Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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I have never seen anything to indicate that being homogeneous, if they were, was more than a coincidence. If they only ever come from one area, sure, they're probably somewhat homogeneous, but no more so than the humans coming from the same area.
We'll never get a no-lore core book because the lore is the thing they can copyright. It's actually not possible (at least in the United States) to copyright the rules of a game. This makes it very hard for whoever owns the D&D IP to sue someone producing a set of rules that is very obviously based on D&D; it's very easy, by contrast, to sue someone who uses the word "Illithid" without permission. Thus the flavor text you find peppered throughout the PHB is actually serving an important financial purpose. The lore is DRM.
I must say I am absolutely excited about the 2024 PHB with the class revisions we saw in the Unearth Arcana. The feedback was listened to and the content I saw was pretty stellar the last few months.
Seeing 3rd party Dungeon Dudes Drakenheim and 3rd party Humblewood on Dndbeyond was absolutely unexpected and very refreshing. I greatly appreciate those two publishers getting the additional exposure. It was a great move and very reassuring.
Does the content need to be better in the campaigns they present? Yes. Do they need to re-evaluate the approach from long 10 lvl books to a return to the shorter 3 to 4 level serials? Perhaps. But I am no way dismayed or worried about WoTC.
I worry about Hasbro and Chris Cocks. That guys clueless.
While the exact boundaries on what can be copyrighted in this context has never been litigated and is best described as unclear, there's quite a bit more than lore that can be copyrighted. The core problem is that rules cannot be copyrighted, but expressions of rules can be (with certain caveats), and the border between those two is not well defined.
OT
That's why I like to create a campaign summary to give to the players as a first step. Explain species in your world; how Elves are barbaric eco terrorists, at least as far as the tyrannical halfing overlords are concerned. Classes which are not allowed or need GM approval. Optional rules and/or house rules which are being used. Which source material may be used. Et al.
Homebrew vs. house rules
I tend to view 'homebrew' as setting/background info: Elves are barbaric vs. house rules are mechanics based, e.g. in my game on a crit the first die/dice set always does full damage and you only roll for the additional. I'm by no means insisting I'm right, just how I use those terms. :-)
I'd like them to stop adding content in adventure books (talking about races, classes and feats). Now we have sourcebooks that barely have any source material and adventures with some little content. Make it a normal sourcebook/compendium like xanathar/phb/mordenkainen series, ...
And please no more half assed books like spelljammer
i dunno, i see plenty of utility in adding a race or two to adventures (like Witchlight) and then later scooping up a year's worth in some folio (or several years worth in a mordenkainen's). in this way you get more bang for your buck if you buy the adventure, you have the option to buy the race (or whatever) piece-meal digitally if all you want is the one thing right away, and maybe the devs aren't encouraged to rush out a splat book (like spelljammer) alongside the adventure just for those races (or feats or whatever). it's one thing to have a setting book come with a thin adventure (to show off it's features), it's another thing for an adventure to come with a thin setting pamphlet (to explain some things that didn't fit in the margins?).
...although, honestly, i think there'll be more Bigby's style books (no adventure, many hooks) than Spelljammer books in the future. but my same pattern recognition that gets me through highway traffic and office water cooler talk in an election year without wrecking seems to be less well calibrated to handle interpolation from wizards of the coast data points.
unhappy at the way in which we lost individual purchases for one-off subclasses, magic items, and monsters?
tell them you don't like features disappeared quietly in the night: provide feedback!
I agree completely, keep sourcebooks as hubs for additional races/subclasses and leave adventure modules as pre-written quests.
This. This right here. Totally agree.
Been playing D&D since 1st edition and played every edition since. What you said above is exactly what's been happening and why, sadly.
I've got two separate 5e games going, but when those wrap, I'm going to be moving on to a different system as well. Likely Zweihander, to put the grit back in my games. Either way, I don't see it being D&D anymore.
Shawn D. Robertson
"Deride not the differing views of others, for it is in thoughtful and considerate conversation we find our greatest friends."
