The minority appears to be those complaining about the errata, but time will tell I guess.
Even if that is the case shouldn't we want them to still enjoy the game and not try and downplay how they feel?
It seems very much the case looking at this and a few other boards. Regardless of your skepticism, to your question precisely how do these errata prohibit the players, for whom you claim to be advocating, from playing the game the way they've been playing?
To answer your question likely nothing unless they want to stick to RAW. Now here is where I'm having issues for some reason when I flip things around, I get the same answer. (Emotional , how does pre-errata stop you from playing how you want to play?)
I fully aware it is a really bad way to answer that, and I don't want to downplay the negative experiences that others have had with the published material. I feel stupid because when I think about it, a lot of you are getting a different answer but I get the same for both situations. (It doesn't help that how i think is with equations and I am really bad with emotional connections)
The minority appears to be those complaining about the errata, but time will tell I guess.
Even if that is the case shouldn't we want them to still enjoy the game and not try and downplay how they feel?
It seems very much the case looking at this and a few other boards. Regardless of your skepticism, to your question precisely how do these errata prohibit the players, for whom you claim to be advocating, from playing the game the way they've been playing?
To answer your question likely nothing unless they want to stick to RAW. Now here is where I'm having issues for some reason when I flip things around, I get the same answer. (Emotional , how does pre-errata stop you from playing how you want to play?)
I fully aware it is a really bad way to answer that, and I don't want to downplay the negative experiences that others have had with the published material. I feel stupid because when I think about it, a lot of you are getting a different answer but I get the same for both situations. (It doesn't help that how i think is with equations and I am really bad with emotional connections)
The difference doesn't lie JUST in the errata. That is just a small victory for people that live with the fact that the world treats them as "other" every day and in all aspects of their lives. The changes are just a small step towards not being "others" in at least some small way. Where some here are bemoaning the loss of some fictional lore, others are grateful that things are getting better, if only in a minor and mostly insignificant way. They still have to face every day life, but at least in the fantasy of D&D, it is a little easier to escape from it for just a while. The words matter to them in a way that many others can never really understand.
To answer your question likely nothing unless they want to stick to RAW. Now here is where I'm having issues for some reason when I flip things around, I get the same answer. (Emotional , how does pre-errata stop you from playing how you want to play?)
I fully aware it is a really bad way to answer that, and I don't want to downplay the negative experiences that others have had with the published material. I feel stupid because when I think about it, a lot of you are getting a different answer but I get the same for both situations. (It doesn't help that how i think is with equations and I am really bad with emotional connections)
To anser your question: nothing.
Nothing is stopping the people in this thread from playing the D&D we want to play. We're invested. We're hooked. We're the sure bet. We're all hundreds of dollars in and gonna keep going because we're heavily engaged with the hobby on multiple levels. Frankly, Wizards doesn't give a shit about us. It knows it'll keep us unless it cocks up in spectacular style a'la 4e, and it also knows it can't really do anything to us. The triple-plus digit post DDB forum user is generally very, very well informed on the game and has thoroughly internalized the knowledge that we can do whatever we like. Wizards could've announced that all drow were now Tiny bright pink Tinkerbells that spent their lives delivering coal to naughty children and outside of the forum outrage, nobody here would really care. We'd just shrug, keep going in our games, and let Wizards do whatever damnfool thing the Good Idea Fairy has instigated next. They can't muck with our games, we're way past the point where we give a shit what Wizards says about lore.
The guy who comes in with three posts to his name, timidly asking if he's allowed to do something in his game he's been running for a few months as his first exposure to D&D? That guy cares what Wizards thinks. That guy is who the errata is for, not us. The errata is designed to discourage fewer new players who may have a cool idea they want to try that the old books disallow, or who may come in from a setting different than Faerun and be confused by the dissonance between 'their' lore and the Forgotten Realms-based book lore. Those players are not hooked. They are not sure bets. Remember - for most people, the rules of a game are the rules of a game. If something's in the rulebook, that means it has to be obeyed or the game won't work right. That's how every single other kind of game out there works, tabletop RPGs are entirely unique in that their rules are fuzzy and up to the discretion of the table. If you try and houserule away half the rules of Monopoly, the game stops working and nobody has fun. Wizards has to teach people that it's okay to monkey with the rules of D&D and make up your own cool stories. Jeremy Crawford has stated before that he's constantly surprised by how many people never figured out that they could go beyond the rulebooks and do something new, a big part of his job is in trying to effectively convince people of this thing everybody in this thread treats as a total taken-for-granted nonissue.
