Mike Mearls tweet: Is the Known World of Mystara coming to 5e? (What's Cool About Mystara?)

havard · Apr 4, 2018

Demetrios1453 said:
There was a proto-Feywild in the Seelie Court, in that it was its own plane that wasn't quite connected to the other planes in the normal way. Of course, in 2e it was accessible from several Outer Planes (most notably the Beastlands, Arborea, and Ysgard) instead of the Material Plane, but otherwise is was fairly similar...

Mystara had its own version of the fairy world. In PC1 - Tall Tales of the Wee Folk, it was referred to as the Feywood. I have made a map of it here.

Elves OTOH are said to be the creation of the Immortal Ordana, although the Dragonlord Trilogy suggested yet another creation story for the elves of Mystara.

-Havard

QuietBrowser · Apr 4, 2018

Just to insert my two cents...

When it comes to Lupins, my introduction to them was the distinctly wolf-people take on them in Dragon for 3e, which I think was based on the Yazhak Steppes tribes? But, anyway, I find the 2e "many breeds" interpretation to be clunky and kind of hokey; for a 5e update, I would follow in 3e's steps and make them wolf-people with the subrace split being Civilized, Tribal and Nomadic.

Rakasta... well, actually, I'm not sure how I'd do them, but one thing that immediately suggests itself to me is perhaps subraces based on the breed categories - thus, the actual stats are for Ancestral, Greater, Wild and Domestic Rakasta, and what kind of cat your rakasta PC happens to resemble is up to you.

I definitely would not do Diaboli as a human variant/subrace, because the two races have nothing in common; Diaboli are devil-like humanoids from the Plane of Dreams who regard humans with as much instinctive terror as humans regard them.

Dire Bare · Apr 4, 2018

QuietBrowser said:
Just to insert my two cents...

When it comes to Lupins, my introduction to them was the distinctly wolf-people take on them in Dragon for 3e, which I think was based on the Yazhak Steppes tribes? But, anyway, I find the 2e "many breeds" interpretation to be clunky and kind of hokey; for a 5e update, I would follow in 3e's steps and make them wolf-people with the subrace split being Civilized, Tribal and Nomadic.

Rakasta... well, actually, I'm not sure how I'd do them, but one thing that immediately suggests itself to me is perhaps subraces based on the breed categories - thus, the actual stats are for Ancestral, Greater, Wild and Domestic Rakasta, and what kind of cat your rakasta PC happens to resemble is up to you.

I definitely would not do Diaboli as a human variant/subrace, because the two races have nothing in common; Diaboli are devil-like humanoids from the Plane of Dreams who regard humans with as much instinctive terror as humans regard them.

I mostly agree with you on the "animal-head" people, including Lupins and Rakasta, I prefer to avoid matching subraces to real-world (or fantasy-world) animal breeds. I hated those articles breaking Lupins and Rakasta down into tons of silly subraces, no offense to Mr. Heard or anyone who digs that goofy aspect of Mystara. In my campaign, Lupins are canine (canoid?) but don't correspond to species or breeds like wolves or domestic dogs, likewise for Rakasta and even Tortles.

Diaboli are similar to Tieflings, but different enough I'd rather design a new race to represent them.

cbwjm · Apr 4, 2018

Coroc said:
[MENTION=6788732]cbwjm[/MENTION] #84 Your ideas to "shoehorn" different races into a classic Setting are great, also for DMs who want to do something like that with their official or homebrewed setting, but let me ask you and the rest of the Forum (although it had been asked before): Is this the biggest Problem we got in converting new Settings to 5e?

Maybe i do not see things like that because i get old and stubborn but for me the biggest Goal to achieve when converting classics like DS, ebberon, DL or Mystara to 5e is:

Do i get the same feel from the Setting like when i played it Long ago with a different Version of the rules and would even someone not familar with the Setting back then but starting to Play it with a 5e conversion get the same vibe?

That is the hardest Thing to achieve and imho this requires something which seems to be outlawed by at least some of the Forum These days:

Cut it out, leave it, do not allow it, restrict reduce: classes, spells, equipment allowed/ available, Combos, alignments etc etc.

E.G.:
Atm if i had to do a DS conversion to 5e halfgiants would not be included in the playable races because i have not found any means to make them fit both fluff and mechanics (yet). That makes the conversion loose some options but stay true to the Feeling and BA of 5e at the same time. Halfgiants would still exist as NPC or Mobs.

Otoh in my example: What i would not care the least about is: Can i somehow shoehorn tieflings as playable race into a DS conversion because simply they are
NOT NEEDED FOR THE FEEL of the Setting.

The feel of the setting is important to me as well. I think Mystara is made for adding new races and new options just based on the history of the world. For a setting like Dark Sun, however, I'd be fine with not having certain options at the start if I was converting. I'd leave out certain races, but be inclined to include others. Athas is cut off from the outer planes so it makes sense to me to say there are no tieflings or aasimar. The elemental planes play a big part so I'd probably include genasi in the setting. If I don't have a good substitute for some of the original races then I'd leave them out until I find/homebrew something that fits in well so the race may not start off with half-giants or thri-kreen and I'm not sure I'd want to include dragonborn as dray either since I like them as potential enemies, not allies. I'd also be inclined to let players know what races aren't in based on the history of Athas, I'd let the players know about the cleansing wars wiping out orcs and gnomes so that they aren't available. I think I'm firmly on the side of restrictions for a setting, often times what a setting removes helps make it memorable.

