That's a big part of what I was getting at, actually. The Core D&D Fanbase, as often portrayed by forum posters here and elsewhere, wants Cool New Shit - but if that Cool New Shit is not the right Cool New Shit (Spoilers: there's no such thing as the "right" Cool New Shit), shits are flipped and the company is accused of everything from selling out to myopia.
If Eberron had released for the first time last year, rather than being a retread of a 3.5e setting that landed when its political themes were supercharged, the reaction would have been godawful. It would've fallen completely flat and everybody would've hated it; the people who liked it would've been told they're stupid and wrong and need to stop having stupid fun in stupid ways.
Wildemount came out. It's a magnificent alternative to the Realms for people who want that classic high fantasy flair but are sick unto death of trying to piecemeal together four previous editions of weird lore. Yes, it's a Critical Role book, but outside of a few cheeky nods here and there, the book was designed and written from the outset to be campaign agnostic. The actual Critical Role campaign, and/or knowledge of it, is not important or even all that beneficial to the new book. It's simply a well-written, self-contained tome of everything you need to play a game set in the continent of Wildemount on the world of Exandria. Despite this, it's almost universally scorned and rejected by "real fans" of D&D.
It's a little infuriating, especially when Magic: the Gathering sourcebooks get a free pass because "Oh, that's just Wizards expanding their IP into their other IP, that's cool!"
C'mon, guys.
C'mon.
Nevertheless. That's why I strongly suspect we're getting another Realms book. The Core Fanbase has gotten angrier and angrier every time a new setting that isn't Forgotten Realms has been announced, and I'm figuring Wizards has strained those folks' already-limited patience as far as it'll go. With a new Baldur's Gate game coming out in the nearish future to boot, they'll want to start reinforcing their old go-to setting. They already did Descent to Avernus, so the new book won't be Baldur's Gate, but still.
I agree with everything in that post expect of the one line about the M:tG sourcebooks. From what I've seen on the forums, people really hated them, especially "real D&D fans." For me, the quality of the world is really what matters, not where it comes from. (Also, I just noticed that I posted the same thing two times in a row, changed slightly. Strange.)
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A fool pulls the leaves. A brute chops the trunk. A sage digs the roots.
Also, if they have to revisit the Forgotten Realms, could they at least choose a different continent than Faurune? I don't know much about the other places, but Kara-tur sounded more interesting than just choosing another chunk of the main continent writing a book about it.
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A fool pulls the leaves. A brute chops the trunk. A sage digs the roots.
Heh. That's funny. I have a severe hateboner for M:tG and despise the Ravnica book with the fury of a thousand exploding suns, but any time that hatred has come up in conversations around here I'm informed that the M:tG/D&D crossovers are awesome and a great way to expand the playerbase of both games. Why that doesn't apply to the Critical Role book I have no idea, but eh. Curious that you've seen the opposite reaction to the M:tG books, though maybe I've just encountered more munchkins drooling over the "here's an entire new spellcasting list" backgrounds. Which, by the way, should be banned forever in any game not explicitly set in Ravnica, but that's neither here nor there I suppose.
I play MtG and enjoy it for what it is, a card game. The lore of those worlds, however, are weak and uninteresting in my opinion.
IMHO, they used to be more interesting when there were novels that paired with the expansions. Basically pre-Kamigawa.
They just restarted having novels with some expansions, and god, they were horrendous. The cards told the War of the Spark story way better than the novel based on them.
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A fool pulls the leaves. A brute chops the trunk. A sage digs the roots.
I play MtG and enjoy it for what it is, a card game. The lore of those worlds, however, are weak and uninteresting in my opinion.
IMHO, they used to be more interesting when there were novels that paired with the expansions. Basically pre-Kamigawa.
They just restarted having novels with some expansions, and god, they were horrendous. The cards told the War of the Spark story way better than the novel based on them.
I wouldn’t know, I stopped throwing my money away on M:tG when Kamigawa was announced.
