Setting Integrity vs Multiversal Genres [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

Regitnui

2018-02-19, 12:35 AM

Mike Mearls is on record saying that each of the settings, to him, represents a different genre of D&D: FR is the "high fantasy" D&D, Eberron the "noire" D&D, Ravenloft the "horror" D&D, and Dark Sun the "post-apocalypse" D&D. This informs the design approach to other settings and may be the reason we receive no books other than adventures that are explicitly set anywhere.

I disagree. I believe that a setting's own internal integrity is paramount. I believe that you can play FR for horror, Eberron for post-apocalypse, Ravenloft for noire and Dark Sun for high fantasy. If each setting is given the proper Core Book baseline to build on, they can branch off, yes, but treating them as mere "roleplay genres" devalues each of them.

Persistent rumours state that all the settings in 5e will be linked via Planescape/Spelljammer/both. Now this has been done before. I'm not going to stand here and declare that this is inherently a bad idea. But I do believe we should be wary of this strategy creating a blurred definition between each setting, where FR gnomes are dropped into Dark Sun, Dark Sun thri-keen into Eberron, and Eberron's shifters into FR. If this is done for the sole reason of "player freedom" or to keep the AL characters viable whereever the adventure arc of the time goes, it's a mistake.

The settings of D&D derive a lot of their flavour by what are considered the common races of each. The lack of gnomes and half-orcs in Dark Sun underlines that something has happened to these races as part of Athas' descent into desert wasteland. That does not remove the rules for those races, but attempting to bring a half-orc character that a player has been using until now into a Dark Sun campaign arc is not a decision that should be handled by using a multiverse or extended universe as an excuse.

This is my opinion, and my opinion alone. WotC doesn't have to release more books. They don't even have to change their overall strategy. I, instead, think that we as players and consumers of the game and materials should not be complacent enough to see the settings hybridised and crossed over arbitrarily. I know some Forgotten Realms fans are unhappy with some settings facts being altered. I say we guard our other settings from experiencing the same dilution in the name of modular gaming and player freedom.

Don't gatekeep. Don't tell people they're playing wrong. But by the Host, the Wall of the Faithless and the elemental planes, let us make sure that our settings keep their spark and flavour beyond being reduced to mere genres of the same game. A noire adventure should not have to take place in Eberron. A high fantasy romp should not be exclusive to Forgotten Realms. Stand for setting integrity and separation of genre and setting.

There. You may now dogpile me with reasons why I'm wrong.

Luccan

2018-02-19, 02:11 AM

MrStabby

2018-02-19, 02:22 AM

Luccan

2018-02-19, 02:42 AM

Hmm. If not settings books do you think there could be "style" books? Something like a dm hide to "horror" adventuring - how to build a world where that genre works and some player content intended for such a world (as an example).

It wouldn't be "ravenloft" but it would be an attempt to capture what WotC sees as making it appropriate as a setting for horror.

That would be interesting. I'd imagine such books would contain brief write-ups of the appropriate world, though I'd much prefer setting books. I suppose a few don't require much updating: Eberron always starts at whatever year (I forget which), I never played 4e, but I don't think Dark Sun has been updated in decades (could be wrong), and Ravenloft, well not sure you need much of an update when most horrors can only be temporarily defeated. Still, it'd be nice to have some relevant, gameable stuff for this edition for DMs and Players in those settings.

the_brazenburn

2018-02-19, 07:19 AM

What about Dragonlance and Greyhawk?

I'd call Greyhawk High Fantasy, or possibly have it take over as noire from Eberron. Eberron is, as others have suggested, really more of a steampunk theme anyway.

Dragonlance I can see as either High Fantasy, or potentially post-apocalyptic.

Unoriginal

2018-02-19, 07:40 AM

Mile Mearls directly and explicitly stating several times that all those settings exist in different worlds of the Material Plane (or on other planes in a few cases) is not "persisting rumors". It's a statement of fact for 5e's canon.

Now, as Mearls stated, the worlds are still different because the background magic field that affect them is different, and so are the deities and the Planes that are linked to them.

Regitnui

2018-02-19, 08:14 AM

Now, as Mearls stated, the worlds are still different because the background magic field that affect them is different, and so are the deities and the Planes that are linked to them.

We're not talking about the in-universe effects, but the potential homogenization of the settings brought on by the intention to make different settings more akin to genres of the same game as opposed to entirely different worlds. Essentially making the core books more definitive of any given setting than the books that would define that setting.

Unoriginal

2018-02-19, 09:16 AM

We're not talking about the in-universe effects, but the potential homogenization of the settings brought on by the intention to make different settings more akin to genres of the same game as opposed to entirely different worlds. Essentially making the core books more definitive of any given setting than the books that would define that setting.

And I'm saying that homogenization (outside of what is required to still play the same game overall) is not likely to happen, because the worlds are clearly separate and obeying different rules (to different extents), with an in-universe explanation as to why it is like that.

Mearl has went on record saying that they didn't make/release an official Warforged race yet because Warforged are specific to Eberron and so meeting one in a different world would mean they have traveled from Eberron to this world, which is something so rare even people like Mordenkainen wouldn't believe it.

They're not going to make a "guide to post-apocalypse D&D" disguised as a Dark Sun book or something like that. Dark Sun IS post-apo D&D, but it's more than that.

Knaight

2018-02-19, 09:28 AM

I'd agree with roughly half of this. The whole idea of a mandatory meta-setting which ties all the settings together instead of just letting them be their own thing annoys me to no end (particularly when it overlaps with the idea that players can just bring characters over from other GM's games), and I'd like to see it gone.

With that said, I do think that settings inform genre, and that's not a bad thing. You can run basically any genre in basically any setting, but it's going to affect the overall feel. To use a somewhat exaggerated example compared to anything likely to pop up in D&D, you could run a romantic comedy in Lovecraft's Cthulhu setting. If you're deliberately using the juxtaposition of setting and story, cool. Otherwise, there's a real question of why exactly you chose that setting. A similar case applies to running a lighthearted comedic fantasy game in Dark Sun.

More than that, there are entire settings built to explicitly explore themes. The mainstream D&D settings are a bit broader, but there's certainly some made explicitly for genre exploration. Horror is pretty much what Ravenloft exists for as as setting. They're coupled for good reason, and while they can be decoupled it's worth considering why exactly you've chosen to do so.

hamishspence

2018-02-19, 09:33 AM

Hmm... interesting. I'm not super familiar with Eberron lore, but the idea of it being "noire", based on what I know, is... odd. I mean, the others were clearly created with those genres in mind, whatever your thoughts on them, but was Eberron really intended to have a "noire" feel? It's clearly Magitech/steampunk-esque. Not that you couldn't do a noire adventure their, but I find it a weird choice.

It's intended to be a scale- a spectrum.

On a different forum

Other Poster:

**Eberron's pretensions to noir aren't cutting it for me. Halflings on dinosaurs, magic trains, and the evil cardinals of the Silver Flame all add up to "slightly campy pulp" to me, not noir.**

Keith Baker

That's because they ARE slightly campy pulp, not noir. The thing to understand is that when I describe Eberron as "pulp-noir", that's not a single thing - it's a spectrum. Eberron is "Lord of the Rings meets Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Maltese Falcon"... but not necessarily AT THE SAME TIME. I wanted a setting that could play in both directions and which COULD bring them together - but which could also allow DMs to play to the extremes.

So lost cities of Xen'drik, battles atop a moving lightning rail, tribes of raptor-riding Talenta barbarians, undead soldiers of the Emerald Claw seeking to activate the Necrotic Resonator - these things are pure pulp. There's no pretension that they are noir in any way; this is Raiders of the Lost Ark with swords and sorcery, with no trace of Sam Spade or Gutman.

On the other end of the spectrum, we have the slums of Sharn. The Machiavellian intrigues of Zilargo. The lingering resentments between the Five Nations, overshadowed by the lurking fear that the Mourning will happen again - the quiet belief that this may be the last generation, that the world could end at any moment, coupled with the assurance that if it doesn't, the war WILL begin anew. The schemes of the Dragonmarked Houses, both the short-term quest for wealth and the long, slow unraveling of the monarchies. THIS is where the noir comes into Eberron. The old soldier who hunts warforged in the sewers of Sharn, seeking vengeance for his own slaughtered family and taking out his sorrows on these creatures who themselves have been abandoned by society. The cold war between the Five Nations balanced against the ancient hidden conflict between dragon and demon, a war that has continued while lesser civilizations have risen and fallen.

Then there are subjects that walk the line in between. The Dreaming Dark are a force most suited to subtle intrigues and the corruption of allies, but you can certainly work in a seen of over-the-top psi-fu action with an quori nightmare if that's what you want. The Lord of Blades can play the role of pulp villain, but he can also serve as a symbol of these discarded soldiers - weapons made for war and now lost and unwanted in a world that wishes to forget the conflict.

It's a mistake to look for noir in every atom of Eberron. It's not SUPPOSED to be there. The DM who loves pulp action and hates the darkness of noir can find exactly what he wants in Eberron - provided he picks the right locations and villains to use in his game. The same is true of the DM who likes noir and hates the over-the-top pulp. It's a spectrum - not a single flavor. There may be halflings riding dinosaurs... in the Talenta Plains. But if you hate them, there's no reason your players ever need to see a clawfoot.

KorvinStarmast

2018-02-19, 10:20 AM

Luccan

2018-02-19, 11:08 AM

That tieflings exist in FR is an already demonstrated example of homogenization. They make sense in Planescape ...

Tieflings have been in FR for a while though, yeah? I've never done a ton in the setting, but there was an NPC tiefling party-member in NWN2, which was a 3.5 game. They were less overtly demonic then, but it's been a fair few years since they weren't in FR, if that's anything to go by.

Also, I don't understand how they "don't make sense" in settings other than Planescape. Distant demonic ancestry seems common enough in a lot of fantasy

Joe the Rat

2018-02-19, 12:34 PM

In Days of Old, tieflings originated in Planescape, as a sort of watered-down-not-necessarily-demonic-origin cambion to fill the angsty mixed parentage race that half-elves supposedly occupy in prime material worlds.

Fiend blood (and celestial blood... and genie blood) are a lot easier to come by in a setting where you can run into them in not-summoned-by-a-wizard situations. Like at a coffee shop or bookstore. Hell, they might run the establishment.

Tieflings exist, and are back-fitted into the settings through Lore-altering gymnastics. This happens. Warforged also got back-fitted into settings. Continue on, and everyplace looks the same, only with different hats.

The challenge is in saying no. The general rules should provide options (or guidelines - see the DMG) for everything anyone could need for any genre of D&D, then justify why certain options are not used or available in this setting.

To circle back around, this is what Mordenkainen's Tome should be doing - if there are world specific playable races, they should get a monster entry, and block of racial attributes in the back of the player section - sort of like what Volo's did with the "monster" pcs. You'll have the tools if you need them, but they are packaged into a "really not from around here" context.

Then the DM has to be willing to say no. Or willing to say yes.

TheCount

2018-02-19, 01:47 PM

I honestly dont know whats the problem if WoTC release races specific to the campaings. If players want to play as one of them in a different setting, most dms would allow it anyway, no?

I know its your personal view of the thing, but, is it really that important? I mean, cordoning off the settings? Spelljammer and Planscape are the default way to connect them as far as i know, but there is also the World Serpent Inn too, and im sure there are many others that the dms come up with, like the different settings are from different eras of the same world, from the top of my head.

If you dont want them to mix, just say so to your players.

I dont see any reason why there shouldnt be warforged in other settings, they could be explained as sentinet golems/animated armors or just creatures cursed to never feel the pleasure of flesh ever again (eating, drinking, sensing temperature and so on).

For my part, i like to mix and match, and i prefer Eberron, what with all the schemming and the shades o generally gray morality.

BurgerBeast

2018-02-19, 02:51 PM

Naanomi

2018-02-19, 03:22 PM

but there is also the World Serpent Inn too
The infinite staircase as well

Regitnui

2018-02-19, 11:24 PM

I think you're taking Mearls' comments to mean something that they don't.

For example, I doubt that Mearls (or anyone) would deny that you can play horror in FR.

I don't think that's his point. I think his point is more akin to: FR is better suited to high fantasy.

There are a number of good reasons to think this, upon which I probably don't need to elaborate. Beyond these (the unmentioned reasons) being a good reasons to "pigeon-hole" the settings into genres, there is the history of genre associated with each.

So: you can do comic Dark Sun if you like, but the setting is not designed with that in mind, nor would it make sense for the game designers to make it a priority to include that possibility. Likewise for horror FR, etc.

But the game designers shouldn't, on the other hand, limit their view of a setting by genre. Why shouldn't Dark Sun handle both post-apocalypse and intrigue (inside the dragon-king cities)? A setting has a main genre, but looking at any setting from only one angle is likely to make them more flanderized and likely to lose their spark.

BurgerBeast

2018-02-20, 02:06 AM

But the game designers shouldn't, on the other hand, limit their view of a setting by genre. Why shouldn't Dark Sun handle both post-apocalypse and intrigue (inside the dragon-king cities)? A setting has a main genre, but looking at any setting from only one angle is likely to make them more flanderized and likely to lose their spark.

You’re just overexagerrating the degree of exclusivity. If you consider each setting to be a product line, you market it based on its strengths.

Nobody is saying that single guys can’t own mini-vans. But as a marketing strategy, you push mini-vans on families and sports cars on single guys.

This is not akin to robbing single guys of their freedom to buy mini-vans. They can go right ahead.

Tetrasodium

2018-02-20, 09:23 AM

You’re just overexagerrating the degree of exclusivity. If you consider each setting to be a product line, you market it based on its strengths.

Nobody is saying that single guys can’t own mini-vans. But as a marketing strategy, you push mini-vans on families and sports cars on single guys.

This is not akin to robbing single guys of their freedom to buy mini-vans. They can go right ahead.

I don't agree that he is exaggerating, it's a very reasonable concern that wotc has given plenty of reason to be concerned over. As to your minivan analogy... It is fatally flawed because wotc is the only one legally allowed to make sports cars suvs, sedans, light trucks, and hatchbacks but had been making nothing but minivans since they switched over from gss/diesel (3.5/4e) to modern fuels (5e) years ago. Granted those minivans often include a section in the owners manual explaining how you can use a sports car like a minivan, but it & the manual+minivan itself is often made by someone who loves minivans & seems to have never considered much if anything about other types of vehicles.

PhoenixPhyre

2018-02-20, 09:41 AM

As to your minivan analogy... It is fatally flawed because wotc is the only one legally allowed to make sports cars suvs, sedans, light trucks, and hatchbacks

Wait what? In a couple weeks I'll play in an "official" D&D setting for the first time ever. That includes with multiple DMs, over a bunch of games at different tables. And heck, most of the front of the DMG is about making your own world.

Yes, D&D tends to run heroic people doing heroic things better than other play styles. Most of the game is not FR specific, and the parts that are are trivially neglectable (as I know, since I've done just that).

Knaight

2018-02-20, 09:53 AM

I don't agree that he is exaggerating, it's a very reasonable concern that wotc has given plenty of reason to be concerned over. As to your minivan analogy... It is fatally flawed because wotc is the only one legally allowed to make sports cars suvs, sedans, light trucks, and hatchbacks but had been making nothing but minivans since they switched over from gss/diesel (3.5/4e) to modern fuels (5e) years ago.

There's a lot of 5e material still covered under the OGL, and everything to a setting that isn't a tiny handful of trademarked terms is open. Basically anyone can legally make, publish, and sell a 5e setting. The standards for non-commercial settings are even looser.

This is without getting into the whole concept of other roleplaying games and their settings, or more than a few intentionally "generic" settings clearly made for D&D.

Tetrasodium

2018-02-20, 11:32 AM

Wait what? In a couple weeks I'll play in an "official" D&D setting for the first time ever. That includes with multiple DMs, over a bunch of games at different tables. And heck, most of the front of the DMG is about making your own world.

Yes, D&D tends to run heroic people doing heroic things better than other play styles. Most of the game is not FR specific, and the parts that are are trivially neglectable (as I know, since I've done just that).

It was in reference to the setting restrictions on dmsguild. I felt like it was an obvious one that did not need spelling out

PhoenixPhyre

2018-02-20, 11:38 AM

It was in reference to the setting restrictions on dmsguild. I felt like it was an obvious one that did not need spelling out

Well, it wasn't obvious (or even evident at all). That's the only platform that has those restrictions and it affects basically no games I've ever seen. Note that you can also publish setting-neutral stuff there. You just can't publish 3rd party settings (or strongly setting-dependent material). You can publish that stuff elsewhere without legal issue, as long as you stick to the OGL. And if you publish on dmsguild, you can use non-OGL sources (as long as you meet the other requirements).

So no, that's appropos of just about nothing relevant.

Tanarii

2018-02-20, 12:45 PM

The challenge is in saying no. The general rules should provide options (or guidelines - see the DMG) for everything anyone could need for any genre of D&D, then justify why certain options are not used or available in this setting.
Agreed. And sadly, you'll still come across things like players that want to bring an outsider/exception into a DM's carefully limited options for their existing setting ... and then get upset when they are told no. Sometimes angry that their "right" to make any character they want has been abrogated.

Not just races, but multiclassing, feats, optional/variant rules, and even house-rules (known in advance) will get this attitude.

PhoenixPhyre

2018-02-20, 02:15 PM

Agreed. And sadly, you'll still come across things like players that want to bring an outsider/exception into a DM's carefully limited options for their existing setting ... and then get upset when they are told no. Sometimes angry that their "right" to make any character they want has been abrogated.

Not just races, but multiclassing, feats, optional/variant rules, and even house-rules (known in advance) will get this attitude.

I've been very lucky not to have any pushback/player entitlement. Except the one who wants to make a kenku. Mostly because that bugs me. :smallfurious:

BurgerBeast

2018-02-20, 07:03 PM

I don't agree that he is exaggerating, it's a very reasonable concern that wotc has given plenty of reason to be concerned over.

Well, given what follows, I can see why you don't think he's exaggerating. You exaggerate further than he does. Maybe exaggerate isn't the right word. Maybe over-dramatize?

As to your minivan analogy... It is fatally flawed because wotc is the only one legally allowed to make sports cars suvs, sedans, light trucks, and hatchbacks but had been making nothing but minivans since they switched over from gss/diesel (3.5/4e) to modern fuels (5e) years ago.

Fatally flawed? Fatally? Really? Drama much?

So don't buy their products, then. But why whine about the products you wish they'd make? Buy what you want. Don't buy what you don't want.

Granted those minivans often include a section in the owners manual explaining how you can use a sports car like a minivan, but it & the manual+minivan itself is often made by someone who loves minivans & seems to have never considered much if anything about other types of vehicles.

Okay, so you don't really understand the analogy at all, but... putting that aside for now: Why would you want to use a minivan as a sports car? It's not a sports car.

If you want a sports car, then buy a sports car. If you want a mini-van, then buy a mini-van. But don't get mad at the manufacturer if they decide they don't want to make sports cars. This is how the free market works.

They make what they want. You buy it if you want. You don't buy it if you don't want it. You don't whinge at them for not making what you want.

