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OmanyteJackson posted:Nah, Planescape, Spelljammer, Eberron, Gamma world and Darksun especially have some really evocative settings and have a lot of tools in their respective toybox. Each setting introduces new rules to expand on what each setting does best. Each one also has a good elevator pitch, for example: Nah I get it. So much of what makes it work is that they built the guilds from the ground up to be a very strong cultivated identity. Gruul in game play is going to feel like X and it feeds into the culture of the guild and it creates a really solid ludonarrative feedback loop, and that shits like brain candy for developing player attachment. Magic settings only get so much time to be explored so they have to go for as high impact with its universe elements as possible. Rav was basically a complete home run for that design concept of a world and so it carries with it a lot of excitement. Basically I’m really excited to see what they do with the guilds in a D&D environment to enable that sort of attachment here.
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Jul 25, 2018 10:26
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Anti-Citizen posted:Basically I’m really excited to see what they do with the guilds in a D&D environment to enable that sort of attachment here.
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Jul 25, 2018 10:29
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Honestly the biggest draw for Ravnica is the cool art, which most people already get Googling the cards. I tried reading the novel that came with the first box and its a pretty bog standard setting with a Megacity theme. The Goblins fly around in experimental tech and die young. The rot zombies zombie. The flower communists commune. The Flying Paladins Paladin. It's not a bad setting, just a very generic one, especially when they're talking about Eberron at the same time.
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Jul 25, 2018 10:37
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Maybe I'm old and nostalgic but I simply can't care about guild city war. Guilds are overdone to begin with, but adding in a magic noose that yanks anyone who upsets the balance? Sounds great, i love having a magically enforced completely static game setting. Where does the food come from, does it get magicked out of thin air or are people eating fungus burgers grown in massive underground farms? Or maybe floating greenhouses that eat concentrated light or even carefully guarded or hoarded secret portals to worlds with endless sun? Cmon now's your chance to sell me on this world, hit me with it Bhodi fucked around with this message at 12:12 on Jul 25, 2018 |
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Jul 25, 2018 12:08
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How does attacking into an area of effect work? Does doing so count as entering? Say there's a moonbeam hitting an enemy on a square next to me, can I whack the dude without getting hit by the moonbeam? Under TotM it would make sense that I would take a hit, as I'd have to reach through the light to attack (especially if,say, I'm shapeshifted into a bear) but on grid-logic I'm staying firmly in my square, so wouldn't get hit. Is there a specific rule on this? Or is it just up to the DM and logic - spears you can attack from outside, bear claws you have to reach through.
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Jul 25, 2018 13:09
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xilni posted:So I can play on roll20 without buying the books again? I’m confused as to what buying a digital book does if I’ve already got a hard copy with me? Does it unlock features on the roll20 platform? If you have the digital books, you can drag-and-drop stuff into character sheets, or in the case of adventure modules, maps and handouts and such. You can also do all of this manually; shelling out money is just a timesaver, nothing else. You can do everything without even paying a subscription, but having your DM get a subscription for your game might be a nice idea just to avoid ads and such. For example, they have a Tomb of Annihilation module my wife bought to run the game for our group, which gives her all the maps in the game set up for roll20 and all the monsters and items added in the book. This lets her drop stuff into the game without needing much prep ahead of time. They haven't put Out of the Abyss up there yet, though, so when I start running that, I'll have to set up everything by hand.
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Jul 25, 2018 13:15
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I just use roll20 as a digital grid and a diceroller. The integrated character sheets and stuff is just too clunky compared to like, keeping a separate excel for it.
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Jul 25, 2018 13:20
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gently caress, until someone pointed it out I didn't realize how much Ravnica lines up with Planescape. So I guess we're getting off-brand Sigil now. This is not a bad thing, Ravnica is one of the more interesting MtG settings IMO. Zendikar as a setting kinda sucked because despite being the ADVENTURE plane, it had like no defining traits because the world just reshapes itself for no reason.
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Jul 25, 2018 13:34
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Bhodi posted:Where does the food come from, does it get magicked out of thin air or are people eating fungus burgers grown in massive underground farms? Or maybe floating greenhouses that eat concentrated light or even carefully guarded or hoarded secret portals to worlds with endless sun? Cmon now's your chance to sell me on this world, hit me with it I haven't found a source that goes into a ton of detail, but food production (and waste management) is the job of the Golgari Swarm. The Golgari are all about making fungus zombies and stuff. Basically, they collect all the trash and dead bodies and break them down in "rot farms" that eventually grow new food (fungus I guess?) in the trash and dead bodies.
