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

[dave2008]

It's a pretty good read, but I do find some of it, most of it covering Van Helsing's exhortations, gets increasingly tedious with purple prose and I usually skip over much of those parts when I read it now.

It has been a long time since I read it; however, my memory of it was Dracula wasn't that scary. He spends a good part of the book running from Van Helsing and eventual dies without much of a fight.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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?

But this means WotC is hip and withit!

 

[dave2008]

WotC is really trying to normalize tieflings.

Aren't they already by the fans? It seems to me tieflings are crazy popular (dragonborn too). I'm old school, plain old humans work good for me!

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

If that's so, why bother calling out that it's a "contemporary take" in a press release?

So they can be hip and withit, of course!

 

[DarkCrisis]

It's been a thing for a long time. Even in Faerun

Could I get a cited example?

 

[TwoSix]

Aren't they already by the fans? It seems to me tieflings are crazy popular (dragonborn too). I'm old school, plain old humans work good for me!

BG3 definitely put tieflings front and center, there's a host of tiefling NPCs and a fan favorite tiefling companion character. The movie featured a tiefling character as well.

There's definitely both an attempt to center them within the D&D mainstream but also popular acceptance of that centering.

 

[BookTenTiger]

If that's so, why bother calling out that it's a "contemporary take" in a press release?

So they can be hip and withit, of course!

It's probably to distract people while they twirl their moustaches and tie helpless victims to railroad tracks.

 

[Scribe]

WotC is really trying to normalize tieflings.

I mean, I would think we are way way past the point they aren't normal?

 

[bedir than]

If that's so, why bother calling out that it's a "contemporary take" in a press release?

So they can be hip and withit, of course!

Press releases aren't meant for fans. They're meant for the press. These are written as mass emails sent to people who have to pump out 20 articles a week, not the superfan that reads thousands of words of nuance into a single sentence.

 

[Umbran]

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

The point was, in fact, that "existing, but still in diapers" seemed a pretty pedantic counter to the point that this kind of D&D fiction predates the people on CR as sentient creators of their own fictions.

So, yeah, jump on me if it makes you feel good. You're kind of jumping on a mirror.