Mike Mearls: Exploring the "Why" of D&D Mythology in 'Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes

[Tetrasodium]

https://youtu.be/yCqW_MI-Exk

Still watching it, but it sounds like wotc might have taken into account the concerns about the race writeups being used to ship settingA lore into settingB type things. Here's hoping for the best :D

[EvilAnagram]

I'm very happy that they're putting careful thought into what aspects of the D&D universe they want to explore, and I can see value in providing cultural guidelines for why certain racial tendencies exist. I still think widely applying these readings of races across settings does a disservice to the variety that can be found between settings, but I can't say that they aren't offering value added.

My chief complaint is simply that they are far too specific. The gods did X and it led to Y, Z, and ß. The problem such precise histories have is that it creates baggage that DMs can't escape, even with their own settings. It can take DMs a while to realize they're under no obligation to use the fluff in the books when they design their own campaigns, and implying that these histories are universal can stifle the creative impulse. Granted, it can also guide creativity, which is what these books should do. In the end, I guess I'm just ambivalent towards it.

[Tetrasodium]

I'm very happy that they're putting careful thought into what aspects of the D&D universe they want to explore, and I can see value in providing cultural guidelines for why certain racial tendencies exist. I still think widely applying these readings of races across settings does a disservice to the variety that can be found between settings, but I can't say that they aren't offering value added.

My chief complaint is simply that they are far too specific. The gods did X and it led to Y, Z, and ß. The problem such precise histories have is that it creates baggage that DMs can't escape, even with their own settings. It can take DMs a while to realize they're under no obligation to use the fluff in the books when they design their own campaigns, and implying that these histories are universal can stifle the creative impulse. Granted, it can also guide creativity, which is what these books should do. In the end, I guess I'm just ambivalent towards it.

Agreed that those are still worries about the lore going overboard every time they mention moreadin, lolth, corellon, etc I cringe at the thought. Take the dragon thing he talks about, there's a difference between an entry about how tiamat ruled X group of dwarves like so and blah blah blah vrs a blub mentioning a dragon ruling some dwarves in that manner. I choose to be a little more hopeful in my cautious optimism.

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

As always, if you're playing a game that isn't part of AL, you can do whatever you want and aren't bound by the published lore.

[Kaliayev]

Whenever I see videos like this, I'm reminded of how much I love Mike's capacity for world building.

[Tetrasodium]

As always, if you're playing a game that isn't part of AL, you can do whatever you want and aren't bound by the published lore.

While true, wotc has tried merging settings before & it did not go well for the settings used as victims in that experiment. planes were replaced with their closest equivalent from other settings. Planes were added because the victim setting did not have a plane that existed in other settings but was needed to support an unaltered metaplot importation. numerous things were changed in the victim setting in order to make the setting fir the baselines needed to support the metapplot as it was in other setings This was all done heedless of details like how it would affect the setting & what reasons/results for the setting differences were being stomped on.... so on & so forth.

So yes, people who like specific settings get a bit nervous when wotc starts talking about hows & whys like this again but only mentions baselines from the previously exported settings. Needing to homebrew content out of core books written for the baselines of those export settings in order to fit a given setting while also fighting against wotc telling players that the way those export settings do things is the right way in every setting is needlessly difficult because of that consistent focus on export settings & only export settings.

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

While true, wotc has tried merging settings before & it did not go well for the settings used as victims in that experiment.

Unless it is mandated that you play in a Wizards of the Coast-approved setting, what happens in your setting is entirely your responsibility as the DM. Wizards is very clear about this.

[Tetrasodium]

Unless it is mandated that you play in a Wizards of the Coast-approved setting, what happens in your setting is entirely your responsibility as the DM. Wizards is very clear about this.

that is an attempt to address a different problem than the one I mentioned.

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

that is an attempt to address a different problem than the one I mentioned.

I don't take the idea of 'victim settings' seriously. You are the DM. If the setting has been victimized, you were the perpetrator, no one else.

[Luccan]

While I agree a DM can fix anything WotC insists on breaking in a setting, I don't think they should have to. Just because WotC wants to change settings to make them more similar doesn't mean they should, nor does it stop being a problem just because DMs can fix it at table level. However, I also understand people are tired of these complaints.

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

Other than SCAG, Wizards hasn't published an explicit setting yet. Unless your game is set entirely within the confines of the Sword Coast, the setting has been built and run at the table level anyway.

Perhaps MToF will change that, but perhaps not, and it'll be a collection of stories, arcs and locations to plug into worlds where they fit and left aside when they don't.

[Luccan]

Other than SCAG, Wizards hasn't published an explicit setting yet. Unless your game is set entirely within the confines of the Sword Coast, the setting has been built and run at the table level anyway.

Perhaps MToF will change that, but perhaps not, and it'll be a collection of stories, arcs and locations to plug into worlds where they fit and left aside when they don't.

I'll agree they've mostly left well enough alone this edition, but given their past, I do understand people being wary.

[Tetrasodium]

I don't take the idea of 'victim settings' seriously. You are the DM. If the setting has been victimized, you were the perpetrator, no one else.

well I could have explained how 4e did that to eberron in the eberron core books to fit the setting around asmodious that style of demon , & his metaplot that was written for a different setting with different baselines rather than modifying asmodious & his metaplot to fit eberron, but that leads top a long debate about which other setting's baselines that the whole thing came from. I could have used import & export, but importing of radioactive waste & biohazards tends to be done with a bit more care than the explosive device they used ghallagher (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErppAlOIGQE) fit the setting around.

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

well I could have explained how 4e did that

This isn't 4th Edition. Other than Faerun's Sword Coast, everything else exists in a state of beautiful possibility.

[quinron]

While I'm on the fence about fluff working its way into crunch, which I consider the main thrust of this discussion, I'm at least happy that this is happening mostly in splatbooks rather than core. At least then you can control how much material you have to re-teach to the players because your setting doesn't follow WotC's canon.

[Tetrasodium]

While I agree a DM can fix anything WotC insists on breaking in a setting, I don't think they should have to. Just because WotC wants to change settings to make them more similar doesn't mean they should, nor does it stop being a problem just because DMs can fix it at table level. However, I also understand people are tired of these complaints.

Exactly on the shouldn't need to. As to the tired of the complaints, look back at the tread... The thread started with cautious optimism over the apparent hope & belief that it looks like they might be doing things a little more carefully than worried only to be met with the usual "but the gm can change it" line of dismissal. You can't tire of one without admitting that the other is not a problem as well unless you endorse the reason for the concerns.



Other than SCAG, Wizards hasn't published an explicit setting yet. Unless your game is set entirely within the confines of the Sword Coast, the setting has been built and run at the table level anyway.

Perhaps MToF will change that, but perhaps not, and it'll be a collection of stories, arcs and locations to plug into worlds where they fit and left aside when they don't.


CoS is in ravenloft, it is not part of faerun & has a number of different baseline assumptions from faerun... but that didn't stop WotC from starting it in faerun and offering no LMoP/PoaA style guidance for starting it in ravenloft or some other setting. Yes the adventures are somewhat made to plug into worlds, but the more that world differs from the baseline standards present in faerun, the more work it can be to fit. I'm not saying the current balance slat there is good, bad, too much, or too little... simply acknowledging that it is there. MtoF makes it relevant because it has been stated to apply to all worlds in the "shared multiverse" and they have mentioned things that simply can not be translated on a 1:1 level (ie drow & "echoes of lolth". Both are extremely different in eberron & have no relation to each other, so skepticism is warranted)



This isn't 4th Edition. Other than Faerun's Sword Coast, everything else exists in a state of beautiful possibility.


when wotc starts talking about how a book applies to all settings & says worrisome things, their history in that clusterbleep is relevant .

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

I've never had problems fitting a published adventure into a thematically-appropriate setting. Nor have I ever felt that the onus is on anyone but me as the DM to preserve the integrity of my setting.

[Tetrasodium]

I've never had problems fitting a published adventure into a thematically-appropriate setting. Nor have I ever felt that the onus is on anyone but me as the DM to preserve the integrity of my setting.

MtoF is not an "adventure", don't pretend that it is in order to troll your point in what was a cautiously optimistic thread.

[EvilAnagram]

I don't take the idea of 'victim settings' seriously. You are the DM. If the setting has been victimized, you were the perpetrator, no one else.
The problem is twofold:
[#]It alters the expectations of the players coming in.
[#]It alters the fiction world released.

Personally, the second problem doesn't affect me at all because I don't give a damn about any D&D fiction series, but plenty of fans of RA Salvatore were upset last edition.

The first can be managed, but it's still a case of the developer cr seating problems for you to solve.

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

The problem is twofold:
[#]It alters the expectations of the players coming in.
[#]It alters the fiction world released.


Like you, I don't take the second thing seriously - I'll go further, and say that released fiction should be treated as non-canon to the game world. It's a pollutant.

Managing player expectations is arguably the most important task for a DM before players sit down at the table. Published material matters, obviously, but in the absence of a published campaign setting the onus is on the DM to provide the material to the players to explain the world, even if it's a big one that's been around since previous editions. How things work is always explicitly up to the DM to decide, and every single sourcebook is very clear about this. If you want the planar relationships to work the way they do in MToF, then that's fine, and if you don't, then they don't and players who don't like it will just have to deal.

Additionally, players having expectations doesn't have anything to do with victimhood. 'Setting victims' is an overwrought way of complaining about unpopular creative choices. The solution to those creative choices exists and has been there from the beginning: do it yourself, and make what yourself clear to the players.

Tetrasodium, I'm referring to your own complaints about Curse of Strahd, and how you want it to have specific guidelines for adaptation like Lost Mines or Princes.

[Tetrasodium]

Like you, I don't take the second thing seriously - I'll go further, and say that released fiction should be treated as non-canon to the game world. It's a pollutant.

Managing player expectations is arguably the most important task for a DM before players sit down at the table. Published material matters, obviously, but in the absence of a published campaign setting the onus is on the DM to provide the material to the players to explain the world, even if it's a big one that's been around since previous editions. How things work is always explicitly up to the DM to decide, and every single sourcebook is very clear about this. If you want the planar relationships to work the way they do in MToF, then that's fine, and if you don't, then they don't and players who don't like it will just have to deal.

Additionally, players having expectations doesn't have anything to do with victimhood. 'Setting victims' is an overwrought way of complaining about unpopular creative choices. The solution to those creative choices exists and has been there from the beginning: do it yourself, and make what yourself clear to the players.

Tetrasodium, I'm referring to your own complaints about Curse of Strahd, and how you want it to have specific guidelines for adaptation like Lost Mines or Princes.


Once again you are missing a few points.

d&d fiction books are not cannon when it comes to eberron. WotC could have published a fiction about drizzt & eliminster teaming up to end the tensions in khorvaire & it would not be cannon. Keith Baker himself will tell you that & has said that not even his eberron novels are cannon. The fact that certain settings are so different from each other means that importing things like lolth, Salvatore style drow, a bleeping portal to waterdeep, etc is not a simple matter of importing that thing because that thing has boatloads of setting soecific lore that conflicts & often that conflict is problematic to the setting it has been imported to. This results in needing to spend inordinate amounts of time teaching a setting because you need to break the very heavily reinforced mold of forgotten realms & greyhawk. Compare the drow of eberron (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CzC9g31syvTiNsWfTBkxrUWDmOdlulww/view) To the drizzt & Salvatore style drow from forgotten realms style of drow, there is effectively no parallels between them because in eberron lolth is a demon overlord & has been bound in khyber for the last hundred thousand years or so (http://eberron.wikia.com/wiki/Eberron_Timeline). So after they imported Asmodeous and the baggage needed to support him like planes with all the care for the setting receiving him as the target of Ghallegher's mallet it starts raising hackles to hear things like how echoes of lolth are in the blood of drow in every setting.


Curse of strahd is a fine adventure set in starting in faerun, moving to semi-faerunized avenloft, and returning to faerun... but it's very much faerunized Ravenloft. For examplem Ravenloft campaign setting has its own faiths & dieities (page49-54) plus a number of other things to its own... Curse of Strahd mostly just replaces a lot of that with faerun's or leaves it out. CoS begins in faerun & makes a number of changes to fit characters coming from faerun, it ends in faerun. This works out pretty well because ravenloft has somewhat more compatible baseline stuff with forgotten realms, gtreyhawk, etc than say eberron.

An eberron adventure that started in faerun & moved to khorvaire like cos does with ravenloft shouldn't be much more than not understanding the cultures, having nearly everything you know about stuff turned on its head, & gawking at the more advanced society that actually has things like disciplined armies, law enforcement, magic as a science, & capitalism all freed from the shackles of cultural stasis. A darksun adventure that starts in faerun should probably go much like many games (https://memegenerator.net/img/instances/500x/80074738/drank-the-mexican-water-nik-has-died-of-dysentery.jpg) of Oregon trail assuming someone doesn't don't kill you for your stuff & leave you hel[pless when halflings come to eat you and drink your blood. Not every setting can simply accept things from every other setting without changing the lore & fluff of what you want to bring over to some degree so irt can fit the setting.

Edit: the most important thing it is missing is guidelines for starting a ravenloft campaign... You know... In ravenloft.

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

Once again you are missing a few points.

No, dude, you are.

You see that splatter of text after the line I've quoted? I'm ignoring it. I'm ignoring it because it's entirely complaints about how settings work, and those complaints do not matter. If the material doesn't work for your needs, change it so it does. End of story.

You write that it sucks that CoS doesn't have adaptation guidelines. Agreed and conceded and so what? Those guidelines are just adaptations, and even modules that have very good adaptation guidelines will require a lot of work from a DM to make fit. That's fine! That's what DMs do! If you aren't interested in putting in that work, you maybe shouldn't be DMing.

[Tetrasodium]

No, dude, you are.

You see that splatter of text after the line I've quoted? I'm ignoring it. I'm ignoring it because it's entirely complaints about how settings work, and those complaints do not matter. If the material doesn't work for your needs, change it so it does. End of story.

You write that it sucks that CoS doesn't have adaptation guidelines. Agreed and conceded and so what? Those guidelines are just adaptations, and even modules that have very good adaptation guidelines will require a lot of work from a DM to make fit. That's fine! That's what DMs do! If you aren't interested in putting in that work, you maybe shouldn't be DMing.

You seem to be missing the point. Ravenloft is a setting (https://www.amazon.com/Ravenloft-Campaign-Setting-Rulebook-Roleplaying/dp/1588460754). It is not a piece of faerun, greyhawk, or any other setting If you are running a game set in Ravenloft using a published campaign set in ravenloft, you shouldn't need to "just change it" so it is in ravenloft.

[Unoriginal]

The game writers are not breaking a setting for you to fix/solve/whatever.

They are changing what the setting is for a new edition.

Don't like it, fine.

But don't bloody pretend that THEY are breaking the setting. THEY are the ones who decide what the setting is like for this edition. They're the ones who have that prerogative and responsibility.

So, feel free to change the setting's reality to fit what you want/how it was in previous editions that has no weight on 5e, but it's YOU who are altering the 5e version of that setting they established.


The sense of entitlement for that kind of thing some people have is just beyond incredible.



Edit: the most important thing it is missing is guidelines for starting a ravenloft campaign... You know... In ravenloft.

Curse of Strahd does have guidelines for starting a Ravenloft campaign, because it has the guidelines to start Curse of Strahd, which is a Ravenloft campaign.

[Tetrasodium]

The game writers are not breaking a setting for you to fix/solve/whatever.

They are changing what the setting is for a new edition.

Don't like it, fine.

But don't bloody pretend that THEY are breaking the setting. THEY are the ones who decide what the setting is like for this edition. They're the ones who have that prerogative and responsibility.

So, feel free to change the setting's reality to fit what you want/how it was in previous editions that has no weight on 5e, but it's YOU who are altering the 5e version of that setting they established.


The sense of entitlement for that kind of thing some people have is just beyond incredible.

Go back and reread this thread. It started out with guarded optimism over how it looked like they had heard the concerns & that the things leading to those concerns might not be too bad. There was some general agreement & QuickLyRaiNbow came in yelling badgm at anyone who dared to consider importing large chunks of faerun, greyhawk, netnir vale lore into another setting & making the setting change to fit that injection of lore.

Yes, they can change the setting, they could also decide wotc no longer wants the money of anyone but fans of faerun.

[Tetrasodium]

\

Curse of Strahd does have guidelines for starting a Ravenloft campaign, because it has the guidelines to start Curse of Strahd, which is a Ravenloft campaign.


You are right that it starts with some information about ravenloft as a setting, but that is something different. I invite you to look at CoS page 18
ADVENTURE HOOKS
In the event that begins the adventure, the fates of Strahd and the adventurers are entwined as the charac*ters are invited or forced into his domain. Different ways to get the adventurers to Barovia are described in the sections that follow. Use whichever one you favor. In "Plea for Help," a colorfully dressed stranger approaches the characters while they are staying at a tavern. The stranger delivers a letter from his master, inviting them to the village of Barovia with an urgent re*quest for their assistance. If the characters take the bait, the fog engulfs them as they cross into Strahd's domain.

In "Mysterious Visitors," the characters are asked to scare off a band of rowdy travelers who are camped outside the town of Daggerford, on the Sword Coast in the Forgotten Realms campaign setting. The travelers welcome the characters to their camp and invite them to sit by their fire while their elder recounts a tragic tale of a cursed yet noble prince. The characters, lulled into a trance by the fire, awaken to find themselves on a foggy road, delivered to Barovia by their Vistani hosts.

In "Werewolves in the Mist," the characters are drawn together by a series of werewolf attacks. The hunt for this pack of lycanthropes leads the characters into a for*est, where they are swept into the land of Barovia. This hook assumes the use of the five factions featured in the Adventurers League.
In "Creeping Fog," the characters are traveling a lonely road through the woods when the fog engulfs them, spiriting them away to the land of Barovia.

The next couple pages talk about those individual suggested options, each & every one of them begns in faerun. Perhaps you could show which one starts in barovia & assumes players are from barovia or why a section about the faerun specific AL factions was more important than nearly anything that could have been included from the ravenloft campaign setting?

[Unoriginal]

Your "optimism" was you hoping the game designers would conform to your desire of changing what is established for 5e to make it more like previous editions.

As for Curse of Strahd: Ravenloft was ALWAYS about people being snatched from another plane (most likely the Material one) and getting confronted with the horror of the very, very dark place they're in. When you're a native of Barovia, you are most likely Strahd's slave or someone Strahd would destroy in an heartbeat. The ancient vampire doesn't do that with new arrivals because he likes watching them walk around like headless chickens, persuaded they have a chance to win...

The adventure hooks are tied to Faerun because the AL module so far have been set in Faerun.

[Tetrasodium]

Your "optimism" was you hoping the game designers would conform to your desire of changing what is established for 5e to make it more like previous editions.

As for Curse of Strahd: Ravenloft was ALWAYS about people being snatched from another plane (most likely the Material one) and getting confronted with the horror of the very, very dark place they're in. When you're a native of Barovia, you are most likely Strahd's slave or someone Strahd would destroy in an heartbeat. The ancient vampire doesn't do that with new arrivals because he likes watching them walk around like headless chickens, persuaded they have a chance to win...

The adventure hooks are tied to Faerun because the AL module so far have been set in Faerun.

I guess you could say "more like previous editions" is one way of saying "not the wholesale importation of fluff & lore from a second setting & forcing the setting to change baselines so it fits the baselines needed for another setting's fluff"... but we both know the concerns are less about setting changes in general than things like "eberron is just a pulpy faerun" & "darksun is just a post apocalyptic faerun"

I'm sure you would be singing the same ridiculous tune if the 5e content were all darksun or all eberron & they were talking about how much stuff from those settings applies to every other setting. I have no problem with new stuff & changes that fit the setting, dragon 408 40-43 would have been one of many perfectly fine ways of importing asmodeous & his metaplot because it changes the metaplot enough to fit the setting instead of the reverse. I rolled my eyes a bit, but didn't mind the eldar feyspires that got added in or the elves being made from the eldar, they were done in a way that fit the setting... they didn't just say "oh yea there is this other nation that has always been there"/ "there is a whole new continent nobody noticed" like they did with the planes.

[Envyus]

well I could have explained how 4e did that to eberron in the eberron core books to fit the setting around asmodious that style of demon , & his metaplot that was written for a different setting with different baselines rather than modifying asmodious & his metaplot to fit eberron, but that leads top a long debate about which other setting's baselines that the whole thing came from. I could have used import & export, but importing of radioactive waste & biohazards tends to be done with a bit more care than the explosive device they used ghallagher (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErppAlOIGQE) fit the setting around.

Once again thats not what happened.

4e did not change the setting to fit in Asmodeus, the setting was changed to fit in 4e cosmology. The Nine Hells came with it. (And were quite minor given that there was only a paragraph about it.)

[Envyus]

CoS is in ravenloft, it is not part of faerun & has a number of different baseline assumptions from faerun... but that didn't stop WotC from starting it in faerun and offering no LMoP/PoaA style guidance for starting it in ravenloft or some other setting. Yes the adventures are somewhat made to plug into worlds, but the more that world differs from the baseline standards present in faerun, the more work it can be to fit. I'm not saying the current balance slat there is good, bad, too much, or too little... simply acknowledging that it is there. MtoF makes it relevant because it has been stated to apply to all worlds in the "shared multiverse" and they have mentioned things that simply can not be translated on a 1:1 level (ie drow & "echoes of lolth". Both are extremely different in eberron & have no relation to each other, so skepticism is warranted)





when wotc starts talking about how a book applies to all settings & says worrisome things, their history in that clusterbleep is relevant .

You never start in Ravenloft. Do you not know how that works. You are outsiders.
And they give an opinion for starting it in Faerun, which is one of like 5 options they give, many of which are generic and could be part of any setting. Ravenloft's gimmick is that it's mists pop out anywhere and can draw people into it.

This is not skepticism it's paranoia.

[Envyus]

I guess you could say "more like previous editions" is one way of saying "not the wholesale importation of fluff & lore from a second setting & forcing the setting to change baselines so it fits the baselines needed for another setting's fluff"... but we both know the concerns are less about setting changes in general than things like "eberron is just a pulpy faerun" & "darksun is just a post apocalyptic faerun"

I'm sure you would be singing the same ridiculous tune if the 5e content were all darksun or all eberron & they were talking about how much stuff from those settings applies to every other setting. I have no problem with new stuff & changes that fit the setting, dragon 408 40-43 would have been one of many perfectly fine ways of importing asmodeous & his metaplot because it changes the metaplot enough to fit the setting instead of the reverse. I rolled my eyes a bit, but didn't mind the eldar feyspires that got added in or the elves being made from the eldar, they were done in a way that fit the setting... they didn't just say "oh yea there is this other nation that has always been there"/ "there is a whole new continent nobody noticed" like they did with the planes.

No. No one has said that.

These slight changes made BY THE SETTINGS CREATOR. Happened 9 years ago get over it.

[Tetrasodium]

You never start in Ravenloft. Do you not know how that works. You are outsiders.
And they give an opinion for starting it in Faerun, which is one of like 5 options they give, many of which are generic and could be part of any setting. Ravenloft's gimmick is that it's mists pop out anywhere and can draw people into it.

While true, that is different from the conversation that was had


"Other than SCAG, Wizards hasn't published an explicit setting yet. Unless your game is set entirely within the confines of the Sword Coast, the setting has been built and run at the table level anyway."
no matter how much fans of faerun might wish it to be so, ravenloft is not part of that rancid midden heap of tolkien's randomly arranged rotting flesh so.... "CoS is in ravenloft, it is not part of faerun & has a number of different baseline assumptions from faerun... but that didn't stop WotC from starting it in faerun and offering no LMoP/PoaA style guidance for starting it in ravenloft or some other setting. Yes the adventures are somewhat made to plug into worlds, but the more that world differs from the baseline standards present in faerun, the more work it can be to fit. I'm not saying the current balance slat there is good, bad, too much, or too little... simply acknowledging that it is there. "
"the most important thing it is missing is guidelines for starting a ravenloft campaign... You know... In ravenloft."
I used the words "in ravenloft" & those were even quoted along with this silliness "Curse of Strahd does have guidelines for starting a Ravenloft campaign, because it has the guidelines to start Curse of Strahd, which is a Ravenloft campaign."
Thus the starting hooks in Cos were produced along with a question of which ones start in ravenloft



Bizarrely CoS is easier to adapt to nearly any setting, the themes of ravenloft can be adapted to nearly any setting, including to some degree... my little pony horror (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZnXfYg4jvo) apparently. By stripping the temples & such of the faith that should be practiced there as they do in CoS they again mak the setting easier to adadpt because none of those temples are devoted specifically to $forgottenRealmsFaith with its own baggage from 30 years of drizzt novels. You can replace strahd with nearly any other disliked despotic-ish ruler of a region without significantly impacting the thing in ways that require much effort to adjust. Now... having a good page & a half on cos 21&22 devoted to rehashing the faerun soecific AL factions in ravenloft rather than say.... anything about ravenloft is inexcusable however. Such things do not belong in a ravenloft adventure, they belong in a faerun or AL document.

Yes, I strongly object to the presence of faerun & faerun only stuff in the Ravenloft CoS adventure. People are quick to point out how only faerun stuff has been published, that does not excuse inserting it in a book devoted to acampaign that is not set in faerun. Also, if only faerun stuff has been published, does that mean that the ravenloft CoS adventure was not published or that it is faerun? I brought up CoS because it is not a faerun book to disprove the claim of everything being faerun in 5e & people seem to be quick to defend the presence of faerun content in the ravenloft adventure.

[Envyus]

While true, that is different from the conversation that was had


"Other than SCAG, Wizards hasn't published an explicit setting yet. Unless your game is set entirely within the confines of the Sword Coast, the setting has been built and run at the table level anyway."
no matter how much fans of faerun might wish it to be so, ravenloft is not part of that rancid midden heap of tolkien's randomly arranged rotting flesh so.... "CoS is in ravenloft, it is not part of faerun & has a number of different baseline assumptions from faerun... but that didn't stop WotC from starting it in faerun and offering no LMoP/PoaA style guidance for starting it in ravenloft or some other setting. Yes the adventures are somewhat made to plug into worlds, but the more that world differs from the baseline standards present in faerun, the more work it can be to fit. I'm not saying the current balance slat there is good, bad, too much, or too little... simply acknowledging that it is there. "
"the most important thing it is missing is guidelines for starting a ravenloft campaign... You know... In ravenloft."
I used the words "in ravenloft" & those were even quoted along with this silliness "Curse of Strahd does have guidelines for starting a Ravenloft campaign, because it has the guidelines to start Curse of Strahd, which is a Ravenloft campaign."
Thus the starting hooks in Cos were produced along with a question of which ones start in ravenloft



Bizarrely CoS is easier to adapt to nearly any setting, the themes of ravenloft can be adapted to nearly any setting, including to some degree... my little pony horror (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZnXfYg4jvo) apparently. By stripping the temples & such of the faith that should be practiced there as they do in CoS they again mak the setting easier to adadpt because none of those temples are devoted specifically to $forgottenRealmsFaith with its own baggage from 30 years of drizzt novels. You can replace strahd with nearly any other disliked despotic-ish ruler of a region without significantly impacting the thing in ways that require much effort to adjust. Now... having a good page & a half on cos 21&22 devoted to rehashing the faerun soecific AL factions in ravenloft rather than say.... anything about ravenloft is inexcusable however. Such things do not belong in a ravenloft adventure, they belong in a faerun or AL document.

Yes, I strongly object to the presence of faerun & faerun only stuff in the Ravenloft CoS adventure. People are quick to point out how only faerun stuff has been published, that does not excuse inserting it in a book devoted to acampaign that is not set in faerun. Also, if only faerun stuff has been published, does that mean that the ravenloft CoS adventure was not published or that it is faerun? I brought up CoS because it is not a faerun book to disprove the claim of everything being faerun in 5e & people seem to be quick to defend the presence of faerun content in the ravenloft adventure.

I don't think you know what Ravenloft is.


"the most important thing it is missing is guidelines for starting a ravenloft campaign... You know... In ravenloft."
I used the words "in ravenloft" & those were even quoted along with this silliness "Curse of Strahd does have guidelines for starting a Ravenloft campaign, because it has the guidelines to start Curse of Strahd, which is a Ravenloft campaign."
"Thus the starting hooks in Cos were produced along with a question of which ones start in ravenloft"

These don't matter at all, and have never mattered to Ravenloft.

[Tetrasodium]

I don't think you know what Ravenloft is.


"the most important thing it is missing is guidelines for starting a ravenloft campaign... You know... In ravenloft."
I used the words "in ravenloft" & those were even quoted along with this silliness "Curse of Strahd does have guidelines for starting a Ravenloft campaign, because it has the guidelines to start Curse of Strahd, which is a Ravenloft campaign."
"Thus the starting hooks in Cos were produced along with a question of which ones start in ravenloft"

These don't matter at all, and have never mattered to Ravenloft.

and you think that somehow justifies a page & a half of faerun & AL faction stuff over literally anything about ravenloft in the CoS book?

[Envyus]

and you think that somehow justifies a page & a half of faerun & AL faction stuff over literally anything about ravenloft in the CoS book?

Yes that is fine. Many people may want to bring some early characters into Ravenloft. And having a plot hook mentioning a specific world is fine partiuarly as they might have just been playing in that setting as the other adventures are set there.
And outside of AL people still do join the factions. So they provide a reason for their characters from those faction to get involved is good as well. And they are about Ravenloft. They are hooks for getting your characters into Ravenloft.

Added on it's just a couple of paragraphs it's not a big deal. Then again you were upset about a paragraph in the Eberron Campaign Guide and assumed that everything changed to fit that paragraph in. So it makes sense you would get upset by a page.

[Tetrasodium]

Yes that is fine. Many people may want to bring some early characters into Ravenloft. And having a plot hook mentioning a specific world is fine partiuarly as they might have just been playing in that setting as the other adventures are set there.
And outside of AL people still do join the factions. So they provide a reason for their characters from those faction to get involved is good as well. And they are about Ravenloft. They are hooks for getting your characters into Ravenloft.

Added on it's just a couple of paragraphs it's not a big deal. Then again you were upset about a paragraph in the Eberron Campaign Guide and assumed that everything changed to fit that paragraph in. So it makes sense you would get upset by a page.
It is not a "couple paragraphs", it's more like a page & a half....


HARPERS

A Harper named Zelraun Roaringhorn knows a metal*smith who will silver your weapons for free. He also pro*vides some helpful magic.
"We strive to protect the powerless," he says. "If the children kidnapped by the werewolves are still alive, I would see them safely returned."

Zelraun Roaringhorn (LN male human mage) has come to Daggerford to meet with its ruler, Duchess Morwen, and offer the Harpers' support.
Zelraun gives each Harper character a spell scrollof remove curse. He has also made arrangements with a metalsmith in Waterdeep to sheathe the characters' weapons in silver. The party can have up to six weapons silvered in this manner. Twenty pieces of ammunition count as one weapon for this purpose.
About the Harpers. The Harpers is a network of spellcasters and spies who advocate equality and who covertly oppose the abuse of power. The organization's longevity is largely due to its decentralized, grassroots, secretive nature, and the autonomy of its members. The Harpers have small cells and lone operatives through*out the Forgotten Realms. They share information with one another from time to time as needs warrant. The Harpers' ideology is noble, and its members pride them*selves on their ingenuity and incorruptibility.
ORDER OF THE GAUNTLET

You met with the heads of the Order of the Gauntlet chapter house in Waterdeep. They've stationed mem*bers of the order at various inns and homesteads east of Daggerford, so that locals need not fear the night. Now they're counting on you to find the werewolves' lair in the Misty Forest. Only then can the order mount an orga*nized assault. As you prepare to depart, a knight of the order named Lanniver Strayl offers you his blessing.

Lanniver Strayl (LG male human knight), a devout fol*lower of Tyr recently arrived in Daggerford, gives a po*tion of heroism to each member of the order in the party.
About the Order of the Gauntlet. Founded by pala*dins and clerics of Helm, Torm, and Tyr, the order is a dedicated group of like-minded individuals driven by re*ligious zeal or a finely honed sense of justice and honor. The order is ready to lash out the moment evil acts, and not a moment before. The order strikes hard and fast, without waiting for the blessings of temples or the per*mission of rulers. The order believes that evil must be smashed, or it will swiftly overcome all.

EMERALD ENCLAVE

You don't need to consult with others in the Emerald Enclave to know that the werewolves are upsetting the natural order. For balance to be restored, they must be eradicated. It seems the gods of nature agree, for they've sent good weather and preserved the monsters' tracks.