I couldn't give three shits what Wizards says about the lore of drow in the Forgotten Realms. if I'm running a table and some mind-altering disease has me running it in Faerun, the lore of the dark elves is what I bloody heckin' say it is. If I'm running a game in the Bellowing Wilds, in Etharis, in Eberron, in Tursk? The lore of drow in the Forgotten Realms has exactly and precisely zero impact on my game. But I'm not a typical D&D player. By Wizards' standards I'm an extremely advanced player they don't need to worry about. The guy who got a bunch of D&D rulebooks for Christmas and is trying out his first game? He has a very good chance of not knowing that he can throw out the lore in the books and make his own, no matter that all the books tell him he can. He's new, he's unsure of himself, and he doesn't know if he can do it properly. And if he decides the lore kinda sucks because it has unpleasant undertones that make him uncomfortable? He's more likely, by far, to decide the game just isn't for him and give it up than to decide to rewrite half the game lore to suit his table better.
That's why Wizards is changing things. Not to satisfy the 'woke' crowd, but to make it easier for people who don't know what tabletop RPGs are all about to get involved, invested, and figure out how awesome the hobby can be without bouncing off of sharp pain points or confusing, contradictory 'lore' that doesn't fit the world the new players want to try out.
To answer your question likely nothing unless they want to stick to RAW. Now here is where I'm having issues for some reason when I flip things around, I get the same answer. (Emotional , how does pre-errata stop you from playing how you want to play?)
I fully aware it is a really bad way to answer that, and I don't want to downplay the negative experiences that others have had with the published material. I feel stupid because when I think about it, a lot of you are getting a different answer but I get the same for both situations. (It doesn't help that how i think is with equations and I am really bad with emotional connections)
To anser your question: nothing.
Nothing is stopping the people in this thread from playing the D&D we want to play. We're invested. We're hooked. We're the sure bet. We're all hundreds of dollars in and gonna keep going because we're heavily engaged with the hobby on multiple levels. Frankly, Wizards doesn't give a shit about us. It knows it'll keep us unless it cocks up in spectacular style a'la 4e, and it also knows it can't really do anything to us. The triple-plus digit post DDB forum user is generally very, very well informed on the game and has thoroughly internalized the knowledge that we can do whatever we like. Wizards could've announced that all drow were now Tiny bright pink Tinkerbells that spent their lives delivering coal to naughty children and outside of the forum outrage, nobody here would really care. We'd just shrug, keep going in our games, and let Wizards do whatever damnfool thing the Good Idea Fairy has instigated next. They can't muck with our games, we're way past the point where we give a shit what Wizards says about lore.
The guy who comes in with three posts to his name, timidly asking if he's allowed to do something in his game he's been running for a few months as his first exposure to D&D? That guy cares what Wizards thinks. That guy is who the errata is for, not us. The errata is designed to discourage fewer new players who may have a cool idea they want to try that the old books disallow, or who may come in from a setting different than Faerun and be confused by the dissonance between 'their' lore and the Forgotten Realms-based book lore. Those players are not hooked. They are not sure bets. Remember - for most people, the rules of a game are the rules of a game. If something's in the rulebook, that means it has to be obeyed or the game won't work right. That's how every single other kind of game out there works, tabletop RPGs are entirely unique in that their rules are fuzzy and up to the discretion of the table. If you try and houserule away half the rules of Monopoly, the game stops working and nobody has fun. Wizards has to teach people that it's okay to monkey with the rules of D&D and make up your own cool stories. Jeremy Crawford has stated before that he's constantly surprised by how many people never figured out that they could go beyond the rulebooks and do something new, a big part of his job is in trying to effectively convince people of this thing everybody in this thread treats as a total taken-for-granted nonissue.