I'm just going to point out, for all the people saying "We should get an entirely new setting, built just for 5e!", or "Man, Wizards will never give the fans what they want!"
They did exactly that. Both those things. In the same book, even. The Explorer's Guide to Wildemount is a brand new setting developed for Fifth Edition, never seen in any E before. Millions of fans of Critical Role jumped for joy at the book, for a myriad of reasons. The 'core' D&D fanbase, though?
"Exandria doesn't count."
"...just another celebrity book..."
"...a real D&D book, not like the CR thing..."
They unilaterally dismiss Wildemount because it's not something that's existed in the D&D lexicon for fifty years. The company works with a beloved creator who's put his heart and soul into the game and in to the book specifically (kinda like, I dunno...Eberron?) and creates a splendid alternative to the Forgotten Realms for people who don't have four previous editions of books to fill in the back lore that is mentioned precisely nowhere in any Fifth Edition book...and the Core Fanbase reaction is "...really? You want me to spend money on what? Lolno, gimme talking space hippos instead."
So yeah. Think on that before savaging Wizards for not making Cool New Shit. There's a thousand and one reasons to give Wizards infinite shit, but this specific reason is not valid.
I'm not dismissing Wildemount or Exandria. I like both of them. The thing is, WotC didn't make those settings. I want Wizards to develop a new setting, not take one from a popular livestreaming show and make a book from it. I want them to make a whole new setting on their own.
I am happy we have Explorer's Guide to Wildemount. I love the book, have a running campaign in the setting, love the contents, but Matt Mercer's team did most of the work. WotC was more of the editors. They revised it, cut pages out, and were not the ones who developed content for the book.
I would like for them to make a new setting developed entirely by them, though. Don't brand M:tG settings as new, even if they are new to D&D. It's great that they're developing books with other people, like the Acq. Inc. and Wildemount books, but I want them to also develop something on their own. I would like some older settings to come back, like Dark Sun, Planescape, Spelljammer, et cetera, but I would also like something entirely new.
It's hard and risky to do so, but it's just what I personally would like. I won't complain about getting books similar to Wildemount and Theros, as they're easier to develop than a whole new setting, but I also want them to take the risk instead of just developing something they know will be popular.
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You may have been the primary reason why I said that people hated the M:tG sourcebooks.
I’d doesn’t help that Ravnica in particular sucked eggs.
Er..... can I ask you guys why you hate MtG so much? And why Ravnica is so bad? I admit that the first pass at Ravnica was more fun than the second, with the whole maze running thing. But there are a lot of really fantastic toolbox cards that came about as a result of Ravnica. And the setting paints a really good, if largely static, view of what life would be like there.
If Eberron had released for the first time last year, rather than being a retread of a 3.5e setting that landed when its political themes were supercharged, the reaction would have been godawful. It would've fallen completely flat and everybody would've hated it; the people who liked it would've been told they're stupid and wrong and need to stop having stupid fun in stupid ways.
This is completely incorrect. I never knew what Eberron was before Rising From the Last War came out last year, it was basically completely new to me, though I had kind of heard of the concept before. I can guarantee that if Eberron had been introduced in Rising from the Last War for the first time, I still would've bought it and liked it as much as I do now. I can assure the same is for newcomers to Eberrron and D&D in general. Maybe certain people would complain about it, but IMHO, it would still have an overwhelming community of support.
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Wildemount came out. It's a magnificent alternative to the Realms for people who want that classic high fantasy flair but are sick unto death of trying to piecemeal together four previous editions of weird lore. Yes, it's a Critical Role book, but outside of a few cheeky nods here and there, the book was designed and written from the outset to be campaign agnostic. The actual Critical Role campaign, and/or knowledge of it, is not important or even all that beneficial to the new book. It's simply a well-written, self-contained tome of everything you need to play a game set in the continent of Wildemount on the world of Exandria. Despite this, it's almost universally scorned and rejected by "real fans" of D&D.