Members of the Emerald Enclave in the party gain inspi*ration whenever the party kills a werewolf.
About the Emerald Enclave. This widespread group of wilderness survivalists-preserves the natural order while rooting out unnatural threats. Druids, rangers, and barbarians make up most of its membership. Branches of the organization can be found wherever untamed wilderness exists. Members of the Emerald Enclave·know how to survive, and more important, they want to help others do the same. They aren't opposed to civilization or progress, but they strive to prevent civili*zation and the wilderness from destroying one another.
LORDS' ALLIANCE

A Lords' Alliance operative from Waterdeep named Eravien Haund comes to Daggerford bearing news that
alliance agents have not only captured one of the were*wolves but also conducted a thorough interrogation be*fore putting the creature out of its misery.
Eravien Haund (LN male half-elf noble) imparts the following information to fellow Lords' Alliance members and tells them not to share it:
The werewolf pack has almost a dozen members. The leader of the pack is a man named Kiril.
• The werewolves come from a distant land called Baro*via. The Lords' Alliance has no information about it.
• The werewolves worship a deity called Mother Night.
• The werewolves leave and return to Barovia through some kind of ancient portal. (This is a deduction on Eravien's part, based on the werewolf prisoner's vague description of how the pack gets to and from Barovia.)

Eravien believes that he can gain prestige within the Lords' Alliance if he learns the whereabouts of the "ancient portal" that the werewolves are using and de*stroys it. He is convinced that the portal represents a danger not only to Daggerford but also to Waterdeep. Any Lords' AJliance character who agrees to destroy it is given a spell scroll of magic weapon. Eravien also promises to furnish the character with a letter of recommendation (see "Marks of Prestige" in chapter 7 of the Dungeon Master's Guide) once the portal is destroyed.

About the Lords' Alliance. The Lords' Alliance is a coalition of political powers concerned with their mu*tual security and prosperity. Heading the coalition are rulers in the North and along the Sword Coast.

Although alliance members have pledged to join forces against common threats, every lord in it places the fate and fortune of his or her settlement above all others. Agents of the alliance are chosen primarily for their loyalty, and are trained in observation, stealth, in*nuendo, and combat. Backed by the wealthy, they carry well-made equipment (often disguised to appear com*mon). Alliance operatives are often glory hounds.

ZHENTARIM

The Black Network sees the werewolf menace as an op*portunity to provide lords and nervous landowners with mercenaries to protect their holdings. But at least one of your fellow members has a grudge against the lycanthropes. Davra Jassur, a member of the Zhentarim based in Waterdeep, arranges a private meeting with you.
DavraJassur (LE female human assassin) poses as a re*cruiter for the Black Network but is, in fact, a cutthroat who quietly disposes of competitors. Her husband,Yafak, was also a member of the Black Network. Hewas escorting a caravan traveling from Daggerford tothe Way Inn (about sixty miles southeast of Daggerford,
along the Trade Way) when the werewolves attacked. Yarak was slain, and Davra wants revenge; she wants the head of the werewolf pack leader. She is too tied up with "business" to engage in a personal vendetta, but if another member of the Black Network were to help, she would owe that individual a special favor (see "Marks of Prestige" in chapter 7 of the Dungeon Master's Guide).

About the Zhentarim. The Zhentarim is an unscrupu*lous shadow network that seeks to expand its influence throughout the Forgotten Realms. The public face of the Black Network appears relatively benign. It offers the best and cheapest goods and services, both legal and illicit, hoping to undercut its competitors.

Members of the Zhentarim think of themselves as members of an extended family and rely on it for re*sources and security. At the same time, members are granted the autonomy to increase their own wealth and influence. As a whole, the Zhentarim promises "the best for the best," although in truth the organization is more interested in spreading its own propaganda and influence than investing in the improvement of its members.

That is far more than "a couple" paragraphs & the vast maority of it is 100% faerun and/or AL specific with no business whatsoever being in a ravenloft book. AL has various PDf files describing the factions, faerun has the only 5e setting sourcebookFaerun is the setting of choice for every other hardcover adventure in 5e. Literally anything about ravenloft, up to & perhaps including, Strahd's bathroom habits are more deserving of that wasted space. Your defense of it shows exactly why people are skittish when WotC starts talking about doing it intentionally because their 5e track record is not so great

[EvilAnagram]

In summation, there are three major views on display in this thread:
Poor changes in the campaign settings ruin them.
Changes don't matter because you should be changing it at your table.
You have no right to complain about changes to campaign settings because devs are god.


I think we need one more, equally hostile point of view for this to really count as a GitP thread.

[Tetrasodium]

In summation, there are three major views on display in this thread:
Poor changes in the campaign settings ruin them.
Changes don't matter because you should be changing it at your table.
You have no right to complain about changes to campaign settings because dems are god.


I think we need one more, equally hostile point of view for this to really count as a GitP thread.

"dems are god"? Obviously a Soros plant :smallbiggrin:

[Kaliayev]

I think we need one more, equally hostile point of view for this to really count as a GitP thread.

Um, Mike Mearls is a genius and Jeremy Crawford is a doo-doo head? drops mic

[Honest Tiefling]

I think we need one more, equally hostile point of view for this to really count as a GitP thread.

How about the removal of Elminster's awful hat all the way back in third edition?

Anyway, on topic...How in the name of Bane's 4th edition toned rear did the HARPERS get into Ravenloft, or am I misreading this thread?

[Tetrasodium]

How about the removal of Elminster's awful hat all the way back in third edition?

Anyway, on topic...How in the name of Bane's 4th edition toned rear did the HARPERS get into Ravenloft, or am I misreading this thread?

CoS 21 &22, you are not misreading the thread and people were actually defending that inclusion.

[Envyus]

How about the removal of Elminster's awful hat all the way back in third edition?

Anyway, on topic...How in the name of Bane's 4th edition toned rear did the HARPERS get into Ravenloft, or am I misreading this thread?

They are not in Ravenloft. If your characters are part of the five factions the hook for them is that your faction wants you to hunt down some werewolves and gives you some gear to do so. But the werewolves were a trap by Strahd and lead you into Ravenloft.

That is the extent of it.


It is not a "couple paragraphs", it's more like a page & a half....


That is far more than "a couple" paragraphs & the vast maority of it is 100% faerun and/or AL specific with no business whatsoever being in a ravenloft book. AL has various PDf files describing the factions, faerun has the only 5e setting sourcebookFaerun is the setting of choice for every other hardcover adventure in 5e. Literally anything about ravenloft, up to & perhaps including, Strahd's bathroom habits are more deserving of that wasted space. Your defense of it shows exactly why people are skittish when WotC starts talking about doing it intentionally because their 5e track record is not so great

Yeah that is not a big deal. It's helpful for people in those factions. Lots of the AL stuff was involved with Ravenloft when the book came out.

[Tetrasodium]

They are not in Ravenloft. If your characters are part of the five factions the hook for them is that your faction wants you to hunt down some werewolves and gives you some gear to do so. But the werewolves were a trap by Strahd and lead you into Ravenloft.

That is the extent of it.

This (http://dndadventurersleague.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Curse-of-Strahd-Amendment-Formatted-v1.2.pdf) contains the pages they belong on, not the CoS book itself.

[Regitnui]

If you wanted to start a Ravenloft campaign in Ravenloft, using 5e material, you'd be hard up for any information short of "this is Strahd. This is Strahd's deal." I mean, the original Ravenloft setting books told us there were multiple darklords, different baronies, each with their own state of distinct madness. The Vistani travelled between them, but so did others, like a carnival of Freaks led by an angel who was rapidly decaying into something else. Plenty of plots, hooks and angles for a DM. CoS is a FR adventure in Ravenloft, not a Ravenloft sourcebook. It seems to fall victim to "iconic syndrome"; Strahd is a famous name, and that seems to be what 5e is built around. This bodes ill for settings that weren't pushed in 2e or never built up iconic characters the entire setting revolves around.

You could start a Ravenloft adventure through that Death House mini-adventure, but there's no answer to "where do the Vistani go" or "what happens if we leave Strahd's barony", despite Ravenloft as a setting having answers: "to other dreadholds" and "you go somewhere worse" respectively. A unified cosmology doesn't do too well when Ravenloft snaps most of FR's assumptions over an indistinct knee and removes pretty much every race in the PHB.

[Unoriginal]

In summation, there are three major views on display in this thread:
Poor changes in the campaign settings ruin them.
Changes don't matter because you should be changing it at your table.
You have no right to complain about changes to campaign settings because dems are god.


I think we need one more, equally hostile point of view for this to really count as a GitP thread.

Try to present me into an even worse light, next time, Ithink you were too subbtle.

[Envyus]

If you wanted to start a Ravenloft campaign in Ravenloft, using 5e material, you'd be hard up for any information short of "this is Strahd. This is Strahd's deal." I mean, the original Ravenloft setting books told us there were multiple darklords, different baronies, each with their own state of distinct madness. The Vistani travelled between them, but so did others, like a carnival of Freaks led by an angel who was rapidly decaying into something else. Plenty of plots, hooks and angles for a DM. CoS is a FR adventure in Ravenloft, not a Ravenloft sourcebook. It seems to fall victim to "iconic syndrome"; Strahd is a famous name, and that seems to be what 5e is built around. This bodes ill for settings that weren't pushed in 2e or never built up iconic characters the entire setting revolves around.

You could start a Ravenloft adventure through that Death House mini-adventure, but there's no answer to "where do the Vistani go" or "what happens if we leave Strahd's barony", despite Ravenloft as a setting having answers: "to other dreadholds" and "you go somewhere worse" respectively. A unified cosmology doesn't do too well when Ravenloft snaps most of FR's assumptions over an indistinct knee and removes pretty much every race in the PHB.

We know exactly what happens if you leave Strahd's barony, you choke to death on mist.

No this is not an FR Adventure in Ravenloft, it is just a Ravenloft Adventure, and that is an Adventure not a setting guide.

Added on the Adventure is not really even based too much on the setting, it's based on the adventure Module which came first and everything spun off of it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravenloft_(module) Ravenloft's Original creators even helped with the Adventure. (Fun fact they were never really fans of the setting.)

Also Ravenloft has always been part of the unified Cosmology as a setting. It was pretty much a cross over setting, multiple dark lords had their lands pulled form their original settings by the mists, and then people on other settings would every once in a while enter the mists and end up in the Dark Lords lands. (Which they could cut off from each other.)

[Unoriginal]

All this thread do is setting the writers up for "failure" (read: "doing something OP doesn't like") by saying "oh, I sure hope the writers are not doing X" when they have been outspoken, several times, about how they were doing X.

Not liking X is fine, pretending that they're in the wrong for doing X because they're not making their settings the way you like is not. Talking nonstop about how doing X is doubleplusnogood whenever anything come close to the subject is even less fine.

[2D8HP]

I watched the video,
https://youtu.be/yCqW_MI-Exk, and my only take-away is that an "orc raised by humans or dwarves would act like a human or dwarf", which seems to negate the while "whispers of Grummush" thing.

The related videos seem more interesting, "The Shadar-kai are the least elfiest of elves and the Eladrin are the most elfiest of elves" and I look forward to the book.

[EvilAnagram]

All this thread do is setting the writers up for "failure" (read: "doing something OP doesn't like") by saying "oh, I sure hope the writers are not doing X" when they have been outspoken, several times, about how they were doing X.

Not liking X is fine, pretending that they're in the wrong for doing X because they're not making their settings the way you like is not. Talking nonstop about how doing X is doubleplusnogood whenever anything come close to the subject is even less fine.

... it's not their setting.

This isn't a book that was written by a single person and is the result of their efforts. The current team at WotC has as much claim to have made Eberron or Ravenloft as anyone else who played and loved it over the last 40 years. The players are the ones who made campaign settings come alive, the ones who put countless hours into them. I think it's understandable for some of us not to like it when people who had no more to do with Athas than we did fundamentally change the setting.

Liking the developers is fine, but so is criticizing them. I don't have to accept that their choices are the right choices, and so long as I stay respectful I have the right to challenge their decisions.

As for setting the devs up for failure, I'm perfectly fine with that. If enough people don't like their choices, it should fail, and they should learn from it. I'm also perfectly happy to be in the minority, though.

[PhoenixPhyre]

The fundamental difference here seems to be the expectation of linear continuity between editions, as if there's some kind of metaversal clock that advances. That seems to be an expectation that only sometimes works.

The vast majority of settings are single-system settings (mainly AD&D). A few were "updated" for new systems (FR being one of them). Except for FR, which has maintained a metaplot continuity between editions (and that's one of the reasons its as NPC/oddness heavy as it is, since core assumptions don't transfer well), the vast majority of the other "updates" have been closer to reimaginings or reboots than continuity updates. Or they've flat out folded the settings together.

And that's to be expected, I think. The editions are so fundamentally different in a lot of core philosophical ways (especially X -> 4e, where X is any other edition, but lesser so X -> 3e) that trying to maintain any continuity except thematics, maps, and some high level ideas is fraught with peril and sure to disappoint someone.

This edition seems to be moving away from "Setting Guides" and more giving material at a different level--discussing design principles (the whys from that video), not the facts on the ground. Whether you like it or not, that seems to be the way they've chosen to go.

[Chaosmancer]

So, my morbid curiosity is raising its head.

I've created my own setting, stealing names and lore from wherever I feel like and changing things slowly into a cohesive if still not entirely unique whole. I'm fine with that.

My only true "experience" in other settings was a homebrewed 4e Darksun game and a few games stealing the place names from Faerun.

I say all this to help define my starting point before I get to my question.

If established settings have been so horribly mangled, and you have no faith in the designers to create a good product... Why are you still invested in the setting's future? If Chipotle started selling crap food, I'd stop buying it.

And if you like the old settings,if you're invested in them... Then just use the old stuff. I get that players will come with preconceived notions but that is literally always going to be the case with [b]something[\b] in the setting. For a personal example, I changed Drow in my game. I made them crazy like the Addams family and incredibly reclusive, so when my friend started spouting off about how the drow were in 3.5 I told him he was wrong, because I had changed all that. It's annoying but it will always happen to one degree or the other.

So... Why all the gnashing of teeth? I get you'd rather have WotC be good stewards of your favorite settings, but if you don't believe capable of it then how does bemoaning how many times they've nuked your favorite setting actually help anything?

Honestly, I haven't watched the video, so I support the optimism, but it honestly doesn't effect me beyond potentially giving me good ideas to incorporate or riff off of, and if someone comes to my table talking about the divine mandate of WotC, I'll gently steer them towards understanding that I've made my own world with its own assumptions... Or take a hammer to their head, whichever is easier :p

[PhoenixPhyre]

In my opinion, the only "published" settings that exist as such right now in 5e are fragments of FR (the Sword Coast + a few pieces that have been hit in adventures) and Barovia. Everything else is homebrew. Yes, that means Eberron doesn't exist in 5e as an official thing--it only exists in fragments and mentions. Its parameters are almost completely undefined. Neither does Dark Sun. Or Dragonlance. Or ...

The focus seems to be on creating your own setting. Even if you borrow pieces or backdrops from settings, the focus is on making it personal. Adapting it to the needs and desires of the tables. For better or worse, this is not an edition that caters to setting purists who want deep tomes of fixed lore.

[Unoriginal]

... it's not their setting.

Yes, it is. Those settings belong to Wizards of the Coast, who mandates authors to write about them.



This isn't a book that was written by a single person and is the result of their efforts. The current team at WotC has as much claim to have made Eberron or Ravenloft as anyone else who played and loved it over the last 40 years.

No. That's like saying that anyone who read and loved the Lord of the Rings has as much claim on the movies as Peter Jackson.

Each edition is an adaptation, and the claim on it belongs to the adapters.



The players are the ones who made campaign settings come alive, the ones who put countless hours into them.

The players are the ones who played in their own versions of the campaign settings. It does not give them any right or creative input on the official releases.



I think it's understandable for some of us not to like it when people who had no more to do with Athas than we did fundamentally change the setting.

It's understandable to not like the change, yes. I myself loathed some of the changes they made in 4e.




Liking the developers is fine, but so is criticizing them.

Too bad no one has been criticizing them, then.

Tetrasodium and others have not criticized any of the versions of the setting, they've just complained that different editions have different lore by claiming, in a bout of circular logic, that the changed setting is wrong because it's changed.



I don't have to accept that their choices are the right choices

There is no wrong or right choices. They decide what the setting is like officially. You may like it, you may not, and you
can change what you wish for your home game, but there is no right or wrong.




and so long as I stay respectful I have the right to challenge their decisions.

"Stay respectful" implies having been respectful in the first place.

Implying that you can decide their choices are wrong isn't respectful.




As for setting the devs up for failure, I'm perfectly fine with that.

You're perfectly fine using an empty rhetoric trick to claim that you've given them a chance to do what you want when you perfectly know they won't, so you can complain harder?

Ok.

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

and you think that somehow justifies a page & a half of faerun & AL faction stuff over literally anything about ravenloft in the CoS book?

For better or for worse, AL is the Wizards business model now. Every adventure - every single one - is going to include information about the AL factions. It seems pretty indisputable that AL has been good for the bottom line, so a page and a half of explanation of the roles of the factions is the price we pay for prosperity.


In my opinion, the only "published" settings that exist as such right now in 5e are fragments of FR (the Sword Coast + a few pieces that have been hit in adventures) and Barovia. Everything else is homebrew. Yes, that means Eberron doesn't exist in 5e as an official thing--it only exists in fragments and mentions. Its parameters are almost completely undefined. Neither does Dark Sun. Or Dragonlance. Or ...

The focus seems to be on creating your own setting. Even if you borrow pieces or backdrops from settings, the focus is on making it personal. Adapting it to the needs and desires of the tables. For better or worse, this is not an edition that caters to setting purists who want deep tomes of fixed lore.

Exactly. And the exception as you say is the fragmented pieces of FR which exist to be the scope of AL play. When building this network of standardized drop-in-drop-out gaming, the setting assumptions have to be fixed in place more than the rest of 5E's design philosophy would like.

With the move towards a rules-lite philosophy, I wonder if we might get a Setting Builder's Guide that touches on the creations of various settings and why they work the way they do while giving some philosophies and dos and don'ts for creating custom settings. "Eberron is high magic, and that manifests itself in these ways. When building a high magic setting, consider these implications: a, b, c." "Dark Sun features unusual physical properties that affect the world like this. When altering the basic assumptions of a world, consider a, b and c." I'd be quite interested in that book.

[KorvinStarmast]

Whenever I see videos like this, I'm reminded of how much I love Mike's capacity for world building. When watching videos like this, I am reminded of how badly WoTC needs to up their game for producing promotional videos. (Get your people some training!) The disembodied hand moving about is a result of poorly set up frame, and reminds me of a badly done "Thing" from Addams Family.

Mearls certainly has creative chops. Glad he explains what's behind this.
He expresses this in "we tell you the mythic past, you write the future." In re world building, the "why not what" lens was refreshing to hear (it's how I remember world building from way back, though why and what is a standard way to write speculative fiction ... ) Also appreciate his touching on the issue of "present and active" deities, and the issue of culture rather than race driving the deep background.

[the_brazenburn]

I can't believe I'm stepping into a setting debate.

With that said, now I feel obliged to join the argument.

So, here's how I see it.

1. WotC has spent so long working with Forgotten Realms in 5e that it is difficult for them to easily adapt the edition to another setting.

2. When they tried to branch out, with Curse of Strahd, some people applauded them, and others said that their Ravenloft adventure was too Faerûn-ish.

3. Those people tend to be the same people who bash Forgotten Realms at every opportunity, and generally go into long and irrelevant discussions of "Why Eberron is the greatest setting ever to exist and why Forgotten Realms is not fit to scrape the dirt from its feet," or something along those lines.

4. Their discussions are met by FR fanatics bashing Eberron for no reason whatsoever, making it look like the Eberron freaks have the moral high ground. This encourages the instigators, who make more threads that dissolve faster and faster into back and forth arguments over nothing.

Please, people, show some decency. Both settings are good, and WotC is under no obligation to do anything other than FR if they feel like it. Other editions have had "default settings", like Nentir Vale for 4e and Greyhawk in 3.5. If Forgotten Realms is going to be 5e's default, there's nothing anybody can do about that.

[Unoriginal]

I can't believe I'm stepping into a setting debate.

With that said, now I feel obliged to join the argument.

So, here's how I see it.

1. WotC has spent so long working with Forgotten Realms in 5e that it is difficult for them to easily adapt the edition to another setting.

2. When they tried to branch out, with Curse of Strahd, some people applauded them, and others said that their Ravenloft adventure was too Faerûn-ish.

3. Those people tend to be the same people who bash Forgotten Realms at every opportunity, and generally go into long and irrelevant discussions of "Why Eberron is the greatest setting ever to exist and why Forgotten Realms is not fit to scrape the dirt from its feet," or something along those lines.

4. Their discussions are met by FR fanatics bashing Eberron for no reason whatsoever, making it look like the Eberron freaks have the moral high ground. This encourages the instigators, who make more threads that dissolve faster and faster into back and forth arguments over nothing.

Please, people, show some decency. Both settings are good, and WotC is under no obligation to do anything other than FR if they feel like it. Other editions have had "default settings", like Nentir Vale for 4e and Greyhawk in 3.5. If Forgotten Realms is going to be 5e's default, there's nothing anybody can do about that.

Forgotten Realms is NOT the default setting for 5e. It's true it's a setting that has gotten a lot of material, due to being where the AL stuff happens, but that doesn't make it the default.

I'm not a FR fan, either. What pisses me off is people who want to pretend that WotC has no right to decide what is the reality of their official settings and act as if said settings were sacro-saint and can't be changed since the day the ink dried on the original writer's desk.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Exactly. And the exception as you say is the fragmented pieces of FR which exist to be the scope of AL play. When building this network of standardized drop-in-drop-out gaming, the setting assumptions have to be fixed in place more than the rest of 5E's design philosophy would like.

With the move towards a rules-lite philosophy, I wonder if we might get a Setting Builder's Guide that touches on the creations of various settings and why they work the way they do while giving some philosophies and dos and don'ts for creating custom settings. "Eberron is high magic, and that manifests itself in these ways. When building a high magic setting, consider these implications: a, b, c." "Dark Sun features unusual physical properties that affect the world like this. When altering the basic assumptions of a world, consider a, b and c." I'd be quite interested in that book.

AL certainly has its own issues. Fortunately that's relatively modular--you can add more detail where it's needed (in an organized play setting or in a published adventure) and then leave that out so people that want to customize the setting can do so.

I would also love to see a meta-setting guide. I'm much more interested in explanation of principles and assumptions and the consequences of altering those assumptions and principles than I am in "In year YYY, person $foo did $bar" or "in this setting, XYZ are true."

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

principles and assumptions[/I] and the consequences of altering those assumptions and principles than I am in "In year YYY, person $foo did $bar" or "in this setting, XYZ are true."

They're two very different products for different types of circumstances. I like the lore deep dives, certainly, but I think that 5E would benefit more from a guide to worldbuilding than any number of official campaign settings.

[PhoenixPhyre]

They're two very different products for different types of circumstances. I like the lore deep dives, certainly, but I think that 5E would benefit more from a guide to worldbuilding than any number of official campaign settings.

My problem with deep lore dives is that they take resources away from things that are more generally useful. I'm currently in my first game (in 4 years or so since I started) actually set in a published setting. I will probably not play in another for another several years. Give me more stuff I can easily adapt to my own setting; I care very little about the history of FR or Eberron or Dark Sun, or...

[EvilAnagram]

Yes, it is. Those settings belong to Wizards of the Coast, who mandates authors to write about them.
The company owns the rights to publish and distribute physical and digital copies of material related to certain settings for the purpose of making a profit.

The notion of ownership of art is more complicated than distribution rights. None of the settings people have brought up were created by employees of WotC. No one currently employed by WotC was involved in their initial development, nor did any one of them have anything more to do with their creation than the thousands of fans who played in those worlds.


No. That's like saying that anyone who read and loved the Lord of the Rings has as much claim on the movies as Peter Jackson.
No, because Peter Jackson actually made The Lord of the Rings. Moreover, playing the game is a much more creative endeavor than watching a film, so by participating in that act of creation, you leave your stamp on the cultural understanding of the art.


The players are the ones who played in their own versions of the campaign settings. It does not give them any right or creative input on the official releases.
I'm not saying it affects the rights to distribute, develop, or otherwise create campaign guides. I'm saying that the cultural impact of these settings on the D&D community has led to an exchange of ideas that has taken place over the past 40 years, developing the idea of these settings into what they are today. The collective gaming community has taken the original Dark Sun and developed the idea through countless hours of creative play, writing, and discussion. The Wizards of the Coast, as the owners of the publishing rights, has the responsibility of shepherding this collective idea into the new edition. They may neglect it, they may reject it, or they may embrace and nurture it, but that is still their role. The idea, itself, belongs to the culture, not to the company who purchased its publishing rights.

I understand you're committed to a strict view, but the idea of who owns art, the culture or the creator, is much more nuanced than you seem to think. The concept has led to many creative backlashes from 4e to Star Wars. Hell, I've seen some nasty reactions to rer tellings of fairy tales. When an idea infiltrates culture, it grows beyond its creator, and there is no consensus, even among creators, of who owns it..

In this case, we aren't even talking about the artist v. the audience, but the audience v. the publishers.


There is no wrong or right choices. They decide what the setting is like officially. You may like it, you may not, and you
can change what you wish for your home game, but there is no right or wrong.
I'm not talking about moral stances here. I'm talking about creative decisions that improve or harm the core draws of a setting. Changing Forgotten Realms to a world-axis cosmology was the wrong thing to do because it fundamentally altered the moral spectrum of the setting and harmed the fans' relationship to the developers.


"Stay respectful" implies having been respectful in the first place.

Implying that you can decide their choices are wrong isn't respectful.
Sure it is. There's nothing disrespectful about disagreeing with someone. If you react to any antagonism as a personal attack, you're in for a rough life.

Huh. Suddenly, your reactions in this thread are cast in a clearer light.


You're perfectly fine using an empty rhetoric trick to claim that you've given them a chance to do what you want when you perfectly know they won't, so you can complain harder?
Yes. Much clearer.

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

My problem with deep lore dives is that they take resources away from things that are more generally useful. I'm currently in my first game (in 4 years or so since I started) actually set in a published setting. I will probably not play in another for another several years. Give me more stuff I can easily adapt to my own setting; I care very little about the history of FR or Eberron or Dark Sun, or...

I agree, partially: I do think there are cool ideas that can be adapted out of the lore-heavy books. I've been looking at my old 3.0 FR books for thoughts about a world that's entirely homebrew and hasn't got many similarities to FR at all. Lore books are basically a Big Book Of Ideas if you already know how to create and adapt your own setting. (An actual Big Book of Setting Ideas would be kind of cool, actually. Just a bunch of modular ideas - NPCs with backgrounds, cities and locations, factions and associations, multiverses and historical events stripped of context or setting-specific details.)

And while you and I prefer running our own worlds, there are others who prefer to use particular settings specifically because of the lore, or the tone of the setting. That market segment needs to be serviced too.

[Unoriginal]

The company owns the rights to publish and distribute physical and digital copies of material related to certain settings for the purpose of making a profit.

The notion of ownership of art is more complicated than distribution rights. None of the settings people have brought up were created by employees of WotC. No one currently employed by WotC was involved in their initial development, nor did any one of them have anything more to do with their creation than the thousands of fans who played in those worlds.

All of those creators have given creative control to either TSR or WoTC.

The 5e writers are the ones who will write the 5e versions of the settings, and that makes them the creators of those versions.



No, because Peter Jackson actually made The Lord of the Rings. Moreover, playing the game is a much more creative endeavor than watching a film, so by participating in that act of creation, you leave your stamp on the cultural understanding of the art.

Peter Jackson made the *movies*. Which depart significantly from the books, since they are Jackson's version of the story, and such an act of creation that left his stamp on the cultural understanding related to said story.

Jackson had this right, because he was authorized to take what a different author wrote and change it.

Yet you're denying that the D&D writer team has this right.



I'm not saying it affects the rights to distribute, develop, or otherwise create campaign guides. I'm saying that the cultural impact of these settings on the D&D community has led to an exchange of ideas that has taken place over the past 40 years, developing the idea of these settings into what they are today. The collective gaming community has taken the original Dark Sun and developed the idea through countless hours of creative play, writing, and discussion. The Wizards of the Coast, as the owners of the publishing rights, has the responsibility of shepherding this collective idea into the new edition. They may neglect it, they may reject it, or they may embrace and nurture it, but that is still their role. The idea, itself, belongs to the culture, not to the company who purchased its publishing rights.

EVERYONE has their own ideas about what something is or should be. WotC has no responsibility to cater to those different and divergent ideas, and trying to satisfy everyone is frankly a doomed endeavor.

Instead, when a new edition comes out, the writers are allowed to reboot the whole thing and build the lore again. In a shape that is recognizable, certainly, but it doesn't change that each edition lore is its own thing, written by different authors, and each is equally valid.




I understand you're committed to a strict view, but the idea of who owns art, the culture or the creator, is much more nuanced than you seem to think. The concept has led to many creative backlashes from 4e to Star Wars. Hell, I've seen some nasty reactions to rer tellings of fairy tales. When an idea infiltrates culture, it grows beyond its creator, and there is no consensus, even among creators, of who owns it..

You can disagree with people's decisions, but implying that they cannot do the versions they want is simply disrespectful.

Once you've left a work in other people's hand, it's their business to do what they wish, as sad as it can sometime turns out. Darth Vader was and still is a cultural icon, it does not change that Lucas had the right to portray him as he is in the prequels, no matter how much it can damage the image the character had originally in the eyes of the audience.



In this case, we aren't even talking about the artist v. the audience, but the audience v. the publishers.

So to you Mearls, Perkins, Crawford, etc are not the artists?



I'm not talking about moral stances here. I'm talking about creative decisions that improve or harm the core draws of a setting. Changing Forgotten Realms to a world-axis cosmology was the wrong thing to do because it fundamentally altered the moral spectrum of the setting and harmed the fans' relationship to the developers.


That is your opinion. Disagreeing if something is a good idea or not is fine, and you can back it up with arguments.

It still doesn't change that it's a subjective opinion, and that I'm sure a lot of people liked the end result of those changes. So, no, can't say it was wrong.



Sure it is. There's nothing disrespectful about disagreeing with someone.

There is a difference between disagreeing with someone's choice and claiming that it's not their call to make this choice in the first place.

Disagreeing that having all of the published settings' worlds in the same Material Plane is a good idea? More than fine. Implying that Mearls and his team cannot take this decision for the official 5e setting because it's not them who wrote about those worlds first? That's being disrespectful.



If you react to any antagonism as a personal attack, you're in for a rough life.

Antagonism isn't "disagreeing", it's "being hostile".



Huh. Suddenly, your reactions in this thread are cast in a clearer light.


Yes. Much clearer.

For someone who claims to be respectful, you sure don't read others' posts well:


All this thread do is setting the writers up for "failure" (read: "doing something OP doesn't like") by saying "oh, I sure hope the writers are not doing X" when they have been outspoken, several times, about how they were doing X.

That's the only way the Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes is set up for failure, ie deliberately put in a position where it will fail, in that particular case fail to meet the standards of Tetrasodium, who made this thread about hoping the writers won't do something they already declared, several times, that they were doing.

Then you declared you were ok with that.

[Tetrasodium]

That's the only way the Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes is set up for failure, ie deliberately put in a position where it will fail, in that particular case fail to meet the standards of Tetrasodium, who made this thread about hoping the writers won't do something they already declared, several times, that they were doing.

Then you declared you were ok with that.


You are truly proving how irrational your complaints are in this thread. Despite your earlier claims, I and others have voiced concern & complaint over tone, direction, etc... for a good long time. Those complaints seemed to be taken into account given the change in tone of xge to be far more setting neutral compared to say..... volos. And then, things astarted coming out of WotC that seemed to suggest the change in tone might be backsliding... so concern & complaints continued to be voiced by myself & others in various places (no matter what you might think, this forum is not the entire d&d community).For a while, more & more worrisome things were getting stated, more recently some of the videos & such like this one seemed to indicate that those concerns & complaints might be getting heard & that mtof shifts gears in a way that is a more reasonable middle ground than some of the other stuff seemed to suggest with constant talk of lolth, corellon, etc. you & a few others took that nervous hurrah & went off attacking it as being unreasonable to even consider anything but blind acceptance of 100% whatever eleminster & drizzt's fanboys & fangirls want delivered up.

Taje a deeo breath, calm down & quit trolling

[Unoriginal]

Those complaints seemed to be taken into account given the change in tone of xge to be far more setting neutral compared to say..... volos.