Dungeonosophy · Apr 5, 2018

QuietBrowser said:
I definitely would not do Diaboli as a human variant/subrace, because the two races have nothing in common; Diaboli are devil-like humanoids from the Plane of Dreams who regard humans with as much instinctive terror as humans regard them.

Diaboli are said to be the "humans" of the Nightmare Dimension. They are devil-like only in appearance. They are usually Chaotic Good. They regard their human-counterparts of the Multiverse Dimension with instinctive terror. Our brownish-peachish skin, hornless heads, and tailless rears are horrible to behold.

Some have speculated that in the Nightmare Dimension, the "good" Immortals are Chaotic Good Devils. The whole array of named Devils (Asmodeus, Dispater, Mephistopheles, etc.) are probably the Chaotic Good Immortals of the Diaboli. (Devils don't exist in the BECMI cosmology, only Demons.) The Demons of the Nightmare Dimension are probably Lawful Evil Eladrin. They look like Eladrin, but are Lawful Evil. The racial powers of the Devils and Eladrin are probably switched.

Coroc · Apr 5, 2018

[MENTION=7635]Remathilis[/MENTION] #90 Please do not get me wrong, i do not want to stick to e.g. 2e anachronisms for the sake of Tradition, which were already bad rules back then and often changed by houserules.

What i did want to Point out was that the vibe of these nonvanilla worlds often came by leaving out some options of the Standard game and adding new stuff.

E.G. Darksun had no Paladins. Every one back then was thinking : Oh thats interesting, no shining Knights of good, this makes the campaign world even more gritty.
No one was crying about not being able to play a thrikreen Paladin or a Kender from Krynn and nobody was crying about not using the Standard phb Options to create his e.g. human character because the attributes were created with a different method to achieve higher averages and the starting Level was three , to counter the deadliness of the Setting.

Darksun is about survival it is not about diversity and inclusion, one of the principles of the setting is that it is excluded and almost impossible to reach from other planes and other prime worlds. If some one decided to bring his character from another world, and the DM would allow it there were rules back then to do this. but they were so that every divine caster had to adopt to the elemental spheres or the Pally would become a fighter etc. and it was generally not recommended to use characters from other Settings.

Darksun is such a good example because it lives of exclusions and altered Basic asumptions, imho it is impossible to use your philosophy on a believable conversion. There is no Problem at all in using every 5e mechanic that does not contradict the Basic Parameters. But you Need some adjustments e.g. for defiling.
Your Standard 5e rules just cannot resolve this.

So what is worse in your eyes or lets say what is the heavier toll on staying true to a System: Leave out some classes and races or alter the math mechanic to introduce defiling or weapon breakage? To me the math is what makes the System unique and do not get me wrong i love the 5e mechanic over any other System especially 2nd ed and prefer it anytime for tabletop.

A race or a class is just a construction which works with the Basic mathematical rules and in the end it does not matter if you call it athasian bard with the or Standard PHB rogue assasin with a poisoner Background and proficiency in Musical instruments.

It gets even better 5e allows to use Standard things for easy adaptions e.g. the mul works perfect as a slightly reskinned halforc. The Attribute modifiers can stay, the only Thing to Change is some mechanic which gives Advantage on Exhaustion checks instead of some of ist standard skills.

5e DMG explicitely recommends to use such replacement e.g. when not having stats for a given mob in the MM just use something similar and Change the Name.

And nothing else is done here, you do not alter the integrity of 5e by leaving out a race or a class or a spell.

Remathilis · Apr 5, 2018

Coroc said:
[MENTION=7635]Remathilis[/MENTION] #90 Please do not get me wrong, i do not want to stick to e.g. 2e anachronisms for the sake of Tradition, which were already bad rules back then and often changed by houserules.

What i did want to Point out was that the vibe of these nonvanilla worlds often came by leaving out some options of the Standard game and adding new stuff.

E.G. Darksun had no Paladins. Every one back then was thinking : Oh thats interesting, no shining Knights of good, this makes the campaign world even more gritty.
No one was crying about not being able to play a thrikreen Paladin or a Kender from Krynn and nobody was crying about not using the Standard phb Options to create his e.g. human character because the attributes were created with a different method to achieve higher averages and the starting Level was three , to counter the deadliness of the Setting.

Darksun is about survival it is not about diversity and inclusion, one of the principles of the setting is that it is excluded and almost impossible to reach from other planes and other prime worlds. If some one decided to bring his character from another world, and the DM would allow it there were rules back then to do this. but they were so that every divine caster had to adopt to the elemental spheres or the Pally would become a fighter etc. and it was generally not recommended to use characters from other Settings.

Darksun is such a good example because it lives of exclusions and altered Basic asumptions, imho it is impossible to use your philosophy on a believable conversion. There is no Problem at all in using every 5e mechanic that does not contradict the Basic Parameters. But you Need some adjustments e.g. for defiling.
Your Standard 5e rules just cannot resolve this.

