Level Up (A5E) Gnolls (and other evil things)

[ronalmb]

I don't know if there are plans for other gnoll material in Level Up, but in the ZEITGEIST setting, no, they're very much not cannon fodder.

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Which product is this? How do i throw money at it?

 

[Morrus]

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Which product is this? How do i throw money at it?

You missed it! It was part of the Level Up Kickstarter in October, and then the Backerkit late pledge manager through December. It should be available generally sometime next year though.

 

[ronalmb]

Well curses, foiled again. I just only discovered LU5E and my players are loving it. I'll have to wait patiently. Hey.. december isn't over yet.. is the Backerkit late pledge still working?

 

[RangerWickett]

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Which product is this? How do i throw money at it?

Adventures in ZEITGEIST is a setting guide for the world that we used in our adventure path ZEITGEIST: The Gears of Revolution, which was published from 2011 to 2015. There's a 5e conversion of those adventures too, but the new book brings the setting forward, and it integrates innovations of Level Up.

The ad copy goes like this:

ZEITGEIST is a step away from traditional fantasy. In many parts of the world, day to day existence is much unchanged from how folks lived centuries ago. Fey trickery, prowling monsters, and roaming brigands pose as great a threat as ever. Priests and druids offer guidance, and it’s possible to live all one’s entire years without seeing a steam engine.

Yet though this is a land born from magic, a revolution of ironclad industry is reshaping nations. Railroads slice through the countryside, driving horrors from their wilderness lairs into new urban labyrinths. Heroes and scoundrels stroll smoggy streets in top hats and tails, battling with pistols or enchanted arcane fusils. Printing presses publish philosophical revolutions and conspiratorial ramblings, inspiring fresh frights to prowl the shadows between gas-lights, under skies darkened by soot and steam.

Every nation is at an inflection point, every ideology is vying for influence, and your adventures will shape the spirit of the new age: the zeitgeist.

You could have pledged for it in the Level Up Kickstarter, and we used the number ordered to help gauge the size of the print run. But there'll also be a limited number of extra print copies available on enpublishingrpg.com, plus it'll be available in PDF format there (and probably on DriveThruRPG). We don't have a final release date yet, but it is in layout now.

 

[Indagare Nogitsune]

What are you asking for exactly? It appears the very first response gave you exactly what you wanted, and then you go and dismiss it without really any acknowledgement. Are you really really looking for solutions or just complaining?

I really didn't mean to dismiss it. I like it a lot, but it doesn't solve the core problem that in the official book*, the first thing anyone will know about Gnolls (on a DC 10 or 15) is that they're demon-worshiping, people-killing creatures. That's not exactly going to allow much room for good Gnolls to interact with people since people would be inclined (quite rightly!) to be wary or just kill them off-hand. I want a solution, but the solution I want is that the game designers reconsider this sort of thing rather than saying "oh hey the Narrator can change this" like somehow it makes it better! I mean, we literally just got done seeing this with Orcs and there's still a question of how people'd get to know their more artistic side!

Here's my take. I think having some group of enemies that can be killed without question is an important part of many types of campaigns. They could be oozes, undead, demons, devils, etc. But something where not every encounter has to be a philosophical argument, which likely triggers IRL arguments between players. I've seen gaming groups collapse over these discussions.

I'm really not trying to argue against that since it involves things that are either non-sentient, unalive, or literally made of Evil. The problem I have is when an entry starts with how EVIL a species is then goes on to say how maybe some can not be evil but doesn't actually provide a lot of info on how to incorporate the non-Evil version in short of "we'll let the Narrator decide!". As written there's no good reason not to kill a Gnoll on site or to simply destroy a clutch of Chromatic Dragon eggs after killing the parent, despite the obvious moral issues these should be.

*While ZEITGEIST is official, it's not Core, and a Narrator would be within their rights to bar it from the table.

 

[Reynard]

This issue has been coming up over and over again for the last couple of years and the answer remains the same: in your game, do what makes you happy and/or comfortable, but the existence of wholly evil stock enemies does not mean the game, its designers, or its players are advocating real world racism or bigotry.

