Micah Sweet
Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
Less isn't always better.
D&D 5E 5e isn't a Golden Age of D&D Lorewise, it's Silver at best.
- Thread starter Henadic Theologian
- Start date
Shardstone
Hero
True, but these kind of platitudes don't add to the conversation. You can't just say general truisms and then not respond to actual points that people make. I'm uninterested in your truisms (I like you as a poster, don't take this as me insulting you pls). If you respond with just a truism, you are expecting me to deconstruct a very vague statement and somehow respond in a way that reflects that vague deconstruction with each point I've made. It isn't fair, and it doesn't promote a healthy discussion; it ends the discussion and prevents it from ever evolving or serving its purpose.
Parmandur
Book-Friend, he/him
But it often can be.
Micah Sweet
Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
So can more. Neither statement means anything.
Parmandur
Book-Friend, he/him
That assumes the discussion serves a "purpose" as such, rather than just being a bunch of us shooting the breeze.
Could Ravenloft have been longer? Probably. But the designers didn't feel like expanding it out any further. Some got annoyed with Xanathar's for having 26 pages of name tables (which I enjoyed, and apparently WotC received good feedback on that feature), would 16 pages of Gothic name tables be an improvement? Depends on who you ask.
Parmandur
Book-Friend, he/him
Precisely! Wisdom, let us attend.
Micah Sweet
Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
Do you think that they would have added 16 pages of Gothic name tables if VRGtR had more pages? Much better ideas have been posited. Why assume the most banal option?
Shardstone
Hero
And this kind of back and forth between you two is why truisms are silly.
What are we even talking about? Aren't we supposed to be talking about how much lore is too much vs too little, not just blanket statements like more isn't always better? Let's look at the actual books and the actual points being made!
There are about a dozen domains in Ravenloft that I have no idea how to use. I could not read them and prep a game for them quickly or efficiently. I could prep the game. But I could not do so quickly or efficiently, because there is so much stuff I need to make. For example, a good domain is the one with the werepanther Dark Lord. That domain has a good map (good!), enemies, a goal, what the NPCs act like, and is a strong scenario I can drop into any game. But, on the other hand, there is "The Carnival." I do not understand The Carnival. It is very hard for me to grasp what my players a really doing here, and what this domain is really about. And that's because the domain just needs about 2 more pages worth of content and/or explanation for it to really click with me so I can efficiently and easily prep the game.
"But Shardstone," I know you are thinking, "That doesn't mean others have that issue!"
I'm sure there are people who have played the Carnival just fine. They probably already had a lot of ideas for it, and were loaded up upon seeing it, just like I was for (checks name) Valachan. But, objectively, adding these 1-2 new pages to the Carnival cannot take away from it. It could only add to it. And if you add those 2 pages to Valachan as well, even better! It does nothing but increase the quality of the book!
The fact that it seems we are losing more content does not give me good heart. In Radiant Citadel, this issue seems to be middling. For example, the "Trail of Destruction" region is AMAZING and super solid, I love it! But, if we do the first adventure in the book, still written well mind you, I don't really know what to do with the setting outside of the limited Night Market adventure. There just isn't enough page count to point me in the right way. Did we really need to keep RC down to 198 pages, or could we have gone 252 and just added some more gameable info, like some more setting-unique monsters or challenges, to really enhance the adventure? Would the book be worse off for this content? I sure don't think so!
What are we even talking about? Aren't we supposed to be talking about how much lore is too much vs too little, not just blanket statements like more isn't always better? Let's look at the actual books and the actual points being made!
There are about a dozen domains in Ravenloft that I have no idea how to use. I could not read them and prep a game for them quickly or efficiently. I could prep the game. But I could not do so quickly or efficiently, because there is so much stuff I need to make. For example, a good domain is the one with the werepanther Dark Lord. That domain has a good map (good!), enemies, a goal, what the NPCs act like, and is a strong scenario I can drop into any game. But, on the other hand, there is "The Carnival." I do not understand The Carnival. It is very hard for me to grasp what my players a really doing here, and what this domain is really about. And that's because the domain just needs about 2 more pages worth of content and/or explanation for it to really click with me so I can efficiently and easily prep the game.
"But Shardstone," I know you are thinking, "That doesn't mean others have that issue!"
I'm sure there are people who have played the Carnival just fine. They probably already had a lot of ideas for it, and were loaded up upon seeing it, just like I was for (checks name) Valachan. But, objectively, adding these 1-2 new pages to the Carnival cannot take away from it. It could only add to it. And if you add those 2 pages to Valachan as well, even better! It does nothing but increase the quality of the book!
The fact that it seems we are losing more content does not give me good heart. In Radiant Citadel, this issue seems to be middling. For example, the "Trail of Destruction" region is AMAZING and super solid, I love it! But, if we do the first adventure in the book, still written well mind you, I don't really know what to do with the setting outside of the limited Night Market adventure. There just isn't enough page count to point me in the right way. Did we really need to keep RC down to 198 pages, or could we have gone 252 and just added some more gameable info, like some more setting-unique monsters or challenges, to really enhance the adventure? Would the book be worse off for this content? I sure don't think so!
Shardstone
Hero
You're doing it again; you're assuming the most insane version of my idea and not addressing any actual ideas posited in the discussion. The issue here is, one person is trying to talk to you about these ideas, and you literally do not care and are just shooting the breeze. Is the disconnect my fault, or yours?
Don't hate you as a poster btw, pls don't take this as an attack.
Parmandur
Book-Friend, he/him
Do you assume that they wouldn't have?
The page count for these books is going to be decided by two factors, 1.) Design goals and 2.) Publishing costs.
For Xanathar's, they had enough need for space to justify the e2 page section that included the name tables that they put them in to give something with the space they were paying for. For VGtR, they didn't apparently have design goals that justified another 32 page section, even with padding. So they didn't.
