Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
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Chris Perkins and Jeremy Crawford were game designers at wizards of the coast for decades until they recently retired to work at a smaller studio. They were the go to people when you wanted to know something as they literally wrote the book on them.
People still talk about J-Craw's rulings when using the 2014 ruleset. With them retiring a new team has been assembled, and they will need time to produce anything new because adventure creation is one of the most labor intensive parts of this. Checking lore facts, writting characters and NPCs, writting scenarios that have meaningful branches, encounter balancing, map making, loot tables with quest related items or things that might be needed for that type of adventure.....
It is like writing a novel but far more complicated because people will be playing them, then making choices you never thought of and you still have to give the DM ways to deal with the unexpected.
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
Thanks for the explanation :)
Is it bad that they left? What do you think?
What do we know about the new team?
Thanks again.
I do not think it is bad that Perkins and Crawford left - both of them had been telegraphing that was their plan for years and both acknowledged their inflexibility and static perspective held the game back at times. Frankly, I kind of wish they had taken a bit of a backseat in 5.5e design - while I like the rework overall and think it improved on 5e’s design, there’s a few places it could have benefited from being a bit bolder.
The new team is a mix of designers with fairly impressive e pedigrees. These include folks who worked with Wizards either as staff or contractors, including several award winning designers for products like Radiant Citadel. They also include some designers from major third party publishers, like Ghostfire Games, known for more interesting monster design than the rather dull offerings of the Crawford and Perkins era. I also believe they poached one of the major designers from Pathfinder, who also had a history working on D&D products a while ago. Importantly, the new team reflects a more multicultural approach and focus on representing different cultures than the mostly-Eurocentric fantasy of the prior developer. Their history shows they are capable of introducing new types of setting and theme, without losing the core identity that makes those settings relatable to everyone regardless of background.
Overall, the new team is extremely talented and very promising. They hold a mix of longstanding institutional knowledge within Wizards and fresh perspectives from across the industry. And it looks like they assembled a team specifically to focus on longstanding 5e weaknesses - uninteresting monster design, homogenous setting design, etc.
I know nothing of the new team, and while I will miss Chris Perkins and Jeremy Crawford, I don't begrudge them leaving. They have been at WoTC a long time, and I am sure the smaller studio (Darrington press) will be far more sedate in their expectations on the pair.
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
Interesting. It looks promising. We'll see what path they take. I do appreciate your time to type that message. Thank you for all that information. ❤️
By the way, whose idea was to change orc lore and make them become a nomadic people with "Mexican" culture traits? Perkin and Crawford's? 🤭
Thanks again!
I think you may be conflating art for lore. The picture you are referencing is found in the player handbook’s page on orcs and depicts an orcish family traversing the desert. Design and art were very clear that their goals with the player handbook art was to showcase a bunch of different environments and members of each species engaging in activities other than just the stereotypical (which is why the art shows a barbarian with a big axe, but also rangers, children, and other less traditionally “orcish” characters).
It is evident the artist drew on the American southwest for their orc piece, but that was a stylistic decision, not to be taken as gospel for orc culture. In fact, if you read the very brief lore associated with orcs, absolutely nothing contained therein would say orcs are to be played as if they’re from the desert.
What Perkins and Crawford did do to orcs is to remove the default lore of their being savages and the direction that they are to be considered evil as part of their fundamental nature. Both of those elements were intentionally added by Gary Gygax to further racism - he regularly admitted he used orcs as a stand in for real world cultures he found biologically inferior. With cultural reckonings occurring in 2020, the old leadership team correctly decided “maybe we should give a second look at the species the game’s co-founder used to promote his real-world views supporting eugenics and genocide.” Hence why the new default lore is pretty simple - it provides the absolute minimum you need for a general vibe, while leaving it up to individual dungeon masters, players, and setting books to flesh out how the species exists in their particular worlds.
I think that should answer both why you are reading a bit too much into a simple piece of art as well as explain what was actually done with orcs by the old leadership team as they transitioned to 5.5.
Interesting. I like the fact that they've changed orc lore and now orcs are not inherently evil, but I disagree with you regarding simplyfing most races' lore. I think the new edition lacks depth compared to 2014.
I didn't know about Gary Gygax's racist perspectives. It's sad (and pathetic) to see people thinking their skin colour makes them superior, or thinking a culture is superior if its GDP is higher. Pity.
