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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SpongeBob will visit dnd .
Hi!!!! Wanna make a pact with him? Pm me if you want to! IL tell you the take offs!
I'm also an Anime and Fortnite fun.(and homebrewing student-master)
Ext Sign
The Club
Pm me the word avocado.
OK so first off this is a slippery slope fallacy, they’ve announced two cross overs neither of which is a million miles from what D&D already does. Both WoW and SW are fantasy (yes SW is fantasy, it has magic users and sword fights and only the vaguest association with science) and that’s what D&D does. So thinking those two will in any way lead to a SpongeBob cross over is Catastrophising.
Secondly so what if they did release a Spongebob book? They released a Rick and Morty cross over and its impact on D&D was so minimal that virtually no one has even remembered it whilst talking about the already established history of D&D cross overs
To be fair to people forgetting Rick and Morty, they also added virtually nothing to the game in terms of content. The book is an adventure module that reprints Basic Rules content and adds a single magic item of its own.
And just like I won't include Star Wars in my game, I won't include SpongeBob. Case closed, if you want it buy it, if you don't don't. They've already said it won't interfere with their mainline products.
Short Answer No.
Long Answer, this is exactly what 3rd Edition was. In 2000 with the release of 3rd edition, WotC (and TSR) released a multitude of books for partners, Star Wars D20, WarCraft D20 most were done in partnership with 2nd party creatives White Wolf and Paizo doing a lot of them.
The announcement was basically a better version of the 2000 announcements of 3rd edition, D20/SRD, and WotC buying TSR.
If anything this feels like going back to roots, hopefully we get tie-in novels published too, then we will be back to what was once how D&D felt in the 2ks.
The Star Wars roleplaying game was not D&D Star Wars, it was a standalone game using the D20 system (its second edition, its first edition was a d6 system). Yes, it had many similarities because of who owned it at the time, but it was still a standalone game not a D&D mod.
No one is saying that this identity issue only started with the announcement of WoW and SW partnerships, it started much sooner. How many of us have been complaining that each book they put it out is mostly fluff and light on substance? How many have complained that instead of putting out content for the single most popular setting the game has ever had, they instead resurrect a near dead setting that was championed by a single executive because that was their favored setting, ignoring what the vast majority of the playerbase actual wanted?
I have no problem with different settings, I have no problem with partnering with other companies to put out non-core content (though in my opinion they rarely do a good job of it). My problem is that they are ignoring the core of the game, and instead focusing on the peripherals.
As for WoW and Star Wars in particular - Star Wars deserves its own system, Jedi are not simply reskinned casters. Another company owns the rights to make that game, so be it if they choose to suck at it. Making a joint venture like this just cheapens both. And as for WoW... WoW owns its very existence to D&D, and is in many ways a bastardization of D&D. WoTC should not be partnering with WoW. One of the biggest complaints of 4th edition, and why it drove people back to 3.5, or Pathfinder, or to other systems - was that it felt like an attempt to turn D&D into tabletop World of Warcraft - and here they go, at it again.
I could type on this issue all day, and list many many supporting arguments, but for once I think I'll keep this short(er). D&D is losing its identity, and this is not a new problem. 3.5 avoided this by having the extra content all support the core of the game. But the trend since then has been to pull away from the core that made the game what it is. A company that succeeds has a single vision, with supporting tangents yes, but a core vision that guides what they do. WoTC seems to have forgotten that.
Just my 2.4 copper pieces on the topic from someone who's not only been around the block, but 4 planes over, under the mountain, over Tarrasque, and back again forty times over.
Playing D&D since 1982
Have played every version of the game since Basic (original Red Box Set), except that abomination sometimes called 4e.
Did you not read the announcement? This is demonstrably fiction.
First, we have this:
Second, they laid out a LOT of ways they are respecting and expanding on their core content. Working with the figures who defined various settings to expand those settings. Building a new setting. Revisiting an old setting and taking steps to preserve its identity. New books in the official settings. Partnering with trusted third party content providers to help expand those settings.
I honestly do not know how you came to the conclusion above - it is utterly contradicted by the facts we have and seems more based in frustration with the concept of UB than reality.
So what you actually mean by “D&D’s identity” is the Forgotten Realms? Anything else is a deviation from that? Seems a little confined considering that half of all D&D games are played in home brew worlds even for the official settings the FR is just one of many
Really not that many, if you mean Forgotten Realms. Also, there's been an awful lot of complaining that FR fluff is no longer part of the core books.
Pretty sure the actual most popular setting is "incoherent generic fantasy" -- you meet in a tavern, and a mysterious cloaked stranger tells you about the adventure hook, and then you go from there into the next adventure. If the DM's using canned modules, those are often set in the FR, but using them does not actually mean the table is playing in the setting in any meaningful sense.
According to WotC and their market surveys, the majority of the player base plays homebrew settings.
The very first setting book for 5.5 was FR. The upcoming adventure along Arcana Unleashed is, I believe FR. As I understand it, they promised more FR stuff at GenCon.
I, personally, am exactly as interested in the FR stuff as I am the WoW stuff, and I'm far from alone.
Ignoring whether or not that criticism of 4e is accurate, this sounds more like turning Warcraft into D&D. They are presumably using the exact same mechanics that you'd use to play in the Forgotten Realms. I expect Dark Sun will have more rules changes than WoW will.
And yes, WoW is built upon D&D. D&D is an enormous influence in the fantasy genre. The vast majority of CRPG and related games use the building blocks, because they're both well-known and they work for a game. WoW uses it. Ultima and Wizardry used it. I believe at least early Final Fantasy used it. And so on. (It's not got less common in modern games; I'm just less familiar with the field.) Levels and hit points are nearly universal, and classes extremely common.
Star Wars D20 was a standalone game, written by TSR (WotC) published by WotC, using 3rd edition D&D rules (written before publishing of 3rd edition) sold under special liscence and not the parntership program D20, although it was labeled as D20.
It was because of how it was designed 100% compatable with 3rd edition D&D, and yes I have played a game that used both seemlessly as well. You can argue all you want, but Star Wars and D&D fit well together, as Star Wars is just a fantasy set in space, and D&D has always had space as a setting, and laser guns as well. Hells D&D has even had a Lightsaber since the late 80s, the Sun blade.
see:
https://www.dndbeyond.com/equipment/49-laser-pistol
https://www.dndbeyond.com/equipment/51-laser-rifle
https://www.dndbeyond.com/magic-items/9229110-sun-blade