D&D 5E D&D Beyond Offers A Free Baldur's Gate Gazetteer

In Baldur’s Gate, thievery, blackmail, and illegal trade runs rampant. Now you can journey to this dangerous city of the Sword Coast with the Baldur’s Gate Gazetteer. Learn about each of the city’s districts and key locations and people, and unlock backgrounds for your next Baldurian character!

The Gazetter includes:

• History of Baldur's Gate
• Baldur's Gate Today
• Government
• Citizenry
• Economy and Trade
• Religion
• Dangers in Baldur's Gate
• City Landmarks
• Upper City
• Lower City
• Outer City
• Beyond Baldur's Gate
• Baldur's Gate Character Backgrounds
• Dark Secrets

The Gazetteer is quite sizable, and mainly lore-based, with two new NPC stat blocks (Nine-Fingers Keene, and Rilasa Real), some random encounter tables, and information on how the regular D&D character backgrounds fit in. There's also a new background, the Faceless. Finally there are some rules about 'Dark Secrets' which are a background element which the party shares.

Claim Baldur’s Gate Gazetteer now! - D&D Beyond

www.dndbeyond.com

 

[Dire Bare]

None of the stuff that I've suggested is hard to do.

You work in publishing?

Either way, it's not so much . . . is it too hard to manage, but is the management of it worth the staff time and money spent. You think it would be, the folks whose actual job it is do not.

Producing additional art is relatively inexpensive.

Huh? Art IS expensive! Good art is, at least.

Last December, WotC's bosses ripped them a new one for leaving money on the table.

Not exactly. Not really at all. WotC feels the D&D brand is under-monitized. And they are referring to digital, video games, and licensing. Not the game itself. The tiny boost of a decent movie/game tie-in isn't going to move the needle much.

They need to do better for their own good.

This is so patronizing. And armchair quarterbacking.

A sourcebook with the new spells, variant rules, and adventure sites from the game, with a lot of inspired-by-the-game new magic items and monsters wouldn't be terribly hard to do -- concept art for videogames tends to be plentiful and very inspirational. Although a physical book would be ideal -- the better to shrink-wrap to the videogame and put on display in Target -- even a digital product would be an improvement over doing nothing.

"Wouldn't be hard to do?" What?!?! A quality D&D book is very hard to do and takes months of development and staff time. Unless you want a crappy, tossed off movie/game tie-in.

Your basic wishlist sounds pretty good, actually . . . . but the video game itself doesn't have any new spells (I think). Variant rules would be nice, but other than the variant ceremorphosis your main PC is going through in the game, there isn't much else "variant" about BG3 . . . at least not as far as I've gotten into the game. Adventure sites would be nice . . . but not something easy, quick, or cheap to do.

 

[Dire Bare]

Then you delay the book release

Why? If the book is ready to go, its not making any money gathering dust on the shelf.

Some here seems to think a direct movie/game tie-in would just be printing extra money for WotC . . . . I suspect the boost would be significantly more mild than that. Apparently, so does WotC.

When did it become the rule that a movie or game MUST have a TTRPG tie-in to maximize sales? It's never worked that way in the past for D&D. Not for WotC, not for TSR before them.

And ultimately, even if you could demonstrably prove WotC is just leaving money on the shelf over this . . . . WHO CARES!?!?! Nobody at WotC is in danger of getting fired, the company isn't in danger of going under, the game isn't in danger of going out of publication. The movie did well, BG3 is doing gangbusters, the D&D game itself is doing amazingly well, better than ever before.

WotC isn't a perfect company and they do make missteps. This isn't one of them. And their stewardship of the game has never been better.

I'm going to have to bow out of this conversation now . . . . it's driving me nutty all this uninformed, negative, armchair quarterbacking . . . . .

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

So, when you asked for examples, that was what? A weird rhetorical trap?

You're wrong, for what it's worth. I work in an adjacent field, and art is inexpensive compared to the rest of the costs WotC is juggling and it is easy to swap in a digital file at the last minute.

As for creating a videogame tie-in book, yeah, it takes time -- but you do it in parallel with the creation of the game, as WotC has been getting regular check-ins and likely has at least one staffer in close creative coordination with them all along. It would be difficult if they decided to do it as the game is hitting the gold master stage or the modern equivalent. (Do many games have gold masters getting sent off to CD replication plants nowadays?) The idea that work on something like this has to happen after IGN has done a review of the game is a weird idea brought up on this thread, not how stuff works in the real world.

