I played M:tG from the end of Unlimited/beginning of Revised through until Future Sight. When hey announced D&D4e in fall of 2007 was when I officially started boycotting WotC. I lifted that boycott for this edition because I thought they had finally gotten their 💩 together and came back to D&D (still don’t play M:tG anymore). Looks like Tasha’s Chamberpot might be the last thing I ever purchase from them.
I think I’ve figured it out. WotC’s MO seems to have been (and will likely continue as):
Throw 💩 at the wall internet, see how it goes.
Do the thing, see how that goes.
Fix it in a later publication, see how that goes.
Consolidate everything.
Rinse & repeat.
They’re counting on:
Being able to “fix it later” to overcome their mistakes.
Being able to consolidate stuff to compensate for the bloat.
Us “buying it anyway” to overcome their shotgun strategy.
Us having memories like goldfish to forget the 🐂💩.
As a Magic player for about a decade, I could've told you that. That's how they operate. Change everything about once a season, get feedback, change some of it back. It's not uncommon in the games industry. It necessitates the participation of a lot of people who will gladly (no, not gladly -- reliably) buy and play whatever comes out, and as such its results are largely influenced by said people's opinions, which don't always align with yours, because you don't do that. But the game has never actually been designed to be played that way. There's never been a rule set for D&D that was designed to run completely unmodified using every available piece of content. I mean, it's impossible on its face, right? There's something like a thousand or so different monsters, you can't fight them all in one game. (Though, it might be fun to try...) The game works best with 3-5 players, but there's 13 classes. You couldn't use everything even if you wanted to.
It's frustrating because a lot of us are used to the "live update" or "changing meta" standard of video games or competitive games like Magic, where you have to keep up with every rules change because that's the only way you can actually play the game with other people. But that's not how D&D works, has ever worked, or, I hope, will ever work. You have your Player's Handbook. It still works as well today as it did when it came out, and that's no secret. You can still find games with just that. With newbies who don't want to buy everything, oldheads who don't want to buy everything, or just people who prefer the core rules. If a new piece of content doesn't add value to your game, don't add it to your game. I don't need to tell you this, you already said this is how you do things, I'm just saying it for other people. (It would be great if you could somehow trust that every piece of content released would be a perfect fit for your personal game, just because of its pedigree, but that obviously doesn't make sense, right? See above. So I don't hold it against Wizards.)
We're 9 editions into D&D in it's history. Original, AD&D, Basic Set, AD&D 2nd, 3rd, 3.5, 4th, Essentials and now 5th. It's always how its worked.
This is what I think as well. That is why I suspect we will see more of the core races getting similar updates the way the Dragonborn did to bring them closer to what is in MMM
To be fair, the important change to dragonborn in Fizban's wasn't floating attribute bonuses (Str/Cha is not the most useful, but it's not horrible), it was making their breath weapon actually useful.
This is what I think as well. That is why I suspect we will see more of the core races getting similar updates the way the Dragonborn did to bring them closer to what is in MMM
To be fair, the important change to dragonborn in Fizban's wasn't floating attribute bonuses (Str/Cha is not the most useful, but it's not horrible), it was making their breath weapon actually useful.
Of course. It is also the type of changes we are seeing in MMM for all the races printed pre Tasha's.
I think I’ve figured it out. WotC’s MO seems to have been (and will likely continue as):
Throw 💩 at the wall internet, see how it goes.
Do the thing, see how that goes.
Fix it in a later publication, see how that goes.
Consolidate everything.
Rinse & repeat.
They’re counting on:
Being able to “fix it later” to overcome their mistakes.
Being able to consolidate stuff to compensate for the bloat.
Us “buying it anyway” to overcome their shotgun strategy.
Us having memories like goldfish to forget the 🐂💩.
