Spelljammer Dark Sun confirmed? Or, the mysterious case of the dissappearing Spelljammer article...

[SkidAce]

.... And I dare say the designers like Perkins, Crawford Winninger et al respect themselves, and they have legit old school credentials. Perkins has produced work for.evwry edition of D&D.

All else aside, I strongly agree with this.

I imagine they feel they are doing the best they can to please people, and keep growing the brand.

I may not like some changes (a beer says I'm older than all yall) but I certainly do not feel disrespected or ignored.

 

[Faolyn]

Show me evidence that they give one wit about not alienating fans. An actual example, not a logic argument.

What would you consider evidence?

I mean, I'm a fan and I'm not alienated.

 

[Faolyn]

Mangling their old IP to keep making money off it is not respecting fans of the original material. The fact that some older fans still like what they're doing doesn't change that. There were good, useful things in Van Richten's Guide, but the book in general represents everything wrong with the modern WotC to me.

And as an equally old fan (and someone who absolutely loves Ravenloft), VGR represents everything right about the modern WotC to me. They took old material that had been repeated numerous times over the course of two editions and breathed new life into it. Do I find everything in it perfect? No. There's stuff I would have done differently and there's stuff from the older books I will continue to use, although I find that the stuff I want to keep is background stuff rather than main plot or Darklord stuff. But all in all, it's a great book that does its job well. If they had merely rehashed the same stuff that was already in 2e and 3x and only made a couple of updates for inclusivity, it would have been boring. And more importantly, not worth my money.

You don't like it. That's fine. You're not required to like everything. You can actively hate it and that's also OK. But not liking something is not the same as being alienated. If you're alienated, it's because you choose to be.

 

[cbwjm]

All else aside, I strongly agree with this.

I imagine they feel they are doing the best they can to please people, and keep growing the brand.

I may not like some changes (a beer says I'm older than all yall) but I certainly do not feel disrespected or ignored.

A small change, but a change they made recently was the schools for the red robes feat in dragonlance. They changed them to illusion and transmutation, a small change, but a change where I feel they listened to the older players.

 

[Parmandur]

A small change, but a change they made recently was the schools for the red robes feat in dragonlance. They changed them to illusion and transmutation, a small change, but a change where I feel they listened to the older players.

And with the Kender, and the changes to the Giff.

 

[cbwjm]

And with the Kender, and the changes to the Giff.

Exactly, they do listen to us old gamers because these are changes that are, more likely than not, changes requested by old gamers since I'd assume most new gamers would be unaware of the originals.

 

[vecna00]

I see what you are saying. This is what I am seeing.

The differing XP tables were for different classes with different abilities. With defilers and preservers, their class abilities are identical. That means that all other things being equal, including encounters and acquired treasures, if both have 15000 XP, the defiler is going to be higher level and have access to more and better abilities. That makes the preserver XP chart a mechanical disadvantage that the apprentice has to look at when deciding which path to take. Faster power or slower power.

I see where you're coming from, I don't agree, but I can see it.

 

[JEB]

If they had merely rehashed the same stuff that was already in 2e and 3x and only made a couple of updates for inclusivity, it would have been boring. And more importantly, not worth my money.

Out of curiosity, what did you think of 5E Eberron? Since that was basically a rehash of stuff already in 3E and 4E, with a couple of updates?

 

[Parmandur]

Out of curiosity, what did you think of 5E Eberron? Since that was basically a rehash of stuff already in 3E and 4E, with a couple of updates?

Eberron was wildly ahead of it's rike in 2003, so it didn't need much in the way of redirection and adjustment. Also, Rising from the Last War was written by 3 out of 4 of the original authors for the Setting, which puts it in a very different relationship with the original as an extension rather than a reimagining.

On the other hand, they did actually go to several new places in 5E, particularly more details on the Mournlands.

 

[humble minion]

Mangling their old IP to keep making money off it is not respecting fans of the original material. The fact that some older fans still like what they're doing doesn't change that. There were good, useful things in Van Richten's Guide, but the book in general represents everything wrong with the modern WotC to me.

Mangling existing canon is hardly something brand and shiny new that WotC introduced with 5th ed. TSR was contradicting and messing up its own canon for years before WotC even existed. I can name you a dozen times where even the old school IP wildly messed itself up or had messy retcons or arbitrarily contradicted itself in Ravenloft alone. Redesigns and setting changes are as old as the settings themselves, and i'm sure that when I'm playing D&D in my retirement home, I'll be annoyed at some change that the new 7th ed has made to the lore that's brand new to us now.

Speaking as a fan of the 'original material', i reckon that all us older fans of the original material pick and choose what bits of the original material they respect and want preserved, and what bits they don't. I mean I really liked old school ravenloft, but there was a whole lot of it that desperately needed an update or which was outdated or which was just plain dumb and misconceived to begin with as well. I don;t think that preserving the old lore in amber is necessary or desirable - even if you could find a single iteration of what the 'old lore' is to preserve. I mean as an example - canonically, in the classic old Ravenloft IP, what is the backstory of Nova Vaasa and Tristian Hiregaard? There's at least four different versions of the story in the 'classic' material, and none of them explain why a bloke whose story revolves entirely around one city is the lord of a huge steppe domain that takes up a third of the Core. It's an utter mess.

If it was me in charge of VRGtR i'd have wildly changed the setting and a bunch of other old-schoolers would have hated me for it. Personally, I'd have completely rearranged the Core into a place where cultures and populations and geography etc all made more comprehensible sense, and probably deemphasised the darklord-centrality of the whole thing in favour of a much more grounded gothic 18th-ish century setting with a degree of internal consistency, and I'd have made more of the old 2e conceit of PCs evil actions having mechanical consequences, and of some magics etc being inherently evil and tainting, etc etc. I didn't like 5e Ravenloft very much - not because it changed the old stuff, but because it changed it in the opposite direction to how I would have changed it.