D&D 5E Humblewood: A New Third-Party Setting on D&D Beyond

Following November's inclusion of Dungeons of Drakkenheim and Lairs of Etharis, another third-party setting has been added to D&D Beyond. From Hit Point Press, Humblewood, a setting which features new birdfolk player races, made a million dollars on Kickstarter back in April 2019. You can buy it from DDB for $39.99

In the world of Everden, nestled between the mighty Crest mountain range and the vast marshes of the Mokk Fields, lies a mystical forest known as Humblewood that hums with the Great Rhythm of nature. Now the fires have come, and the Woods have been thrown into chaos. Even in these dark times, brave heroes can be found within the Wood. Will you answer the call?

Welcome to Humblewood, a campaign setting where you get to adventure as birds and other woodland critters. Come and discover the mystery behind all the forest fires, is it the Bandit Coalition or something even more nefarious? Explore the verdant forest within:

• Embody the Great Rhythm of nature by selecting between 10 new playable Races and 4 new subclasses from within the D&D Beyond character builder
• Empower your characters with 3 new backgrounds, 7 new feats, 10 new spells, and over 20 new magic items
• Expand your DM toolkit with more than 50 new monsters in the D&D Beyond Encounters tool and 11 new maps for use with D&D Beyond Maps

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Wikipedia got you covered: Virtual reality sickness - Wikipedia.

Note it's basically the same profile as motion sickness in general, it's just that VR is causing more people to look into it again: Motion sickness - Wikipedia

Thanks, that is a bit of a rabbit hole. Nothing there looks insoluble if someone is willing to throw money at it. What has intrigued me recently is the Apple headset. What does Apple know that I do not, selling a $3.5k headset.

 

[Twiggly the Gnome]

What does Apple know that I do not, selling a $3.5k headset.

How many whales they have?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Nothing there looks insoluble if someone is willing to throw money at it.

Dude, you need to read it better before saying stuff like that.

There are absolutely no solutions to the problem which work reliably right now, so no, you can't "throw money at it".

The only things people have done that seem to work are:

A) People forcing themselves to suffer intense nausea for weeks so it eventually lessens. That is not a money problem, it's basically just people torturing themselves because they're desperate to try VR. If someone else ordered you to use VR it would be pretty morally and ethically bleak.

B) Electroshocking your inner ear continuously whilst you use this. This is completely untested and the long-term consequences are unknown. I would suggest it's very likely that long-term your balance and perhaps hearing will become impaired by something like that though.

C) Making it so you don't move off one spot in VR. This isn't reliable, but it can help give you like 10-20 minutes in VR before the motion sickness kicks in. So you can't have games where you move around except by teleporting (and not too often) or similar.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Dude, you need to read it better before saying stuff like that.

There are absolutely no solutions to the problem which work reliably right now, so no, you can't "throw money at it".

The only things people have done that seem to work are:

A) People forcing themselves to suffer intense nausea for weeks so it eventually lessens. That is not a money problem, it's basically just people torturing themselves because they're desperate to try VR. If someone else ordered you to use VR it would be pretty morally and ethically bleak.

B) Electroshocking your inner ear continuously whilst you use this. This is completely untested and the long-term consequences are unknown. I would suggest it's very likely that long-term your balance and perhaps hearing will become impaired by something like that though.

C) Making it so you don't move off one spot in VR. This isn't reliable, but it can help give you like 10-20 minutes in VR before the motion sickness kicks in. So you can't have games where you move around except by teleporting (and not too often) or similar.

That is not needed in most cases. If you look at the causes, the principal ones listed, apparent motion, framerate, image resolution and lack of expected inputs in the peripheral vision. field of view and eye width adjustability are also important.
This paper suggests that "VR HMDs should have a good quality display-screen (i.e., OLED or upgraded LCD), an adequate FOV (i.e., diagonal FOV ≥ 110°), adequate resolution per eye (i.e., resolution > 960 × 1,080 sub-pixels per eye), and an adequate image refresh rate (i.e., refresh rate ≥ 75 Hz) to safeguard the health and safety of the participants and the reliability of the neuroscientific results "
Along with adequate hardware to drive and fully spatialised sound, since they are looking at the use of VR in clinical setting they also point out that the capability of the software also matters.

There is nothing in there that says electroshocking your inner ear is necessary.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

What does Apple know that I do not, selling a $3.5k headset.

That this is an expensive alpha test. The "real" consumer product is years in the future and thousands of dollars cheaper.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

There is some reason why there are few VR videogames. But we have the option of playing Augmented Reality using tablets with cams. For example there is a AR videogame franchise, the Invizimals, where you had to use the AR to catch "invisible" mons.

Nintendo also has got some AR game like Mario Kart Live.

But we should wonder why there aren't more CRPGs, or these aren't more popular among the gamers.

* I wonder if Battlezoo could appear in D&DB or those setting, Ryoko and Koryo, based in Far East cultures. Or the Wagadu Chronicles, inspired in Africa.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

That is not needed in most cases. If you look at the causes, the principal ones listed, apparent motion, framerate, image resolution and lack of expected inputs in the peripheral vision. field of view and eye width adjustability are also important.
This paper suggests that "VR HMDs should have a good quality display-screen (i.e., OLED or upgraded LCD), an adequate FOV (i.e., diagonal FOV ≥ 110°), adequate resolution per eye (i.e., resolution > 960 × 1,080 sub-pixels per eye), and an adequate image refresh rate (i.e., refresh rate ≥ 75 Hz) to safeguard the health and safety of the participants and the reliability of the neuroscientific results "
Along with adequate hardware to drive and fully spatialised sound, since they are looking at the use of VR in clinical setting they also point out that the capability of the software also matters.

There is nothing in there that says electroshocking your inner ear is necessary.

Like I said, you need to read this better - the are VR HMDs which have all of that and they cause just as much motion sickness as other ones. I'm not sure why you think they don't.

Why not read the actual articles? Serious question.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Like I said, you need to read this better - the are VR HMDs which have all of that and they cause just as much motion sickness as other ones. I'm not sure why you think they don't.

Why not read the actual articles? Serious question.

I have read some of the actual articles, I even quoted from one.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I have read some of the actual articles, I even quoted from one.

Then I don't get why you think that would be a generalized solution. It's already been disproven. Nausea remains a huge problem for general acceptance. I read an article by a VR booster recently who described it as a "niche" problem, and it's extremely funny, because the majority of people using VR experience it to a greater or lesser extent, but in his mind that's irrelevant, because only people who stick with VR count, and relatively few people who experience significant nausea in VR stick with it, hence it becomes "niche" to him. Incredible logic.

One thing that does seem to work against nausea (without solving it entirely) is stuff that's "full-body" - i.e. VR stuff that is similar to the conceptions of movies like Lawnmower man, albeit less extreme so far, and usually using your body to move it, rather than it to move your body. However that's all extremely bulky, clunky, and expensive so far and it doesn't seem like any of that could change any time soon.

The closest I've seen to a potential leap here is that Disney have invented this bizarre and hard-to-describe, almost April-fools-like system which effectively keeps you in place as you walk (only at low walking speeds so far). Combine that with stuff like torso tracking tech and I think you could have something, though it wouldn't suitable for home use as the machinery required for the keep-you-in-place system is apparently pretty serious under the "stage".

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Nausea is caused when the visual information your brain receives conflicts with the information it is getting from the balance organs in the inner ear. There is something wrong if you don't experience it to some extent.