Regitnui

2018-02-20, 11:27 PM

The minivan analogy is better covered with WotC only ever making white minivans with one engine option. There are many people who'd like different colours or engine options, but the possibility is that WotC only wants to build white minivans, so they change the colour of the steering wheel and chrome the wheels and call it a different minivan in the name of keeping all the parts in every minivan interchangeable.

However, in the past, WotC made green, black, and red minivans with engine options ranging from small to large. Those people who were customers of a specific type of minivan; whether the brown one with a powerful tuned engine or the grey one with customized decals and a growly diesel or another; come into the shop and only see white minivans. They offer to make them different colours again, but the customers don't want the white minivan with a different colour. They want their old model updated because that model worked for them.

Recent attempts to promote the different models of minivan resulted in them using parts from the white minivan anyway, which makes people worried that WotC has forgotten how to make anything but white minivans. When the man in charge declares his intention that everything will be compatible with the white minivan, the fans of the growly diesel wonder how a diesel engine is supposed to be completely compatible with a petrol without losing the traits that made it a growly diesel engine.

Makes sense?

Tanarii

2018-02-20, 11:51 PM

For some reason I feel like I should be driving my kids to their soccer game.

Naanomi

2018-02-20, 11:55 PM

Luccan

2018-02-21, 12:23 AM

Of course, the decision to make white minivans was based off of marketing research and although people may claim to want other colors, the historic van sales data clearly shows they make more profit just churning out those white cans and people keep buying them (in fact last time the van company went crazy with options, it essentially went bankrupt)

I thought it almost went bankrupt because it built a bunch of vans, then sold schematics for how to build one at home online, so people just paid for the quicker and cheaper schematics and the company lost a lot of money because no one was buying any vans they actually made, even the white ones.

Naanomi

2018-02-21, 12:51 AM

(I was trying to reference the collapse of TSR back in 2e, partially blamed on continuing to sink money into settings very few people were buying... not anything 3.X related... I didn’t follow the business side then)

Luccan

2018-02-21, 12:52 AM

Darth Ultron

2018-02-21, 01:10 AM

Mike Mearls is on record saying that each of the settings, to him, represents a different genre of D&D: FR is the "high fantasy" D&D, Eberron the "noire" D&D, Ravenloft the "horror" D&D, and Dark Sun the "post-apocalypse" D&D. This informs the design approach to other settings and may be the reason we receive no books other than adventures that are explicitly set anywhere.

I disagree.

I disagree too.

Mike is typical of the non-gamer corporate and tribal division type thinking. Setting A is X, if you want to play X, you must play in Setting A. This makes sense as they both want to label and divide people, but, of course, most of all, Make Money. Oh, you want to play a High Fantasy D&D game, oh well, then you MUST buy our Offical High Fantasy Setting: The Forgotten Realms.

And as a Die Hard FR fan, I can tell you the Setting is not ''High Fantasy''. But, of course, the ''Mikes'' in the world see a couple powerful NPCs and go ''oh, FR is all high fantasy, pew pew!". Though, they do ignore everything else in the setting, but then that is normal for them to do for everything.

The ''genre'' don't fit the settings very well. I'd say that the vast majority of FR fans like the detail of the setting, really it's the only setting with insane levels of detail. Eberron the "noire"? Nope. At best Eberron has always been the Anti-FR(hey if you hate FR, play in Eberron!), but you could also say it's the ''pulp'' or ''all most steampunk'' setting too. Dark Sun the "post-apocalypse"? Er, well more like ''harsh survival''?

Now Ravenloft is just about pure ''Horror'', but it still feels wrong to say it's ''just that''.

You can really do anything in any setting....to fight a Dragon King or Domain Lord (Dark Sun and Ravenloft) sure sound like High Fantasy. And Vampires in Waterdeep would sure be horror in FR.

Really, what they should make is more generic books like just ''intrigue'' or ''survival''. And for a sneaky evil money grabbing trick: put all the settings in there too. BUT do do the utterly lame one line stuff or the special box. I'm talking like a CHAPTER per setting. So the start of the book would have the generic fluff and generic mechanics, then the next chapters would be that topic PER SETTING. Now each setting has a bit of a different 'spin' on each topic, so each chapter would be unique. BUT, and this is the best part, each unique setting thing is not ''locked'' into that setting. You can use it anywhere. As it's true if you make a book ''The Horrible Horrors of Ravenloft Horror", then yes likely only the couple of Ravenloft fans will buy it. But make a ''Tome of Horror'', with HUGE chapters per setting, and you have a good chance of getting fans of a lot of the settings. And for more evil money...you could split this into two books....one the Generic ''Secrets of Intrigue'' and one ''Worlds of Intrigue".

BurgerBeast

2018-02-21, 02:32 AM

I disagree too.

Mike is typical of the non-gamer corporate and tribal division type thinking. Setting A is X, if you want to play X, you must play in Setting A. This makes sense as they both want to label and divide people, but, of course, most of all, Make Money. Oh, you want to play a High Fantasy D&D game, oh well, then you MUST buy our Offical High Fantasy Setting: The Forgotten Realms.

Except that’s not what he’s saying at all. He’s saying: we’re making products of this type for this setting. He’s not saying you can’t play it in other ways. He’s saying that WotC is not making products for it. That’s totally different.

The company made three core books that are all you need to play the game. They’re not pigeon-holing anyone. They then decided that the best way to support the settings while not bloating the market is to focus the themes.

And now you cry about it. I suppose they offended your existence. Maybe if they’d given you a trigger warning first, things would be okay.

And as a Die Hard FR fan, I can tell you the Setting is not ''High Fantasy''. But, of course, the ''Mikes'' in the world see a couple powerful NPCs and go ''oh, FR is all high fantasy, pew pew!". Though, they do ignore everything else in the setting, but then that is normal for them to do for everything.

I’ll agree that FR is not high fantasy. But who cares? Mearls never said it is. [edit: or maybe Mearls did say this, but it’s oblique to the point.] He said WotC is going to support it with high-fantasy-themed products (which the products do not appear to be, in my opinion). [edit: that’s the relevant part.] All that matters is the company decided to go with consistency of theme within a setting. Big deal. Get over it.

Don’t buy the products, or buy the products and adjust the theme. How hard is that?

The ''genre'' don't fit the settings very well.

Who cares? There are as many opinions on this as there are players. The game is built to be played however you want. How is that not enough? Do you really need product support for multiple settings with multiple themes? Or can you sort that out for yourself and just avoid products you don’t like?

I'd say that the vast majority of FR fans like the detail of the setting, really it's the only setting with insane levels of detail.

So what’s the problem, then? You need more? You need it to be done to your specifications?

You can really do anything in any setting....to fight a Dragon King or Domain Lord (Dark Sun and Ravenloft) sure sound like High Fantasy. And Vampires in Waterdeep would sure be horror in FR.

And nobody is saying you can’t. Nobody. You’ve invented this position. All they are saying is that they don’t plan to release a “vampires in Waterdeep” campaign. Get over it, already.

Really, what they should make is more generic books like just...

Maybe you should get a job at WotC. Go pitch your ideas to them.

But in the mean time, just play how you want. I don’t think you have to worry about Mearls complaining that you’re playing FR wrong because your campaign is about vampires in Waterdeep. Because he never f**king said anything remotely like that.

Unoriginal

2018-02-21, 04:21 AM

I'll never understand why people dislike Mearls so much.

Zilong

2018-02-21, 04:37 AM

I'll never understand why people dislike Mearls so much.

yeah, I've seen a lot of that attitude since i started frequenting D&D boards more regularly. I'm a bit baffled to be honest.

As for making the various settings more homogenized, I don't see a need to panic. The only example we have so far is Ravenloft via curse of Strahd. As far as I can tell it hasn't been infected in any major way by any other setting. Sure Mordenkainen shows up, but its a bit of a cameo anyway and he's not even from FR which is the setting everyone seems to complain about in this respect. Though I may be missing the point since halfway through all this I started getting the urge to shop for cars.

Regitnui

2018-02-21, 05:51 AM

I'll never understand why people dislike Mearls so much.

I don't personally, but I'm just worried about his enthusiasm for the one line of D&D (Pseudo-FR/Core). If the other settings don't see stuff that doesn't belong show up, I'll admit I was worried over nothing.

I also know he's not the only person at WotC. So I blame the company for the company's missteps, not Mearls.

strangebloke

2018-02-21, 10:11 AM

Or just, y'know, don't play the modules.

Do the homework yourself, and experience the wonder of a new setting for a change.

I'm playing through mines of phandelvr with a new DM/group and it's alright, but personally I prefer most of the homebrewed settings my friends have come up with. This new campaign in Lost Mines is the first time I've ever touched any official setting in my seven years of dnd.

I'm kind of boggled by how much everyone complains about 'x setting/module has not been updated for 5e'?

Like what's really missing from 5e that you can't run an ebberon campaign? The artificer? Just play a wizard who is on the hunt for magic-item recipes. Dragonmarks? It's a magic item that grants you an x/long rest ability. Lore? What would you even change? It isn't that crazy-hard to update a module to 5th edition.

Unless y'all are playing in AL, I don't really see the problem.

Tanarii

2018-02-21, 10:27 AM

I'll never understand why people dislike Mearls so much.
I hated him because he was promoted up then intentionally axed 4e, which I really liked, as a test bed for his ideas on how to change D&D back into something more familiar to its previous incarnation.

Turned out I liked the new version too. And it was absolutely what they needed to do from a business standpoint. But it still felt like the move made by a greedy and egotistical corporate slime-ball pursuing his own personal agenda to me for a long time. Eventually I got over it.

Personal rancor behind me, my impression of him now is he's pretty good at vision and top-level concepts, which is why 5e is such a success, as well as being a pretty solid (if vanilla) product. But everything I've ever seen that's definitely attributed as a direct-from-him & unpolished mechanic is terrible, so apparently he sucks at mechanics.

So given that, when he talks on things like product lines and settings and genres, I'm willing to cut him some slack and see how it turns out. IMO, so far he's been doing a good job on those fronts.

Regitnui

2018-02-21, 10:45 AM

Like what's really missing from 5e that you can't run an eberron campaign?

*clears throat*

Changelings (UA is not official)
Shifters (UA is not official)
Warforged (UA is not official)
Dragonmarks (UA is not official)
Artificer (UA is not official)
Psionics (UA is not official)
Kalashtar
The Quori
Daelkyr
Dolgrim
Dolgrue
Dolgaunts
Symbionts
Horrid animal template
Magebred template
Undying (creature type)
Magical Locations
optional magical components
Special materials (byeshk and targath)

Admittedly, none of this is critical, since I'm running an Eberron campaign right now. Even having one UA puts us well ahead of Dark Sun and Dragonlance, but you did ask me what was missing. I also refrained from adding GM materials like possession/channelling rules and elemental binding/vehicles rules. Never mind the various magical items...

Unoriginal

2018-02-21, 10:47 AM

I hated him because he was promoted up then intentionally axed 4e, which I really liked, as a test bed for his ideas on how to change D&D back into something more familiar to its previous incarnation.

Turned out I liked the new version too. And it was absolutely what they needed to do from a business standpoint. But it still felt like the move made by a greedy and egotistical corporate slime-ball pursuing his own personal agenda to me for a long time. Eventually I got over it.

Personal rancor behind me, my impression of him now is he's pretty good at vision and top-level concepts, which is why 5e is such a success, as well as being a pretty solid (if vanilla) product. But everything I've ever seen that's definitely attributed as a direct-from-him & unpolished mechanic is terrible, so apparently he sucks at mechanics.

So given that, when he talks on things like product lines and settings and genres, I'm willing to cut him some slack and see how it turns out. IMO, so far he's been doing a good job on those fronts.

I encourage you to watch Mearls's Happy Fun Hour show, where he designs subclasses based on name suggestions from the fans.

Pretty interesting to see him talk both about the design methods that are behind the game's different subclasses, as well as the feedback the D&D team got on how players perceived class features since the begining of 5e

Tetrasodium

2018-02-21, 11:11 AM

For some reason I feel like I should be driving my kids to their soccer game.

(I was trying to reference the collapse of TSR back in 2e, partially blamed on continuing to sink money into settings very few people were buying... not anything 3.X related... I didn’t follow the business side then)

Oh. I was referring to what little knowledge I had on the money problems WotC faced in 4e
You've all displayed why I called the original minivan analogy fatally flawed, as it requires too many levels of oversimplification to use.

Luccan 4e's problem was completely different & more related to the 4e system itself. The 3.5>4e switch that created pathfinder is quite a bit like southpark's IT (https://www.hulu.com/watch/266066) or the fart powered version that came before it that I'm haaving trouble finding. The fact that IT was later shown to have a button that turns off the thrusting spitroast bukake features & such maps pretty well to how people just started using the still mostly 3,5 compatible 3.75 known as pathfinder (which is still more like a midway for 3,5 & 5e than 4e was despite some of the functional 4e elements making it into 5e).
.
Naanomi, the problems that tsr had are well documented & fragmenting the customer base probably contributed to it, but general mismanagement & the release of an uncountable number of splatbooks caused a not insignificant portion of problems on their own beyond those.

Well, given what follows, I can see why you don't think he's exaggerating. You exaggerate further than he does. Maybe exaggerate isn't the right word. Maybe over-dramatize?

Fatally flawed? Fatally? Really? Drama much?

So don't buy their products, then. But why whine about the products you wish they'd make? Buy what you want. Don't buy what you don't want.

Okay, so you don't really understand the analogy at all, but... putting that aside for now: Why would you want to use a minivan as a sports car? It's not a sports car.

If you want a sports car, then buy a sports car. If you want a mini-van, then buy a mini-van. But don't get mad at the manufacturer if they decide they don't want to make sports cars. This is how the free market works.

They make what they want. You buy it if you want. You don't buy it if you don't want it. You don't whinge at them for not making what you want.

I'm not sure why your incredibly poor analogy about minivans (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?551463-Setting-Integrity-vs-Multiversal-Genres&p=22858104#post22858104) would cause me not to buy wotc's products.Your analogy is completely understood, but it lacks consideration for the point Regitnui i& others are making in the way you made it.. the number of people who have already redone it in very different ways nicely shows why I called it "fatally" flawed. I & pthers have extended your analogy to somewhat account for the problems you neglect to consider(or deliberately ignore?), soyou want to complain about it.... :/

I'll never understand why people dislike Mearls so much.
quick to give feedback to the "find the drawing board" stuff. I say that as someone who has given negative feedback on both mechanical & fluff aspects of his stuff in the past Greyhawk initiative didn't work for me because I (and many others) handle initiative differently from him, but it's still an option with merits I can see. I didn't like his lolth pact warlock enshrining lolth at a class level & was very vocal about it, my praise of the kraken pact warlock & acrobat(?)rogue were limited to what I think was a comment in his happy fun hour thing & one or two likes on twitter
He's passionate, enthusiastic, & sometimes an easy target because of the sheer volume of stuff he puts out. Fr the most part he does a great job, but you don't usually see people crediting him for the good stuff he puts out let alone the stuff he clearly had a hand in as much as they are complaining about the stuff they dislike

I'll never understand why people dislike Mearls so much.

yeah, I've seen a lot of that attitude since i started frequenting D&D boards more regularly. I'm a bit baffled to be honest.

As for making the various settings more homogenized, I don't see a need to panic. The only example we have so far is Ravenloft via curse of Strahd. As far as I can tell it hasn't been infected in any major way by any other setting. Sure Mordenkainen shows up, but its a bit of a cameo anyway and he's not even from FR which is the setting everyone seems to complain about in this respect. Though I may be missing the point since halfway through all this I started getting the urge to shop for cars.
No it's really not the only example. It's just the only published example of a setting. Listen to some of the stuff they say about the mindflayer empire and the gods reacting in the state of d&d (https://nerdsonearth.com/2017/11/the-state-of-dungeons-and-dragons-podcast/) & other videos/tweets. For an example of a tweet, crawford answers a qiestion of why we got tabaxi instead pf playable gnolls in volos by saying that it's because they are horrible people... well in darl sun they are dead & in eberron they are moreklingonish noble savage types. In the tiefling video someone asks about the wild idea of an abyssal tiefling, but asks in a tone as if they had no idea that was always a reasonable possibility after they were published in the planeswalker handbook(?) up until 4e. Choosing to bake extraplanar struggles into aasimar & fallen aasimar by extension over just a bit of an extraplanar touch in the ancestry is a published example

Those sort of slips happen frequently where wild ideas get baked into stuff at low levels or implied that baking them in at that level is a reasonable idea. Individually they are usually not too difficult to refluff and/or work around, but over time you have done so many work arounds that the original is unrecognizable or has too manny spinning plates driven between the original source to maintain.

I don't personally, but I'm just worried about his enthusiasm for the one line of D&D (Pseudo-FR/Core). If the other settings don't see stuff that doesn't belong show up, I'll admit I was worried over nothing.

I also know he's not the only person at WotC. So I blame the company for the company's missteps, not Mearls.

I'm in the same boat. He puts out a lot of stuff (some good... some... well... ) & very often seems to take positive/negative feedback into account Some of the subclasses & xanathar comments in xge can be almost directly attributed to discussions in this & other forums & like what mearls (or maybe crawford) said about common magic items coming after reading that someone said they use them a lot phrased in a way that masde him ask why do't we have any & we should start in something they were reading somewhere they are not the only things. As a whole, we are probably better off with both types of feedback & I think mearls has thick enough skin to handle the criticism. :D

I disagree too.

Mike is typical of the non-gamer corporate and tribal division type thinking. Setting A is X, if you want to play X, you must play in Setting A. This makes sense as they both want to label and divide people, but, of course, most of all, Make Money. Oh, you want to play a High Fantasy D&D game, oh well, then you MUST buy our Offical High Fantasy Setting: The Forgotten Realms.

And as a Die Hard FR fan, I can tell you the Setting is not ''High Fantasy''. But, of course, the ''Mikes'' in the world see a couple powerful NPCs and go ''oh, FR is all high fantasy, pew pew!". Though, they do ignore everything else in the setting, but then that is normal for them to do for everything.

The ''genre'' don't fit the settings very well. I'd say that the vast majority of FR fans like the detail of the setting, really it's the only setting with insane levels of detail. Eberron the "noire"? Nope. At best Eberron has always been the Anti-FR(hey if you hate FR, play in Eberron!), but you could also say it's the ''pulp'' or ''all most steampunk'' setting too. Dark Sun the "post-apocalypse"? Er, well more like ''harsh survival''?

Now Ravenloft is just about pure ''Horror'', but it still feels wrong to say it's ''just that''.

You can really do anything in any setting....to fight a Dragon King or Domain Lord (Dark Sun and Ravenloft) sure sound like High Fantasy. And Vampires in Waterdeep would sure be horror in FR.

Really, what they should make is more generic books like just ''intrigue'' or ''survival''. And for a sneaky evil money grabbing trick: put all the settings in there too. BUT do do the utterly lame one line stuff or the special box. I'm talking like a CHAPTER per setting. So the start of the book would have the generic fluff and generic mechanics, then the next chapters would be that topic PER SETTING. Now each setting has a bit of a different 'spin' on each topic, so each chapter would be unique. BUT, and this is the best part, each unique setting thing is not ''locked'' into that setting. You can use it anywhere. As it's true if you make a book ''The Horrible Horrors of Ravenloft Horror", then yes likely only the couple of Ravenloft fans will buy it. But make a ''Tome of Horror'', with HUGE chapters per setting, and you have a good chance of getting fans of a lot of the settings. And for more evil money...you could split this into two books....one the Generic ''Secrets of Intrigue'' and one ''Worlds of Intrigue".

