Recent content by zakael19

Nobody is saying Exandria is the be-all-end-all of settings. Within "standard D&D high fantasy published by WOTC" it's pretty decent, has some specific stuff going for it enumerated herein, and Wildemount in particular is a much better then average setting handbook for a DM to actually use...

Within WOTC official settings, this wasn't a thing until Eberron; and has continued being a bit of a back and forth in WOTC main line products (witness all the kerfuffle around WOTC "modernizing" species along this line in the 5.2024 products). You're also skipping over the general emphasis on...

People in general and in fan-style communities in particular seem to have difficulty using "I" statements. Eg: "I think, I feel..." and you instead get a lot of this posting subjectivity in the frame of absolute truth. And of course when people push back on that style of assertion, things spiral.

We're getting smoother with combat as we do more, people were making a serious effort to weave their Awesomeness Narration into the mechanical resolution tonight. We also discovered that starting a combat with Victories makes a huge difference when you make the Intuition roll to notice the...

I will refer you back to my bulleted list in post 75.

Yup. If a) you're already in the market for a WOTC published 5e setting book (a subset of D&D customers), and b) don't have a reason to already pick one of the other ones, and c) generally want a "High Fantasy" world, Wildemount is genuinely good and of the 5e books I've read the most chock full...

Dude, you're just making stuff up here to crap on CR and the setting. My post included an example of the sort of adventure seeds the book provides, which reach all the way up to "make a difference in the literal war between empires kicking off that will have continent level ramifications." Every...

I generally dont really care about the backdrop of gods in a setting apart from what is relevant to the characters, and any themes that might help with using their agents or goals within play. Having a fairly concise pantheon that's got a reason to be somewhat distant is Good for Play imo. The...

"Through the ashen skies of Creation Primordial, the gods came from beyond the ether, new and formless. Looking on this roiling realm, they saw potential for great beauty, great strength, and the chance to learn their own place in creation."

To respond to OP in a wider scale, again as somebody who has watched/listened to (0) CR episodes: Explorer's Guide to Wildemont specifically as one of the few published WOTC campaign settings for 5e does the following I really like: It's "new." The only pre-existing lore is what you see from...

My personal gold standard for Factional play is of course Blades in the Dark. When I've been building setting type stuff for any other games, I find myself trying to actively mirror that format. In a more traditional format, the way that the 4e Neverwinter Campaign Setting operationalizes a...

Right! That's the city in Call of the Netherdeep that had a gazetteer and hooks that were more interesting than the actual campaign plot, lol.

Yup, gold standard IMO.

4e Neverwinter Campaign Setting. A really great focused and actionable book with inherent player goals, really cool ideas, and a bunch of FR’s best villains in one area.

We've got a couple pieces of art from a water color artist who pumps out incredible sketches into filled art (smaller scale) in an absurdly short time. Professional artists really are on a whole 'nother level. _______________ D&D art has been trending towards mostly "high heroic fantasy"...