Critical Role Tell me the selling points of Tal'Dorei / Wildemount, without mentioning Critical Role, Matt Mercer, etc.

[Synthil]

Exandria attempts that, but it being unwilling to deal with the actual ramifications of war

What ramifications is Exandria unwilling to deal with that Eberron does?

 

[Umbran]

Exandria attempts that, but it being unwilling to deal with the actual ramifications of war means you end up with either obvious morals like "Making refugees bad, helping refugees good" or have to add in stuff I don't think most players would want ...

Well, hold on a second there.

You sound like you are criticizing Exandria for not having things that you admit the players don't want anyway.

What's up with that?

 

[Necropolitan]

All of your criticisms are either false, exagerated, or also true of your precious Faerun.

You keep saying that, but you haven't actually responded to any of them beyond yelling "LIAR!" and wildly claiming I must have some secret evil personal motive to do so.

The fact that the immediate response to criticism of Exandria is to claim critics are acting in bad faith based on absolutely nothing is another reason people should avoid it.

And bashing other settings doesn't make Exandria look better, it just makes the Exandria fandom look worse.

Well, hold on a second there.

You sound like you are criticizing Exandria for not having things that you admit the players don't want anyway.

What's up with that?

No? Not sure how you got that from my comment.

I'm saying Exandria's delving into topics it doesn't seem interested in dealing with and uses "That's for DMs to decide" as a cop-out and war is one of them.

To contrast in Eberron the DMs are given the motives of the various factions involved in previous wars and likely reasons for new ones that will break out. And if war doesn't break out there are still numerous ways the possible causes of war can still affect PC adventures.

As far as I can tell Eberron fans (myself included) like that. And since Exandria insists on having/insists it has a similar "Setting on the brink" situation but doesn't do that I'm criticizing it for that reason.

 

[zakael19]

You keep saying that, but you haven't actually responded to any of them beyond yelling "LIAR!" and wildly claiming I must have some secret evil personal motive to do so.

The fact that the immediate response to criticism of Exandria is to claim critics are acting in bad faith based on absolutely nothing is another reason people should avoid it.

And bashing other settings doesn't make Exandria look better, it just makes the Exandria fandom look worse.


No? Not sure how you got that from my comment.

I'm saying Exandria's delving into topics it doesn't seem interested in dealing with and uses "That's for DMs to decide" as a cop-out and war is one of them.

To contrast in Eberron the DMs are given the motives of the various factions involved in previous wars and likely reasons for new ones that will break out. And if war doesn't break out there are still numerous ways the possible causes of war can still affect PC adventures.

As far as I can tell Eberron fans (myself included) like that. And since Exandria insists on having/insists it has a similar "Setting on the brink" situation but doesn't do that I'm criticizing it for that reason.

The default of the setting is "War Has Broken Out, here's the ramifications and how players can get involved."

To do otherwise is presented with "if your players don't want to deal with that, here's some thoughts." It's very much not how the setting is built. The War permeates the entire gazette.

 

[TiQuinn]

I'm saying Exandria's delving into topics it doesn't seem interested in dealing with and uses "That's for DMs to decide" as a cop-out and war is one of them.

The Wildemount book is about two nations at war. There’s an actual section in there titled “How to Run a War Campaign”. It’s the default assumption.

 

[Necropolitan]

The Wildemount book is about two nations at war. There’s an actual section in there titled “How to Run a War Campaign”. It’s the default assumption.

And yet it has less information than Eberron where wars have yet to begin.

 

[TiQuinn]

And yet it has less information than Eberron where wars have yet to begin.

Less information in what respect? The full origin of the war is there, the motivations of the key players, the political intrigues, multiple hooks to engage the PCs from court machinations to down in the trenches and the impact on common folks…what precisely is missing that you feel needs to be there?

Edit: Also, saying it has less information than Eberron is also kind of obvious in one respect. There’s been 3 books on Exandria as a setting, one of which is Wildemount which is focused on the war. Eberron’s had something like a dozen or more accessories at this point?

 

[W'rkncacnter]

The problem with your criticisms isn't that they are falsifiable, it's that they make no sense. It sounds more like Matt Mercer ran over your dog.

...i mean considering what character he played in dispatch...

 

[bbanguking]

Exandria, like Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, etc., is a standard D&D fantasy setting. It doesn't push the envelope imo other than the Divine Gate (which CR has abandoned), and it treats the PHB/DMG/MM like lego: you can fit any race, item, spell, or monster into the world seemlessly. I think this is a major plus for a DM who just wants to run a D&D world without the need to homebrew a ton (though you certainly can).

Each of the three sourcebooks has a very simple, straightforward style. Tal'dorei was built up in an ad hoc, city-by-city way: if you're familiar with Matt Colville's "Running the Game", it was basically built that way (not on purpose I imagine, it just happened). As a result, Tal'Dorei's somewhat empty and very simple (good republic, elf city, dwarf city, wilderness). Wildemount is more interesting, it was designed and was intended to be more grey. It has four distinct regions (imperial west, mercantile south, monstrous/weird east, and wild north), but in the same world.

If I was going to summarize the setting, I'd say it's like this:

• Religion: Uses the PHB's Dawn War Pantheon with a few alterations here and there. There's a "Divine Gate" which prevents the gods from meddling on Exandria.
• Lore: Set 800 years after a magical apocalypse wiped out most of civilization. Lots of ruins to explore, lots of problems left over, etc.
• Factions: Each region has a number of distinct factions and there are a lot of great hooks for players to plug themeslves into the world.
• Gazeteer: Each region has its own little infobox with simple helpful details (demographics, gods, economy, etc.) Each sub-region within the Gazeteer has quest hooks for low, medium, and high level parties. A few NPCs are listed but nothing exhaustive: very table-ready.
• Sandbox: Funny coming from the massive changes in the third campaign, but the sourcebooks have some hooks for meta-plots if the DM wants them but it's also easy to just plop and play.

For criticisms, I'd say the homebrew generally undertuned and I'm not a huge fan of the Blood Hunter or some of the game's subclasses: they're not bad, they just needed more of a community edit (understandable why that wasn't possible). A lot of small nitpicks outside of that as well, stuff like the Calendar (players never use the days it's just a bit too out there).

I think overall it's a fine setting even if you don't give a crap about CR. I think as a DM, if you want to run a sandbox but find GH/FR have too much baggage, but you also don't want to run CR, just get the Wildemount book and file the serial numbers off the names: it's good-quality scaffolding for a tried-and-true style of sandbox.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

...i mean considering what character he played in dispatch...

Predictable, the DM plays all the villains.