I just saw the preview article for the Body Bag. I can't believe I never thought to create a D&D version of The Stuff, a movie which freaked the crap outta me when I was a kid.
I thought Neil did a great job voice acting Astarion, but I didn't really care much for the character. I only used him when I absolutely needed his talents. He was rarely part of my party through the game, though.
I mean, you are owning something... the limited, ephemeral access to something you otherwise don't have the corporate-granted privilege to look at. LOL
While I'd prefer physical, we're in the age of DriveThruRPG, itch.io, etc. The thin modules I used to sit in B. Dalton to fawn over on the weekends are ancient history...
I didn't mind the logo design too much (though not a fan of it), but I was not a fan of the cover art for the core books. I get what they were going for, but it was pretty ugly IMO... and I'm of the opposite opinion of you that a "normie" in a public setting would look at them and think, "Yeah...
My first thought had been a map for the DM-facing book, but I think that works much better for the... not sure the term... whatever they have on the inside, er, side of the covers. :)
I like Karlach, too, and I get that they're trying to ride the BG3 train, but she's objectively less iconic a Forgotten Realms character than anyone else on either cover. At least they didn't try to squeeze out any more mileage from Drizzt...
I don't know what I'd want for the player-facing book, but for the DM-facing book I probably would have liked some grand looking set piece featuring one of the main cities.
That would be awesome. I'm not a big fan of how dwarves, halflings, etc. got "downsized" into a singular entity while we still got the various elf subspecies. It's even weirder when drow are clearly called out as a bespoke player option while duergar are, I guess, just cookie cutter dwarves?
I guess that would really depend on what the focus of these books is. Are these intended to have broad "all of the Realms" scope or are the character choices hints at a limited selection of cities or regions they're going to cover...?
Great! I was disappointed that the new black and red dragons were smaller sized than the last round of dragons. If they "fix" it with this blue dragon, that's great. Then, all they'd have to do is release the friggin last gem dragon instead of leaving us with 4 out of 5. LOL