I couldn't give three shits what Wizards says about the lore of drow in the Forgotten Realms. if I'm running a table and some mind-altering disease has me running it in Faerun, the lore of the dark elves is what I bloody heckin' say it is. If I'm running a game in the Bellowing Wilds, in Etharis, in Eberron, in Tursk? The lore of drow in the Forgotten Realms has exactly and precisely zero impact on my game. But I'm not a typical D&D player. By Wizards' standards I'm an extremely advanced player they don't need to worry about. The guy who got a bunch of D&D rulebooks for Christmas and is trying out his first game? He has a very good chance of not knowing that he can throw out the lore in the books and make his own, no matter that all the books tell him he can. He's new, he's unsure of himself, and he doesn't know if he can do it properly. And if he decides the lore kinda sucks because it has unpleasant undertones that make him uncomfortable? He's more likely, by far, to decide the game just isn't for him and give it up than to decide to rewrite half the game lore to suit his table better.
That's why Wizards is changing things. Not to satisfy the 'woke' crowd, but to make it easier for people who don't know what tabletop RPGs are all about to get involved, invested, and figure out how awesome the hobby can be without bouncing off of sharp pain points or confusing, contradictory 'lore' that doesn't fit the world the new players want to try out.
Bra-f***ing-VA! Insightful as usual Yurei.
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Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
Don't feel bad, no need to apologize. Half the reason I love getting stuck in to meaty debates like this is that nothing is better for testing and sharpening your own opinions and knowledge on a given issue than pitting it against its enemies in gladatorial combat, hueh. I say in most all these threads that if even one person's understanding expands as a result of the calm, reasoned posts that happen in between all the neckbeard dueling and catfighting? The thread was worth it.
I'm glad my words could help, and I apologize in turn if I grew too heated. I take these arguments perhaps more seriously than I should and sometimes frustration gets the better of me.
Maybe a new edition would have gone better, maybe not. If they're anticipating this to hit their sales, they might decide to do it with 5.0 and have the controversy largely forgotten by the time 5.5 (or whatever it is) comes out in 2024 that will have a fresh start and not have the negative associations of this controversy, not being the edition that was PC or whatever.
Is that correct and it would be beneficial to do it now? Is that their line of thinking? We have no idea. It could just be a rush to get in on the tail end of BLM. Who knows. Not anyone that would be able to tell us.
DND absolutely is optimised for violence. That's what the whole system is built around. Oh, okay, I guess you can magic your way out, but it sure as heck isn't built to encourage social interaction. Sure, there are one roll pass/fail options for social encounters but the game is not optimised for them. And yes, you can use words but that only makes my point - if you're not articulate and social encounters rely on IRL words, what kind of character are you going to choose?
I'll be honest, I'm struggling to see how your comment relates to mine?
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If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
DND absolutely is optimised for violence. That's what the whole system is built around. Oh, okay, I guess you can magic your way out, but it sure as heck isn't built to encourage social interaction. Sure, there are one roll pass/fail options for social encounters but the game is not optimised for them. And yes, you can use words but that only makes my point - if you're not articulate and social encounters rely on IRL words, what kind of character are you going to choose?
How is that any different from real life? Is reality optimized for combat? If you are inarticulate, do you not have similar problems in real life? But in real life, we are dealing sentient being on sentient being. Even those who are not articulate can still see how things work socially and adjust their lives accordingly, can rise up, can even rise up en mass or form groups that can deal with those who have chosen to cause harm. And even those who choose to cause harm, they are usually far more rational than presented on a typical tv show, actually being willing to listen to words and make rational decisions. Sometimes those decisions will indeed be to choose violence but that is to a great extent instinctive fight or flight response, which is also 'natural.'
However, here we are, talking all of this out in words. And you are doing fine with yours. Discussions like this are a lot more complex than any combat system ever will be. There will be combats for those who are less good with words, yes, but that is not the same as the system being optimized for violence. To the contrary, that is you saying that players cannot handle the more difficult solution of finding ways to talk things out, whether through not being good speakers or through just blind impatience. But that is on the players, not the rules. Even the best arguments can have persuasion rolls to offset bad deliveries or to mitigate players who are better speakers playing low charisma characters.
If anything I'd say 5e handles out-of-combat encounters better than combat ones, you have a limited number of action choices, unless you're a fighter I guess, and most encounters boil down to grinding out the same actions and attacks turn after turn. Compare that to put of combat encounters and players are only limited by their creativity in terms of how they use any of their skills. Casters have a great range of utility spells that don't necessarily have any combat application at all.