As a Magic player for about a decade, I could've told you that. That's how they operate. Change everything about once a season, get feedback, change some of it back. It's not uncommon in the games industry. It necessitates the participation of a lot of people who will gladly (no, not gladly -- reliably) buy and play whatever comes out, and as such its results are largely influenced by said people's opinions, which don't always align with yours, because you don't do that. But the game has never actually been designed to be played that way. There's never been a rule set for D&D that was designed to run completely unmodified using every available piece of content. I mean, it's impossible on its face, right? There's something like a thousand or so different monsters, you can't fight them all in one game. (Though, it might be fun to try...) The game works best with 3-5 players, but there's 13 classes. You couldn't use everything even if you wanted to.
It's frustrating because a lot of us are used to the "live update" or "changing meta" standard of video games or competitive games like Magic, where you have to keep up with every rules change because that's the only way you can actually play the game with other people. But that's not how D&D works, has ever worked, or, I hope, will ever work. You have your Player's Handbook. It still works as well today as it did when it came out, and that's no secret. You can still find games with just that. With newbies who don't want to buy everything, oldheads who don't want to buy everything, or just people who prefer the core rules. If a new piece of content doesn't add value to your game, don't add it to your game. I don't need to tell you this, you already said this is how you do things, I'm just saying it for other people. (It would be great if you could somehow trust that every piece of content released would be a perfect fit for your personal game, just because of its pedigree, but that obviously doesn't make sense, right? See above. So I don't hold it against Wizards.)
We're 9 editions into D&D in it's history. Original, AD&D, Basic Set, AD&D 2nd, 3rd, 3.5, 4th, Essentials and now 5th. It's always how its worked.
Can you clarify what "it" refers to in your response?
Myself I'm excited about these changes and am very happy with them, what I'm not happy about is the extreme lack of communication by DDB on what is going to happen or not happen? I tweeted them asking this same thing and no response yet but it has only been 20 minutes so I have no info at this time and I may never have any. This lack of communication concerning this is unlike anything DDB has done before. They used to be upfront about stuff, and I know they never said a date or time when something was going to happen, but this has me concerned about the future here.
Myself I'm excited about these changes and am very happy with them, what I'm not happy about is the extreme lack of communication by DDB on what is going to happen or not happen? I tweeted them asking this same thing and no response yet but it has only been 20 minutes so I have no info at this time and I may never have any. This lack of communication concerning this is unlike anything DDB has done before. They used to be upfront about stuff, and I know they never said a date or time when something was going to happen, but this has me concerned about the future here.
It's become the norm since Adam Bradfords team left. This is the new normal.
Myself I'm excited about these changes and am very happy with them, what I'm not happy about is the extreme lack of communication by DDB on what is going to happen or not happen? I tweeted them asking this same thing and no response yet but it has only been 20 minutes so I have no info at this time and I may never have any. This lack of communication concerning this is unlike anything DDB has done before. They used to be upfront about stuff, and I know they never said a date or time when something was going to happen, but this has me concerned about the future here.
My guess is this is more of a "game changer" than Tasha's, like literally. WotC didn't factor in how DDB and the other two major digital licensees would incorporate the work upon release. DDB's policy (I dunno if its the same for Roll20 or Fantasy Grounds, but if it is then that gives more weight to the following) is to bring all owner's content up to the "new standard". That would essentially give MMM away for free to a lot of players. So, I think in a perfect world you have WotC with DDB and its other digital partners determining "How are we going to do this?"
At the end of the day, DDB is beholden to WotC including what they can say about WotC releases and when. The past team (some would say just Adam) were more adept at putting the shine on things that weren't known.* What we currently have looks like Community Management, "Content" Direction, and Customer Service just not being all that well integrated so at the end of the day, outside Stormknight popping in to do their best at providing perspective to the best of their knowledge, the most reliable source of information on current policy and developments comes from the moderators, which is ironic since that should fall outside their actual job/duty of moderating. The Dev Updates are more bragging shows more than addressing challenges like this (though again, this one there may be a literal contractual gag, whereas the difficulties of tech development could be communicated a bit more candidly).
*That said, while Adam's team was good at that aspect of communication there was so much bloat to their content a lot of subscribers said they wanted more actual development and less sponsored live play performances and the like.