~Me~
That was great. RIP. I'm an old guy - been playing since the 80s expert box set. AD&D was awesome - the classic adventures riveting (I6 ravenloft, the UK series, Sourge of the Slavelords, Queen of the DemonWeb pits, etc...). Awesome. 2e was great too. Then stopped , got weird with "tana'ari, and ba'atezu" instead of devils and demons. 5e picked up again, now were seeing the slide. VTT is dead.
I disagree WotC hasn't a clue what players want, or do they seem to care. The new classes are weak duplicates, or just junk like streetfighter/pugilist classes. They are trying to monetize everything... $9 vtt dice ? FU WotC. The new books natural language SUCKS. Leaving everything to the DM. Why did they seperate Dragons out as unique entries ?! Overall 5e and the newest 5.5+ is weak junk.
RESPECTFULLY :
To the thin skinned facist MODS here at the disappointing D&DB...choke on a box of richards. You have to act respectable to get respect and you weasels are so far from it I can only laugh. Any criticism of the game, the site, the mods' skills seems to be greeted horribly :)
D&DB is weak sauce run by inbred gerbils...
D&D 5.5e is a junk game make for ADD kids who can barely read. Bring back RACES, SKILLS and put the WOKE back to sleep.
Not sure why you replied to my comment on a thread that is over two years old… but to do so with such reckless disregard for sensibility is rather disappointing. Your post contains material falsehoods - Pugilist is not a Wizards-made class, for the most obvious of several examples - and seems to find fault in optional purchases that are by no means something you need to play the game and thus can be easily ignored.
If you are going to necrobump a thread, you could have done better than the same tired arguments folks have been shouting at windmills for almost two years now.
Now that this thread is back up, it's interesting to look at things in retrospect. I was indeed getting a bit pessimistic towards the end of 5.0. Spelljammer was such a disappointment that I got much more selective about which books to get after that.
I really liked the 2024 PHB, however, and apart from a few details consider it a clear improvement over the 2014 version. It's just a shame that it's been slow to get picked up by gaming groups (e.g., there are still clearly more LFG postings for 2014 than 2024 on Roll20). The Forgotten Realms book was nice, if nothing spectacular. The updated artificer is also fine, but I don't like that it was part of a book on a setting I'm not interested in. Overall, as far as player options go, I am cautiously optimistic at the moment.
I do have to agree with the point that newer books have been disappointingly light on lore. I can accept the argument that the PHB is intended to be setting-neutral, even if I personally don't love that approach. And the Forgotten Realms book did contain some information on the setting, though it wasn't very comprehensive. I do hope we'll get a proper lore book like MTF was again at some point. Preferrably light on mechanical content so that those not interested wouldn't miss out on important character options.
I'm not an official lore guy so I don't really have a dog in this fight, but I totally get why people might want more lore books. Just as a sort of PSA to anyone who's willing to use the web to collect lore, there is a major site (I don't think I can link it here, but I don't believe it's plagiarized content either) that has a metric ton of FR lore. A simple google search for 'forgotten realms -ai' will bring it up in the top few results.
5e had a very strong early run with great writing, awesome art, interesting mechanical expansions and a solid foundation in two of the three core rulebooks. The Monster book has always been a problem in all categories, but we also have been blessed with amazing 3rd party books that picked up the slack so... I don't know, I ignored the official monster book and it didn't really hurt the game any.. and to be honest, in hindisight it wasn't aweful it was just very uninspired.
Though I disagree on which specific book was the starting point of trouble, it definitely started before Spelljammer, I think its splitting hairs to debate it. There is no question the quality has fallen off the deep end compared to where we started and the three 5.5e core books are without question the worst version of the game by a margin so wide its not even worth the energy to trash talk it.
The good news is that I think Wizards of the Coast has become painfully aware of the root cause and if recent dispute between Hasbro and WotC are any indication not to mention some of the high profile departures, its clear now that this "un"-creative direction was not something WotC did willingly, which leaves some room for hope that they might gain control over the product in the future and we might see a return to some decent product development and writing.
I had some hopes for the Forgotten Realms books but from the reviews I have seen, I haven't been inspired to pick them up. It's clear that whoever made these books has no idea what D&D or the Forgotten Realms are about and what a source book like that is for. Right now the product is disconnected from its audiance but I'm still hopeful that WotC can do more than just produce a good starter set.