Don't feel bad, no need to apologize. Half the reason I love getting stuck in to meaty debates like this is that nothing is better for testing and sharpening your own opinions and knowledge on a given issue than pitting it against its enemies in gladatorial combat, hueh. I say in most all these threads that if even one person's understanding expands as a result of the calm, reasoned posts that happen in between all the neckbeard dueling and catfighting? The thread was worth it.
I'm glad my words could help, and I apologize in turn if I grew too heated. I take these arguments perhaps more seriously than I should and sometimes frustration gets the better of me.
I just want to say I really don't mean any malicious intent with my posts, even if my tone comes across hostile through the wonderful medium of text.
Truth is, I really don't even care about orcs. I don't use them in my games for most of the reasons you've described unless a player character is one. I've only been playing 5e for the past 3 years And DMing for 2 so I'm not a veteran by any measure. I don't like using hordes of orcs because quite frankly I think it's lazy more than anything. I would like to see WoTC add lore to some of the neglected races. Goblins get to be crafty and cunning tinkerers, but orcs just don't have an alignment anymore. I thought Eberron was cool with what it did with both races, again this is just a 5e perspective so I might be ignorant of something compromising.
I do think the little lore changes are a bit out of place right now, with potentially another edition soon round the corner as they could completely reinvent the Forgotten Realms or make an entirely new one.
I would like to apologise to anyone who has been upset by my line of questioning. None of you are responsible for what WoTC do with their property and my queries should have been with them more directly.
So I'm sorry. I don't like who I am when I forum post.
DND absolutely is optimised for violence. That's what the whole system is built around. Oh, okay, I guess you can magic your way out, but it sure as heck isn't built to encourage social interaction. Sure, there are one roll pass/fail options for social encounters but the game is not optimised for them. And yes, you can use words but that only makes my point - if you're not articulate and social encounters rely on IRL words, what kind of character are you going to choose?
How is that any different from real life? Is reality optimized for combat? If you are inarticulate, do you not have similar problems in real life? But in real life, we are dealing sentient being on sentient being. Even those who are not articulate can still see how things work socially and adjust their lives accordingly, can rise up, can even rise up en mass or form groups that can deal with those who have chosen to cause harm. And even those who choose to cause harm, they are usually far more rational than presented on a typical tv show, actually being willing to listen to words and make rational decisions. Sometimes those decisions will indeed be to choose violence but that is to a great extent instinctive fight or flight response, which is also 'natural.'
However, here we are, talking all of this out in words. And you are doing fine with yours. Discussions like this are a lot more complex than any combat system ever will be. There will be combats for those who are less good with words, yes, but that is not the same as the system being optimized for violence. To the contrary, that is you saying that players cannot handle the more difficult solution of finding ways to talk things out, whether through not being good speakers or through just blind impatience. But that is on the players, not the rules. Even the best arguments can have persuasion rolls to offset bad deliveries or to mitigate players who are better speakers playing low charisma characters.
If anything I'd say 5e handles out-of-combat encounters better than combat ones, you have a limited number of action choices, unless you're a fighter I guess, and most encounters boil down to grinding out the same actions and attacks turn after turn. Compare that to put of combat encounters and players are only limited by their creativity in terms of how they use any of their skills. Casters have a great range of utility spells that don't necessarily have any combat application at all.
You're viewing it as combat v non combat. In my opinion, that's not the best way. To my view, that's like viewing food as being veggies v non veggies. I understand why, it's because the other elements, the non combat elements, are quite underdeveloped in comparison. For example of the other divisions, you get social interaction, physical interaction with the world (climbing, etc), observing the world, etc.
Let's look at what's the most important non combat aspect of the world (in my experience, at least), socially interacting with others, and compare it to combat. I'll just be looking at non creative methods, since once you get creative, it's like dealing with infinities, and unmanageable.