I don't know where you got that impression, they never hid that it was going to be as setting neutral as the Volo's.


you & a few others took that nervous hurrah & went off attacking it as being unreasonable to even consider anything but blind acceptance of 100% whatever eleminster & drizzt's fanboys & fangirls want delivered up.

One, that you're trying to present me as advocating for "blind acceptance of 100% whatever eleminster & drizzt's fanboys & fangirls want delivered up" is beyond ridiculous.

Two, I stayed silent up until people started saying that the D&D writers modifying settings through editions was something that needed "fixing". Which is frankly insulting.

D&D writers of a new edition are not breaking anything. They are building the new, unbroken version of the settings.



Taje a deeo breath, calm down & quit trolling

Ah, yes, of course, *I* am the troll.

[EvilAnagram]

All of those creators have given creative control to either TSR or WoTC.

The 5e writers are the ones who will write the 5e versions of the settings, and that makes them the creators of those versions.
None of the 5e writers are working in a vacuum, and anything they write about those settings will be informed by the decades of creative work supplied by members of the community. This includes published adventures (fans used to be able to submit content through Dungeon Magazine and Dragon Magazine, articles), conventions, discussions, written articles, and actual play.

Also, I doubt any settings will be explored at all, save in passing. That's why they're releasing so much "setting-neutral" information.


Peter Jackson made the *movies*. Which depart significantly from the books, since they are Jackson's version of the story, and such an act of creation that left his stamp on the cultural understanding related to said story.

Jackson had this right, because he was authorized to take what a different author wrote and change it.

Yet you're denying that the D&D writer team has this right.
I would actually just say that Jackson had as much right as the D&D writer team to act as shepherd to the story and setting. Note, he shirked his responsibility to the story with The Hobbit, which has passed from cultural consciousness and is consistently rejected as valid by fans.

Because ownership of art belongs to the culture.



EVERYONE has their own ideas about what something is or should be. WotC has no responsibility to cater to those different and divergent ideas, and trying to satisfy everyone is frankly a doomed endeavor.

Instead, when a new edition comes out, the writers are allowed to reboot the whole thing and build the lore again. In a shape that is recognizable, certainly, but it doesn't change that each edition lore is its own thing, written by different authors, and each is equally valid.
Your second paragraph does not follow the first. The writers don't "reboot the whole thing" because doing so would remove the purpose of using a preexisting setting. They build on what was there and leave their own mark, certainly, but if they completely reject the past work they are doomed to failure. Sure, they're not going to please everyone, but ignoring the fanbase is just as unwise as trying to appease everyone.


You can disagree with people's decisions, but implying that they cannot do the versions they want is simply disrespectful.
First, no it isn't. In a business or artistic endeavor, it is frequently necessary to stop people from doing what they want in order to improve the results. Sometimes people get attached to bad ideas, and those ideas either get dropped or harm the whole project. It happens constantly. Jaws is a great example of this. "No, Steven, we can't train a great white shark. They die in captivity, Steven. Yes, I'm sure. I know the puppet isn't working. Well, figure out a way around it. I don't know, show less of the shark, Steve."


Once you've left a work in other people's hand, it's their business to do what they wish, as sad as it can sometime turns out. Darth Vader was and still is a cultural icon, it does not change that Lucas had the right to portray him as he is in the prequels, no matter how much it can damage the image the character had originally in the eyes of the audience.
On the other hand, the culture takes ownership of iconic stories and demands they be treated with deftness, so they absolutely should not do with it as they please. Especially in a copyright landscape like our own.



So to you Mearls, Perkins, Crawford, etc are not the artists?
They're the artists behind 5e's ruleset and the campaigns they've written. They're not retroactively the artists who created the every part of D&D's IP.



It still doesn't change that it's a subjective opinion, and that I'm sure a lot of people liked the end result of those changes. So, no, can't say it was wrong.
Subjectivity is subjective. There is a sliding scale, and when a work leads to general outrage and has major structural issues, it is perfectly fair to say wrong decisions were made.



There is a difference between disagreeing with someone's choice and claiming that it's not their call to make this choice in the first place.

Disagreeing that having all of the published settings' worlds in the same Material Plane is a good idea? More than fine. Implying that Mearls and his team cannot take this decision for the official 5e setting because it's not them who wrote about those worlds first? That's being disrespectful.
How so?



Antagonism isn't "disagreeing", it's "being hostile".
No, it literally means to be in opposition. Lord Grantham is the antagonist of Series Four of Downton Abby, for example, because he wishes to cling to a more conservative approach to running the land than the protagonist (Mary) does. As her father, he is not hostile to her, but he opposes her ideas.

I read your failure statement as more general than that, ...so rest assured I don't careto step into your little spat with Tetra.

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

Jaws is a great example of this. "No, Steven, we can't train a great white shark. They die in captivity, Steven. Yes, I'm sure. I know the puppet isn't working. Well, figure out a way around it. I don't know, show less of the shark, Steve."

I only want to talk off-topic about Jaws:

So yeah. The mechanical puppet sharks (plural!) looked kind of crappy. They also didn't really work in salt water. And once the primary model almost ate George Lucas.

He, Spielberg and John Milius snuck into the hangar to see the puppets, and Lucas crawled halfway inside the thing's mouth. As a joke Milius and Spielberg closed the shark's mouth but they couldn't get it open again. After they pulled Lucas out, they thought they'd broken the thing for good.

Apparently it was Martin Scorsese who suggested just not showing the shark, because really no one is afraid of sharks. What they're afraid of is the water and the possibility of sharks.

[Envyus]

4. Their discussions are met by FR fanatics bashing Eberron for no reason whatsoever, making it look like the Eberron freaks have the moral high ground. This encourages the instigators, who make more threads that dissolve faster and faster into back and forth arguments over nothing.

This never happened. No one here has bashed Eberron. Nor are we FR fanatics despite what Tetrasodium believes.

[KorvinStarmast]

While I agree a DM can fix anything WotC insists on breaking in a setting, I don't think they should have to. Just because WotC wants to change settings to make them more similar doesn't mean they should, nor does it stop being a problem just because DMs can fix it at table level. DM's who whine about settings ... not a good look. On that we can agree.
Other than Faerun's Sword Coast, everything else exists in a state of beautiful possibility. Indeed.
well I could have explained how 4e did that to eberron] Eberron, for the short attention span generation: "In (this setting), there's an app for that." Daily low level magic ~ apps. See also the world building by Weiss and Hickman Darksword series. Predates Baker by two decades (late 80's). See also Terry Goodkind's own comments about how he uses magic in his various books (I stopped after the first: for him, magic is a substitute for tech. (This is from at least 20 years ago, maybe his take on that has changed). Predated Baker by not quite a decade. All said and done, though, what Keith Baker put together fit well enough, so good on him! Getting published and getting a nice fan base, yay! :smallsmile:
but plenty of fans of RA Salvatore were upset last edition. Crybabies are going to cry. You can't stop that.


Changes don't matter because you should be changing it at your table. Depends on if you play "public gaming / cons" or the regular game. (One thing I think that gets forgotten is that convention play/tournament play is a different version of the game than the game itself. Been true since the first publication). The issue with cons and tournaments is that in some cases a "points scoring system" is superimposed on a game where the original design had nothing to do with 'winning' ... sorry, I am digressing from Mearls and lore.

I think we need one more, equally hostile point of view for this to really count as a GitP thread. How about this: people need to stay on topic. Mearls, the video, and what is behind the mythology and lore foundations they are trying to provide. We seem to have lost momentum on that.

How about the removal of Elminster's awful 'Tis a consummation devoutly to be wish'd.

In this case, we aren't even talking about the artist v. the audience, but the audience v. the publishers. I will buy no other GRR Martin stuff until he finishes book VI in ASOIAF. That's the kind of reaction a clusterhump in publication can evoke.

* yes "there's an app for that" is a bit reductionist as a description of Eberron. :smallbiggrin:

[the_brazenburn]

This never happened. No one here has bashed Eberron. Nor are we FR fanatics despite what Tetrasodium believes.

I'm not talking about this thread in general. I'm talking about setting-genre threads in general, which do have a fair amount of bashing going on on all sides (Sorry to use you as an example, War_lord, but you are very well known for this sort of behavior).

And again, I don't think you are FR fanatics. I'm saying that they do exist, and they often clash with Eberron fans. It isn't related to this thread in particular.

Sorry for the mix-up!

[Unoriginal]

How about this: people need to stay on topic. Mearls, the video, and what is behind the mythology and lore foundations they are trying to provide. We seem to have lost momentum on that.


I've made a thread about this video, the other day. People didn't seem very interested, even if it's pretty good.

[Chaosmancer]

None of the 5e writers are working in a vacuum, and anything they write about those settings will be informed by the decades of creative work supplied by members of the community. This includes published adventures (fans used to be able to submit content through Dungeon Magazine and Dragon Magazine, articles), conventions, discussions, written articles, and actual play.

Also, I doubt any settings will be explored at all, save in passing. That's why they're releasing so much "setting-neutral" information.


I would actually just say that Jackson had as much right as the D&D writer team to act as shepherd to the story and setting. Note, he shirked his responsibility to the story with The Hobbit, which has passed from cultural consciousness and is consistently rejected as valid by fans.

Because ownership of art belongs to the culture.



Your second paragraph does not follow the first. The writers don't "reboot the whole thing" because doing so would remove the purpose of using a preexisting setting. They build on what was there and leave their own mark, certainly, but if they completely reject the past work they are doomed to failure. Sure, they're not going to please everyone, but ignoring the fanbase is just as unwise as trying to appease everyone.


First, no it isn't. In a business or artistic endeavor, it is frequently necessary to stop people from doing what they want in order to improve the results. Sometimes people get attached to bad ideas, and those ideas either get dropped or harm the whole project. It happens constantly. Jaws is a great example of this. "No, Steven, we can't train a great white shark. They die in captivity, Steven. Yes, I'm sure. I know the puppet isn't working. Well, figure out a way around it. I don't know, show less of the shark, Steve."


On the other hand, the culture takes ownership of iconic stories and demands they be treated with deftness, so they absolutely should not do with it as they please. Especially in a copyright landscape like our own.



They're the artists behind 5e's ruleset and the campaigns they've written. They're not retroactively the artists who created the every part of D&D's IP.



Subjectivity is subjective. There is a sliding scale, and when a work leads to general outrage and has major structural issues, it is perfectly fair to say wrong decisions were made.



How so?



No, it literally means to be in opposition. Lord Grantham is the antagonist of Series Four of Downton Abby, for example, because he wishes to cling to a more conservative approach to running the land than the protagonist (Mary) does. As her father, he is not hostile to her, but he opposes her ideas.

I read your failure statement as more general than that, ...so rest assured I don't careto step into your little spat with Tetra.


I'm not going to break up my reply, because responding via phone is terrible but also because this ends up being a big idea discussion.

Nothing you've said about art belonging to the community is technically wrong, but I think you're applying it too broadly.

Steven King is considered a master of horror, people love his work, but he himself reportedly doesn't. Obviously both points of view would be right, and culturally his work will stand as a classic, but even if the entire country demanded it we couldn't force him to write a sequel to IT. We don't own the intellectual property, it belongs to him and the next book he writes is entirely his to decide, even if it is a sappy romance.

Lets look to comic books or video games. The largest "community" demographic (country level) tends to view these materials as "not art" and holding little inherent value. But, despite the fact that the larger community may never recognize that "Sunstone" is a fantastic piece of art doesn't mean that within the smaller community of its fans it can't be considered an important work. Heck, as you stated nothing happens in a vacuum and the history of literature is rife with examples of little known artists inspiring the people who wrote great classics.

So the culture owns the work... Except when it doesn't. To look at one of your examples, I find calling the recent Hobbit movies "invalid" as wrong and a bit insulting in an elitist sort of way. It isn't invalid as a movie, they work just fine as movies. Isn't invalid as art, definitely still art on multiple fronts. Can't even say it is an invalid interpretation (I have no idea what an invalid interpretation would even look like) because it is the same story, and recognizably so. So, I'm curious how you'd support the claim. It can't be that a council of super fans who hated it get to say whether or not the rest of us can enjoy it. That defies your own arguments.

Turning this back to DnD settings... The WotC team has full rights to craft and create whatever they please. It will obviously be somewhat shaped by the community, because those stories everyone in the community tells about those settings will influence their work. So will their previous work. And the work of George RR Martin. And the work of Lord Dunsany. Maybe the Foglios, or Chef Gordan Ramsey. Who can honestly trace back every single point of inspiration they may have encountered in the last 40 some years. And, fans are free to like it, praise it, or hate it. They are free to change it, grind it down, or pass it on. But, there isn't going to be a council meeting of the "True fans of Eberron" to dictate to WotC what they will create and release. It simply doesn't work that way.

The culture owns the longevity and interpretation of art, not it's creation.

[Unoriginal]

Chaosmancer, I can only respectfully bow down in front of such a great post.

Also, I agree that Sunstone is amazing

[Tetrasodium]

I'm not going to break up my reply, because responding via phone is terrible but also because this ends up being a big idea discussion.

Nothing you've said about art belonging to the community is technically wrong, but I think you're applying it too broadly.

Steven King is considered a master of horror, people love his work, but he himself reportedly doesn't. Obviously both points of view would be right, and culturally his work will stand as a classic, but even if the entire country demanded it we couldn't force him to write a sequel to IT. We don't own the intellectual property, it belongs to him and the next book he writes is entirely his to decide, even if it is a sappy romance.

Lets look to comic books or video games. The largest "community" demographic (country level) tends to view these materials as "not art" and holding little inherent value. But, despite the fact that the larger community may never recognize that "Sunstone" is a fantastic piece of art doesn't mean that within the smaller community of its fans it can't be considered an important work. Heck, as you stated nothing happens in a vacuum and the history of literature is rife with examples of little known artists inspiring the people who wrote great classics.

So the culture owns the work... Except when it doesn't. To look at one of your examples, I find calling the recent Hobbit movies "invalid" as wrong and a bit insulting in an elitist sort of way. It isn't invalid as a movie, they work just fine as movies. Isn't invalid as art, definitely still art on multiple fronts. Can't even say it is an invalid interpretation (I have no idea what an invalid interpretation would even look like) because it is the same story, and recognizably so. So, I'm curious how you'd support the claim. It can't be that a council of super fans who hated it get to say whether or not the rest of us can enjoy it. That defies your own arguments.

Turning this back to DnD settings... The WotC team has full rights to craft and create whatever they please. It will obviously be somewhat shaped by the community, because those stories everyone in the community tells about those settings will influence their work. So will their previous work. And the work of George RR Martin. And the work of Lord Dunsany. Maybe the Foglios, or Chef Gordan Ramsey. Who can honestly trace back every single point of inspiration they may have encountered in the last 40 some years. And, fans are free to like it, praise it, or hate it. They are free to change it, grind it down, or pass it on. But, there isn't going to be a council meeting of the "True fans of Eberron" to dictate to WotC what they will create and release. It simply doesn't work that way.

The culture owns the longevity and interpretation of art, not it's creation.


It's not that simple. CBS absolutely owns the rights to star trek, but trekkies make star trek what it is. somewhere along the line cbs started being weird with voyager & enterprise then tried some big explosion from the makers of fast & furious movies that were skeptically received but ok movies. CBS made discovery after making it very clear that it would be going in a new not quite trek redirection & using it to push their unwanted streaming service... a trekkie made The Orville & it's more trek than most of the recent trek series despite not sharing a single bit of copyrighted work.

[KorvinStarmast]

The culture owns the longevity and interpretation of art, not it's creation. Nice summary to a nice post. *applause*

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

It's not that simple. CBS absolutely owns the rights to star trek, but trekkies make star trek what it is. somewhere along the line cbs started being weird with voyager & enterprise then tried some big explosion from the makers of fast & furious movies that were skeptically received but ok movies. CBS made discovery after making it very clear that it would be going in a new not quite trek redirection & using it to push their unwanted streaming service... a trekkie made The Orville & it's more trek than most of the recent trek series despite not sharing a single bit of copyrighted work.

I think, though, that you've proven his point. CBS can do what they want with Star Trek, and if fans aren't happy they can create their own vision.

[Tetrasodium]

I think, though, that you've proven his point. CBS can do what they want with Star Trek, and if fans aren't happy they can create their own vision.


Not quite.... a lot of former trek writers write for the orville. The reason it feels more like trek than just about any trek is because they are allowed to spresad their wings more without being told to insert kerSplodeyPlot & avoid social/politicalHotButton plots at every turn.

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

Not quite.... a lot of former trek writers write for the orville. The reason it feels more like trek than just about any trek is because they are allowed to spresad their wings more without being told to insert kerSplodeyPlot & avoid social/politicalHotButton plots at every turn.

But, crucially, it is not actually Star Trek. It may feel like it and look and smell and walk like it, but it's not. It's a thing that fans and former writers came up with to fill a Star Trek-shaped space, not unlike creating a setting like Arslorp because I object to the creative choices made in the last edition of the Middle-Earth Campaign Setting.

[Tetrasodium]

But, crucially, it is not actually Star Trek. It may feel like it and look and smell and walk like it, but it's not. It's a thing that fans and former writers came up with to fill a Star Trek-shaped space, not unlike creating a setting like Arslorp because I object to the creative choices made in the last edition of the Middle-Earth Campaign Setting.

Pathfinder wasn't d&d but 4.0 was so very much not d&d that pathfinder became known as 3.75. WotC accepted that they can't just peddle slop like that and gave us 5e.

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

Pathfinder wasn't d&d but 4.0 was so very much not d&d that pathfinder became known as 3.75. WotC accepted that they can't just peddle slop like that and gave us 5e.

That's a very subjective interpretation of events, and certainly not one shared by everyone. But hey! It does help make my original point regarding lore in sourcebooks, so I'm fine with it!

[Tetrasodium]

That's a very subjective interpretation of events, and certainly not one shared by everyone. But hey! It does help make my original point regarding lore in sourcebooks, so I'm fine with it!

oh yea, 4e was so wildly "popular" that it inspired paizo to make pathfinder.

[2D8HP]

I'm not talking about this thread in general. I'm talking about setting-genre threads in general, which do have a fair amount of bashing going on on all sides[...]

[...] I don't think you are FR fanatics. I'm saying that they do exist, and they often clash with Eberron fans. It isn't related to this thread in particular[...]


Setting bashing?

Um okay, sure!

Thanks for asking!

:amused:

Okay, in Faerun I don't like the factions, Elminster, the factions, Drizzt, the factions, the Harpers, and did I mention the factions?

Alright in Eberron I don't like magical robot PC's, magi-tech, the common use of high magic, and... well that's really about it, the setting seems pretty cool with it's post-world-war mileau and I really like the island of Xen'Drik.


That out of the way, I've watched more of the other promotional videos for Mordenkainen's Tome of*Foes, which are working in getting me even more eager to get the book.

One thing that's caught my eye and ear is happy Mearls seem to briefly mention Nentir Vale, I'd like to see more on that setting.

[EvilAnagram]

snip
I don't know where you're seeing conflict between my position and yours. I'm not saying that WotC doesn't have the right to make new material, but that there are expectations placed on their creations based on existing material. Whether their work succeeds or fails depends, in part, on respecting that material. I think you make excellent points, but they are not directed at my argument.


I'm perfectly happy to say why it's invalid: The changes made to the story were not in pursuit of adapting it to film, but rather in pursuit of making it long enough for a trilogy. These changes bloated the films, unwound tension at strange points, and undermined the core drama of the story. The core drama, if you remember, hinges on the relationship between Bilbo and Thorin, which is shunted aside to focus on a weird cross-species relationship that didn't exist in the book.

Now, a good way to judge changes between mediums is to evaluate whether or not these changes helped the core story being told. In this case, the romance does not intersect the central story at all, either in action or theme. It is there to provide an excuse for Legolas to show up and squeeze some more reels into the film. It detracts from the main action, from the core relationship, and from the core understanding of Legolas (if he already learned to appreciate the bravery of dwarves, why does he backtrack so much come Fellowship?).

Furthermore, by the second movie it falls apart structurally. It has to inject swarms of orcs to maintain tension (orcs a who travel quickly by day, which the original trilogy and books establish orcs do not do). The second film ends at a moment of rising tension after a weird smelting battle. Then, the third movie begins at one of the highest points of tension and immediately releases it while the movie struggles to maintain any tension for the rest of its runtime. And the battle! It took longer than Helm's Deep to drag out a few pages.

And how did they drag it out? Emphasizing the relationship between Thorin and his nephews throughout the trilogy and make them die fighting heroically? Nah. Fili is captured offscreen and summarily executed while Kili fights next to random elf lady who cries as he gets stabbed. Then Legolas saves the day. It takes fifteen minutes. That piece of the battle took longer than the entire splitting of the Fellowship, and at every point it detracted from the central story. Thorin was brave and good-hearted, but deeply flawed. In the book, Kili and Fili died bravely defending him to emphasize that tragedy. In the movie, they could have explored why they were willing to die for him or emphasized the loss to their family. They could have given them moments with him in which he tells them not to throw their lives away because he loves his nephews. They could have simply done a callback in their fighting style to emphasize their nobility. But no. Elf lady. Now let's watch Legolas murder things again.

Now, you can say this is disrespectful to the artists (though the actors were very upset with how they were treated by the studio and by the changes to the film after they agreed to it), and you can say that Jackson had the right to do it, but you can't say his actions were benign. A few years later and Hobbit has nothing close to the cultural capital LotR still has. Instead, it has had a lasting and detrimental effect on New Zealand labour laws (look it up), and it undermines quite a bit of the artistry of the original trilogy (You can't just recycle the Nazgul's leitmotif! It's a freaking leitmotif! It is there to create an emotional connection to the characters it represents! They're singing about being Nazgul in the damn Black Speech!). On top of all that, the movies just aren't very good, despite a lot of genuine efforts from the actors, costumers, and other crew. Worst of all (except for the poor treatment of actors and changes to labour laws), we're never going to get a movie about Bilbo Baggins having an adventure with dwarves.

[Regitnui]

I'd like to say that I'm sure the D&D team can create faithful and excellent versions of any setting. What I'm worried about is their (apparent) reliance on iconics this edition, especially when those iconics apply to only one or two settings in the wide, wide world. Saying something like "all drow feel the call of lolth" makes perfect sense in FR, but not so much in Eberron. Athas elves can't have heard of Corellon, as there are explicitly no gods in that setting.

I'm doubtful that their attempt to apply "one size fits all" mythology will end up like the metaphorical fair exam; asking Athas or Eberron to accommodate mythology drawn from FR is like asking a fish to climb a tree, or expecting FR to accommodate those settings' mythology. Each of them have distinct histories and myths, so I personally have severe doubts that trying to apply a common mythology will work in worlds with radically different core assumptions. I'm not bashing FR. I'm saying that I want to play Eberron, and coating it with a bunch of FR's iconics and myths would lower my enjoyment of a setting. I wouldn't want to play FR with Eberron's core assumptions either.

[Envyus]

oh yea, 4e was so wildly "popular" that it inspired paizo to make pathfinder.

Pathfinder started development before 4e was even out. 4e did sell well, the issue was the broken base caused the large amount of changes to the formula. Which Paizo realized they could captilize on with a system backwards compatible with 3.5.

[Envyus]

I'd like to say that I'm sure the D&D team can create faithful and excellent versions of any setting. What I'm worried about is their (apparent) reliance on iconics this edition, especially when those iconics apply to only one or two settings in the wide, wide world. Saying something like "all drow feel the call of lolth" makes perfect sense in FR, but not so much in Eberron. Athas elves can't have heard of Corellon, as there are explicitly no gods in that setting.

I'm doubtful that their attempt to apply "one size fits all" mythology will end up like the metaphorical fair exam; asking Athas or Eberron to accommodate mythology drawn from FR is like asking a fish to climb a tree, or expecting FR to accommodate those settings' mythology. Each of them have distinct histories and myths, so I personally have severe doubts that trying to apply a common mythology will work in worlds with radically different core assumptions. I'm not bashing FR. I'm saying that I want to play Eberron, and coating it with a bunch of FR's iconics and myths would lower my enjoyment of a setting. I wouldn't want to play FR with Eberron's core assumptions either.

I don't think there is any danger of that happening. Athas has always been part of the greater cosmology. (It's just considered a hellish backwater that no one wants to go to cause it's cut off from everything and you can't leave if you go there.

Athas Elves would not know of Corellon, but they can be descended from elves that did originally.

And which FR Iconics are you talking about. Cause Corellon and Lolth don't come form FR. They have been around before that was a published setting.

[donpaul]

I don't take the idea of 'victim settings' seriously. You are the DM. If the setting has been victimized, you were the perpetrator, no one else.

I second it, even I don't entertain the idea of 'victim settings' .

[Unoriginal]

And that mythogy isn't FR either. Elves being shape-changing semi-divine creatures until they ****ed themselves over is something 5e writers invented for this edition, to give one example.

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

Okay, in Faerun I don't like the factions, Elminster, the factions, Drizzt, the factions, the Harpers, and did I mention the factions?


You know what? I've actually kind of come around on the factions. I don't like them, precisely. I think there's a lot of baggage associated with them, especially the Zhentarim and the Harpers. They seem a bit too powerful at times, as well. And I don't play AL, so I can't speak to how they interact with that style of GMing.

That said, I think there's a lot of value in these persistent organizations that players are encouraged but not required to participate in. It's another tie to the world, another opportunity for adventure hooks and an alternate reward method.

When a player joins a faction, they're buying in to a particular vision of how they want your world to look, and doing so in a way with real consequences for their character. A member of the Do-Gooders Alliance really ought to be doing good when they can, after all, and their membership is on the line. It's some of the good bits of a Paladin's Code without the bad bits.

Factions are basically quest generators. It's a bit tacky and a bit gamey, but it does make sense that large, dispersed power networks would send agents and goons out to accomplish particular tasks. It also makes sense that success at those tasks and adeptness navigating those networks would lead to advancement. One of the classic rewards at high levels of play has always been land; get your players involved in things that can't be solved by swinging a sword, put pressure on their finances and force them to act as members of the political elite rather than disruptors of the status quo. How much more interesting might giving them their own spy ring, or responsibility for a continental smuggling operation, or control of an Anti-Wightocalypse Magical Task Force be?

I think they're going to be something that I consider adapting into my own settings. Not the same factions, definitely not! But the idea is sound, pared back a little.

[strangebloke]

I don't know where you're seeing conflict between my position and yours. I'm not saying that WotC doesn't have the right to make new material, but that there are expectations placed on their creations based on existing material. Whether their work succeeds or fails depends, in part, on respecting that material. I think you make excellent points, but they are not directed at my argument.

...I'm at a loss to understand what your point even is at least in the context of this thread.

Tetra was arguing that any bit of lore that specifically references a setting is toxic because it implies that this is the case for all settings. He's "optimistic" in that he thinks they're going to be doing less of this in MToF.

Unoriginal said that optimism was misplaced, because the reasons for the setting changes that Tetra has disliked are still present. They changed Ravenloft to sell more CoS modules, and it's fair to say that they'll keep doing that. Indeed, the devs have said that they're going to continue to allow for AL continuity between campaigns. With that in mind, he sees Tetra is setting himself up for disappointment, and expressed annoyance at Tetra for repeating this pattern of optimism followed by inevitable disappointment several times.

Then you told everyone to stop being so hostile (classic blunder. "Don't be angry" is the surest way to make someone angry ever known to man) and cast Unoriginal as saying that the Devs are beyond criticism. Since then, Unoriginal has repeatedly said the opposite, that criticizing the devs is fine. Obviously if they make content that the fans don't like, they should fail. Literally no one has been arguing against that.

So your main argument was a complete non-sequitur, and you then brought in the loaded phrase "...It's not their setting" implying that the devs don't have the right to make their own version. This caused all kinds of misunderstandings based around the exact usage of the terms "ownership" and "invalid", leading to Chaosmancer's post. Of course, this whole discussion was silly, since the devs have the right to make changes and the fans have the right to evaluate those changes as stupid and literally no one has been arguing against that point.

And the Hobbit movies were bad adaptations, but calling them invalid is just like... what? What do you think calling them invalid means to the people you're talking to? Do you think that conveys more information than just calling them bad adaptations?

I respect you, EA, but it really seems to me that this whole argument could have been avoided.

[Tetrasodium]

Setting bashing?

Um okay, sure!

Thanks for asking!

:amused:

Okay, in Faerun I don't like the factions, Elminster, the factions, Drizzt, the factions, the Harpers, and did I mention the factions?

Alright in Eberron I don't like magical robot PC's, magi-tech, the common use of high magic, and... well that's really about it, the setting seems pretty cool with it's post-world-war mileau and I really like the island of Xen'Drik.


That out of the way, I've watched more of the other promotional videos for Mordenkainen's Tome of*Foes, which are working in getting me even more eager to get the book.

One thing that's caught my eye and ear is happy Mearls seem to briefly mention Nentir Vale, I'd like to see more on that setting.
mostly correct about eberron. It's more wide magic than high magic. something happened in 4e that played up the level of that wide magic into high magic. ritual magic gone wild, magic items by level, etc are largely the blame imo. the magic robot thing got heavily played up in numerous ways in 4e. Prior to 4e, warforged were more lost intelligent golems race with the types of hate & sometimes mental abuse stereotypes you normally see directed at immigrants/refugees & automation from the people it just got fired for the 5th time in large numbers. 4e played down the tragic elements & up the robot similarities.




And that mythogy isn't FR either. Elves being shape-changing semi-divine creatures until they ****ed themselves over is something 5e writers invented for this edition, to give one example.


Wgile true that the elves being shape changing blahblah is new, that alone is not the only bone of concern. Every time they talk about elves, dwarves, whatever, they mention various dieties & the importance of those deities in shaping various things. The problem is that those deities come from forgotten realms & greyhawk pretty much exclusively or they come from the earlier source material those settings were directly evolved from into settings of their own. They fit with the meddling & involved with mortal affairs pantheon of those two settings & their baselines line up with those two settings.

Compared to darksun, eberron, & maybe a few others... greyhawk & forgotten realms are so similar that you can take something drawn from the baselines of one & transplant it to the other with little more need than some name changes. Goblinoids are basically the same, elves & dwarves ditto, demons ditto, orcs, gnolls, so on & so forth. In darksun, oh most of them are dead... in eberron?... elves got pointy ears & dwarves/goblins are both short; but there are too many low level fundamental differences between eberron/darksun and forgotten realms/greyhawk to take grand plots & the results of them or frameworks based on them to simply move over without significant changes.


Yes you could say maybe elves descended/evolved like so in darksun at some point before everything went to crud. In eberron>...elves are the former slaves of the giant empire. That bit is relevant because said empire used draconic magic to magebred them into elves from captured eldar.... there is no room there for a forgotten realms/greyhawk inspired metaplot about correlon unless you weant to say corellon/lolth/etc were all members of the giant empire of xen'driik & traveled to forgotten realms/greyhawk/etc to either begin, test, or repeat their experiments with draconic magic on captured eldar in spheres where time moves faster or something. That kinda thing creates significant ripples downline since it would change the role of giants wildly, dragons to some degree, numerous things about gods, etc.






Various people have mentioned factions as being disliked as described, considered a good thing, being basically questgivers, etc... Most of that is true; but factions came into the discussion by way of pointing out that the CoS ravenloft adventure. I can understand people invested in AL wanting to carry over their character/renown into CoS sure, but ravenloft itself has many many many power groups (http://www.nwnravenloft.com/forum/index.php?topic=35791.0) that are unique to ravebnloft. Rather than include a few pages about some of them & maybe a table that shows how to convert renown gained from one into claims & tavern tales that count as renown in another. Part of why CoS feels like a faerunized ravenloft adventure is because they removed all of those factions present in ravenloft to make room for not rufflinf faerun faction feathers. For fans of settingB (ie ravenloft in this case), they don't give a rat's juicy pellet about those faerun derived feathers.

Now ravenloft still mostly functions as a setting with problems without those factions, but a setting like eberron falls apart because the native factions are incredibly important & complexly involved in too much. If concern number one in implementing factions in $setting is not ruffling the feathers established for the forgotten realms derived factions, then $seting is going to have about as much as mr tusk (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5JwdoY_qAE) has in common with a walrus.




...I'm at a loss to understand what your point even is at least in the context of this thread.

Tetra was arguing that any bit of lore that specifically references a setting is toxic because it implies that this is the case for all settings. He's "optimistic" in that he thinks they're going to be doing less of this in MToF.

That ias very different from what I was saying.

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

Tetra, in one simple, concise sentence, what are you saying?

