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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With the onslaught of partner content and now full-on world crossovers, does anyone else feel like D&D is losing itself? I'm not saying that the inclusion of 3PC content is bad; it's good to see the stuff made by others here, especially when it's almost always consistently more in depth than main content. But it's the new WoW content that is starting to really hammer home this might be the start of us feeling the bloat content that the MtG crowd feels.
Am I the only one? I know someone people have to love it, and it's their right, but something just feels off to me.
Nah, because D&D has always had a loose relationship with any sense of identity. Do you want the medieval fantasy of Greyhawk, or Renaissance vibes of Forgotten Realms? Perhaps you want to go into space with Spelljammer or get multidimensional with Planescape. Is it the gothic horror of Ravenloft or the magepunk of Eberron that tickles your fantasy fancy?
While I'm not enamoured with the Universes Beyond stuff, it's not that out there. WoW is pretty parallel to D&D fantasy and Star Wars X D&D is not anything new by a long shot.
And as for third party, that no more defines D&D's identity than yours or mine homebrew games do
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
I think the reason this feels different is that all those things you've mentioned are settings that were created for D&D as opposed to distinct, separate, pre-existing franchises that (at least in some cases, like Star Wars) already have their own perfectly good TTRPG systems.
pronouns: he/she/they
I think I worded it poorly. I think I should clarify that the additional universes content, not like GBS and other content that had been made for the base game by outside creators. Universes Beyond just feels like the horrible bloat they did to MtG to spam out subpar content they had licence agreements to.
The first D&D crossover product happened in 1984 - making crossovers part of D&D longer than the Forgotten Realms. The first Blizzard crossover happened in 1999, making it older than third edition. Fifth edition has had numerous crossover products, including Stranger Things and Rick and Morty. The idea that somehow crossovers are going to come in cause D&D to lose its identity is a little bit silly - if they were going to destroy the identity of the game, they probably would have done so already in the past forty-two years.
As for the comparison to Magic, this is a bad comparison for a number of reasons. First, in Magic, you have to play with the cards as they are printed (other than proxies and such of course), and there is an incentive to play the best cards you can for a deck. That means you can be forced to play with UB cards simply because they are the only option for you. Even if you take a stand against any UB, Magic is a game played often with other people, regularly strangers. You have no real control over what you are playing against, so if you wanted to avoid UB, you could still be forced to interact with it because someone else brought UB to the table.
Pretending that is equivalent to D&D is nonsensical. In D&D, you and your group get total control over what content is allowed and how that content is framed. Do not want to deal with UB? You can exclude it completely from your game or just change it to work in your own setting. Limiting content and re-flavoring content have been wildly accepted options for... over fifty years now.
Next, the complaint about "subpar content" seems more based in antagonism to the concept than fact. I do not think anyone would deny that Magic has had some UB flops - Spider-man, for example, flopped due to changes in design goals resulting in a messy set. But the LotR set? Final Fantasy? Both regarded as two of the best designed and most fun sets ever created. Hobbit is getting great early reviews from the cards, and TMNT, while a less popular IP, got reviews that pretty much said "Okay, maybe I think the IP choice was dumb, but this is a shockingly fun and well designed set for Limited."
Finally, I think it is important to note your complaints seem to ignore every single other thing that was mentioned at the same time. There is the fact that Wizards hired a new team to work on D&D UB explicitly so they would not have to compete for staff time and take away from core D&D products. There is the fact Wizards is working with some fantastic individuals like Luke Gygax, Tracy Hickman, R.A. Salvatore, and Keith Baker to flesh out settings that these folks either created or wrote definitive contributions to. There is Wizards working with third-party publishers to further flesh out worlds like Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, and Eberron. The entire roadmap really reads like a love letter to D&D and the core identity of its most popular and iconic settings.
As someone who has been playing since the 90's let me inform you, that D&D NEVER HAD A SINGULAR IDENTITY.
It was always table to Table, module to module, Setting to setting and even within itself, it contains such a admixture of things from other sources like Tolkien, Lovecraft, Vance, Hope Hodgeson, Judeo-Christian metaphysics, and a smattering of other real-life religions all rolled together.
These are only feeling incongruous because they had their own distinct identities that are now being included into D&D, but that is how D&D was made in the first place.
D&D is a soup, and it doesn't stop being a soup because we now have new optional ingredients.
D&D didn't stop being D&D when Dragonlance, Darksun, SpellJammer, Mystara , RavenLoft, or Maztica were added, and it won't with other things drifting in. It will always be what you make it.
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
As long as projects like this don't mean fewer core DnD products I feel like this is a positive when something meshes well. The Warcraft universe in particular always felt very heavily DnD-influenced to me and is a natural for a DnD setting with some relatively minor unique twists. The content in the Warcraft book for players looks deep and really interesting.
You likely recognize Star Wars has a strong history of being supported by WotC, and I think the products were generally well received back in the day. I know I have really enjoyed what I've seen out of them. From what I understand the current Star Wars TTRPG from Edge has become somewhat poorly supported in general.
I love the SW5E fan-made project that's out there, but it has unfortunately ground to a standstill since the creators moved on to projects they could make $ with. I'm excited to mesh the official Star Wars system WotC launches with content from SW5E.
When/what timeframe is the identity you are referring to? Is it from the 1970s? or from the 2010s? Both are very different. Is it another timeframe?
Ok, so lets focus in on the real issue. Your worry is Subpar content correct?
That is worth being worried about, but let's also remember that we can and have gotten subpar first party content as well. Slop is Slop no matter its source, and we won't know which first or 3rd party stuff is crap until it is out.
