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change my name posted:Everything I’ve seen in FR lore bends toward everything eventually resetting back to a status quo over and over again. I’m sure there’s an in-game explanation of Harper sabotage or whatever but it’s probably that WotC writers don’t want there to be major upheaval they did a major upheaval in 4e with blowing up the setting and advancing the timeline 100 years and it loving sucked, the only good parts were largely evolutionary, not change for change's sake
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Mar 28, 2021 18:32
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El Seven posted:My request to you fine folks is for a few more seemingly mundane jobs, which can also be used as a step to facilitate the heist. The players will not be aware that each mission is part of a greater heist. You can stretch out the missions you mentioned and make the first half prep work, scouting, gaining information about the typical schedules of relevant people, researching the type of safe so they can pick the lock easier, and other things of that nature.
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Mar 28, 2021 19:08
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Arivia posted:they did a major upheaval in 4e with blowing up the setting and advancing the timeline 100 years and it loving sucked, the only good parts were largely evolutionary, not change for change's sake In a way, I'm glad that they don't try to tell some epic story that results in permanent changes to the Forgotten Realms, since they have enough trouble telling coherent small scale stories let alone something huge like that. Seriously, can you imagine it being anything other than Mordenkainen, Drizzt Do'Urden, and Elminster (or whoever) teaming up while the NPCs cook for them and do their laundry? Maybe, if the players make an especially good Performance check during the nightly entertainment, they might be allowed to witness the climactic showdown! If not, your players can read about it in a new novel from R. A. Salvatore, due out this fall. It'll have more cameos and callbacks than loving Ready Player One, so preorder today to find out what happens to your characters! Seriously though, WotC would need to totally overhaul how they handle modules and storytelling in said modules to pull off something like that, and while I think such a thing is technically possible, I don't think they would.
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Mar 28, 2021 19:55
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Arivia posted:they did a major upheaval in 4e with blowing up the setting and advancing the timeline 100 years and it loving sucked, the only good parts were largely evolutionary, not change for change's sake Yeah I kinda hate that because it means older modules set in the FR haven't gotten an update.
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Mar 28, 2021 20:07
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El Seven posted:[quote]My request to you fine folks is for a few more seemingly mundane jobs, which can also be used as a step to facilitate the heist. The players will not be aware that each mission is part of a greater heist. One word of caution I'd have for you here -- it sounds like you're scripting out the heist in fairly high detail. Are your players on board with that level of fore-ordaining things? What happens if the heist goes off the rails? Who is coming up with this heist plan in-universe, and why aren't they keeping the players informed of the why of the minor jobs they're doing? Having said all of that, the common heist tropes I'm aware of are: - You need to recruit someone to help with the heist - There's a known hazard that you'll need some way to deal with during the heist - You need some way to make a clean getaway after getting what you're after These can all tie together. Maybe your getaway involves hiring a druid who can transform the characters (and their pilfered loot) into birds, then they fly away to a safehouse. Or a wizard who can just teleport them straight there. But you need some way to get the spellcaster on side. Do they have a debt they owe to a rival guild? Maybe they stole something and then lost it when gambling, and the original owner is demanding its return? As for known hazards, maybe the heist is guarded by a chimera or basilisk or some other dangerous beast/abomination/etc. You'll need to get the tools to either sneak past it, or convince it that you aren't a threat. You could get guard uniforms, but the beast can differentiate you anyway because you don't smell right -- all the guards that work with the beast use a specific perfume that's hard to find.
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Mar 28, 2021 20:18
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Yeah I kinda hate that because it means older modules set in the FR haven't gotten an update. Just have the party step into a magical time traveling inn whenever you want to run an old module.
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Mar 28, 2021 20:22
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Azathoth posted:In a way, I'm glad that they don't try to tell some epic story that results in permanent changes to the Forgotten Realms, since they have enough trouble telling coherent small scale stories let alone something huge like that. Smaller scope modules in the FR are perfectly fine, but WotC has demonstrated it doesn't think they'll sell as well without comic-book style "THE WHOLE WORLD IS AT STAKE" poo poo over the last 20 years again and again and again.