[MeeposFire]

Frankly settings get changes all the time and the idea that you can or should stop it is a hopeless and foolish endeavor. The only settings that do not change are the ones that are dead. Now some change in different ways of course FR tends to do it by time skips and major events (which I really have found to dislike even though I like FR) or you can be like Eberrron and tend toward making only minor changes to make some things fit or to make use of things as they are created (this is my preference and Eberron is probably my favorite setting though man some people her make me almost ashamed to admit that). Yea some things changed but seriously some of you are taking this way too seriously heck since the complaints are about lore just grab your previous edition book and use it for the lore. Lore is easy to be edition agnostic especially if it is not like FR and tries to actually explain mechanical differences via lore.

When I played my 4e Eberron games my 3e Eberron book was there. When I played 4e Dark Sun my AD&D books were there and I used them. When I played FR in 3e I used all the lore from AD&D BECAUSE I LIKED IT BETTER and I did not think I had to come on here and make a complaint that in the current set of books that they came up with new ideas and were pushing them ( I may end up talking about how I did not like an idea but I would not complain that they were making new ideas it is their game to design for after all).

I mean I did not complain when the 3e monster manuals kept saying all the information about goblins and gnolls that did not fit in with Eberron at the time. To me that would be silly because of course those books said something different because Eberron made specific exceptions for various things and I understood that and I also understood that if the monster manual says something different it either does nto apply at all to my Eberron game or I have to adapt it. IN either case I move on and call it a day. The only reason that in later manuals they sometimes gave a specific shout out in the changes for Eberron is because that was the new setting they were pushing and they wanted to support it. They often only put out changes for the settings they were actively supporting so I find little difference from how it is now.

[strangebloke]

That ias very different from what I was saying.

Not very different I think.

Your mantra has been "Don't put setting A into setting B." and that's perhaps a better summary of your position, but it also understates the breadth of what you mean by "putting setting A into setting B."

A plain reading of that statement would be: "Don't put warforged as a common race in Faerun, don't put Moradin in Eberron."

But your critique is way more inclusive than that. You've expressed frustration at basically every single passage in either the DMG, PHB or MM that references anything setting specific.

"Obould Many-Arrows is mentioned in the orc entry!"
"Drizzt is mentioned in the Drow entry!"
"Most of the fluff text for human cultures comes from Faerun!"

Moreover, you also object to adventure modules even mentioning other planes, even when those mentions are justified by every edition's lore. CoS mentions both Faerun (the player comes from there, setting up the fish-out-water scenario that enhances the horror experience) and Greyhawk (spoilers).

So, I'm pretty sure that I was accurately representing your position.

[Unoriginal]

Unoriginal said that optimism was misplaced, because the reasons for the setting changes that Tetra has disliked are still present. They changed Ravenloft to sell more CoS modules, and it's fair to say that they'll keep doing that. Indeed, the devs have said that they're going to continue to allow for AL continuity between campaigns. With that in mind, he sees Tetra is setting himself up for disappointment, and expressed annoyance at Tetra for repeating this pattern of optimism followed by inevitable disappointment several times.

To be 100% clear, what I said is that the devs have been adamantly clear they are using the "all setting worlds are in the same Material Plane" setting for the official books, and that Tetrasodium made this thread despite knowing that, and so it was "setting the devs up for failure to meet Tetrasodium's standards" as a way to complain harder.

Not my most charitable or pleasant moment on this forum, I admit, but I have a sense of pattern recognition.

I don't know what else you want to call a thread with OP saying "hopefully the devs are not doing X", when he has made dozens and dozens of posts about how much he hates X and that the devs have repeatedly stated they are doing X.

I also said, and it was my first post in this thread, that for good or ill, it was the devs' right AND job to modify the settings for a new edition, and that saying that it needed "fixing" was insulting.

[strangebloke]

To be 100% clear, what I said is that the devs have been adamantly clear they are using the "all setting worlds are in the same Material Plane" setting for the official books, and that Tetrasodium made this thread despite knowing that, and so it was "setting the devs up for failure to meet Tetrasodium's standards" as a way to complain harder.

Not my most charitable or pleasant moment on this forum, I admit, but I have a sense of pattern recognition.

I don't know what else you want to call a thread with OP saying "hopefully the devs are not doing X", when he has made dozens and dozens of posts about how much he hates X and that the devs have repeatedly stated they are doing X.

I also said, and it was my first post in this thread, that for good or ill, it was the devs' right AND job to modify the settings for a new edition, and that saying that it needed "fixing" was insulting.

Fair enough. I was trying to be concise and I knew that my understanding of all relevant arguments was a little murky. But I felt I could give you a more fair hearing than EA or Tetra were.

I mean, you wouldn't think that saying "it's the job of WotC to make the settings for this edition" is a particularly contentious statement. No DND setting exists in Plato's world of perfect forms. WotC is making an official DND metasetting, but it can't be objectively 'right' or 'wrong.' It can be objectively poorly written or subjectively boring, but it isn't like 5e FR can be judged against an ideal version of FR.

As far as value goes, it's whatever you make of it.

[Sception]

Settings change all the time, but those changes can be for the better or the worse. And the ability of DM's to 'fix' things didn't stop those things from being better or worse to begin with. 'Publish setting doesn't matter because DM can fix it' doesn't carry a lot of weight. DM's can fix mechanical content, too. Or make it all up whole cloth. All published content is optional, that doesn't nullify judgment of its quality.

consolidated pantheons and cosmology across the game does risk negatively impacting future campaign material which is a shame. And DMs & groups that eschew that material for homebrow are still forced to shell out money for it if they want to access the slim trickle of supplemental mechanical content that is packaged alongside bunches of lore content that they can't really use.

I'm not against this style of book or this book in particular, but there's definitely meaningful criticism to be made of this format for content releases.

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

Settings change all the time, but those changes can be for the better or the worse. And the ability of DM's to 'fix' things didn't stop those things from being better or worse to begin with. 'Publish setting doesn't matter because DM can fix it' doesn't carry a lot of weight.

We're talking about a situation where there isn't a published setting, so complaints about settings carry virtually no weight either. Again, unless you are playing specifically within the confines of the Sword Coast of Faerun, the burden of world construction is wholly on the DM. There's no published worldbuilding material for 5E outside that one book.

If we get a Dragonlance Campaign Setting with magic trains or a Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting where halfling gods pull talking dinosaurs in rickshaws, then we can start having this discussion about changes to published settings. The Player's Handbook, DMG and Monster Manual are generic documents.

[strangebloke]

I'm not against this style of book or this book in particular, but there's definitely meaningful criticism to be made of this format for content releases.

This is why I'm not buying Volo's. I might consider it for the monsters and races, but the 50-odd pages of Gnoll/Goblin/Orc fluff are just kinda useless to me.

[2D8HP]

This is why I'm not buying Volo's. I might consider it for the monsters and races, but the 50-odd pages of Gnoll/Goblin/Orc fluff are just kinda useless to me.


I thought that the lore on Hags in Volo's was cool.

[Sception]

I personally like the books, I just can see valid complaints on the dearth of supplemental material this edition from those for whom the fluff isn't meaningful. The app/website/whatever letting you purchase just the mechanical content should fill the gap, but the pricing betrays the extent to which the fluff material is seen as empty filler by the publisher, given that the crunch is a small portion of the page count in most of these books, but a much larger portion of the a la carte price.

[KorvinStarmast]

Tetra, in one simple, concise sentence, what are you saying? I am not sure that this is a plausible request. :smallcool:

@EvilAnagram

I'm perfectly happy to say why it's invalid: The changes made to the story were not in pursuit of adapting it to film, but rather in pursuit of making it long enough for a trilogy. My core complaint with that movie/movies is roughly as you put it.
They could have done it in one, and maybe a stretch into two.
Three was self-indungent, and a naked money grab. It worked. :smallyuk:

I personally like the books, I just can see valid complaints on the dearth of supplemental material this edition from those for whom the fluff isn't meaningful.
The app/website/whatever letting you purchase just the mechanical content should fill the gap, but the pricing betrays the extent to which the fluff material is seen as empty filler by the publisher, given that the crunch is a small portion of the page count in most of these books, but a much larger portion of the a la carte price. The problem at its root is the "fluff versus crunch" attitude in the first place.
I will now don my asbestos jacket, and have a cigar.

[MeeposFire]

I am not sure that this is a plausible request. :smallcool:

@EvilAnagram
My core complaint with that movie/movies is roughly as you put it.
They could have done it in one, and maybe a stretch into two.
Three was self-indungent, and a naked money grab. It worked. :smallyuk:
The problem at its root is the "fluff versus crunch" attitude in the first place.
I will now don my asbestos jacket, and have a cigar.

Lindsay Ellis made a great set of videos about the Hobbit movies and many of the issues in their production that are certainly worth viewing.

[Tetrasodium]

Not very different I think.

Your mantra has been "Don't put setting A into setting B." and that's perhaps a better summary of your position, but it also understates the breadth of what you mean by "putting setting A into setting B."

A plain reading of that statement would be: "Don't put warforged as a common race in Faerun, don't put Moradin in Eberron."

But your critique is way more inclusive than that. You've expressed frustration at basically every single passage in either the DMG, PHB or MM that references anything setting specific.

"Obould Many-Arrows is mentioned in the orc entry!"
"Drizzt is mentioned in the Drow entry!"
"Most of the fluff text for human cultures comes from Faerun!"

Moreover, you also object to adventure modules even mentioning other planes, even when those mentions are justified by every edition's lore. CoS mentions both Faerun (the player comes from there, setting up the fish-out-water scenario that enhances the horror experience) and Greyhawk (spoilers).

So, I'm pretty sure that I was accurately representing your position.

Pretty much yes. Fans of faerun might be upset if WotC declared that warforged were now a race common in faerun... faans of faerun would be bleeping livid if they did that by importing the role of house cannith, the last war, the fallen giant empire of xendrik, & so on in order to do it. Making warforged a standard race in faerun could indeed be done, but if done it should be done in a way that fits that seting. The last war, the fallen giant empire of xendriik almost certainly being the source of cannith's "creation" of the creation forges used to make warforged, the prejudices resulting from armies of warforged suddenly being told to go find jobs & live lives all over due to the treaty of throneholsm so on & so forth... all of that depends on a great number of eberron specific things & a lot of those things are in direct violent contradiction with various things in faerun.


As to "putting mordain in eberron", it could be done in a reasonable way that involves changing mordain & his story into something that fits the setting (ie unlike the faerun warforged import example above). Of particular concern in the case of eberron is the fact that they already dod that in 4e with asmodeous & they did it exactly like the example above... complete with the replacement of planes, addition of planes, somewhat new & different role for demons, so on & so forth. Yes individually many of those changes were often small things & that could be excusable if there were not dozens of trivial ways Asmodious could have had his metaplot changed to fit eberron in ways that would be truly interesting additions to the setting rather than abrasive to it(ie a warlord from shavarath, a demon overlord, a lord of dust, etc). The addition of eldar & feyspires was a bit silly, but interesting in it's own way without conflicting with anything. The replacement of lizardmen with dragonborn was ridiculous because of how incredibly poorly it was described rather than just saying nobody really cared about that backwater swamp enough to lift the skirts so to speak & really check what the differences between these primitive scaled lizardman-like tribes were. Tieflings being created by asmodious was fairly offensive to the setting because the setting has such an absurdly high level of demon interference right from the middle of the setting's own creation myth on that no such origin story was needed for them. A near unlimited number of things ranging from "they just exist in small numbers here & there" all the way to "they mostly live in the demon wastes & house Tharashk(?) setting up an outpost there let to some making their way out" or whatever. Instead of doing something to fit the setting in an interesting manner, they did a ctrl-c -> ctrl-v of their origin from some other setting resulting in a conflict that is both shallow & ill fitting to a setting with significant interconnected depth nearly anywhere you start digging.


As to my objecting to various mentions of different settings... it is important to look at the context of those discussions. For example dmg10-13 talks about different structures of gods. Those structures are packed with various in setting examples at the start. When those various structures get to things like monotheism ideals, etc that are significant things in one setting & pretty much only that setting... the setting references suddenly end Now, XgE page 18 has a small sidebar/cutout on the lower left devoted to "serving a pantheon, philosophy, or force" & that sidebar/cutout moves it from the realm of dmg into a player reference while also mentioning the fact that it's "common" (ie pretty much the norm/default common) in eberron. I dob't care that they put in all sorts of references to different settings in dng 10-13, I care thet they stopped when it got to stuff that applies to eberron but not faerun, greyhawk, etc. They do that kind of thing a lot.


The oroblem with drizzit & the drow entry is that he is not simply "mentioned", drizzt & lolth dominates the drow entry complete with a giant salvatore style drow relevant image of spiders & such while using phrasing that indicates it applies to every setting. That particular argument has gone on for dozens of pages before. The result is that as a gm running a setting where drow are different I need to shatter the massively reinforced stereotypes that have been presented as always applicable before I can introduce things. I'll summarize an actual relevant play experience I had.
As part of the campaign the players had gone back in time to before the giant empire rose & Ourelonastrix (http://eberron.wikia.com/wiki/Ourelonastrix) had just begun teaching the secrets of draconic magic to the giants. At this point in history, the giants are the only race other that dragons with anything approaching a culture. This is important.
dm: "written on the door in draconic & something else you think is probably giant is blahblah," <-- Nobody in the group knew giant & what it said is irrelevant.
The players had already met Ourelonastrix in the future/present day before getting flung back, but he seemed to just be an old human man of possibly loose wires laughing about how he gets to enjoy being on the giving end of timey wimey type spoilers (dr who & river song type crossing of timelines)
playerA asked what type of written runes was used
dm: I'm not sure what it says in the phb, but giants and dragons are the only two races out there with written languages at this time, so I'm going to say either gdraconic runes or it uses its own style of writing
PlayerA: "ok good enough"
PlayerB: "Actually it should be dwarven runes"
GM: "maybe in faerun, but the dwarves don't exist yet & dont come along fleeing Risia from thousands of years so it needs to be its own runes or draconic ones because those are the only two races at this point"
playerB: "but no the dwarves came along first & then the giants got theur writing because of $event"
PlayerA: So dwarves don't exist here yet & it's either draconic or giant runes used in giant script? ok great!
Player B: But that's only the case here in eberron because in most oth...
GM: So the door opens and...

A one off thing like that is not so disruptive, but when it happens often, the gm needs to decide between ignoring it & allowing baselines to be changed for that bit of irrelevant lore & keeping $otherSetting from hijacking the setting they are running.


Faerun's factions getting about a page & a half in CoS is relevant because it loads up on faerun specific stuff that could be better devoted to fitting in some information about factions & groups that actually exist n ravenloft like these (http://www.nwnravenloft.com/forum/index.php?topic=35791.0)

BAROVIA
Dawnslayers - Morninglord-loyal knighthood of vampire hunters.
Crimson Hounds - Elite enforcers of the Von Zarovich bloodline. Known to put whole villages to the sword to teach a specific point.
Tyrant Mages - Von Zarovich family mage elite and secret police. Known for their cruelty.
Keepers of the Black Feather - Secretive Barovian lodge that wages an unceasing shadow war against the creatures of the night.
Order of the Guardians - A monastic order of lorekeepers dedicated to finding cursed objects and keeping them out of the wrong hands.
Gundarkite Rebels - Organized resistance to outside rule of Gundarkite territory.
Red Vardo Traders - Band of salvagers and thieves who 'return' items to their 'original owners'.
Ba'al Verzi - Infamous fraternity of assassins.
Church of Ezra - No firm foothold in establishing wide belief. Seen as Borcan poisoners and agents.
Church of Hala - Presence in Bstobis. Regarded as helpful and unobtrusive, mostly left to their own devices.
Cult of the Morninglord - Most popular religion in Barovia. Large Gundarakite following which tends to cause suspicion.
Cult of Nerull/Erlin - Marginal presence, small numbers of Gundarakites associate Nerull with ethnic pride. Underground following.

BORCA
Boristi Trading House - A major merchant interest, led by the Boristi family of Borca.
1st Sect of Ezra - LN "Home Faith" centered in the Great Cathedral of Levkarest. Almost all Borcans worship/pay lip services to Ezra. Powerful church base.
The Scions of Yakov Dilisnya - Secret society in the church of Ezra, dedicated to creating an empire using the influence and power of the Ezrite church.
Dilisnya Crime Family - One of the most potent criminal organizations in Ravenloft, led by Ivan Dilisnya.
Church of Hala - Small following in the rural areas of Borca. Often used as scapegoats as witches.
Academy of Style - Expensive and prestigious finishing school in Levkarest open only to the most respected families.

DARKON
4th Sect of Ezra - LE "Zealots" branch of the faith centered in Nevuchar Springs. Militant and steadily growing in popularity for its beliefs in fighting the darkness.
The Kargat - Secret police dedicated to furthering the will of Azalin Rex. Membership all monstrous.
The Unholy Order of the Grave - A nightmarish society of monsters who literally worship death.
Dark Delvers - Mystery cult centered in Darkon, searching for truth about the Hated Mother and her power.
Brautslava Institute - Teaches various arcane-related subjects
The Fraternity of Shadows - An arcane cabal (Illusionists) of researchers and scholars who seek to know the truth behind Ravenloft and control it. Based in Brautslava.
The Order of the Guardians - A monastic order of lorekeepers dedicated to finding cursed objects and keeping them out of the wrong hands.
University of Il Aulk - Once the greatest school on the Core, now a crumbling ruin in the dead city.
The Eternal Order - Offically sanctioned cult of the dead though heavily diminished over time. Churches are largely autonomous from each other.
Cult of the Overseer - Popular in the west, heavy message of compassion, charity and the need to do good deeds while one lives to be judged favourably in death.

DEMENTLIEU
3rd Sect of Ezra - TN "Erudites" centered in Ste. Mere des Larmes in Port-a-Lucine. Largely unconcerned with gaining new followers, has a tolerant mindset to other faiths.
Van Richten Society - A loose alliance of correspondents who seek to continue Van Richten's legacy.
Les Ordures - A group of lower class men and woman seeking to strike out at the nobility through embarrassment and belittlement.
La Societe de Legerdemain - An organization of street performers who provide the means to study real magic.
Noble Brotherhood of Assassins - Organization of social intriguers that works to bring down the most corrupt nobles in Dementlieu.
L'Academie des Sciences - Dementlieu based cabal of mystics who seek to recover and study magical items.
The Brain - An underground crime and resistance network fighting against Dominic D'Honaire, led by Rudolph von Aubrecker, the Living Brain.
University of Dementlieu - The current prominent university in the Core.
Church of Hala - Maintains several hospices, well received by the lower class and treated with indifference by the nobility.
Echanson's Heresy - Cupbearers who believe Ezra was born as a mortal, scour the realms in search of her secret descendants.
Circle Sinister - Crime racket that's a major player in Port-a-Lucine underworld. Led by Black Pieter, often noted for his willingness to work with adventurers if it benefits him.

FALKOVNIA
The Talons - Fanatical "knighthood", the best soldiers in Falkovnia who are absolutely loyal to Drakov. Each member is altered via dire ritual including the consumption of a form altering potion and is practically a terminal psychotic.
Freemen of Falkovnia - The only rebel group of Falkovnians that's managed to survive for more than a week.
Ebon Fold - Secret society of assassins operating in Falkovnia at Azalin's behest. Membership formed from the reanimated corpses of impalement victims.
Church of Hala - Conforms to Falkovnian ideals of religion so left to its own devices, hospices seem to always meet with bad luck and hasty demises though.
Church of Ezra - Under heavy scrutiny, acolytes regularly tortured and killed for aiding abetting resistance movements.
Eternal Order - Appeals to veteran soldiers and seeks largely to appease Darkon's restless dead to prevent them from swarming the border.
Stagengrad Military Academy - Prominent Falkovnian military academy.

FORLORN
Forfarian Pantheon - Large resurgence of worship of the old (Celtic) gods in Forfarmax. Few actual priests.
The Morninglord - Introduced by travelling clerics from Barovia. Welcomed, though most of the druids follow the old gods.

G'HENNA
Cult of Zhakata - G'Hennan based faith centered around placating its beast god.

HAR AKIR
Green Hand - A secret cabal of Akari tomb defenders.

HAZLAN
Order of the Guardians - A monastic order of lorekeepers dedicated to finding cursed objects and keeping them out of the wrong hands.
Red Academy - Hazlik's college of witchcraft, an arcane focused school quickly rising in prominence.
Church of the Lawgiver - State religion of Hazlan and only officially sanctioned one allowed. Wide scale worship from Mulani and Rashemi alike.
Church of Hala - Operates in secret, worshiped by the Rashemi and well received by those who don't even pray to Hala.
Iron Inquisition - Lawgiver internal security and heretic hunters.

INVIDIA
Gundarkite Rebels - Organized resistance to outside rule of Gundarkite territory.
Church of Ezra - Most Invidians profess faith in one of the four sects, preference being personal taste and attitude.
Church of Hala - Secretly worshiped since being outlawed, members burnt or hung. Publically mistrusted due to its secrecy.

KARTAKASS
Brotherhood of Broken Blades - Vigilante witch-hunters dedicated to wiping out abusers of magic. Well-meaning but reportedly often vague in defining who is an "evil" magician.
Howling Clan - Wolf God heretics who embrace their savage humanity, led by Mother Fury
Ancestral Choir - Main theological belief system. Handful of priests who serve to continue the traditions and gaurd the souls of the dead joining the Choir.
Church of Ezra - Few converts, stratified social structure being a concept most Kartakans abhor.
Church of Hala - Unobtrusive hospices, seldom regarded or thought much of beyond being healers.

LAMORDIA
Van Richten Society - A loose alliance of correspondents who seek to continue Van Richten's legacy.
Syndicate of Enlightened Citizens - Lamordian conspiracy with designs against the supernatural.

MARKOVIA
Order of the Guardians - A monastic order of lorekeepers dedicated to finding cursed objects and keeping them out of the wrong hands.

MORDENT
2nd Sect of Ezra - LG "Pure Hearts" centered in the Chapel of the Pure Hearts. Large following due to its benevolent dogma though Home Faith is also present.
Lamplighters - School of policing that originated in Mordent, and has recently been exported to other domains. Known for rigorous honesty.
Van Richten Society - A loose alliance of correspondents who seek to continue Van Richten's legacy.
Order of the Guardians - A monastic order of lorekeepers dedicated to finding cursed objects and keeping them out of the wrong hands.
Church of Hala - Accepted though often regarded as playing with fire due to the nature of melding the arcane and divine, inviting the influence of the forces of darkness.

NIDALA
Knights of the Shadows - A venerable knighthood that struggles against tyranny in all of its guises. While not actually based in Nidala, it is the one place they make a pilgrimage to that's constant.
Church of Belenus - Puritanical version of the faith, actively castigates "sinners" and purges non-humans.

NOVA VAASA
Syekhmetskaya Circle - Nova Vaasan based criminal organization said to be controlled by the shadow genius Malken.
Church of the Lawgiver - Only religion in Nova Vaasa, actively imprisons "heretical" clerics of other faiths if caught.

RICHEMULOT
The Lock and Key - A Richemoluise cabal of masked Caliban watchmen, known for their strict code of honor and justice.
Van Richten Society - A loose alliance of correspondents who seek to continue Van Richten's legacy.
The Cult of Simon Audaire - A conspiracy of disaffected human Reniers plotting against their kin.
The House of a Hundred Moths - Richemuloise arcane university that maintains a vague cover as an astrological institute.
Church of Ezra - All four sects present, largely casual lipservice following among worshippers.
Church of Hala - Widespread presence among commoners, mistrusted by nobility.

SITHICUS
The Order of the Guardians - A monastic order of lorekeepers dedicated to finding cursed objects and keeping them out of the wrong hands.

SRI RAJI
University of Tvashtri - Only major school outside of the Core, known for religious and scientific study.

TEPEST
Order of the Guardians - A monastic order of lorekeepers dedicated to finding cursed objects and keeping them out of the wrong hands.
Tepestani Pantheon - Large devotion to various (Celtic) gods with Belenus as the chief one.
Tepestani Inquisition - Loose organization of priests in Tepest who have declared war against the night, also known to brutalize elven folk.
Church of Ezra - Marginal following, has often protected innocents against the Tepestani Inquisition.
Church of Hala - Largely devoted to rooting out the domain's hags and goblins. Executed by Inquisition as witches if found.
Church of the Lawgiver - Has a small presence but proven unpopular with the commoners for its superior attitudes.

VALACHAN
Cult of Yutow
Church of Ezra - Small presence in Helbenik. Faith's compassionate teachings appeals to some.
Church of Hala - Large, unobtrusive persence. Popular although careful it does not act in conflict with Yutow.

VREBREK
Cult of the Wolf God - Most common religion though no human settlements worship it. Worshipped solely by werewolves and placated out of fear. The enemy of all men.
Church of Ezra - Small presence, Home Faith the sect of choice among its worshippers.
Church of Hala - Highly regarded, witches honoured for fighting the werewolves. Unpopular with th elycans who actively hunt its clerics. Operates well hidden sacred groves.
Woodcutter's Axe - Organised human rebels fighting the oppression of the werewolves.

Adventure league has a mere six factions, out of hundred plus factions present in ravenloft itself they couldn't find a single digit number of them with a similar enough roles/values/etc & maybe include a renown conversion formula for those AL folks? They could even include a few pages about the lucky ravenloft factions of note & shed some light on the setting of ravenloft itself where CoS is set.


We're talking about a situation where there isn't a published setting, so complaints about settings carry virtually no weight either. Again, unless you are playing specifically within the confines of the Sword Coast of Faerun, the burden of world construction is wholly on the DM. There's no published worldbuilding material for 5E outside that one book.

If we get a Dragonlance Campaign Setting with magic trains or a Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting where halfling gods pull talking dinosaurs in rickshaws, then we can start having this discussion about changes to published settings. The Player's Handbook, DMG and Monster Manual are generic documents.

You don't seem to understand. The sword coast is a region within faerun. Ravenloft is [I][U]not part if faerun. In tweets & videos, Wotc has explicitly mentioned how eberron, darksun, & the like are part of the shared cosmology & that MToF applies to all settings in the shared multiverse. The fact that there is no 5e eberron campaign setting is irrelevant to the fact that WotC has said this bookdoes & will apply to eberron.

[Regitnui]

My main worry is by making a combined material plane where all the worlds exist, they might force each world to operate on other worlds' core assumptions; Eberron doesn't fit in Planescape, because its planar model is only vaguely similar to that of the Great Wheel. Athas has no gods and a vastly different magic system, so can't operate off FR's Weave and Mystara. Or we get a system where each other setting is treated as a "stop" for FR-based adventures, like Ravenloft and CoS (yes, I understand that's part of the Demiplane of Dread's gimmick, but hear me out). Like they make a Planeshift adventure that visits Sigil and returns to FR, or an Eberron adventure where all the FR factions suddenly have an interest in a world that's got more magic items than they do members. All I am is cautious. I don't know how they're going to handle other settings besides FR ("default") and Ravenloft (Can appear anywhere). Portals to Athas don't exactly open up in the Anauroch and disgorge defilers into the Sword Coast on a regular basis.

That doesn't mean I'm against crossover settings; I'd love to see an updated treatment of Spelljammer that plays up the madness that comes with shoving different cultures of the same race from different settings together, as well as a sort of "planar map" putting the different Crystal Spheres with a "travelling distance" from each other kinda playing off how different they are, perhaps even with a subtle nod towards the Plane Shift semi-official booklets by mentioning a "world assailed by planar aberrations" or a "dying world turned construct factory". I would love to see an "external" view of the different Material Planes; maybe Forgotten Realms' sphere looks patchwork or pitted with holes from the appearances of different cultures, while Athas' sphere is completely opaque and Eberron's has a dead gold dragon around a green couatl holding a fiend in its coils.

So I'm not optimistic. I'm cautious. Expect the worst, hope for the best.

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

I personally like the books, I just can see valid complaints on the dearth of supplemental material this edition from those for whom the fluff isn't meaningful. The app/website/whatever letting you purchase just the mechanical content should fill the gap, but the pricing betrays the extent to which the fluff material is seen as empty filler by the publisher, given that the crunch is a small portion of the page count in most of these books, but a much larger portion of the a la carte price.

I can see (and agree with to a large extent!) that perspective. I'm just not sure this is new. Lots of useful or important technical crunch has been buried in unrelated, irrelevant fluff for many editions now, and it's always been a pain in the butt justifying spending $40 on Oriental Adventures so you can point to a page in a book that says "you may add your Wisdom modifier to attack and damage with simple weapons and unarmed strikes".

And if spell lists are going to be kept somewhat limited, PrCs aren't going to exist, feats remain optional and limited in scope and magic items are going to be a sideline rather than a main part of character power, I'm not sure how much crunch there actually is to release. Certainly a series like the Complete books from 3.5 is unlikely, as those were entirely feats, classes, prestige classes, spells and items.

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

You don't seem to understand. The sword coast is a region within faerun. Ravenloft is [I][U]not part if faerun. In tweets & videos, Wotc has explicitly mentioned how eberron, darksun, & the like are part of the shared cosmology & that MToF applies to all settings in the shared multiverse. The fact that there is no 5e eberron campaign setting is irrelevant to the fact that WotC has said this bookdoes & will apply to eberron.

I wanted one sentence! One! :smallsigh::smallsigh:

Let's say you're going to play a game in Eberron. As part of setting up the game, you as the DM have to establish the parameters of the world of Eberron. You have to do this because WotC has not, as yet, done it for you with the release of a published ECS. What is stopping you from saying "Eberron's cosmology does not conform to the diagrams in MToF."?

I do not understand what point, if any, you are making by emphasizing that Ravenloft is not part of Faerun. Yeah. Duh. We all understand that. What's that got to do with the price of tea in China?

[strangebloke]

As part of the campaign the players had gone back in time to before the giant empire rose & Ourelonastrix (http://eberron.wikia.com/wiki/Ourelonastrix) had just begun teaching the secrets of draconic magic to the giants. At this point in history, the giants are the only race other that dragons with anything approaching a culture. This is important.
dm: "written on the door in draconic & something else you think is probably giant is blahblah," <-- Nobody in the group knew giant & what it said is irrelevant.
The players had already met Ourelonastrix in the future/present day before getting flung back, but he seemed to just be an old human man of possibly loose wires laughing about how he gets to enjoy being on the giving end of timey wimey type spoilers (dr who & river song type crossing of timelines)
playerA asked what type of written runes was used
dm: I'm not sure what it says in the phb, but giants and dragons are the only two races out there with written languages at this time, so I'm going to say either gdraconic runes or it uses its own style of writing
PlayerA: "ok good enough"
PlayerB: "Actually it should be dwarven runes"
GM: "maybe in faerun, but the dwarves don't exist yet & dont come along fleeing Risia from thousands of years so it needs to be its own runes or draconic ones because those are the only two races at this point"
playerB: "but no the dwarves came along first & then the giants got theur writing because of $event"
PlayerA: So dwarves don't exist here yet & it's either draconic or giant runes used in giant script? ok great!
Player B: But that's only the case here in eberron because in most oth...
GM: So the door opens and...

Ebberon being a published setting would not stop any of this. This player is simply an idiot who is trying to shoehorn FR somewhere it doesn't belong. Why is he even challenging the DM on the lore of all things? The DM could be running a game where everyone is born of primodial goo as far as the player knows.


Adventure league has a mere six factions, out of hundred plus factions present in ravenloft itself they couldn't find a single digit number of them with a similar enough roles/values/etc & maybe include a renown conversion formula for those AL folks? They could even include a few pages about the lucky ravenloft factions of note & shed some light on the setting of ravenloft itself where CoS is set.
The only thing in AL that is continuous is the character and their resources. So if a level 5 paladin finishes LMoP and goes onto CoS, there has to be a mechanism by which he's in Ravenloft, and a mechanism by which he returns. Otherwise, when he rejoins his old teammates from LMoP for the next campaign the other members will ask him "What have you been doing the last year? Where did you get that shiny sword" and he'll be like.... "duuur, I don't know."

Look at CoS as an "Introduction to Ravenloft." It's a gateway to the setting for newbies rather than a super long-and-in-depth Ravenloft campaign. Why does it fill you with rage that newbies who otherwise would never have heard of Ravenloft are now hungry for more? WotC doesn't publish long-and-in-depth campaigns where the kind of stuff you like to talk about would be relevant anyway.

*sigh*

Lore discussions are boring.

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

Lore discussions are boring.

I think they're interesting when they're about the lore and what does and doesn't work, and how to use it correctly. When they're just seething about the meta of the lore with no utilitarian component, they're about the most tedious things imaginable.

[Unoriginal]

Eberron doesn't fit in Planescape, because its planar model is only vaguely similar to that of the Great Wheel

See, that sentence encapsulates the whole issue.

3.X Eberron's plannar model was like this.

It does NOT mean that any of the other editions version of Eberron must be like that.