My guess is this is more of a "game changer" than Tasha's, like literally. WotC didn't factor in how DDB and the other two major digital licensees would incorporate the work upon release. DDB's policy (I dunno if its the same for Roll20 or Fantasy Grounds, but if it is then that gives more weight to the following) is to bring all owner's content up to the "new standard". That would essentially give MMM away for free to a lot of players.
Well, it would give away all parts of MMM that are effectively errata of prior books. Which WotC could get around by just letting the digital licenses create two versions of the creatures (which seems to be in effect what happened with dragonborn in Fizban's), but that causes its own issues.
My guess is this is more of a "game changer" than Tasha's, like literally. WotC didn't factor in how DDB and the other two major digital licensees would incorporate the work upon release. DDB's policy (I dunno if its the same for Roll20 or Fantasy Grounds, but if it is then that gives more weight to the following) is to bring all owner's content up to the "new standard". That would essentially give MMM away for free to a lot of players.
Well, it would give away all parts of MMM that are effectively errata of prior books. Which WotC could get around by just letting the digital licenses create two versions of the creatures (which seems to be in effect what happened with dragonborn in Fizban's), but that causes its own issues.
So is that a vote in the "WotC didn't think of their partner's digital updating policies so now some think as to how to resolve it is probably going on between legal dept. so everyone is happy" column?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
My guess is this is more of a "game changer" than Tasha's, like literally. WotC didn't factor in how DDB and the other two major digital licensees would incorporate the work upon release. DDB's policy (I dunno if its the same for Roll20 or Fantasy Grounds, but if it is then that gives more weight to the following) is to bring all owner's content up to the "new standard". That would essentially give MMM away for free to a lot of players.
Well, it would give away all parts of MMM that are effectively errata of prior books. Which WotC could get around by just letting the digital licenses create two versions of the creatures (which seems to be in effect what happened with dragonborn in Fizban's), but that causes its own issues.
I feel this would cause another storm of people asking if the other errata'd/updated content can be given back to us and definitely cause some issues with knowing what we're buying lol. What gets updated and what gets different versions. Even if caused by different things (new book vs errata). Still patiently waiting on that update about this book near the beginning of the new year. 🙄
At the end of the day, DDB is beholden to WotC including what they can say about WotC releases and when. The past team (some would say just Adam) were more adept at putting the shine on things that weren't known.* What we currently have looks like Community Management, "Content" Direction, and Customer Service just not being all that well integrated so at the end of the day, outside Stormknight popping in to do their best at providing perspective to the best of their knowledge, the most reliable source of information on current policy and developments comes from the moderators, which is ironic since that should fall outside their actual job/duty of moderating. The Dev Updates are more bragging shows more than addressing challenges like this (though again, this one there may be a literal contractual gag, whereas the difficulties of tech development could be communicated a bit more candidly).
*That said, while Adam's team was good at that aspect of communication there was so much bloat to their content a lot of subscribers said they wanted more actual development and less sponsored live play performances and the like.
Agreed on your take in general. I personally feellike we've lost the communication and therefore some of the bloat, along with things like UA that were supposed to speed up development, yet it feels like development has gotten slower if anything. Although this could just be perception based due to the lack of communication. It certainly doesn't feel faster to me at least.
I was really hoping to avoid this discussion on this particular thread as it will kill all talk of the content of the book in favor of the WotC/DnDBeyond relationship and the future of this site. Since that isn't going to happen, I might as well just give in and put my 2 cents into it.
All the content will be updated to include the errata sounds great until... "Wait! but I don't want THAT errata!" Or "What do you mean there is a new edition coming out and I have to repurchase everything, I thought all the Updates were included?!"
It does not make good business sense to support multiple versions of the game OR to give away new versions of the game when it happens.
Buying digital resources like this is risky because at some point you will not have it anymore. When you buy digital, you own nothing. You are just buy access and you can lose that access at any time.
I agree that buying things digitally is risky. I'd be quicker to buy things if they were PDFs. Best of both worlds for me - I can keep what I want.if I don't like the new stuff, or if I do like it, I can update.
