Only the Lonely: Why We Demand Official Product

[Azzy]

Ebay?

As someone who was there, I never saw the Campanion or Masters boxed sets on sale in my local stores ever. They were entirely hypothetical to me.

I have them all.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

And what good is a book that is 95% "reprint" with a few timeline updates and 5% a few subclasses here and there.

This is why I want a book that hits the following notes, at a page count around the size of the PHB.

*Guide to Worldbuilding and campaign crafting

*Guide to The Multiverse (ie, to a handful of settings) with some expansion on the planes if there’s room

*Xanathars style expansion of player options

*Xanathar’s style expansion of game rules and tools for the DM

*Mini-bestiary

*Eberron/Ravnica style adventure/campaign seeds and a small intro adventure for each example world

it would use the worlds shown to guide DMs on building worlds, creating custom player options, enemies, items, and rules, and expand on existing guidelines and advice for building campaigns and worlds, managing multiversal campaigns, etc.

I’d nominate:

Lower Magic Epic Fantasy: Dragonlance
*introduce a few race options, couple subclasses, variants for robed wizards, and a martial support class

Wildly Advanced High Magic Adventure: Kaladesh
*new artificer subclass and infusions, new races, advanced vehicle rules and stats. Vehicle spells and magic items. Vehicle as Spellcasting focus.

Dark/Gothic Fantasy: Innistrad
Rules for playable gothic monsters, rework some of the gothic heroes UA stuff. Alternate vampirism and lycanthropy rules

Sword and Sorcery Fantasy: Greyhawk
@lowkey13 what even would be here?

Apocolyptic Fantasy: Dark Sun
*Psionic options expansion, couple race options and subclasses. Variant features for replacing Spellcasting in a couple different classes, including bards. Optional rules for defiling magic.

something new, like Modern Urban Fantasy: New World
*variant spells, vehicle spells, expanded spell armor options, new subclasses and expanded proficiencies, new items.

 

[Don Durito]

I want a pocket size edition of the Player's Handbook to make transport easier.

 

[pemerton]

It's exactly the fact that your player pointed out the discrepancy that may be of concern to some.

No one pointed out a discrepancy. A poster on these boards whom I've never met outside of this context (@dragoner) let me know that about 49 years ago another Traveller player wrote up stats for Alien aliens.

For others (like me), I don't have the time to do the conversions myself. I want to be able to, for example, select an old edition module and not have to do the conversion for monsters that had stats in older editions but not the current edition.

I'm not necessarily talking about basic NPCs, but unique monsters from iconic (or not so iconic) products. For example the Abomination of Diirinka in the 2e module Axe of the Dwarvish Lords. How would you convert it?

I'm not familiar with that module.

But given that it's almost certain that WotC will never republish it in a 5e form, if you want to use it you will have to write your own stats. @Tony Vargas on these boards has said that he runs pre-3E material by just converting the AC from low-is-good to high-is-good. I'm guessing he uses the THACO number, damage and hit points as written.

 

[pemerton]

Sword and Sorcery Fantasy: Greyhawk
@lowkey13 what even would be here?

I own nearly every pre-3E Greyhawk book/boxed set, and some 3E ones as well.

You don't need special rules to run or play GH. It's just D&D. (Or Rolemaster. Or Burning Wheel. Or . . ..)

If anyone wants to play GH, just buy a copy of the boxed set from DM's Guild and start playing!

Apocolyptic Fantasy: Dark Sun
*Psionic options expansion, couple race options and subclasses. Variant features for replacing Spellcasting in a couple different classes, including bards. Optional rules for defiling magic.

Psionics is its own thing - though a sorcerer might be used to approximate it.

Athasian bards, without spellcasting, can be done as assassin rogues. The actual 5e bard is a spellcasting class - I don't think we're going to see it rebuilt as a non-caster.

Defiling magic can presumably be done the same as in the 2nd ed books, or else using the 4e variant. In 2nd ed AD&D, the rules for the effects of defiling can be ported wholesale to 5e (I just reread them to make sure). Being a defiler rather than a preserver gives, in effect, a bonus to earned XP (approx +40%, meaning that quite a bit of the time from 2nd through name level the defiler will be a level ahead of the preserver). In 5e you could just do the same thing, or if in the hard cold light of 30 years of D&D experience that seems too broken or ad hoc you could do something else - eg +1 to save DCs and attack rolls for the defiler.