That paragraph of yours is pure trolling. While a book like that that uses examples from thpse settings is not a useless idea, it sounds a lot more like tsr's tome/book of $whatever splatbooks but designed to intentionally anger people. The fact that a lot of stuff in the core books pretty much does that almost exclusively for settings that are somewhat close to the default settingis why fans of settings not so close get so upset with wotc. Your suggestion would pretty much prove some of their most vitriolic complaints to have been made with good reason.

BurgerBeast

2018-02-21, 06:02 PM

I'm not sure why your incredibly poor analogy about minivans (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?551463-Setting-Integrity-vs-Multiversal-Genres&p=22858104#post22858104) would cause me not to buy wotc's products.

It wasn't designed to stop you from buying products.

It was designed to illustrate the stupidity of your claim. If you don't like the fact that WotC is marketing FR to fans of high fantasy, then shut up or do something about it. If you don't like the fact that Dodge is marketing minivans to families, then shut up or do something about it. Don't cry and insist that WotC market FR to horror fans. Don't cry and insist that Dodge market minivans to single men.

Is that clear enough for you?

Your analogy is completely understood, but it lacks consideration for the point Regitnui i& others are making in the way you made it..

Except I never made it for that purpose. It was meant to be simple. If someone takes an analogy and changes it, particularly if they infer more complexity than was intended, that doesn't make the analogy flawed. It makes their use of it flawed.

...the number of people who have already redone it in very different ways nicely shows why I called it "fatally" flawed.

Yeah. When you use a tool for a purpose that it was not designed for, the tool is flawed. Nice try, pal.

I & pthers have extended your analogy to somewhat account for the problems you neglect to consider(or deliberately ignore?), soyou want to complain about it.... :/

Yeah, you're trying to use my hammer as a screwdriver... so the hammer is flawed. Got it.

What's worse is that the analogy actually probably has the flexibility to be adapted to those purposes, and maybe even was adapted well in some cases, but that's not relevant... because I wasn't trying to achieve those purposes anyway.

Since the analogy is clearly too much for you try this:

1. WotC is going to market the product however they want.
2. You can still play with the products however you want.
3. Therefore, shut up about it and play how you want.

--- or ---

3. Keep whinging on an internet forum.

--- or ---

3. Do something about it.

If that's too complex, or fatal for you, let me know. I'll see if I can be clearer. I wouldn't want anyone to die because of a flaw in an analogy or argument. Apparently that's a possibility. No drama here. No drama here at all.

Knaight

2018-02-21, 06:28 PM

It was designed to illustrate the stupidity of your claim. If you don't like the fact that WotC is marketing FR to fans of high fantasy, then shut up or do something about it. If you don't like the fact that Dodge is marketing minivans to families, then shut up or do something about it. Don't cry and insist that WotC market FR to horror fans. Don't cry and insist that Dodge market minivans to single men.
At this point you're basically against the entire concept of criticism, at least of corporations. I've got no beef with WotC attaching genre to setting, but the idea that criticism is useless without an alternative being produced is itself basically useless. It impedes multi step collaboration where one person identifies a flaw and someone else fixes it because it's been pointed out, it impedes the process of gaining understanding from bad examples, and it's a really useful way to just dismiss criticism instead of engaging with it.

If that's too complex, or fatal for you, let me know. I'll see if I can be clearer. I wouldn't want anyone to die because of a flaw in an analogy or argument. Apparently that's a possibility. No drama here. No drama here at all.
"Fatally flawed" is a standard idiom, which essentially always has the meaning that whatever it is applied to is completely useless because of said flaw (in this case that would be your argument). There's no connection to actual death, and trying to claim that it's dramatic is just bizarre.

Regitnui

2018-02-21, 11:31 PM

It was designed to illustrate the stupidity of your claim. If you don't like the fact that WotC is marketing FR to fans of high fantasy, then shut up or do something about it. If you don't like the fact that Dodge is marketing minivans to families, then shut up or do something about it. Don't cry and insist that WotC market FR to horror fans. Don't cry and insist that Dodge market minivans to single men.

Is that clear enough for you?

Except we're already a limited and specialised consumer group. We all love minivans (RPGs). The point of the thread is not "WotC must market all settings to all people". But rather that they shouldn't build one uber-setting and declare that it is one-size-fits-all. We don't want Lolth hanging out in Eberron, or Sul-Katesh in Athas, or Rajaat in FR. The "epic crossover" is the domain of fan fiction/homebrew.

Let the settings remain what they are with the option of linking. Don't build the linking mechanism and try to plug the previously independent settings in so that all of the material previously published fits. Gnomes don't exist in Dark Sun. WotC shouldn't try to make it that gnomes can appear there just because gnomes are in core.

strangebloke

2018-02-22, 12:04 AM

Except we're already a limited and specialised consumer group. We all love minivans (RPGs). The point of the thread is not "WotC must market all settings to all people". But rather that they shouldn't build one uber-setting and declare that it is one-size-fits-all. We don't want Lolth hanging out in Eberron, or Sul-Katesh in Athas, or Rajaat in FR. The "epic crossover" is the domain of fan fiction/homebrew.

Let the settings remain what they are with the option of linking. Don't build the linking mechanism and try to plug the previously independent settings in so that all of the material previously published fits. Gnomes don't exist in Dark Sun. WotC shouldn't try to make it that gnomes can appear there just because gnomes are in core.

How hard is it to adapt stuff from 4e or 3e? I wouldn't think the fluff would change that much.

BurgerBeast

2018-02-22, 01:30 AM

At this point you're basically against the entire concept of criticism, at least of corporations.

What on earth are you talking about? No. This is false.

I've got no beef with WotC attaching genre to setting, but the idea that criticism is useless without an alternative being produced is itself basically useless.

What does this have to do with anything? I’m saying this:

If WotC chooses to market FR as high fantasy, that does not mean they are holding guns to the heads of everyone who is using the FR setting and forcing them to comply to the high fantasy genre.

That’s all.

It does not follow. People who are acting as if it does follow are categorically wrong.

It impedes multi step collaboration where one person identifies a flaw and someone else fixes it because it's been pointed out, it impedes the process of gaining understanding from bad examples, and it's a really useful way to just dismiss criticism instead of engaging with it.

Yes, thank you for explaining something everyone already knows and that has nothing at all to do with my point.

I dismissed his criticism because it is based on a false representation of Mearls. I did not dismiss it because I am generally opposed to criticism. (I’m not.)

"Fatally flawed" is a standard idiom, which essentially always has the meaning that whatever it is applied to is completely useless because of said flaw (in this case that would be your argument). There's no connection to actual death, and trying to claim that it's dramatic is just bizarre.

See Politics and the English Language by George Orwell. In his words, the use of such recycled language is a clear sign that the person using it is not thinking at all about what they write, and therefore doesn’t deserve to be listened to.

Besides the fact that it’s a ridiculous thing to say, it is based on a demonstrated lack of understanding of how the metaphor was used.

Except we're already a limited and specialised consumer group. We all love minivans (RPGs).

This goes back to my point about not understanding the metaphor. I did not use minivans as a metaphor for RPGs. I used minivans as a metaphor for specific campaign settings such as FR or Dark Sun.

The point of the thread is not "WotC must market all settings to all people". But rather that they shouldn't build one uber-setting and declare that it is one-size-fits-all.

Well, first of all, they didn’t do that. Hence my claims about being over dramatic. Second, you’re free to transplant any of the material anywhere you want.

Third, I think you’ve misrepresented the claim in the thread. The claim (at least the claim to which I responded) is that WotC/Mearls is forcing particular genres onto particular settings.

We don't want Lolth hanging out in Eberron, or Sul-Katesh in Athas, or Rajaat in FR. The "epic crossover" is the domain of fan fiction/homebrew.

Who cares? Your taste is your taste.

Let the settings remain what they are with the option of linking.

Or link the settings with the option of keeping them the same. Who cares?

None of this has anything to do with my point, though. My point is: don’t misrepresent what Mearls said.

Don't build the linking mechanism and try to plug the previously independent settings in so that all of the material previously published fits.

Why not? Because you don’t like it? I don’t care what you like.

Gnomes don't exist in Dark Sun. WotC shouldn't try to make it that gnomes can appear there just because gnomes are in core.

Remember what I said about putting the cart before the horse? Has WotC officially put gnomes into Dark Sun?

Regitnui

2018-02-22, 03:49 AM

BurgerBeast

2018-02-22, 09:48 AM

Burgerbeast, attempting to shut down a debate on a topic with "it hasn't happened yet", "I don't care" or "I don't see a problem" is not helpful. Thank you for your opinion, but you being finished with the issue does not mean the debate is over. And anyway, we have seen WotC prioritise namegrabs and marketability over setting integrity in DDO: The game was set in Eberron, but eventually included an invasion from Faerun so they could use Lolth and the associated lore.

“It hasn’t happened yet” is an excellent reason to stop debating, in this case, because there are a number of reasons to think that (1) there may never be a 5e Dark Sun product, and (2) if there were, there is no reason to think they’d treat it the same as they’ve FR.

Hate what they’ve done. That’s fine. But it does make some kind of sense, whether you like it or not. First, they decided that FR would be the default setting. Second, they decided that a re-boot if old materials would appeal from a marketing perspective. Third, they had the problem that many of the old modules weren’t set in the FR. So they made a decision: plunk them into the FR. This was almost certainly to avoid bloat, and maintain the slow-release model they’ve established. None of these conditions would apply to Dark Sun.

“I don’t care” is an appropriate response to matters of taste. That’s because any claim that is based purely on taste is a debate-ender. When one person says “I like it,” and the other says “I don’t”... well, who gets to tell the other what they should like? No one. The debate (or at least that line of debate) is over.

I don’t deny that WotC is using name-grabs. I think it’s a cheap marketing ploy and I hate it, too. But what do you want to do? Cry about it together? They have the right to market however they want, and I have the right to buy or not buy the product. I also have the right to use the product however I want when I buy it.

Finally, none of this addresses my criticism.

My criticism was: stop putting words in Mearls’ mouth.

You can accuse WotC of bringing FR to Eberron in DDO. You can accuse them of shamelessly attaching names to books for no reason other than to attract people to products unrelated to said names.

But if anyone is going to accuse Mearls of (directly or indirectly) banning genres from settings... that person is wrong.

If anyone is going to accuse WotC of bringing gnomes to Dark Sun... that person is wrong.

But here’s the thing: What if they do bring gnomes to Dark Sun? What’s the problem with that? The problem is that you don’t like it. But guess what? Someone else might. So who is right? Well, that’s a matter of taste. So no one is right.

So what do we do? Force one to bend to the other’s will? Tell them their way is wrong? Tell WotC that they can’t introduce gnomes to Dark Sun?

No. It’s always wrong to impose your will on others over matters of taste (unless you don’t believe in freedom of expression).

So my disagreement in this thread is based in two axioms:

1. Don’t put words in other people’s mouths
2. Don’t try to claim that your taste is somehow superior to someone else’s

And this is much more helpful that it may seem. Because sometimes you discover that what appears to be a matter of taste is actually a matter of judgment, which means there is room for debate. On the flip side, sometimes you have to face the fact that what you’re debating is a matter of taste, which means it is pointless, whether you like it or not.

Scots Dragon

2018-02-22, 10:09 AM

*clears throat*

Changelings (UA is not official)
Shifters (UA is not official)
Warforged (UA is not official)
Dragonmarks (UA is not official)
Artificer (UA is not official)
Psionics (UA is not official)
Kalashtar
The Quori
Daelkyr
Dolgrim
Dolgrue
Dolgaunts
Symbionts
Horrid animal template
Magebred template
Undying (creature type)
Magical Locations
optional magical components
Special materials (byeshk and targath)

Admittedly, none of this is critical, since I'm running an Eberron campaign right now. Even having one UA puts us well ahead of Dark Sun and Dragonlance, but you did ask me what was missing. I also refrained from adding GM materials like possession/channelling rules and elemental binding/vehicles rules. Never mind the various magical items...
You know they haven't even added the stuff necessary to properly play in the Forgotten Realms even though that's the one everyone complains about, right?

There are no rules for;
Avariel, because as you say UA is not official
Wild Elves, because as you say UA is not official
Psionics, which are not unique to Eberron and are also present in the Forgotten Realms. As you say, UA is not official
Progression past 20th level
Witches of Rashemen
Incantatrices
Red Wizards of Thay
Elven High Mages
Spellsingers
Shadow Adepts
Mythals
Halruaan Skyships
Generalist Wizards
Phaerimm
Sharn
Saurials
Chosen
Steel Dragons
Mercury Dragons
Shadow Dragons (specifically as a dragon type, not as a template)
Deep Dragons
Gem Dragons
Fey'ri / Daemonfey
Malaugrym
Nishruu
Wemics
Loxos
Baelnorn
Gnolls as a playable race
Hagspawn
Shades

Need I go on? For an edition that people tend to complain about for being so Forgotten Realms focused, there's certainly a remarkable shortage of the actual Forgotten Realms in it.

Unoriginal

2018-02-22, 10:21 AM

Red Wizards are in 5e, though. Also, Gnolls are not a playable race in 5e FR, either.

Scots Dragon

2018-02-22, 02:47 PM

Red Wizards are in 5e, though. Also, Gnolls are not a playable race in 5e FR, either.

The Red Wizards of Thay in previous editions have had several unique aspects and spellcasting styles which are not available in D&D 5E's rendition of them.

EDIT:
I would also be remiss if I didn't mention the sheer number of gigantic departures from earlier Forgotten Realms material, much of which is admittedly left over from D&D 4E, which are honestly completely incompatible with how the setting was earlier described.

the_brazenburn

2018-02-22, 03:34 PM

You know they haven't even added the stuff necessary to properly play in the Forgotten Realms even though that's the one everyone complains about, right?

There are no rules for;
Avariel, because as you say UA is not official
Wild Elves, because as you say UA is not official
Psionics, which are not unique to Eberron and are also present in the Forgotten Realms. As you say, UA is not official
Progression past 20th level
Witches of Rashemen
Incantatrices
Red Wizards of Thay
Elven High Mages
Spellsingers
Shadow Adepts
Mythals
Halruaan Skyships
Generalist Wizards
Phaerimm
Sharn
Saurials
Chosen
Steel Dragons
Mercury Dragons
Shadow Dragons (specifically as a dragon type, not as a template)
Deep Dragons
Gem Dragons
Fey'ri / Daemonfey
Malaugrym
Nishruu
Wemics
Loxos
Baelnorn
Gnolls as a playable race
Hagspawn
Shades

Need I go on? For an edition that people tend to complain about for being so Forgotten Realms focused, there's certainly a remarkable shortage of the actual Forgotten Realms in it.

Hear, hear!

Kane0

2018-02-22, 03:44 PM

strangebloke

2018-02-22, 04:28 PM

Admittedly, none of this is critical, since I'm running an Eberron campaign right now. Even having one UA puts us well ahead of Dark Sun and Dragonlance, but you did ask me what was missing.

I asked you what was missing that prevented you from running an eberron campaign.

The answer, clearly, is nuthin.

Half the things you listed don't even have mechanical meaning in 5e. What's a template?

Kane0

2018-02-22, 04:32 PM

strangebloke

2018-02-22, 04:44 PM

You can also run a game with nothing but a blank sheet of paper, some dice and other players. That doesn't stop the players asking the Devs to make content they want to see and know has a history within the game.

When I Homebrew a setting, I spend weeks and weeks just typing all my ideas up. I've got several hundred page docs, most of which the players have never seen.

All that stuff? It's fluff. Because fluff is what makes a setting, not mechanics. Having a special race of flying elves is cool! Making them have marginally different modifiers than the aarakocra is not really meaningful.

And all the fluff from third or fourth edition? You can just... Keep that.

The mechanics are comparatively simple to fabricate. Flying elves are aaracokra with slightly different racial features. A monster template is a free extra combat abilities and HP at most. If it ever comes up, you can use the same stats for an eberron airship as you use for every other airship.

The already published info for ebberon is as much as I ever write up for my own campaigns.

Tanarii

2018-02-22, 07:30 PM

Mmmyeah only half agree with the setting-as-genre thing. It makes sense from a dev/sales perspective, having one product for each niche that compete with each other as little as possible. But on the other hand the idea of a whole setting, not just a gameworld, that only carries with it one specific feel or flavor it really limits your ability to branch out and runs a big risk of becoming boring and repetitive. You need that variation to keep things fresh.
Depends on how much content they release.

For example, looking at the content released so far of FR, it appear we have:
- stopping a cult trying to resurrect Tiamat
- surviving the rabbit hole of the Underdark and something something demons
- the far north and dealing with the invasion of giants
- exploring a undead and dinosaur infested jungle for lost civilizations

Sound pretty high adventure, crazy locations, etc to me. And of course, each one is a full adventure path campaign.

I don't know much about Ebberon, but the little I've seen indicates it's pretty good classical D&D setting in that it has a nice mish-mash of crazy places and settings. So it should be able to create a number of different Pulp and/or Noire themed adventure paths without getting too stale.

You do have a point though. In 2e, Dark Sun, Dragonlance, and Planescape were all great examples of being too one-dimensional/themed, but mainly because releasing too much content that was all more of the same. (The one that made me sad was the diminishing of the infinite planes into Planescape.)

-----------------/-/

When it comes to settings, my personal one I liked the way it felt, but never figured out to run a campaign in, was Spelljammer. It's occurred to me after reading Angry's latest article, it might be fun to straight up adapt the OG Star Trek episodes. Probably better with players who don't know them all by heart.

Tetrasodium

2018-02-22, 10:29 PM

How hard is it to adapt stuff from 4e or 3e? I wouldn't think the fluff would change that much.

Not hard at all, it's just like writing setting books from scratch & there is no reason to because after a certain level of homebrewing adaptations it is no longer d&d.. there is even a lot of it that community members have created on their own & privately dustributed on various forums & private communities... but for example I've seen at least two very different takes on dolgrim & that least three different ways of handling flametouched iron/byeshk. I'm sure dark sun no doubt has similar but the end result is that you have to do some level of homebrewing to both core and the community created stuff you are adapting.

The problem is not the fluff. The problem is that some settings have very different baseline assumptions that have huge ripple effects

EWhile I don't agree with everything on Regitnui's list & would add some other things, I'm tired of needing to say things like "Yes they exist, but I'm already having to homebrew too much stuff over from 2 editions ago on top of fighting to break inaccurate baselines established in core books so just assume they don't exist for now"

strangebloke

2018-02-22, 10:56 PM

Not hard at all, it's just like writing setting books from scratch & there is no reason to because after a certain level of homebrewing adaptations it is no longer d&d.. there is even a lot of it that community members have created on their own & privately dustributed on various forums & private communities... but for example I've seen at least two very different takes on dolgrim & that least three different ways of handling flametouched iron/byeshk. I'm sure dark sun no doubt has similar but the end result is that you have to do some level of homebrewing to both core and the community created stuff you are adapting.