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Mar 28, 2021 20:32
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change my name posted:Just start a cult, they're never hurting for recruits Just join or begin promoting one of the many cults that already exist. FR is never hurting for religious crazies. Fumbles posted:It's fair enough. But be prepared if one of the Big Dogs decided they'd rather just take you over or support someone taking over your land who isn't going to force them to pay you. Or just refuse to pay you and functionally say "yeah what are you gonna do about it?" This was the point of the Zhentarim. They use their magical and monstrous powers to bully small domains and rivals into giving their merchants favorable trade concessions to bankroll the development of their magical and monstrous powers. Azathoth posted:In a way, I'm glad that they don't try to tell some epic story that results in permanent changes to the Forgotten Realms, since they have enough trouble telling coherent small scale stories let alone something huge like that. The Realms do see a lot of permanent changes, but those changes don't do much to change the overall flavor of the setting. The term Realms Shaking Event (RSE) wasn't coined for nothing. The 2E material altered the pantheon and expanded the setting. The 3E material added new major villain groups and complicated the politics of the setting's core regions. The 4E material put the setting through an apocalypse that reshuffled the villain and god rosters and replaced some of the legacy real-world-analog regions with more fantastical ones. The 5E material undid a lot of the geographical and divine changes from 4E while keeping most of its villains and new races and classes. The thing is: no matter how expansive or sweeping the changes may be, FR is always going to be D&D as presented by the core game books. A lot of the expansive changes made to the setting are made specifically to keep it in line with the current edition. So from a big picture view, the setting never really changes much. TSR did make a module series like you describe, the Avatar modules, and from everything I've read, they're just as awful as you imagine they would be. I don't know much about the Maztica or Horde modules, but it wouldn't surprise me if they were similar. But I'm gonna reluctantly come to WotC's defense here. Tomb of Annihilation and Rime of the Frostmaiden are both major region-affecting stories, and while the former has a lot of cameos (and a big one that's not even an FR cameo), they're never designed to steal the party's thunder. Frostmaiden's main plot develops from the events of The Crystal Shard, but it doesn't have any cameos from Drizzt or his friends. The 4E Neverwinter book tracks closely with Salvatore's 4E Drizzt novels and is basically a catalog of their locations, conflicts, and villains, but it only includes Drizzt as a guy PCs can possibly learn some alternate encounter or utility powers from. And the three big 3E adventures put the party at the forefront of all the action. When WotC has done big RSE stuff, they've kept it to novels and sourcebooks, so you might be right that it would end up like the Avatar modules. And the question might be: why would they release a major epic adventure to change the Realms? But I think the problem with WotC's approach to FR adventures is less that they are driven by metaplot and named NPCs and more that they take a really slapdash and superficial approach to using the lore and fiction. I think you can compare it to Bethesda's approach to Fallout where it's a bunch of key words and signifiers without much concern for a coherent interconnected fictional world.
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Mar 28, 2021 21:00
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Most of the Maztica stuff is crap, but FMA2 Endless Armies is surprisingly good - it's Lovecraftian pulp where the Amnian conquistadors gently caress up the indigenous watchers over a slumbering Great Old One and the PCs have to put it back down.
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Mar 28, 2021 21:11
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Now that people have had time to see some characters with custom lineages or different distributions of the racial ASI per Tasha rules, are there any particular interesting race/class combinations of note that weren't a thing before? I'm not thinking so much "now my wizard can wear armor, it's OP as hell" as much as like "now this cool trait finds a neat home in a new class where it was kind of awkward and unused before."
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Mar 28, 2021 21:28
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Nehru the Damaja posted:Now that people have had time to see some characters with custom lineages or different distributions of the racial ASI per Tasha rules, are there any particular interesting race/class combinations of note that weren't a thing before? I'm not thinking so much "now my wizard can wear armor, it's OP as hell" as much as like "now this cool trait finds a neat home in a new class where it was kind of awkward and unused before." Goliaths make neat conquest paladins or melee warlocks because their racial can make Armor of Agathys last longer.