The writers of this edition's version of Eberron could write that Sigil is visible in Eberron's sky, and it would be true.

Because there is no sacro-saint core of any setting that cannot be modified.

Maybe the fans would hate it, or think it's bad writing, or anything, but it does NOT remove the right of the authors to do so.


Now, because the 5e writers are not belligerent ***holes, they have actually taken into account the tastes of Eberron's fans, and made very clear that:

a) Eberron, while still being in the Material Plane like all the other setting world, is in its own remote Crystal Sphere, and it's so difficult to reach even experienced multi-world travelers like Mordenkainen think it's a legend at best.

b)the Warforged are not released as a race yet because they come from Eberron, and they don't want to tons of characters coming from Eberron showing up all over the cosmos

c) Each Crystal Sphere has different rules on magic and on which gods and planes interact with it, which is why X planes are around Eberron and influence it while Y planes are connected to Faerun in a different way.

[strangebloke]

I think they're interesting when they're about the lore and what does and doesn't work, and how to use it correctly. When they're just seething about the meta of the lore with no utilitarian component, they're about the most tedious things imaginable.

Right, sorry.

Meta-lore discussions are boring.

Particularly seeing as I have not, and never will use a published setting. I know that it's an argument that pulls ire here, but I just look at people like Tetra and I'm like...

I haven't had the setting I wanted published in, well, ever. I've written hundreds of pages of setting information! I've hand-drawn ultra-detailed maps and made dozens of spreadsheets to track the evolving relationships between the powerful factions of the game. I've hacked together houserules to reflect in-setting realities that dnd can't model effectively...

And you're pissed because some random MM page contains a footnote about how 'x' in 'y' setting function without mentioning setting 'z'?

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

Right, sorry.

Meta-lore discussions are boring.

Particularly seeing as I have not, and never will use a published setting. I know that it's an argument that pulls ire here, but I just look at people like Tetra and I'm like...

I haven't had the setting I wanted published in, well, ever. I've written hundreds of pages of setting information! I've hand-drawn ultra-detailed maps and made dozens of spreadsheets to track the evolving relationships between the powerful factions of the game. I've hacked together houserules to reflect in-setting realities that dnd can't model effectively...

And you're pissed because some random MM page contains a footnote about how 'x' in 'y' setting function without mentioning setting 'z'?

Exactly. Exactly. And you know what's extra infuriating? That same book contains a note that says you can change anything you want at any time you want for any reason to fit the story you're trying to tell. I mean, can you imagine such an insult?

[PhoenixPhyre]

Right, sorry.

Meta-lore discussions are boring.

Particularly seeing as I have not, and never will use a published setting. I know that it's an argument that pulls ire here, but I just look at people like Tetra and I'm like...

I haven't had the setting I wanted published in, well, ever. I've written hundreds of pages of setting information! I've hand-drawn ultra-detailed maps and made dozens of spreadsheets to track the evolving relationships between the powerful factions of the game. I've hacked together houserules to reflect in-setting realities that dnd can't model effectively...

And you're pissed because some random MM page contains a footnote about how 'x' in 'y' setting function without mentioning setting 'z'?

Amen. I'm busy using my (horrific) digital art skills to make a map of a city and also contemplating trying to draw clothing styles to better flesh out cultures for the NPCs I'm making for my world.

I can skim over "Malbulugugugugugugg made goblins baaaaad because baaaad"--what I want is either pieces I can use (stats/mechanics) or ideas I can transplant (after suitable modification).

I bet that if you take any two DMs who run in the same published setting and compare the setting details, they'll differ in significant ways. And that's with published works.

[Tetrasodium]

Ebberon being a published setting would not stop any of this. This player is simply an idiot who is trying to shoehorn FR somewhere it doesn't belong. Why is he even challenging the DM on the lore of all things? The DM could be running a game where everyone is born of primodial goo as far as the player knows.

The only thing in AL that is continuous is the character and their resources. So if a level 5 paladin finishes LMoP and goes onto CoS, there has to be a mechanism by which he's in Ravenloft, and a mechanism by which he returns. Otherwise, when he rejoins his old teammates from LMoP for the next campaign the other members will ask him "What have you been doing the last year? Where did you get that shiny sword" and he'll be like.... "duuur, I don't know."

Look at CoS as an "Introduction to Ravenloft." It's a gateway to the setting for newbies rather than a super long-and-in-depth Ravenloft campaign. Why does it fill you with rage that newbies who otherwise would never have heard of Ravenloft are now hungry for more? WotC doesn't publish long-and-in-depth campaigns where the kind of stuff you like to talk about would be relevant anyway.

*sigh*

Lore discussions are boring.
Yes, player B was being an ass, but he has piles of 5e books saying that he;s still probably correct. As to a level 5 paladin going to ravenloft & coming back to rejoin his friends in lmop, not every setting needs to or should have travel between them. I'm fine with random wackjobs being snatched out of faerun & getting depostited into cyre after 994YK & struggling their way out of the bizarre arcanopocalyptic wasteland known as the mournland (http://eberron.wikia.com/wiki/Day_of_Mourning), it;s a friendly place where rain disolves flesh, entire villages are encased in glass, living spells roam the land, healing does not work, so on & so forth... but there is no mechanism to get back. I'm not fine with a mass influx if random nuts from faerun popping up in sharn & contracting with house orien to get back unless wotc is also fine with blighting faerun with the conquering, parceling up, & colonization of their precious unmarred drizztland in ways that make the european colonial empires look like rank amateurs dabbling in a sandbox.


c) Each Crystal Sphere has different rules on magic and on which gods and planes interact with it, which is why X planes are around Eberron and influence it while Y planes are connected to Faerun in a different way.

This is correct, but if you take plot/group/whatever from one sphere into another sphere were those baselines are different enough to be nearly incompatible, you need to change the plot/group/whatever that you want in order to fit the baselines of the new sphere so the thing you are moving over can fit.



Right, sorry.

Meta-lore discussions are boring.

Particularly seeing as I have not, and never will use a published setting. I know that it's an argument that pulls ire here, but I just look at people like Tetra and I'm like...

I haven't had the setting I wanted published in, well, ever. I've written hundreds of pages of setting information! I've hand-drawn ultra-detailed maps and made dozens of spreadsheets to track the evolving relationships between the powerful factions of the game. I've hacked together houserules to reflect in-setting realities that dnd can't model effectively...

And you're pissed because some random MM page contains a footnote about how 'x' in 'y' setting function without mentioning setting 'z'?

Now imagine if in 4e they published that setting, did a terrible job changing it to fit things from some other setting, & were talking about merging your preferred setting with bits of stuff from the source of the previous clusterbleep.


I wanted one sentence! One! :smallsigh::smallsigh:

Let's say you're going to play a game in Eberron. As part of setting up the game, you as the DM have to establish the parameters of the world of Eberron. You have to do this because WotC has not, as yet, done it for you with the release of a published ECS. What is stopping you from saying "Eberron's cosmology does not conform to the diagrams in MToF."?

I do not understand what point, if any, you are making by emphasizing that Ravenloft is not part of Faerun. Yeah. Duh. We all understand that. What's that got to do with the price of tea in China?

Yes it's up to the dm to establish the parameters of the world, however when wotc releases stuff aimed at players saying that those parameters are in direct conflict with those parameters in order to fit a boatload of baggage from a different setting, it is needlessly complicated.

As to your question about MtoF, last I checked we are a few weeks from having access to the book. Odds are good that There will be things from eberron in conflict from it, but if mtof comes out saying stuff like this applies to all $whatever & that $whatever is in contradiction with the setting, carries a lot of baggage of its own, and many things covered in mtof it becomes a matter of "mtof content is banned because it's all wrong & I need to rewrite anything you want out of it" When that happens too often.....

[strangebloke]

Now imagine if in 4e they published that setting, did a terrible job changing it to fit things from some other setting, & were talking about merging your preferred setting with bits of stuff from the source of the previous clusterbleep.


I'd be frocking overjoyed that people were actually playing on the continent of Albior, fighting to unify the Rhudlands and free them from Draconic tyrrany.

Even if it wasn't the same, I'd be literally giddy that my baby had taken wings.

[JoeJ]

The writers of this edition's version of Eberron could write that Sigil is visible in Eberron's sky, and it would be true.

It would be true for the AL at least. I'm still free to say, "yes, I understand that the devs have made their decision, but it's a stupid-*** decision, so I've elected to ignore it."

There wouldn't be a lot of point in getting upset about it, though.

[War_lord]

It would be true for the AL at least. I'm still free to say, "yes, I understand that the devs have made their decision, but it's a stupid-*** decision, so I've elected to ignore it."

There wouldn't be a lot of point in getting upset about it, though.

When you realize Tetra's argument is basically "I am offended that WoTC even has settings that aren't Eberron" you realize the futility of trying to have an adult conversation over it.

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

It would be true for the AL at least. I'm still free to say, "yes, I understand that the devs have made their decision, but it's a stupid-*** decision, so I've elected to ignore it."


That's it precisely. AL is a different beast. It's a game that runs by what are essentially convention rules and should be considered separately from the rest of 5E. You make your world work the way you want it to.



Yes it's up to the dm to establish the parameters of the world, however when wotc releases stuff aimed at players saying that those parameters are in direct conflict with those parameters in order to fit a boatload of baggage from a different setting, it is needlessly complicated.

As to your question about MtoF, last I checked we are a few weeks from having access to the book. Odds are good that There will be things from eberron in conflict from it, but if mtof comes out saying stuff like this applies to all $whatever & that $whatever is in contradiction with the setting, carries a lot of baggage of its own, and many things covered in mtof it becomes a matter of "mtof content is banned because it's all wrong & I need to rewrite anything you want out of it" When that happens too often.....

Contradictions between what the authors and publishers say and what DMs and players say have always existed. I played in high school in a Forgotten Realms game with the orcs and gnomes removed because they were dumb fantasy monsters. It wasn't a big deal.

When MToF releases, any information it has that relates to the structure of the cosmos is use-as-you-wish. It's up to the DM to establish the parameters of the world, the end. There's not really a however. The only reason a table would have MToF banned is if it includes player content that the DM doesn't want to see that the table. If it doesn't have player content, then banned or not what's written in it is only valid if the DM makes that affirmative choice. I don't consider this needlessly complicated. I don't consider it complicated at all. In non-AL play, sole responsibility for the setting rests with the DM, and that guy or gal has absolute, l'état c'est moi power, no matter what's written in that book or any book.

[EvilAnagram]

And the Hobbit movies were bad adaptations, but calling them invalid is just like... what? What do you think calling them invalid means to the people you're talking to? Do you think that conveys more information than just calling them bad adaptations?
I'm saying that at a certain point they stopped trying to be adaptations of The Hobbit in anything but name. They wanted to be something else, and they pursued it with the basic plot points of the book weighing them down. It almost makes no sense to treat it as an adaptation because they weren't trying to adapt it. That's why I call it invalid as an adaptation: it stopped trying to adapt.


I respect you, EA, but it really seems to me that this whole argument could have been avoided.
Fair points, all around.

[Tetrasodium]

We're talking about a situation where there isn't a published setting, so complaints about settings carry virtually no weight either. Again, unless you are playing specifically within the confines of the Sword Coast of Faerun, the burden of world construction is wholly on the DM. There's no published worldbuilding material for 5E outside that one book.

If we get a Dragonlance Campaign Setting with magic trains or a Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting where halfling gods pull talking dinosaurs in rickshaws, then we can start having this discussion about changes to published settings. The Player's Handbook, DMG and Monster Manual are generic documents.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r93sKXCvXQ4&feature=youtu.be&t=488


if you are a new person to d&d entirely, this is obe of the first books that you can just hand this to them & be like "this is the d&d multiverse"
Mike Mearls: "Yea & that's one of the things that we wanted to do was create something where a new player or dungeon master could read the chapter say on dwarves if you're playing a dwarf & reallyunderstand what it means to be a dwarf in dungeons & dragons.
Now the backgrouund definitions we give don't determine all dwarves, we know there are always exceptions. But we wanted to give a good starting point to really let you get inside the psychology of dwarves. How do dwarves think? How do they see the world. Applying that to elvesm halflings, gnomes, the gith, demons & devils too the bloodwar gets similar treatment."

Those races are often wildly different in different settings. In forgotten realms & greyhawk.. halflings are basically things that resemble but are legally distinct from the hobbits (http://www.cc.com/video-clips/b1vw6f/futurama-leela-s-oz)... in darksun, they are blood drinking savage cannibalistic things that eat people they catch. In eberron, they are somewhat in between (http://keith-baker.com/dragonmarks-halflings/) with some differences plus dinosaurs. There is no mindset that neatly bridges that galaxy spanning spectrum & any attempt to do so can very easily cause severe problems by telling players that this is how characters of $yourCaractersRace think, see the world, etc. The same can hold true with nearly any race if you start looking cross settings.

Now it is entirely possible that WotC might have taken into account some of the complaints & concerns over this kind of thing since 4e eberron bleeped that pooch & the video I started this thread with gives some hope that they might be using lube & doing pretty reasonably, but in the other videos Wotc has said a lot of deeply troubling things like echoes of lolth in the blood of drow in settings where drow have nothing to do with lolth & lolth is something different entirely.

fans of salvatore style drow from forgotten realms would be in the parking lot outside wotc with torches if mtof says something to the extent of "Lolth is really a demon overlord rather than a deity, in faerrun she is a giant who learned draconic magic from the giants of xen'driik & used that magic to mix mud into the blood of captured eldar but most drow worship vulkooor the scorpion, elemental fire, pr shadow & darkness" don't act like people being concerned about that sort of treatment after getting it once already are being unreasonable & overreacting.

[Envyus]

Those races are often wildly different in different settings. In forgotten realms & greyhawk.. halflings are basically things that resemble but are legally distinct from the hobbits (http://www.cc.com/video-clips/b1vw6f/futurama-leela-s-oz)... in darksun, they are blood drinking savage cannibalistic things that eat people they catch. In eberron, they are somewhat in between with some differences plus dinosaurs. There is no mindset that neatly bridges that galaxy spanning spectrum & any attempt to do so can very easily cause severe problems by telling players that this is how characters of $yourCaractersRace think, see the world, etc. The same can hold true with nearly any race if you start looking cross settings.

Now it is entirely possible that WotC might have taken into account some of the complaints & concerns over this kind of thing since 4e eberron bleeped that pooch & the video I started this thread with gives some hope that they might be using lube & doing pretty reasonably, but in the other videos Wotc has said a lot of deeply troubling things like echoes of lolth in the blood of drow in settings where drow have nothing to do with lolth & lolth is something different entirely.
You ignored the part were he said there are exceptions. And that is the generic lore for those races. It is the default Lore and how they act by default. In wildly different settings like Darksun and Eberron they can act different form the standard, but that is the exception not the rule. So get over it and accept it already, because that is how it has ALWAYS been. In D&D there are default assumptions about races and lore. Some settings change that up.

Also 4e Eberron did not really screw the pooch it was fine as a setting. There were some cosmology changes but they were ultimately pretty minor.


fans of salvatore style drow from forgotten realms would be in the parking lot outside wotc with torches if mtof says something to the extent of "Lolth is really a demon overlord rather than a deity, in faerrun she is a giant who learned draconic magic from the giants of xen'driik & used that magic to mix mud into the blood of captured eldar but most drow worship vulkooor the scorpion, elemental fire, pr shadow & darkness" don't act like people being concerned about that sort of treatment after getting it once already are being unreasonable & overreacting.

No that would not happen, You do know that Lolth is just Demon Lord in some settings not even a full deity. In fact that is what she originally was, she managed to power herself up over the editions but in the older ones she was just a Demon lord.

[Tetrasodium]

You ignored the part were he said there are exceptions. And that is the generic lore for those races. It is the default Lore and how they act by default. In wildly different settings like Darksun and Eberron they can act different form the standard, but that is the exception not the rule. So get over it and accept it already, because that is how it has ALWAYS been. In D&D there are default assumptions about races and lore. Some settings change that up.

Also 4e Eberron did not really screw the pooch it was fine as a setting. There were some cosmology changes but they were ultimately pretty minor.



No that would not happen, You do know that Lolth is just Demon Lord in some settings not even a full deity. In fact that is what she originally was, she managed to power herself up over the editions but in the older ones she was just a Demon lord.


no I did not ignore the exceptions, I weight it against past history combined with the concerning stuff they have said. If simply saying that there are exceptions was enough, why does the drow entry in the phb not say there are exceptions to the lolth worshipping drizzt combating style drow described? WotC does not have a track record to grant that offhand statement as being good enough to quell doubts & concerns

[Envyus]

no I did not ignore the exceptions, I weight it against past history combined with the concerning stuff they have said. If simply saying that there are exceptions was enough, why does the drow entry in the phb not say there are exceptions to the lolth worshipping drizzt combating style drow described? WotC does not have a track record to grant that offhand statement as being good enough to quell doubts & concerns

Because it does not need to say there are exceptions. The settings were they are exceptions say that.

Drow evil and worship Lolth that has been their lore from day 1. If a setting has different lore then it's up to the setting to say that.

[JoeJ]

fans of salvatore style drow from forgotten realms would be in the parking lot outside wotc with torches if mtof says something to the extent of "Lolth is really a demon overlord rather than a deity.


I'll just leave this here:



The dark elves worship demon lords from the Abyss. The best known example is the worship of the Demon Queen Lolth... The demoness Lolth is a very powerful and feared demon Lord.

[Tetrasodium]

Because it does not need to say there are exceptions. The settings were they are exceptions say that.

I wanted to preserve this.... You just stated exactly why I did not count the offhand comment about exceptions existing in a book that is supposed to apply to the mindset, thought process, etc of every setting.

[Envyus]

I wanted to preserve this.... You just stated exactly why I did not count the offhand comment about exceptions existing in a book that is supposed to apply to the mindset, thought process, etc of every setting.

Well yes it says there are exceptions. In the term of there are exceptions from the norm within the race.

The exceptions I am talking about is when the entire Race is different from the default, like it is in Eberron.

For example. It can give a general description of what Drow are like, and say that some Drow break that mold and rebel. It does not need however to say "In this one other setting they worship scorpions instead of spiders and live in Jungles instead of underground."

[Tetrasodium]

Well yes it says there are exceptions. In the term of there are exceptions from the norm within the race.

The exceptions I am talking about is when the entire Race is different from the default, like it is in Eberron.

except that this is supposed to apply to all of the "shared multiverse" and WotC has been extremely clear that eberron & darksun are both part of the "(not so)shared multiverse".

[Envyus]

except that this is supposed to apply to all of the "shared multiverse" and WotC has been extremely clear that eberron & darksun are both part of the "(not so)shared multiverse".

And they are. Stuff changes between the worlds however. Eberron is so far out it's planer structure has changed, and pretty much no one can reach it via Spelljammer. While Dark Sun's a hellhole of a Prime World that no one wants to go to cause if you do you get cut off and can't leave. And for Dark Sun this has always been the case.

And whats supposed to apply to all? Lore? cause that has never been the case, there are just default assumptions about D&D settings, which many change between them.

[Regitnui]

See, that sentence encapsulates the whole issue.

3.X Eberron's plannar model was like this.

It does NOT mean that any of the other editions version of Eberron must be like that.

The writers of this edition's version of Eberron could write that Sigil is visible in Eberron's sky, and it would be true.

Because there is no sacrosanct core of any setting that cannot be modified.

Maybe the fans would hate it, or think it's bad writing, or anything, but it does NOT remove the right of the authors to do so.

It was also 4e's model, so at this point, changing Eberron's planar model would be similar to putting Sigil in the sky of Forgotten Realms. Excepting, of course, we have an idea how the Forgotten Realms look this edition, so any changes have been made. Fans of other settings are still bracing themselves. Of course WotC hace the right to do whatever they want, but there's a limit to what they can do and have it still be that setting; add Forgotten Realms gods to Eberron, it's not Eberron. Add Eberron's wide magic to Dark Sun, it's not Dark Sun anymore.

If you get past Tetrasodium's abrasive style of writing, you'll see that there was some concern in his initial posts, the same I'm sure FR fans had in 3.5 when their setting wasn't default; they didn't know how their favourite world had changed after Die, Vecna, Die. (Deny it all you want, when you use the Faerun nations for human name examples, FR is default lore even if it's a light dusting)



Now, because the 5e writers are not belligerent ***holes, they have actually taken into account the tastes of Eberron's fans, and made very clear that:

a) Eberron, while still being in the Material Plane like all the other setting world, is in its own remote Crystal Sphere, and it's so difficult to reach even experienced multi-world travelers like Mordenkainen think it's a legend at best.

b)the Warforged are not released as a race yet because they come from Eberron, and they don't want to tons of characters coming from Eberron showing up all over the cosmos

c) Each Crystal Sphere has different rules on magic and on which gods and planes interact with it, which is why X planes are around Eberron and influence it while Y planes are connected to Faerun in a different way.

Now, if they stick to this, everyone will be happy. I dare say Tetra would go quiet and a certain other user would disappear entirely.

But, these assurances are all words until they publish an adventure set in Eberron. I don't want them to carry over AL factions and characters into that unchanged. That would mean that you add FR baggage to a world that frankly doesn't need it. So until we see an Eberron book published, I'll remain cautious about the "combined material plane" and "combined mythology" talks I hear out of WotC and D&D Beyond.

Like I said though, I like a Spelljammer crossover more than a Planescape crossover. Hopefully there's a change in factions though, or they're going to have to rewrite lore and explain why the Harpers have a "space" programme before they're allowed guns by the local God of Technology.

[Envyus]

Like I said though, I like a Spelljammer crossover more than a Planescape crossover. Hopefully there's a change in factions though, or they're going to have to rewrite lore and explain why the Harpers have a "space" programme before they're allowed guns by the local God of Technology.

The factions are not involved in stuff outside of FR. In the sole Adventure taking place outside of FR in Ravenloft, the factions were involved in the sense you could be related to one. But they had no presence or anything once you got pulled into Ravenloft. Cause they don't exist there.

[MeeposFire]

The factions are not involved in stuff outside of FR. In the sole Adventure taking place outside of FR in Ravenloft, the factions were involved in the sense you could be related to one. But they had no presence or anything once you got pulled into Ravenloft. Cause they don't exist there.

Besides people from other settings get stuck in Ravenloft all the time including FR, Dragonlance, and Greyhawk so the idea that some Zhents or whatever could be there is not out of bounds though probably a threat to a domian of dread's ord so probably would not last too long at any one time.

[Regitnui]

The factions are not involved in stuff outside of FR. In the sole Adventure taking place outside of FR in Ravenloft, the factions were involved in the sense you could be related to one. But they had no presence or anything once you got pulled into Ravenloft. Cause they don't exist there.

Yes, and they immediately resumed their prominence in the next adventure? All I'm saying is that AL has to drop those factions more permanently if it wants to expand beyond Faerun permanently. Either that, or AL gets conversion notes on handling the Spelljammer adventure without leaving the ground.

[Envyus]

Yes, and they immediately resumed their prominence in the next adventure? All I'm saying is that AL has to drop those factions more permanently if it wants to expand beyond Faerun permanently. Either that, or AL gets conversion notes on handling the Spelljammer adventure without leaving the ground.

Well of course they would the next adventure happens in FR.

[Chaosmancer]

Yes, player B was being an ass, but he has piles of 5e books saying that he;s still probably correct. As to a level 5 paladin going to ravenloft & coming back to rejoin his friends in lmop, not every setting needs to or should have travel between them. I'm fine with random wackjobs being snatched out of faerun & getting depostited into cyre after 994YK & struggling their way out of the bizarre arcanopocalyptic wasteland known as the mournland (http://eberron.wikia.com/wiki/Day_of_Mourning), it;s a friendly place where rain disolves flesh, entire villages are encased in glass, living spells roam the land, healing does not work, so on & so forth... but there is no mechanism to get back. I'm not fine with a mass influx if random nuts from faerun popping up in sharn & contracting with house orien to get back unless wotc is also fine with blighting faerun with the conquering, parceling up, & colonization of their precious unmarred drizztland in ways that make the european colonial empires look like rank amateurs dabbling in a sandbox.



This is correct, but if you take plot/group/whatever from one sphere into another sphere were those baselines are different enough to be nearly incompatible, you need to change the plot/group/whatever that you want in order to fit the baselines of the new sphere so the thing you are moving over can fit.

Whether or not Playet B has books that say he is right is completely irrelevant. I have a lot of books saying Halflings are peaceful and pastoral. Heck, i can even point to cultural icons, movies and video games that agree with me.

That doesn't mean I'm in any way right if I tell the DM the information they are providing is wrong.

And, honestly, that is a player problem not a problem that WotC has created. I know a lot of people don't like Critical Role, but Mercer successfully homebrewed a unique and vibrant world and his players probably never challenged his right to that lore. Matt Colville has done the same thing, and 90% of the players I've had in my home games have never tried to read FR lore to me as law.

This isn't something new setting books will fix. Ever.

And... I think either you wanted something different from CoS (perhaps a game set entirely in Barovia instead of people arriving there from outside) or you don't understand the desire of players to continue using their same characters in Adventures League. Replacing an organization a character has previously been affiliated with with an entirely new organization for only a single adventure... That'd be a horrible mess I think.

It would have been cool to hear of these organizations during the adventure though, some of them look interesting

[Regitnui]

Well of course they would the next adventure happens in FR.

Not my point. CoS was an excursion, but moving AL to any other campaign setting will either compromise that setting's lore (or FR's lore) or require that AL adventures become disconnected from the published adventures. There will have to be some change in the Factions system for AL if WotC wants to have any other setting, even one open to crossovers like Spelljammer. After all, the Zhentarim don't have a spelljammer programme.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Not my point. CoS was an excursion, but moving AL to any other campaign setting will either compromise that setting's lore (or FR's lore) or require that AL adventures become disconnected from the published adventures. There will have to be some change in the Factions system for AL if WotC wants to have any other setting, even one open to crossovers like Spelljammer. After all, the Zhentarim don't have a spelljammer programme.

I strongly doubt that AL will ever do anything entirely outside of FR. Visiting other material planes, sure. But it will be tied to FR as its core. It's the setting with by far the most name recognition among non-D&D people among other things. If you walk into a bookstore with a SF&F section, they'll probably have a small shelf of "D&D" novels. All of which, with very few exceptions, are set in FR.

But AL is not 5e; 5e is not AL. AL is a superstructure built on top of the core rules. I see large attempts to remain as neutral in the core materials as possible. The default seems to be "a homebrew setting somewhere in the core multiverse." The printed adventures are completely different, however. Because they're intrinsically tied to a specific setting, they contain the setting details as needed for that particular adventure.

[EvilAnagram]

Yes, and they immediately resumed their prominence in the next adventure? All I'm saying is that AL has to drop those factions more permanently if it wants to expand beyond Faerun permanently. Either that, or AL gets conversion notes on handling the Spelljammer adventure without leaving the ground.

But they're not going to expand beyond Faerun permanently. Hell, every rumor I hear about the next adventure suggests it's taking place in Faerun. Apparently, Perkins let something drop about Lantan, and Undermountain is bubbling to the surface. This is the first adventure released just after MToF, with all its interplanar and Spelljammer goodies, and there still seems to be no will to expand beyond Faerun. We might eventually get another adventure that dips somewhere else, but that's it.

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

But they're not going to expand beyond Faerun permanently. Hell, every rumor I hear about the next adventure suggests it's taking place in Faerun. Apparently, Perkins let something drop about Lantan, and Undermountain is bubbling to the surface. This is the first adventure released just after MToF, with all its interplanar and Spelljammer goodies, and there still seems to be no will to expand beyond Faerun. We might eventually get another adventure that dips somewhere else, but that's it.

So the question in my mind is whether we'll get published adventures that aren't AL-compatible. Everything I've heard so far - not from anyone in the know, mind you - is that AL has been hugely successful for Wizards. The thinking may very well be that anyone who wants to run a Dark Sun or Spelljammer or Mystara adventure already possesses the know-how to do it, so the published adventures are written for the more by-the-book audience.

Of course, some of the published adventures aren't super easy to run straight out of the book, so who knows.

[Regitnui]

But they're not going to expand beyond Faerun permanently. Hell, every rumor I hear about the next adventure suggests it's taking place in Faerun. Apparently, Perkins let something drop about Lantan, and Undermountain is bubbling to the surface. This is the first adventure released just after MToF, with all its interplanar and Spelljammer goodies, and there still seems to be no will to expand beyond Faerun. We might eventually get another adventure that dips somewhere else, but that's it.

Yet they keep talking about a Material Plane where every setting exists. So either everything is Faerun, or WotC is going to ignore half of its history to keep AL the main sanctioned play experience. They could (and this is just the blatherings of an uneducated lunatic) disconnect the factions from a particular setting and rename them, causing practically no disruption to AL players, but as said above, I'm an uneducated lunatic who couldn't possibly understand the plans of WotC and their ideas going forward.

[Unoriginal]

Yet they keep talking about a Material Plane where every setting exists. So either everything is Faerun, or WotC is going to ignore half of its history to keep AL the main sanctioned play experience. They could (and this is just the blatherings of an uneducated lunatic) disconnect the factions from a particular setting and rename them, causing practically no disruption to AL players, but as said above, I'm an uneducated lunatic who couldn't possibly understand the plans of WotC and their ideas going forward.

OR, the actual logical explanation: not everything is Faerun, WotC is not going to ignore its history, and AL happening in Faerun doesn't prevent other worlds from existing in the Material Plane.

AL characters can already potentially encounter characters from Greyhawk or other worlds.

[EvilAnagram]

Yet they keep talking about a Material Plane where every setting exists.
Sure. If everything is in the same material plane, then you only have to talk about the one. They can talk about elves and dwarves as whole groups without paying attention to differences between settings. They can weave any gods they want into any lore they want because it's the same plane. It reduces the amount of work for them, while they only have to write books set in the most popular, and therefore most profitable setting.

The only settings that will get anything at all will be those like Ravenloft, which can be explored in a single campaign. Not fully, but enough.

@Unoriginal I would love to think they're going to explore something outside Faerun, but I don't see any evidence of that happening.

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

Depends whether adventures or adventure paths are decoupled from AL. Portability is such a key selling point of AL that a Dragonlance, Eberron or other world AL-compatible adventure would be a heavy lift creatively. Maybe at some point later in the 5E cycle we'll get some fully standalone, non-AL adventures.

[strangebloke]

I would definitely anticipate more plane hopping adventures like CoS. If those are popular enough, my next guess would be a "start from level one " eberron campaign, since I think that's their second most popular setting.

They don't have to worry about compatibility because if you're starting from level one, you aren't using an AL character anyway.

If they do this, they'll promo it very heavily.

Honestly I'm just waiting for a meta plot to emerge across the modules.

[Unoriginal]

Pretty sure they'll do a Great Modron March adventure at some point.

[Chaosmancer]

I do wonder if they will brand or update AL in the future. Like, turn the current league into "AL FR" and open a second league for a different world, or run a few seasons in a different world.

If I'm remembering correctly, Tomb of Annihilation had some rules about perma-death and what to do with your characters if you didn't want to risk them like that. I imagine it went over like a lead brick, but they could be using that experience to refine and talk about a seasonal change to a different setting.

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

IIRC Tomb of Annihilation has an out - after you finish the adventure you can have faction members revive your dead characters. I'll have to look in the book when I get home.

[Unoriginal]

You can have as many AL characters as you wish, so...

[Tetrasodium]

You can have as many AL characters as you wish, so...

Also correct, the preserve, carry, or transport action rewards & characters across settings argument people have brought up as desired by some is understandable yes... except AL is not an mmo with a ~3-5 character limit per account to keep the database from getting too unwieldy & all. There is no reason to either infect other settings with faerun flore & fluff or to dilute them of their own groups, organizations, politics, etc just to protect the sanctity of faerun. If they want faerun wants to be a plane hopping world shaped sigil or a spelljammer ship where you never leave the ground then faerun needs to adapt for that rather than every other setting.

[Unoriginal]

ALL settings were modified.

I don't understand why you keep insisting FR is some kind of privileged, untouched setting trying to phagocyte all others.

[Tetrasodium]

ALL settings were modified.

I don't understand why you keep insisting FR is some kind of privileged, untouched setting trying to phagocyte all others.

I posted a big loooonnnng list of factions, groups, & organizations present in ravenloft earlier. Can you direct me to the pages for say... Six of those in cos?

[PhoenixPhyre]

I posted a big loooonnnng list of factions, groups, & organizations present in ravenloft earlier. Can you direct me to the pages for say... Six of those in cos?

This is not only not responsive to what it's quoting, it's an absolute non-sequitur.