The problem is not the fluff. The problem is that some settings have very different baseline assumptions that have huge ripple effects

EWhile I don't agree with everything on Regitnui's list & would add some other things, I'm tired of needing to say things like "Yes they exist, but I'm already having to homebrew too much stuff over from 2 editions ago on top of fighting to break inaccurate baselines established in core books so just assume they don't exist for now"

This whole post confuses me.

1. You say 'like writing setting books from scratch', but there's no way you have to do that much work. You're making a campaign in one corner of one continent, for starters. Secondly, we all know that there's no benefit to writing things out as completely as WotC does for it's finished products since your players have the collective attention span of a goldfish who has forgotten his ADD meds. Thirdly, you can do it as you go, so while a hundred pages of text may seem impossible at first glance, over the course of 2-3 years it really isn't that much. At most you have to slightly edit and update a few notes on the aspects of the setting that will be relevant to the campaign for the next five levels or so, and field questions as they come.

2. "After a certain amount of homebrewing it is no longer DND" is just a confusing statement. First of all who the frickle frack cares if it is "proper dnd" if you and your mates are playing the kind of game you want to? And even then, you're using the d20 system, with the official dnd classes, in an (out-of-date) dnd official setting, which they have under trademark... By what measure is this 'not DnD'???

3. You say that the fluff isn't the problem... so then what is? The mechanics? Do wizards in eberron not cast spells? Do fighters not hit things with pointy metal bits? Do bards not faff about needlessly? At most you have to curate a few bits of homebrew. "We're using Keith Baker's warforged and fistmonger666's artificer class and Matt Mercer's Gun Slinger. See links."

4. Just say "Yah, they exist. Haven't fleshed that part out yet. You want to interact with that? Let's sit down for all of five minutes and figure that **** out."

5. WTH is an 'innacurate baseline?'

Scots Dragon

2018-02-23, 02:40 AM

Not hard at all, it's just like writing setting books from scratch & there is no reason to because after a certain level of homebrewing adaptations it is no longer d&d.. there is even a lot of it that community members have created on their own & privately dustributed on various forums & private communities... but for example I've seen at least two very different takes on dolgrim & that least three different ways of handling flametouched iron/byeshk. I'm sure dark sun no doubt has similar but the end result is that you have to do some level of homebrewing to both core and the community created stuff you are adapting.

The problem is not the fluff. The problem is that some settings have very different baseline assumptions that have huge ripple effects

EWhile I don't agree with everything on Regitnui's list & would add some other things, I'm tired of needing to say things like "Yes they exist, but I'm already having to homebrew too much stuff over from 2 editions ago on top of fighting to break inaccurate baselines established in core books so just assume they don't exist for now"

You could of course just keep using D&D 3E because that's evidently the edition that did Eberron best, and indeed the setting seems to have been designed with some of D&D 3E's assumptions in mind.

I mean, I technically don't use D&D 5E personally and only really stick around to see if the edition gets any better for actually playing the parts of the game I'm most fond of. As it stands it has, in fact, not improved in any of those areas. So I stick with AD&D or D&D 3E because those editions most fit my view of the Forgotten Realms, and I'm really not alone in that given the intense backlash to the D&D 4E take, and indeed there's basically no genuine support for some of my other favourite settings outside of the Realms in more recent editions. Dragonlance, Greyhawk, and Planescape are completely unsupported in the past two editions outside of some very, very vaguely sketched information in the core three rulebooks, sometimes actually offering contradicting information as with the always-devil-descended tieflings.

Tetrasodium

2018-02-23, 08:45 PM

This whole post confuses me.

1. You say 'like writing setting books from scratch', but there's no way you have to do that much work. You're making a campaign in one corner of one continent, for starters. Secondly, we all know that there's no benefit to writing things out as completely as WotC does for it's finished products since your players have the collective attention span of a goldfish who has forgotten his ADD meds. Thirdly, you can do it as you go, so while a hundred pages of text may seem impossible at first glance, over the course of 2-3 years it really isn't that much. At most you have to slightly edit and update a few notes on the aspects of the setting that will be relevant to the campaign for the next five levels or so, and field questions as they come.

2. "After a certain amount of homebrewing it is no longer DND" is just a confusing statement. First of all who the frickle frack cares if it is "proper dnd" if you and your mates are playing the kind of game you want to? And even then, you're using the d20 system, with the official dnd classes, in an (out-of-date) dnd official setting, which they have under trademark... By what measure is this 'not DnD'???

3. You say that the fluff isn't the problem... so then what is? The mechanics? Do wizards in eberron not cast spells? Do fighters not hit things with pointy metal bits? Do bards not faff about needlessly? At most you have to curate a few bits of homebrew. "We're using Keith Baker's warforged and fistmonger666's artificer class and Matt Mercer's Gun Slinger. See links."

4. Just say "Yah, they exist. Haven't fleshed that part out yet. You want to interact with that? Let's sit down for all of five minutes and figure that **** out."

5. WTH is an 'innacurate baseline?'

Your first point is entangled with your last one. Some settings are a thoughtless midden heap of random stuff piled on with no thought or consideration to how one thing might effect others nearby/later in time.... eberron is not one of those those settings. In eberron they ask questions like "what if all this magic & stuff existed from the start, how would that change the way that the world develops & people within it act?" For example drow are one of those things down to their core. They were originally actual (near?)-immortal fey creatures called eldar who were captured by the giants (who themselves even at this point are another of those things wildly shaped thrpough the new baseline assumption) & forced through a mix of tens of thousands of years of slavery+magebreeding to bind them to eberron instead of being able to freely travel back to thelanis. Lots of stuff happens to the giants with the Quori (invaders from plane of dreams), The Dragons come up again (as in all dragons... oops I left that out in my explanation to you, they were super important a few times over before getting to this point) , mome stuff happens to the various elf subgroup & the elves/drow split off into a few wildly different factions each with wildly different customs & ideals... pretty much none of which are all that much like the 3 pages on elves in the phb... so if for example have an elf in the party & am having trouble conveying elf society quickly enough for him & the group while also running an interesting adventure to grasp, trying to add a second player that will need me to juggle drow too is too much work... coincidentally that also covers question two

as to question three, because magic is treated as a science/teachable facts that changes wizard fluff to a certain degree, but funny you should mention bards faffing about needlessly like they do in most other settings. Because magixc is treated as a science as one of the baseline assumptions for the civilizations in eberron, you have things like one of the largest, most advanced, & most powerful empires ever(the dhakaani) relying on what were often warrior bards ("dur'kala") & such for cleric type functions because their culture has/had an extreme focus on each individual having a role within the community to fulfill for the betterment of everyone. This also is part of why goblins have/had problems with getting/understanding "faith/belief" limiting clerics & other divine casters from developing much in their society. So to answer the question, bards do not simply faff about uselessly.

You could of course just keep using D&D 3E because that's evidently the edition that did Eberron best, and indeed the setting seems to have been designed with some of D&D 3E's assumptions in mind.

I mean, I technically don't use D&D 5E personally and only really stick around to see if the edition gets any better for actually playing the parts of the game I'm most fond of. As it stands it has, in fact, not improved in any of those areas. So I stick with AD&D or D&D 3E because those editions most fit my view of the Forgotten Realms, and I'm really not alone in that given the intense backlash to the D&D 4E take, and indeed there's basically no genuine support for some of my other favourite settings outside of the Realms in more recent editions. Dragonlance, Greyhawk, and Planescape are completely unsupported in the past two editions outside of some very, very vaguely sketched information in the core three rulebooks, sometimes actually offering contradicting information as with the always-devil-descended tieflings.

You keep griping about how people say that the 3,5 eberron stuff was best & should just stick with 3.5... but it's not nearly that simple. As far as mechanics go, it's easier to convert 3.5 stuff to 5e than 4e stuff because the crunch mechanics of much of it was closer than whatever mmo 4e was trying to emulate. But even being closer does not mean that you can do a direct translation: take for example the horrid beast template (an important thing if you delve into certain areas of the setting). First you need to contend with the fact that beasts themselves are somewhat different. Then you can look at ecs289:

Armor Class: Bony or chitinous plates cover the horrid animal's body. giving it an armored appearance and improving its natural armor bonus to AC by +5.
Special Attacks: A horrid animal retains all of the special attacks of the base creature and gains the following special attack. Acidic Attack (Ex): A horrid animal's primary attack deals an extra 1d6 points of acid damage per 4- HD of the horrid animal (maximum 5d6). A horrid animal‘s secondary attacks do not deal acid damage. - It's important to point out that primary/secondary attack isn't broken down the same way in 5e as 3.5. It's also important to note that extraordinary/supernatural/magic attacks no longer have the same significance either.
Special Qualities: A horrid animal retains all the special qualities of the basecreature and gains the following qualities. This sounds more significant than it really is.
[list]
ill—Tempered (EJ): Handle Animal checks involving a horrid animal take a -4 penalty. since horrid animals are. more difficult to control than normal animals or even dire animals. - This is another irrelevant distinction of an important factor. In 3,5 druids were actually a pet class with spells & wildshape, their animal companion was always around.
immunity- to Acid (Ex): A horrid animal has immunity to acid. - Again theex/su/magic distinction comes up, but also it's worth noting that damage types in 5e are much less relevant where a mere +1 weapon will overcome nearly every resistance in the MM.
improved Natural l Healing (Ex): horrid animal heals naturally at three times the normal rate. recovering 3 hit points per Hit Die with a full night's rest. They are still called hit dice for recovery, but back in 3.5 it was handled by a formula factored on your con modifier & the number of hours you spend recovering iirc.

Abilities: Increase from the base creature as follows:Con +4. Pretty straight forward
Feats: A horrid animal gains Improved NaturalAttack as a bonus feat for each of its natural weapons. - Oops, that[/url] does not exist in 5e
Challenge Rating: As base creature +1. If the base creature has a Fractional CR (such as 1/3 or 1/2). the
horrid animal has a CR of 1. This is also a lot less relevant than it used to be because 3,5 had a lot of effects that affected creatures below a given CR differently than those at/above it
Alignment: Always neutral evil. - Because of the changes in how resistances are handled & the way spells like protection from evil changed, this again is complicated & not as simple as it sounds.

There are some things I usde from 4e, but much like FR fans like to complain about the wtf changes 4e made in faerun, they doid the same in eberron exceptr more than a few of those changes very clearly are more forcing the setting to adapt to the way it is done everywhere else rather than adapting $thing to smoothly fit the setting. The problem with that is that they disrupt the ability to extrapolate based on past events & ripples. While WotC seems to have gotten progressively better since they opened a portal from faerun so they could introduce lolth, eliminster, & lolth worashipping drow into the eberron based ddo, there are still reasons for eberron fans to be wary given that Pota 249 has guidance on how to change various factions, groups, & organizations with established & significant functional presences in the world so they line up with the factions used by AL, I don't think anyone needs me to point out their setting origins.
Kindly take your snark & shove it. Given that you yourself admit that you don't play 5e & stick with 3.5 , perhaps you should stop complaining that people want to see certain things from older editions brought up to date in 5e since you could potentially back port a lot of them. Plus, I doubt that people still playing second & third edition are a notable segment of WotC's income stream.

Temperjoke

2018-02-23, 10:03 PM

I can see how they would want to keep their official published work for a campaign setting within a certain genre, I don't know that it's the healthiest thing for that particular campaign setting, since it divides up your potential customer base. For example, if FR is a "high fantasy" genre of game, that's going to turn off potential customers who want a low-to-no magic setting. Buyers who aren't interested in Horror will totally ignore Ravenloft items.

On the other hand, if you aren't dividing your settings by genre, then you run the risk of diluting each setting by putting out too much material, not to mention intimidating to new players/dms. This is the problem they had before, too many splatbooks for people to keep up with. Sticking to certain genres also aids in your writing. You hire writers/designers who are familiar with a specific genre for one setting and keep them in the same "division" then they're going to be more familiar with the setting and tone that you want. This makes it easier to create new material because they're already familiar with the impacts previous books would have had on the newest book.

Scots Dragon

2018-02-23, 10:05 PM

While WotC seems to have gotten progressively better since they opened a portal from faerun so they could introduce lolth, eliminster, & lolth worashipping drow into the eberron based ddo, there are still reasons for eberron fans to be wary given that Pota 249 has guidance on how to change various factions, groups, & organizations with established & significant functional presences in the world so they line up with the factions used by AL, I don't think anyone needs me to point out their setting origins.
Kindly take your snark & shove it. Given that you yourself admit that you don't play 5e & stick with 3.5 , perhaps you should stop complaining that people want to see certain things from older editions brought up to date in 5e since you could potentially back port a lot of them. Plus, I doubt that people still playing second & third edition are a notable segment of WotC's income stream.

Okay, firstly, that wasn't snark.

That was literally me just wondering exactly why you don't just play D&D 3.5E, since it obviously does support Eberron better. Certainly if I were going to run an Eberron campaign, I'd run it in the edition that Eberron was built for rather than complaining constantly about the Forgotten Realms and its fans on the internet. Seriously. There's literally no reason for you to be going on like this in basically every single goddamn thread about every single goddamn thing this edition does.

I only stick around because I'm in the same boat. I'd like to see some Dragonlance, or some Greyhawk, or even actual stuff that's in the actual Forgotten Realms rather than the half-baked attempt found in the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide.

Secondly.

There are some things I usde from 4e, but much like FR fans like to complain about the wtf changes 4e made in faerun, they doid the same in eberron exceptr more than a few of those changes very clearly are more forcing the setting to adapt to the way it is done everywhere else rather than adapting $thing to smoothly fit the setting. The problem with that is that they disrupt the ability to extrapolate based on past events & ripples.

You literally cannot compare the two in terms of the effects of the edition change on the Forgotten Realms campaign setting both in terms of how it absolutely violated and retconned literal decades of material that came before it, and how it affected and changed the setting. The changes to Eberron are barely noticeable and frankly extremely minor in context, and your constant complaining about the Forgotten Realms like it's some kind of privileged setting in this context is absurd.

Tetrasodium

2018-02-23, 11:23 PM

Okay, firstly, that wasn't snark.

That was literally me just wondering exactly why you don't just play D&D 3.5E, since it obviously does support Eberron better. Certainly if I were going to run an Eberron campaign, I'd run it in the edition that Eberron was built for rather than complaining constantly about the Forgotten Realms and its fans on the internet. Seriously. There's literally no reason for you to be going on like this in basically every single goddamn thread about every single goddamn thing this edition does.

I only stick around because I'm in the same boat. I'd like to see some Dragonlance, or some Greyhawk, or even actual stuff that's in the actual Forgotten Realms rather than the half-baked attempt found in the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide.

Secondly.

You literally cannot compare the two in terms of the effects of the edition change on the Forgotten Realms campaign setting both in terms of how it absolutely violated and retconned literal decades of material that came before it, and how it affected and changed the setting. The changes to Eberron are barely noticeable and frankly extremely minor in context, and your constant complaining about the Forgotten Realms like it's some kind of privileged setting in this context is absurd.

To the first part of your question, I run 5e because like 3.75/pathfinder was an improvement over 3.5, the 5e system is again a good improvement with many features I like In the 5e mechanics alone, there are very few things I dislike & most of those are pretty much along the lines of "without the mounted combatant feat there is almost no mechanical benefit to bothering with a mount" & that one was such a minor nonissue that it took me a while to think of it.

Since you mentioned the words "forgotten realms" & tried to get into a pissing contest on which setting was treated worse.. I'm just going to roll my eyes because I've been very careful to avoid discussing that particular subject since I explained (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=22830860&postcount=348) a couple weeks backwhy I've attacked it so harshly in the past.. Yes that post is full of typos because it was written from a phone while waiting for a new network card. I'm n ot really interested in the pissing contest, sure you win whatever.

Beelzebubba

2018-02-24, 03:39 AM

You literally cannot compare the two in terms of the effects of the edition change on the Forgotten Realms campaign setting both in terms of how it absolutely violated and retconned literal decades of material that came before it, and how it affected and changed the setting. The changes to Eberron are barely noticeable and frankly extremely minor in context, and your constant complaining about the Forgotten Realms like it's some kind of privileged setting in this context is absurd.

Not knowing either one, were the changes like Star Wars ditching the entire Extended Universe, because it became so filled top to bottom with untenable nonsense that players couldn't go anywhere without some lore nerd ruining their games by saying 'well actually you can't do that because...'?

Regitnui

2018-02-24, 03:41 AM

War_lord

2018-02-24, 04:52 AM

Beelzebubba

2018-02-24, 05:23 AM

No, it just added more nonsense. The reason the Forgotten Realms is so convoluted is because every time there's a new edition, someone decides that the setting needs to conform to the mechanics of the new edition, and decides that they want change other things about the setting. So literally every time there's a new edition, faerun has a massive cataclysm, usually involving the goddess of magic dying again. If they just retconned things it wouldn't be an issue but they insist on explaining it. It would benefit the setting if they did just pull a disney and restarted the setting. But they won't ever do that because there's a whole fandom based around memorizing every bit of the "lore", playing every game and reading every novel, much like there is with star wars. Except that with the Forgotten Realms the "expanded universe" people are the only reason it turns a profit as a setting.

Well, I can understand the perspective, but I sympathize with the designers. For a new game to have anything to offer, there has to be something new and mysterious and interesting to entice people to try it, and for a setting, that means adding some dramatic tension and new things to learn. Keeping too much the same is too risk-averse and self-sabotaging.

They're basically making a bet. If the new edition, and the adventures with the new setting sell well, then they have a built-in audience to write new books for. If they don't, then the existing book franchise can truck along and keep telling the same stories that already work.

So, like comic books, over time, these things add up and over time get ridiculous. It's the nature of the beast.

The thing is, if you're interested in either setting for the purpose of actually playing in it, you're not going to care. Every D&D setting is filled with untenable nonsense if you have a DM who doesn't realize that the vast majority of players don't care about minute bits of setting fluff. A DM who's way too into Eberron is going to be just as annoying as a DM who's way too into Forgotten Realms.

I'm burnt on Forgotten Realms from my time in 3.5, and since then have an allergic reaction to settings with deeply established lore. I find it confining.

I was ready to throw some snark about 'well how many Eberron novels are there then' as a dig, then I did a quick search. Haha. Glad I did. They have similar problems, for sure.

War_lord

2018-02-24, 05:55 AM

I'm burnt on Forgotten Realms from my time in 3.5, and since then have an allergic reaction to settings with deeply established lore. I find it confining.

I was ready to throw some snark about 'well how many Eberron novels are there then' as a dig, then I did a quick search. Haha. Glad I did. They have similar problems, for sure.

Unfortunately the gold standard of most Creative staff in the RPG business appears to be the Silmarillion, with all the faults that entails.

Scots Dragon

2018-02-24, 08:06 AM

Not knowing either one, were the changes like Star Wars ditching the entire Extended Universe, because it became so filled top to bottom with untenable nonsense that players couldn't go anywhere without some lore nerd ruining their games by saying 'well actually you can't do that because...'?

The Forgotten Realms introduced an event called the Spellplague.

