D&D 5E Wandering Monsters: Morons and Salads

Kamikaze Midget said:

Yeah, sure. But this is essentially making "new IP." You shouldn't replace the older versions of these things, so you're in a situation where anything you make is unable to connect to an existing network of fans. It has to stand or fail on its own merits. And it's easy to fail.

If you're going to have Limbo, and you're going to have a Clockwork Nirvana, you're better off using the stuff that's already there for them, presented with all the awesome possibilities they have inherent in them. Someone invented these things in the first place -- someone somewhere thought they'd be a good idea. The focus in this case is getting to what makes the idea good, and using that as the driving force.

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It's been 20+ years. The people who are going to give a crap aboud slaadi and modrons do. No one is going to bust out a brand new exciting way of looking at platonic solids with arms and legs that hasn't been brought up before now.

So, the choice is this: Let them sit off to the side a bit for the people who love them to get to use them, more or less unmolested, or WotC will tinker with them -- or, in all likelihood, them up beyond all recognition of the people who love them today -- in the hopes of reaching a broader audience.

Of those two, for the people who love them, putting them off to the side is the better option, IMO. It's certainly what I would have preferred with gnomes in 4E.

Whizbang Dustyboots said:

It's been 20+ years. The people who are going to give a crap aboud slaadi and modrons do. No one is going to bust out a brand new exciting way of looking at platonic solids with arms and legs that hasn't been brought up before now.

So, the choice is this: Let them sit off to the side a bit for the people who love them to get to use them, more or less unmolested, or WotC will tinker with them -- or, in all likelihood, them up beyond all recognition of the people who love them today -- in the hopes of reaching a broader audience.

Of those two, for the people who love them, putting them off to the side is the better option, IMO. It's certainly what I would have preferred with gnomes in 4E.

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I don't really disagree, I just think from a business standpoint that abandoning the old and going with the new is kind of a tough sell. Especially for a design that's focused on reuniting the base. New critters aren't going to bring any of the previous e's players along for the ride.

So if the modrons go in, they should be recognizable to anyone coming from 2e Planescape (or 3e, or 4e, or 1e....modrons have made some appearance in most of D&D's e's, and haven't necessarily been drastically changed). If they don't go in, they can sit on the sidelines, but I don't imagine the public would be the people to ask about IF they can go in or not. IF they go in, they shouldn't be dramatically different.

Cyberen said:

I'm getting fed up with Planescape fans arguing they are the true Keepers of Extraplanar Awesomeness.

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I generally agree with this. There was extra-planar D&D before Planescape (eg Gygax's DMG and MMs, and Jeff Grubb's Manual of the Planes), and there is also post-Planescape extra-planer D&D (eg 4e's The Plane Above, which includes Glorantha-style HeroQuesting).

Shemeska said:

the 2e expansion didn't totally redesign either of them, it took the 1e baseline and added in additional ecology, society, etc material.

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Given how long that those 2e details have been in place, they've become effectively (IMO) iconic elements to D&D itself, not just Planescape as a setting.

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Shemeska said:

Those 2e changes were almost entirely constructive though - adding to rather than invalidating or overwriting previous material on the planes.

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The question is not whether or not it's "constructive" or "revisionary". Even if it's constructive, it's still narrowing. Why should the game as a whole be saddled with this niche stuff?

Shemeska said:

It's sloppy design to buck continuity and just rampantly contradict previous material unless you're doing so to reconcile already contradictory material. Add to rather than destroy or invalidate.

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That's not sloppy design. If the old stuff was not very interesting, or not very popular, or too narrow or conoluted, then it is good game design to revisit story elements and try to make them more engaging, more widely accessible, etc. The game and its lore aren't the province of a small group of true-believing enthusiasts. Both from the commercial point of view (WotC wants story elements that will be widely popular and widely taken up), and from the community point of view (the "story" of D&D is something that every D&D player has a stake in), conservatism is not the only or even the best route.

Hussar said:

That presumes that the previous material was good enough in the first place. I think there's a pretty strong argument that the original starting point wasn't that good. While Planescape certainly has strong proponents, I'm not sure if there are enough of them to really justify retaining material that never gained any traction outside of that setting.

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This. And it cuts both ways. The same reason for thinking that WotC may have made a mistake in its 4e-ing of the Forgotten Realms - ie an apparent upopularity with a wide range of fans - suggests that where a new story element, like the Feywild and its eladrin, has gained traction than it should be able to displace some prior, obscure version of the same element.

It's not as if anyone who knows and loves the old stuff can't pretty easily adapt new stats to their old story stuff (and the 4e Manual of the Planes even laid out the Great Wheel conversion for the benefit of those who preferred it to the 4e cosmology).

pemerton said:

That's not sloppy design. If the old stuff was not very interesting, or not very popular, or too narrow or conoluted, then it is good game design to revisit story elements and try to make them more engaging, more widely accessible, etc.