Without magic, you can...persuade or intimidate, and maybe saving throws. . Combat with a character with no special abilities? You can attack with a melee weapon (we'll ignore damage types), you can shoot them with a ranged weapon, you can grapple, you can choose knock them unconscious, you have a health system, you have saving throws (much more regular than in social interaction), you get the life or death throws mechanjcs, you get to choose weapons which each has a meaningful impact in terms of straight damage vs being able to dual wield etc, your get to choose between armour or stealth, and so forth. I could go on, but then I'm starting to get into overlaps (such as having the choice to throw or stab with your dagger).
With spells, yes, you get spells that help with social interaction such as Friends, Detect Thoughts, etc, but most of those are also applicable to combat, and then there are tons that are only applicable for combat.
When looking at magic items, there are some that are for social interaction, but the vast majority are for combat.
We could go through other aspects of the game, like observing the world, exploring it, etc - but it's mostly the same story. The combat side of things is marvellously developed. It's spoiled me as I started playing Star Trek Adventures, whose combat is severely lacking in comparison, and it has received a lot of care and attention. The other aspects of the game are severely neglected by comparison. Don't get me wrong, they're not terrible, but the combat side of things is so well developed that it kind of makes the rest look almost non existent. We have a class that was based around another leg that gets seen as very underpowered as a result and had to be patched to have more combat options just so people would consider it viable. You seemed to consider the game as combat v non combat, as opposed to combat v social interaction v exploration etc.
I'm now aware that we've gone wildly off OT now, so I'll leave it there. I'll just say that it would be amazing if WotC could develop the other aspects of the game to the level that they developed combat, or at least to the point where players see them as important aspects of the game in their own right. I don't know how they can, but it'd be great if they could do that.
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If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
At the end of the day, regardless of what Wizards of the Coast publishes, you can run your game in any capacity that you and your players find acceptable.
Your experiences are not the same as another's nor more valid. It is important that published content be published in a manner that is experience agnostic, meaning, that regardless of your experiences, you can find it enjoyable and acceptable. From that point, make it your own. If that consists of making all drow evil Lolth worshippers, you do you, or having widespread racism, you do you.
I feel the way the changes were explained was very bad.
Paragraphs removed and lists of possible traits added, all without showing us what the old/new lore is. Lore is changed, but won't tell what was removed or added.
It is this unknown change that I have a negative reaction to.
If it was known, we would not have to ask what lore made people uncomfortable, because then we could see what made it "bad".
I feel the way the changes were explained was very bad.
Paragraphs removed and lists of possible traits added, all without showing us what the old/new lore is. Lore is changed, but won't tell what was removed or added.
It is this unknown change that I have a negative reaction to.
If it was known, we would not have to ask what lore made people uncomfortable, because then we could see what made it "bad".
I feel the way the changes were explained was very bad.
Paragraphs removed and lists of possible traits added, all without showing us what the old/new lore is. Lore is changed, but won't tell what was removed or added.
It is this unknown change that I have a negative reaction to.
If it was known, we would not have to ask what lore made people uncomfortable, because then we could see what made it "bad".
I feel the way the changes were explained was very bad.
Paragraphs removed and lists of possible traits added, all without showing us what the old/new lore is. Lore is changed, but won't tell what was removed or added.
It is this unknown change that I have a negative reaction to.
If it was known, we would not have to ask what lore made people uncomfortable, because then we could see what made it "bad".
That is the problem, not showing exactly what it was before and after.
Are you talking about digital copies? Because if you have a printed copy you have the original text. If you are talking about digital copies than you're barking up the wrong tree.
I feel the way the changes were explained was very bad.
Paragraphs removed and lists of possible traits added, all without showing us what the old/new lore is. Lore is changed, but won't tell what was removed or added.
It is this unknown change that I have a negative reaction to.
If it was known, we would not have to ask what lore made people uncomfortable, because then we could see what made it "bad".
That is the problem, not showing exactly what it was before and after.
You can see what was removed if you compare what the books show on the website to the books you have in the app. Someone mentioned the beholder getting savaged. If I may, the text that was removed from the beholder is really just redundancy. It is covered in the literal pages of content right above it.
You can see what was removed if you compare what the books show on the website to the books you have in the app. Someone mentioned the beholder getting savaged. If I may, the text that was removed from the beholder is really just redundancy. It is covered in the literal pages of content right above it.
This.
