Yeah, and it's also easy to find pretty well-written stuff for free online these days (or collaborate with people who will help you write it), too.
Yep, which is why I'm far from ecstatically blown away by 5e's "contributions" to the hobby (I'm thinking particularly of Session 0 and Boundaries) in some of its recent hardbacks. I mean "codification" in an official book is great and all, but there's this marketing of the codification of known practices as "leadership" in the PR building up to the release that just strikes me as inauthentic at best and outright cynical in some regards. The community tends to articulate these matters more concisely as well which makes me feel some of this output is just "filler" to justify a hardcovers page count. I sort of wish the game would go with smaller products in this regard, but for whatever reason, likely business, we got the hardcover press grinder.
4E had Nentir Vale, if you're talking about a major "emergent" setting. 5E seems to be converting M:tG material for new setting content though.
I don't put a lot of stock in the MtG stuff. There's good stuff there, but it's also sort of "at hand" material a lot of creative work has been done on, and produced almost "in house" (like the design team down the hall did all the art direction and what have you already) so it's literally an economical offering in terms of resources required to produce as opposed to a whole cloth setting piece.
I can also say from D&D Live I'm very concerned that Witchlight seems to simply be produced because they saw how much success Hitpoint was having with the Heckna carnival campaign kickstarter. Also not sure about the implicit forcing of a parallel between Feywild's "domains" being a thing to balance with the Shadowfell's Domains of Dread. I mean I always thought the Shadowfell was a "parallel" to the prime material world and the Domains of Dread were something that existed in relationship to the Shadowfell ... did the Feywild always have a similar "echo" of the prime material with additional nodes like Prismire or whatever it's called? I just don't see say The Raven Queen existing in this Feywild, of course I've also seen folks portray the Raven Queen living in something like Candyland, and that just seems to do the idea a disservice.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Relationships from Prime Material to Feywild to Shadowfell have shifted from edition to edition. One way I heard it explained once was that the Feywild was comprised of all the dreams of all the creatures in the Prime, and the Shadowfell was comprised of our nightmares.
The original origins of the Feywild and the Shadowfell comes from 4e. It was said that they were created at the same time as the material plane was by the Primordials in the time before the Dawn Wars. When the Primordials were crafting the world, they casted off bits they perceived as “to bright” or “too dark” from the Prime. Those bight and dark bits culminated into the Feywild and Shadowfell, which are seen as the bright and dark echos of the Prime world and many of the creatures that exist on these two planes are considered echos of creatures from the Prime Material. The geology of the three planes are similar, though not entirely the same.
Obviously they had to change the origins of these two planes to fit 5e’s cosmology (the Feywild seems to be the newly reimagined Plane of Faeries and the Shadowfell is a combination of the Plane of Shadows and the Negative energy plane from what I have read) but they still seem to act similarly to their 4e counterparts at least as far as I’ve seen (I of course could be mistaken). So if the Domains of Dread are now tied to the Shadowfell in some way, it doesn’t seem to be too far of a stretch that an oppose expression of them could exist and have a connection to the Feywilds. It makes sense to me as a design concept at least.
4E had Nentir Vale, if you're talking about a major "emergent" setting. 5E seems to be converting M:tG material for new setting content though.
I don't put a lot of stock in the MtG stuff. There's good stuff there, but it's also sort of "at hand" material a lot of creative work has been done on, and produced almost "in house" (like the design team down the hall did all the art direction and what have you already) so it's literally an economical offering in terms of resources required to produce as opposed to a whole cloth setting piece.
I can also say from D&D Live I'm very concerned that Witchlight seems to simply be produced because they saw how much success Hitpoint was having with the Heckna carnival campaign kickstarter. Also not sure about the implicit forcing of a parallel between Feywild's "domains" being a thing to balance with the Shadowfell's Domains of Dread. I mean I always thought the Shadowfell was a "parallel" to the prime material world and the Domains of Dread were something that existed in relationship to the Shadowfell ... did the Feywild always have a similar "echo" of the prime material with additional nodes like Prismire or whatever it's called? I just don't see say The Raven Queen existing in this Feywild, of course I've also seen folks portray the Raven Queen living in something like Candyland, and that just seems to do the idea a disservice.
