Insect Plague is a small fraction of the total area of most people's backyards. You can't even move Insects - it'd be nearly a complete waste of a spell vs. an army. Also, Longbows have a longer range than Call Lightning.

[War_lord]

Yeah, but they're a) inhuman monsters

Said the guy who constantly complains about Orcs, Goblins and Gnolls being inhuman monsters.



You might have a case for broodguards and purebloods, but the abominations and anathema? Nope. They're further removed from humans than any elf from the baseline high elf.

They're still human derived, from the way the process is described, an abnormally strong human could progress up the totem pole of transformation pretty rapidly.


Also, may I have an apology for assuming I'm calling elf players racists?

I'm not going to apologize for calling you out on your bull now or ever. How about you apologize for misrepresenting your hatred of D&D as being a problem with FR now that it has been shown that most of what you object to long predates that setting?