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Mar 28, 2021 21:49
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Nehru the Damaja posted:Now that people have had time to see some characters with custom lineages or different distributions of the racial ASI per Tasha rules, are there any particular interesting race/class combinations of note that weren't a thing before? I'm not thinking so much "now my wizard can wear armor, it's OP as hell" as much as like "now this cool trait finds a neat home in a new class where it was kind of awkward and unused before." Wildhunt Shifter barbarians work really well now as a way to negate the downside of Reckless Attack, where before it wasn't really worth it because of the +2 to wisdom. Kobolds can also work really well as spellcasters now that you don't have to grab +2 dex, Scorching Ray with each beam having advantage is nice and being able to use saving throw spells does a lot to negate their main weakness of disadvantage in sunlight.
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Mar 28, 2021 21:53
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You can go for str / con as a tiefling now, and having Hellish Rebuke as an option is nice, as is the fire resistance for tanking.
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Mar 28, 2021 23:31
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Do the high elves not have a nature God? I was looking at the Seldarine and there only seems to be Rillifane, for wild elves. If I were playing a high elf nature cleric, would I flavor it as just an aspect of Correlon or something?
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Mar 29, 2021 00:05
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quote:The thing is: no matter how expansive or sweeping the changes may be, FR is always going to be D&D as presented by the core game books. This isn't strictly true, it's just what WotC decided to do. Changing which gods you can worship is more of an annoyance than a shakeup; and generally too many of the adventures involve bringing Elminster his groceries. It's often not literally Elminster, but stories where the players' agency revolves around which NPC they choose to serve while that NPC continues to run the setting at large, whether or not this is justified by a book series that one person at the table last picked up 20 years ago. The focus should not be on NPCs at all. Book characters should not really be involved in adventures at all. The stories of these adventures should always hand players the reins. The amount of people who give a drat about realmslore was diminishing 10 years ago and I can't imagine it being anything but worse now. And it's not really specific to the Realms, to be fair, nobody gives a poo poo about Mordenkainen either. If your setting becomes known for "realms-shaking events" to the point there's an acronym it's already become a problem. There's a lot of baggage between "Mordenkainen? Who cares" and module writers punching above the material's weight and trying to do Crisis on Infinite Planes material with a bunch of characters that just don't have many peoples' attention. Even in a setting with more compelling characters the way they do adventures would be pretty weak. Meeting Superman might be cool, doing stuff for Superman because he can't be bothered would not. Generally what people go in for in interactive storytelling is a chance to make their mark on the setting, as well as a setting that feels alive, explicable, and in some way relevant/relatable to real life. This is why Eberron is popular, it's a big reason why New Vegas is the most popular 3D Fallout, it's most of the reason why Bioware games were a big deal in their day (certainly wasn't the gameplay). Comparatively, far fewer people are compelled by a series of LOTR photocopies thrown in with the kitchen sink because "ah it's the classic realms andeverythingforeverybodyit'sjustoverhereinthecorner."
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Mar 29, 2021 01:31
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El Seven posted:
Some ideas off the top of my head... 1. The party needs to kidnap someone with information necessary to the heist and bring them in alive. 2. The party needs to plant evidence in the hideout/home of a member of a rival gang. 3. Steel an important key off the ring of a local guard/official and replace it with a fake.
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Mar 29, 2021 01:37
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Sodomy Hussein posted:This isn't strictly true, it's just what WotC decided to do. Nah, it's basically the point of the setting since TSR purchased it from Greenwood. They wanted a generic setting for AD&D that wasn't Gygax's own Greyhawk. The purpose of the Time of Troubles/Avatar Crisis was to provide a metaplot explanation for why the rules of the setting changed from 1E to 2E.