I'm just smiling because it wasn't that long ago that there were a couple of discussions about digital v physical, and I was told I was paranoid for not liking the idea of my content being at the mercy of DDB (or WotC for that matter). I mean, I'm not that bothered about the changes, I'm more trying to present some people's positions and more having having issue with the general direction being taken rather than the specifics.
Still, another vote here for discussing the content rather than rehashing this.
The Kenku thing kind has me split. On the one hand, it's something quite different and somewhat unique. As a DM, I'd be happy for a player to give up and just talk normally if they didn't want to continue or even necessarily start. On the other, I can imagine that it would get very annoying if the player didn't handle it very well, and I'd reckon that the worst ones would be the most likely to persevere. I guess personally, it seemed quite gimmicky as well - and I probably won't be worse for missing it.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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.
The Kenku thing kind has me split. On the one hand, it's something quite different and somewhat unique. As a DM, I'd be happy for a player to give up and just talk normally if they didn't want to continue or even necessarily start. On the other, I can imagine that it would get very annoying if the player didn't handle it very well, and I'd reckon that the worst ones would be the most likely to persevere. I guess personally, it seemed quite gimmicky as well - and I probably won't be worse for missing it.
I love it! I know the concept of mimicking other people sounds cool, but it is a real pain in the posterior to keep it up IF you even try. Being a Crow Person can be made unique enough by tapping into other qualities. I was really surprised at how excited I was that they dropped that.
The Kenku thing kind has me split. On the one hand, it's something quite different and somewhat unique. As a DM, I'd be happy for a player to give up and just talk normally if they didn't want to continue or even necessarily start. On the other, I can imagine that it would get very annoying if the player didn't handle it very well, and I'd reckon that the worst ones would be the most likely to persevere. I guess personally, it seemed quite gimmicky as well - and I probably won't be worse for missing it.
I love it! I know the concept of mimicking other people sounds cool, but it is a real pain in the posterior to keep it up IF you even try. Being a Crow Person can be made unique enough by tapping into other qualities. I was really surprised at how excited I was that they dropped that.
I'd like the mimicry ability to possibly be maintained. The ability to mimic, that is. The notion that Kenku can only communicate through mimicry leads to some real ham fisted interpretations by voice actors at WotC sponsored events, and if the pros make hash of it....
It actually speaks <rimshot, I'll be here all night> to the whole "doing the voices" as the proper or not focus of role playing. There was a recent Coleville video out there where on "doing the voices" and how it can often be a detriment to actually role playing, sacrificing actual deliberation of a what a character would do in favor of some performance emulation of what they think they're favorite streamers are doing (where the accent is just that an accent upon a deliberate performance including playing the sheet, not a voice that comes to your head).
I'm also pretty sure Kenku NPCs in WotC adventures have not strongly adhered to this racial feature.
The Kenku thing kind has me split. On the one hand, it's something quite different and somewhat unique. As a DM, I'd be happy for a player to give up and just talk normally if they didn't want to continue or even necessarily start. On the other, I can imagine that it would get very annoying if the player didn't handle it very well, and I'd reckon that the worst ones would be the most likely to persevere. I guess personally, it seemed quite gimmicky as well - and I probably won't be worse for missing it.
I love it! I know the concept of mimicking other people sounds cool, but it is a real pain in the posterior to keep it up IF you even try. Being a Crow Person can be made unique enough by tapping into other qualities. I was really surprised at how excited I was that they dropped that.
I like this a lot as well (Edit: reading above and below to clarify I'm glad the mandatory part is gone). Looking forward to quite a bit of this book personally. I'm personally looking forward to playing a rogue bugbear the next chance I get to be a player - it'll be my first rouge and I like their stealth set with moving through small spaces. I was hoping for the kobold in Fizbans but glad it's coming here. There are things I agree with that have been brought up like the lack luster lore/description for newer playable races that I don't like either. For the most part though I think my group will enjoy the content of this book and we'll be picking it up if/when it becomes available.
