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To be fair the D&D team is essentially nothing, which explains why they have to copy/paste massive tracts of earlier editions and farm stuff out to third parties.
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Jan 4, 2015 10:36
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Wait, they moved the Temple of Elemental Evil to FR? Did the villiage of Hommlet just drop from the sky?
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Jan 4, 2015 10:59
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Babylon Astronaut posted:Wait, they moved the Temple of Elemental Evil to FR? Did the villiage of Hommlet just drop from the sky? Everything must be in FR, the kitchen sink setting that no wait really guys has a lot of fascinating intrigue
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Jan 4, 2015 11:00
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Look I'm not exactly super into FR but it does have cool stuff of it's own they could use. There's plenty of evil cults and big bad monsters and poo poo that could've been used for adventures. I mean christ, how many video games has the Realms had by now? People hated 4e FR for "making it into something it wasn't." But so far 5e seems dedicated into making it into nothing. Either way it's become decidedly clear why they have no plans for an FR setting book.
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Jan 4, 2015 11:19
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ThirdEmperor posted:Well obviously all ideas are reliant on not having idiots executing them. D&D 5e in a nutshell, really.
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Jan 4, 2015 12:08
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More like a cautionary tale in my opinion.
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Jan 4, 2015 17:39
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It's going to be interesting to see if they'll be able to add more class options to the Champion Fighter archetype.
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Jan 4, 2015 17:50
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ProfessorCirno posted:Wait, these aren't even being made BY WotC. They were licensed out to "Sasquatch Game Studio." WotC's D&D team isn't actually doing ANYTHING. At least that means that the adventure should be pretty good - I'm pretty sure Sasquatch is Richard "Red Hand of Doom" Baker - who even managed to produce the passable H2 for 4e (when H1 was Keep on the Shadowfell and H3 was Pyramid of Shadows) despite Mearls being the other name on the book.
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Jan 4, 2015 18:55
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The Bee posted:Okay, I gotta hear a source for this. Drow Roomate seems like the best class feature. Turns out it's the 'Thunder Guide'. Serial Hero: At 8th level, famed Korranberg Chronicle reporter Kole Naerrin writes a serialized account of your adventures appearing over the course of thirteen weeks. You earn 1,000 gp per point of your Charisma bonus for the rights to your story (minimum 1,000 gp). Really seems like someone just wrote up their personal character.
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Jan 4, 2015 21:20
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What they did to Forgotten Realms in 4e always struck me as a solution in search of a problem. The thing is that the people who actually want to play in FR and are fans of FR really don't have much use for the 4e version where they try and strip all the long-term setting details to try and sell it to non-Fans. Meanwhile I don't see who thought they could appeal to non-fans by saying "Hey look we filed off all the stuff in Forgotten Realms and made it into a generic fantasy setting!" Forgotten Realms has a fanbase of fans who actually want to follow the storyline and play in the setting, that fully codified and elaborated fantasy setting was the reason why people wanted to play in it. People who didn't like it aren't suddenly going to become fans by stripping out huge chunks of it, and the people who did like it were obviously not going to be happy when suddenly huge chunks of this thing they liked were missing. The 4e Revisions seemed to undo the setting's primary strength for no good reason.
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Jan 4, 2015 21:28
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Babylon Astronaut posted:Wait, they moved the Temple of Elemental Evil to FR? Did the villiage of Hommlet just drop from the sky? This story arc other then the name will likely have nothing to do with the Temple of Elemental Evil and Hommlet. (Which I honestly do want a remake for.) It appears to be focusing on the Princes of Elemental Evil. Imix, Olhydra, Yan-C-Bin, and Orgemoch. The original temple of elemental evil really can't be done anywhere but Greyhawk due to the large role Iuz has in it. (Also the Demoness Lady of Fungi Zuggtmoy)
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Jan 4, 2015 21:32
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Omnicrom posted:The 4e Revisions seemed to undo the setting's primary strength for no good reason. *The primary strength as defined by people already invested. As someone with only a superficial knowledge of FR, I never thought of setting a game in the Realms until 4e. I liked the changes a lot, and pre-SP Realms still existed for anyone who wanted to stay 3.x.