I have heard a lot more support for Wildemount than negativity. I personally love the book and setting. My only complaint is that they probably should've playtested some of the content in Unearthed Arcana first.
I do wish WotC would make a brand new setting, but I can understand it being risky, but that's exactly why I want them to do it. Wouldn't it be refreshing to see a brand new setting with a new flavor and theme completely made by Wizards of the Coast come to 5e? If they do it right, people will be happy for a new setting, probably like the new setting, and it'll have a good community reaction. Sure, people online will surely complain, as the internet is the melting pot of all ideas and opinions, but haven't people complained about nearly every 5e book that's ever come out?
It's a little infuriating, especially when Magic: the Gathering sourcebooks get a free pass because "Oh, that's just Wizards expanding their IP into their other IP, that's cool!"
I find this frustrating as well. Their M:tG settings are clearly only cash grabs, but they have a few pieces of content that I buy the books for.
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I personally don't like M:tG settings because of a few reasons:
They're cash grabs.
They're trying to combine 2 different cosmologies into one thing, which I absolutely despise. If Ravnica never had the Outer Planes or a crystal sphere in their lore before, why do they suddenly have them now? (I can answer that, because they want to make more easy cash-grabbing M:tG books in the easiest way possible.) Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms don't have planeswalkers, so don't try to fake that they do.
Many of the worlds don't function as D&D worlds, like Ravnica or New Phyrexia, IMHO.
M:tG storylines move much quicker than D&D ones, so it's harder to keep up, and there's a bunch of convoluted lore. (Same problem as Forgotten Realms. We don't need another Forgotten Realms.
That's pretty much it for me. Anyone else want to comment?
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I personally don't like M:tG settings because of a few reasons:
They're cash grabs.
They're trying to combine 2 different cosmologies into one thing, which I absolutely despise. If Ravnica never had the Outer Planes or a crystal sphere in their lore before, why do they suddenly have them now? (I can answer that, because they want to make more easy cash-grabbing M:tG books in the easiest way possible.) Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms don't have planeswalkers, so don't try to fake that they do.
Many of the worlds don't function as D&D worlds, like Ravnica or New Phyrexia, IMHO.
M:tG storylines move much quicker than D&D ones, so it's harder to keep up, and there's a bunch of convoluted lore. (Same problem as Forgotten Realms. We don't need another Forgotten Realms.
That's pretty much it for me. Anyone else want to comment?
I feel like if they divorced a setting from the rest of the M:tG lore, it could be fairly interesting. They are definitely cash grabs though, but only one has been released yet and we haven't seen the contents of the second one. It could be better.
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A fool pulls the leaves. A brute chops the trunk. A sage digs the roots.
@drag0n I played a number of other card games for a while, in addition to Magic. They all were better, and they all ended up dying because M:tG is a nine hundred pound tumorous gorilla that chokes the life out of any other property that tries to work in that market. I find Magic to be old, outdated, clunky, and much less fun to play than newer games, and Wizards' policy of invalidating all your cards three weeks after you buy them via set rotation grinds my gears. Doesn't help that they decided to up and just discard several of their formats a few years ago, forcing my brother to sell a collection he'd spent seven years and several thousand dollars curating.
Beyond that, the 'lore' of Magic the Gathering is no such thing. They can pretend there's lore all they want, but flavor text on cards does not a story make. Ravnica in particular is a trashfire, as we saw with the Ravnica sourcebook. The guilds are wildly implausible, simple static cardboard mockeries of real organizations because each one has to fit its narrowly defined two-color stereotype with no room for depth or character. The existence of the guilds is considered all the story anybody needs, all "here, have eleven organizations that all kinda hate each other. Tell a story!" The Magic-specific races are somehow even dumber than British space hippos. It does not fit, it does not work, and the wildly overpowered 'Guild Member' backgrounds with their extensive Free Spell Lists have been driving DMs up the damned wall since they came out.
Theros had better do a much friggin' better job of being a D&D book than Ravnica did or there will be Issues.