The AL factions are in CoS purely, solely, and exclusively to provide a "why are you caught up in the adventure" hook for people coming from FR.

All settings were modified by 5e. Just as they were for 4e. Because you have an irrational hatred for FR, you assume it must be all FR's fault. When FR was modified just as much. You're explicitly blaming a "victim" here (not that I think the changes were victimizations).

[Unoriginal]

I posted a big loooonnnng list of factions, groups, & organizations present in ravenloft earlier. Can you direct me to the pages for say... Six of those in cos?

Again, that's empty rhetoric. You're acting as if other settings being modified for 5e and/or for AL meant that the Forgotten Realms have not been modified as well.

[Tetrasodium]

This is not only not responsive to what it's quoting, it's an absolute non-sequitur.

The AL factions are in CoS purely, solely, and exclusively to provide a "why are you caught up in the adventure" hook for people coming from FR.

All settings were modified by 5e. Just as they were for 4e. Because you have an irrational hatred for FR, you assume it must be all FR's fault. When FR was modified just as much. You're explicitly blaming a "victim" here (not that I think the changes were victimizations).

No it is absolutely relevant to his statement. The organizations in ravenloft are not present in the CoS ravenloft adventure because it would be too awkward to move them back out to faerun without infecting faerun with organizations from ravenloft so they dilute ravenloft & strip them out of their roles in CoS. Surely if they can fit a page & a half of space devoted to AL's faerun specific factions they can manage to fit at least a table or sidebar about a couple of the ones present in ravenloft itself. If the ravenloft in CoS is not diluted for faerun specific AL, where are the ravenloft specific organizations, religions, plethora of dark lords (http://ravenloft.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_Darklords), etc?

Oh... you are suggesting that the deliberate design decision to treat ravenloft in CoS like a sigil or spelljammer adventure treats other settings & write it to ensure minimal levels of cross politicization back to faerun when they don't ride a spelljammer back & don't race back to sigil does not treat faerun as an untouchable plane of purity tracking mud across ravenloft?... it does not work that way.


Again, that's empty rhetoric. You're acting as if other settings being modified for 5e and/or for AL meant that the Forgotten Realms have not been modified as well.



sooo..... where are the ravenloft specific organizations, religions, plethora of dark lords (http://ravenloft.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_Darklords), etc?

[PhoenixPhyre]

No it is absolutely relevant to his statement. The organizations in ravenloft are not present in the CoS ravenloft adventure because it would be too awkward to move them back out to faerun without infecting faerun with organizations from ravenloft so they dilute ravenloft & strip them out of their roles in CoS. Surely if they can fit a page & a half of space devoted to AL's faerun specific factions they can manage to fit at least a table or sidebar about a couple of the ones present in ravenloft itself. If the ravenloft in CoS is not diluted for faerun specific AL, where are the ravenloft specific organizations, religions, plethora of dark lords (http://ravenloft.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_Darklords), etc?

Oh... you are suggesting that the deliberate design decision to treat ravenloft in CoS like a sigil or spelljammer adventure treats other settings & write it to ensure minimal levels of cross politicization back to faerun when they don't ride a spelljammer back & don't race back to sigil does not treat faerun as an untouchable plane of purity tracking mud across ravenloft?... it does not work that way.

CoS is not a "ravenloft" adventure per se. It's a Barovia adventure. And beyond that, you're assuming that Ravenloft remains the same (ie that those organizations still exist). New editions only import what they want--stuff from prior editions isn't "canon" until it's published for this one. Thus it has always been. Very very few settings get ported between editions anyway, and most that do suffer significant changes. This has been true for all editions.

Not only that, you're blaming FR for something that FR has nothing to do with. At most, blame AL for wanting continuity. If AL were set in Holy Eberron instead, you'd still see those types of issues with any crossover. Because otherwise you either destroy all possible continuity or destroy the ability to play things in other orders/skip adventures.

[Regitnui]

I do wonder if they will brand or update AL in the future. Like, turn the current league into "AL FR" and open a second league for a different world, or run a few seasons in a different world.

I'd actually sign up for a AL Eberron.

Actually no, I wouldn't (not enough people near me). But I'd at least appreciate the effort in acknowledging that D&D is more flexible than just one world. Unfortunately, I guess I'm going to have to stick to finding statblocks, third-party and homebrew for my 5e for the foreseeable future.

We know they have Eberron races in a file folder somewhere. Have they just abandoned the possibility of anything but Faerun for fear of waking the fiendish overlords they sealed in the basement with a pile of 3.5 sourcebooks? Though they did hint at Keith Baker coming back to work with them, and if Keith Baker is any one thing in D&D, it's Eberron. Though I'm actually expecting an adventure in his style rather than any actual attempt to make the AL people accept that FR is not the entire D&D universe... Maybe a Spelljammer adventure that then crashes back on Faerun after giving everyone a precious (metaphorical) breath of the outside phlogiston? I've learned not to expect much. I submit my application to the Wall of the Faithless and accept my fate. /drama

[PhoenixPhyre]

I'd actually sign up for a AL Eberron.

Actually no, I wouldn't (not enough people near me). But I'd at least appreciate the effort in acknowledging that D&D is more flexible than just one world. Unfortunately, I guess I'm going to have to stick to finding statblocks, third-party and homebrew for my 5e for the foreseeable future.


AL is not D&D. D&D != AL. FR is not the default setting for D&D, but it is for AL adventures. There is a difference. A big difference.



We know they have Eberron races in a file folder somewhere. Have they just abandoned the possibility of anything but Faerun for fear of waking the fiendish overlords they sealed in the basement with a pile of 3.5 sourcebooks? Though they did hint at Keith Baker coming back to work with them, and if Keith Baker is any one thing in D&D, it's Eberron. Though I'm actually expecting an adventure in his style rather than any actual attempt to make the AL people accept that FR is not the entire D&D universe... Maybe a Spelljammer adventure that then crashes back on Faerun after giving everyone a precious (metaphorical) breath of the outside phlogiston? I've learned not to expect much. I submit my application to the Wall of the Faithless and accept my fate. /drama

AL is better left in one setting. It can provide much more richness and continuity there. But since AL != D&D and D&D != AL...

That's what's so aggravating here. People seem to assume that if it's not a published setting it doesn't matter, or that official play is all that matters. It isn't. It's a minority, I'd guess, of all play. And 5e has gone to great lengths to make it severable from the core product.

[Unoriginal]

We know they have Eberron races in a file folder somewhere. Have they just abandoned the possibility of anything but Faerun for fear of waking the fiendish overlords they sealed in the basement with a pile of 3.5 sourcebooks? Though they did hint at Keith Baker coming back to work with them, and if Keith Baker is any one thing in D&D, it's Eberron. Though I'm actually expecting an adventure in his style rather than any actual attempt to make the AL people accept that FR is not the entire D&D universe... Maybe a Spelljammer adventure that then crashes back on Faerun after giving everyone a precious (metaphorical) breath of the outside phlogiston? I've learned not to expect much. I submit my application to the Wall of the Faithless and accept my fate. /drama

Mearls has went on record saying they won't release the Warforged until they can do so in Eberron proper, so...

[Tetrasodium]

CoS is not a "ravenloft" adventure per se. It's a Barovia adventure.
Could you maybe show me where on the faerun map that barovia is listed? Could you perhaps show me when barovia quit being part of ravenloft?


And beyond that, you're assuming that Ravenloft remains the same (ie that those organizations still exist). New editions only import what they want--stuff from prior editions isn't "canon" until it's published for this one. Thus it has always been. Very very few settings get ported between editions anyway, and most that do suffer significant changes. This has been true for all editions.

People on this forum seem to have a knack for being unable to follow links sourcing things they try to argue against so I posted the full list I pulled up from a quick google se4arcg earlier at the bottom of this post (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=23040631&postcount=104). There are over a hundred groups & organizations listed there... are you suggesting that all of those 100+ organizations no longer make the cut to be part of ravenloft and it is still somehow ravenloft?


Not only that, you're blaming FR for something that FR has nothing to do with. At most, blame AL for wanting continuity. If AL were set in Holy Eberron instead, you'd still see those types of issues with any crossover. Because otherwise you either destroy all possible continuity or destroy the ability to play things in other orders/skip adventures.

No, I'm doing something very different, I'm blaming WotC because FR groups are mentioned instead of ravenloft groups. Those faerun specific factions kick off this adventure offering:

Zelraun gives each Harper character a spell scroll of remove curse. He has also made arrangements with
a metalsmith in Waterdeep to sheathe the _characters' weapons in silver. The party can have up to six weapons
silvered in this manner. Twenty pieces of ammunition count as one weapon for this purpose.
Lanniver Strayl ... gives a po*tion of heroism to each member of the order in the party.
Members of the Emerald Enclave in the party gain inspi*ration whenever the party kills a werewolf.
Any Lords' Alliance character who agrees to destroy is given a spell scroll of magic weapon. Eravien also promises to furnish the character with a letter of recommendation (see "Marks of Prestige" in chapter 7 of the Dungeon Master's Guide) once the portal is destroyed.
but if another member of the Black Network were to help, she would owe that individual a special favor (see "Marks of Prestige" in chapter 7 of the Dungeon Master's Guide).
admittedly that was a quick copy/paste job, I may have missed a reward or two.

Six awards to start out CoS coming from faerun specific factions with a age & a half of stuff about those factions rather than a list of possible starting things like OotA page 5 has for "scavenged possessions" and some detail on a few ravenloft groups along with possibly ways players could encounter them early on. Instead of adding depth to ravenloft by giving some groups there for players to get involved with, we need to make room for the faerun specific factions so wotc can pretend faerun is sigil or something.


If they were using eberron & stomping all over with the CoSF, dragonmarked houses, library of korranburg, the trust, etc it would be somebody else complaining about how eberron was invading & diluting their favorite settings.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Ah, dreaded context.

All the previous AL modules were set in FR. Thus, existing AL characters are in FR when they start CoS and many have associations with the factions. As a result, the quest hook givers will be FR factions. That's basic logic. Especially since, after defeating Strahd and returning home, they'll have to be back in FR for the next AL module (also set in FR). So having bookmark rewards (at either end--hooks to get you investigating and rewards for completion) based in FR factions makes total sense for AL which is the point of the module.

Specifically, Ravenloft designed to snatch PCs up from wherever they are. Starting in Ravenloft kinda defeats the whole purpose. Including Ravenloft factions in that part (many of whom aren't in Barovia at all anyway) would be pointless. They're neither here nor there. Since none of them have any influence outside Ravenloft (by its very nature), including them in something that's supposed to have continuity is pointless.

So this is just more of your irrational hatred slipping through. And still not responsive to the point that FR was changed by 5e just as much as Eberron was changed by 4e. The 5e meta-setting is not the same as FR. The AL setting is not the same as the 5e meta-setting. Adventures aren't setting guides, nor are they supposed to be. They present a tiny slice of one setting for the purposes of the adventure only.

[JoeJ]

Mearls has went on record saying they won't release the Warforged until they can do so in Eberron proper, so...

For people who can't wait, though, Kobold Press's world of Midgard has a definitely-not-warforged artificial race that's playable.

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

a great many words, none of which are really relevant

AL is not the totality of 5e. 5e's meta-setting is not the totality of the 5e play experience, either. If you want to play a Ravenloft game, there is nothing at all stopping you.

[Unoriginal]

Ah, dreaded context.

All the previous AL modules were set in FR. Thus, existing AL characters are in FR when they start CoS and many have associations with the factions. As a result, the quest hook givers will be FR factions. That's basic logic. Especially since, after defeating Strahd and returning home, they'll have to be back in FR for the next AL module (also set in FR). So having bookmark rewards (at either end--hooks to get you investigating and rewards for completion) based in FR factions makes total sense for AL which is the point of the module.

Specifically, Ravenloft designed to snatch PCs up from wherever they are. Starting in Ravenloft kinda defeats the whole purpose. Including Ravenloft factions in that part (many of whom aren't in Barovia at all anyway) would be pointless. They're neither here nor there. Since none of them have any influence outside Ravenloft (by its very nature), including them in something that's supposed to have continuity is pointless.

So this is just more of your irrational hatred slipping through. And still not responsive to the point that FR was changed by 5e just as much as Eberron was changed by 4e. The 5e meta-setting is not the same as FR. The AL setting is not the same as the 5e meta-setting. Adventures aren't setting guides, nor are they supposed to be. They present a tiny slice of one setting for the purposes of the adventure only.

PhoenixPhyre, there is a point were we have to admit no communication is possible.

Only a fool talks to walls, and I'm tired of being that fool.

Tetrasodium has repeatedly demonstrated he refused to argue rationally, in good faith, or to even take into account what the other person is talking about. The Ignore button was made to deal with that kind of things.

[Tetrasodium]

Specifically, Ravenloft designed to snatch PCs up from wherever they are. Starting in Ravenloft kinda defeats the whole purpose. Including Ravenloft factions in that part (many of whom aren't in Barovia at all anyway) would be pointless. They're neither here nor there. Since none of them have any influence outside Ravenloft (by its very nature), including them in something that's supposed to have continuity is pointless.

Snatched from wherever but....


Ah, dreaded context.

All the previous AL modules were set in FR. Thus, existing AL characters are in FR when they start CoS and many have associations with the factions. As a result, the quest hook givers will be FR factions. That's basic logic. Especially since, after defeating Strahd and returning home, they'll have to be back in FR for the next AL module (also set in FR). So having bookmark rewards (at either end--hooks to get you investigating and rewards for completion) based in FR factions makes total sense for AL which is the point of the module.



So which is it?.. Are they snatched from wherever they are, or is it a Faerunized version of ravenloft that dilutes and waters down ravenloft rather than introduce things in ravenloft that have no relevance to faerun?

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

Snatched from wherever but.... So which is it?.. Are they snatched from wherever they are, or is it a Faerunized version of ravenloft that dilutes and waters down ravenloft rather than introduce things in ravenloft that have no relevance to faerun?

What? The two quotes aren't in opposition. Characters from FR end up in Barovia, but since the module is designed for AL play, they all come from the Sword Coast, Chult or the parts of the Underdark under the Sword Coast because those are the only pieces of settings that have been addressed in AL-legal material. That means that to include material useful to AL DMs, the intended audience, the book has to address what to do with those characters.

This is like holding up a piece of fruit and asking "is this a pineapple or is it PROOF THAT KANYE WAS AN INSIDE JOB".

[PhoenixPhyre]

For people who can't wait, though, Kobold Press's world of Midgard has a definitely-not-warforged artificial race that's playable.

I built one myself that fits my world. So yeah. No need to wait for published stuff.


AL is not the totality of 5e. 5e's meta-setting is not the totality of the 5e play experience, either. If you want to play a Ravenloft game, there is nothing at all stopping you.

Considering I'm in my first FR game ever (after DMing for years) and my home setting is completely unlike the 5e meta-setting...I have to agree.


PhoenixPhyre, there is a point were we have to admit no communication is possible.

Only a fool talks to walls, and I'm tired of being that fool.

Tetrasodium has repeatedly demonstrated he refused to argue rationally, in good faith, or to even take into account what the other person is talking about. The Ignore button was made to deal with that kind of things.

Based on this quote, I'm going to be forced to agree with you there. It's a total, malicious (or ignorant) misrepresentation that is not only non-responsive but absolutely meaningless in any context.


Snatched from wherever but....

So which is it?.. Are they snatched from wherever they are, or is it a Faerunized version of ravenloft that dilutes and waters down ravenloft rather than introduce things in ravenloft that have no relevance to faerun?

Last chance--the adventures are designed to provide continuity between AL seasons. Hence they include things that are relevant to existing AL characters. These existing AL characters (because AL is set in FR), come from FR. Thus, they need FR hooks to get them to the adventure.
Edit: intemperate remarks removed.

[gloryblaze]

One thing that's extremely important to keep in mind is that Curse of Strahd is not supposed to be a Ravenloft adventure (as in, an adventure in the campaign setting named "Ravenloft"). It's meant to be an adaption of the Hickman's original stand-alone Ravenloft module from the 80s, which predates the Ravenloft campaign setting that was later based on it.

Tetrasodium, since you like Wiki links so much, take a gander at this one: Ravenloft (module) (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravenloft_(module))

Read through that, and tell me how many Domains of Dread does it mention, besides Barovia? How many Darklords does it mention, besides Strahd? How many of those "hundreds of Ravenloft factions" does it star as quest-givers and major players?

Once you answer those questions for yourself, try this one on for size: Would it really make sense for an adaptation of that module to include a half dozen domains, darklords, and factions that were never in it to begin with?

[Regitnui]

snipped for size

What does != mean? I thought does not equal was /= or =/=, so I'm unsure if I'm reading that right.

[gloryblaze]

What does != mean? I thought does not equal was /= or =/=, so I'm unsure if I'm reading that right.

!= is "is not equal to" in Java, at the least

[Regitnui]

!= is "is not equal to" in Java, at the least

Thank you. I'm more familiar with the layman's or math notation. I've got no idea of programming language beyond

10: say FR is default setting for 5e
20: get forcibly corrected
30: explain that it doesn't have to be exact to be default
40: goto 10.

[Unoriginal]

Based on this quote, I'm going to be forced to agree with you there. It's a total, malicious (or ignorant) misrepresentation that is not only non-responsive but absolutely meaningless in any context.

Which quote?

[PhoenixPhyre]

Which quote?

The one I responded to below that statement. Sorry. It was just so fallacious it broke past my normal Hanlon's Razor defenses (never assume malice when incompetence is a possibility).



Thank you. I'm more familiar with the layman's or math notation. I've got no idea of programming language beyond

10: say FR is default setting for 5e
20: get forcibly corrected
30: explain that it doesn't have to be exact to be default
40: goto 10.

PARSE ERROR ON 30. The default setting is by definition the one presumed for the core books and requires no significant changes from the content in the core books. FR requires fundamental changes (eg FR paladins must worship gods and there are a number of tenets added to all oaths that force them to be LG or the next best thing to it, both things that are decidedly not true in the default) from the default. Therefore, FR is not the default.

[Unoriginal]

The one I responded to below that statement. Sorry. It was just so fallacious it broke past my normal Hanlon's Razor defenses (never assume malice when incompetence is a possibility).


Eh, I have this assumption too. At the start, that is.

[Envyus]

I posted a big loooonnnng list of factions, groups, & organizations present in ravenloft earlier. Can you direct me to the pages for say... Six of those in cos?

It does not matter. (Though a few of them are mentioned.) Namly the Ba'al Vizri Assassins, the Keepers of the Feather and Church of the Morning Lord. None of the ones outside of Barovia matter. As Barovia is the only place that matters in the adventure.

The Adventure is not is not even based on the Ravenloft campaign setting. It's based on the Ravenloft Adventure which predates the setting by a lot. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravenloft_(module)

[Akolyte01]

I like idea of asking "why" different races and monsters act the way they do. I really dislike that the answer is so often "cause a god said so"

Why do goblins and bugbears work together? God said so. Why do orcs raid and pillage? God said so. Etc. etc.


I'm very happy that they're putting careful thought into what aspects of the D&D universe they want to explore, and I can see value in providing cultural guidelines for why certain racial tendencies exist. I still think widely applying these readings of races across settings does a disservice to the variety that can be found between settings, but I can't say that they aren't offering value added.

My chief complaint is simply that they are far too specific. The gods did X and it led to Y, Z, and ß. The problem such precise histories have is that it creates baggage that DMs can't escape, even with their own settings. It can take DMs a while to realize they're under no obligation to use the fluff in the books when they design their own campaigns, and implying that these histories are universal can stifle the creative impulse. Granted, it can also guide creativity, which is what these books should do. In the end, I guess I'm just ambivalent towards it.

I agree with this sentiment.

People have responded with the idea that "oh well as a DM you don't have to use any ideas you don't like." But what if we want to use *some* of it? The purpose of these books is to provide ideas and content DMs can drop into their campaigns, but so many things are so specific that it's not very easy to "plug and play" with various bits because they are so intertwined with specifics that may not fit.

[PhoenixPhyre]

People have responded with the idea that "oh well as a DM you don't have to use any ideas you don't like." But what if we want to use *some* of it? The purpose of these books is to provide ideas and content DMs can drop into their campaigns, but so many things are so specific that it's not very easy to "plug and play" with various bits because they are so intertwined with specifics that may not fit.

I'm curious as to which pieces in particular you think are so intertwined as to be inseparable from the specific lore. That hasn't been my experience at all, and I run a very heavily custom setting (completely different cosmology, origin stories, nature of magic, etc).

[EvilAnagram]

I'm curious as to which pieces in particular you think are so intertwined as to be inseparable from the specific lore. That hasn't been my experience at all, and I run a very heavily custom setting (completely different cosmology, origin stories, nature of magic, etc).

The book apparently introduces elves as the descendants of Fey spirits who turned against the god Correlon when they were tricked by Lolth. In fact, it treats all elves in all worlds in the multiverse as precisely this.

This is extremely specific, building on characters and events specifically from the Forgotten Realms and applying them universally. Players who come to a table having read this will have specific expectations of the game world that may be thwarted by the table's setting. This can create conflict and sour experiences. On the other hand, simply not claiming that this story has played out for all elves across all settings prevents that expectation from forming.

[PhoenixPhyre]

The book apparently introduces elves as the descendants of Fey spirits who turned against the god Correlon when they were tricked by Lolth. In fact, it treats all elves in all worlds in the multiverse as precisely this.

This is extremely specific, building on characters and events specifically from the Forgotten Realms and applying them universally. Players who come to a table having read this will have specific expectations of the game world that may be thwarted by the table's setting. This can create conflict and sour experiences. On the other hand, simply not claiming that this story has played out for all elves across all settings prevents that expectation from forming.

Funny. I've never had issues with this idea--so few players actually read the "lore" sections and those that do are also the ones most understanding of my session 0 "as a note--I change just about all the knobs. Don't take any origin stories as truth." comments to heart. I won't use this information, since my setting is so heavily custom, but I can see that if you file off the serial numbers (changing "Correlon" to his local analog and adjusting the details) you can fit that in pretty-much anywhere. It's how the elves have been since 4e, and there are hints of it since before then, so I don't think that it's that big a change. Just an amplification and sharpening of the mythology.

It's also just mythology--it's one origin story. The orcs may tell a different one. The feeling I picked up from the video was "here's an explanation for the origin of elves" not "here's the explanation". From what they said, it will also have ideas on what parts are the core decision points and what happens if you decide to change them.

In essence, the lore in the book, like all setting books in this edition, is primarily for DMs. Players can read it, sure, but there are clear "your DM's world may be different, expect variation" flags all over it. Just like there are in the PHB and DMG.

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

People have responded with the idea that "oh well as a DM you don't have to use any ideas you don't like." But what if we want to use *some* of it? The purpose of these books is to provide ideas and content DMs can drop into their campaigns, but so many things are so specific that it's not very easy to "plug and play" with various bits because they are so intertwined with specifics that may not fit.

What are the parts that you might like? I think the more specifically you isolate what you do and don't like the easier it is to disentangle those things to plug and play with. If you like 'elves', that's a big block of stuff. If you like elf mechanics and the idea of elves as descendants of nature spirits, but don't like the relationship with a particular god and their affinity with trees, you can excise those bits while preserving the things that you think are important.

On my end, I've been thinking about the broader elemental plane presented in the DMG. I like it! It's an interesting place with some cool ideas, but it doesn't work in my setting, which has discrete elemental planes. I don't like the wheel arrangement, and I don't like the planes being normal-but-wet/hot/windy/sandy. I like the border zones, so I need to figure out ways to utilize those in a place that doesn't have those planar overlaps. I've got some ideas on that score. The easy thing to do would be scrap the planes and just drop the DMG versions in, rough edges and all, but that would be unsatisfying. It's a challenge, but when I've figured it out the setting will be stronger for it.

The important thing is the concept, after all.

[Tetrasodium]

CoS is not a "ravenloft" adventure per se. It's a Barovia adventure. And beyond that, you're assuming that Ravenloft remains the same (ie that those organizations still exist). New editions only import what they want--stuff from prior editions isn't "canon" until it's published for this one. Thus it has always been. Very very few settings get ported between editions anyway, and most that do suffer significant changes. This has been true for all editions.

Not only that, you're blaming FR for something that FR has nothing to do with. At most, blame AL for wanting continuity. If AL were set in Holy Eberron instead, you'd still see those types of issues with any crossover. Because otherwise you either destroy all possible continuity or destroy the ability to play things in other orders/skip adventures.


Ah, dreaded context.

All the previous AL modules were set in FR. Thus, existing AL characters are in FR when they start CoS and many have associations with the factions. As a result, the quest hook givers will be FR factions. That's basic logic. Especially since, after defeating Strahd and returning home, they'll have to be back in FR for the next AL module (also set in FR). So having bookmark rewards (at either end--hooks to get you investigating and rewards for completion) based in FR factions makes total sense for AL which is the point of the module.

Specifically, Ravenloft designed to snatch PCs up from wherever they are. Starting in Ravenloft kinda defeats the whole purpose. Including Ravenloft factions in that part (many of whom aren't in Barovia at all anyway) would be pointless. They're neither here nor there. Since none of them have any influence outside Ravenloft (by its very nature), including them in something that's supposed to have continuity is pointless.

So this is just more of your irrational hatred slipping through. And still not responsive to the point that FR was changed by 5e just as much as Eberron was changed by 4e. The 5e meta-setting is not the same as FR. The AL setting is not the same as the 5e meta-setting. Adventures aren't setting guides, nor are they supposed to be. They present a tiny slice of one setting for the purposes of the adventure only.



Here is the problem in both of your recent strings of posts, it is also the source of the disconnect you are complaining about in them. You two believe and/or choose to argue somehing along these lines

CoS is a rehash(or whatever word you want to use) of the original CoS adventure to 5e. Because of that, it is completely reasonable for wotc to ignore the years if depth added into ravenloft and rehash it with the same blank slate as back in the 80s(79s?) when the first adventure was created as a standalone not knowing that it would be popular enough to merit further development of the ravenloft setting itself. I do not believe that is a reasonable way of releasing new content
AL is strictly faerun only with the exception of CoS taking part in part of ravenloft... Furthermore Ravenloft grabs travelers from different places around the multiverse when it pleases ravenloft. You two feel that is important for AL players to have an adventure hook involving the harpers/order of the gauntlet/zhentarim/emerald enclave/etc before ravenloft grabs them. I violently disagree, The self imposed shackles that AL applies to itself are not justification for pretending faerun is suddenly part of Sigil where people intentionally jump through "doors" to other worlds & return. Nor is it in any way justification to water down the lore of the setting itself in favor of not confusing faerun only AL's self imposed shackles.
a proper hook would read something like "for whatever reasonable reason players want to name, they are traveling on a foggy road. They can be traveling individually, in one group, or in many groups. The grouping is not initially important. After some time, it is clear that they must have taken a wrong turn because familiar & expected landmarks are nor present. More concerning than the landmark problem is the fact that many of them notice that the rod itself does not seem to be in the expected shape or condition. Regardless of weather players choose to travel till morning or stop & rest till morning, the mists begin to clear by morning. Ravenloft had stolen them away as soon as the foggy mists first rose. Although the sun has not yet risen on the deeply overcast day, and never actually will the party finds themselves traveling and resting scattered around the same clearing in the road come morning. Further up the road is a line if chimney smoke from a village in the distance.
I believe that ending the last point with "Information about the village & it's inhabitants can be found in $section" would be an extremely reasonable way to provide hooks to the players in a manner relevant to ravenloft itself. You two seem to believe that it must be hooks set in faerun or I am unreasonably attacking faerun's parasitic infestation of ravenloft.
Again, I believe that words like these "for Adventure League players with an interest in converting renown to the secret & not so secret organizations listed in $section by telling of their past adventures & deeds in performed other realms, see the following table" are all that is needed for the AL players adventuring in faerun to convert their precious renown & faction rank over to a completely different setting where it has no place. If AL wants their players to have cross world organizations with faction tracking into & across multiple worlds, then AL must unshackle itself from faerun where that sort of thing is not well supported and move AL to a drop in/drop out place like Sigil. You two seem to believe the reverse
Because some of those positions you are holding are so unquestionably awful, you instead choose to claim that I'm unreasonably bashing, hating, attacking, or whatever to faerun when faerun merely has the unlucky position of being treated like an infectious crystal sphere/world/setting sized rendition of Sigil that WotC is not yet willing to admit AL needs .

[Envyus]

The book apparently introduces elves as the descendants of Fey spirits who turned against the god Correlon when they were tricked by Lolth. In fact, it treats all elves in all worlds in the multiverse as precisely this.

This is extremely specific, building on characters and events specifically from the Forgotten Realms and applying them universally. Players who come to a table having read this will have specific expectations of the game world that may be thwarted by the table's setting. This can create conflict and sour experiences. On the other hand, simply not claiming that this story has played out for all elves across all settings prevents that expectation from forming.

This has nothing to do with the Forgotten Realms. FR's elf orgin lore is different, those events don't come from the Forgotten Realms, and the characters don't ether. Correlon and Lolth are generic d&d characters.

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

CoS is a rehash(or whatever word you want to use) of the original CoS adventure to 5e. Because of that, it is completely reasonable for wotc to ignore the years if depth added into ravenloft and rehash it with the same blank slate as back in the 80s(79s?) when the first adventure was created as a standalone not knowing that it would be popular enough to merit further development of the ravenloft setting itself. I do not believe that is a reasonable way of releasing new content

A reasonable objection, I think; it's not ideal for the future of particular settings to have the best content stripped out and made compatible with AL play. That said, the success of AL play is more important than any particular setting, or even any combination of settings. If that means you strip-mine Greyhawk (ToA, PotA), Dragonlance (HotDQ, RoT), Faerun (OotA) and Ravenloft, you do it.


AL is strictly faerun only with the exception of CoS taking part in part of ravenloft... Furthermore Ravenloft grabs travelers from different places around the multiverse when it pleases ravenloft. You two feel that is important for AL players to have an adventure hook involving the harpers/order of the gauntlet/zhentarim/emerald enclave/etc before ravenloft grabs them. I violently disagree, The self imposed shackles that AL applies to itself are not justification for pretending faerun is suddenly part of Sigil where people intentionally jump through "doors" to other worlds & return. Nor is it in any way justification to water down the lore of the setting itself in favor of not confusing faerun only AL's self imposed shackles.

Barovia (because Ravenloft doesn't exist as such) grabs players from different places. The only place to grab from so far are three fairly specific bits of Faerun: the Sword Coast, Chult and a small region in the Underdark. I don't agree with the outsized influence of factions, but that's the choice they've made; it's easy enough to ignore them. Where I don't agree with you is how this is suddenly about Faerun becoming Planescape. You've got to show your work there. The planar jumping isn't a Faerun thing; it's a Barovia thing, and it's an integral part of that setting. If it had been creatively brutalized, that aspect would have been removed in favor of just making it a regular location in Faerun.


a proper hook would read something like "for whatever reasonable reason players want to name, they are traveling on a foggy road. They can be traveling individually, in one group, or in many groups. The grouping is not initially important. After some time, it is clear that they must have taken a wrong turn because familiar & expected landmarks are nor present. More concerning than the landmark problem is the fact that many of them notice that the rod itself does not seem to be in the expected shape or condition. Regardless of weather players choose to travel till morning or stop & rest till morning, the mists begin to clear by morning. Ravenloft had stolen them away as soon as the foggy mists first rose. Although the sun has not yet risen on the deeply overcast day, and never actually will the party finds themselves traveling and resting scattered around the same clearing in the road come morning. Further up the road is a line if chimney smoke from a village in the distance.

I'd be reasonably fine with this (except there hasn't been an RCS yet), and it's a good example of a DM identifying a piece of published content that doesn't fit his needs and fixing it.

You've got to calm your goddamn rhetoric down if you want to accuse other people of being unreasonable. Every single thing you post somehow turns into setting axe-grinding. Take a step back and divorce the principle from the settings.

[MeeposFire]

When this book comes out as a fan of Eberron and Dark Sun should I be upset when the book will almost certainly NOT say that halflings ride dinosaurs and are potential cannibals? This is ridiculous as I for one would not expect them to make an in general book about those races and then expecting them to put very specific setting information in that is very specific to only one setting.

[Tetrasodium]

When this book comes out as a fan of Eberron and Dark Sun should I be upset when the book will almost certainly NOT say that halflings ride dinosaurs and are potential cannibals? This is ridiculous as I for one would not expect them to make an in general book about those races and then expecting them to put very specific setting information in that is very specific to only one setting.

Dinosaur riding is an activity that has very little /if anything) to do with the kind of mindset /ouook on the eorld/way of viewing the world mtof is supposed to cover.