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Jul 25, 2018 13:49
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Seriously, Ravnica is actually really loving cool. I mean this is a plane with Steam Punk Goblins, a Ghost Mafia, Tree Communists, Mad Geneticists ......and......Juggalos. And yet it works, all these disparate groups really feel like part of the same world and make something greater than the sum of their parts. It is a really cool and varied environment and the guilds really are a huge draw.
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Jul 25, 2018 15:04
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Madmarker posted:Seriously, Ravnica is actually really loving cool. I mean this is a plane with Steam Punk Goblins, a Ghost Mafia, Tree Communists, Mad Geneticists ......and......Juggalos. And yet it works, all these disparate groups really feel like part of the same world and make something greater than the sum of their parts. It is a really cool and varied environment and the guilds really are a huge draw. I mean honestly the descriptions so far just sound like a city in Eberron ala Stormreach but with the 'Guilds' instead of 'Houses' with a unique aesthetic. I mean the final encounter of the 4e Eberron intro adventure involved you defending an airship (or was it a monorail) from goblins flying on rocket speeders trying to ambush and steal something. EDIT: Bhodi posted:Where does the food come from, does it get magicked out of thin air or are people eating fungus burgers grown in massive underground farms? Or maybe floating greenhouses that eat concentrated light or even carefully guarded or hoarded secret portals to worlds with endless sun? Cmon now's your chance to sell me on this world, hit me with it This is the kind of poo poo that would make me interested. Like whats the life of people on the ground, how do they work, if magic is everything then is it just a end game capitalist society of a overwhelming underclass without magic? What does a person without magic do to contribute as an adventurer? kingcom fucked around with this message at 15:23 on Jul 25, 2018 |
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Jul 25, 2018 15:09
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I feel better now that they're trying to keep MTG "game" elements out of the campaign setting. If they truly do release a world book like the Critical Role's Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting then that will be a huge thumbs up. I probably wont ever play within that world until they bring it over to Adventure League, but paging through soon-to-be-legit source books is cool regardless.
Philthy fucked around with this message at 15:28 on Jul 25, 2018 |
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Jul 25, 2018 15:18
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kingcom posted:This is the kind of poo poo that would make me interested. Like whats the life of people on the ground, how do they work, if magic is everything then is it just a end game capitalist society of a overwhelming underclass without magic? What does a person without magic do to contribute as an adventurer? I believe that's the sort of thing that would be covered in a setting-specific sourcebook.
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Jul 25, 2018 15:29
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Here's my  primer again for people who missed it, with a few added notes.mango sentinel posted:Brief summary of the settings and guilds, as of the original Guildpact era: Rakdos and Gruul don't fit in super well since why would a society tolerate such near pointless destructive forces so I'm hoping the Rav book gives them a little more raison d'etre.
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Jul 25, 2018 16:11
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I think there's a couple excuses for that. I think that the Guildpact literally forces everyone to put up with Rakdos and Gruul and the other factions just try to keep them in check and give them a job to do. I forget if this was an actually given excuse from a MaRo article or something I just made up but I think Rakdos might be a little more subdued than the cards let on. Like, the cards just don't show it because in a game where we're Planeswalkers trying to murder each other, "Magician Who Does a Card Trick And Nothing Bad Happens" isn't very useful as opposed to "Fat Knife Clown". So the game cares more about the chaotic death cult portion of the Rakdos guild than the in-universe fun face people usually see. Still that being said, if there was a greater than zero chance that going to the guild's magic show might result in someone just actually getting sawed in half on stage I would think those shows would be a lot less popular. I don't think you get to "whoopsie" that one under the rug.
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Jul 25, 2018 16:48
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I'm bummed that M:tG cards will now be justifications for putting more stupid into this game. loving hell, I would've rather a crossover with just about anything else. Even the comedy options you are thinking about. Stapling on a bloated card game with years of redactions, lore, etc. is just too much for me to parse. Nobody is making me play the M:tG setting, yeah, I just hate the thought of the wasted opportunity on trying to milk a cash cow than ... you know... give a bone to existing D&D stuff that doesn't get to see the light of day. I'm not trying to be the grognard shitmaster, but I've avoided M:tG for this long and now it's in my hobby too! 