@Levi: I'm not sure why Wizards is better than anyone else when it comes to making stuff. While I get that Exandria is not a departure from the Classic Fantasy genre the way Eberron is, I don't see how the work originating from a talented creator outside the company makes it any less valid. While I wouldn't mind seeing some wild new tangents, regardless of who or what created them...well. We're not going to. You need to look to third party publishers for that sort of thing, folks making supplements and semifficial homebrew settings for 5e. Stuff like Grim Hollow or Humblewood. Wizards isn't going to bother releasing anything they don't absolutely know is going to be a surefire slam-dunk hit. Not after 4e, where they tried to get inventive and were soundly told to go **** themselves by all the people now clamoring for more 5e retreads of 3.5e stuff.
I personally don't like M:tG settings because of a few reasons:
They're cash grabs.
They're trying to combine 2 different cosmologies into one thing, which I absolutely despise. If Ravnica never had the Outer Planes or a crystal sphere in their lore before, why do they suddenly have them now? (I can answer that, because they want to make more easy cash-grabbing M:tG books in the easiest way possible.) Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms don't have planeswalkers, so don't try to fake that they do.
Many of the worlds don't function as D&D worlds, like Ravnica or New Phyrexia, IMHO.
M:tG storylines move much quicker than D&D ones, so it's harder to keep up, and there's a bunch of convoluted lore. (Same problem as Forgotten Realms. We don't need another Forgotten Realms.
That's pretty much it for me. Anyone else want to comment?
I feel like if they divorced a setting from the rest of the M:tG lore, it could be fairly interesting. They are definitely cash grabs though, but only one has been released yet and we haven't seen the contents of the second one. It could be better.
Meh, I couldn't even get through the two paragraph blurp of that book I was so uninterested. Magic The Gathering is not a role-playing setting, its nonsense created for competitive CCG that they tried to stitch together into something they could sell to MTG players that might consider playing D&D (aka buying D&D books). It was not made for D&D fans and if they weren't sure about that they could have just asked.
I wouldn't read that book if you paid me 50 bucks to take it off your hands.
I only said that the Theros book had a possibility of being better. I personally didn't like the sets based on it, but the legendary monsters rules sound cool and could be setting-agnostic.
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A fool pulls the leaves. A brute chops the trunk. A sage digs the roots.
That's a big part of what I was getting at, actually. The Core D&D Fanbase, as often portrayed by forum posters here and elsewhere, wants Cool New Shit - but if that Cool New Shit is not the right Cool New Shit (Spoilers: there's no such thing as the "right" Cool New Shit), shits are flipped and the company is accused of everything from selling out to myopia.
If Eberron had released for the first time last year, rather than being a retread of a 3.5e setting that landed when its political themes were supercharged, the reaction would have been godawful. It would've fallen completely flat and everybody would've hated it; the people who liked it would've been told they're stupid and wrong and need to stop having stupid fun in stupid ways.
Wildemount came out. It's a magnificent alternative to the Realms for people who want that classic high fantasy flair but are sick unto death of trying to piecemeal together four previous editions of weird lore. Yes, it's a Critical Role book, but outside of a few cheeky nods here and there, the book was designed and written from the outset to be campaign agnostic. The actual Critical Role campaign, and/or knowledge of it, is not important or even all that beneficial to the new book. It's simply a well-written, self-contained tome of everything you need to play a game set in the continent of Wildemount on the world of Exandria. Despite this, it's almost universally scorned and rejected by "real fans" of D&D.
It's a little infuriating, especially when Magic: the Gathering sourcebooks get a free pass because "Oh, that's just Wizards expanding their IP into their other IP, that's cool!"
C'mon, guys.
C'mon.
Nevertheless. That's why I strongly suspect we're getting another Realms book. The Core Fanbase has gotten angrier and angrier every time a new setting that isn't Forgotten Realms has been announced, and I'm figuring Wizards has strained those folks' already-limited patience as far as it'll go. With a new Baldur's Gate game coming out in the nearish future to boot, they'll want to start reinforcing their old go-to setting. They already did Descent to Avernus, so the new book won't be Baldur's Gate, but still.