That's fine, I wasn't making a comment on quality - CharlesThePlant mentioned "the way 3E had Eberron" which made me assume he was talking about editions having new settings emerge, I just wanted to point out 5E does have new setting content emerge already. The M:tG stuff is hit and miss for me (and from what I read on here, it's the same for a lot of others but possibly with other hits and other misses).
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
4E had Nentir Vale, if you're talking about a major "emergent" setting. 5E seems to be converting M:tG material for new setting content though.
I don't put a lot of stock in the MtG stuff. There's good stuff there, but it's also sort of "at hand" material a lot of creative work has been done on, and produced almost "in house" (like the design team down the hall did all the art direction and what have you already) so it's literally an economical offering in terms of resources required to produce as opposed to a whole cloth setting piece.
I can also say from D&D Live I'm very concerned that Witchlight seems to simply be produced because they saw how much success Hitpoint was having with the Heckna carnival campaign kickstarter. Also not sure about the implicit forcing of a parallel between Feywild's "domains" being a thing to balance with the Shadowfell's Domains of Dread. I mean I always thought the Shadowfell was a "parallel" to the prime material world and the Domains of Dread were something that existed in relationship to the Shadowfell ... did the Feywild always have a similar "echo" of the prime material with additional nodes like Prismire or whatever it's called? I just don't see say The Raven Queen existing in this Feywild, of course I've also seen folks portray the Raven Queen living in something like Candyland, and that just seems to do the idea a disservice.
That's fine, I wasn't making a comment on quality - CharlesThePlant mentioned "the way 3E had Eberron" which made me assume he was talking about editions having new settings emerge, I just wanted to point out 5E does have new setting content emerge already. The M:tG stuff is hit and miss for me (and from what I read on here, it's the same for a lot of others but possibly with other hits and other misses).
I liked most of the MTG stuff, my Ravnica game has been going strong and I love magic schools so Strixhaven is an easy buy for me (wasn't that drawn to Theros though), but I agree the MTG stuff is too conveniently 'on hand' with all the creative work basically done. I generally judge my enthusiasm for the mtg ports along with my enthusiasm for books like Wildmount and other titles based on 3rd parties.
I really would like to see something new new. Idk how realistic it is of an expectation, but I think it'd be cool.
I can totally understand feeling cynical about the MtG settings, but as someone who knows nothing about MtG and always runs a homebrew setting, I can pillage ideas from them just as easily as any other setting. I am not super familiar with Ravinica outside of some pretty busted magic items coughIllusionist's Bracerscough, but Theros had tons of good ideas and quality content. As long as the next new setting keeps up that standard, I'll be happy regardless of where it's from.
As for the Feywild stuff, I've been really unimpressed with the 5e cosmology as a whole. It just feels so disjointed and slapdash. Say what you want about 4e, but the core pantheon and planar arrangement were simple, straightforward, and provided a very solid foundation to build off of. And that was straight out of the DMG/PHB. Here we are X years into 5e and it still doesn't feel like they have things nailed down. Just play your game in FR I guess?
Just want to clarify that I'm not necessarily seeing the MtG stuff unfavorably, but I'm just recognizing it as creative content that's already "on hand" in terms of art direction, theme etc, so it shouldn't be to anyone's surprise that there's adaptations (now going both ways with the Forgotten Realms MtG foray).
I think the DMG/PHB cosmology presented in 5e works fine, would I want it fleshed out? Yes. I'd also like it more consistently fleshed out, it doesn't seem 5e is super big on continuity, I can't put my finger on it, other than pointing to things like Tyranny of Dragons happening like 3-5 years before Descent into Avernus, and it doesn't seem to have mattered much. So the fact that continuity doesn't seem to matter much in the prime material plane, I guess I'm not too surprised things are a bit loose with the rest of the cosmology.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I am so hyped with Dragonlance being one of those settings, finally, that if it did not become one, I think my love affair with D&D 5e would cease and I would move on to other things.