Tell me oh sage, what mindset, or way of viewing the world, etc can bridge the near-Hobbits of faerun with the omgwtfKILLITWITHFIRE monsters of darjsun?

[Regitnui]

PARSE ERROR ON 30. The default setting is by definition the one presumed for the core books and requires no significant changes from the content in the core books. FR requires fundamental changes (eg FR paladins must worship gods and there are a number of tenets added to all oaths that force them to be LG or the next best thing to it, both things that are decidedly not true in the default) from the default. Therefore, FR is not the default.

Thank you for proving my point.

So it's OK if other settings are changed and altered to fit 5e, but FR must be exactly the same before it can be considered the default? It's not like the word "Chondathan" means anything to any other setting, and the paladin thing is mechanical. But if the 5e changes are made in any other setting, it remains that setting, but the Forgotten Realms (default) must be converted back to previous editions before it'll be "proper" Forgotten Realms?

10: Say Forgotten Realms is 5e Default Setting
20: Be forcefully corrected
30: Explain a light dusting is still default flavour
40: goto 10

[MeeposFire]

Dinosaur riding is an activity tho has very little /if anything) to do with the kind of mindset /ouook on the eorld/way of viewing the world mtof is supposed to cover.

Tell me oh sage, what mindset, oway of viewing the world, etc can bridge the near-Hobbits of faerun with the omgwtfKILLITWITHFIRE monsters of darjsun?

You respond to my query but do not answer it. I used dinosaurs and cannibals as simple examples to get my point across which I stated was that I do not think you should expect them to write a more in general book to have a bunch of very specific info that really only applies to one very specific setting. You can replace dinosaur with any other Eberron specific detail that only applies to Eberron or cannibalism with any detail from Dark Sun whatever you choose I would not expect it to be really even considered when they wrote this book.

As for your second sentence you are going to have to write it again because I am not sure what you are really asking me to answer because the way it looks like to me right now it looks like you are making my point for me and I do not think that is what you are trying to do.

[Tetrasodium]

You respond to my query but do not answer it. I used dinosaurs and cannibals as simple examples to get my point across which I stated was that I do not think you should expect them to write a more in general book to have a bunch of very specific info that really only applies to one very specific setting. You can replace dinosaur with any other Eberron specific detail that only applies to Eberron or cannibalism with any detail from Dark Sun whatever you choose I would not expect it to be really even considered when they wrote this book.

As for your second sentence you are going to have to write it again because I am not sure what you are really asking me to answer because the way it looks like to me right now it looks like you are making my point for me and I do not think that is what you are trying to do.

No, I absolutely answered it. You are uninformed or wilfully ignorant about mtof. I say willful ignorance given that in this (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=23041582&postcount=120) post I include both an embedded video of meals talking about what the book will be explaining. The mindset and way of viewing the world is explicitly relevant. Explain how a mindset can apply to both extremes of halfling without making one of them into something else or admit that attempting to combine the settings ad such a low level baseline is problematic & worthy of serious concern.

Should a fan of eberron be upset if halfling activities and such like tribes riding dinosaurs across the blade desert?... That depends on how many pages are devoted to explaining similar activities in faerun. As a better example, yes if the drow entry is say 4 pages on drizzt & the Salvatore style lolth worshipping drow of the underark in faerun followed by a paragraph or two saying that drow in eberron are broken down into groups that worship animalistic totem deities like the half man half scorpion God vulkoor, darkness, and fire without enough detail to explain that vulkoor has nothing to do with lolth & why others worship darkness /fire (it is actually important).... Then yes, they absolutely have reason to question why a book that is supposed to apply to both settings has a hypothetical 4pages to one setting & a couple paragraphs to another.

[Unoriginal]

Thank you for proving my point.

So it's OK if other settings are changed and altered to fit 5e, but FR must be exactly the same before it can be considered the default? It's not like the word "Chondathan" means anything to any other setting, and the paladin thing is mechanical. But if the 5e changes are made in any other setting, it remains that setting, but the Forgotten Realms (default) must be converted back to previous editions before it'll be "proper" Forgotten Realms?

10: Say Forgotten Realms is 5e Default Setting
20: Be forcefully corrected
30: Explain a light dusting is still default flavour
40: goto 10

*sigh*

It is not a "light dusting", and it has nothing to do with how much the settings were modified. You're mixing up issues.

The Forgotten Realms, like all settings, were significantly modified for 5e. That's a fact.

The Forgotten Realms are NOT the default setting, because there is A LOT of things in FR that are different from the default setting as presented in the books, and this regardless of how much FR was modified.

An hint that FR is not the default setting: they published a whole guide about how it's different from the default D&D.

[Envyus]

It's only default in that the adventures so far - CoS take place there.

[Envyus]

As a better example, yes if the drow entry is say 4 pages on drizzt & the Salvatore style lolth worshipping drow of the underark in faerun followed by a paragraph or two saying that drow in eberron are broken down into groups that worship animalistic totem deities like the half man half scorpion God vulkoor, darkness, and fire without enough detail to explain that vulkoor has nothing to do with lolth & why others worship darkness /fire (it is actually important).... Then yes, they absolutely have reason to question why a book that is supposed to apply to both settings has a hypothetical 4pages to one setting & a couple paragraphs to another.

It's been mentioned that Vulkoor is going to be talked about in the upcoming book.

And the reason why they can spend a hypothetical 4 pages talking about Lolth and Drow, as compared to a paragraph on Vulkoor is simple. Because Lolth worshipping Drow are the default and that has nothing to do with FR, FR just uses the default. While Vulkoor Drow are an exception on a different world that can be called out.

[Unoriginal]

This has nothing to do with the Forgotten Realms. FR's elf orgin lore is different, those events don't come from the Forgotten Realms, and the characters don't ether. Correlon angd Lolth are generic d&d characters.

This.

So far people have been going "Eurgh, how dare they use that FR concept as a basic assumption of D&D" when it has never been a FR concept and always a basic assumption of D&D. And then they keep insisting it's FR.

[Regitnui]

This.

So far people have been going "Eurgh, how dare they use that FR concept as a basic assumption of D&D" when it has never been a FR concept and always a basic assumption of D&D. And then they keep insisting it's FR.

I recall three settings out of the nine or so D&D has as moneymakers. Lolth, Corellon and drow is in Nentir Vale, Greyhawk, and _Forgotten Realms_. So while the Lolth issue is not necessarily a FR-only thing, the fact that they hold up Drizzt as her narrative opposite with his My Species Doth Protest Too Much thing certainly is an FR thing. The default fluff of 5e is not only FR, but more of it is taken from FR than anywhere else. I will remind you that they used up most of the human entry in the PHB on FR nationalities as name examples; which mean less than nothing to anyone who hasn't played FR. I literally had one of my players ask me what a Shou was. I had to look it up on Google, which points me to Forgotten Realms wiki which only then tells me it's "fantasy Asian'".

There's no giant neon sign powered by Ao the Overdeity that says FR is the default. However, there's a lot of little indicators like the Drizzt thing, the human names thing, the assumption of the Great Wheel (which FR uses) and others that point towards FR being the default fluff for D&D5e. That's not a condemnation or a statement of quality of FR. I'm just wondering why people get so defensive when I say it. Greyhawk was default for 3.5. Nentir Vale was default for 4e. Now it's FR's turn.

[JoeJ]

As a better example, yes if the drow entry is say 4 pages on drizzt & the Salvatore style lolth worshipping drow of the underark in faerun followed by a paragraph or two saying that drow in eberron are broken down into groups that worship animalistic totem deities like the half man half scorpion God vulkoor, darkness, and fire without enough detail to explain that vulkoor has nothing to do with lolth & why others worship darkness /fire (it is actually important).... Then yes, they absolutely have reason to question why a book that is supposed to apply to both settings has a hypothetical 4pages to one setting & a couple paragraphs to another.

The drow as Lolth worshippers in the Underdark comes from Greyhawk. It first appeared in 1978 in the classic D1-D3 module series. It wasn't until quite a bit later that it spread to the FR.

[gloryblaze]

I recall three settings out of the nine or so D&D has as moneymakers. Lolth, Corellon and drow is in Nentir Vale, Greyhawk, and _Forgotten Realms_. So while the Lolth issue is not necessarily a FR-only thing, the fact that they hold up Drizzt as her narrative opposite with his My Species Doth Protest Too Much thing certainly is an FR thing. The default fluff of 5e is not only FR, but more of it is taken from FR than anywhere else. I will remind you that they used up most of the human entry in the PHB on FR nationalities as name examples; which mean less than nothing to anyone who hasn't played FR. I literally had one of my players ask me what a Shou was. I had to look it up on Google, which points me to Forgotten Realms wiki which only then tells me it's "fantasy Asian'".

There's no giant neon sign powered by Ao the Overdeity that says FR is the default. However, there's a lot of little indicators like the Drizzt thing, the human names thing, the assumption of the Great Wheel (which FR uses) and others that point towards FR being the default fluff for D&D5e. That's not a condemnation or a statement of quality of FR. I'm just wondering why people get so defensive when I say it. Greyhawk was default for 3.5. Nentir Vale was default for 4e. Now it's FR's turn.

The human entry in the PHB is about FR humans, true. And sure, Drizz't has a sidebar in the crow entry.

But the table of deities in the DMG? They're the deities of the Nentir Vale.

The sidebar for vampires in the MM? Strahd, who we've established is either setting neutral or belongs to Ravenloft.

Speaking of sidebars, Draconians from Dragonlance get one in he Dragonborn section of the PHB.

And let's not forget that Mordenkainen, Bigby, Melf, Rary, etc (who lend their names to iconic spells in the PHB, EEPC, and XGtE) are all Greyhawk NPCs.

I agree that FR gets the lion's share of the references, but it's in bad faith to claim that the Core 3 Rulebooks use FR as a default assumption. I would say FR comes up so frequently for 3 reasons:

A) It departs the least from default assumptions (maybe tied with Greyhawk), making it easy to draw examples from for default lore.
B) It's the setting of AL, so the writers have incentive to shill it a bit.
C) The Drizz't novels were a veritable cultural phenomenon, giving FR characters more name recognition than characters from other settings.

[EvilAnagram]

I agree that FR gets the lion's share of the references, but it's in bad faith to claim that the Core 3 Rulebooks use FR as a default assumption.
There's no reason to abuse people of dishonest arguments when you agree with their basic point in everything but degrees. To Reggie, that lion's share of references gives the default assumptions an FR taste. To you, it doesn't. Accusing him of being disingenuous because you disagree on the degree to which the FR influence matters is rude and uncalled for.

[Glorthindel]

The Adventure is not is not even based on the Ravenloft campaign setting. It's based on the Ravenloft Adventure which predates the setting by a lot. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravenloft_(module)

That arguement holds water until you come across Dusk Elves.

[Chaosmancer]

Dinosaur riding is an activity that has very little /if anything) to do with the kind of mindset /ouook on the eorld/way of viewing the world mtof is supposed to cover.

Tell me oh sage, what mindset, or way of viewing the world, etc can bridge the near-Hobbits of faerun with the omgwtfKILLITWITHFIRE monsters of darjsun?

You know what Tetra, you are right. There is absolutely no way to square my gypsy halflings with their twin goddesses with the farming halflings of FR with the dino-riders of Eberron with the cannibals of darksun where no gods exist.

Its impossible for a single book to do that, so, WoTC should never write any lore at all.

Everyone, take your PHBs, rip out everything except the mechanics, and burn it. It isn't inclusive enough. The Sword Coast book forgot to mention the cultures of the people from "not asia" and "not arabia" who might show up in those coastal hubs, so rip them out, they are an insult to all of those people who could be found in the Sword Coast.

In fact, we should refuse to buy anything that isn't 100% inclusive of the entire history of DnD covering every aspect that has ever existed.


Or, you know, we could just accept that these books aren't perfect repositories of all knowledge, that they will generalize and focus on the lowest common denominators of the settings. Which makes perfect sense, because a multiverse is absurdly huge and DnD has a massive and often contradictary history that makes ideas like "covering everything" absurd.

But then I couldn't sell all these pitchforks and torches, so let's call up the angry mob and start rioting

[Tetrasodium]

The drow as Lolth worshippers in the Underdark comes from Greyhawk. It first appeared in 1978 in the classic D1-D3 module series. It wasn't until quite a bit later that it spread to the FR.

And?.. I also mentioned drizzt and Salvatore. You might have missed it, I know it is a "recent" phenomenon... But drizzt & Salvatore's drizzt booksare set in forgotten realms and have been for the last thirty years. You are not the first person to split that hair like that, why is this a contentious statement? Fans of faerun need to own their setting's overbearing npcs and stop this kind of nonsense.

[Unoriginal]

But then I couldn't sell all these pitchforks and torches, so let's call up the angry mob and start rioting

At least there will be a lot of new angry mobs in the Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes.

[Regitnui]

That arguement holds water until you come across Dusk Elves.

Not being sarcastic, genuinely interested: How do dusk elves match up with Corellon and Lolth and all of that traditional not-but-totally-is-FR elvish lore? Are they a village of elves trapped in the mists, descendants or clanmates of an elven Darklord, a way to make CoS less racially one note than medieval Transylvania?


At least there will be a lot of new angry mobs in the Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes.

And maybe some of them will be from a world other than Faerun. Do Giff form angry mobs, or do they just shoot everything?

[Unoriginal]

not-but-totally-is-FR elvish lore

This is approaching dementia-level of denial of reality.

The NEW elven lore that is NOT FR-specific, written for this editon of D&D, will provide an explanation for the different elf variants, and we will be able to extrapolate the specific origin of the Dusk Elves for it, unless they tell us outright.



And maybe some of them will be from a world other than Faerun. Do Giff form angry mobs, or do they just shoot everything?

*sigh*

NONE of those monsters have to be "from a world other than Faerun", because NONE of them are exclusive to Faerun or written with FR lore only.

As to answer your question: Giffs, who are from a different Crystal Sphere than the published D&D worlds, just like the Neogi and Dragonbait, shoot people.

[Tetrasodium]

It's only default in that the adventures so far - CoS take place there.

This is your entire post. I'm not sure how you can even make this statement without the troll on mm291 coming over to clap you on the shoulder. CoS takes place in a region of ravenloft unless you are going to claim ravenloft has suddenly moved to barovia, can you point it out on themap of faerun? The saddest part is that you are not even the first or only one to do it in this thread.



It's been mentioned that Vulkoor is going to be talked about in the upcoming book.

And the reason why they can spend a hypothetical 4 pages talking about Lolth and Drow, as compared to a paragraph on Vulkoor is simple. Because Lolth worshipping Drow are the default and that has nothing to do with FR, FR just uses the default. While Vulkoor Drow are an exception on a different world that can be called out.

Which is completely different from what I said (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=23044516&postcount=186) on either group, it's just the tiny sliver that lets you cloak your awful arguement in a coat of reasonableness. What I said was

if the drow entry is say 4 pages on drizzt & the Salvatore style lolth worshipping drow of the underark in faerun followed by a paragraph or two saying that drow in eberron are broken down into groups that worship animalistic totem deities like the half man half scorpion God vulkoor, darkness, and fire without enough detail to explain that vulkoor has nothing to do with lolth & why others worship darkness /fire (it is actually important)).... Then yes, they absolutely have reason to question why a book that is supposed to apply to both settings has a hypothetical 4pages to one setting & a couple paragraphs to another.



Now please Envyus stop dishonestly perverting my arguments in order to troll your points about me being unreasonable.



You know what Tetra, you are right. There is absolutely no way to square my gypsy halflings with their twin goddesses with the farming halflings of FR with the dino-riders of Eberron with the cannibals of darksun where no gods exist.
This is absurd. Seriously, wtf. at what point did your campaign setting get published by wotc? did your campaign setting get mentioned by name in the phb, dmg, etc like darksun? For those who do not know about halflings in darksun like Chaosmancer... I point you to this quick summary[/urk] of them on the darksun wiki.


Once halflings were the masters of the world. In fact, during the Blue Age the halflings were the only intelligent beings on all of Athas. They were the original inhabitants of the world, and all human, demihuman, and humanoid races are descended from them.

That said, today’s halflings bear little resemblance to their ancient forebears. Where once halflings filled the land in every direction, today they inhabit the slowly disappearing forests and jungles, like the Forest Ridge and the vertical forests of the Jagged Cliffs. Where once they were civilized masters of an advanced society, today they are feral, savage creatures as wild as the arid winds. They are more willing to eat a stranger in their lands than to welcome him.




Its impossible for a single book to do that, so, WoTC should never write any lore at all.

again, what the bleep, this is a perverse misrepresentation of what I as well as mearls said. I embedded embedded a video of him in this post. Included in [url="http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=23041582&postcount=120" (http://thedarksun.wikidot.com/halfling)that[/i] post i a quoted section of the video Here is the section from mike mearls of WotC & the interviewer again

if you are a new person to d&d entirely, this is to be of the first books that you can just hand this to them & be like "this is the d&d multiverse"
Mike Mearls: "Yea & that's one of the things that we wanted to do was create something where a new player or dungeon master could read the chapter say on dwarves if you're playing a dwarf & reallyunderstand what it means to be a dwarf in dungeons & dragons.
Now the background definitions we give don't determine all dwarves, we know there are always exceptions. But we wanted to give a good starting point to really let you get inside the psychology of dwarves. How do dwarves think? How do they see the world. Applying that to elvesm halflings, gnomes, the gith, demons & devils too the bloodwar gets similar treatment."


Everyone, take your PHBs, rip out everything except the mechanics, and burn it. It isn't inclusive enough. The Sword Coast book forgot to mention the cultures of the people from "not asia" and "not arabia" who might show up in those coastal hubs, so rip them out, they are an insult to all of those people who could be found in the Sword Coast.

In fact, we should refuse to buy anything that isn't 100% inclusive of the entire history of DnD covering every aspect that has ever existed.


Or, you know, we could just accept that these books aren't perfect repositories of all knowledge, that they will generalize and focus on the lowest common denominators of the settings. Which makes perfect sense, because a multiverse is absurdly huge and DnD has a massive and often contradictary history that makes ideas like "covering everything" absurd.

But then I couldn't sell all these pitchforks and torches, so let's call up the angry mob and start rioting

Forgotten realms is not "the" settings, it is a setting. every region Chaosmancer mentioned is one of the many regions exclusive to forgotten realms making up the entire phb page 31. The fact that they do things like devote an entire page to that and dominate the drow entry on phb24 with text & imagery about drizzit & salvatore style drow (Salvatore has 30 years of forgotten realms drizzt books) is relevant of note because no other setting in any core book gets similar treatment. the drow of eberron as as different from those of forgotten realms as the halflings of darksun. You can read a wonderful writeup on them here (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CzC9g31syvTiNsWfTBkxrUWDmOdlulww/view)(pdf). Lest I get accused of facillitating piracy, the guy who put that together shared it publically in many places like this (https://www.reddit.com/r/Eberron/comments/83l2xc/5e_wayfinder_almanac_xendrik_advisory/)

[EvilAnagram]

This is approaching dementia-level of denial of reality.

The NEW elven lore that is NOT FR-specific, written for this editon of D&D, will provide an explanation for the different elf variants, and we will be able to extrapolate the specific origin of the Dusk Elves for it, unless they tell us outright.
If you don't have the fortitude to maintain civility, it's time to leave the discussion.

Further, as he said, the Correlon/Lolth storyline exists in three settings and is most prominent in FR, which has dozens of books that explore it to some degree. Don't pretend that a meta-story based in this lore has no significant connection with FR.

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

And?.. I also mentioned drizzt and Salvatore. You might have missed it, I know it is a "recent" phenomenon... But drizzt & Salvatore's drizzt booksare set in forgotten realms and have been for the last thirty years. You are not the first person to split that hair like that, why is this a contentious statement? Fans of faerun need to own their setting's overbearing npcs and stop this kind of nonsense.

There is air in many parts of Europe, including Italy. Though there is air in Italy, Italy is not the source of air.

[Regitnui]

This is approaching dementia-level of denial of reality.

The NEW elven lore that is NOT FR-specific, written for this editon of D&D, will provide an explanation for the different elf variants, and we will be able to extrapolate the specific origin of the Dusk Elves for it, unless they tell us outright.

Evidently the humour in my strikeout fell flat. I was asking (if you looked past the tease) what the lore behind the dusk elves was, even if that was in previous editions. I don't have CoS or any previous Ravenloft material, so I don't know and I was curious.



*sigh*

NONE of those monsters have to be "from a world other than Faerun", because NONE of them are exclusive to Faerun or written with FR lore only.

As to answer your question: Giffs, who are from a different Crystal Sphere than the published D&D worlds, just like the Neogi and Dragonbait, shoot people.

Again, a joke. I know you've been fighting with Tetrasodium for most of this thread, who's dead serious, but I'm handling this with a little humour. When someone said angry mobs will be in MToF, with the Giff in mind, wondered if any of the angry mobs would be formed of creatures that aren't from FR; as in don't exist there. I know you're on edge after this thread, but let's assume I'm good-naturedly teasing and joking as opposed to sitting in a dark room clutching 3.5 sourcebooks and stabbing an effigy of the entire 5e design team (humorous exaggeration), OK?

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

Further, as he said, the Correlon/Lolth storyline exists in three settings and is most prominent in FR, which has dozens of books that explore it to some degree. Don't pretend that a meta-story based in this lore has no significant connection with FR.

I'm not going to pretend that the lore is unconnected to FR, but it's just as untrue to say that the lore is exclusive to FR. (I don't think you're saying that!) I'm even willing to concede that FR is the default setting. What I am still not convinced by are arguments about why that matters.

[PhoenixPhyre]

If you don't have the fortitude to maintain civility, it's time to leave the discussion.

Further, as he said, the Correlon/Lolth storyline exists in three settings and is most prominent in FR, which has dozens of books that explore it to some degree. Don't pretend that a meta-story based in this lore has no significant connection with FR.

It exists in the biggest three settings that have survived edition transitions. The majority of published settings die with their "home" edition. Only a few have survived with any kind of recognition--Greyhawk, FR, Eberron (which is much younger), and Dark Sun. Even Planescape and Spelljammer were never formally updated for 3e, let alone 4e or 5e.

So something that exists in three of the major settings is generic lore. Although I'm not confident about this, I'd be willing to bet that it's in FR because it was in other lore first (that is, FR was a transplant recipient, not a donor).

Edit:

Greyhawk: OD&D, AD&D (both), 3e (default), 4e, 5e (mentions only, probably more in Mordenkainen's).
FR: OD&D (and before), AD&D (both), 3e, 4e, 5e (AL setting)
Eberron: 3e, 4e, 5e (mentions only)
Dark Sun: AD&D 2e, 3e (3rd party only), 4e, 5e (mentions)
Dragonlance: AD&D (editions?), 3e (third party only), 5e (mentions only)
Mystara: TSR D&D (editions?), 5e (mentioned in PHB a couple times)

As far as I can tell, those are the only major multi-edition settings. So being in 3 of the 4 that have actually had multi-edition setting guides is pretty darn generic.

[Unoriginal]

If you don't have the fortitude to maintain civility, it's time to leave the discussion.

You forgoed civility pages ago when you deliberately mischaracterized my arguments to put the side you support in a more favorable light than the opposition. Do not try try to claim you have the high ground on this matter.



Further, as he said, the Correlon/Lolth storyline exists in three settings and is most prominent in FR, which has dozens of books that explore it to some degree.

Because there is more FR books does not mean that Lolth and Corellon are more proeminent in FR. That's like saying Dwarves are more proemiment in FR than in Dragonlance because Dwarves appear in more FR novels than there is of Dragonlance ones


Don't pretend that a meta-story based in this lore has no significant connection with FR.

This is NEW lore, and it has as many significant connections with FR than with any other Material Plane world.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Doing more research:

Lolth's first appearance was in D1-D2, the very first published non-human (and thus non-earth-mythology) deity. So 1978. Ancient history.

Corellon first appeared in Deities and Demigods (1980, 1e AD&D). So ancient history. AFAIK, the elven-origin myth (having to do with struggles between the two) has its roots back to this book.

So no, this isn't FR lore. It was imported into FR, nor originating in FR.

Yes it's prominently known in its FR incarnation, but that's because FR is the only setting that has modern name recognition (no, Dragonlance doesn't count anymore. It's been fictionally dead for years (last publication 2008) and divorced from the D&D setting for longer).

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

Dragonlance: AD&D (editions?), 3e (third party only), 5e (mentions only)

Dragonlance also got converted to the SAGA system, and the 3E books were kind of weird. The Dragonlance Campaign Setting is technically first-party as it was officially published by WotC, even though it was written by a third party. Every other book - Towers of High Sorcery, Races of Ansalon, Age of Mortals - is third party through Margaret Weiss's company Sovereign. The modules were all AD&D 1st edition, officially republished in 2nd edition and unofficially republished in 3rd edition.

[Consensus]

I don't see the problem with admitting you don't enjoy the default lore. I don't really like the default lore, and I wish they would release more campaign settings. It really annoys me how much an axe other eberron fans have to grind about FR, when its been shown pretty clearly that FR isn't what's causing the problems they're complaining about

[Glorthindel]

Not being sarcastic, genuinely interested: How do dusk elves match up with Corellon and Lolth and all of that traditional not-but-totally-is-FR elvish lore? Are they a village of elves trapped in the mists, descendants or clanmates of an elven Darklord, a way to make CoS less racially one note than medieval Transylvania?


Oh, Dusk Elves don't have anything to do with Forgotten Realms (except in that their inclusion could be seen as an attempt to normalise non-humans in Barovia in order to soften the landing of such characters from the Realms that would otherwise suffer widespread fear and bigotry) or the new elven lore.

I was just using them to address the point someone raised about CoS being a reproduction of the original I6 Ravenloft / House of Strahd (as an excuse to justify the failure to include tonally-correct later Ravenloft elements), by pointing out an element that is clearly and blatantly not derived in any way from that module (and hasn't been derived from anywhere, barring one or two notable immigrants like Jandar Sunstar, Barovia has been pretty solidly 100% human through all editions of Ravenloft). The Dusk Elves are an entirely new invention added to the setting, and actually cause conflictions with other established elements (The Church of the Morninglord was created following an encounter with the previously mentioned Jandar Sunstar whose alien elven features led to him being mistaken for a god).

[Tetrasodium]

I don't see the problem with admitting you don't enjoy the default lore. I don't really like the default lore, and I wish they would release more campaign settings. It really annoys me how much an axe other eberron fans have to grind about FR, when its been shown pretty clearly that FR isn't what's causing the problems they're complaining about

Forgotten realms, the "default" lore, and the "default" setting do not get treated as separate entities for the purposes of these kinds of discussions for a few reasons. Firstly there is the fact that WotC itself says things like "in the forgotten realms" (book/page, take your pick), "In "Mysterious Visitors," the characters are asked
to scare off a band of rowdy travelers who are camped outside the town of Daggerford, on the Sword Coast in the Forgotten Realms campaign setting."(CoS18), The Harpers have small cells and lone operatives through*out the Forgotten Realms.(CoS21), so on & so forth. People arguing in defense of this sort of virulent infection of other settings complain about how it is simply the "default", because that is the only way to justify shoehorning forgotten realms stuff into every nook & cranny of anything it can be forced into while still maintaining the appearance of being reasonable. Secondly, complicating the discussion by obfuscating forgotten realms stuff dies nothing if value. In addition "default" elevates the problem elements "in the forgotten realms campaign setting" being forced into everything by WotC as something more weighty than it deserves given things like 30 years of drizzt novels set in the forgotten realms & such.

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

Firstly there is the fact that WotC itself says things like "in the forgotten realms" (book/page, take your pick), [I]"In "Mysterious Visitors," the characters are asked

Adventures are not sourcebooks. Every adventure has been published for AL play. Literally no one, no one, disputes that FR is the assumed setting for AL play. That doesn't mean FR is the default setting for Fifth Edition, because 5E and AL are not the same thing.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Adventures are not sourcebooks. Every adventure has been published for AL play. Literally no one, no one, disputes that FR is the assumed setting for AL play. That doesn't mean FR is the default setting for Fifth Edition, because 5E and AL are not the same thing.

And how many times does that have to be said? I think we're in the dozens so far. Adventures =/= rules =/= core lore. In fact, I'm sure that there are published adventures that do extreme violence to official setting documents. Adventures, like novels, exist in sandboxed (computer sense) bubble universes--alternate histories if you will. So they're only tangentially connected to the core setting "facts".

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

And how many times does that have to be said? I think we're in the dozens so far. Adventures =/= rules =/= core lore. In fact, I'm sure that there are published adventures that do extreme violence to official setting documents. Adventures, like novels, exist in sandboxed (computer sense) bubble universes--alternate histories if you will. So they're only tangentially connected to the core setting "facts".

Isn't the point of most published adventures to do extreme violence to the status quo of settings? Like, damn, look at Out of the Abyss, for example. One reasonably important Underdark city is destroyed. Play your cards right, and you can destroy a major drow city, kill off its ruling class and eliminate a particularly annoying plot-armored NPC, and the hook in the end of the adventure is kill Llolth and all of her progeny. If that's not major changes to the status quo, I don't know what would qualify.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Isn't the point of most published adventures to do extreme violence to the status quo of settings? Like, damn, look at Out of the Abyss, for example. One reasonably important Underdark city is destroyed. Play your cards right, and you can destroy a major drow city, kill off its ruling class and eliminate a particularly annoying plot-armored NPC, and the hook in the end of the adventure is kill Llolth and all of her progeny. If that's not major changes to the status quo, I don't know what would qualify.

Exactly. That's the whole point of a sandboxed alternate continuity--allow the players to make changes (or force them to make changes for some of the more railroaded modules). But for someone outside that bubble, those changes never happened.

[Unoriginal]

In fact, I'm sure that there are published adventures that do extreme violence to official setting documents. Adventures, like novels, exist in sandboxed (computer sense) bubble universes--alternate histories if you will. So they're only tangentially connected to the core setting "facts".

Pretty sure it was the default assumption for 3.X Eberron, actually. The core setting "facts" would never move from the year described as "current" in the setting book.

[Tetrasodium]

Pretty sure it was the default assumption for 3.X Eberron, actually. The core setting "facts" would never move from the year described as "current" in the setting book.

Yes it was, that is part of why it has such a deeply woven timeline (http://eberron.wikia.com/wiki/Eberron_Timeline) full of interconnecting events & power groups so there would be room to build without needing to move the timeline forward or start conflicting with (then) 20some years of cannon drizzt novels. That conflict is part of why no novel, including keith baker's own eberron novels are not cannon.

Rather than a randomly assorted jumble of events from cannon novels, the vast majority of those events have less than a page written about them across all dozen+ eberron sourcebooks. They are still relevant because they are mentioned by & influence later organizations & events such as The church of the silver flame. (http://eberron.wikia.com/wiki/Church_of_the_Silver_Flame)



The Silver Flame has existed since the dawn of time. When Eberron was overrun by darkness and the demon spawn of Khyber, the Flame arose to bring light to the world and to bind the fiends in the depths of the Dragon Below.
Already we are talking about the creation myth where the progenitor wyrms created eberron. That myth goes something like this. Khyber, Syberis, & Eberron discovered The Prophecy (http://eberron.wikia.com/wiki/Draconic_Prophecy). Khyber & Syberis dis agreed on the best way to use that knowledge, That disagreement let to an eventual fight where Khyber killed her sister Syberis. In a rage, eberron attacked Khyber over the murder of their sister & began to coil her up in his coils. Eberron shifted himself into the world & used the body pf his sister Syberis to form the ring of Syberis (http://eberron.wikia.com/wiki/Ring_of_Siberys).Everywhere her blood rained down, life was created. These children of Syberis were celestials & such. Likewise Eberron began to create the mortal creatures. Knowing that she would lose this battle, Khyber created children of her own. The Children of Khyber (demons) want to destroy & corrupt the creations of her siblings. Dragons are children of eberron, but some sources say that they were also touched by Syberis & that explains their long lives & incredible power. Two sentences in & we have already drawn to the creation myth.


But the Flame was too pure for flawed humanity, and the people of Khorvaire could not hear its call -- until Tira Miron set upon her righteous path. This noble warrior had devoted her life to the cause of honor and sacrifice, and in her the Flame found a worthy vessel. Guided by a glorious feathered serpent, Tira gave her life to end the reign of a demon lord that had escaped its bond. Though she fell in battle, Tira's soul joined with the Silver Flame, and in so doing, she became a conduit -- a voice that humanity could hear. Across Thrane, the pure of heart heard her call; and ever since then, the Church of the Silver Flame has stood against evil, whatever form it might take.