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Mar 29, 2021 01:46
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Sodomy Hussein posted:The amount of people who give a drat about realmslore was diminishing 10 years ago and I can't imagine it being anything but worse now. I knew who he was and felt embarrassed for everyone involved, so god only knows how it felt for someone under 40 who's never played Baldur's Gate 2. I can't imagine there are too many people who play D&D and have never read a book or played a game set in the Forgotten Realms*, but I'd be interested to hear what those people think when one of these super hyped characters pops up in modules. * Though possibly a growing number thanks to the popularity of homebrew settings like Adventure Zone, Crit Role, Dimension 20 etc.
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Mar 29, 2021 03:51
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Bobby Deluxe posted:I can't imagine there are too many people who play D&D and have never read a book or played a game set in the Forgotten Realms*, but I'd be interested to hear what those people think when one of these super hyped characters pops up in modules. I've played D&D since the late 80s, read like 100 dragonlance novels, a bunch of REALLY lovely (somehow shittier than DL) Greyhawk novels, but the only FR stuff I read was The Cleric Quintet which I was given as a gift. No Drizzt. Never played Baldur's Gate, but I did play Pools of Radiance on DOS in the early 90s. One of the ways I knew my Waterdeep Heist campaign was going to go poorly from the start was when my DM went nuts showing us the 2-page spread of The Yawning Portal that was literally a fully-diagrammed Where's Waldo of character cameos. A couple of players had about 30 seconds of interest while the DM pointed out various characters to us for FIVE MINUTES STRAIGHT. He seemed legitimately upset when I told him I didn't know a single one of these characters. This is basically how I feel whenever I hit a cameo moment in 5E. The characters are almost always introduced such that you are supposed to be impressed by their name recognition. It's never like... Jarlaxle swinging in from a balcony and flexing on 3 dudes who were kicking your rear end. That might make them interesting to the players. Instead he just swaggers in and people go "IT'S JARLAXLE!! WOOOO!!!" and you are supposed to be impressed. It's dumb af.
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Mar 29, 2021 04:12
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The only named lore NPCs I throw at my party are Acererak and Halaster Blackcloak. In both cases it is because the party is messing with their deathtrap dungeon. If someone went out of their way to find Mordenkainen or something I'd let them but I like to make up my own quest giving NPCs. Edit: oh I also once had them encounter Dungeon Master from the D&D cartoon. He is part of the official lore right? Rutibex fucked around with this message at 05:00 on Mar 29, 2021 |
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Mar 29, 2021 04:33
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Bobby Deluxe posted:Last Comic Relief in the UK they got a DM to lead a bunch of comedians. The quest itself was the standard dumb joke campaign, but halfway through the final battle the DM got overexcited and decided to add Minsc for absolutely no reason. It was pretty clear none of the players knew or cared who he was. I have honestly never touched any of the Forgotten Realms tie-in media outside of the stuff published as actual game supplements. In fact I don't think I've ever read a D&D-branded novel at all, and I'm generally not super drawn to generic post-LotR high fantasy stuff to begin with. I've expressed it a few times in the thread, but as someone who absolutely does not care about the Forgotten Realms, I find the way modules are written to accommodate cameos by famous NPCs to be utterly baffling, mostly because they're usually done in a really clumsy way that does seem to think about what this adds to the adventure the players are supposed to be on and often devotes large amounts of page space to things that don't matter to players not already familiar with the tie-in products. I think cameos in modules can be done in an effective way, but that's not the way I've seen it done in the FR modules I've read. KingKalamari fucked around with this message at 07:36 on Mar 29, 2021 |
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Mar 29, 2021 07:32
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When I ran Dragon Heist, I replaced Mirt the Moneylender with my last Baldur's Gate PC as leader of the Harpers, and she became one of the most memorable NPCs of the campaign, I think because the onus was explicitly on me to make her memorable, rather than being able to rely on the celebrity factor of her having appeared in a bunch of books.
