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Mānawatia a Matariki! Since we are talking about Māori culture, today (Friday) is a public holiday here in NZ to celebrate Matariki, the Māori new year. "Matariki" is the Māori term for the Pleiades star cluster. Māori have traditionally spent the time when the stars are visible to give...

I ran the Infinite Staircase version of both these adventures (“When a Star Falls” and “Beyond the Crystal Cave”) for my episodic Eberron campaign recently. We enjoyed both adventures. As I recall, the group was pretty thorough with Star Falls, but they skipped much of the Eternal Garden...

Look, I’m not looking to start a fight or claim the moral high ground here. I get that this scene was meant to be a throwaway line reflecting a 90s trend. I was a teen in the 90s, and while I don't remember any specific tribal tattoo fads, I can think of plenty of other fads that we would...

On a different note, the double-episode’s depiction of 2024 (as imagined by the writers 30 years before) is interesting. It centers on homeless / jobless / mentally unwell Americans forced to live in ghetto-like “sanctuary districts” through no fault of their own. Apparently an LA mayor from...

I was editing my post to provide more context when you replied, but I’ll reiterate the main point for you here: it’s an (albeit fictional) example of cultural appropriation, especially since he admits to getting it to fit in / be cool (“got it in high school … like everybody else”), not because...

These days it would be classed as cultural appropriation. The issue here isn’t so much that the white guy got a Māori tattoo because he was enthusiastic about the culture. It’s that he did it to be cool (“got it in high school … like everybody else”). If he had been gifted the tattoo in a...

OK I think I just watched what for me is the worst DS9 episode so far: S3 E10 “Fascination”. That’s the one where Lwaxana Troi has a fever that causes her to project her lust for Odo onto others, causing various characters to engage in various embarrassing forms of infatuation, some bordering on...

He didn't quit. He was laid off. Said so himself. No.

Oh, I missed that! Sorry. Thanks for pointing it out.

Yeah, it's super weird. They've hidden the subclasses and backgrounds and such too! It makes no sense, since there's no real space limitations there.

WotC has always been somewhat allergic to page numbers. LOL.

I'm not disputing that at all. Yes, but it doesn't list their page numbers.

Not when you're using the DDB monster database or the encounter builder or Maps or ...

Yes, that would have been nice - similar to what they did in the 2014 DMG.

One reason is that they don't want the playable humanoid species to be monocultural in the generic form of the game. They will be including those in the campaign setting books - so like the classic Drow Priestess of Lolth will be in the upcoming FR book as a representative of the Menzoberranzan...

I haven't found that to be the case. It's been pretty helpful to me when converting adventures from older editions to 5e and when brainstorming ideas and such. It seems to be able to evaluate a 5e statblock and judge the CR fairly accurately (using the 2014 monster-building rules) as well.

From 5e, I would say The Book of Many Things and its accompanying deck. Will have to think about older edition products.

Tell that to Sam Altman. ChatGPT seems to have a considerable amount of D&D content (both WotC and TSR) in its database.

They want you to see there’s content you don’t own so you’ll be more tempted to buy it! Yes, those were in Volo’s. I liked the chapters on individual monster groups in the book too. I understand why they felt they had to get rid of it, though.

At the risk of inviting people to beat this dead horse some more, the idea is that orcs, elves, and other such playable humanoid species are represented by the generic "profession" stat blocks (the mages, commoners, warriors, druids, priests, cultists, performers, etc).