The basic idea behind the Spellplague was that the goddess of magic, Mystra, was murdered by a conspiracy between Shar and Cyric. The resulting effects were that magic went kind of haywire, and most wizards and sorcerers and priests were plagued with a sort of magical illness that killed or drove many of them insane, and spread strange blue fire across the land which warped and changed the landscape and left it much stranger than it was before. It was revealed via gigantic retcon that the world was connected to an alternative sister-world called Abeir, elements of which became present in Faerûn during the Spellplague and replacing several entire nations. The world was now full of earthmotes, sections of the landscape ripped up and held aloft through magic, many places were left as permanent wasteland, and many individuals were inflicted with things called spellcars.

Several other nations, especially those with a strong presence of magic, suffered greatly during the Spellplague and were often even destroyed outright. Entire sections of the landscape were blasted apart. Sections of the Chultan Peninsula sank into the ocean, drowning many nations and turning the rest of the place into an Archipelago. Most of the plainlands of the Shaar were wracked by earthquakes which opened vast hundred-mile-wide chasms into the Underdark. The Sea of Fallen Stars retracted and shrank, leaving many previous port cities landlocked and many islands now connected to the mainlands.

In addition to this many other fan-favourite deities were killed or rendered useless independently of the above. Notable instances of this included most of the drow and dwarven pantheons, and most of the elven pantheon was retconned into being aspects of non-elven deities. Speaking of races, many of those were radically altered. Most of the elves now became eladrin, and previous iconic elven locations such as Evereska, Evermeet, and Myth Drannor became 'eladrin' settlements. The tieflings were rewritten from the ground up from their old Planescape-style forms to match the ideas which were introduced for D&D 4E, and they were given far more prominence than they previously had. New races like dragonborn and goliaths were unceremoniously shoehorned in without any real rhyme or reason, with the dragonborn in particular being explained by the aforementioned Abeir thing, with one of the new nations slotted in over a previous one being the dragonborn kingdom of Tymanther.

The cosmology was also radically altered, replacing things with the World Axis cosmology. Admittedly this was altered already once before, in the transition to D&D 3E, with the introduction of a 'world tree' cosmology that most people just ignored in favour of the pre-existing Great Wheel that had been the default since the earliest days of D&D, well before the Forgotten Realms was even being published, and which Ed Greenwood himself had contributed to in his articles for Dragon Magazine back in the day, particularly expanding on the Nine Hells and the Archdevils therein.

And of course, they advanced the timeline by over a century, thus making it so that most human characters from previous campaigns or storylines would have died of old age rather than allowing campaigns to continue on mostly uninterrupted after the changes were implemented as it was in the case of, for instance, the Time of Troubles for the AD&D 1E to AD&D 2E transition.

This is a broad sketch of events, and doesn't quite cover all of the specifics or the full detailed extent of the changes and retcons. I'm not sure I can think of a comparable event in other fiction outside of comic-book stuff like the Crisis on Infinite Earths.

In Eberron, near as I can tell the major differences were a few retcons to explain the presence of the new races, mostly the fae spires to explain eladrin, tying the tieflings to Ohr Kahluun, replacing many of the lizardfolk in Qbarra with dragonborn, and also updating the cosmology somewhat to match the World Axis.

Naanomi

2018-02-24, 08:23 AM

Planescape, despite being the source of the ‘metasetting’, is taking some serious blows to continuity and structure as well...

“The first yugoloths were created by a sisterhood of night hags on Gehenna.”

Um... there are at least two major retcons in that one sentence, which also shatters the symmetry of the exemplar races that is important to the structure and function of the Outer Planes...

Millstone85

2018-02-24, 08:39 AM

The Forgotten Realms introduced an event called the Spellplague.And now 5e has the Second Sundering.

From what I have gathered, the original separation of Abeir-Toril into the alternate worlds of Abeir and Toril is now regarded as something of a Zeroth Sundering. Lord Ao accomplished this separation by repurposing a ripple of magical energy that had travelled back in time from a future event. Said event was the First Sundering, when an elven ritual created the island of Evermeet with already much collateral damage for the Realms. It also sent a ripple forward in time, which Ao also repurposed to trigger the Second Sundering.

The Second Sundering is how Abeir and Toril reclaimed the bits and pieces that the Spellplague had exchanged between them. It also created a great storm above the Sea of Fallen Stars, so its waters would rise back to their former level, and undirectly caused an earth elemental to close all the chasms in the land. Dead gods also came back to life, including Mystra. And I guess the Abyss somehow got separated from the Elemental Chaos it had fallen into after the Spellplague.

Yeah, that's some Crisis on Infinite Earths imbroglio.

Scots Dragon

2018-02-24, 08:41 AM

And now 5e has the Second Sundering.

From what I have gathered, the original separation of Abeir-Toril into the alternate worlds of Abeir and Toril is now regarded as something of a Zeroth Sundering. Lord Ao accomplished this separation by repurposing a ripple of magical energy that had travelled back in time from a future event. Said event was the First Sundering, when an elven ritual created the island of Evermeet with much collateral damage for the Realms. It also send a ripple forward in time, which Ao also repurposed to trigger the Second Sundering.

The Second Sundering is how Abeir and Toril reclaimed the bits and pieces that the Spellplague had exchanged between them. It also created a great storm above the Sea of Fallen Stars, so its waters would rise back to their former level, and undirectly caused an earth elemental to close all the chasms in the land. Dead gods also came back to life, including Mystra. And I guess the Abyss somehow got separated from the Elemental Chaos it had fallen into after the Spellplague.

Yeah, that's some Crisis on Infinite Earths imbroglio.

The Second Sundering can very easily be summarised as the designers quickly hitting CTRL+Z on as many things as they could find. Still there's a lot that hasn't really been fixed. The tieflings are still unrecognisable from what they're supposed to be, for instance, and we're left wondering exactly what the setting properly looks like now outside of the Sword Coast and Chult since those are the only regions to have been given any explanation at all.

Regitnui

2018-02-24, 09:11 AM

I was ready to throw some snark about 'well how many Eberron novels are there then' as a dig, then I did a quick search. Haha. Glad I did. They have similar problems, for sure.

The snark still works, because none of the Eberron novels are ever canon. They don't add to the lore at all, even the ones by the creator Keith Baker, unlike FR which has almost every novel advancing the setting and adding more convolution like a net in boat propeller.

Tetrasodium

2018-02-24, 09:38 AM

Well, I can understand the perspective, but I sympathize with the designers. For a new game to have anything to offer, there has to be something new and mysterious and interesting to entice people to try it, and for a setting, that means adding some dramatic tension and new things to learn. Keeping too much the same is too risk-averse and self-sabotaging.

They're basically making a bet. If the new edition, and the adventures with the new setting sell well, then they have a built-in audience to write new books for. If they don't, then the existing book franchise can truck along and keep telling the same stories that already work.

So, like comic books, over time, these things add up and over time get ridiculous. It's the nature of the beast.

I'm burnt on Forgotten Realms from my time in 3.5, and since then have an allergic reaction to settings with deeply established lore. I find it confining.

I was ready to throw some snark about 'well how many Eberron novels are there then' as a dig, then I did a quick search. Haha. Glad I did. They have similar problems, for sure.

Unlike the FR novels, all of them are pretty much set at & around 998YK where the setting marks the present day, both are different from the FR novels. The eberron setting is not supposed to progress in time like FR & that's why the changes they made to explain system changes that didn't need explaining were so poorly accepted. Even a player/GM new to the setting would see how oddly they stick out compared to everything else around them. I've read a handful of the eberron novels & this is a complete list of things I've adapted from them for my game:

in one of the books, humans visit a city almost entirely inhabited by monstrous races, many of which have various forms of darkvision and/or light sensitivity. the humans are given a "goodlight" & it's described as just enough light to not bump into walls if you move slow enough but not enough to be especially useful. I put them in as permanent 15' dim light projecting things on a stick to hold or just attached to a thong you can tie to your gear & stupidly cheap where to look (ie anywhere vision having/usually very poor races are likely to be found in significant numbers). It has the effect of really drawing a distinction between pc's who have darkvision & pcs who do not since breaking into the home of $monstrousRaceBaddies while using only those doesn't draw much more attention than seeing a neighbor navigating by cell phone light vrs seeing a neighbor navigating with one of those blind someone the next state over spot lights. With one you shrug & go back to grilling the burgers, with the other you might step away from the grill & point out the oddity to your guests.
I very much liked the way keith baker described interacting with the web of magic to magical wards & treat traps/wards/most any magic like that when players try to find out anything about them or are working to disable one.
the city noted above was a subterranean thing made by the dhakaani (goblin) empire thousands of years ago. I liked the scale it had where even tunnels/hallways/etc were absurdly large to the human visitors with crazy high ceilings. In most anything made by them, I tell the players that the ceilings are like 60' or more above them. At least once I extended this by placing several feet of illusion projected beneath the ceiling displaying a dimmed version of the sky above in a way that gave better impression of depth. I did it there because the spells were still active for $PlotReasons related to the game & location they were in at the time.
In one of those same books they did something in a fancy restaurant specializing in gnomish cuisine. The food was bread flavored with prestidigitation & water likewise flavored in cups that were prestidigitated with flavor/smell. I thought it was amusing & used that style of meal once

That is opposed to the FR books where characters, events, and plots themselves in them frequently get baked into core books that do not include words like "campaign setting" in their title.

War_lord

2018-02-24, 10:08 AM

The snark still works, because none of the Eberron novels are ever canon. They don't add to the lore at all, even the ones by the creator Keith Baker, unlike FR which has almost every novel advancing the setting and adding more convolution like a net in boat propeller.

You don't need to advance the story to be convoluted. Eberron already has the potential to be convoluted if players are faced with a DM attached to the "canon", novels just add to that. And yes, a novel does add to the lore, why do you think they bother publishing them, because fans will buy them. As for "no lore", well:

in one of the books, humans visit a city almost entirely inhabited by monstrous races, many of which have various forms of darkvision and/or light sensitivity. the humans are given a "goodlight" & it's described as just enough light to not bump into walls if you move slow enough but not enough to be especially useful. I put them in as permanent 15' dim light projecting things on a stick to hold or just attached to a thong you can tie to your gear & stupidly cheap where to look (ie anywhere vision having/usually very poor races are likely to be found in significant numbers). It has the effect of really drawing a distinction between pc's who have darkvision & pcs who do not since breaking into the home of $monstrousRaceBaddies while using only those doesn't draw much more attention than seeing a neighbor navigating by cell phone light vrs seeing a neighbor navigating with one of those blind someone the next state over spot lights. With one you shrug & go back to grilling the burgers, with the other you might step away from the grill & point out the oddity to your guests.
I very much liked the way keith baker described interacting with the web of magic to magical wards & treat traps/wards/most any magic like that when players try to find out anything about them or are working to disable one.
the city noted above was a subterranean thing made by the dhakaani (goblin) empire thousands of years ago. I liked the scale it had where even tunnels/hallways/etc were absurdly large to the human visitors with crazy high ceilings. In most anything made by them, I tell the players that the ceilings are like 60' or more above them. At least once I extended this by placing several feet of illusion projected beneath the ceiling displaying a dimmed version of the sky above in a way that gave better impression of depth. I did it there because the spells were still active for $PlotReasons related to the game & location they were in at the time.
In one of those same books they did something in a fancy restaurant specializing in gnomish cuisine. The food was bread flavored with prestidigitation & water likewise flavored in cups that were prestidigitated with flavor/smell. I thought it was amusing & used that style of meal once

That reads like lore to me.

Naanomi

2018-02-24, 11:06 AM

In the Darksun novels they killed the main setting antagonist... then in the edition change they added two or three forms of ‘arcane magic but not defiling’ to a setting largely defined by the defiling nature of magic...

Regitnui

2018-02-24, 11:45 AM

Tanarii

2018-02-24, 12:15 PM

For a long time, Dragonlance novels only wrote about history, never established the future. It was a way the setting avoided clashes between new Lore and DMs wanting to run adventures after the War of the Lance. Eventually that changed.

The other problem was many of the TSR hired writers were hacks. Which made me sad, because Tracy and Hickman were good, or at least good enough to write books for teens.

Hack writers is a major problem with Forgotten Realms novels too. But unlike DL, the main writers, Greenwood and Salvatore, are the hackiest of hacks. I just ignore anything that's not a setting product as far as FR lore goes, because there's no way I'm going to torture myself digging through their crap.

Luccan

2018-02-24, 12:47 PM

Not going to feign expert knowledge, but I know Dark Sun had novels. Though the research I've done into them indicated the story line never really finished.

Tetrasodium

2018-02-24, 01:57 PM

You don't need to advance the story to be convoluted. Eberron already has the potential to be convoluted if players are faced with a DM attached to the "canon", novels just add to that. And yes, a novel does add to the lore, why do you think they bother publishing them, because fans will buy them. As for "no lore", well:

That reads like lore to me.

In my defense:

the city I mention is capitol one of the main nations of khorvaire established in the eberron campaign setting book (even though the monstrous nation of droaam is not technically recognized as a "nation" in some regards in the eberron campaign setting book).
The dhakaani have a not insignificant role in the eberron campaign setting book.
Eberron is a world where magic is treated as a science as explained in the eberron campaign setting book, rather than describing disarming a trap in terms of tumblers & mechanical stuff I describe an equivalent in terms of like a complex web of arcane energies & such that allows the players to be more creative than "well the rogue rolled a 1... um... can I assist to help him try again?", the result immediately proved itself to be a big success & hit with my players so I kept going with it.
the high ceilings is all me, I shamelessly stole it, since my group is fairly large (6-8 players), I also tend to have very large rooms and/or treat a cluster of smaller rooms as one room with wall & door sized obstacles in it as well. Thats hardly "lore"
The illusory ceiling showing the sky is something I've used in fortresses that were builtby the 5 nations (those nations are also described in the eberron campaign setting book and very significant) hardened against things being dropped on them from above since it allows the occupants to see outside in the event of an attack. The only difference in this case was that I added several feet of depth to give more perspective & dimmed to accommodate the eyes of the light sensitive occupants who would have built it originally.... Illusion magic is explained in the phb
The goodlight is effectively a cheap & barely drift globe that you can buy & driftglobe is in the DMG book. The fact that monstrous races tend to often be on the economically very poor side of the scale is established in the eberron campaign setting book along with the reasons why. You don't need to know that the reason they are often poor is because when the dhakaani empire was crumbling (or why), humans came along & sLongStoryShort started taking the nice stuff while enforcing generational poverty on the former dhakaani they largely enslaved for a long while... however you can extrapolate things based on that when a player asks a question or tries to do something you really dont expect (you know, like all the effing time :smallbiggrin:)
the gnomish cuisine is a bit of pure fluff, the players were visiting some important people in House Jorasco (the house is established in the eberron campaign setting book) who were gnomes (which is also established in the eberron campaign setting book that house jorasco is gnomes because the dragonmark of healing manifests on gnomes). I wanted something fancy that could offend & it seemed like a fun way of doing a fancy meal. at other times, they have been served troll meat in droaam established in the eberron campaign setting book if not one of the other core setting books, warm stew from a modified timestop/repeating gentle repose+prestidigitated warm ration container (because magic is treated as a science). Since my players really liked the timestop ration stew & kept mentioning it I made sure it was easily available.

I think that pretty much blows your attack apart given how much of that is from the eberron campaign setting book & other core books like the monster manual & phb.

There is also the fact that the fluff I added is pretty minor & non-disruptive to the point where one of the other regular GMs at the shop I run my games at runs as close as possible to AL as possible started selling goodlights when he got tired of dealing with torches & "can you see that" "who has darkvision" type hangups. If you have a goodlight & don't care you have darkvision & are fine.. if you've got a goodlight only & don't have darkvision, you are a bumbling nearly blind hazard.

Scots Dragon

2018-02-24, 02:18 PM

I'm going to have to correct you. All of what Tetrasodium said he includes, I don't. We work off a common lore, but none of it is from the novels. Unlike FR where the latest Drizzt adventure mentions a certain drow city and that is now official canon that such a city exists at that place, an Eberron novel can have Thorn of Breland visit a feyspire, kill eladrin lords, and summon a fiend to lay waste to the city of Karthspire, and she doesn't even exist by the author of the story's own admission, if you don't want her to.

The simple difference is that Eberron's sourcebooks are the only lore. If you find the sourcebooks' lore convoluted, you can spend all the time you like working it out or adapting it to your use. Digging into the FR lore, however, requires an edition guide to ensure that you have the proper context. Eberron has a book. Forgotten Realms has a wiki. One is solid and fixed. The other is constantly changed by many people. Which one is less convoluted?

An FR novel pushes the lore and timeline forward.
An Eberron novel writes and interesting story in the world.
I don't know about other settings. Anyone willing to help with their favourite setting's handling of novels?

Honestly, I don't think that's really an argument of quality for or against either setting.

All it really says to me is that Eberron caters to those who prefer a more static setting which doesn't really progress and thus can be used as a blank canvas, while the Forgotten Realms caters to those who prefer a more detailed and evolving setting which has canonical stuff going on in it. That's really way more of a matter of taste than anything else, and the Forgotten Realms is still tailored at its core for Dungeon Masters to be able to ignore or change or add certain aspects to fit their tastes.

Case in point, the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting (D&D 3.0E), page 297

Campaigns
Since its debut in 1987, the Forgotten Realms setting hsa generated literally hundreds of Forgotten Realms novels, adventures, and supplements. The only portions of this body of material that matter are the parts you choose to incorporate into your campaign.

In preparing to run a Forgotten Realms campaign, you have several choices. First, you should consider which optional rules to allow in your game. Second, you should decide where your campaign is set. Faerûn is a big place, and your campaign can fit quite comfortably into one corner of the continent with room to spare. Designing the particular locations, characters, and plots of your version of the Forgotten Realms campaign is covered in more detail in the next section, World-Building.

Rule 1: It's Your World
This campaign setting is packed with details about Faerûn and the world of Toril, but the book provides only a broad sampling of the people, places, and things the world contains. The real details are left up to you. Make additions as you see fit. For example, if you need a village, a small town, or a dungeon in some locale to make an adventure work our right, go right ahead and add it.

Likewise, the details in this book reflect what the people of Faerûn know about their world – but only you know the truth. So if your players read this book and try to dictate details of the world for you ('No, the river runs through Silverymoon!'), stand firm. It's your world. Don't be a slave to the map or this book, and don't be afraid to alter anything you want to.

There are similar guidelines in most editions of the core campaign setting.

War_lord

2018-02-24, 02:44 PM

the city I mention is capitol one of the main nations of khorvaire established in the eberron campaign setting book (even though the monstrous nation of droaam is not technically recognized as a "nation" in some regards in the eberron campaign setting book).

Setting politics players don't care about. +1 convolution.

The dhakaani have a not insignificant role [B]in the eberron campaign setting book.

Second use of a made up fantasy word, instead of just saying Goblin. +1 convolution.

Eberron is a world where magic is treated as a science

No, it's not treated as a science. It's treated as something that just works. There's no science or scientific curiosity involved and the implementation is always extremely rudimentary.

as explained in the eberron campaign setting book, rather than describing disarming a trap in terms of tumblers & mechanical stuff I describe an equivalent in terms of like a complex web of arcane energies & such that allows the players to be more creative than "well the rogue rolled a 1... um... can I assist to help him try again?", the result immediately proved itself to be a big success & hit with my players so I kept going with it.

It's not complex or interesting if it's so common people can lock their tool shed with it.