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Mar 29, 2021 09:20
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Bobby Deluxe posted:I can't imagine there are too many people who play D&D and have never read a book or played a game set in the Forgotten Realms*, but I'd be interested to hear what those people think when one of these super hyped characters pops up in modules. Not FR but I once joined a friend's campaign with a new DM that was set in the Crit Role world (well it was a whole bunch of worlds/settings, it was strange). At the time I had no exposure to CR and everyone else were diehards. To make a long-story-short I dipped out after two sessions once Percy and Grog showed up, and I did not get why everyone else was freaking out for a know-it-all-noble and a dumb-barbarian. So yeah it's weird 
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Mar 29, 2021 10:54
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Blooming Brilliant posted:Not FR but I once joined a friend's campaign with a new DM that was set in the Crit Role world (well it was a whole bunch of worlds/settings, it was strange). At the time I had no exposure to CR and everyone else were diehards.  Wait, did they include characters from a web show as NPCs in their game? That's some deep meta-nerd poo poo.
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Mar 29, 2021 13:38
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I've never had a major character from FR lore in the game I am running. Most of the people my players end up interacting with are functionaries working under the heads of states for the region or representatives of factions at play in the particular intrigues they have gotten involved with. Honestly if I decided to run a game off a module, I guess I am not opposed to doing so on principle but I would have no special regard for them and they would be as mortal and fallible as any of the other pieces on the board. I will never read a forgotten realms novel
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Mar 29, 2021 13:50
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Rutibex posted:
It's bad but it's no worse than what WoTC is doing by inserting characters from their novels as Big Deal NPCs. If anything, critical role characters are more recognizable to new players that FR novel characters. Of the DnD group I play with, there are at least two people who watch critical role, I am the only one who played the old infinity engine games, and none of us have ever read a DnD novel.
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Mar 29, 2021 14:01
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Rutibex posted:
Eh, I think it depends a lot on execution. Pretty much all of the major long-standing NPCs in FR and Greyhawk are other people's former characters, and honestly having Mordenkainen show up doesn't strike me particularly different from Percy or Grog, especially if those two characters are in the same sort of position where they're PCs of the table which originated the setting (I'm assuming they are, I don't watch CR). The way those cameos are handled in published WotC adventures is almost universally terrible, and it sounds like it was terrible in the game Blooming Brilliant sat in on, but I don't think such appearances are inherently bad. For me it boils down to whether, if you replaced the character with a non-celebrity NPC with identical traits, would the interaction still be relevant to the game, or at the very least, fun and memorable? If the answer to that is no, then the cameo probably needs reconsidering unless literally everyone at the table is a massive lore nerd.
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Mar 29, 2021 14:05
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The character cameos in WotC modules are problematic for the same reason the modules generally have issues: they're written as if you're supposed to somehow reenact an adventure that the author DM'd. The idea that players might be unfamiliar with elements of the setting, or make different decisions from the author's party, is typically not really engaged with. That's why the modules often feature weird character cameos and reams of useless DM notes, while missing fundamental elements like character motivations.
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Mar 29, 2021 15:14
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Rutibex posted:
The only character from a webshow that was added to an official FR setting(unless AL is doing wild poo poo or someone from a show I haven't heard of) was Arkhan, Joe Manganiello's character from his home game and a guest on Critical Role for their Finale, who's a Tiamat paladin, who is trying to free her from hell. It's not really played up as some huge thing that you should know or care who this is. It's just another named NPC in Avernus they put in the book. There is a sourcebook for Wildmount which is set in Mercer's world Exandria. But anyone having Percy and Grog show up is just pure DM choice. no player characters are even mentioned in that sourcebook. Edit: It's early and I might have misparsed your post apologies Dexo fucked around with this message at 16:19 on Mar 29, 2021 |
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Mar 29, 2021 16:15
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i have read three (3) r.a. salvatore novels when i was 11 i basically only remember drizzt and lolth and that's about it; i wasn't even playing d&d at that time i have read michael moorcock, however, so that's basically the same thing as reading novels about dungeons and dragons
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Mar 29, 2021 16:44
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I guess technically Frostmaiden changes things up quite a bit too, but we'll have to see if further modules/games mention it at all I think as written you can't fight the chardalyn dragon until it has destroyed all of the Ten Towns? Our DM let us cut it off early but I guess in-canon they're totally gone now Edit: Actually the FR wiki says it takes place in 1489, so who the gently caress knows
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Mar 29, 2021 16:47
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I'd like to see more modules released that are nothing but settings. Don't try to write an epic adventure with story twists and shocking reveals and deep dives into the lore of the setting. Just give me a creepy dungeon, a weird host of creatures to live there, why, and let me set the PC's loose in it. Expedition to Barrier Peaks comes to mind. More of something like that.