The Kenku thing kind has me split. On the one hand, it's something quite different and somewhat unique. As a DM, I'd be happy for a player to give up and just talk normally if they didn't want to continue or even necessarily start. On the other, I can imagine that it would get very annoying if the player didn't handle it very well, and I'd reckon that the worst ones would be the most likely to persevere. I guess personally, it seemed quite gimmicky as well - and I probably won't be worse for missing it.
I love it! I know the concept of mimicking other people sounds cool, but it is a real pain in the posterior to keep it up IF you even try. Being a Crow Person can be made unique enough by tapping into other qualities. I was really surprised at how excited I was that they dropped that.
I'd like the mimicry ability to possibly be maintained. The ability to mimic, that is. The notion that Kenku can only communicate through mimicry leads to some real ham fisted interpretations by voice actors at WotC sponsored events, and if the pros make hash of it....
LOL Right?!
If I understand what was leaked correctly, the Mimicry Ability is still part of the race, they just dropped the "mandated" RP part.
The Kenku thing kind has me split. On the one hand, it's something quite different and somewhat unique. As a DM, I'd be happy for a player to give up and just talk normally if they didn't want to continue or even necessarily start. On the other, I can imagine that it would get very annoying if the player didn't handle it very well, and I'd reckon that the worst ones would be the most likely to persevere. I guess personally, it seemed quite gimmicky as well - and I probably won't be worse for missing it.
I love it! I know the concept of mimicking other people sounds cool, but it is a real pain in the posterior to keep it up IF you even try. Being a Crow Person can be made unique enough by tapping into other qualities. I was really surprised at how excited I was that they dropped that.
I like this a lot as well (Edit: reading above and below to clarify I'm glad the mandatory part is gone). Looking forward to quite a bit of this book personally. I'm personally looking forward to playing a rogue bugbear the next chance I get to be a player - it'll be my first rouge and I like their stealth set with moving through small spaces. I was hoping for the kobold in Fizbans but glad it's coming here. There are things I agree with that have been brought up like the lack luster lore/description for newer playable races that I don't like either. For the most part though I think my group will enjoy the content of this book and we'll be picking it up if/when it becomes available.
There is a LOT that I like about the updated races, a few things that just Meh and I can't think of anything that I out right dislike. That in itself is pretty rare.
So is that a vote in the "WotC didn't think of their partner's digital updating policies so now some think as to how to resolve it is probably going on between legal dept. so everyone is happy" column?
It does seem to reflect a poor understanding of digital publication and tools, yes; none of this would be any sort of problem for paper books, because if someone produces a revised edition of a book, the only way of getting that revision is buying the new book.
Frankly, the problem WotC is struggling with is probably not the new versions of monsters as PCs, that's only something like 10% of the book, the problem is that a large number of the monster entries are duplicates with the same name as the original, so for digital sources for monsters, they have a couple of unappealing options
Treat them as errata, so someone who has the earlier books gets a large fraction of the book for free.
Allow resellers to version things, so you can get Alhoon (MotM) and Alhoon (VGM)
Deprecate prior books (probably not permitted by existing contracts and guaranteed to make everyone extremely angry)
The Kenku thing kind has me split. On the one hand, it's something quite different and somewhat unique. As a DM, I'd be happy for a player to give up and just talk normally if they didn't want to continue or even necessarily start. On the other, I can imagine that it would get very annoying if the player didn't handle it very well, and I'd reckon that the worst ones would be the most likely to persevere. I guess personally, it seemed quite gimmicky as well - and I probably won't be worse for missing it.
I love it! I know the concept of mimicking other people sounds cool, but it is a real pain in the posterior to keep it up IF you even try. Being a Crow Person can be made unique enough by tapping into other qualities. I was really surprised at how excited I was that they dropped that.
I'd like the mimicry ability to possibly be maintained. The ability to mimic, that is. The notion that Kenku can only communicate through mimicry leads to some real ham fisted interpretations by voice actors at WotC sponsored events, and if the pros make hash of it....
LOL Right?!