Firstborn fucked around with this message at 17:05 on Jul 25, 2018 |
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Jul 25, 2018 17:01
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Firstborn posted:I'm bummed that M:tG cards will now be justifications for putting more stupid into this game. loving hell, I would've rather a crossover with just about anything else. Even the comedy options you are thinking about. Stapling on a bloated card game with years of redactions, lore, etc. is just too much for me to parse. Nobody is making me play the M:tG setting, yeah, I just hate the thought of the wasted opportunity on trying to milk a cash cow than ... you know... give a bone to existing D&D stuff that doesn't get to see the light of day. you may not be trying but boy are you succeeding
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Jul 25, 2018 17:15
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Laughing at DnD players trying to act like they're above MtG players. Only difference is amount of money invested and even then you can go crazy for DnD
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Jul 25, 2018 17:16
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It was a joke. I don't give a poo poo about WotC books at all*. This post is available on dmsguild for 1.99 I've included a d37 table of other lovely games to put in this one * a recent development after buyer's remorse on some modules that required more work than if I had did it myself Firstborn fucked around with this message at 17:20 on Jul 25, 2018 |
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Jul 25, 2018 17:17
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MonsterEnvy posted:Races of Eberron UA https://media.wizards.com/2018/dnd/downloads/723UA_EberronRaces7232018.pdf quote:Integrated Tool finally i can live the dream of playing a warforged chauffeur with an integrated carriage envoybots, roll out
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Jul 25, 2018 17:29
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i don't think it's particularly surprising that people are skeptical of them pushing a new setting without a clear vision for how it integrates or what it brings to the table beyond "it is an MTG tie-in." Sigil is planes and megacity, dark sun is psionics and harsh wilderness, etc. The existing concepts we've seen from the ravnica stuff released through UA doesn't seem to have any real through line. Ravnica seems to confirm the existing complaint that 5e has no real vision and releases books slowly and seemingly at random. from the opposite end, what was cool about ravnica when it first dropped in MTG was in giving strong flavor to existing extratextual concepts; it's one thing to say that izzet represents the tricky and unpredictable nature of the U/R combo, and another to be like "niv mizzet is an Ancient Red Dragon who casts disintegrate as a level 18 caster" and so on.
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Jul 25, 2018 17:45
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At this point I'm hard pressed to identify what any of you actually want or expect out of a setting book.
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Jul 25, 2018 18:05
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Personally, for me, the text has to eventually coalesce into a game. Pages upon pages of self referential garbage that informs nobody and reads like the author was getting paid by the word is the standard. Rather than starting with the history 10,000 years ago, maybe give some threads that lead to some place you could actually show and don't tell. Format the book so it's not strictly DM fanfiction that will never get run because the book isn't designed to be used at a table. Most settings books are just really bad genre fiction where you have to parse important information from dozens of paragraphs concerning towns the players will never go to, gods the players will never ask about, kings long dead with names nobody will remember...
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Jul 25, 2018 18:10
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Firstborn posted:Personally, for me, the text has to eventually coalesce into a game. Pages upon pages of self referential garbage that informs nobody and reads like the author was getting paid by the word is the standard. Rather than starting with the history 10,000 years ago, maybe give some threads that lead to some place you could actually show and don't tell. Format the book so it's not strictly DM fanfiction that will never get run because the book isn't designed to be used at a table. Most settings books are just really bad genre fiction where you have to parse important information from dozens of paragraphs concerning towns the players will never go to, gods the players will never ask about, kings long dead with names nobody will remember... I like DM fanfiction
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Jul 25, 2018 18:13
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It's okay if you like it. Every DM I know has walls and walls of hardcovers he will never run ever, but has probably read once or twice and imagined a campaign hook about it (me too). That's the nature of those books. I don't mean to say I want a setting book with strictly mechanics, but you could probably throw in some one-page dungeons or encounters that would give you a peek into the tone they are going for and stuff. Instead, they will just write a lovely genre novel and bold some text if it corresponds to a creature you can find in a separate monster manual.
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Jul 25, 2018 18:19
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Firstborn posted:It's okay if you like it. Every DM I know has walls and walls of hardcovers he will never run ever, but has probably read once or twice and imagined a campaign hook about it (me too). That's the nature of those books. I don't mean to say I want a setting book with strictly mechanics, but you could probably throw in some one-page dungeons or encounters that would give you a peek into the tone they are going for and stuff. Instead, they will just write a lovely genre novel and bold some text if it corresponds to a creature you can find in a separate monster manual. Yeah I would love that
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Jul 25, 2018 18:21
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mango sentinel posted:At this point I'm hard pressed to identify what any of you actually want or expect out of a setting book. im still waiting on a PHB audiobook
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Jul 25, 2018 18:25
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I was meh on both of these settings (Ravnica and Eberron) but I just learned Eberron is early-20th century war in DnD setting form, and now I'm going to be all in on that poo poo. I ran a Star Wars EotE campaign based on Hitler and the Munich Putsch after I read Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. (No, Hitler was not the good guy because I'm sure someone has done that.)  mango sentinel posted:At this point I'm hard pressed to identify what any of you actually want or expect out of a setting book. I posted this before, but a Dark Sun or Dragonlance book in the style of Curse of Strahd would've been my preference, with lots of setting material and a good sandbox-y campaign to go with it. I'd also accept something along the lines of the 3-volume Drow War series.