Thanks for the explanation! I do appreciate it. 😊
I think you missed a key point - they are simplifying the *default* lore in the player handbook, instead allowing those species to be explored on an individual basis, including in setting specific official content.
The old default lore actually ended up simplifying the game more than it added complexity. It created a singular “right” way to play certain species, and that ended up precluding “wrong” ways to play. It also led to issues when you were in alternative settings. most players’ primary exposure to the game is through the PHB, but most games are not set in the same world as the PHB. This led to issues such as a player reading and internalizing Forgotten Realms orc lore from the PHB, then having to drastically change their characters when told “sorry, Eberron orcs are very different.” Then there were unfortunate longstanding issues with gatekeeping, with folks going so far as to say “you’re playing the game wrong” for not following the default.
It is also worth noting, none of the lore was erased - all Forgotten Realms lore still exists out there, and, frankly, is better organized and accessible through resources like the FR Wiki. There’s five decades of lore out there for the taking - it is not exactly the best use of page space in a core book designed to cover the basics of playing.
So, while I completely understand where you’re coming from, the counterintuitive reality based on decades of data is that by moving lore from the PHB into specific setting books actually ends up increasing the complexity of the game overall, not simplifying it.
I see your point. I'd argue that most players don't really buy other books besides the PHB, and their only contact with DnD lore is that book—or what their DM tells them—. That reduces, in my opinion, new players' knowledge of the world they are going to play in, and I think lore is important to shape your character.
New players that start with 2024 rules will never know anything about the Underdark and how drow society works if they wanted to create a Drow. I mean, yeah, they will not know about the "evil drow society" and, therefore, they won't have that prejudice towards drows, but isn't that culture what shapes most drows?
It's true, though, that 5e 2014 had "narrow" races in terms of personality, and even some races were more orientated towards certain classes, which is something I dislike (that's why I love how backgrounds work in 5.5).
Maybe my point of view is biased because I love Forgotten Realms' lore and I feel that with 5.5 it has been oversimplified. I think I should see the bigger picture, taking into account the other universes that exist in DnD.
The majority of games do not use published lore, which means that lore in the PHB is just wasted space the DM has to tell the players to ignore.
Well, I don't see it as "wasted space" at all. I use that lore with my players and they want me to expand their knowledge about Toril. None of my players have ever complained about the lore of the world they are playing in, quite the opposite.
I disagree with your perspective because it's like saying that, for example, all the pages explaining LotR lore in the LotR Roleplaying are a waste of space.
If you are playing in a certain campaign setting, the lore of that setting matters, in my opinion.
What do you base that on? In my experience, a lot of games do in fact use published lore.
I’d call them “suggestions” myself, but the point stands. Especially since a species culture can vary from world to world so having a breakdown down on how Orcs, Elves, and Humans interact with each other in Faerun would be different than how they’d interact in Ebberon which would be different than how they’d interact in Dragonlance etc
But that’s exactly the point, the lore for Toril only applies to Toril so for anyone not playing a game in that setting putting that lore in the PHB is not only wasted space but actually counter productive because players read it without realising it might not be accurate. I set most of my campaigns in Eberron where the lore for the Drow is significantly different from the Underdark lolth worshipers you mentioned so my players would have to unlearn what they read in the PHB. The plan with 5.5 is to leave that out the core books and only put it in books specifically about a setting, which is actually exactly what the Lord of the Rings books did
Well the Eberron: Forge of the Artificer book didn't include anything about the species from the PHB.
But Eberron: Rising from the Last War does, and as is clearly stated in the very first sentence of FotA, “This book is an extensive supplement to Eberron: Rising from the Last War.” The very clear and obvious intent is that the books be used in conjunction and thus there is no point in repeating lore already contained in the companion book.
The OP Legends of Greyhawk will produce bundle of adventures 5.5E at various level.
I mean they DO have a ton of content they need to update to 5.5 or else a lot of players will probably riot haha. Everyone wants their favorite subclasses to work with the new rules and not get left behind.
Well, Forgotten Realms is the default campaign setting for DnD, so I guess it makes sense if the explanations are more focused on Toril. I think they could add more paragraphs explaining that drows are different in other universes, like Eberron, for example. I wouldn't see that as wasted space, but as a lore enrichment. 😊
My Gnoll snoot smells Bait. Think this might be become a rage trap.
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