A Look at the Duerger: Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes Preview

Alas, the party completed the Duergar section of the dungeon 2 sessions ago! :O

 

[MechaTarrasque]

Usually this time of the month we would get a new Unearthed Arcana from WotC; however, this month they've posted a one-page preview of May's Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, showing some random tables associated with the Duergar. Click on the image below for the PDF!

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"We have a number of things we're tinkering with for upcoming installments of Unearthed Arcana. Between wrapping up [/FONT]Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes and going to Gary Con, were not ready to show any of the UA inventions in the workshop (mysterious smoke is billowing out of some of them), so we're previewing a page from the Tome of Foes! This page-showing some duergar-themed tables-gives you a taste of the sorts of tables you'll find in Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, which is out this May. The book's tables will help you flesh out different aspects of your D&D campaigns and characters.
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The tables include clan name, clan status, clan's notable traits, adventurer story hooks, and quirks."[/FONT][FONT=&amp]

Find the PDF here.

Separately, WotC's Nathan Stewart shared these images:

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[QuietBrowser]

I find this preview a huge disappointment. I mean, it'd be pretty lackluster regardless, but the fact it's duergar is just icing on the cake... sad truth is, whilst TSR struck gold with the Drow, the Duergar never have been as good.

I mean, not only does their entire characterization and culture boil down to "they act like any other grumpy dwarven jerk, but unlike surface dwarves, there's no heart of gold under that cranky arrogant workaholic exterior", but they aren't even that unique: they used to share the Underdark Dwarf niche with a non-evil dwarf subrace up until 4th edition! Even drow have something more to them than just "Generic Jerky/Evil Elf" as an underlying culture...

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

We have already been discussing this in the MToF thread for the past few hours.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

It might be worth having a separate thread Duerger.

The preview is clearly underwhelming. The one thing that did manage to make Duerger interesting was the Sword Coast Legends computer game. As a game it was rubbish, but it did visit a duerger city that had a real atmosphere of oppressive industry and a people stoically crumbling under crushing despair.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

I miss the spiggan gnomes, mixture of Tyrion Lannister and Red Hulk. When the return?

 

[Jacob Lewis]

"Hey guys, look! Duergar are back! Remember them? It's just like old times! This is gonna be great!"

Yeah. Wow. I can hardly... stay awake. Wake me when this edition is over.

 

[JRedmond]

They should have released nothing rather than release a book preview under Unearthed Arcana. The preview is also pretty boring, not sure what they were thinking.

 

[kenmarable]

They should have released nothing rather than release a book preview under Unearthed Arcana. The preview is also pretty boring, not sure what they were thinking.

I'm really scratching my head on how something not very exciting is actually worse than nothing at all. That makes no sense whatsoever.

With UA only once a month and DDB now supporting UA, I was really hoping for something more and preferably player-centric. But also in the OotA game I DM, they are just arriving at Gracklstugh, so it's perfect timing even if it isn't very much.

 

[Warmaster Horus]

I'm seeing MToF as being more of a preview of what direction the next WotC AP is going to go. That said, more random charts makes it hard for me to suppress a yawn.