The illusory ceiling showing the sky is something I've used in fortresses that were builtby the 5 nations (those nations are also described in the eberron campaign setting book and very significant) hardened against things being dropped on them from above since it allows the occupants to see outside in the event of an attack.

More fictional politics. +1 convolution.

The fact that monstrous races tend to often be on the economically very poor side of the scale is established in the eberron campaign setting book along with the reasons why.

Because they're used as obvious stand ins for real life groups in a recycling of a very tired trope?

You don't need to know that the reason they are often poor is because when the dhakaani empire was crumbling (or why), humans came along & sLongStoryShort started taking the nice stuff while enforcing generational poverty on the former dhakaani they largely enslaved for a long while...

Called it. And +2 for "Dhakaani" again. Sounds like a mixed drink.

the gnomish cuisine is a bit of pure fluff, the players were visiting some important people in House Jorasco (the house is established in the eberron campaign setting book) who were gnomes (which is also established in the eberron campaign setting book that house jorasco is gnomes because the dragonmark of healing manifests on gnomes).

Who cares? +2

I wanted something fancy that could offend & it seemed like a fun way of doing a fancy meal. at other times, they have been served troll meat in droaam established in the eberron campaign setting book if not one of the other core setting books, warm stew from a modified timestop/repeating gentle repose+prestidigitated warm ration container (because magic is treated as a science). Since my players really liked the timestop ration stew & kept mentioning it I made sure it was easily available.

No, that's not science, if it was it would be better explained then a list of spells. Further, sorry but in any setting where its trivial to create magically fresh and tasty food, the fancy rich person thing would be to hire a master chef and have all your food prepared without the use of magic. BECAUSE it's extravagant.

Regitnui

2018-02-24, 03:01 PM

War_lord, stop being contradictory for no good reason other than not liking Eberron. We know you're not fond of it. If you're scoring Eberron on made-up names, surely FR scores higher. If you're scoring Eberron on politics players don't care about, double it, because FR has divine and mundane politics.

Honestly, I don't think that's really an argument of quality for or against either setting.

All it really says to me is that Eberron caters to those who prefer a more static setting which doesn't really progress and thus can be used as a blank canvas, while the Forgotten Realms caters to those who prefer a more detailed and evolving setting which has canonical stuff going on in it. That's really way more of a matter of taste than anything else, and the Forgotten Realms is still tailored at its core for Dungeon Masters to be able to ignore or change or add certain aspects to fit their tastes.

I prefer the one over the other. If you prefer the "evolving" setting sort of thing, that's great for you. Having my players be the Drizzt and Mordenkanen of their campaign appeals more to me than having famous named NPCs who are all but immortal running around.

War_lord

2018-02-24, 03:10 PM

Regitnui

2018-02-24, 03:24 PM

Do you have ANY LINE beyond complaining about FR and exalting Eberron?

Were you not reading the rest of this topic? I started this over my concern of setting bleed or homogenization.

Scots Dragon

2018-02-24, 03:59 PM

To pipe in on the genre issue... I'm gonna say something really controversial. The Forgotten Realms is not and has never been a high fantasy setting, which makes one of their starting premises kinda shallow. It shows that they either do not understand the Forgotten Realms, or do not in fact understand the meaning of the words 'high fantasy', and given the path Wizards of the Coast has gone down over the past couple decades or so it's quite clear that both might be true.

To elaborate; high fantasy, also known as epic fantasy, refers to the Tolkien-inspired fantasy which centres heavily around epic quests and often involves vast mythological conflicts between good and evil, with a scope and scale that encompasses the fate of an entire known world. A considerably good example of this is Lord of the Rings.

The Forgotten Realms is far closer to heroic fantasy, or sword-and-sorcery, with smaller scale quests and power struggles that don't necessarily involve more than the fate of a kingdom, and often not even then. The scales and stakes are far more personal to the heroes rather than having any real impact beyond immediate events. This is something that has, over the years, slightly shifted about the Forgotten Realms starting with D&D 3E, but I believe this is the best indication as to the fact that Wizards of the Coast really doesn't always understand the material they're trying to work with.

Regitnui

2018-02-24, 04:32 PM

The Forgotten Realms is far closer to heroic fantasy, or sword-and-sorcery, with smaller scale quests and power struggles that don't necessarily involve more than the fate of a kingdom, and often not even then. The scales and stakes are far more personal to the heroes rather than having any real impact beyond immediate events.

At the risk of sounding ignorant, doesn't Heroic Fantasy scale into Epic Fantasy over the course of the game? You start with chasing rats out of an old lady's pillow storage, and graduate to fighting a demigod in a volcano to save the world.

Scots Dragon

2018-02-24, 05:00 PM

At the risk of sounding ignorant, doesn't Heroic Fantasy scale into Epic Fantasy over the course of the game? You start with chasing rats out of an old lady's pillow storage, and graduate to fighting a demigod in a volcano to save the world.

You might eventually graduate to something like that, but epic fantasy / high fantasy usually starts with the heroes on that epic quest to fight the demigod in a volcano to save the world despite the fact that they're probably not suited to doing much more than chasing the rats out of an old lady's pillow storage to begin with. Even if the plot isn't obvious, it's there in the background, stewing away and providing a backdrop that shapes the entire world.

The epic fantasy genre has an overarching metaplot that dominates every aspect of a given storyline or campaign. A far better example of high fantasy within Dungeons & Dragons would be none other than Dragonlance, which has the War of the Lance, the aftermath of the Cataclysm, and the machinations of Takhisis all being front and centre from the setting's very inception. The Forgotten Realms is far more along the lines of Conan or Elric where the stakes might get pretty high at times, but the focus is more on the personal stakes of the heroes and thier involvement in the story, and the world itself is rarely the major scope of a given story.

Naanomi

2018-02-24, 06:33 PM

Scots Dragon

2018-02-25, 08:29 AM

High fantasy doesn’t work well in DnD play... one of the central features of high fantasy is that the ultimate conflict isn’t resolved by physical might but rather by moral superiority... the ring is destroyed by Frodo and Sam’s harrowing journey, not because Aragorn and his buddies kicked in Sauron’s teeth. A few of the novels are high fantasy, but very little table experience is

You could play a campaign more along the lines of Wheel of Time well enough, where the heroes do eventually gain greater powers while having the battle against a relatively high level BBEG who's more of a vast existential threat as the long-term focus. The moral superiority stuff is limited mostly to Lord of the Rings specifically, and other high fantasy does dabble in heroes who can win by simply becoming powerful enough to out-fight the villains.

Or at least to find the MacGuffin to prevent the undefeatable villain from being resurrected and such.

Naanomi

2018-02-25, 10:26 AM

Generally, if you win through being strong and fighting it is considered ‘heroic fantasy’ not ‘high fantasy’. Fantasy as a literary genre has a thousand tiny subgenres with fairly specific definitions:

The four key features of high fantasy:
-takes place in a non-real setting
-clear good guys and bad guys
-epic in scale
-ultimate victory isn’t achieved through might of arms

strangebloke

2018-02-25, 12:21 PM

What people mean when they say that fr is high fantasy is that it naturally scales to high/epic level.

There's loads of epic level threats in Fr. Demigods, arch-lichs, and all the other crap big e deals with on a daily basis.

Eberron, by contast, really doesn't have many epic level threats. Iirc the campaign setting book states: "you can give the Lord of blades epic levels, or have a couple of force dragons amongst the rest of the dragons..."

Anyway. I basically don't see why anyone cares about the changes to lore we've seen so far. My PCs can't remember the name of the guy they work for, much less the origin of the particular breed of fire they're trying to smash. Even then, lore is portable if you wanna bring over 3x lore.

Regitnui

2018-02-25, 12:30 PM

Eberron, by contast, really doesn't have many epic level threats. Iirc the campaign setting book states: "you can give the Lord of blades epic levels, or have a couple of force dragons amongst the rest of the dragons...".

Demiliches are a thing, as are dragons and giants with class levels (having a few centuries to practice magic means you can kick butt). The Overlords, as in fiendish personifications of concepts are world-altering, and their main servants are epic levels as well. Basically while there are epic threats in Eberron as any setting, the focus remains on the delicate balance of forces that your PCs are about to mess up.

Tetrasodium

2018-02-26, 04:17 PM

i
What people mean when they say that fr is high fantasy is that it naturally scales to high/epic level.

There's loads of epic level threats in Fr. Demigods, arch-lichs, and all the other crap big e deals with on a daily basis.

Eberron, by contast, really doesn't have many epic level threats. Iirc the campaign setting book states: "you can give the Lord of blades epic levels, or have a couple of force dragons amongst the rest of the dragons..."

Anyway. I basically don't see why anyone cares about the changes to lore we've seen so far. My PCs can't remember the name of the guy they work for, much less the origin of the particular breed of fire they're trying to smash. Even then, lore is portable if you wanna bring over 3x lore.

the general reasons behind why the lore changes were more than just some extra stuff (with hundreds of past events shaping various aspects of the setting defined by little more than an entry on a timeline at most there was no reason to cause those kinds of problems in a setting that does not advance in time) have already been covered a few times in this & other threads, so enough said there unless you have specific questions about that.

As to the epic threats in the setting, Regitnui covered those nicely (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=22872888&postcount=95). The difference is not that they do not exist but that the low & mid level groups are all involved in shady activities behind the curtain of their above board activities pretty much whenever they can as part of power struggles within and with each other while trying not to be the spark that topples the tenuous peace. rather than hunting rats in an old lady's storage you start out as useful unaffiliated expendable pawns who can be hired to clean up the magebred war-rats that somehow broke out of their containment & took over the illegal lab breeding weapons of war in the slummiest part of sharn (think all of NYC in magically supported towers built over Manhattan) on up to dealing with the overlord/daelkyr/whatever that is working with/corrupting one of those groups or whatever. If you want to do that kind of epic/high fantasy game you can, it's just there are enough places you can hang the hooks that it doesn't need to be like PotA has bands of j-random nobody cultists that none of the various city/national/supranational organizations noticed all of the control/infrastructure that they were building up overnight even though there are loose threads all over the place & gobs of faceless nobody cultists involved.

Just because it has the supporting structure for more complex motives & situations doesn't mean that the complexity cannot also be used to enhance traditionally simplistic types of fantasy.

strangebloke

2018-02-26, 05:36 PM

While epic-level threats exist in Eberron...

there are fewer of them than in FR.

I do not think this is a contentious statement.

Tetrasodium

2018-02-26, 07:37 PM

While epic-level threats exist in Eberron...

there are fewer of them than in FR.

I do not think this is a contentious statement.

I........ dunno. People like to talk about the spellplague/sundering for forgotten realms. Eberron has gone through multiple civilization/apocalyptic events & many of them are/were tied to, predicted by, or an attempt to manipulate... The Prophecy. As a result, you can have biblicaly powerful forces like overlords, lords of dust, dragons/giants with many class levels, entire nations, etc suddenly shift from benign to apocalyptic. It's relevant not because forgotten realms invents new ones in every novel & meticulously indexes/defines a list too long to manage without a wiki. Instead, the important distinction is because eberron does not need to list every individual apocalypse inducing level of threat & everything leading up to them in favor of having a complex tapestry of grey morals & such so people tend to use it as a strike against the setting. Given how the folks at WotC keep talking about how powerful mind flayers are as a whole... it's important to note that the Daelkyr have invaded eberron, caused a 15000 year old continent spanning empire to crumble, & oh... that's right, the Daelkyr created the mind flayers.

Scots Dragon

2018-02-27, 03:21 AM

Instead, the important distinction is because eberron does not need to list every individual apocalypse inducing level of threat & everything leading up to them in favor of having a complex tapestry of grey morals & such so people tend to use it as a strike against the setting.

I can't imagine what that's like, having people continually using the way your favourite setting is set up in order to launch continuous strikes against it and sniping at it continuously even when it's way off topic.

Also I have to ask, how many people have been actually genuinely criticising or sniping at Eberron? Rather than just asking you to stop screeching at the top of your lungs about it every time Wizards of the Coast does... basically anything. At all. Meanwhile you spend every goddamn second you can trying to moan about the Forgotten Realms.

War_lord

2018-02-27, 04:36 AM

the Daelkyr created the mind flayers.

According to the Daelkyr, who are an obscure race that only exist on one plane of a world so obscure and backwards that they've failed to penetrate the boundaries between those worlds. If they did manage to do so, the claim that the Daelkyr created the Mindflayers would be see as laughably provincial.

And worldbuilding implications aside (at best the Daelkyr found these Aberrations.) Someone should explain to Keith that a key part of Eldritch beings is that you don't just explain their origin to try to make your "original race do not steal" seem cooler then it actually is.

Regitnui

2018-02-27, 04:50 AM

Also I have to ask, how many people have been actually genuinely criticising or sniping at Eberron? Rather than just asking you to stop screeching at the top of your lungs about it every time Wizards of the Coast does... basically anything. At all. Meanwhile you spend every goddamn second you can trying to moan about the Forgotten Realms.

I apologise for him. Not all Eberron fans are like that, despite attempts to write us all off was a lost cause. I know very well what it's like to be sniped at unnecessarily near-constantly.

And war_Lord? The mind flayers have been pretty well explained for at least two editions now. It wasn't Eberron that robbed them of being eldritch and terrifying.

Scots Dragon

2018-02-27, 05:04 AM

I apologise for him. Not all Eberron fans are like that, despite attempts to write us all off was a lost cause. I know very well what it's like to be sniped at unnecessarily near-constantly.
The Eberron thread in the D&D 3.5E forum is proof enough of that.

And war_Lord? The mind flayers have been pretty well explained for at least two editions now. It wasn't Eberron that robbed them of being eldritch and terrifying.

I think you could stretch that out to four or five depending on how you're counting them. An Ecology of the Mind Flayer article was introduced in Dragon #78, during the halcyon days of AD&D 1E, and their origins and society were explored even more in a series of AD&D 2E sources, mostly the Illithiad.

War_lord

2018-02-27, 05:17 AM

I apologise for him. Not all Eberron fans are like that, despite attempts to write us all off was a lost cause. I know very well what it's like to be sniped at unnecessarily near-constantly.

Oh yeah, you totally don't snipe at the Forgotten Realms at every opportunity, using it as a scapegoat for everything you dislike in D&D. Yep, totally innocent. You totally haven't spent months scaremongering about everything supposedly revolving around the Forgotten Realms.

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.

So no, Regitnui, you don't get to paint yourself as "the reasonable one", when you engage in the same behavior that breeds my inherent dislike of nearly all of the Eberron fandom (because in my experience it's the fandom that's toxic.

And say what you will about Tetrasodium, but Tetrasodium has never claimed they were being attacked by me personally, and Tetrasodium has never lied about anything I've said in order to generate sympathy from an audience. I can respect that even if I can't respect the nearly illegible rants about a topic people are sick of hearing about. Tetrasodium isn't here putting on airs of grace and wisdom. You are.

And war_Lord? The mind flayers have been pretty well explained for at least two editions now. It wasn't Eberron that robbed them of being eldritch and terrifying.

Are they from the future or the far realm, is Ilsensine a god or a concept? What are the Elder Brains after? These are all questions. "They're all subjects of Keith's brainfart" is not a question, it reduces them to the status of Goblins and, like everything Eberron, is rendered mundane.

Tetrasodium

2018-02-27, 06:12 AM

According to the Daelkyr, who are an obscure race that only exist on one plane of a world so obscure and backwards that they've failed to penetrate the boundaries between those worlds. If they did manage to do so, the claim that the Daelkyr created the Mindflayers would be see as laughably provincial.

And worldbuilding implications aside (at best the Daelkyr found these Aberrations.) Someone should explain to Keith that a key part of Eldritch beings is that you don't just explain their origin to try to make your "original race do not steal" seem cooler then it actually is.

What's that? having stuff from other settings thoughtlessly displace the lore of your favorite setting in order to keep as much of the new arrival's lore the way the new arrival is done in their source setting rather than adopting some trivial change that makes the new arrival fit the setting instead of the other way around is irksome... I wonder what it would be like if wotc did that kind of thing in a previous edition, setting specific game, & numerous offhand remarks I can't imagine what that's like... Oh wait there was 4e, lolth+her drow+eleminster in ddo, & that section in the adapting for eberron part of 5e pota that talks about how to alter eberron groups to fill the role of the AL legal factions presented as presented rather than the other way around.... wow, it's almost like "the daelkyr created mind flayers" is a specifically chosen example to not so subtlety make that point with a deliberately abrasive club to prove a point relevant to the thread, eh?

War_lord

2018-02-27, 06:45 AM

What's that? having stuff from other settings thoughtlessly displace the lore of your favorite setting in order to keep as much of the new arrival's lore the way the new arrival is done in their source setting rather than adopting some trivial change that makes the new arrival fit the setting instead of the other way around is irksome... I wonder what it would be like if wotc did that kind of thing in a previous edition, setting specific game, & numerous offhand remarks I can't imagine what that's like... Oh wait there was 4e, lolth+her drow+eleminster in ddo, & that section in the adapting for eberron part of 5e pota that talks about how to alter eberron groups to fill the role of the AL legal factions presented as presented rather than the other way around.... wow, it's almost like "the daelkyr created mind flayers" is a specifically chosen example to not so subtlety make that point with a deliberately abrasive club to prove a point relevant to the thread, eh?

No, it's not equivalent at all, because Mind Flayer are broadly the same in every other setting. This is a consequence of Kieth's brainless charging into the need to be different, motivated by a soulless hatred for what came before. And behold the result, Eberron is a laughably backwards and obscure sphere, inhabited entirely by primitives who, despite having much more access to magic, are unable to wield it for anything greater then menial tasks. So much for "magic as science", they don't even know D&D's version of space travel is possible.

Scots Dragon

2018-02-27, 07:07 AM

Oh wait there was 4e, lolth+her drow+eleminster in ddo, & that section in the adapting for eberron part of 5e pota that talks about how to alter eberron groups to fill the role of the AL legal factions presented as presented rather than the other way around.... ?

Let me just ask you this; is this really something you need to get riled up about? I mean, it's just a bunch of sidequests in an MMORPG and some badly put-together advice. It really does not amount to much.

Hell, I don't like Adventurer's League at all and think its take on the Forgotten Realms by way of the factions is a deep and shocking misunderstanding of what the setting's even about, and it's actually just as much an attempt to shoehorn in the Magic: The Gathering colour wheel as it is anything else.

Just go and play your stupid little setting with the magic robots and the airships and the magitek and stop all this goddamn incoherent sniping everytime anything happens in D&D.

No, it's not equivalent at all, because Mind Flayer are broadly the same in every other setting. This is a consequence of Kieth's brainless charging into the need to be different, motivated by a soulless hatred for what came before. And behold the result, Eberron is a laughably backwards and obscure sphere, inhabited entirely by primitives who, despite having much more access to magic, are unable to wield it for anything greater then menial tasks. So much for "magic as science", they don't even know D&D's version of space travel is possible.

You aren't helping.

War_lord

2018-02-27, 07:19 AM

You aren't helping.

Help with what? They brag about how Eberron is totally different and superior to the rest of D&D. Then they moan when its decision to be different to everything else leaves it marginalized when any setting generic material is released.

Scots Dragon

2018-02-27, 07:22 AM

Help with what? They brag about how Eberron is totally different and superior to the rest of D&D. Then they moan when its decision to be different to everything else leaves it marginalized when any setting generic material is released.