If I understand what was leaked correctly, the Mimicry Ability is still part of the race, they just dropped the "mandated" RP part.
In Nerd Immersions’s part two of the PC Race leaks, the Kenku was shown to indeed still have Mimicry but without the mandate to have to speak with it. They also gained a neat ability to gain advantage on any skill they are proficient with a number of times equal to their prof bonus. They can also be small size as well as medium now.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Meddle not in the affairs of dragons, for thou art crunchy and taste good with ketchup."
I played M:tG from the end of Unlimited/beginning of Revised through until Future Sight. When hey announced D&D4e in fall of 2007 was when I officially started boycotting WotC. I lifted that boycott for this edition because I thought they had finally gotten their 💩 together and came back to D&D (still don’t play M:tG anymore). Looks like Tasha’s Chamberpot might be the last thing I ever purchase from them.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
We're 9 editions into D&D in it's history. Original, AD&D, Basic Set, AD&D 2nd, 3rd, 3.5, 4th, Essentials and now 5th. It's always how its worked.
To be fair, the important change to dragonborn in Fizban's wasn't floating attribute bonuses (Str/Cha is not the most useful, but it's not horrible), it was making their breath weapon actually useful.
Of course. It is also the type of changes we are seeing in MMM for all the races printed pre Tasha's.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
Can you clarify what "it" refers to in your response?
Myself I'm excited about these changes and am very happy with them, what I'm not happy about is the extreme lack of communication by DDB on what is going to happen or not happen? I tweeted them asking this same thing and no response yet but it has only been 20 minutes so I have no info at this time and I may never have any. This lack of communication concerning this is unlike anything DDB has done before. They used to be upfront about stuff, and I know they never said a date or time when something was going to happen, but this has me concerned about the future here.
It's become the norm since Adam Bradfords team left. This is the new normal.
My guess is this is more of a "game changer" than Tasha's, like literally. WotC didn't factor in how DDB and the other two major digital licensees would incorporate the work upon release. DDB's policy (I dunno if its the same for Roll20 or Fantasy Grounds, but if it is then that gives more weight to the following) is to bring all owner's content up to the "new standard". That would essentially give MMM away for free to a lot of players. So, I think in a perfect world you have WotC with DDB and its other digital partners determining "How are we going to do this?"
At the end of the day, DDB is beholden to WotC including what they can say about WotC releases and when. The past team (some would say just Adam) were more adept at putting the shine on things that weren't known.* What we currently have looks like Community Management, "Content" Direction, and Customer Service just not being all that well integrated so at the end of the day, outside Stormknight popping in to do their best at providing perspective to the best of their knowledge, the most reliable source of information on current policy and developments comes from the moderators, which is ironic since that should fall outside their actual job/duty of moderating. The Dev Updates are more bragging shows more than addressing challenges like this (though again, this one there may be a literal contractual gag, whereas the difficulties of tech development could be communicated a bit more candidly).
*That said, while Adam's team was good at that aspect of communication there was so much bloat to their content a lot of subscribers said they wanted more actual development and less sponsored live play performances and the like.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Well, it would give away all parts of MMM that are effectively errata of prior books. Which WotC could get around by just letting the digital licenses create two versions of the creatures (which seems to be in effect what happened with dragonborn in Fizban's), but that causes its own issues.
So is that a vote in the "WotC didn't think of their partner's digital updating policies so now some think as to how to resolve it is probably going on between legal dept. so everyone is happy" column?
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I feel this would cause another storm of people asking if the other errata'd/updated content can be given back to us and definitely cause some issues with knowing what we're buying lol. What gets updated and what gets different versions. Even if caused by different things (new book vs errata). Still
patientlywaiting on that update about this book near the beginning of the new year. 🙄Agreed on your take in general. I personally feel like we've lost the communication and therefore some of the bloat, along with things like UA that were supposed to speed up development, yet it feels like development has gotten slower if anything. Although this could just be perception based due to the lack of communication. It certainly doesn't feel faster to me at least.