And making even a small movement in the right direction does help save jobs. I'm sorry that me having gone through it and not wanting others to go through it is somehow patronizing. If you've never had blood all over at the walls at your workplace, I'm happy for you, but I have watched so many adults sob at their cubicles, wondering how they're going to pay their bills or tell their families, that "hey, maybe you should do the thing the boss said you had to do" is something I think about a lot, even when it comes to others. I found last December's monetization thing chilling and I haven't forgotten about it since.

Incidentally, "they're perfect, they know what they're doing" is also armchair quarterbacking, or at least armchair cheerleading. I'm not sure why mine is a bad thing and yours is bad.

Finally, if this subject offends you like this, why engage with it?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

this uninformed, negative, armchair quarterbacking . . . . .

Speaking of patronizing.

 

[bedir than]

Why? If the book is ready to go, its not making any money gathering dust on the shelf.

For the same reason you don't release the 25$ collectible bucket of popcorn when the movie isn't in theaters. It's a tie-in

 

[Dire Bare]

Incidentally, "they're perfect, they know what they're doing" is also armchair quarterbacking, or at least armchair cheerleading.

Oh, WotC is far from perfect. Lots of, ah, interesting missteps this year.

But "failing" to properly get some movie/game tie-ins out there isn't one of their missteps. Or at least, not one to get overly worried about.

I mean, if they had produced a beautiful hardcover TTRRPG book, perhaps "Minsc's Guide to Baldur's Gate" with some of those variant rules you mentioned, a reprint of the Descent into Avernus gazetteer we just got for free, maybe some statblocks from the earlier "Heroes of Baldur's Gate" . . . and all perfectly timed with the games full release . . . . well, that would be super cool. I'd probably buy it. But I don't think the lack of this kind of product is a serious error at any level.

You do bring up a good point . . . why am I engaging in this conversation? What I see as constant negativity towards WotC from the fans over everything they do . . . drives me nuts. I should just walk away, but . . . hey, this is the internet!

Nobody is changing their minds here, and ultimately WotC is doing just fine, so . . . for my own mental health I'm done on this one.

 

[Dire Bare]

For the same reason you don't release the 25$ collectible bucket of popcorn when the movie isn't in theaters. It's a tie-in

Well, a direct tie-in . . . yeah, you'd have to wait on that one. The "Honor Among Thieves Adventure Book" should probably wait for the movie's release. But "Descent into Avernus" being released years before BG3 is just fine, even though it is a tie-in, if indirectly.

But again . . . producing that direct movie/game tie-in isn't worth the time and effort, from WotC's point-of-view. Obviously, some here disagree.

 

[bedir than]

Well, a direct tie-in . . . yeah, you'd have to wait on that one. The "Honor Among Thieves Adventure Book" should probably wait for the movie's release. But "Descent into Avernus" being released years before BG3 is just fine, even though it is a tie-in, if indirectly.

But again . . . producing that direct movie/game tie-in isn't worth the time and effort, from WotC's point-of-view. Obviously, some here disagree.

Stormwreck Isle is tied to the 80s cartoon that almost no one watched.
It could have easily replaced that character art with Edgin's crew and been tied to a movie that somewhere around ten million people have watched this year.
Or have the pregens be the third group in the games!

 

[Dire Bare]

Stormwreck Isle is tied to the 80s cartoon that almost no one watched.
It could have easily replaced that character art with Edgin's crew and been tied to a movie that somewhere around ten million people have watched this year.
Or have the pregens be the third group in the games!

Yes, it could have . . . . and?

A lot of us LOVED the callback to the 80s cartoon we grew up on! Didn't bother me a lick that this "tie-in" was decades too late!! Or that the new starter didn't tie-in to the movie.

Although, actually . . . it kinda did, as the 80s cartoon kids showed up BOTH in the new starter AND the new movie!!!

EDIT: Oh, and I'll push back on the "cartoon that almost no one watched" . . . there's a reason why the D&D cartoon is considered classic Saturday morning nostalgia. It didn't rise to the heights of He-Man, Transformers, or GI Joe, but plenty of us Gen X'ers watched the hell out of that when we were kids!

 

[mamba]

"How is the storyline linked to D&D?
Baldur’s Gate 3 takes place right after the events of Descent into Avernus. The holy city of Elturel disappeared from the Forgotten Realms and descended into Avernus, the first layer of the Nine Hells. In our canon, it was saved by a party of heroes.

So, it is linked by basically the events of the adventure having been undone? How is that different from ‘it never happened’?

I assume there must be one, or this is the weirdest ‘tie in’ ever… can anyone provide some details?