D&D 5E Wandering Monsters: Morons and Salads

[Cyberen]

Sure, I acknowledge I don't know Planescape, because at the time it was on the shelves, my homebrew campaign was already extraplanar (so I wasn't interested as a DM) and there was a remote possibility that I could play a PC in a Planescape campaign, so I didn't get it in order not to spoil the fun.
But I refuse the 2ers the right to impose their fluff on Next, just because Planescape=2e=paramount of planar goodness. The fluff change from 1e to 2e was real and tiresome for me, so I can sympathize with those who were pissed off by 4e take on so many setting issues (even of I generally consider 4e versions to be vastly more interesting than prior versions).
If you chose to be inclusive and retro-compatible, you can't seriously consider 2e as a starting point, as it excludes everything prior 2e from your inclusiveness )

 

[Celebrim]

But they had little to no real detail prior to 2e. Plus the 2e expansion didn't totally redesign either of them, it took the 1e baseline and added in additional ecology, society, etc material.

You can do a lot of ammendment by expansion and extrapolation, without actually writing anything that completely contridicts what came before.

 

[Shemeska]

Sure, I acknowledge I don't know Planescape, because at the time it was on the shelves, my homebrew campaign was already extraplanar (so I wasn't interested as a DM) and there was a remote possibility that I could play a PC in a Planescape campaign, so I didn't get it in order not to spoil the fun.
But I refuse the 2ers the right to impose their fluff on Next, just because Planescape=2e=paramount of planar goodness. The fluff change from 1e to 2e was real and tiresome for me, so I can sympathize with those who were pissed off by 4e take on so many setting issues (even of I generally consider 4e versions to be vastly more interesting than prior versions).
If you chose to be inclusive and retro-compatible, you can't seriously consider 2e as a starting point, as it excludes everything prior 2e from your inclusiveness )

Those 2e changes were almost entirely constructive though - adding to rather than invalidating or overwriting previous material on the planes. That addition was then almost entirely conserved through 3e. There was a distinct continuity between those three editions. The 4e changes on the other hand didn't just add onto and elaborate upon previous material, they overwrite them and replaced them, or just deleted previous material without providing an explanation or a replacement. That's the big difference between the 1e/2e planar changes versus what we saw in 4e.

In going with only the printed material and its internal continuity across 1e/2e/3e and at what point expansions were done and what points had what level of detail, versus what someone might have done in their home games... well yeah, of course I feel rather comfortable in taking the 2e planar material as a starting point of sorts (and heck I never even played 2e).

 

[Shemeska]

You can do a lot of ammendment by expansion and extrapolation, without actually writing anything that completely contridicts what came before.

That's the best way to go forward in setting development really. 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.

 

[Hussar]

/snip
Yes, but I'd suggest that part of the reason for this is that they just aren't presented very often compared to orcs or fiends - either as foils, friends, or allies. Rightly or wrongly they are a fairly obscure monster outside of Planescape. It's not necessarily clear that if you designed or replaced them with anything that they'd immediately get traction and become an equally popular monster to orcs, giants, dragons, or demons. It could be that regardless of form they are pretty niche, and I think it is fairly obvious to me that a lot of the answers are simply people picking what they think is the best of the options presented. For example, I'm strongly on the side of, "Slaad are great, they just need someone to build on their lore." and "The worst thing that could happen would be to make Slaad merely another horrorific monstrousity.", but I also would have voted for 'Aberration' simply because that's the best of the available terms. Likewise, I'm also a proponent of Modrons, but would have also voted for 'Construct' as the best of the available terms. Neither vote indicates that I think they monsters need a complete rewrite, just a bit of elaboration and depth.

But, I would say that it is pretty clear that keeping them the same will not gain them any more tractions. After twenty or thirty years, both modrons and slaad are, as you say, a fairly obscure monster. Despite numerous Dragon articles, modules based strongly around them, and pretty lengthy amounts of lore in the game, neither race has managed to really capture more than a small niche.

