Cynical amusment re: today's WotC site updates

[mhacdebhandia]

Is there so little interesting material in the MMIV that the Dragonspawn are all they want to tell us about?

This criticism would be ever so much more cogent if it weren't demonstrably true that the previews to date contain, in fact, three spawn of Tiamat and four creatures which are not:

• Spawn of Tiamat: Redspawn arcaniss in the PDF preview, bluespawn godslayer in the excerpts, redspawn firebelcher in the July previews.
• Non-spawn: Wizened elder in the June previews, black rock triskelion, dwarf ancestor, and defacer in the excerpts.

Even the art used in the Design and Development column was fairly evenly split.

 

[Hussar]

By that split, that means that half of the book is spawn. That would seem to make the book mostly about spawn with a bit of odds and sods tacked on.

MMIV - The Sp(Y)awn of Tiamat with extra bits.

 

[Cam Banks]

This could well attest to Wizards doing better design work than the DL team.

Gee, thanks!

Cheers,
Cam

 

[MerricB]

Gee, thanks!

Cheers,
Cam

FWIW, I don't think it's true. (Although I can point to a couple of lousy DL team design decisions, I can point to a multitude of lousy Wizards design decisions). Rather, I believe that people who like new stuff don't care where it comes from, just as long as:

a) they like it, and
b) they can incorporate it in their game.

Given that DL has something of a focus on dragons, is it surprising that the new Dragonspawn are popular with some DL fans? I don't think so.

Cheers!

 

[Sammael]

I can attest that they all are not as haphazardly designed as you say.

I didn't want to imply they were haphazard. I wanted to imply that they were so simple that it'd be unfair to compare them to anything more complex than them.

How much of the book have you read?

Everything that has been previewed so far, plus the RPG side of D&D miniatures cards. That's 6 Spawn of Tiamat (two were both previewed and appear in War of the Dragon Queen). I am not going to read any more of the book, because I am not going to purchase it. At least not until I can find it for a bargain bin price, and possibly not even then.

 

[Kunimatyu]

As I've posted in the other thread (didn't realize we had dragonspawn issues here as well, or I'd just have posted it in here), I really wanted to like the dragonspawn, but the silly blackdragonspider and whitespawn iceskidder illustrations really hurt the concept for me. I like the idea of the spawn, and they have a multitude of potential campaign uses (we'll ignore the dragon overload for now...), but if I sent a Whitespawn Iceskidder at my players and showed them the illustration, they'd die of laughter.

I do, however, anxiously await a mini of the Bluespawn Stormlizard. They're not all bad, but there are definitely more extreme stinkers than extremely awesome ones. It was just apparently too much to ask for a decent blackspawn -- how hard is it to make a gaunt, patherlike blackspawn that acts like a hunting hound for the humanoid blackspawn? What about an amphibious blackspawn that ambushes tasty creatures in marshes?

 

[mhacdebhandia]

By that split, that means that half of the book is spawn. That would seem to make the book mostly about spawn with a bit of odds and sods tacked on.

Well, gee, I didn't know facts were off the table and selective interpretations of evidence were all that's admissible.

I mean, a 3-to-4 spawn-to-not split in the previewed monsters is one thing, but 40+ creatures just in the first column of three in the previewed Table of Contents compared to only 14 spawn of Tiamat doesn't mean anything, apparently.

Hell, if you count all the spawn of Tiamat as separate creatures but count things like the bloodhulks, classed humanoid and monstrous humanoids, and advanced versions of creatures (like the varag and varag pack leader) as one creature, the ratio is 50+-to-14.

So I think your attempt at humourous criticism flew wide of the mark.