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If that's the situation, I think the best option is just to leave it. If a small group of people liked it before, why completely change it? Just leave it in the dust and make something new. If people never liked the old modrons, they're probably not going to like the new ones just because they're a little more dark and gritty (and the people who did like the old ones will dislike the new ones). Just make a new thing that you think people will like.

Another example: I do not like the 4e Dragonborn. Does that mean I want it to be remade it to fit my sensibilities? No. It should stay exactly as it is, and the people who like it will still like it. If I don't like it, I'll just not use it. No problem.

GX.Sigma said:

If that's the situation, I think the best option is just to leave it.

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I think there's something to be said for that (and I think [MENTION=11760]Whizbang Dustyboots[/MENTION] said something similar upthread). But [MENTION=2067]Kamikaze Midget[/MENTION] also has a reasonable point, I think, in saying that from WotC's point of view it is attractive to try and leverage and develop what they already have, rather than create new material from whole cloth.

Those who like Planescape modrons still have all their old books, after all. Ease of mechanical conversion or mechancial substitutability therefore seems key to me. A very simple example - as the 4e MoP points out, all you have to do to substitute 4e-stat demons into Planescape fiction is change their origin from Elemental to Immortal. It's similarly easy to redescribe a 4e succbus as a demon rather than a devil.

If the main change to D&Dnext modrons is in their visual appearance, for instance, then all a Planescape GM has to do is show the players the old pictures rather than the new ones!

(I'll admit some changes make this harder than others - I don't know Planescape eladrins well enough to know how easily substitutable the 4e stats for eladrins are, although Kamikaze Midget has suggested upthread that it's probably not all that hard.)

GX.Sigma said:

If that's the situation, I think the best option is just to leave it. If a small group of people liked it before, why completely change it?

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Just chiming in to say this is essentially my view. Even though I'd never even heard of the Plane of Vacuum (I think?), but when I heard about Mearls (I think?) and a few others slamming it on a podcast, that put a real bitter taste in my mouth. So what if not many people liked it? You're making fun of it because it's not popular, and to hell with the groups that had fun with it?

No, if you're going to make something new, then make it new. You don't need to essentially rename things. That bugs me. But then, all retconning bugs me, even if I see it as necessary on the very rare occasion. Renaming (or retconning) slaads? Not at all necessary. Just make new things up that you think are interesting. Why bother changing it, if it'll just potentially make many supporters mad, and it's not guaranteed to garner much interest (like most things from Limbo, I imagine)?

I don't know. It just screams "unnecessary" to me. Just my thoughts. As always, play what you like

pemerton said:

Those who like Planescape modrons still have all their old books, after all. Ease of mechanical conversion or mechancial substitutability therefore seems key to me. A very simple example - as the 4e MoP points out, all you have to do to substitute 4e-stat demons into Planescape fiction is change their origin from Elemental to Immortal. It's similarly easy to redescribe a 4e succbus as a demon rather than a devil.

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The thought then goes: why do I need to give WotC my money for the pleasure of fixing their fiction for my game? Why would I be interested in a product that doesn't do what I need it to do right out the gate? Especially given the rampant success and ready availability of competing models like Pathfinder? What do I need the newest edition for, exactly?

5e is going to face that value proposition, too. The less people have to fix, the more likely it is to come out ahead in that analysis.

Kamikaze Midget said:

The thought then goes: why do I need to give WotC my money for the pleasure of fixing their fiction for my game?

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Sure, but that question will be asked by those who dislike modrons (in their current/Planescape form) as well as those who like them. Having to ignore stuff in the Monster Manual is itself a form of fiction repair, after all.

pemerton said:

Sure, but that question will be asked by those who dislike modrons (in their current/Planescape form) as well as those who like them. Having to ignore stuff in the Monster Manual is itself a form of fiction repair, after all.

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Maybe. I'm not totally on board with that because every game ignores stuff in the Monster Manual, as a matter of course. No D&D game in the history of the tabletop RPG has ever gone through every monster the game has on offer. To use a patently absurd example: if you played 2e and never once used a zaratan, I don't think the effort you put forth in ignoring it is really comprable to the effort of someone who wanted to use it, but then had to wrestle the thing away from the "sea-going death star with lazers that was domesticated by the dragonborn and used as a mobile warship!" that some designer thought might be cool. It's sort of the difference between a wikipedia page you don't read, and a wikipedia page about a topic you're really interested in that's just filled with lies.

Ignoring stuff in the MM is something every table has to do, because there is no game out there that functionally uses all those critters.

KM, I think the problem that I have with your argument is that anything which is established, can never be changed once established. Someone, somewhere, probably likes just about everything. So, you can never take anything and rework it and possibly make it better.

Given the massive amounts of stuff for D&D, that kinda means that we're getting a narrower and narrower field to work with. If we want to make new Abomination Toads that Impregnate People, and we cannot call them Slaad, then we're back to throwing things at the wall and hope that something sticks. Slaad aren't terrible. They are pretty cool. There's nothing wrong with changing them so that more people might think they are even cooler.

If that means that your Chaos Toads from the outer planes become a bit more Lovecraftian Horror Toads, is that really a bad thing?