Even speaking as someone who pretty much finds Eberron to be a crappy setting, behaving in that manner is making the discussion more toxic than it already is.

Regitnui

2018-02-27, 07:32 AM

I think you could stretch that out to four or five depending on how you're counting them. An Ecology of the Mind Flayer article was introduced in Dragon #78, during the halcyon days of AD&D 1E, and their origins and society were explored even more in a series of AD&D 2E sources, mostly the Illithiad.

There are far better monsters to cast as "eldritch horror". Mind flayers are practically mundane at this point. Volo's explained them completely in this edition, the Lords of Madness did the same in 3.5. I'm not sure about older editions or 4e, having missed or skipped most of those.

Organised gibbering mouthers have more eldritch horror than the illithids right now.

War_lord

2018-02-27, 07:32 AM

Even speaking as someone who pretty much finds Eberron to be a crappy setting, behaving in that manner is making the discussion more toxic than it already is.

I don't agree with that, Tetrasodium doesn't restrict their... style to this site, so my presence didn't cause that. Regitnui is convinced I have it out for him personally, which I had no control over, so I didn't cause that. The source of the conflict is that both of them have demonstrated Eberronmania on multiple occasions, despite people asking them, gradually less politely to stop. If I had any control over that I'd be using it to get them to stop. This discussion is always toxic, because the Eberron fandom, or at least as far as it's active in the 5e section, is toxic. I find Forgotten Realms to be a pretty crappy setting, I still want to defend it from this crap.

Regitnui

2018-02-27, 07:41 AM

Scots Dragon

2018-02-27, 07:50 AM

There are far better monsters to cast as "eldritch horror". Mind flayers are practically mundane at this point. Volo's explained them completely in this edition, the Lords of Madness did the same in 3.5. I'm not sure about older editions or 4e, having missed or skipped most of those.

Most of that seems to be repeating what's said in AD&D 2E's Illithiad, to be honest.

Organised gibbering mouthers have more eldritch horror than the illithids right now.

Making something horrific and terrifying is completely and utterly independent of whether you know where it came from.

About ninety-nine percent of horror is presentation, and knowing what we do about Mind Flayers can actually make them more scary. We know how they reproduce, for instance, which is to say by inserting a wormlike tadpole creature into a humanoid's ear and letting it take over their brain and body. Building up to that can be skin-crawlingly terrifying, combining body horror and impending doom, especially alongside their tendency to subvert the wills of their victims to begin with.

Mind Flayers are scary because the least horrifying thing they do to their victims is the brain-eating and we know that.

War_lord

2018-02-27, 07:54 AM

Please, War_lord. Where in this topic have I given you any reason or offence?

This thread is very thinly disguised fear mongering about WoTC getting their grubby FR into "glorious" Eberron.

the_brazenburn

2018-02-27, 07:55 AM

I don't agree with that, Tetrasodium doesn't restrict their... style to this site, so my presence didn't cause that. Regitnui is convinced I have it out for him personally, which I had no control over, so I didn't cause that. The source of the conflict is that both of them have demonstrated Eberronmania on multiple occasions, despite people asking them, gradually less politely to stop. If I had any control over that I'd be using it to get them to stop. This discussion is always toxic, because the Eberron fandom, or at least as far as it's active in the 5e section, is toxic. I find Forgotten Realms to be a pretty crappy setting, I still want to defend it from this crap.

War_lord, please. About two pages ago, I asked both of you to stop your toxic behavior on this thread.

Regitnui immediately responded and apologized, then didn't engage in any more toxicity for several posts. You, on the other hand, didn't do any of that.

As much as I disagree with Regitnui on many things (Eberron really is a terrible setting), I'm going to take his side on this one. Please stop your toxicity on this thread.

War_lord

2018-02-27, 08:02 AM

War_lord, please. About two pages ago, I asked both of you to stop your toxic behavior on this thread.

Regitnui immediately responded and apologized, then didn't engage in any more toxicity for several posts. You, on the other hand, didn't do any of that.

As much as I disagree with Regitnui on many things (Eberron really is a terrible setting), I'm going to take his side on this one. Please stop your toxicity on this thread.

That's a false statement, your only contribution to this thread was "Hear, hear!"

I get that Regitnui has made making false statements about me very fashionable. But I this time I picked up on the attempt and checked.

Scots Dragon

2018-02-27, 08:08 AM

That's a false statement, your only contribution to this thread was "Hear, hear!"

I get that Regitnui has made making false statements about me very fashionable. But I this time I picked up on the attempt and checked.

That's because he's misremembering. He actually said things to that effect in the Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=22822609&postcount=254) thread.

the_brazenburn

2018-02-27, 08:12 AM

That's a false statement, your only contribution to this thread was "Hear, hear!"

I get that Regitnui has made making false statements about me very fashionable. But I this time I picked up on the attempt and checked.

Oh crap, I'm sorry. As it turns out, you are right. I posted that on a different thread. My deepest apologies.

The principle still holds true, however. You are contaminating this thread with your toxicity and nastiness towards Regitnui and Tetrasodium, and claiming that people are purposefully making false statements about you, which is unsupported by evidence, is certainly not helping matters.

Remember, this was primarily Regitnui's thread. Don't usurp your guest rights.

War_lord

2018-02-27, 08:18 AM

Oh crap, I'm sorry. As it turns out, you are right. I posted that on a different thread. My deepest apologies.

The principle still holds true, however. You are contaminating this thread with your toxicity and nastiness towards Regitnui and Tetrasodium, and claiming that people are purposefully making false statements about you, which is unsupported by evidence, is certainly not helping matters.

It's funny that you called back to that particular thread, shall I send you the PM where Regitnui admits that I didn't call him a racist? You know, the false statements I have no evidence of?

Remember, this was primarily Regitnui's thread. Don't usurp your guest rights.

That's not how threads work, the Mordenkainen's thread was mine, I didn't demand, nor had I the power to demand, that anyone not contribute.

PhoenixPhyre

2018-02-27, 08:19 AM

Frankly, the bad thing here is the assumption that travel between settings is (for high-powered creatures) reasonably doable and thus everything has to have the same set of planes/cosmology and races can only have one origin. That cuts out a lot of interesting ideas. Which is why I completely dump it for my setting.

* All my planes are both limited in size (~ 4AU in radius) and have a one-to-one correspondence with the material. The planes are enclosed in a crystal sphere that is both metaphysical and physical.
* Outside of this bubble is psychoactive void--dreams really do come true. In fact, everything that exists (all the various bubble universes) are dreams of fragments of the void itself (after all, if it can dream of self, there must be other).
* At least some of the denizens of the Dreaming Dark are inimical to all materialized dreams. Basically borg-like thought-forms that consume/destroy all worlds they can.
* No such thing as alignment (not for men, not for gods/angels/devils). There are demons, but some of them are nice folks who just happen to have goals or means that are a bit disfavored by the establishment. Others are just nasty, though.
* The job of the angels is to keep things from Outside from getting in. So travellers just don't happen.

the_brazenburn

2018-02-27, 08:23 AM

It's funny that you called back to that particular thread, shall I send you the PM where Regitnui admits that I didn't call him a racist? You know, the false statements I have no evidence of?

You did call him a racist. You said that anybody who plays an elf is a fantasy racist. If you can't remember that, go back and hunt through ten pages of your toxic comments on the previous thread until you find it. Maybe that will give the mods enough time to shut this thread down once and for all.

That's not how threads work, the Mordenkainen's thread was mine, I didn't demand, nor had I the power to demand, that anyone not contribute.

No? Maybe it should be.

Nobody is asking you not to contribute. The fact is, what you are doing now is not contributing. You are detracting from the original purpose of the thread, which was to politely discuss setting integrity.

War_lord

2018-02-27, 08:26 AM

You did call him a racist. You said that anybody who plays an elf is a fantasy racist. If you can't remember that, go back and hunt through ten pages of your toxic comments on the previous thread until you find it. Maybe that will give the mods enough time to shut this thread down once and for all.

He literally admitted to me in a private message that I never called him a racist. Maybe you should go back and read the thread since you've mangled what I said even more. You're accusing me of being toxic, but you can't even accurately recount what anyone actually said.

the_brazenburn

2018-02-27, 08:30 AM

He literally admitted to me in a private message that I never called him a racist. Maybe you should go back and read the thread since you've mangled what I said even more. You're accusing me of being toxic, but you can't even accurately recount what anyone actually said.

I may quote from the MToF thread here:

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

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

Emphasis mine.

War_lord

2018-02-27, 08:37 AM

Which was said in the voice of Regitnui, as a sarcastic summation of his ranting about there being too many Elven subraces. The guy who could claim offense has admitted this. You're a being offended on someone else's behalf long after they admitted making a false statement. You're talking to me, a person who nearly always plays a High Elf or Half elf. What, was I calling myself racist?

He claimed I deliberately misinterpret him, he then claimed there was an "elves are superior" mindset. So I was sarcastically highlighting how he himself loves to make broad statements about parts of the D&D fandom. Which he then decided to misinterpret as me calling him racist against elves. Which you've now further mangled into "warlord called people who play elves racist", which is literally what I was angry at Regitnui for doing.

the_brazenburn

2018-02-27, 08:42 AM

Which was said in the voice of Regitnui, as a sarcastic summation of his ranting about there being too many Elven subraces. The guy who could claim offense has admitted this. You're a being offended on someone else's behalf long after they admitted making a false statement. You're talking to me, a person who nearly always plays a High Elf or Half elf. What, was I calling myself racist?

Fine. I went overboard with the racism bit. I apologize for that, and I wouldn't have posted about that if I'd known about the private message beforehand. I apologize to everybody on this thread for derailing the topic. Please excuse my transgressions of forum etiquette.

Regitnui

2018-02-27, 08:50 AM

Fine. I went overboard with the racism bit. I apologize for that, and I wouldn't have posted about that if I'd known about the private message beforehand. I apologize to everybody on this thread for derailing the topic. Please excuse my transgressions of forum etiquette.

He still misinterpreted what I initially said, which was there seems to be a massive love for unnecessary elven subraces on the part of WotC, but that's neither here nor there.

Again, I apologise for perpetuating the derailment.

strangebloke

2018-02-27, 08:55 AM

Sigh...

Look, I get that you're all super invested in the lore of FR or planescape or dark sun or eberron or whatever, but honestly why do you care so much if WotC "screwed it up"?

LotR lore got super jacked up by the movies, but I'm still really happy they got made. In many cases its pretty clear why they took things in the direction they did, (differences between writing a book and shooting a film) and in any case the end result was awesome. LotR is a setting that has, IMO, much better and more interesting lore than any DnD setting, but I'm sort of ok with it getting butchered, because, well...

The lore is still there. People still get into the books because they're still good. If anything, they got more people into the lore.

I'm playing in FR for the first time, and honestly? Not a single player thus far has so much as expressed interest in the larger setting. Does the complex history between Luskan and Neverwinter actually matter, outside of a campaign centered on those things?

Similarly, in Eberron, does the structure of Aerenal society matter in any campaign not focused on those guys?

Tetrasodium will disagree, because he seems to think that absolutely everything is critical, but my answer would be... nope, not at all. I have a tough time getting PCs to remember the name of the kingdom that they're adventuring in.

Naanomi

2018-02-27, 09:24 AM

You are right that for 95%+ of games, established lore matters next to nothing.

However I think there is a sort of ‘secondary market’ on lore, those who love to buy and read books of lore (or the lore section of other books at least) even if it doesn’t come up in play... the same people who read every in-game book in Skyrim or scour the appendixes of the Silmarillion. Us lore junkies are the ones who mostly dislike changes in established lore, especially those that seem arbitrary or pointless... after all if ‘lore doesn’t matter’ in most games, why go out of your way to change it instead of just rolling with what is already established? Adding the feywild is fine... it puts a place for a monster type that has always kind of needed it... but what benefit is there to move the home plane of the yugoloth and tie them to night hags? What purpose did that serve beyond just change for change’s sake? Does it somehow make yugoloth a more usable monster?

Also, in those few places where it does come up in game... weird retcons can be disruptive or create the need for a lot of explanation. One of my main home brew settings had a pantheon of Gods mirroring the Elemental Planes, including the quasi and paraelemental planes that... don’t exist anymore. I had to rewrite my Cleric player info on selecting their God to explain why there is a God known as the Lord of Radiance and why he is enemies with the Lady of Salt... because the planar symmetry doesn’t make sense without a (now adhoc) explanation

Regitnui

2018-02-27, 09:35 AM

Also, in those few places where it does come up in game... weird retcons can be disruptive or create the need for a lot of explanation. One of my main home brew settings had a pantheon of Gods mirroring the Elemental Planes, including the quasi and paraelemental planes that... don’t exist anymore. I had to rewrite my Cleric player info on selecting their God to explain why there is a God known as the Lord of Radiance and why he is enemies with the Lady of Salt... because the planar symmetry doesn’t make sense without a (now adhoc) explanation

This is what I mean. Even if the worlds must be linked, it's the little corners of them, the weirdness, that gives the players more freedom and DMs more inspiration to grow their own homebrew settings. I don't particularly care if my rogue can fit into Mystara when we play a Dark Sun game, and we should refuse any attempt WotC makes to blanket enforce a level of homogeneity for no reason other than some half-baked multiverse idea or Adventurer's League regulated play scenario.

PhoenixPhyre

2018-02-27, 09:43 AM

we should refuse any attempt WotC makes to blanket enforce a level of homogeneity for no reason other than some half-baked multiverse idea or Adventurer's League regulated play scenario.

I don't see how they're enforcing anything. Literally everything they publish is suggestions only. They even say in the PHB that DMs are the masters of the world and can change anything. There's no expectation that any of that lore/fluff/whatever you want to call it is constant from game to game even within the same ostensible setting!

Naanomi

2018-02-27, 09:44 AM

we should refuse any attempt WotC makes to blanket enforce a level of homogeneity for no reason other than some half-baked multiverse idea
The DnD settings have all been connected for a long time; albeit some of them more distantly... getting from FR to Eberron has been theoretically possible for as long as there has been an Eberron, because the paths between Cosmologies explicitly lead to every possible world. I like the ‘big picture interconnectedness’ of all the settings; what I don’t like is changes to established fluff for no reason other than just wanting to change it.

strangebloke

2018-02-27, 09:57 AM

we should refuse any attempt WotC makes to blanket enforce a level of homogeneity for no reason other than some half-baked multiverse idea or Adventurer's League regulated play scenario.

1. WoTC enforces nothing. Do what you want, man. Ignore new lore, use old lore. At most, you'll need to come up with a few monster statblocks (a good DM should do this anyway) and a few planar environments.
2. 'no other reason than AL'...

0_0

You do realize how big a deal AL is, right? You do realize that we're literally talking about millions of brand-new gamers coming into TTRPGs in the biggest surge of interest since the 80s, right? AL is something I have zero interest in playing in, but boy howdy am I happy it exists.

Regitnui

2018-02-27, 09:58 AM

I don't see how they're enforcing anything. Literally everything they publish is suggestions only. They even say in the PHB that DMs are the masters of the world and can change anything. There's no expectation that any of that lore/fluff/whatever you want to call it is constant from game to game even within the same ostensible setting!

They're not. But I'm just concerned that we should, as the fans, be aware that an organized play scenario could create unwanted homogenization.

The DnD settings have all been connected for a long time; albeit some of them more distantly... getting from FR to Eberron has been theoretically possible for as long as there has been an Eberron, because the paths between Cosmologies explicitly lead to every possible world. I like the ‘big picture interconnectedness’ of all the settings; what I don’t like is changes to established fluff for no reason other than just wanting to change it.

Connectedness is not homogenization. I wouldn't want the rough edges of any setting shaved off so that they fit everything else.

Naanomi

2018-02-27, 10:08 AM

Connectedness is not homogenization. I wouldn't want the rough edges of any setting shaved off so that they fit everything else.
Sure, as much diversity as you want, it is a big umbrella they can put anything into.

One of Eberron’s themes is ‘all the DnD stuff is here, but different!’ so the challenge of incorporating but differentiating things is part of the world building there. Despite the different cosmiology, it is in a lot of ways more ‘classic DnD’ with less tweaking necessary than Darksun or even Spelljammer

Regitnui

2018-02-27, 10:32 AM

Sure, as much diversity as you want, it is a big umbrella they can put anything into.

One of Eberron’s themes is ‘all the DnD stuff is here, but different!’ so the challenge of incorporating but differentiating things is part of the world building there. Despite the different cosmiology, it is in a lot of ways more ‘classic DnD’ with less tweaking necessary than Darksun or even Spelljammer

And I wouldn't want them to take out miniature giant space hamsters just because they don't make sense anywhere other than Spelljammer. I mean, Eberron has what a 3.5 article called the Far Realm orbiting it. I would not at all be opposed to players from FR fighting off the fleshwarping Daelkyr in FR emerging from a Far Realm portal. That's interconnectedness. That's fun. A priest of elemental water falling through a portal, splashing into the Lhazaar Sea and having a religious epiphany at the hands of merfolk would be a hilariously funny easter egg.

When we embrace the odd and strange parts of the setting and use them as links, it's fun. I don't want to see the Great Wheel stamped onto Eberron and its orbiting planes renamed (the Plane of War Shavarath suddenly becoming a layer of Carceri or Asgard), or Athas being recast as the "other side of the world" in FR. That's homogenization and removing strange things.

Naanomi

2018-02-27, 10:41 AM

Regitnui

2018-02-27, 10:54 AM

Naanomi

2018-02-27, 11:05 AM

Joe the Rat

2018-02-27, 11:20 AM

Did anyone here get into string theory back in the day? Because that helps work with altered cosmologies.

The relevant bit, grossly oversimplified and badly butchered: working towards a Grand Unification Theory in early models led to situations where the equations did.... highly inappropriate things. But the different models could work mathematically if you did a bit of folding. One model, many forms, most of which look incompatible without breaking the bank.

In other worlds, how the multiverse works depends on how your home plane - and by extension you - are folded. Asmodeus is Asmodeus, and sits there with his Ruby Rod. But what he looks like, what his slouchable throne looks like, and where it is relative to the local greengrocer depends on how you look at it.

Oerth (Greyhawk) sits happily in manifold-0: Happy Cosmic Wheel land. Krynn, Athas, a plethora of home games, and maybe-now Toril are here.

But Toril might still be in manifold-1: strange tree/tower/wall of the faithless bubble. It depends on whether you take it to the new(old) cosmology, or stick with Ed's old (new) one.

Eberron is manifold-2: Many of the same types of places exist, they just have a different way of connecting. If you wanted to be strange about it, entities of all types interact normally, you can go to various outer-plane-equivalencies, and can still spelljam from place to place, but as an M-2 native, you can always deorbit from a plane.

Manifold-3 is Yggdrasil itself. it connects specific planes/worlds in a different mode, with a different transitive plane. If you came from Actual Midgard, this is your set of options. This is one you may be able to walk/sail off of.

Maybe an easier analogy. The blind men and the elephant. How you describe the thing depends on where you touch it - and the truth of it is something far more complex than the great wheel.

Asmotherion

2018-02-27, 11:30 AM

There. You may now dogpile me with reasons why I'm wrong.