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Mar 29, 2021 16:48
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Declan MacManus posted:i have read three (3) r.a. salvatore novels when i was 11 The closest thing I have ever read to a DND novel (as in a mediocre fantasy novel set in a property owned by WOTC) is some of the official MTG novelizations. Specifically, the absolute drug fueled nonsense of the Onslaught Block books. One of the main characters is a wet-dream illusion angel amputee with panther legs. My only exposure to most DND specific characters is osmosis and noticing way to many male dual wielding male Drow Rangers in games I was playing in.
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Mar 29, 2021 16:54
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Lucas Archer posted:I'd like to see more modules released that are nothing but settings. Don't try to write an epic adventure with story twists and shocking reveals and deep dives into the lore of the setting. Just give me a creepy dungeon, a weird host of creatures to live there, why, and let me set the PC's loose in it. I love the old modules for exactly this reason. They have a lot of generic "content" but leave the flavor to the DM, to the point where important NPCs will not even have a name, just "Captain of the Guard". That way you can add it into whatever setting you want really easily.
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Mar 29, 2021 16:55
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Rutibex posted:I love the old modules for exactly this reason. They have a lot of generic "content" but leave the flavor to the DM, to the point where important NPCs will not even have a name, just "Captain of the Guard". That way you can add it into whatever setting you want really easily. how... modular
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Mar 29, 2021 16:58
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Lucas Archer posted:I'd like to see more modules released that are nothing but settings. Don't try to write an epic adventure with story twists and shocking reveals and deep dives into the lore of the setting. Just give me a creepy dungeon, a weird host of creatures to live there, why, and let me set the PC's loose in it.
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Mar 29, 2021 17:02
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Syrinxx posted:As stated earlier in the thread, they are making money hand over fist with lovely 300 page tomes, why would they change to something good That's just it, I don't think it's an either/or proposition. Why not both? They have a poo poo ton of writers. Have the big campaigns still put out, but add in some smaller, more modular dungeons/scenarios in between. We've already seen it established that D&D, as a brand, sells great. It's like they're leaving money on the table.
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Mar 29, 2021 18:02
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I keep coming up with character concepts faster than I can actually play them new character idea: "Arax the Bull" , minotaur paladin. Battle Cry: "Taste the Beast"  (default party in c64 Pool of Radiance)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w29PG-8Tywo https://twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/996536482306273280?s=20
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Mar 29, 2021 18:08
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you can smite with natural weapons but not your fists
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Mar 29, 2021 18:10
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I don’t even put cameos in the Star Trek Adventures game I run unless it would be awkward not to acknowledge the people who run the place they’re trying to sneak past (my players always seem to be trying to sneak past DS9 and through the wormhole). I know almost nothing about FR despite reading the source books since I was a little kid. The setting’s details just slide off my brain and refuse to stick. It’s generic high fantasy and I can’t imagine playing something that relied on lore instead of whatever seemed to entertain my players. I have been binging The Adventure Zone and picked up Monster of the Week to start something kind of similar to Amnesty, but even with that direct of an inspiration, it’s still gonna be a completely different thing lead by my players’ actions. I guess I kind of get it if you know you have a lore loving group of players, but that just sounds like the worst.
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Mar 29, 2021 18:11
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