I was really hoping to avoid this discussion on this particular thread as it will kill all talk of the content of the book in favor of the WotC/DnDBeyond relationship and the future of this site. Since that isn't going to happen, I might as well just give in and put my 2 cents into it.
All the content will be updated to include the errata sounds great until... "Wait! but I don't want THAT errata!" Or "What do you mean there is a new edition coming out and I have to repurchase everything, I thought all the Updates were included?!"
It does not make good business sense to support multiple versions of the game OR to give away new versions of the game when it happens.
Buying digital resources like this is risky because at some point you will not have it anymore. When you buy digital, you own nothing. You are just buy access and you can lose that access at any time.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
I agree that buying things digitally is risky. I'd be quicker to buy things if they were PDFs. Best of both worlds for me - I can keep what I want.if I don't like the new stuff, or if I do like it, I can update.
I'm just smiling because it wasn't that long ago that there were a couple of discussions about digital v physical, and I was told I was paranoid for not liking the idea of my content being at the mercy of DDB (or WotC for that matter). I mean, I'm not that bothered about the changes, I'm more trying to present some people's positions and more having having issue with the general direction being taken rather than the specifics.
Still, another vote here for discussing the content rather than rehashing this.
The Kenku thing kind has me split. On the one hand, it's something quite different and somewhat unique. As a DM, I'd be happy for a player to give up and just talk normally if they didn't want to continue or even necessarily start. On the other, I can imagine that it would get very annoying if the player didn't handle it very well, and I'd reckon that the worst ones would be the most likely to persevere. I guess personally, it seemed quite gimmicky as well - and I probably won't be worse for missing it.
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.
I love it! I know the concept of mimicking other people sounds cool, but it is a real pain in the posterior to keep it up IF you even try. Being a Crow Person can be made unique enough by tapping into other qualities. I was really surprised at how excited I was that they dropped that.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
I'd like the mimicry ability to possibly be maintained. The ability to mimic, that is. The notion that Kenku can only communicate through mimicry leads to some real ham fisted interpretations by voice actors at WotC sponsored events, and if the pros make hash of it....
It actually speaks <rimshot, I'll be here all night> to the whole "doing the voices" as the proper or not focus of role playing. There was a recent Coleville video out there where on "doing the voices" and how it can often be a detriment to actually role playing, sacrificing actual deliberation of a what a character would do in favor of some performance emulation of what they think they're favorite streamers are doing (where the accent is just that an accent upon a deliberate performance including playing the sheet, not a voice that comes to your head).
I'm also pretty sure Kenku NPCs in WotC adventures have not strongly adhered to this racial feature.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I like this a lot as well (Edit: reading above and below to clarify I'm glad the mandatory part is gone). Looking forward to quite a bit of this book personally. I'm personally looking forward to playing a rogue bugbear the next chance I get to be a player - it'll be my first rouge and I like their stealth set with moving through small spaces. I was hoping for the kobold in Fizbans but glad it's coming here. There are things I agree with that have been brought up like the lack luster lore/description for newer playable races that I don't like either. For the most part though I think my group will enjoy the content of this book and we'll be picking it up if/when it becomes available.
LOL Right?!
If I understand what was leaked correctly, the Mimicry Ability is still part of the race, they just dropped the "mandated" RP part.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
There is a LOT that I like about the updated races, a few things that just Meh and I can't think of anything that I out right dislike. That in itself is pretty rare.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
It does seem to reflect a poor understanding of digital publication and tools, yes; none of this would be any sort of problem for paper books, because if someone produces a revised edition of a book, the only way of getting that revision is buying the new book.
Frankly, the problem WotC is struggling with is probably not the new versions of monsters as PCs, that's only something like 10% of the book, the problem is that a large number of the monster entries are duplicates with the same name as the original, so for digital sources for monsters, they have a couple of unappealing options
In Nerd Immersions’s part two of the PC Race leaks, the Kenku was shown to indeed still have Mimicry but without the mandate to have to speak with it. They also gained a neat ability to gain advantage on any skill they are proficient with a number of times equal to their prof bonus. They can also be small size as well as medium now.
"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