So what is worse in your eyes or lets say what is the heavier toll on staying true to a System: Leave out some classes and races or alter the math mechanic to introduce defiling or weapon breakage? To me the math is what makes the System unique and do not get me wrong i love the 5e mechanic over any other System especially 2nd ed and prefer it anytime for tabletop.

A race or a class is just a construction which works with the Basic mathematical rules and in the end it does not matter if you call it athasian bard with the or Standard PHB rogue assasin with a poisoner Background and proficiency in Musical instruments.

It gets even better 5e allows to use Standard things for easy adaptions e.g. the mul works perfect as a slightly reskinned halforc. The Attribute modifiers can stay, the only Thing to Change is some mechanic which gives Advantage on Exhaustion checks instead of some of ist standard skills.

5e DMG explicitely recommends to use such replacement e.g. when not having stats for a given mob in the MM just use something similar and Change the Name.

And nothing else is done here, you do not alter the integrity of 5e by leaving out a race or a class or a spell.

Then I'd argue, as I have in the past, that Dark Sun isn't a D&D world but it's own game that happened to use some of 2e's mechanics and the D&D name. It's as much "Dungeons and Dragons" as d20 Modern or Star Wars Saga was, a separate game that shared some mechanics with D&D. Dark Sun would ideally benefit from all removal from D&D and to be a separate system with it's own player and GM guide and free of the assumptions of D&D. It could even go farther by completely redesigning classes, races, monsters, equipment, and combat rules to reflect the harsh and less magical world.

Honestly, the best thing for Athas is someone gets the liscence from WotC and makes a stand-alone game. Because in an era of limited splat, WotC will never do it justice and keep forcing Sophie's Choice: setting purity or system compatibility.

Coroc · Apr 5, 2018

[MENTION=7635]Remathilis[/MENTION] Well then Ravenloft is not D&D either for you? (Some still say it worked best with AD&D or AD&D 2nd rules btw.)

To enhance this, Eberron is also not very Standard D&D, i mean Orc Druids being the good ones and an elven dragon being one of the big bad bosses?

I never Play modern games like star wars, and to Label them as D&D would be unfitting eventually, but in the case someone would use 5e rules and adapt them for star wars and call that D&D next Star Wars i would see it as what it is : a brand Name.

On your third Party idea: Well there is something close to this for darksun i believe athas.org has soem rights in this, although i don't know how far they are entitled.

I still do not see the Problem to use 5E for darksun. There are no official 5E greyhawk products, i use old stuff, convert it and adapt it and voila it works for me and my Group. I do not see the absolute need on darksun being totally different System though, if it were that way it would not have worked out with 2E or 4E.

Remathilis · Apr 5, 2018

Coroc said:
[MENTION=7635]Remathilis[/MENTION] Well then Ravenloft is not D&D either for you? (Some still say it worked best with AD&D or AD&D 2nd rules btw.)

To enhance this, Eberron is also not very Standard D&D, i mean Orc Druids being the good ones and an elven dragon being one of the big bad bosses?

I never Play modern games like star wars, and to Label them as D&D would be unfitting eventually, but in the case someone would use 5e rules and adapt them for star wars and call that D&D next Star Wars i would see it as what it is : a brand Name.

On your third Party idea: Well there is something close to this for darksun i believe athas.org has soem rights in this, although i don't know how far they are entitled.

I still do not see the Problem to use 5E for darksun. There are no official 5E greyhawk products, i use old stuff, convert it and adapt it and voila it works for me and my Group. I do not see the absolute need on darksun being totally different System though, if it were that way it would not have worked out with 2E or 4E.

My metric is simple: how much of the core rules can I use with only minor changes. Let's look at the PHB in relation to Dark Sun. Chapter 1 is changed as Dark Sun PCs need higher ability scores to survive. Nearly all races in chapter 2 would need changing because they don't exist (gnomes, half-orcs) or are radically different. You'd have to remove several classes in chapter 3 (bard, paladin, monk, maybe cleric?) And modify most others. You'd have to create mostly New backgrounds as most of the PHB ones aren't appropriate. The equipment in chapter 5 is a joke for Dark Sun; it's nearly entirely useless. The magic chapter would need changing to account for defiling and the spells chapter would need extensive cuts to remove named spells (Bigby, etc) as well as "cheat spells" like create water.

What's left? The adventuring and combat chapters? Nearly 70% of the PHB is invalid.

Contrast that to Ravenloft; nearly all the races exist (naturally or as "guests"), all classes exist with all subclasses, all backgrounds, spells and equipment do too. The only changes are some modifications to certain spells and class abilities, so maybe less than 5% is invalid. Eberron literally allows "everything in D&D" to exist in Eberron and then just gives you more options like artificers and warforged.

There is only two settings that are defined more by what isn't allowed than what's added: Dragonlance and Dark Sun. Even Dragonlance doesn't come close to requiring an alternate phb to play. Dark Sun literally redefines everything in the core D&D books. You can't play Dark Sun with the PHB the same way you can play every other setting; that to me says it really should be it's on thing.