There's also the matter of folks complaining about changes and not having the change laid out to them. Not to go all Zen riddle; but if a angry poster goes back to Volo's and can't figure out what's missing, were they really robbed if they were never aware of the removed text in the first place.
So much of this "controversy" is resultant from bad faith journalistic coverage.
Why do I have a feeling that if these changes had been made in the very late 2000s/early 2010s, there would be notably less rage? Today there's a whole cottage industry of reactionaries who rage against anything that could be vaguely perceived as "woke".
Late to toss my two coppers in, and tbh, after spending a few days reading this thread and thinking about it, I fear I don’t really have much to add.
However I did want to say, as one of those folks whose played since he was ten & is now over a half century, I like the changes!! I am not at all upset by the edits, and I don’t think any of it detracts or sullies my enjoyment of the game as a whole. My children are in their twenties now, and I do think that the D&D being published today is indeed focused to appeal more towards their generation than mine, and I think that is a good thing.
I don’t see what is happening as ripping the lore to bits, and even if they were… heck that would be what.. the sixth time Forgotten Realm’s lore was “Crisis-Molded” into something reflecting the newest commercial offerings? I lose track.
I guess more than anything else I just wanted to be one of those voices saying that I think this direction WOTC seem to be taking things is a positive step in a good direction. I hope it leads to a long fun journey we can all take together.
That would be nice.
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To answer your question likely nothing unless they want to stick to RAW. Now here is where I'm having issues for some reason when I flip things around, I get the same answer. (Emotional , how does pre-errata stop you from playing how you want to play?)
I fully aware it is a really bad way to answer that, and I don't want to downplay the negative experiences that others have had with the published material. I feel stupid because when I think about it, a lot of you are getting a different answer but I get the same for both situations. (It doesn't help that how i think is with equations and I am really bad with emotional connections)
PR style responses are considered hostile intent.
The difference doesn't lie JUST in the errata. That is just a small victory for people that live with the fact that the world treats them as "other" every day and in all aspects of their lives. The changes are just a small step towards not being "others" in at least some small way. Where some here are bemoaning the loss of some fictional lore, others are grateful that things are getting better, if only in a minor and mostly insignificant way. They still have to face every day life, but at least in the fantasy of D&D, it is a little easier to escape from it for just a while. The words matter to them in a way that many others can never really understand.
Edit: At least that is what it means to me.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
To anser your question: nothing.
Nothing is stopping the people in this thread from playing the D&D we want to play. We're invested. We're hooked. We're the sure bet. We're all hundreds of dollars in and gonna keep going because we're heavily engaged with the hobby on multiple levels. Frankly, Wizards doesn't give a shit about us. It knows it'll keep us unless it cocks up in spectacular style a'la 4e, and it also knows it can't really do anything to us. The triple-plus digit post DDB forum user is generally very, very well informed on the game and has thoroughly internalized the knowledge that we can do whatever we like. Wizards could've announced that all drow were now Tiny bright pink Tinkerbells that spent their lives delivering coal to naughty children and outside of the forum outrage, nobody here would really care. We'd just shrug, keep going in our games, and let Wizards do whatever damnfool thing the Good Idea Fairy has instigated next. They can't muck with our games, we're way past the point where we give a shit what Wizards says about lore.
The guy who comes in with three posts to his name, timidly asking if he's allowed to do something in his game he's been running for a few months as his first exposure to D&D? That guy cares what Wizards thinks. That guy is who the errata is for, not us. The errata is designed to discourage fewer new players who may have a cool idea they want to try that the old books disallow, or who may come in from a setting different than Faerun and be confused by the dissonance between 'their' lore and the Forgotten Realms-based book lore. Those players are not hooked. They are not sure bets. Remember - for most people, the rules of a game are the rules of a game. If something's in the rulebook, that means it has to be obeyed or the game won't work right. That's how every single other kind of game out there works, tabletop RPGs are entirely unique in that their rules are fuzzy and up to the discretion of the table. If you try and houserule away half the rules of Monopoly, the game stops working and nobody has fun. Wizards has to teach people that it's okay to monkey with the rules of D&D and make up your own cool stories. Jeremy Crawford has stated before that he's constantly surprised by how many people never figured out that they could go beyond the rulebooks and do something new, a big part of his job is in trying to effectively convince people of this thing everybody in this thread treats as a total taken-for-granted nonissue.