The original origins of the Feywild and the Shadowfell comes from 4e.
both have been around since at least 3.5
Planes that were similar did exist but they were different to their modern counterparts. The Feywild and Shadowfell as they exist today were first described in 4e. Before we had the Plane of Faeries (an outer world plane) and the Demiplane of Shadows. Now they are the echo’s of the material world and exist in the inner planes.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Meddle not in the affairs of dragons, for thou art crunchy and taste good with ketchup."
The original origins of the Feywild and the Shadowfell comes from 4e.
both have been around since at least 3.5
Planes that were similar did exist but they were different to their modern counterparts. The Feywild and Shadowfell as they exist today were first described in 4e. Before we had the Plane of Faeries (an outer world plane) and the Demiplane of Shadows. Now they are the echo’s of the material world and exist in the inner planes.
Yes but ‘as it is today’ is not ‘original origins’, which is what you said.
The original origins of the Feywild and the Shadowfell comes from 4e.
both have been around since at least 3.5
Planes that were similar did exist but they were different to their modern counterparts. The Feywild and Shadowfell as they exist today were first described in 4e. Before we had the Plane of Faeries (an outer world plane) and the Demiplane of Shadows. Now they are the echo’s of the material world and exist in the inner planes.
Yes but ‘as it is today’ is not ‘original origins’, which is what you said.
No, RoughCoronet0 is technically correct. Pre-4th Edition, there were the planes of Positive and Negative Elemental Energy, and there was a Demiplane of Shadow, and some relatively ambiguous “land of the fey” if I recall. But when 3.5 shifted to 4e, the planes of elemental energy got folded into other stuff, as did the Demi-elemental planes. The Plane of Negative Elemental Energy and the Demiplane of Shadow got smooshed together (highly technical term) and combined into what was called “The Shadowfell” for the first time ever. It never technically existed prior to 4e.
Yep, which is why I'm far from ecstatically blown away by 5e's "contributions" to the hobby (I'm thinking particularly of Session 0 and Boundaries) in some of its recent hardbacks. I mean "codification" in an official book is great and all, but there's this marketing of the codification of known practices as "leadership" in the PR building up to the release that just strikes me as inauthentic at best and outright cynical in some regards. The community tends to articulate these matters more concisely as well which makes me feel some of this output is just "filler" to justify a hardcovers page count. I sort of wish the game would go with smaller products in this regard, but for whatever reason, likely business, we got the hardcover press grinder.
I don't put a lot of stock in the MtG stuff. There's good stuff there, but it's also sort of "at hand" material a lot of creative work has been done on, and produced almost "in house" (like the design team down the hall did all the art direction and what have you already) so it's literally an economical offering in terms of resources required to produce as opposed to a whole cloth setting piece.
I can also say from D&D Live I'm very concerned that Witchlight seems to simply be produced because they saw how much success Hitpoint was having with the Heckna carnival campaign kickstarter. Also not sure about the implicit forcing of a parallel between Feywild's "domains" being a thing to balance with the Shadowfell's Domains of Dread. I mean I always thought the Shadowfell was a "parallel" to the prime material world and the Domains of Dread were something that existed in relationship to the Shadowfell ... did the Feywild always have a similar "echo" of the prime material with additional nodes like Prismire or whatever it's called? I just don't see say The Raven Queen existing in this Feywild, of course I've also seen folks portray the Raven Queen living in something like Candyland, and that just seems to do the idea a disservice.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Relationships from Prime Material to Feywild to Shadowfell have shifted from edition to edition. One way I heard it explained once was that the Feywild was comprised of all the dreams of all the creatures in the Prime, and the Shadowfell was comprised of our nightmares.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
The original origins of the Feywild and the Shadowfell comes from 4e. It was said that they were created at the same time as the material plane was by the Primordials in the time before the Dawn Wars. When the Primordials were crafting the world, they casted off bits they perceived as “to bright” or “too dark” from the Prime. Those bight and dark bits culminated into the Feywild and Shadowfell, which are seen as the bright and dark echos of the Prime world and many of the creatures that exist on these two planes are considered echos of creatures from the Prime Material. The geology of the three planes are similar, though not entirely the same.
