D&D 5E D&D Beyond Offers A Free Baldur's Gate Gazetteer

In Baldur’s Gate, thievery, blackmail, and illegal trade runs rampant. Now you can journey to this dangerous city of the Sword Coast with the Baldur’s Gate Gazetteer. Learn about each of the city’s districts and key locations and people, and unlock backgrounds for your next Baldurian character!

The Gazetter includes:

• History of Baldur's Gate
• Baldur's Gate Today
• Government
• Citizenry
• Economy and Trade
• Religion
• Dangers in Baldur's Gate
• City Landmarks
• Upper City
• Lower City
• Outer City
• Beyond Baldur's Gate
• Baldur's Gate Character Backgrounds
• Dark Secrets

The Gazetteer is quite sizable, and mainly lore-based, with two new NPC stat blocks (Nine-Fingers Keene, and Rilasa Real), some random encounter tables, and information on how the regular D&D character backgrounds fit in. There's also a new background, the Faceless. Finally there are some rules about 'Dark Secrets' which are a background element which the party shares.

Claim Baldur’s Gate Gazetteer now! - D&D Beyond

www.dndbeyond.com

 

[Weiley31]

For example about Runeterra(League of Legends), and Yordles as PC specie.

They tried that already. Yordles were suggested to be refluffed Gnomes. Eventually the Runterra/League of Legends crossover was eventually removed as there was a rumor/possibility that DNDBeyond may have accidently jumped the gun on something like that without getting permission. Or something.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

This may be the most low effort marketing tie-in I have ever seen. It's the BG chapter of Avernus, with, like, 2 extra NPCs. It is wierd that people are cheering about this.

A D&D game is going to likely be the biggest game of the year, and probably man sites' Game of the Year, and the best they can do is to give away an already produced gazeteer from a module published 4 years ago. This strongly suggests to me that they did not have ANY tie-in marketing planned and only after BG3 was a break out did they think to try.

Between this and the severely lackluster HAT tie-in marketing, what is happening over there? Who is in charge?

It certainly suggests whoever it was who was yelling about lack of monetization last winter got pushed out of a window or something, as they are routinely leaving money on the table, even now.

It would have been comically easy to hire a decent freelancer, have them compile and tighten up previous Baldur's Gate (or Neverwinter, for a DADHAT tie-in) lore and then develop new content for it, and have it ready to go for when BG3 finally dropped. The amount that they pay freelancers is, unfortunately, a drop in the bucket compared to most marketing budgets, so it would have been easy enough to afford, especially amortized over the extremely long span of time that BG3 was in early access.

Even if one didn't want to sell it in hard copy, say as a bundle with the videogame at Gamestop or via Amazon, they could have put it up as a POD on DMs Guild and charged $10 for and plenty of people would have been happy to buy it.

 

[darjr]

I really do think this was partially in response to folks asking where the tie in stuff was.

 

[Veltharis ap Rylix]

They posted an announcement video:

 

[Reynard]

I really do think this was particularly in response to folks asking where the tie in stuff was.

Why not launch day? I think it because they don't know what they are doing.

 

[darjr]

Why not launch day? I think it because they don't know what they are doing.

Because they saw the feedback that happened after launch day?

They couldn’t have seen it before it existed.

Now that I think about it I kinda do not want a direct tie in. The last big one was the Sword Coast Adventurers Guide. While I liked and appreciated it they got FRIED over it.

Also they could easily be cheesy

 

[Zaukrie]

the number of complaints about free stuff is astounding.

 

[Reynard]

Because they saw the feedback that happened after launch day?

They couldn’t have seen it before it existed.

Exactly. They did not plan to tie in, which seems rather odd.

Now that I think about it I kinda do not want a direct tie in.

I do. I want an adventure book for it. The writing is way better than what WotC offers.

The last big one was the Sword Coast Adventurers Guide. While I liked and appreciated it they got FRIED over it.

I am not sure how this is related.

Also they could easily be cheesy

Mmm... cheese.

 

[Reynard]

the number of complaints about free stuff is astounding.

Once again, the complaints aren't about "free stuff" but about WotC's apparent incompetence and sometimes obvious maliciousness.

but I suspect you knew that.

 

[Zaukrie]

Once again, the complaints aren't about "free stuff" but about WotC's apparent incompetence and sometimes obvious maliciousness.

but I suspect you knew that.

To what end? What does this add, pointing it out over and over?