I'm not meaning to cast aspersions on your imagined book. Just trying to point out that so much of this material is already able to be used in 5e with minimal fuss and effort.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Paul Farquhar]

No one pointed out a discrepancy. A poster on these boards whom I've never met outside of this context (@dragoner) let me know that about 49 years ago another Traveller player wrote up stats for Alien aliens.

I would imagine there are about as many different sets of stats for alien xenomophs as there where groups playing Traveller in 1986!

 

[jasper]

..ns they roll 3 dice. 3 dice have a better chance of rolling under 10 than one die.

.......

You could also do this unskilled by rolling 2 d20s and being forced to pick the higher of the two results.

...

More fiddly than d20 vs DC? Yes, but infinitely more tuneable.

SBEEEEEEEP Half my players can't even keep both d20 twenties on the table. Now you want 3 or more. How about you go create your own game. All this would do is add more rolling and SLOW down the game.

 

[jayoungr]

So, let's say you have a Dex of 10 and 3 skills ranks in "bows." You roll a d20 and try to get under 10. Someone with a higher Dex is naturally more "talented." But unless they increased in the skill they can only roll the one die. Let's say someone with a Dex of 10 puts 8 ranks into the skill. Maybe that means they roll 3 dice. 3 dice have a better chance of rolling under 10 than one die.

The Dark Eye does something like that.

Use it as a sourcebook for more "Swords and Sorcery" style campaigns.

Honest question because I don't have a lot of experience with this type of play, but does it really need a whole book? It seems like 2-5 pages apiece to expand on each of the points you made would be enough, making a document about the size of one of the longer "Plane Shifts." It looks to me like most of getting "vanilla" D&D to sword & sorcery is subtractive, and it doesn't take a lot of page space to eliminate or restrict things from the base game.

However, as I said, I don't know much about the genre, so maybe you or others can tell me what I'm missing here.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

So this is something I've thought a bit about. My initial impulse is generally that WoTC shouldn't touch it, because it is unlikely to go well.

That said, the question I would ask before making a Greyhawk book is- why? If they just want to do the lore, then there are more than sufficient sources from people to pull from. Whether you're a 3e Greyhawk fan and love the Gazeteers, or a real Greyhawk fan (ahem, couldn't resist) and think anything after the '83 Box Set isn't Scottish (if you know what I mean), there is sufficient material to purchase or peruse (Canonfire, for example).

I wouldn't want them to just throw out Greyhawk as a "hey, lookie, here is a vaguely generic setting. There were modules set here, back in the day. It's like Forgotten Realms, but, um, less Elminster, more Zagyg."

No. No no no no no no.

So, as you allude to, I've thrown out the idea of playing into the strengths of Greyhawk. Use it as a sourcebook for more "Swords and Sorcery" style campaigns. So what does that mean, exactly?

-The past was greater that the present.

-Civilization holds on, at best, tenuously.

-Alignment matters. There is real good, real evil, and people trying to maintain a balance.

-Decay has set in to the few great powers (Great Kingdom, etc.).

-Magic is uncommon, and the magic of the past (invoked devastation, artifacts) is greater than the magic of the present.



And so on. It would be taking its cues from Lieber, Howard, and Zelazny. The book would have the collection of optional rules (here is how you move to gold = xp, and away from killing monsters; here is the optimal way to lower magic somewhat, here is how healing works, etc.) to make a good S&S campaign setting.

New classes (subclasses) would be tailored toward the world; Barbarians would be from Ratik on north, Monks would have a Scarlet Brotherhood option, and so on.

Finally, I would approach the world (mini-gazeteer) as an opportunity to, in a manner similar to the 1983 set, provide tons of hooks for the DM to color in. Hints of adventures, ideas to explore, but not dictates. Rumors and innuendo to fire the imagination.

If you're aren't going to do something interesting, don't bother doing it at all. IMO.

Yep! That’s exactly the sort of thing I’d want in a guide to multiverse. “Here is Greyhawk. Here are the themes of it, and here is how to run games in this sort of world.”

And hey, after the book is out, ask people what they loved most in the book, and maybe do a full book for the settings in the book people loved best.