Obviously they had to change the origins of these two planes to fit 5e’s cosmology (the Feywild seems to be the newly reimagined Plane of Faeries and the Shadowfell is a combination of the Plane of Shadows and the Negative energy plane from what I have read) but they still seem to act similarly to their 4e counterparts at least as far as I’ve seen (I of course could be mistaken). So if the Domains of Dread are now tied to the Shadowfell in some way, it doesn’t seem to be too far of a stretch that an oppose expression of them could exist and have a connection to the Feywilds. It makes sense to me as a design concept at least.
"Meddle not in the affairs of dragons, for thou art crunchy and taste good with ketchup."
Characters for Tenebris Sine Fine
RoughCoronet's Greater Wills
That's fine, I wasn't making a comment on quality - CharlesThePlant mentioned "the way 3E had Eberron" which made me assume he was talking about editions having new settings emerge, I just wanted to point out 5E does have new setting content emerge already. The M:tG stuff is hit and miss for me (and from what I read on here, it's the same for a lot of others but possibly with other hits and other misses).
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
I liked most of the MTG stuff, my Ravnica game has been going strong and I love magic schools so Strixhaven is an easy buy for me (wasn't that drawn to Theros though), but I agree the MTG stuff is too conveniently 'on hand' with all the creative work basically done. I generally judge my enthusiasm for the mtg ports along with my enthusiasm for books like Wildmount and other titles based on 3rd parties.
I really would like to see something new new. Idk how realistic it is of an expectation, but I think it'd be cool.
I can totally understand feeling cynical about the MtG settings, but as someone who knows nothing about MtG and always runs a homebrew setting, I can pillage ideas from them just as easily as any other setting. I am not super familiar with Ravinica outside of some pretty busted magic items coughIllusionist's Bracerscough, but Theros had tons of good ideas and quality content. As long as the next new setting keeps up that standard, I'll be happy regardless of where it's from.
As for the Feywild stuff, I've been really unimpressed with the 5e cosmology as a whole. It just feels so disjointed and slapdash. Say what you want about 4e, but the core pantheon and planar arrangement were simple, straightforward, and provided a very solid foundation to build off of. And that was straight out of the DMG/PHB. Here we are X years into 5e and it still doesn't feel like they have things nailed down. Just play your game in FR I guess?
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
Just want to clarify that I'm not necessarily seeing the MtG stuff unfavorably, but I'm just recognizing it as creative content that's already "on hand" in terms of art direction, theme etc, so it shouldn't be to anyone's surprise that there's adaptations (now going both ways with the Forgotten Realms MtG foray).
I think the DMG/PHB cosmology presented in 5e works fine, would I want it fleshed out? Yes. I'd also like it more consistently fleshed out, it doesn't seem 5e is super big on continuity, I can't put my finger on it, other than pointing to things like Tyranny of Dragons happening like 3-5 years before Descent into Avernus, and it doesn't seem to have mattered much. So the fact that continuity doesn't seem to matter much in the prime material plane, I guess I'm not too surprised things are a bit loose with the rest of the cosmology.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I am so hyped with Dragonlance being one of those settings, finally, that if it did not become one, I think my love affair with D&D 5e would cease and I would move on to other things.
both have been around since at least 3.5
Guide to the Five Factions (PWYW)
Deck of Decks
Planes that were similar did exist but they were different to their modern counterparts. The Feywild and Shadowfell as they exist today were first described in 4e. Before we had the Plane of Faeries (an outer world plane) and the Demiplane of Shadows. Now they are the echo’s of the material world and exist in the inner planes.
"Meddle not in the affairs of dragons, for thou art crunchy and taste good with ketchup."
Characters for Tenebris Sine Fine
RoughCoronet's Greater Wills
Yes but ‘as it is today’ is not ‘original origins’, which is what you said.
Guide to the Five Factions (PWYW)
Deck of Decks
No, RoughCoronet0 is technically correct. Pre-4th Edition, there were the planes of Positive and Negative Elemental Energy, and there was a Demiplane of Shadow, and some relatively ambiguous “land of the fey” if I recall. But when 3.5 shifted to 4e, the planes of elemental energy got folded into other stuff, as did the Demi-elemental planes. The Plane of Negative Elemental Energy and the Demiplane of Shadow got smooshed together (highly technical term) and combined into what was called “The Shadowfell” for the first time ever. It never technically existed prior to 4e.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting