D&D 5E Clickbait we didn't fall for: "Wizards is copying Critical Role"

[doctorbadwolf]

Matt Mercer is 41.
He was not reading Dragons of Autumn Twilight while waiting for snack in his high chair.

Okay you just being pedantic for fun or do ya got a point there?

Like what universe did you invent in your imagination where someone in this conversation doesn’t know that someone both in the early 80’s didn’t read the books that came out in ‘84?

Or did you sprint right past even thinking about that to do an unnecessary “well, actually”?

No one asked or commented on whether the cast of CR read Dragonlance when it came out.

 

[bedir than]

We have reached that point in the internet dystopia where even though we did not fall for the clickbait, we still feel compelled to argue about it for pages and pages.

That's what's happening on the "D&D is being mothballed" and "Wizards is getting rid of the Druid" threads.

This thread is actually talking about a novel we haven't read and ripping it to shreds

 

[Parmandur]

Maybe more interesting than the novel is the fact that the D&D design team came up with the characters and we are told theybwill be featured in multiple ways in the next year. New Iconics for the Core books, part of an Advebture, related to the TV show in production..?

 

[Scribe]

If the internet is a dystopia, it's only a reflection of the dystopia the real world (if you can call this world real).

 

[Morrus]

The Fallbacks: Novel introduces new D&D Forgotten Realms adventurers

Meet the newest Dungeons & Dragons party in the first epic adventure of The Fallbacks ... Can a band of misfits stay together? Or are they bound for ruin?

nerdvanamedia.com

A tiny bit of more info, although nothing that makes the novel interesting. They called it a contemporary take, so that a bad sign, that will mean it will age very poorly, you want timeless, not contemporary, when will folks learn that?

There's no such thing as 'timeless'. It's a meaningless word. Everything is always a contemporary take. Stuff in 1200 AD was a contemporary take. The stuff in the 1980s was a contemporary take. The stuff today is a contemporary take. The stuff in 2050 will be a contemporary take. All 'timeless' usually means is 'exactly the same as when I was a kid', which if we followed as a rule all our media would be composed of cave paintings.

 

[Clint_L]

I'm fine with players determining the nature of how their Clerics get their magic in whatever way suits them. If they want to play a New Age-style cleric who gets their magic from some sort of general spiritualism, it's fine by me. They can be an atheist cleric, for all I care, and get their power from their belief in a mechanistic universe. I can adapt to anything, as long as they stay away from actual, currently practiced religions.

 

[Reynard]

There's no such thing as 'timeless'. It's a meaningless word. Everything is always a contemporary take. Stuff in 1200 AD was a contemporary take. The stuff in the 1980s was a contemporary take. The stuff today is a contemporary take. The stuff in 2050 will be a contemporary take. All 'timeless' usually means is 'exactly the same as when I was a kid', which if we followed as a rule all our media would be composed of cave paintings.

While I think that broadly it is true that "timeless" is a marketing term, there are works that do in fact resonate no matter how far removed from their original context: The Epic of Gilgamesh, The Odyssey and The Illiad, Beowulf, Le Morte d'Arthur, Dracula, The Lord of the Rings. "Timeless" stories exist, for sure.

Not that I think any D&D novel is going to be one of those. Absolutely aim that thing at the contemporary audience.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Things like, IDK, Shakespear, get called "Timeless" because they resonate with a modern audience, and that audience figures it resonated the same way with the original audience. Did it? Don't know, they're dead - but I'd guess, probably not.

(OK, Shakespear may not be the best example, said modern audience might feel obliged to find something in it...)

There's a similar phenomenon with science fiction - no matter how distant or speculative the future it's set in, it's a commentary on the times in which it was written.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

This is how pretty much everybody I know has ever played a cleric, regardless of edition.

Huh. The few clerics I DM for really enjoy getting weird with fantasy religions. (Faithful of the goddess of writing are mummified with written pages when they die and destruction of the written word is the most serious sin in their church.)

It's definitely a commitment to play that way, though.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I strongly approve of "Clickbait we didn't fall for" becoming a recurring descriptor on posts.

This is clearly a bunch of characters they have ambitions for, and creating a new set of iconic characters is a good idea. And yes, this particular group feels very much like design-by-committee. I'm sure we will see them show up in an actual play, possibly with recurring players.

But even if WotC wanted to reverse engineer Critical Role, and there's no sign that they want to, this ain't how you'd do it.