I honestly think the biggest threat to the well being of hobby is the abuse of their creative teams.
They are constantly laid off and the remainders have to pick up more and more slack and are crunched to exhaustion.
D&D might not be as bad as MTG Arena at the moment, but it isn't out of the realm of possibility.
Killing their golden goose is a far worse existential threat than some bad books.
He/Him. Loooooooooong time Player.
The Dark days of the THAC0 system are behind us.
"Hope is a fire that burns in us all If only an ember, awaiting your call
To rise up in triumph should we all unite
The spark for change is yours to ignite."
Kalandra - The State of the World
The modern Adventures in Faerun book was basically a lore gazeteer. Not as detailed as 3.0's but far better than "The only place is the Sword Coast".
I've been re-reading the 2e and 4e FR campaign setting books, and the Adventures in Faerun is in many respects better. The 2e one might have more content, but it's disorganized, hard to read, and really not good content. Teenage me didn't know better, but it's like going back and watching Voltron as an adult.
Overall, I think it was a pretty good book. Some places it could have been improved - I think the Circle Spells could have used more time in the oven and the monsters still had the lackluster design of the Perkins and Crawford era. Most reviews of the lore, including my own, are in line with your analysis. In particular, the fact they made room for other regions was a huge selling point to most everyone I know.
Frankly, I think I have only seen one person really trashing the new book for their lore. But this was the kind of person who has a history of spreading misinformation and saying the quiet part out loud, so their “they changed so much lore” complaints really felt like a dog whistle for “how dare they ask Arabic folks to rework Calimshan, which previously had been written by an all-white team based on their stereotypes.”
I also think it is worth noting that, love or hate FR, it is not actually a useful product to judge the game moving forward. It released at a weird time for Wizards - Crawford and Perkins had just left (as they said they would years before they actually did) and the new leadership team was not yet decided. They also had not really hired many of the truly amazing game developers they have brought on recently. So, it was a book that still had the flaws of Perkins and Crawford (most notably terrible monster design - something that, based on some of the new hires and their backgrounds, I am optimistic will start changing) and likely suffered a bit from the transition and lack of leadership (I expect this is why the big new feature, circle spells, felt poorly balanced).
Ravenloft is the first real book I expect we will see with the firm hand of the new leadership and new designers - and considering their strong horror background, I think it will be a great test to see how well they do at making new unique settings (it has a bunch of new domains of dread in it) and powerful, dynamic monsters (new high level threats promised in the book, and horror is historically good for monster design).
This is my thinking as well. Whatever D&D has been up to this point is the result of the same people who brought us most of the late-era 5e nonsense. We are yet to see what this new team can do.
I don't think the reviews of the FR books where nescessarily bad, but they are mostly isolated to sponsored reviews, which carry a lot of bias. Regardless my assessment is less based on what they said and more about what they showed. It had that later era 5e book stank on it.
The last decent setting book on the Forgotten Realms was the 3e era book.
I think my main issue with the way setting source books have been written latetly is that they are not a GM source for running campaigns in the setting; they are source books for a DM to run adventures. The focus is to zoom'ed in. I want a setting sourcebook to describe the setting to me, give me the lore, history and bring me up to speed on current events, give me some specific bad guys in the world (both factions and people), and what is motivating them. Design it around the idea that I, as the DM, will create a campaign in the setting. What these books mostly do is say "here are mini-adventures you can run in the Forgotten Realms", which mind you I don't think is a bad concept for a book, but it's not what I'm looking for in a setting book. That a setting book does not make.
For example, I want to know what the Thay are up to, what plots are going down, who are the major players in that conflict, on both sides, and how/why other factions would get involved, and how can we get the players involved in the plots. Give me the timeline, the major events that have transpired, things I can actually use as a basis for a campaign. I don't need a "here is a Thay Wizard adventure scenario balanced for 3rd level". That is not something for a campaign; that is something for an evening one-shot.
Now, mind you I haven't read the books so I could be wrong, but that is the impression I got from the reviews about it.