But again, I don't think you need to worry about Identity loss because of the nature of D&D. MTG can lose identity with universes beyond because it always had a tight set of lore and Meta-physics narrative that can be derailed by a new-york hotdog stand.
I think we will be ok. We just have to mop off the slop if it turns out to be a problem. (AKA don't integrate it into your game.)
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
Came here to make pretty much exactly the same responses as Caerwyn, MTG suffers from the fact it’s competitive so you’re almost forced to use the best cards whether you like it or not whilst the cooperative small group nature of D&D means you can easily ignore stuff you don’t like.
Also as Gnoll said what identity do you mean? I’ve only been playing for six years and I’m frequently told on these very forums I’m not a “real D&D player” by people who think 2e was the beginning of the end. I’ve seen people who’ve been playing in Greyhawk for fifty years say the Forgotten Realms aren’t “real D&D”, never mind Eberron or Spelljammer. The identity of D&D to me seems far more dependent on which setting you choose and how your table plays than nothing WotC themselves are doing
Absolutely agree with this.
Playing D&D since 1982
Have played every version of the game since Basic (original Red Box Set), except that abomination sometimes called 4e.
This is fearmongering against proven precedent.
These 2 have history w/DND, & are valid, proven crossovers.
Any arm-flailing about identity lost via crossovers is inherently ludicrous, because this kind of thing has happened before, & it will happen again.
Besides, where were y'all when Rick & Morty and Minecraft had crossovers? WHy are the goalposts moved for WoW & Star Wars
AFAIC, this has precedent, and crossovers are PERFECTLY within the parameters of "identity".
We're also getting PLENTY of content within the main DND universes itself.
DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
First people complained that WOTC was too controlling over the narrative of D&D - So they went setting agnostic and relied on 3rd party publishers to make the broad other settings - People complained.
Now they are once again widening the net of what D&D covers (It already covered like 8 or so genres anyway why not add in a few more) and we are not happy.
Look D&D's "Identity" has always been in flux, hence why we are on 5.5 edition. So why not welcome more people to the community by giving them something they might like along side our already established genres.
Insomuch as the identity of Dungeons & Dragons has always included "this is D&D, we can do anything" I don't see how adding yet another fantasy setting and a space-wizards-with-laser-swords setting could possibly detract from that identity. I'm not particularly excited about either (though I am absolutely champing at the bit for Dark Sun) but I'm excited for people who do want the WoW and Star Wars crossover content because that's what it is. It's content. To use or not use as desired. We all have the option to just not buy those products if we don't want to play D&D in those worlds at our tables.
Maybe it's just me, but I feel like D&D has about as many identities as there are tables. For me the core stuff is great and my players and I integrate other bits and pieces, official and otherwise, as we want. Season to taste. There is plenty of stuff out there that I don't particularly care for, but if it lights someone else's torch, that's all to the good.
D&D is a system, not a world.
There is no core identity, because each world is different. Your Eberron is not my Eberron, your Forgotten Realms is not my Forgotten Realms. D&D has never been just about high magic fantasy worlds.
But the thing I want to see is better ability to manange all this content within the Character Builder to reduce option anxiety and bloat.
To add a little more to this. Since we are getting Darksun with brutality seemingly intact, I do feel that I should point out that Darksun itself is more of a tonal and genre departure for D&D than most of the 3rd party stuff coming down the pipe.
But we aren't worried about that causing loss of D&D identity. Why? It is far more Different than World of Warcraft.
It is because we are confusing D&D Identity with BRAND identity. It was never brand identity that mattered.
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
And BOTH WoW and Star Wars have intersected with D&D before. You're right, this is nothing new.
I think the question is less “Will the identities of these ‘Universes Beyond’ dilute or erode D&D’s identity?” than “How successfully can D&D preserve and present the identities of these Universes?”. From my very dusty familiarity with Warcraft (1, 2 and 3, but not WoW), I think it’ll be a fairly friction-free translation. For Star Wars, did I want them to do it? Not sure. Do I want to see how they do it? Yes.
They’re both pretty compatible. WoW frankly pulled a lot straight from D&D- dungeons, shapeshifting Druids, color-coded dragons, etc.- so on a setting level it meshes well with D&D’s paradigm. Whether or not people will be satisfied with how species traits, class abilities, etc. get iterated is another matter, but frankly imo that’s largely a case of “eat what’s on your plate or don’t”. Perfectly or even just thoroughly recreating all the elements from an MMO system is just a non-starter for a TTRPG.
Star Wars- while having its roots pretty firmly in a D&D style narrative- is harder to call, mostly because it’s been through so many different iterations in terms of how Force-users stack up against the rest of the galaxy. Following a TOR model where blaster-using PCs can keep pace with Jedi and Sith provides the most player role options, but tends to water down the power fantasy of playing the latter two. Keeping it more in line with the cinematic or single player game iterations would obviously present the opposite issue of either just running parties of Force-users or having the other party members feel marginalized when compared to the people who easily cut down foes, jump all over the place, and telekinetically lift massive objects and/or choke people out. I do also wonder how a team/company that has very thoroughly distanced itself from morality mechanics for the past decade will approach the whole Light Side/Dark Side thing.
Overall I don’t see any ominous “implications” from this, given that WotC seems to be increasing team size in proportion to the additional workload. More options will exist, and tables will use them or not use them as it suits the group. Will there be conflicts at some tables over what is or isn’t allowed? Yes, in all likelihood, but that’s not exactly new to D&D, particularly in the wake of 5.5.