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Jul 25, 2018 18:31
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mango sentinel posted:At this point I'm hard pressed to identify what any of you actually want or expect out of a setting book. Well it can't be a new setting because there are old ones that haven't been released. And it can't be an old one because those are all rehashes. It can't have lots of new options because then they're forcing you to buy the book. But if it doesn't have enough then it is a waste. DND broke some brains and now some people just look for a reason to be outraged and butthurt about everything.
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Jul 25, 2018 18:42
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Seems like a pretty reductive take. I also never read or talked to anyone who thought CoS for example was a rehash of the Ravenloft module. Not really sure what you are getting at. e: edited for feelings Firstborn fucked around with this message at 18:49 on Jul 25, 2018 |
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Jul 25, 2018 18:46
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whoops
Firstborn fucked around with this message at 18:54 on Jul 25, 2018 |
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Jul 25, 2018 18:52
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I want some low-magic setting poo poo. Where wizards and heroes are rare and amazing. Forgotten Realms makes it difficult for you as a DM to make heroes feel heroic by default. A wizard can shoot a fireball at 3 but whatever, even in this small village there's an NPC that can do better than that but doesn't because of *~reasons~*. Apparently Greyhawk is kind of like that, fantasy but not like "magic hogwarts street lamps" all over the place.
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Jul 25, 2018 19:07
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doctor 7 posted:I want some low-magic setting poo poo. Where wizards and heroes are rare and amazing. I'm kind of skeptical that Greyhawk is like that based on what I vaguely remember from reading the Greyhawk Gazetteer back in the day. If I remember correctly the entire Western side of the main continent is a desert because some mages got out of control.
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Jul 25, 2018 19:10
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Greyhawk is one of the most egregious examples of high-level NPCs not doing poo poo about the goblin town nearby for ~reasons~. Turns out, the ~reason~ was that Gygax tended to populate his towns and stuff with retired PCs (in some cases, the players retired from the game) to give the game a consistent feel like you would see in an MMO or something.
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Jul 25, 2018 19:13
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Firstborn posted:Greyhawk is one of the most egregious examples of high-level NPCs not doing poo poo about the goblin town nearby for ~reasons~. Turns out, the ~reason~ was that Gygax tended to populate his towns and stuff with retired PCs (in some cases, the players retired from the game) to give the game a consistent feel like you would see in an MMO or something. Ah. All I know about Greyhawk is stuff I read in older modules and none of the towns seem magical mystical. Compared to Forgotten Realms where basically everything is magical of some sort.
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Jul 25, 2018 20:56
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If there's anything that really separates Greyhawk from FR, I have no idea what it is. Anyways, some of you are a touch too cynical. Even if the Ravnica book is a shameless marketing move, that doesn't preclude it from being good. Plus, Ravnica is cool.
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Jul 25, 2018 21:10
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doctor 7 posted:Ah. All I know about Greyhawk is stuff I read in older modules and none of the towns seem magical mystical. Compared to Forgotten Realms where basically everything is magical of some sort. Towns don't seem magical mystical but 9 out of 10 of them have that weird old guy who lives on the outskirts of town that is actually some obi wan Luke Skywalker bullshit 20th level adventure who retired for the quiet life and secretly protects the village. Conversely, Eberron is full of magic and incredibly fantastical, but the very powerful movers and shakers of that setting top out at like level 10-12. Characters in that setting can feel elevated to real power players on a global scale and eventually just demigods. The level of magic in a setting doesn't really dictate that compared to the relative level of power/capability.
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Jul 25, 2018 21:12
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So does the kalashtar's racial resistance to psychic damage make it a prime choice for the "angry onion" druid/barbarian build, or are there still better races to do that with?
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Jul 25, 2018 21:21
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The only thing that bums me out about Ravnica is that it's like a baby Sigil, and that means we won't get Sigil for a long time. I wanna play the poo poo out of Spore Druid though. I bet that School of Invention wizard is Izzet, too. Unrelated: Does anyone else like doing lovely accents as much as I do? Because I loving love doing lovely accents. Current ones are a horrible Skyrim-inspired Norse accent and the other is like a nasal Deckard Cain, with mid-Atlantic and Maine in equal measure. At some point I wanna try to do an idyllic Dorset country accent without becoming a pirate. It's tricky!
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Jul 25, 2018 21:22
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Demons & Devils & Dungeons & Dragons: A Brief History As a response to the release of Mordenkainen's tome of Foes, the Plot Points podcast did a fantastic job of breaking it down and wanted to let the world know as best I can. https://plotpoints.libsyn.com/demons-devils-dungeons-dragons-a-brief-history-pt-1 https://plotpoints.libsyn.com/demons-devils-dungeons-dragons-a-brief-history-part-ii I'm kinda amazed whom he was able to record with.
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