I'd say, at this point, it's going to take a lot more than some fancy backstory to change that.

At what point do you step back and try something new? How valuable is a niche creature that very few people actually use? Is it worth keeping things the same to please a niche instead of trying to expand further?

Take Eladrin. Now, I've got no actual data to back this up, but, my gut feeling is that when you say Eladrin now, most people think elf, and not extra-planar kinda angel. Eladrin have gained a lot of traction from their rewrite. I just did a Google Image search with the term Eladrin, and, while there are a few of the Planescape images in there, the overwhelming majority were 4e Eladrin.

I'd say, at least with Eladrin, there's a pretty strong case for change. Forcing Eladrin back into the "outsider" box would be a serious mistake. It would be like forcing Darkmantles to be Piercers again, simply because Piercers came first.

 

[Hussar]

That's the best way to go forward in setting development really. 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.

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.

My beef with the Planescape stuff is similar to Cyberen's. The whole Blood War thing was entirely a 2e construct and had nothing whatsoever to do with 1e. And the Blood War infects so much of any D&D planar play. Every module, every planar supplement, whatever, all has to reference the Blood War. It was very annoying to someone who thought the Blood War wasn't all that interesting in the first place.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Might the best solution be to leave modrons and slaadi alone and put additional/replacement monsters into the mix?

The folks who like the originals can still get their not-demon-chaos-frogs itch scratched, and WotC could give us something more in line with their current vision for Limbo.

Nirvana has three sets of natives so far, and there are probably fewer people with strong opinions about formians than there are modrons -- to the extent that people go "huh, extraplanar borg ants, OK" and that's it -- and they're thus probably a good vehicle for WotC making them the Nirvana poster children.

 

[jadrax]

I'd say, at least with Eladrin, there's a pretty strong case for change. Forcing Eladrin back into the "outsider" box would be a serious mistake. It would be like forcing Darkmantles to be Piercers again, simply because Piercers came first.

What to do about Eladrin was another question that really seemed to split people in the Wandering Monster polls.

 

[Klaus]

Nirvana has three sets of natives so far, and there are probably fewer people with strong opinions about formians than there are modrons -- to the extent that people go "huh, extraplanar borg ants, OK" and that's it -- and they're thus probably a good vehicle for WotC making them the Nirvana poster children.

Which is what they were in 3e (they were in the first MM as *the* LN outsiders).

It was said a while back that cosmology in DDN would be "choose your own, mix and match". I see no reason why modrons and slaadi couldn't have a baseline hook, with the option of "plugging in" the Planescape lore upon them.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Might the best solution be to leave modrons and slaadi alone and put additional/replacement monsters into the mix?

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.

If you'd like to jettison those things and go a totally new direction: awesome. But that way lies thousands of kaorti and ythrak and spellthievies for every one githyanki/githzerai or warlock. It's a risk. It lets you put out new ideas, but most new ideas aren't good enough to shake out the old ones.

Which is why we get a lot of this "How MUCH can we change this?" kind of talk. They want to keep the fans of the original, but they also want to re-invent and make new. The extent to which they can do that is very limited, if they want to keep the things that were good about the originals.

I'd say, at least with Eladrin, there's a pretty strong case for change. Forcing Eladrin back into the "outsider" box would be a serious mistake. It would be like forcing Darkmantles to be Piercers again, simply because Piercers came first.

It's not for you or anyone at WotC to dictate what things are in peoples' own home games. It's WotC's job to give us things we might want to use in our home games. For some people, that's gonna be angel-elves, and WotC needs to give them that. For some people, that's gonna be PC-race blink-elves, and WotC needs to give that, too. (Of course, this overlooks the fact that 4e eladrin and earlier e eladrin are actually much much closer than most of either side would like to admit, and the main thrust of the problem with 4e eladrin being more about the wahoo of a teleporting 1st-level PC, but I digress).

For some people, it's gonna be squid-things that fall from the roof. For some people, it's gonna be living stalactites.

It's not a zero-sum kind of thing.