Please do not contact or message me.
I agree with everything in that post expect of the one line about the M:tG sourcebooks. From what I've seen on the forums, people really hated them, especially "real D&D fans." For me, the quality of the world is really what matters, not where it comes from. (Also, I just noticed that I posted the same thing two times in a row, changed slightly. Strange.)
A fool pulls the leaves. A brute chops the trunk. A sage digs the roots.
My Improved Lineage System
Also, if they have to revisit the Forgotten Realms, could they at least choose a different continent than Faurune? I don't know much about the other places, but Kara-tur sounded more interesting than just choosing another chunk of the main continent writing a book about it.
A fool pulls the leaves. A brute chops the trunk. A sage digs the roots.
My Improved Lineage System
Heh. That's funny. I have a severe hateboner for M:tG and despise the Ravnica book with the fury of a thousand exploding suns, but any time that hatred has come up in conversations around here I'm informed that the M:tG/D&D crossovers are awesome and a great way to expand the playerbase of both games. Why that doesn't apply to the Critical Role book I have no idea, but eh. Curious that you've seen the opposite reaction to the M:tG books, though maybe I've just encountered more munchkins drooling over the "here's an entire new spellcasting list" backgrounds. Which, by the way, should be banned forever in any game not explicitly set in Ravnica, but that's neither here nor there I suppose.
Please do not contact or message me.
You may have been the primary reason why I said that people hated the M:tG sourcebooks.
A fool pulls the leaves. A brute chops the trunk. A sage digs the roots.
My Improved Lineage System
Oh no, Yurei is not alone here. I hate Ravnica. It is the worst book since SCAG.
The MtG settings are a cash grab as WotC (and Hasbro) try to leach as much money as they can from the current popularity of D&D.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
I’d doesn’t help that Ravnica in particular sucked eggs.
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I didn't like Ravnica that much, but I feel like other M:tG settings could be done well.
A fool pulls the leaves. A brute chops the trunk. A sage digs the roots.
My Improved Lineage System
I play MtG and enjoy it for what it is, a card game. The lore of those worlds, however, are weak and uninteresting in my opinion.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
IMHO, they used to be more interesting when there were novels that paired with the expansions. Basically pre-Kamigawa.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
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They just restarted having novels with some expansions, and god, they were horrendous. The cards told the War of the Spark story way better than the novel based on them.
A fool pulls the leaves. A brute chops the trunk. A sage digs the roots.
My Improved Lineage System
I wouldn’t know, I stopped throwing my money away on M:tG when Kamigawa was announced.
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I'm not dismissing Wildemount or Exandria. I like both of them. The thing is, WotC didn't make those settings. I want Wizards to develop a new setting, not take one from a popular livestreaming show and make a book from it. I want them to make a whole new setting on their own.
I am happy we have Explorer's Guide to Wildemount. I love the book, have a running campaign in the setting, love the contents, but Matt Mercer's team did most of the work. WotC was more of the editors. They revised it, cut pages out, and were not the ones who developed content for the book.
I would like for them to make a new setting developed entirely by them, though. Don't brand M:tG settings as new, even if they are new to D&D. It's great that they're developing books with other people, like the Acq. Inc. and Wildemount books, but I want them to also develop something on their own. I would like some older settings to come back, like Dark Sun, Planescape, Spelljammer, et cetera, but I would also like something entirely new.
It's hard and risky to do so, but it's just what I personally would like. I won't complain about getting books similar to Wildemount and Theros, as they're easier to develop than a whole new setting, but I also want them to take the risk instead of just developing something they know will be popular.
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
Er..... can I ask you guys why you hate MtG so much? And why Ravnica is so bad? I admit that the first pass at Ravnica was more fun than the second, with the whole maze running thing. But there are a lot of really fantastic toolbox cards that came about as a result of Ravnica. And the setting paints a really good, if largely static, view of what life would be like there.
