D&D 5E Escapist article on SCAG is Brutal.

[I'm A Banana]

I was actually really impressed with how the divine descriptions were applicable to all characters, they even explain why a perfectly good hero might get drawn to an evil deity.

It's coherent (though I've always kind of loathed the Wall of Souls, always seemed like a bit of a "screw you" to characters who just didn't want to bother learning about the fantasy pantheon), but it's not exactly practical to use in play. Unless you have a very thorough knowledge of each of the gods and what they control, any character you play is only really going to worry about their particular patron, and even then it's lip-service and curse-words. Or to maybe put it another way: if I'm a cleric of Tempus, I care a lot about Tempus, but I'm not going to mention how my cleric also prays to Kossuth when he starts a campfire. If I just play a Fighter, maybe he honors Tempus (because he doesn't fancy being mortar in the afterlife), but it doesn't influence my gameplay at all, and you'd be lucky if I even knew there WAS a god of fire as a player, even though my character ostensibly utters a curse to Kossuth when his torch goes out.

Also, I haven't finished the book yet, I'm only on page 50, but so far the greater world perspective helps me better understand how my character fits or wouldn't fit in sword coast. As in, "Oh, if I wanted to make an Elf focused on herding animals, I know where to set their home town."

That's part of this kind of random assortment - I wouldn't know by reading the section on Elves that animal herding was even something they did much of. There's the magicy elves (who probably use cantrips), there's the hunty elves (which probably don't do much herding), there's the dark elves (who maybe herd lizards?). If herding animals is a thing they wanted elf players to hook onto, why isn't that theme reinforced? That could totally be something that sets FR elves a bit apart from Generic Fantasy Elves, something where I can say this elf who herds Animal X is an archetype that FR allows for that no other setting does, something special to FR and D&D. But I couldn't tell you that from the bit about elves in the book.

 

[Jester David]

i09 also has a "review" out and it's pretty harsh on the book as well: http://io9.com/two-major-rpg-books-came-out-this-month-and-theyre-bot-1742001057

 

[pukunui]

It could be much better as a player's guide.

Oh sure.

It's main flaw there is that its structure is outside-in, not inside-out: it talks about the setting in broad sweeps before it digs down to what individual characters know.

I'm not really sure I'd call that a flaw. I think it helps to know some broader info about the greater setting, but I can see how it could work to start small and then expand, rather than zoom in from a distance. I think that's six of one, half-dozen of the other territory really, though.

... and that's right before the Wall of Gods, which is going to produce about 2-3 useful paragraphs for any individual character (and mostly just clerics).

I disagree. I think that stuff is interesting enough to be worthwhile reading through at least once, even if you're aren't planning on playing a cleric.

Again, IMO, this doesn't make the book bad, and I'm not really comparing it to previous guides, it just could be much better at inspiring me to play a Sword Coast Adventurer and giving that Adventurer a reason to exist and care about the Sword Coast. That's kind of why I agree with the review: this book is OK. It's not GREAT, but it's OK. It's got some awesome bits and some bits that aren't so strong. As a player's guide, it could be significantly better.

Fair enough. I agree that it could be better. Just about everything WotC has ever put out could've been better than it was, though.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I'm not really sure I'd call that a flaw. I think it helps to know some broader info about the greater setting, but I can see how it could work to start small and then expand, rather than zoom in from a distance. I think that's six of one, half-dozen of the other territory really, though.

It's one of those moments that makes the SCAG seem a little unfocused and raises the question of who the target audience is. SWORD COAST ADVENTURER'S GUIDE it says, and then spends its first dozen pages going on about things that are not the Sword Coast or really relevant to the Sword Coast. For a DM, this might not be a big problem - the rest of the world might be where you send your Sword Coast adventurers. For a player, this seems like a good chunk of superfluous information right up front, when the book should still be selling you that a Sword Coast Adventurer is what you want to be and talking about how awesome that is! Raises the question of why Steve Kenson (or whoever) decided that this was the way it should be.

I disagree. I think that stuff is interesting enough to be worthwhile reading through at least once, even if you're aren't planning on playing a cleric.