I couldn't give three shits what Wizards says about the lore of drow in the Forgotten Realms. if I'm running a table and some mind-altering disease has me running it in Faerun, the lore of the dark elves is what I bloody heckin' say it is. If I'm running a game in the Bellowing Wilds, in Etharis, in Eberron, in Tursk? The lore of drow in the Forgotten Realms has exactly and precisely zero impact on my game. But I'm not a typical D&D player. By Wizards' standards I'm an extremely advanced player they don't need to worry about. The guy who got a bunch of D&D rulebooks for Christmas and is trying out his first game? He has a very good chance of not knowing that he can throw out the lore in the books and make his own, no matter that all the books tell him he can. He's new, he's unsure of himself, and he doesn't know if he can do it properly. And if he decides the lore kinda sucks because it has unpleasant undertones that make him uncomfortable? He's more likely, by far, to decide the game just isn't for him and give it up than to decide to rewrite half the game lore to suit his table better.
That's why Wizards is changing things. Not to satisfy the 'woke' crowd, but to make it easier for people who don't know what tabletop RPGs are all about to get involved, invested, and figure out how awesome the hobby can be without bouncing off of sharp pain points or confusing, contradictory 'lore' that doesn't fit the world the new players want to try out.
Please do not contact or message me.
Bra-f***ing-VA! Insightful as usual Yurei.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
I want to thank both yurei and golaryn for their responses. Sorry about arguing with you all the last couple of days.
PR style responses are considered hostile intent.
Don't feel bad, no need to apologize. Half the reason I love getting stuck in to meaty debates like this is that nothing is better for testing and sharpening your own opinions and knowledge on a given issue than pitting it against its enemies in gladatorial combat, hueh. I say in most all these threads that if even one person's understanding expands as a result of the calm, reasoned posts that happen in between all the neckbeard dueling and catfighting? The thread was worth it.
I'm glad my words could help, and I apologize in turn if I grew too heated. I take these arguments perhaps more seriously than I should and sometimes frustration gets the better of me.
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These forums can get fairly heated and it is easy to get swept up into it. I am sorry if my response have felt dismissive.
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I'll be honest, I'm struggling to see how your comment relates to mine?
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
If anything I'd say 5e handles out-of-combat encounters better than combat ones, you have a limited number of action choices, unless you're a fighter I guess, and most encounters boil down to grinding out the same actions and attacks turn after turn. Compare that to put of combat encounters and players are only limited by their creativity in terms of how they use any of their skills. Casters have a great range of utility spells that don't necessarily have any combat application at all.
I just want to say I really don't mean any malicious intent with my posts, even if my tone comes across hostile through the wonderful medium of text.
Truth is, I really don't even care about orcs. I don't use them in my games for most of the reasons you've described unless a player character is one. I've only been playing 5e for the past 3 years And DMing for 2 so I'm not a veteran by any measure. I don't like using hordes of orcs because quite frankly I think it's lazy more than anything. I would like to see WoTC add lore to some of the neglected races. Goblins get to be crafty and cunning tinkerers, but orcs just don't have an alignment anymore. I thought Eberron was cool with what it did with both races, again this is just a 5e perspective so I might be ignorant of something compromising.
I do think the little lore changes are a bit out of place right now, with potentially another edition soon round the corner as they could completely reinvent the Forgotten Realms or make an entirely new one.
I would like to apologise to anyone who has been upset by my line of questioning. None of you are responsible for what WoTC do with their property and my queries should have been with them more directly.
So I'm sorry. I don't like who I am when I forum post.
You're viewing it as combat v non combat. In my opinion, that's not the best way. To my view, that's like viewing food as being veggies v non veggies. I understand why, it's because the other elements, the non combat elements, are quite underdeveloped in comparison. For example of the other divisions, you get social interaction, physical interaction with the world (climbing, etc), observing the world, etc.
Let's look at what's the most important non combat aspect of the world (in my experience, at least), socially interacting with others, and compare it to combat. I'll just be looking at non creative methods, since once you get creative, it's like dealing with infinities, and unmanageable.