I'm going to flip this around. During the first age, The Dragons (as in all of them) were fighting a losing war with the demons & demon overlords (both of which are native in many cases).The dragons were losing badly, any lesser races aroundat the time were mostly hiding in the shadows trying to dodge the metaphorical fallout.At some point during this war, a couatl rediscovered the prophecy & found a way to bind the demon overlords to khyber & end the war. This binding required that the couatl sacrifice their own immortal lives to create the binding flame/[/url]/kalok shash (http://eberron.wikia.com/wiki/Kalok_Shash) or silver flame (http://eberron.wikia.com/wiki/Silver_Flame). The flame created a couatl for a time to guide Tira who sacrificed hersef to the flame so she could rebindthe escaped overlord.




he Church of the Silver Flame was born in 299 YK. A volcanic eruption in Thrane released a demon lord. But with the coming of the demon lord it also created a link with the power that kept it in check for an eon

This is the 299YK volcanic eruption & what incarnated the couatl that guided Tira



The Power (silver flame) found a vessel in a young woman named Tira Miron. Tira soon raised the forces of Thrane and drove the fiends back to the black mountain.

The nation of Thrane is massively shaped in culture & history of this. but the mortal forces could not do anything but drive it back to the mountain at great cost to themselves


With the demon lord and his army back in the vaults of Khyber, Tira went to the cave where the Silver Flame rose from the floor and jumped into her soul, making her a part of the flame. Tira now serves as the Voice of the Silver Flame, the intermediary between humanity and the divine.

through her own self sacrifice she bound the demon overlord. Some say that part of her spirit lives on in the 11 year old Jaela_Daran (http://eberron.wikia.com/wiki/Jaela_Daran) who has the abilities of a 20th level cleric (by 3.5 standards)while inside the walls of the flamekeep (http://eberron.wikia.com/wiki/Flamekeep)


The Silver Flame is not an anthropomorphic deity. It is a celestial force comprised of a vast multitude of noble spirits. It neither requires sacrifices of gold or spices, nor does it want praise in the form of prayer. Instead, it needs bold warriors and pure ministers who will embrace the light and use that inspiration to banish evil from the world. A typical worshiper of the Sovereign Host offers prayers in the hopes that the deities will help him; a true follower of the Silver Flame is interested only in how she can serve the cause of the flame.

This is an incredibly important aspect of the silver flame and makes the failure to note anything about it on dmg10-13 an extremely glaring omission when you look at the early sections that regularly mention forgotten realms & practical mame swaps from settings with nearly the same baselines as forgotten realms n that section.


The Fury of the Flame
The ministry of the Silver Flame performs countless good works throughout the Five Nations, but the actions of the templars often overshadow these efforts. The most dramatic instance of this occurred when the inquisition destroyed the lycanthropes. To outsiders, this wholesale slaughter may seem shocking and unforgivable. However, a few factors can help people understand how such an event could occur -- and what the Church might do in the future.
This is talking about the 832YK Lycanthropic inquisition where lycanthropy suddenly became trivially easy to transmit. In response, ther cosf templars went on a crusade bent on wiping out lycanthropy.. While there were many who helped shifters escape & remain safe, the race known as shifters suffered massive losses to the point where nearly any shifter alive today can name which of their ancestors were affected by it.



The Church of the Silver Flame operates under a strict hierarchy. The Church expects the faithful to trust the wisdom of those who stand above them, since those higher in the hierarchy stand closer to the Flame. Thus, most templars act without questioning their orders: If a cardinal authorizes an action, it must be in the best interests of the world. This is especially true of the puritans.

This sets the stage for a lot of well meaning tragedies.


The ultimate goal of the Church is to cleanse Eberron itself. For many members of the Church, this noble goal justifies any means required to reach it. This manner of thinking serves as one of the sources of evil-aligned priests within Thrane. Such a priest may be good in almost all ways, but she has a willingness to employ evil tools -- such as torture -- when necessary to achieve a goal that furthers the Church's cause.
Yes you read that right, the lawful good church of the silver flame is often willing to resort to terrible measures in the persuit of cleansing evil from the world. In fact, While the lolipope oversees the religious aspects of the church, the Lawful evil High Cardinal Krozeb (http://eberronunlimited.wikidot.com/thrane) is mostly left alone to run the rest as he sees fit.

That;'s just a quock writeup on one group crossing multiple past & present aspects, groups, individuals, & organizations, Many of the things mentioned will have their own similarly sized web of links. This goes to show how incredibly da,aging it can be to the setting when they do things like in 4e when they replaced planes with their nearest cousin & added a whole new plane to support Asmodeous' whole metaplot & the demon structure it needed as is rather than adjusting it to simply fit the setting

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

Pretty sure it was the default assumption for 3.X Eberron, actually. The core setting "facts" would never move from the year described as "current" in the setting book.

I think it's the default assumption for every setting, really, unless I'm misunderstanding what you mean. The only difference with Eberron as far as I'm aware is that the supportive material - novels and the like - aren't considered canon, which prevents the absurdist buildup of lore that occurs in FR and other settings but also makes those edition-to-edition changes more jarring. I mean, Dragonlance goes from being a Tolkienesque good-v-evil-on-earth-in-heaven-and-in-hell to having dragons popping out of wormholes, traveling through dimensions and planets being abducted by gods. I'd be pretty confused if there hadn't been 2,000 pages of novelization explaining why this was actually good (for a given value of good. It's not good.). Had we just gone from "yay the dragon queen is vanquished and now an evil black mage is the setting-threatening bad guy" to Age of Mortals, I wouldn't have known what in the Sam Hill was a-goin' on at all.

[Regitnui]

The Dusk Elves are an entirely new invention added to the setting, and actually cause conflictions with other established elements (The Church of the Morninglord was created following an encounter with the previously mentioned Jandar Sunstar whose alien elven features led to him being mistaken for a god).

Thanks!


Had we just gone from "yay the dragon queen is vanquished and now an evil black mage is the setting-threatening bad guy" to Age of Mortals, I wouldn't have known what in the Sam Hill was a-goin' on at all.

You're misunderstanding. Eberron doesn't move forward at all. 3.5 started in 998YK just after the Last War, and 4e started in 998YK just after the Last War. Instead of jumping forwards in time and trying to keep iconics alive and relevant through centuries and justifying the system change with a huge reconstruction of the setting, it's more like different Eberrons in different systems. Parallel universes instead of a huge continuing one.

[PhoenixPhyre]

it's more like different Eberrons in different systems. Parallel universes instead of a huge continuing one.

This makes the "but you ruined my setting!" complaints even more pointless--all they're doing is splitting off a new branch.

[Tetrasodium]

This makes the "but you ruined my setting!" complaints even more pointless--all they're doing is splitting off a new branch.

Not really because while eberron novels are not cannon, the eberron soyrcebooks most certainly are

3.5 SourceBooks
Eberron Campaign Setting - The Major one
Players Guide to Eberron - Brief Overview of Eberron
Races of Eberron - Detailed look at Changelings, Kalashtar, Warforged and Shifters.
Dragonmarked - A guide to the Dragonmarked Houses
Explorer's Handbook - All kinds of transportation options for the explorer.
Five Nations - Detailed look at Aundair, Breland, Karrnath, Thrane and Cyre
Forge of War - History of The Last War, details for playing a campaign in war-time.
Magic of Eberron - All kinds of arcane and psionic junk.
Faiths of Eberron - Detailed look at gods and cults of Eberron.
Secrets of Sarlona - Exploring the xenophobic continent of Sarlona.
Secrets of Xen'Drik - Exploring the Shattered Lands of Xen'Drik
Dragons of Eberron - A look at Argonessan and the Dragons of Eberron
Sharn City of Towers - A detailed exploration of Sharn.
Stormreach - A detailed exploration of the pirate capital of Xen'Drik.

4e Sourcebooks
Eberron Campaign Guide - mainly gm focused eberron campaign settingish book
Eberron Player's Guide - mainly playerfocused eberron campaign settingish book
That'sabout the time that WotC realized 4e was not the system they had hoped & started to switch over to 5e. Since 5e, every book with the exception of CoS has been forgotten realms

I'm not sorting which are which & some are both.... the many (http://eberron.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Adventures) adventures.


When they change low level baseline stuff like they did in 4e to fit Asmodeous' silly metaplot from some other setting it dramatically affects everything that intersects with the modified stuff

[Regitnui]

This makes the "but you ruined my setting!" complaints even more pointless--all they're doing is splitting off a new branch.

Not if it doesn't feel right.

Let me illustrate with an example we have:

Dragonborn were added in 4e by saying they were from a particular peninsula where a particularly powerful demon lived, and were there to guard it. The peninsula was also inhabited by regular lizardfolk, and since the dragonborn and lizardfolk had a history and conflict that the new human settlers were disrupting, no "civilised" culture looked long enough to realise some of the scalefolk were dragon-like and others were lizard-like. Fair and simple.

Tieflings were introduced by putting in a new "demiplane" which had never been used before in Eberron, contriving a history for that new demiplane, explaining why that demiplane influenced the world, and then why tieflings had never been noticed before. The fandom took one look at that and rejected it where they'd happily accepted the dragonborn. Why? Because there were 5 other distinct sources for fiends (underdark, plane of war, plane of fire, plane of ice, plane of darkness) that had been ignored to crowbar in a substantial and unneeded extra bit.

That's the difference, and largely what we as Eberron fans fret about when we're not having civil alignment debates or fleshing out the fanon. We don't mind changes. We mind obtrusive changes. Let's take a theoretical that's come up a few times when we've discussed this amongst ourselves: Lolth.

Now, to start, Lolth is a powerful fiend and has an interest in corruption and expanding her power. That suggests an "Overlord", a near-deity spawned from the Underdark in the Age of Fiends. Can we use the spider motif? Yes; There's a canon Overlord called the Spinner in Shadows, coincidentally in Xen'drik, where the drow are. Can we have her rule the drow? No. The drow worship nature spirits/fire/a force of shadow, all previously defined. So we have Lolth, the Spinner in Shadows, Demon Overlord. Personally, I associate the name Lolth with the thri-keen, who have formed a powerful nightmare being of that name in the Plane of Dreams.

However, we saw Lolth put in Eberron in DDO (not without a reason, but a poor one), and that was just straight transplant of lore from FR Greyhawkdefault older-D&D-derived settings. With drow, spiders, matriarchy and driders. That's what we fear, and why the news that Keith Baker is working with the creative team makes us hopeful that we'll have more "dragonborn"-style changes and fewer "lolth"-style changes. Of course, we're all still skittish about the edition change. At least FR fans know what they've got.

[Chaosmancer]

This is absurd. Seriously, wtf. at what point did your campaign setting get published by wotc? did your campaign setting get mentioned by name in the phb, dmg, etc like darksun? For those who do not know about halflings in darksun like Chaosmancer... I point you to this quick summary[/urk] of them on the darksun wiki.



again, what the bleep, this is a perverse misrepresentation of what I as well as mearls said. I embedded embedded a video of him in this post. Included in [url="http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=23041582&postcount=120" (http://thedarksun.wikidot.com/halfling)that[/i] post i a quoted section of the video Here is the section from mike mearls of WotC & the interviewer again

I take umbrage at the fact you find my humor absurd, but since the joke is lost upon you I can at least tell you what inspired it.

You may remember Meeposfire whom you quoted yesterday. They were asking if you thought they should be offended if Mordekainen's came out and didn't reference Halfling cultural cues from Ebberon and Darksun (dinosaur riding and cannabalism respectively).

Your response (for the sake of completeness) was:


Tell me oh sage, what mindset, or way of viewing the world, etc can bridge the near-Hobbits of faerun with the omgwtfKILLITWITHFIRE monsters of darjsun?

You later gave a more serious answer about it depends on how much space is dedicated to each version.

But frankly this also kind of a ridiculous answer. Taking the lore for dwarves, elves, drow, halflings, gnomes, tieflings, demons and devils (just a portion, albeit a large portion of everything in Mordenkainens) and giving write-ups for Forgotten Realms, generic fantasyland, Nentir Vale, Eberron, Dragonlance, Greyhawk, Birthright, Mystara, Darksun, and Planescape... That's just too much, that is far more than a single book should hold.

So... I felt like making fun of the idea. I included my setting because (frankly) it is still a canonical part of the shared DnD multiverse, even if it's never been published and no one but me cares, the entire idea behind a shared multiverse is that all of these worlds can potentially fit within the infinite space.

Of course they can't give "a single view or mindset" that covers everything "oh sage" they are divergent and contradictory by their very design.

[JoeJ]

And?.. I also mentioned drizzt and Salvatore. You might have missed it, I know it is a "recent" phenomenon... But drizzt & Salvatore's drizzt booksare set in forgotten realms and have been for the last thirty years. You are not the first person to split that hair like that, why is this a contentious statement? Fans of faerun need to own their setting's overbearing npcs and stop this kind of nonsense.

So drow also exist in the FR. So what? Drow exist in many settings, as does Lolth. Lolth-worshipping drow fly in organic ships through wildspace. They live in Sigil, and throughout the planes of the Great Wheel. They are an FR thing only in the sense that the Euro is a German thing.

As for what fans of Faerun ought to do, it's not my place to say. They have every right to enjoy their lore just like I enjoy mine.

[Tetrasodium]

So drow also exist in the FR. So what? Drow exist in many settings, as does Lolth. Lolth-worshipping drow fly in organic ships through wildspace. They live in Sigil, and throughout the planes of the Great Wheel. They are an FR thing only in the sense that the Euro is a German thing.

As for what fans of Faerun ought to do, it's not my place to say. They have every right to enjoy their lore just like I enjoy mine.


Oh they absolutely are entitled to enjoy it, but don't turn around and say "but dragon issue whatever" described them first for greyhawk" when there are quite literally thousands of pages of canon stuff across the various drizzt & forgotten realms novels fleshing that style of drow out further. They are welcome to enjoy that lore in forgotten realms, that lore has no business in settings where drow do not fit that style of mold

Claiming that forgotten realms is the default setting & it's the default setting not forgotten realms forcing its lore into settings that have incompatible fluff & lore is deceitful & dishonest at best. The reason the default setting argument gets raised so strenuously is because an argument along the lines of "I like the lore of forgotten realms best because it fits with my preferences so settings that are different should be adapted to fit my preferred lore rather than expecting some level of continuity in setting lore" is so obnoxious & offensive that even the most ardent supporter of forgotten realms will hace trouble voicing it as a reasonable argument.

[JoeJ]

Oh they absolutely are entitled to enjoy it, but don't turn around and say "but dragon issue whatever" described them first for greyhawk" when there are quite literally thousands of pages of canon stuff across the various drizzt & forgotten realms novels fleshing that style of drow out further. They are welcome to enjoy that lore in forgotten realms, that lore has no business in settings where drow do not fit that style of mold

You're not making any sense. Drow and Lolth are Greyhawk things that turned into default D&D things. If Eberron doesn't have them, that's because Eberron is an exception to the default. Nobody is requiring you to import them to any setting if you don't want to, or to retain them in a setting you want them removed from. If you really must complain about something, you'd have a much better case complaining about Greyhawk infecting every other setting. (Now if Wizards published something about Mary Sueminster's adventures in Eberron, that would be a different matter.)


The reason the default setting argument gets raised so strenuously is because an argument along the lines of "I like the lore of forgotten realms best because it fits with my preferences so settings that are different should be adapted to fit my preferred lore rather than expecting some level of continuity in setting lore" is so obnoxious & offensive that even the most ardent supporter of forgotten realms will hace trouble voicing it as a reasonable argument.

That would be a bad argument, were anyone making it. It's also a bad argument to make assertions about what somebody is secretly thinking.

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

You're misunderstanding. Eberron doesn't move forward at all. 3.5 started in 998YK just after the Last War, and 4e started in 998YK just after the Last War. Instead of jumping forwards in time and trying to keep iconics alive and relevant through centuries and justifying the system change with a huge reconstruction of the setting, it's more like different Eberrons in different systems. Parallel universes instead of a huge continuing one.

Got it. That's an interesting way to handle edition changes.

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

Oh they absolutely are entitled to enjoy it, but don't turn around and say "but dragon issue whatever" described them first for greyhawk" when there are quite literally thousands of pages of canon stuff across the various drizzt & forgotten realms novels fleshing that style of drow out further. They are welcome to enjoy that lore in forgotten realms, that lore has no business in settings where drow do not fit that style of mold

What possible relationship do these things have? An author publishing books in the FR setting does not change the publication date of Greyhawk material. It is a fact, an immutable, immovable fact, that many of the things you are complaining about did not originate with Forgotten Realms.

I've snipped the entire second half of your post because it's rude, dishonest and commits, like, three argumentative fallacies.

[Tetrasodium]

You're not making any sense. Drow and Lolth are Greyhawk things that turned into default D&D things. If Eberron doesn't have them, that's because Eberron is an exception to the default. Nobody is requiring you to import them to any setting if you don't want to, or to retain them in a setting you want them removed from. If you really must complain about something, you'd have a much better case complaining about Greyhawk infecting every other setting. (Now if Wizards published something about Mary Sueminster's adventures in Eberron, that would be a different matter.)

Regitnui posted a great example comparing how dragonborn & tieflings were added to eberron in 4e here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=23045686&postcount=223). dragonborn being added alongside lizardmen was explained very poorly, but the logic was sound & they fit ok so it was a minor disruption at worst. Tieflings got asmodious & his whole metaplot, but that required replacing and outright adding planes to the cosmology in order for tieflings to keep their same origin as other 4e settings. MtoF is 5e content, WotC has explicitly stated it will apply to everything in the shared multiverse. WotC has also explicitly said that eberron is part of that shared multiverse. The end result is that whatever hamfisted clusterbleeps made pushing the totallynotfaerunabsolutelynotforgottenrealms "default" setting in this 5e book will affect future eberron stuff because they said it applies to eberron.


That would be a bad argument, were anyone making it. It's also a bad argument to make assertions about what somebody is secretly thinking.

Then why is it relevant to distance forgotten realms from the problem of forcing the Salvatore drizzt/lolth worshipping style of drow baselines into other incompatible settings by pointing out that drow were first introduced to greyhawk very shortly before we started getting 30 years of drizzt novels?

[JoeJ]

Then why is it relevant to distance forgotten realms from the problem of forcing the Salvatore drizzt/lolth worshipping style of drow baselines into other incompatible settings by pointing out that drow were first introduced to greyhawk very shortly before we started getting 30 years of drizzt novels?

Why are Salvatore and Drizzt relevant to the problem you have with Greyhawk material being injected into Eberron?

[Tetrasodium]

What possible relationship do these things have? An author publishing books in the FR setting does not change the publication date of Greyhawk material. It is a fact, an immutable, immovable fact, that many of the things you are complaining about did not originate with Forgotten Realms.

And precisely what relevance does bringing that up have to the problem of Salvatore's drizzt style lolth worshipping drow being virulently injected into other settings with incompatabilities other than distancing forgotten realms from the problems it causes when WotC treats it like their favorite MarySue in a bad slashfic fans of other settings are forced t o endure?

I've snipped the entire second half of your post because it's rude, dishonest and commits, like, three argumentative fallacies.

Oh I'm sorry that you couldn't keep your position and argue that it did not apply to you.

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

And precisely what relevance does bringing that up have to the problem of Salvatore's drizzt style lolth worshipping drow being virulently injected into other settings with incompatabilities other than distancing forgotten realms from the problems it causes when WotC treats it like their favorite MarySue in a bad slashfic fans of other settings are forced t o endure?


Oh I'm sorry that you couldn't keep your position and argue that it did not apply to you.

I honestly have no idea what you're on about, and I'm not sure you do either.

[Tetrasodium]

Why are Salvatore and Drizzt relevant to the problem you have with Greyhawk material being injected into Eberron?

To answer that question, lets look back to when you brought it up here in this post (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=23044740&postcount=192), you quoted a secdtion on me talking about " drizzt & the Salvatore style lolth worshipping drow of the underdark in faerun" Yes I left out a d in underdark, but I don't believe there is any confusion about what "underark" should have been

If you look at the PHB entry for drow, Greyhawk is not present anywhere in it.... However, forgotten realms & drizzt are & I do not believe that the drow in forgotten realms and greyhawk have any notable differences What possible reason did you have for distancing forgotten realms from thetotallynotforgottenrealms "default" setting of forgotten realms?

[EvilAnagram]

You forgoed civility pages ago when you deliberately mischaracterized my arguments to put the side you support in a more favorable light than the opposition. Do not try try to claim you have the high ground on this matter.
So your point is that jokes and misunderstandings are exactly the same as accusing people of being dishonest, and the perceived bad behavior of others justifies bad behavior on your part? Is that an argument you're willing to stick by?


Because there is more FR books does not mean that Lolth and Corellon are more proeminent in FR. That's like saying Dwarves are more proemiment in FR than in Dragonlance because Dwarves appear in more FR novels than there is of Dragonlance ones
Not what I said. I said that the Lolth/Corellon story plays a larger part in the dozens of FR novels, not that the larger number of novels makes it a bigger deal. The Lolth/Corellon conflict is a bigger deal in FR because the dark elves play an enormous role in the Forgotten Realms fiction, and their society constantly grappling with that conflict.



This is NEW lore
Built on a conflict that is explored more in the Forgotten Realms than in any other setting.

[Millstone85]

Eberron doesn't move forward at all. 3.5 started in 998YK just after the Last War, and 4e started in 998YK just after the Last War. Instead of jumping forwards in time and trying to keep iconics alive and relevant through centuries and justifying the system change with a huge reconstruction of the setting, it's more like different Eberrons in different systems. Parallel universes instead of a huge continuing one.
Dragonborn were added in 4e by saying they were from a particular peninsula where a particularly powerful demon lived, and were there to guard it. The peninsula was also inhabited by regular lizardfolk, and since the dragonborn and lizardfolk had a history and conflict that the new human settlers were disrupting, no "civilised" culture looked long enough to realise some of the scalefolk were dragon-like and others were lizard-like. Fair and simple.

Tieflings were introduced by putting in a new "demiplane" which had never been used before in Eberron, contriving a history for that new demiplane, explaining why that demiplane influenced the world, and then why tieflings had never been noticed before.Wait, if each new edition uses an alternate history of Eberron as of 998YK, then what is this about dragonborn and tieflings not having been noticed "before". Before what?

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

Wait, if each new edition uses an alternate history of Eberron as of 998YK, then what is this about dragonborn and tieflings not having been noticed "before". Before what?

If I understand correctly, in 3.X there are no dragonborn in Eberron. In 4E, they're discovered after 998YK. And in 5E, we don't know yet because there's no ECS.

[strangebloke]

Wait, if each new edition uses an alternate history of Eberron as of 998YK, then what is this about dragonborn and tieflings not having been noticed "before". Before what?

In terms of edition, they weren't around before. In terms of years they were around but nobody cared/knew about them.

Fears of Lolth being added as a drow deity in Eberron are way overblown. Lolth is default DND. Ebberon will likely depart from that. In any case, it's all total speculation, and it seems unlikely even that we'll get an official Eberron campaign setting any time in the next two years.

In other words, this is a very stupid debate. Tetra, if you aren't going to persuade anyone in the last 100 posts you've written on the topic, another 100 isn't going to make much difference.

[Tetrasodium]

Wait, if each new edition uses an alternate history of Eberron as of 998YK, then what is this about dragonborn and tieflings not having been noticed "before". Before what?

the same history. dragonborm being addded was poorly described in the 4e source books. Their presence amounted to "they were always there in Q'barra with the lizardmen, but it was such an awful backwater swamp seemingly with nothing of value or any reason for people to go there so most people didn't care enough to learn that there were two races of scaled folks there rather than just one race or slightly different varieties of one race"

Tieflings were never present in eberron prior to 4e. Even though eberron has very high levels of demon activity & influincing going on in it throughout history all the way back to its creation myth & an entire region once ruled by demon overlords (demon wastes (http://eberron.wikia.com/wiki/The_Demon_Wastes))that still has what was once a demon cityAshtakala (http://eberron.wikia.com/wiki/Ashtakala) that is still inhabited by some of the [url="http://eberron.wikia.com/wiki/The_Lords_of_Dust"]lords of dust[/urk] intent of freeing the overlords. Rather than using any of that long list of possible ways tieflings could come about at any point in the last 10,000,000 years they instead swapped a bunch of planes with their nearest cousin, added "baator the nine hells" to support Asmodious as the ruler of the nine hells, & declared he was responsible for creating them the same way he was responsible everywhere else.

They added eldar by adding in some feyaspires that manifest out of thelanis into eberron proper in a few places in the world every hundred or more years & declared those feytspires got stuck by the day of mourning. It was silly, but it fit well enough because it was changed to fit the setting instead of the other way around.

They also declared that the elves were originally made by the giant empire of xen'driik (the giants were taught or were still being taught all the secrets of draconic magic by the dragons at this point) after the giants captured some eldar & mixed "mud into their blood". This was of literally zero concern. Elves were enslaved by the giants from the start. Magebreeding had been performed many times & was such a staple of the setting that you could buy magebred mounts that were bred with some of the 3,5 mount/beast feats from the getgo in nearly any civilized area given coin & availability or willingness to wait


edit: the reason why some people suddenly started to care that lizardmen & dragonborn were actually different species was because there were dragonhards recently discovered there in q'barra & those are basically magic batteries for magic items.

[JoeJ]

To answer that question, lets look back to when you brought it up here in this post (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=23044740&postcount=192), you quoted a secdtion on me talking about " drizzt & the Salvatore style lolth worshipping drow of the underdark in faerun" Yes I left out a d in underdark, but I don't believe there is any confusion about what "underark" should have been

What you call "Salvatore style" is actually Gygax style. Salvatore created the character of Drizzt. He didn't create drow culture or their worship of Lolth.


If you look at the PHB entry for drow, Greyhawk is not present anywhere in it.... However, forgotten realms & drizzt are & I do not believe that the drow in forgotten realms and greyhawk have any notable differences What possible reason did you have for distancing forgotten realms from thetotallynotforgottenrealms "default" setting of forgotten realms?

Seriously? A single FR character mentioned in a sidebar is your beef? Did you miss the fact that the quote at the beginning of the elf section references Goldmoon and Qualinost? Or that the High Elf and Wood Elf subsections both mention Krynn and Greyhawk as well as FR? Or that Bigby, Drawmij, Evard, Leomund, Melf, Mordenkainen, Nystul, Otiluke, Otto, Rary, Tasha, and Tensor all got onto the spell list? Or that the gods of Eberron listed in the back of the PHB along with those of Krynn, Greyhawk, FR, and several historical cultures? (And as usual, no explanation of why only human deities change between settings.)

Even this very thread is a discussion about a book named for Mordenkainen!

I'm not a fan of the FR - I want material for Cerilia and/or Spelljammer - but geez! There's no sense in getting outraged every time that setting gets mentioned anywhere. FR is closer to default D&D than Eberron, granted, but no closer than Krynn or Greyhawk are.

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

FR is closer to default D&D than Eberron, granted, but no closer than Krynn or Greyhawk are.

I don't quite agree with that - the human entry, for one, includes regions and name lists for FR regions, but does not have any mention of humans in other settings. Other racial entries that aren't sidebarred are all fully generic.

[EvilAnagram]

I don't quite agree with that - the human entry, for one, includes regions and name lists for FR regions, but does not have any mention of humans in other settings. Other racial entries that aren't sidebarred are all fully generic.

I think it's understandable why people resist the idea that Faerun is default. After all, Faerun is a super generic setting, so obviously attempts to make rules for any setting will apply there. However, the fact that 8 of twelve books released for 5e center around the Forgotten Realms, and the remaining four include callouts to the Realms on multiple occasions, strongly ties this edition to the Realms.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I think it's understandable why people resist the idea that Faerun is default. After all, Faerun is a super generic setting, so obviously attempts to make rules for any setting will apply there. However, the fact that 8 of twelve books released for 5e center around the Forgotten Realms, and the remaining four include callouts to the Realms on multiple occasions, strongly ties this edition to the Realms.

Combining rule books with adventures is a disingenuous move. They serve different purposes and adventures are, by nature, set in a setting while rule books aren't.

[Envyus]

This is your entire post. I'm not sure how you can even make this statement without the troll on mm291 coming over to clap you on the shoulder. CoS takes place in a region of ravenloft unless you are going to claim ravenloft has suddenly moved to barovia, can you point it out on themap of faerun? The saddest part is that you are not even the first or only one to do it in this thread.


I probably should have spelled it better. I was saying all the adventures minus Curse of Strahd take place there. And used a - sign instead of the word for some reason.

[Envyus]

And precisely what relevance does bringing that up have to the problem of Salvatore's drizzt style lolth worshipping drow being virulently injected into other settings with incompatabilities other than distancing forgotten realms from the problems it causes when WotC treats it like their favorite MarySue in a bad slashfic fans of other settings are forced t o endure?
Are you just not reading what people are saying. Cause they have pointed out several times this is not true.


Oh I'm sorry that you couldn't keep your position and argue that it did not apply to you.

You are getting super hostile and accusatory against people that don't agree with you.

[War_lord]

Are you just not reading what people are saying.

You were under the impression that Tetra actually reads what people are saying? I figured out long ago that they just scan for keywords and then pick whichever one of their prescripted rants fits best.

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

Are you just not reading what people are saying. Cause they have pointed out several times this is not true.


I just want to take this moment to be amused by the idea of "Drizzt-style drow" who are Llolth worshippers. Isn't the whole point of that character that he... isn't and doesn't?

Also, my next character is 100% gonna be Drizzle Downunder the Extremely Pessimistic Australian. "Em, yah, I know all Aussies are, like criminals and stuff? But I'm different, mate. I don't expect you to unnerstand that."

[Chaosmancer]

Claiming that forgotten realms is the default setting & it's the default setting not forgotten realms forcing its lore into settings that have incompatible fluff & lore is deceitful & dishonest at best. The reason the default setting argument gets raised so strenuously is because an argument along the lines of "I like the lore of forgotten realms best because it fits with my preferences so settings that are different should be adapted to fit my preferred lore rather than expecting some level of continuity in setting lore" is so obnoxious & offensive that even the most ardent supporter of forgotten realms will hace trouble voicing it as a reasonable argument.

Wait... What?

Can I paraphrase that?

"Saying Forgotten realms is the default setting and saying that forgotten realms is the default setting and not saying that forgotten realms lore is being forced into non-forgotten realms settings is dishonest at best"

That's what you are going with?

You know Tetra, you have a serious problem. You just absolutely can't get over 4e edition. That's the only way this makes sense to me.

Lets lay out a few facts, you seem to love long lists of facts after all.

There has been 1 official setting book in 5e, explicitly set in Faerun. Sword Coast adventurers guide.

There has been 1 book that is pretty much a forgotten realms setting book, but it isn't explicit and can be adapted to other similar settings. That's Volo's Guide.

All of the setting changes to Ebberron that you keep repeating, those happened in 4e. Zero official information has been explicitly released for Eberron to my knowledge.

Mordenkainen's book is going to talk about Lolth, but will also talk about that Scorpion god from Eberron, so officially from the information we have Lolth and Driz'zt are never going to appear in Eberron.

There was an adventure in Barovia. You hate this adventure (as I understand it) because of multiple reasons. These reasons include that it did not detail otger Dread Lord domains that were outside the scope of the adventure. They did not list organizations from those domains or ones from Barovia itself. However, you also hate that the PCs were pulled from Faerun and were given information on how the organizations they are affiliated with got them into this situation.

To summarize, you seem to hate that an adventure about people from Faerun being pulled to Barovia involved people from Faerun being pulled to Barovia.


Now, I'll fully admit almost everything released for 5e to date is for Forgotten Realms or a setting incredibly similiar to it... But raging about Lore being forced unto a setting that we have no proof is actually going to be forced on a setting, lore that could easily be out specified by an official setting book, lore you've already been ignoring while you run your game... It seems like mountains out of molehills my friend.

5e's cousin is the one that kicked your dog, 5e hasn't hurt you yet. Stop being so defensive

[PhoenixPhyre]

I'm not so familiar with 4e's release timeline. When did the Eberron setting materials come out? Was any of the current 5e team even working at WoTC at that point? I know Mearls joined late and did Essentials, but the team has shrunk considerably and had almost 100% turnover during 4e.

So the people who "wreaked" Eberron might not even be working there any more. If so, talk about a misaimed grudge.

[EvilAnagram]

Combining rule books with adventures is a disingenuous move. They serve different purposes and adventures are, by nature, set in a setting while rule books aren't.

Not really. The adventures could have been set in any one of half a dozen popular settings without raising eyebrows. But they consciously chose to set almost every single adventure in one setting, and that speaks volumes about that setting's impact on their writing.

Even if we don't count adventures, 3/6 rule books that have been released are still themed around the Forgotten Realms, and those that weren't still included things like FR ethnicities for standard humans.