I went into this a bit in my reply to [MENTION=6680011]garnuk[/MENTION], but I don't know how useful it is in play. I can pretty much assure you that my HotDQ groups won't be doing much with it.

It's a section actually makes me think the main audience for the SCAG is FR lore fans who want a post-Sundering update. God list is super useful for that.

Fair enough. I agree that it could be better. Just about everything WotC has ever put out could've been better than it was, though.

It's a disappointment after the really high quality initial release. Some of the wailing and gnashing of teeth is it falling short of that (admittedly, high!) expectation.

 

[Corpsetaker]

Because of the title, they should have really focused the entire book on the Sword Coast and not anywhere else. If they wanted a general over view of the setting then they should have done a big FRCS first and then setting books afterwards.

 

[pukunui]

It's one of those moments that makes the SCAG seem a little unfocused and raises the question of who the target audience is. SWORD COAST ADVENTURER'S GUIDE it says, and then spends its first dozen pages going on about things that are not the Sword Coast or really relevant to the Sword Coast. For a DM, this might not be a big problem - the rest of the world might be where you send your Sword Coast adventurers. For a player, this seems like a good chunk of superfluous information right up front, when the book should still be selling you that a Sword Coast Adventurer is what you want to be and talking about how awesome that is! Raises the question of why Steve Kenson (or whoever) decided that this was the way it should be.

Yeah, all right, I can see your point there. Perhaps they should have put the Sword Coast info first and then the general Faerûn/Toril overview second. Then again, I'd say the (poor) organization of information in the books has been 5e's biggest weakness all along. Even the core books could've been organized better.

I went into this a bit in my reply to [MENTION=6680011]garnuk[/MENTION], but I don't know how useful it is in play.

Does everything in the book need to be useful "in play"?

It's a disappointment after the really high quality initial release. Some of the wailing and gnashing of teeth is it falling short of that (admittedly, high!) expectation.

I'll admit that I'm not at all disappointed by it. Yes, part of me would've liked a bigger book with more fluff and/or crunch in it, but I'm still pretty happy with what is in the book.

 

[garnuk]

I went into this a bit in my reply to [MENTION=6680011]garnuk[/MENTION], but I don't know how useful it is in play. I can pretty much assure you that my HotDQ groups won't be doing much with it.

I agree it's not useful in play.. However for me, it has been very useful for character creation, in our Under Ilfaer game I just made a character based on all the worldly information. Backstory, various beliefs (not a cleric) escaped homelands, etc.

 

[JohnLynch]

TION=6680011] I don't know how useful it is in play. I can pretty much assure you that my HotDQ groups won't be doing much with it.

As DM I find the god's info extremely useful because for once it covers worshipers and clergy, not the god's themselves. Little tidbits will be getting sprinkled throughout a lot of my adventures as a result.

 

[Hussar]

Again, agreed. I'd just be surprised if they explicitly rule things out, in case their strategy changes - the better to avoid the "but you promised..." complaints. (Subject, of course, to my previous caveat that of course they'll get the complaints regardless...)

(Of course, one of the reasons I try to be careful about what they have and haven't said is that I got badly caught out by that once before: the whole "we're not working on a 4e that requires minis" thing.)



Wasn't one of the justifications for the 4e approach to the Realms exactly that - that the sheer volume of accumulated lore had become a barrier to entry for too many people?

/snip

Oh, sure. They aren't going to pin themselves down with any outright statements. They got so thoroughly spanked the last time that I imagine their marketing department has some pretty strict guidelines on what they can say publicly and not. I'd be shocked if they didn't, or, even if it wasn't handed down from on high, they didn't do it themselves.

As far as the justifications for the 4e approach goes, I think we can safely say that that approach was received with ... less than enthusiasm.

But, I was thinking more individual books rather than the line as a whole. Most setting fans are pretty happy (apparently) with flavour heavy books.

 

[MoonSong]

I think the gist of it comes from that interview with Chris Perkins from a while back, in which he talked about not wanting to make books just for their own sake, and not wanting to make books that would just sit on someone's shelf not getting used, and not necessarily making books at all but providing content in other ways that we haven't seen before, and so on and so forth.

I'm very afraid this book would sit on my bookshelf for ages. That is why I'm still on the fence.