This is completely incorrect. I never knew what Eberron was before Rising From the Last War came out last year, it was basically completely new to me, though I had kind of heard of the concept before. I can guarantee that if Eberron had been introduced in Rising from the Last War for the first time, I still would've bought it and liked it as much as I do now. I can assure the same is for newcomers to Eberrron and D&D in general. Maybe certain people would complain about it, but IMHO, it would still have an overwhelming community of support.
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I have heard a lot more support for Wildemount than negativity. I personally love the book and setting. My only complaint is that they probably should've playtested some of the content in Unearthed Arcana first.
I do wish WotC would make a brand new setting, but I can understand it being risky, but that's exactly why I want them to do it. Wouldn't it be refreshing to see a brand new setting with a new flavor and theme completely made by Wizards of the Coast come to 5e? If they do it right, people will be happy for a new setting, probably like the new setting, and it'll have a good community reaction. Sure, people online will surely complain, as the internet is the melting pot of all ideas and opinions, but haven't people complained about nearly every 5e book that's ever come out?
I find this frustrating as well. Their M:tG settings are clearly only cash grabs, but they have a few pieces of content that I buy the books for.
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
I personally don't like M:tG settings because of a few reasons:
That's pretty much it for me. Anyone else want to comment?
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
I feel like if they divorced a setting from the rest of the M:tG lore, it could be fairly interesting. They are definitely cash grabs though, but only one has been released yet and we haven't seen the contents of the second one. It could be better.
A fool pulls the leaves. A brute chops the trunk. A sage digs the roots.
My Improved Lineage System
@drag0n
I played a number of other card games for a while, in addition to Magic. They all were better, and they all ended up dying because M:tG is a nine hundred pound tumorous gorilla that chokes the life out of any other property that tries to work in that market. I find Magic to be old, outdated, clunky, and much less fun to play than newer games, and Wizards' policy of invalidating all your cards three weeks after you buy them via set rotation grinds my gears. Doesn't help that they decided to up and just discard several of their formats a few years ago, forcing my brother to sell a collection he'd spent seven years and several thousand dollars curating.
Beyond that, the 'lore' of Magic the Gathering is no such thing. They can pretend there's lore all they want, but flavor text on cards does not a story make. Ravnica in particular is a trashfire, as we saw with the Ravnica sourcebook. The guilds are wildly implausible, simple static cardboard mockeries of real organizations because each one has to fit its narrowly defined two-color stereotype with no room for depth or character. The existence of the guilds is considered all the story anybody needs, all "here, have eleven organizations that all kinda hate each other. Tell a story!" The Magic-specific races are somehow even dumber than British space hippos. It does not fit, it does not work, and the wildly overpowered 'Guild Member' backgrounds with their extensive Free Spell Lists have been driving DMs up the damned wall since they came out.
Theros had better do a much friggin' better job of being a D&D book than Ravnica did or there will be Issues.
@Levi:
I'm not sure why Wizards is better than anyone else when it comes to making stuff. While I get that Exandria is not a departure from the Classic Fantasy genre the way Eberron is, I don't see how the work originating from a talented creator outside the company makes it any less valid. While I wouldn't mind seeing some wild new tangents, regardless of who or what created them...well. We're not going to. You need to look to third party publishers for that sort of thing, folks making supplements and semifficial homebrew settings for 5e. Stuff like Grim Hollow or Humblewood. Wizards isn't going to bother releasing anything they don't absolutely know is going to be a surefire slam-dunk hit. Not after 4e, where they tried to get inventive and were soundly told to go **** themselves by all the people now clamoring for more 5e retreads of 3.5e stuff.
Sad. But true.
Please do not contact or message me.
I only said that the Theros book had a possibility of being better. I personally didn't like the sets based on it, but the legendary monsters rules sound cool and could be setting-agnostic.
A fool pulls the leaves. A brute chops the trunk. A sage digs the roots.
My Improved Lineage System