Without magic, you can...persuade or intimidate, and maybe saving throws. . Combat with a character with no special abilities? You can attack with a melee weapon (we'll ignore damage types), you can shoot them with a ranged weapon, you can grapple, you can choose knock them unconscious, you have a health system, you have saving throws (much more regular than in social interaction), you get the life or death throws mechanjcs, you get to choose weapons which each has a meaningful impact in terms of straight damage vs being able to dual wield etc, your get to choose between armour or stealth, and so forth. I could go on, but then I'm starting to get into overlaps (such as having the choice to throw or stab with your dagger).
With spells, yes, you get spells that help with social interaction such as Friends, Detect Thoughts, etc, but most of those are also applicable to combat, and then there are tons that are only applicable for combat.
When looking at magic items, there are some that are for social interaction, but the vast majority are for combat.
We could go through other aspects of the game, like observing the world, exploring it, etc - but it's mostly the same story. The combat side of things is marvellously developed. It's spoiled me as I started playing Star Trek Adventures, whose combat is severely lacking in comparison, and it has received a lot of care and attention. The other aspects of the game are severely neglected by comparison. Don't get me wrong, they're not terrible, but the combat side of things is so well developed that it kind of makes the rest look almost non existent. We have a class that was based around another leg that gets seen as very underpowered as a result and had to be patched to have more combat options just so people would consider it viable. You seemed to consider the game as combat v non combat, as opposed to combat v social interaction v exploration etc.
I'm now aware that we've gone wildly off OT now, so I'll leave it there. I'll just say that it would be amazing if WotC could develop the other aspects of the game to the level that they developed combat, or at least to the point where players see them as important aspects of the game in their own right. I don't know how they can, but it'd be great if they could do that.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
At the end of the day, regardless of what Wizards of the Coast publishes, you can run your game in any capacity that you and your players find acceptable.
Your experiences are not the same as another's nor more valid. It is important that published content be published in a manner that is experience agnostic, meaning, that regardless of your experiences, you can find it enjoyable and acceptable. From that point, make it your own. If that consists of making all drow evil Lolth worshippers, you do you, or having widespread racism, you do you.
I feel the way the changes were explained was very bad.
Paragraphs removed and lists of possible traits added, all without showing us what the old/new lore is.
Lore is changed, but won't tell what was removed or added.
It is this unknown change that I have a negative reaction to.
If it was known, we would not have to ask what lore made people uncomfortable, because then we could see what made it "bad".
That's just not true https://media.wizards.com/2021/dnd/downloads/VGtM-Errata.pdf They mention what has been removed and the give the changes to the old lore.
That is the problem, not showing exactly what it was before and after.
Are you talking about digital copies? Because if you have a printed copy you have the original text. If you are talking about digital copies than you're barking up the wrong tree.
You can see what was removed if you compare what the books show on the website to the books you have in the app. Someone mentioned the beholder getting savaged. If I may, the text that was removed from the beholder is really just redundancy. It is covered in the literal pages of content right above it.
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This.
There's also the matter of folks complaining about changes and not having the change laid out to them. Not to go all Zen riddle; but if a angry poster goes back to Volo's and can't figure out what's missing, were they really robbed if they were never aware of the removed text in the first place.
So much of this "controversy" is resultant from bad faith journalistic coverage.
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Why do I have a feeling that if these changes had been made in the very late 2000s/early 2010s, there would be notably less rage? Today there's a whole cottage industry of reactionaries who rage against anything that could be vaguely perceived as "woke".
Late to toss my two coppers in, and tbh, after spending a few days reading this thread and thinking about it, I fear I don’t really have much to add.
However I did want to say, as one of those folks whose played since he was ten & is now over a half century, I like the changes!! I am not at all upset by the edits, and I don’t think any of it detracts or sullies my enjoyment of the game as a whole. My children are in their twenties now, and I do think that the D&D being published today is indeed focused to appeal more towards their generation than mine, and I think that is a good thing.
I don’t see what is happening as ripping the lore to bits, and even if they were… heck that would be what.. the sixth time Forgotten Realm’s lore was “Crisis-Molded” into something reflecting the newest commercial offerings? I lose track.
I guess more than anything else I just wanted to be one of those voices saying that I think this direction WOTC seem to be taking things is a positive step in a good direction. I hope it leads to a long fun journey we can all take together.
That would be nice.