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Jan 4, 2015 21:38
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MonsterEnvy posted:This story arc other then the name will likely have nothing to do with the Temple of Elemental Evil and Hommlet. (Which I honestly do want a remake for.) Yeah, it's not just shoe-horning ToEE into the Realms. It looks like it's a call-back to ToEE that's built on existing Realms lore. The Tiamat stuff is similar. She's been a part of the Realms for a long time, but it's the first time she's been a really big deal outside of the Vilhon region. It's still weird, though, that they would focus on all this stuff that has only a minor connection to Realms lore instead of all the Realms stuff they could focus on, especially when the big event is all about different gods making different power plays. poo poo, do something with Moander if you wanna go "classic" with the 5E Realms.
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Jan 4, 2015 21:47
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Print Baldur's Gate as an adventure where your everyone in your party is Bhaalspawn.
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Jan 4, 2015 21:51
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Have a new Pool of Radiance open beneath New Phlan
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Jan 4, 2015 21:53
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PeterWeller posted:Yeah, it's not just shoe-horning ToEE into the Realms. It looks like it's a call-back to ToEE that's built on existing Realms lore. The Tiamat stuff is similar. She's been a part of the Realms for a long time, but it's the first time she's been a really big deal outside of the Vilhon region. Well the adventures that came out during the playtest. (Ghosts of Dragonspear castle and Dreams of the Red Wizards) had a decent amount of stuff from the Elemental Princes. What with Elemental keys that were in alters belonging to them. Combined with the designers saying they loved the Elemental Princes and that they wanted to make an adventure involving them. Some of the last issues of the online version of Dungeon and Dragon magazines had a lot of elemental evil themed stuff as well. I think they have wanted to do this for a while. MonsterEnvy fucked around with this message at 21:57 on Jan 4, 2015 |
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Jan 4, 2015 21:54
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Blingdenstone also deals with Ogremoch, or more precisely Ogremoch's Bane. It feels like a lot of the adventures in the playtest, and going into the final release, have dealt with either Red Wizards or mentions of the Elemental Princes of Evil.
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Jan 4, 2015 22:02
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Tunicate posted:Serial Hero: At 8th level, famed Korranberg Chronicle reporter Kole Naerrin writes a serialized account of your adventures appearing over the course of thirteen weeks. You earn 1,000 gp per point of your Charisma bonus for the rights to your story (minimum 1,000 gp). No recurring royalties or merchandise residuals? That's an awful deal. Also I guess becoming famous as a pulp action hero has no benefits at all in a setting full of literacy, newspapers, and big cities full of people desperate for escapist entertainment in the wake of a terrible war.
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Jan 4, 2015 22:22
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I wish that farming the books to third parties could a be a good thing. It would be nice to see what non-Mearls people would do with D&D. But I doubt they'll actually be given any creative freedom with the content.
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Jan 4, 2015 22:50
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Maybe they should've farmed out the PHB et. al. too.
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Jan 4, 2015 22:56
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PeterWeller posted:Yeah, it's not just shoe-horning ToEE into the Realms. It looks like it's a call-back to ToEE that's built on existing Realms lore. The Tiamat stuff is similar. She's been a part of the Realms for a long time, but it's the first time she's been a really big deal outside of the Vilhon region. It's because they don't give a poo poo about Forgotten Realms and their talk about restoring it to pre-4e standards was just talk meant to bring in the angry FR fans with no actual intention of giving them what they want? FR is absolutely going to be turned into a flavorless generic setting where they dump all their adventures regardless of how well they fit. Again, it's absolutely telling that, when asked, they revealed they had no plans at all to do any sort of FR setting book or even explain what their whole cataclysm or whatever it's called did. All they've done is go "the big names are alive again" and then jam in adventures that belong in other settings.
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Jan 4, 2015 23:15
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Solid Jake posted:Maybe they should've farmed out the PHB et. al. too. Yeah probably. I get the feeling that the design teams are caught in a loop - it's such a small industry and there are few actual 'names' in it, and as Hasbro really doesn't care a great deal, what are they going to do but hire the same team that screwed up last time? The best hope of breaking the cycle is probably to get one of the various videogame endeavors to go big and bring some love to the projects.
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Jan 4, 2015 23:23
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Was FR ever really not flavorless? I don't see how it was ever special or in need of being protected from outside influences.
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Jan 4, 2015 23:32
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The only thing that ever interested me in Forgotten realms was the Spellplague and now that's gone.
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Jan 4, 2015 23:46
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The forgotten realms had REALMSPACE and that has to count for something, being the second best FR product. It even got it's own videogame that was kinda an adorable Sid Meier's Pirates But In Space. Grand Theft Mindspider.
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Jan 4, 2015 23:50
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I'll be honest and I got into Forgotten Realms through Baldur's Gate but the whole idea of a world reeling from the Time of Troubles where all the gods had shown up and demonstrated their abilities to be giant shitlords first hand seems like a good idea for a setting. Seems like that should have been the core focus of the setting., one where everyone is loaded with unbelievable amounts of magic and everyone is hoarding it waiting for the next apocalyptic event to hit them (like the Spellplague). It would be a good excuse for why theres so many dungeons with loads of equipment everywhere, why the main characters cant just move off to solve problems because they are thinking of the big picture. They could really utilize the whole inevitable world changing event rule they seem to have for each edition too.
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Jan 5, 2015 00:02
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ProfessorCirno posted:It's because they don't give a poo poo about Forgotten Realms and their talk about restoring it to pre-4e standards was just talk meant to bring in the angry FR fans with no actual intention of giving them what they want? It's not so sinister as that. It's more just a bit of a disconnect between the novel team and game team as to what exactly they want to put into this new old Realms. They can't explain what the Sundering did or release a new campaign book because the Sundering ia still going on. Tiamat's power play and whatever is going on with the elemental princes are part of the scheming for a piece of the new Realms pie as Ao rewrites the Tablets of Fate. So you have a novel line that is bringing back some beloved major characters, and a game line that is trying to add in some classic D&D tropes from outside the setting, and that means the latter looks like it's ignoring Realms lore. And ultimately the Realms are big and varied enough to where they can easily include all this stuff, so it's nothing to be really upset about. That's one of the setting's great strengths after all.
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Jan 5, 2015 03:59
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PeterWeller posted:It's not so sinister as that. It's more just a bit of a disconnect between the novel team and game team as to what exactly they want to put into this new old Realms. They can't explain what the Sundering did or release a new campaign book because the Sundering ia still going on. Tiamat's power play and whatever is going on with the elemental princes are part of the scheming for a piece of the new Realms pie as Ao rewrites the Tablets of Fate. So you have a novel line that is bringing back some beloved major characters, and a game line that is trying to add in some classic D&D tropes from outside the setting, and that means the latter looks like it's ignoring Realms lore. That is really a cop-out, though. If the current FR story is all about the ongoing Sundering thing, then they can certainly release something detailing what the gently caress it even is. And, honestly, it's not 'sinister' when immense amounts of Next hype has been all about WE'RE BRINGING THE OLD STUFF BACK without much (if any) self-awareness or care; it's par for the course that they'd insist that old FR is back and better than ever, baby, what do you mean you want some kind of explanation no we don't do that.
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Jan 5, 2015 04:08
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Darwinism posted:what do you mean you want some kind of explanation no we don't do that.
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Jan 5, 2015 04:11
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I've come to the conclusion that FR would be a vastly more awesome setting if the next end of world event thing was just shAO khan declaring Mortal Kombat and had the gods wiping up a bunch of their favourite mary sues to battle to the death.
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Jan 5, 2015 04:17
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PeterWeller posted:And ultimately the Realms are big and varied enough to where they can easily include all this stuff, so it's nothing to be really upset about. That's one of the setting's great strengths after all. You could take every Forgotten Realms location and culture that isn't a half-assed copy of something historical, mash them all together into a single place, and nobody would even notice.
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Jan 5, 2015 04:21
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kingcom posted:I've come to the conclusion that FR would be a vastly more awesome setting if the next end of world event thing was just shAO khan declaring Mortal Kombat and had the gods wiping up a bunch of their favourite mary sues to battle to the death. So uh basically the Spellplague
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Jan 5, 2015 04:24
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Darwinism posted:So uh basically the Spellplague I don't remember people being summoned to a ring out of nowhere and fighting to overdramatic music. How long did Tyr and Helm perform uppercuts as they slowly approached each other from the edge of the ring?
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Jan 5, 2015 04:27
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kingcom posted:I'll be honest and I got into Forgotten Realms through Baldur's Gate but the whole idea of a world reeling from the Time of Troubles where all the gods had shown up and demonstrated their abilities to be giant shitlords first hand seems like a good idea for a setting. Seems like that should have been the core focus of the setting., one where everyone is loaded with unbelievable amounts of magic and everyone is hoarding it waiting for the next apocalyptic event to hit them (like the Spellplague). It would be a good excuse for why theres so many dungeons with loads of equipment everywhere, why the main characters cant just move off to solve problems because they are thinking of the big picture. They could really utilize the whole inevitable world changing event rule they seem to have for each edition too. If they ever even tried to treat it that way, I'd probably like the setting a lot more. It's like the logical conclusion of a setting that operates under D&D rules.
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Jan 5, 2015 04:28
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PeterWeller posted:It's not so sinister as that. It's more just a bit of a disconnect between the novel team and game team as to what exactly they want to put into this new old Realms. They can't explain what the Sundering did or release a new campaign book because the Sundering ia still going on. Tiamat's power play and whatever is going on with the elemental princes are part of the scheming for a piece of the new Realms pie as Ao rewrites the Tablets of Fate. So you have a novel line that is bringing back some beloved major characters, and a game line that is trying to add in some classic D&D tropes from outside the setting, and that means the latter looks like it's ignoring Realms lore. It's not something sinister. Its something lazy. The Realms has tons of stuff you can find to make adventures out of but you'd have to actually know the Realms stuff or look it up. Instead, I made this adventure slash grabbed this AD&D thing, let's just put it in the Realms, DONE. You're attributing way more thought to this then I am. I'm not saying they're some evil force trying to kill FR. I'm saying they don't give a poo poo. 4e made widespread changes to FR intentionally to change it in order to try to shake out the massive library of REALMSLORE. 5e is turning it into ultimately a formless generic setting unintentionally because they're lazy and don't care.
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Jan 5, 2015 04:31
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I wouldnt be surprised if they did some market research on what are the most recognizable and marketable elements of D&D, and they now plan to shoehorn all of those elements into the setting. Incidentally, anyone see a video or listen to a podcast of Mike Mearls running a game? Is he any good?
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Jan 5, 2015 04:40
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ascendance posted:Incidentally, anyone see a video or listen to a podcast of Mike Mearls running a game? Is he any good? He ran some livestreams of 5e while it was in playtest, as I recall. There was at least one occasion where it ground to a halt because nobody passed the requisite skill check. Oh, and the wights. Can't forget the wights.
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Jan 5, 2015 04:45
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ProfessorCirno posted:It's not something sinister. Its something lazy. Yeah, I agree. I'm not trying to defend what they're doing, just explain it a little bit from the perspective of someone who keeps up with some of the fiction. It seems pretty clear to me that Greenwood and Salvatore have a pretty solid plan for this new Realms that Mearls doesn't seem to give a poo poo about. The former are off with Baker and other writers working out these long plots to bring everything back to sort of how it was during the late 2E/early 3E era. The latter is farming out work to bring in stuff he is nostalgic for.
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Jan 5, 2015 04:57
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ascendance posted:Incidentally, anyone see a video or listen to a podcast of Mike Mearls running a game? Is he any good? Depends how interesting you find walls. e: and, from memory, continuously re-rolling skill checks until someone passes.
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Jan 5, 2015 05:06
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Yeah I just read through that section of the Imp Zone's Next thread around the time that Mearls DM'd a Next playtest session and it was really underwhelming. It's like when Blizzard has a "PvP against the devs!" event or something and you realize that the developers have bad/wrong talent builds and use their keyboards to turn.
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Jan 5, 2015 05:16
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