Here's That SCAG Table of Contents!

AaronOfBarbaria

Adventurer

• Oct 2, 2015

• #81

Morrus said:

It's always 11 days.

Click to expand...

Which, if it is easier to remember for others like it is for me, is 2 Fridays prior to the listed release date, since things seem pretty consistently set to release on Tuesdays.

 

log in or register to remove this ad

redrick

First Post

• Oct 2, 2015

• #82

Li Shenron said:

Personally I think we need more subclasses rather than backgrounds. Furthermore, a background is mostly just 2 skills + 2 tools/languages + 1 downtime feature. The traits/ideals/bonds/flaws are very useful, tho not strictly 'crunch'. But besides new dowtime features, the rest is something that already exists in the game. You can just pick 2 skills + 2 tools/langs and have a new background.

Click to expand...

If done well, the new backgrounds could do a good job at tying player characters into the specific Forgotten Realms setting, allowing each player to absorb some fluff/lore about the setting without having to digest a whole gazetteer's worth of information. Anybody can come up with custom background crunch for an existing character concept in minutes, but presenting an open-ended background that will inspire other players is a bit more of a tricky thing. (It's something I'd love to put together for my homebrew campaigns if I had the time.)

While it's hard to speculate too much from a table of contents, this looks to be much more fluff than crunch. For a campaign setting sourcebook, I'd say that's an appropriate balance!

 

Azzy

ᚳᚣᚾᛖᚹᚢᛚᚠ

• Oct 2, 2015

• #83

There's too much fluff! There's not enough fluff! Why is there all this FR fluff in this FR sourcebook? Why is there stuff for other settings in a FR sourcebook? Why is there so much space on gods when people can wiki it? Why is there all this stuff that's already been touched on three editions ago?

You people make me laugh.

The primary goal of any setting sourcebook should be to introduce new players to the setting without inundating them in reams of lore or new options, so that they feel that they have enough information to adventure in the setting and to tailor characters to the setting. Such a sourcebook should provide tools to customize the core game to facilitate play in that setting. Catering to players that have been with the setting for two or more editions should be fairly low on the list of priorities as they tend to have disparate expectations (as seen above) of what should be in such a sourcebook.

 

Jeff Carlsen

Adventurer

• Oct 2, 2015

• #84

My suspicion is this:

Early on, They were considering releasing an Adventurer's Guide for each storyline, or at least doing so fairly often. It was then determined that this would end up being too much content, so settled on creating one Adventurer's Guide for the sword coast, where they know their adventures are going to take place for the foreseeable future. Then, they can release small PDF supplements where necessary to support a specific story. This fits better with the Core + 1 Supplement model that Mearls has mentioned.

 

AaronOfBarbaria

Adventurer

• Oct 2, 2015

• #85

[MENTION=6563]Azzy[/MENTION] has a great point, and it has given me an idea: I'm going to share the primary reason why I, a long-time D&D player with a full collection of Forgotten Realms supplments, am purchasing this book (besides that my players might like to use any mechanical options found in it).

It could serve as an outline for how to efficiently present Mystara setting information to my current players, who have no more knowledge of that setting than can be found by me constantly mentioning random cool esoteric factoids from it and playing the arcade games Tower of Doom and Shadow Over Mystara, that are currently in their first campaigns set in Mystara (and are, luckily, playing characters that are as unaware of basic info about the world because they have only just arrived their from an old home-brew world I am abandoning and Oerth).

I've looked at other campaign setting products and books and found them to be lacking as such an outline because they are far to lengthy (busy lives and all means not much time to read, and I don't like feeling like I am assigning "homework" for a game) or designed in intentionally disjointed ways because other books were to be coming along to fill in, so this book might be the one to help me, since it is both relatively brief and also released in the current "we aren't pumping out tons of books" era.

 

SkidAce

Legend

Supporter

• Oct 2, 2015

• #86

I use the 3e FRCS book outline for the wiki of my custom world. Best sourcebook ever.

 

AaronOfBarbaria

Adventurer

• Oct 2, 2015

• #87

SkidAce said:

I use the 3e FRCS book outline for the wiki of my custom world. Best sourcebook ever.

Click to expand...

I wish I could agree. It's not even the best presentation of the Forgotten Realms, in my opinion (talking of organization and design of the book itself, not making judgements on font choices, art, or differences in game mechanics).

 

SkidAce

Legend

Supporter

• Oct 2, 2015

• #88

AaronOfBarbaria said:

I wish I could agree. It's not even the best presentation of the Forgotten Realms, in my opinion (talking of organization and design of the book itself, not making judgements on font choices, art, or differences in game mechanics).

Click to expand...

Fair enough. different strokes and all that.

The organization and layout is one of the reasons I like it.

Hey, let me know a campaign source book you like the outline and organization of so I can compare and see your thoughts.

 

B

Benji

First Post

• Oct 2, 2015

• #89

I'm upset the 'History' is only like 4 or so pages long. That's not gonna fit a lot in. Or make it all very vague. I am stupidly excited about Duregar as player race for some reason (now we know that because it's announced as a goal) and now want to be a player so I can play a duregar outcast who's like an anti-Driz. I'm also hoping that 'rare elf subraces' has avarial in it because it'd make on of my players very happy.

 

pming

Legend

• Oct 2, 2015

• #90

Hiya.

Just one more comment by me. The Ranger not having another archtype. I'd like to see a ranger archtype "Spelunker"; a ranger that focuses on hunting out the lairs of underground monsters, infiltrating them, and slaying said beasties. I've always thought both the Ranger and the Druid should have decent "underground" versions of them... I still to this day allow a Druid (in 1e AD&D) to 'focus' on Underground; replacing above ground stuff with underground stuff (find water underground, recognize edible moss and fungus, underground monster/beast languages and forms, etc). But 5e has a slick way of introducing these "setting concepts" into a class without disrupting the core ideals of the class.

I suppose the Rage of Demons would have been a perfect book to put it in, but oh well... this would do just as well, with all the other Archtypes and Backgrounds included.

My 2cp's.

^_^

Paul L. Ming