Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide: The First Official D&D 5E Setting

Yes, it is new, I was just creating a thread for it myself.

 

[CapnZapp]

Nah... I think we'll just let you keep sleeping through all of it. Maybe you'll dream something you like while the rest of us are actually playing the game.

Yeah. What is dnd if not reactionary nostalgia and tired tropes?

At least, that's why I love the game!

 

[Mistwell]

Dragon did about 384 pages per year in the beginning which is 1 and a half 256 page "Hardcovers" plus of course the other stuff being produced.

That is certainly not insignificant.

I didn't say it was insignificant. I said 5e well outpaced AD&D in the first year. 6 major releases in 12 months, additional content in articles and Dragon+, additional accessories like DM screen and licensed spell cards, 5e isn't nearly as sparse a release schedule as AD&D 1e.

 

[Ashran]

Forgotten Realms? Blade Singers? This sounds like pure fan service. Pass.

Someone wake me when we get a product that isn't spoon feeding us sentimental crap like this. Maybe something that spurs creativity & originality, rather than rehashing tired tropes.

That drove me to thinking... What would be "something that spurs creativity & originality" exactly ?. A book on how to create adventures/campaign setting ? It has been done before. Anything else ? I mean, the whole game is about giving you the tools to get creative and spurs creativity, so, when they announces something with more tools for just that my first instinct is to say "cool". But it's just me...

This is not a troll, I would really love to read what people in this thread disatisfied with the annoncement would consider creative & original. A new campaign setting, maybe? What kind of tools do you feel we are missing at this point ?

 

[Mercule]

Welll...we already have a Fighter subclass with magic. So, I'll throw out that maybe BladeSinger will be a Wizard with martial stuff...?

More likely a Bard subclass, I'd think. Take the Valor Bard and swap out the Inspiration and Combat Magic with some bladesong related toys. Not sure the Valor Bard isn't good enough on its own, though.

I could also see the Bladesinger as a Fighter subclass, though I'm not sure how it'd be functionally different from the Eldritch Knight.

I don't see it being a Wizard subclass. Maybe you could add light armor and a couple toys for the school, but I can't think of anything that wouldn't either be unbalanced or be functionally equivalent to a single-level dip into Fighter.

Monk or Paladin, maybe, but those are pretty big stretches.

 

[Mistwell]

Note he said the pages that covered AD&D; they did coverage for all sorts of things, from what I gather.

Yes, particularly in the early years it was a general tabletop gaming magazine with some coverage or AD&D.

I am sympathetic to the desire for more content for 5e. I love the game, and I like reading new stuff for this game. I just also like to put the release schedule in perspective - it's honestly about the norm for about half the editions of D&D. Some editions had a much heavier release schedule (3e and 4e), but the others had about this same release schedule in the beginning (1e and 2e). Expressing a desire for more content doesn't need to be mixed with exaggeration. I know it's the Internet so exaggeration comes with the territory. But I also think it's fair to point it out when it's done.

 

[S_Dalsgaard]

Dragon did about 384 pages per year in the beginning which is 1 and a half 256 page "Hardcovers" plus of course the other stuff being produced.

That is certainly not insignificant.

The first year of Dragon was six issues, each at 32 pages, of which maybe half were D&D related. That's 192 pages or around a hundred related to AD&D (which is pretty much equal to the page count of HotDQ).

The second year (77-78) they did a bit more, with eight issues at up to 38 pages.

 

[The Grassy Gnoll]

Thread is TLR, but I'm looking forward to this.
I only have the original FR Grey Box which had snippets of info only. With the adventures for 5e being set on the Sword Coast, this sounds great for me.
And FWIW, I think it much more sensible to do 'regions' rather than all of the FR for settings, anyway. A Lonely Planet guidebook for Earth would be far less detailed and colourful than those that break the world down into manageable, travellable chunks.
It's a Yay from me.

 

[Patrick McGill]

I think they simply included the Purple Dragon Knight because it's iconic, and Cormyr is close enough for them to be involved at least tangentially. I'm sure there's going to be other hooks from other parts of Faerun in this book as well; the Sword Coast is certainly not isolated.

This mini-setting idea might be good or bad, depending. I was thinking the other day about the number of settings people want to see, and with the current rate of releases, it will be decades before something is published for everything. Breaking the settings down into smaller parts increases that time frame exponentially. Most likely, however, we're just not going to see something published from every setting. Which is probably a good thing.

I do like the focus on one piece of the setting, however. It makes it easier to use for newer DMs. With a book about the whole of Faerun, you still have some work to do to figure out where the campaign will start and where it will go. Narrowing the focus like this makes that a little easier. Hopefully it will have maps within it that easily allow a sandbox style campaign to happen.


Actually... wasn't there mention when one of the surveys was completed that a majority of people wanted to see sand box style content? I wonder if this product has anything to do with that.

(As an aside, love to see that Green Ronin is involved. they've quickly become one of my favorite publishers in the new wave of RPG content)

 

[Shasarak]

I didn't say it was insignificant. I said 5e well outpaced AD&D in the first year. 6 major releases in 12 months, additional content in articles and Dragon+, additional accessories like DM screen and licensed spell cards, 5e isn't nearly as sparse a release schedule as AD&D 1e.

The first 4 major releases of 5e just match what was already available originally (although not compiled into hardback) and the other 2 may or may not actually be useful depending if you use pre-designed adventures or not which historically is not the case.

So really we currently have a few UA articles and a couple of pages from the Dragon+

 

[MonsterEnvy]

and the other 2 may or may not actually be useful depending if you use pre-designed adventures or not which historically is not the case.

Uh no lots of people use Pre Designed Adventures if only for ideas. Stuff like Against the Giants and Tomb of Horrors would not be so iconic if they were not used.