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

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Descent Into Avernus is definitely a BG3 tie-in.

THEN IT IS A FAILURE.

There needs to be a new print run of it in stores right now, with a shiny "AS SEEN IN BALDUR'S GATE III" sticker on it. It needs to be sold as a bundle with the videogame in Gamestop.

A tie-in is supposed to move extra product because of that connection. If a book produced several years ago is moving extra units right now because of the videogame, it's despite WotC's marketing team, not because of them.

 

[Reynard]

...but, posting WotC stupid in every thread seems to be a hobby for some.

I'll cop to this. WotC has absolutely not been a good steward of D&D for the past few years and I think it is important to point it out when I see it. Complaining about their marketing failures isn't fundamentally different than complaining about their sensitivity failures or their anti-consumer activities.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I was talking about the feed back after launch. I didn’t see much of it before launch.

I don’t disagree that they could have considered a tie in before that but post launch feedback would still have had nothing to do with it.

Why on earth would professional marketers wait for after-launch feedback? That's literally not how the industry works.

Do we expect doctors to just throw up their hands and wait until an autopsy to figure out what they should have done all along?

 

[darjr]

Why on earth would professional marketers wait for after-launch feedback? That's literally not how the industry works.

Do we expect doctors to just throw up their hands and wait until an autopsy to figure out what they should have done all along?

Ugh.

They didn’t wait. They noticed.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

They didn’t wait. They noticed.

That's simply not true. Again, early access. Years of reviews before the game was released.

They had more than enough warning this was coming and it did not take them 18 months to say "hey, maybe we should release a chapter from Descent into Avernus" for free. This is something they may well have decided to do on Monday.

 

[Parmandur]

"Tie in" is not really accurate here. "Prequel" is, sure, but tie-ins are, by definition, temporally related.

They announced them the same day as tie-in products?

 

[darjr]

That's simply not true. Again, early access. Years of reviews before the game was released.

They had more than enough warning this was coming and it did not take them 18 months to say "hey, maybe we should release a chapter from Descent into Avernus" for free. This is something they may well have decided to do on Monday.

I’ll say it one more time.

I wasn’t talking about their plans or what they thought about doing with another tie in or not.

I was talking about them responding to the large and loud feed back they got AFTER launch.

 

[Demetrios1453]

THEN IT IS A FAILURE.

There needs to be a new print run of it in stores right now, with a shiny "AS SEEN IN BALDUR'S GATE III" sticker on it. It needs to be sold as a bundle with the videogame in Gamestop.

A tie-in is supposed to move extra product because of that connection. If a book produced several years ago is moving extra units right now because of the videogame, it's despite WotC's marketing team, not because of them.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but, why do you care so much about it so as to have to respond in all caps? Shrug your shoulders as a missed opportunity, enjoy what we got, and move on. It's not WotC was caught killing kittens or something, just something rather inconsequential in missing a marketing opportunity.

 

[Parmandur]

Descent into Avernus is absolutely not a BG3 tie-in, unless there are a whole lot more mind flayers and githyanki in it than I think.

And even if it were the tie-in, releasing it three years in advance makes it a failure as a tie-in.

They did a whole live event in 2019 that announced BG3 and introduced Descent into Avernus as a tie-in?

 

[Parmandur]

THEN IT IS A FAILURE.

There needs to be a new print run of it in stores right now, with a shiny "AS SEEN IN BALDUR'S GATE III" sticker on it. It needs to be sold as a bundle with the videogame in Gamestop.

A tie-in is supposed to move extra product because of that connection. If a book produced several years ago is moving extra units right now because of the videogame, it's despite WotC's marketing team, not because of them.

They did re-release it as a print/digital bundle, and I have no doubt that it will be on store shelves as well (probsvly is already). The big "Baldur's Gate" will help most people.