You can't yourself grant an evil race sentience and free will,use them as stock enemies, then complain they are stock enemies. If they have free will in.your game, don't use them as stock enemies. If they don't, there's nothing to worry about. If the book says "inherently evil" that's what they are unless YOU choose otherwise.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I really didn't mean to dismiss it. I like it a lot, but it doesn't solve the core problem that in the official book*, the first thing anyone will know about Gnolls (on a DC 10 or 15) is that they're demon-worshiping, people-killing creatures. That's not exactly going to allow much room for good Gnolls to interact with people since people would be inclined (quite rightly!) to be wary or just kill them off-hand. I want a solution, but the solution I want is that the game designers reconsider this sort of thing rather than saying "oh hey the Narrator can change this" like somehow it makes it better! I mean, we literally just got done seeing this with Orcs and there's still a question of how people'd get to know their more artistic side!



I'm really not trying to argue against that since it involves things that are either non-sentient, unalive, or literally made of Evil. The problem I have is when an entry starts with how EVIL a species is then goes on to say how maybe some can not be evil but doesn't actually provide a lot of info on how to incorporate the non-Evil version in short of "we'll let the Narrator decide!". As written there's no good reason not to kill a Gnoll on site or to simply destroy a clutch of Chromatic Dragon eggs after killing the parent, despite the obvious moral issues these should be.

*While ZEITGEIST is official, it's not Core, and a Narrator would be within their rights to bar it from the table.

How is the Narrator unable to make gnoll what they want in their game? It's their game. Are you really insisting that the designers change the text of the MM to accommodate you, because the text you want being in a supplement for the same system isn't good enough?

 

[Bedrockgames]

I mean, different settings having different things is fine, but I really wish people were a bit more hesitant when it came to living beings effectively being "okay to kill" because of whatever reasons. And I know some people will point out they're literally possessed by a demon, but if anything that makes this sort of thing worse since it's a violation of their free will.

Are they literally demon possessed? I am typically very okay with evil monsters, and I am okay with monsters that have a susceptibility to being possessed by evil demons, but IMO, something being possessed by evil doesn't make it okay to kill (it might be necessary to do so in self defense, but if something is possessed, elimination the possessed state would be the thing a good character would seek, not the destruction of the body of the possessed). That would be like if the priest in exorcist just threw Regan out the window and said "problem solved". It wouldn't make him the good guy in the movie.

If they are literally demonic themselves, that is different.

 

[Bedrockgames]

This issue has been coming up over and over again for the last couple of years and the answer remains the same: in your game, do what makes you happy and/or comfortable, but the existence of wholly evil stock enemies does not mean the game, its designers, or its players are advocating real world racism or bigotry.

This definitely. I think if anything, you could say the existence of stock evil enemies bothers you in terms of world building or something, but I think we are reading far too many real world issues into something that is really meant to be something more like "fighting against the darkness". I generally actually prefer settings where there isn't this cosmic struggle, but I can enjoy them, and I don't see them as endorsements of murder or racialist theories. I see them as treating the setting more like a psychological delve into 'spiritual combat' (the struggle of good against evil).

 

[Bedrockgames]

I really didn't mean to dismiss it. I like it a lot, but it doesn't solve the core problem that in the official book*, the first thing anyone will know about Gnolls (on a DC 10 or 15) is that they're demon-worshiping, people-killing creatures. That's not exactly going to allow much room for good Gnolls to interact with people since people would be inclined (quite rightly!) to be wary or just kill them off-hand. I want a solution, but the solution I want is that the game designers reconsider this sort of thing rather than saying "oh hey the Narrator can change this" like somehow it makes it better! I mean, we literally just got done seeing this with Orcs and there's still a question of how people'd get to know their more artistic side!

Maybe it is just a generational thing, or a product of growing up in the settings era of the hobby, but back int he day we used to change EVERYTHING from the official entry to suite our table. Every campaign setting was different and you weren't expected to have to follow all the details in generic entries (which were just a baseline meant to cover a wide range of worlds).