I actually agree with you on the most part.

Sure, each setting has it's preset; it's like the way it was designed to function optimally for. But, on the other hand, labbeling them as "only useful for one thing" is bad marketing. I do believe it was an unintended interpretation of what he meant however.

In an introduction of a Spacejammer world for example, he might need to put a short intro for each world he is going to introduce, and this was a good synopsise of what is to come.

But sure enough, nobody will dictate you what you'll do in your Game; You can have an epic fantasy Game in Ravenloft, or a Horror game in Ebberon just fine, there is more than enough (past) material for both to happen.

Tetrasodium

2018-02-27, 11:50 AM

If you really wanted to, I think you could put Eberron in the Great Wheel without destroying its uniqueness (like Darksun, throw up a planar barrier preventing regular access to the plane, put difficult to traverse but technically existing portals in the various orbiting planes to the established parts of the Planes), albeit with the natives being ‘wrong’ about a lot of lore (common across all Prime worlds really)... but I think it works better as a poster-child as an alternate Cosmology, only accessible by the Great Wheel via specific portals, epic magic, and a few dangerous journeys through the deepest parts of the planes

You absolutely can, but this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTvtFJLn6oA) from an officially licensed product is not an example of doing so because nobody of note in eberron reacts in wys that their their power, obligations, & motivations suggests they would in order to introduce lolth worshiping drow (over the eberron style drow no less), lolth, faerun, & eliminster. The result is a cautionary tale that should not be watched quietly when it seems to be repeating.

Sigh...

Look, I get that you're all super invested in the lore of FR or planescape or dark sun or eberron or whatever, but honestly why do you care so much if WotC "screwed it up"?

LotR lore got super jacked up by the movies, but I'm still really happy they got made. In many cases its pretty clear why they took things in the direction they did, (differences between writing a book and shooting a film) and in any case the end result was awesome. LotR is a setting that has, IMO, much better and more interesting lore than any DnD setting, but I'm sort of ok with it getting butchered, because, well...

The lore is still there. People still get into the books because they're still good. If anything, they got more people into the lore.

I'm playing in FR for the first time, and honestly? Not a single player thus far has so much as expressed interest in the larger setting. Does the complex history between Luskan and Neverwinter actually matter, outside of a campaign centered on those things?

Similarly, in Eberron, does the structure of Aerenal society matter in any campaign not focused on those guys?

Tetrasodium will disagree, because he seems to think that absolutely everything is critical, but my answer would be... nope, not at all. I have a tough time getting PCs to remember the name of the kingdom that they're adventuring in.

While I'm glad that ddo was made & enjoyed it for a long time, the way wotc stamped eleminster, lolth, & lolth style drow all over it while steadily turning it into what might as well have been waterdeep online combined with what they did in 4e means that waiting quietly with fingers crossed despite the appearance of disturbing trends is not an acceptable option. So when Wotc announces a new book by talking about the drow/elf conflict (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r93sKXCvXQ4) and how you could give that book to a new person to d&d entirely could really understand what it means to be an elf, it triggers warning alarms (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWwOJlOI1nU). When that comes around the same time that a lolth pact warlock (https://twitter.com/mikemearls/status/932490057344204800/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.sageadvice.eu%2F2017%2F1 1%2F20%2Fwarlock-patron-lolth-the-spider-queen-by-mike-mearls%2F) is getting dangled out to test the waters, it too is in desperate need of feedback because we've seen how that movie ends (https://www.scienceabc.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Titanic-collide-on-iceberg-ship-sea.jpg).

The DnD settings have all been connected for a long time; albeit some of them more distantly... getting from FR to Eberron has been theoretically possible for as long as there has been an Eberron, because the paths between Cosmologies explicitly lead to every possible world. I like the ‘big picture interconnectedness’ of all the settings; what I don’t like is changes to established fluff for no reason other than just wanting to change it.

That's kind of how the eldarin fey spires were put into eberron to justify the eldarin having come from somewhere, they were odd but not a big deal. replacing the planar cosmology to justify tieflings keeping the same origin in eberron as in other settings rather than giving them a different origin in a setting with so much historical demonic activity that it's source is part of the creation myth itself (and not an obscure offhand footnote either) was just change to be lazy. The fact that the only justification they need to fit eberron was "yea they exist" or "yea some of them live in the demon wastes but you don't see them very often because it's hard to get in & out & kinda like Athas but not so nice there" makes the laziness downright painful. As Naamomi pointed out (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=22877920&postcount=127), by all means add new stuff, dive into stuff that only exists as an entry on the timeline, surprise me... but don't change random stuff just to change it so something has the same basket of loose string trailing incompatible lore in every setting.

Regitnui

2018-02-27, 11:59 AM

I see Xoriat not as the Far Realms itself but as a demiplane so infected with Far Realm corruption as to have become almost entirely a cerebrotic blot. Partially because established lore says the Far Realms are not a ‘part’ of any Cosmology, lying outside of that order all together (and the same Far Realm threatens all Cosmologies according to 4e lore)

The funny thing is that Xoriat, for all its danger, is naturally part of Eberron's created cosmology. Its existence is necessary for Eberron to be balanced. So I can see a "realm of madness beyond the cosmology" from the Great Wheel's perspective being Xoriat held at the edge of whatever anomaly is keeping Eberron apart from the meddling gods of other worlds. When Xoriat appears to intersect a different world, it breaks out cerbriotic blots and aberrations because it isn't part of that world; it's Eberron's madness, not that of the other world's, so it has worse effects. Great Wheel adventurers might try to destroy the seals holding Xoriat away from Eberron just so that it resumes its normal orbit and stops infecting other planes.

Naanomi

2018-02-27, 12:56 PM

I think it cheapens the concept of the Far Realm to make it a ‘natural part’ of anywhere myself, and making it naturally part of Eberron makes that world a bit too centrally important for my liking... but in an Eberron focused game looking for an avenue of a crossover that explanation works ok I guess.

I prefer to leave the Far Realm as the multiverse’s ‘error message’; always lurking just behind the veil of reality, ready to spill forth any time there is a massive magic accident or some other reality-shattering catastrophe... a place that doesn’t want or seek contact with ours, and by all rules should not be able to do so... but is disasterous for both sides when contact is somehow made

Regitnui

2018-02-27, 01:17 PM

Naanomi

2018-02-27, 01:34 PM

I'd be willing to accept the existence of both, and one gets mistaken for the other.
Yeah, that works. The weird ‘coincidental’ overlaps between the two is just kind of part of the nature of Eberron and its frequent ‘twisted mirroring’ of Great Wheel stuff; though I suspect some kind of more direct connection.

Perhaps in the beginning of the Planes or Eberron, Xoriat grew up around a small hole to the Far Plane and helped keep it contained; or the nature of the Madness of Xoriat naturally opened tiny connections to that abberent place

Regitnui

2018-02-27, 01:39 PM

Yeah, that works. The weird ‘coincidental’ overlaps between the two is just kind of part of the nature of Eberron and its frequent ‘twisted mirroring’ of Great Wheel stuff; though I suspect some kind of more direct connection.

Perhaps in the beginning of the Planes or Eberron, Xoriat grew up around a small hole to the Far Plane and helped keep it contained; or the nature of the Madness of Xoriat naturally opened tiny connections to that abberent place

Perhaps Eberron's primordial dragons intentionally built a piece of the Far Realm into Eberron to stop it from suffering from the Great Wheel's "error" messages. It's the failsafe, like Eberron Material is born in Irian and is destroyed in Mabar.

Naanomi

2018-02-27, 02:11 PM

Perhaps Eberron's primordial dragons intentionally built a piece of the Far Realm into Eberron to stop it from suffering from the Great Wheel's "error" messages. It's the failsafe, like Eberron Material is born in Irian and is destroyed in Mabar.
Perhaps. The Ancient Ones who create new cosmologies have pretty much free reign to do whatever they want, making a small chunk of the Far Realm (or making use of Far Realms energy or whatever) an integrated part of the structure of the Cosmology is entirely within their power

Regitnui

2018-02-27, 02:31 PM

Perhaps. The Ancient Ones who create new cosmologies have pretty much free reign to do whatever they want, making a small chunk of the Far Realm (or making use of Far Realms energy or whatever) an integrated part of the structure of the Cosmology is entirely within their power

Who or what are the Ancient Ones?

Tetrasodium

2018-02-27, 02:37 PM

Who or what are the Ancient Ones?

She's probably talking about Eberron/Khyber/Siberyis but dunno

Naanomi

2018-02-27, 02:41 PM

Who or what are the Ancient Ones?
According to Planescape Lore, they are the highest known creative forces in Existence. They exist outside of time and known space, and go around creating new Cosmologies, and then leave agents to over see them.

They may be the Luminous Being that AO answers to in FR, or those Luminous Beings may be an intermediary being in charge of just one Cosmology. In a more Meta sense, they may represent the creators of different campaign worlds.

There are a few monsters associated with them (mostly in keeping people from the Cosmology trying to find or interact with them); and they are implied to occasionally directly empower specific agents for various purposes (like how Anubis was raised beyond Godhood to protect the corpses of dead Gods in the Astral plane of the Great Wheel)

Regitnui

2018-02-27, 02:41 PM

She's probably talking about Eberron/Khyber/Siberys but dunno

The Primordial Dragons are creators of a universe, but I'd guess the Ancient Ones are the Great Wheel equivalent from 2e.

Naanomi

2018-02-27, 02:42 PM

She's probably talking about Eberron/Khyber/Siberyis but dunno

The Primordial Dragons are creators of a universe, but I'd guess the Ancient Ones are the Great Wheel equivalent from 2e.
The Primordial Dragons are likely equivalent to Overpowers or Luminous Beings. The Ancient One is more like... Keith Baker (or the cosmic representation of)

Tetrasodium

2018-02-27, 10:12 PM

Perhaps Eberron's primordial dragons intentionally built a piece of the Far Realm into Eberron to stop it from suffering from the Great Wheel's "error" messages. It's the failsafe, like Eberron Material is born in Irian and is destroyed in Mabar.
I feel like it's probably important to note that I don't say any of this to knock other settings but to compare & contrast them.

Being inspired to try new ideas & push the boundaries is often considered "madness" as well. Eberron is radically different from pretty much every other setting when it comes to cultural stasis (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MedievalStasis)

Forgotten realms -35000 DRto 1358DR (http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Portal:History) with the age of humanity (http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Age_of_Humanity) being -3000 to 1358
Greyhawk -1900 to 998 (http://dungeons.wikia.com/wiki/Word_of_Greyhawk_Timeline) It doesn't seem to break it down quite so clearly
darksun -14578 to free year 12 (http://athas.org/events) I'm not even going to try unwinding the pre apocalypse advancements
eberron -10,000,000 YK to 998YK (http://eberron.wikia.com/wiki/Eberron_Timeline), the giants built a wildly advanced empire, had it destroyed, the goblinoids then did the same & had it destroyed, then about -2000YK humans came to khorvaire & within 500 years most of the (admittedly weakened & crumbling) dhakaani/goblinoid empire into human controlled nations. by 15YK those nations are united under one human emperor & institutes of higher learning like the arcanix are bing established. By 998YK human civilization has weathered at least two semi-apocalyptic events (overlord escaping from volcano eruption in thrane, lycanthropic plague/purge) & each time bounced back stronger. Yes the last war was a hundred year long civil war that split the nation & did a lot of damage, but it only ended a few years ago & isn't technically any more over than everyone was happy after ww1.

In that short time, humans have surpassed the level of technology generally available in every other setting & are rapidly catching up to the long destroyed giant/dhakaani empires at an ever accelerating pace.
While there is extreme poverty & extreme wealth (with lots of therebetween too) in eberron, your average dirt farmer can & will do things like hire people to bring in rain/ plant growth the crops, have minor magical items to do things like read affordable books mass printed by house sivvis even if it's a dark & stormy night thanks to a coldfire light or similar.. have a prestidigitating toilet & create water basin or similar rather than an outhouse or creek/manual water pump... be able to afford to bring their crops to s far off city & likely even visit them more & more affordably as time went on... so on & so forth.
That plane of madness shatters whatever shackles cause cultural stasis elsewhere. Yes some other settings have advances eberron does not yet have, but those are rarely something your average dirt farmer is likely to have much if any exposure to.

Naanomi

2018-02-27, 10:20 PM

Tetrasodium

2018-02-27, 10:52 PM

Eberron is probably less advanced than the Netherese were at their height; and definetly drastically behind Darksun’s Halfling empire and several of the precursor races in Spelljammer (the Reigar and their ilk). Eberron is a bit unique because the ‘now’ is more advanced than medieval times, but that isn’t to say that other settings haven’t had historical moments that put it to shame in that domain

Yea, it was not my intent to suggest that present day khorvaire is more advanced than what other settings (or even iebverron itself) have obtained in the past... The intent was to show the dramatically different path of advancement. Both the giant & dhakaani empires of eberronwere dramatically more advanced than the present day continent khorvaire as well, unquestionably so. The giants were creating life & shifting planar orbits, the dhakaani were likely engaging in genetic tampering of themselves through mage breeding among other things The difference between present day (mostly) human galifar/khorvaire & those is that the speed of progress has been advancing towards them well faster than a simple linear curve.

The giant empire lasted about 40,000 years & the kind of stuff it was doing was pretty unusual across settings. The dhakaani empire something like 10-15k years depending on where you consider the start & end... but I don't believe goblinoids in other settings accomplished anything even resembling an advanced stable society. I left out the elves, who admittedly have some nice advancements, because regular wars with the dragons halfheartedly attacking combined with managing to take a lot of things from the giant empire when the former slaves fled the destruction being rained down upon their giant masters by the unified & enraged dragons going so far beyond mere "total war" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_war) that it makes Sherman's march to the sea (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman%27s_March_to_the_Sea) look downright limp wristed gave the elves an advanced society based on another's innovations that has been stuck treading water at many points in its history.

Regitnui

2018-02-27, 11:47 PM

The Primordial Dragons are likely equivalent to Overpowers or Luminous Beings. The Ancient One is more like... Keith Baker (or the cosmic representation of)

The three Primordial Dragons aren't the out-of-universe creators trying to look for a glorious cameo. Keith is on record as never even making an NPC version of himself. They're the creators of a universe, which certainly puts them above most of the Wheel Gods. Is Ao, the being/bloke/force that knocked all the FR gods into fleshy bodies, an Overpower or Ancient One?

Naanomi

2018-02-28, 12:05 AM

The three Primordial Dragons aren't the out-of-universe creators trying to look for a glorious cameo. Keith is on record as never even making an NPC version of himself. They're the creators of a universe, which certainly puts them above most of the Wheel Gods. Is Ao, the being/bloke/force that knocked all the FR gods into fleshy bodies, an Overpower or Ancient One?
AO is an Overpower, one or two tiers down (it is unclear) but subservient to the will of the Ancient Ones. Ancient Ones in theory made every possible Cosmology in all existence. Overpowers are in charge of a single Crystal Sphere on the Prime, their boss (a ‘Luminous Being’) supervises the Great Wheel... and may actually be an Ancient One, but maybe a rank below that; it is never really clarified. Highpower from Dragonlance is also considered an Overpower by most accounts.

In a strict Planescape Lore sense; the three dragons would have made the universe, but the Ancient Ones dreamed up the dragons

((The idea that the Luminous Beings are GMs and the Ancient Ones are game designers is mostly a joke, albeit an old one that is played with directly in the novels))

Regitnui

2018-02-28, 12:25 AM

In a strict Planescape Lore sense; the three dragons would have made the universe, but the Ancient Ones dreamed up the dragons

Ah. So the Primordial Dragons are on par with Ao and Highpower and Gary Gygax, but there's a tier above them called the Ancient Ones? Genuine curiosity here, because I've never been able to lore-binge either of 2e's great crossover settings. Eberron's place in them as an equal to the ubiquitous Great Wheel is something I'm interested in seeing.

Also, it would be cool to have a reference to the Planeshift books if they do give us an explicit crossover setting.

Naanomi

2018-02-28, 01:20 AM

Let’s see if I can do this...

*In the Great Wheel (and presumably at least some other Cosmologies), there are Gods. Gods embody and manage certain fundamental forces of existence on the Great Wheel, but haven’t been around forever and are (with very few exceptions) dependent on the worship of other beings to sustain their power. Some were directly created by higher cosmic beings, but many were once mortals or other types of being who ascended to divinity.

**On at least some Prime Material worlds, above the Gods, is an Overpower. Overpowers were never mortal beings (Mystara’s immortals system is a different Cosmology from the Great Wheel), and have seemingly infinite power over their home Prime, as well as some significant abilities off of it. Overpowers are thought to be the creators of many (if not all) crystal spheres. They are primarily interested in making sure the Gods do their jobs, but occasionally step in to ensure stuff happens ‘the way it should’, though exactly what that means is debatable.

AO and Highpower are the only named Overpowers we know of for sure, but there implied to be others. IO (creator of the dragon pantheon) is sometimes implied to be an Overpower as well. It is somewhat implied that Overpowers are the beings that fought the Draeden in the earliest known times of the current Great Wheel timeline, though lore calls them ‘Gods’ it is established that would have been long before the actually Gods would have appeared.

For what it matters, I’d put the dragons of Eberron around here (though may be slightly stronger actually)

***Above the Overpowers, which they seem to actually formally report to, is a ‘Luminous Being’. This may in fact be a representation of an Ancient One, but perhaps not. This being appears to oversee the entirety of the Great Wheel Cosmology.

In a very meta-sense, that is at least 90% joke, this being represents the GM as the ultimate adjudicator and manipulator of reality with no practical limits on its power

****The Ancient Ones are the ultimate known powers in creation. They are in fact the creators of different Cosmologies. Their numbers and membership are completely unknown, though they do have a few monsters associated with them and their bidding (I forget their names... one is a living black hole that hunts down people who get close to actually finding the Ancient Ones, and one is a dog thing that tracks down people traveling from one Cosmology to another and forces them ‘home’). If the Luminous Being isn’t an Ancient One itself, it likely reports to them to enact their will in some inscrutable way

In the same Meta, joking way that the GM is a Luminous Being; Ancient Ones are supposed to represent the original creators of fictional realms, Gygax and Baker, but also theoretically and Stan Lee and Terintino and the like. Don’t take this metaphor too seriously, but it does give some insight to the power level and scope they are supposed to represent.

Note that *very* old lore calls them ‘Old Ones’, but the terminology mostly switched to ‘Ancient Ones’ to differentiate them from Lovecraft, especially when Lovecraft’s Gods were actually included in the Dieties and Demigods book.

~~~in addition to these, there appear to be some beings empowered by the Luminous Being/Ancient Ones to do specific jobs outside of this system, but are generally stronger than the Gods in this duty... Anubis was once a normal God, but was selected and empowered to protect the dead bodies of Gods on the Astral Plane. Some might put the Lady of Pain in this group, but she is inscrutable as ever in this regard so no one can be really sure either way. There are also beings that were once chronomancers live in the Temporal Prime who work to keep the timeline intact who were ‘recruited’ forcefully by the Ancient Ones

? How much of this system is inherent to the Great Wheel, how much is present in other Cosmologies, and if it was present ‘before’ the Great Wheel (in the time before Draeden, when LeShay originated from) is all pure fan-conjecture