D&D General Joe Manganiello: Compares Early 5E to BG 3 . How Important is Lore?

[Paul Farquhar]

That's what the setting books were for: filling in the details and areas the adventures didn't cover. The 3e line was particularly awesome in that regard.

The original Dragonlance Setting book was much more focused on mechanics, and bringing in characters from other settings, than lore.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I mean, sure. I'll eat my words when WotC releases the DL setting book like TSR finally did.

Or that WotC did prior to the current era, upon which Margaret Weis' company iterated during 3e.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The original Dragonlance Setting book was much more focused on mechanics, and bringing in characters from other settings, than lore.

It was the first time. Mechanics were important. And there was a lot of lore in DLA, certainly much more than 5e has done for it.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

It was the first time. Mechanics were important. And there was a lot of lore in DLA, certainly much more than 5e has done for it.

To the extent that it was virtually a different game, with it's own classes. Which contradicted the original adventures, which were written for standard D&D classes. For example, it introduced classes for Red Robe and Black Robe wizards, but Rastalin wasn't either, he was an old school Magic User.

5e avoided touching the lore as much as it could, because WotC know how it upsets people. So they left it alone.

 

[Mecheon]

Did the designers express any appreciation for the work of their predecessors, and a desire to respect it? The Planescape people did.

Based on the number of hard pulls they did and the fact Azalin's roaming around as a "Hey you can meet him" NPC while his realm cracks from whatever latest "Get the hell out of Ravenloft" plan he has cooked up, along with adding in a whole mini-domain for the "Cyre got sucked into Ravenloft" theory indicates, yeah, they do

However, let's be completely honest here? A lot of old Ravenloft is bad. There's only so much you can do with "Hey here's a horror movie from the 70s with no pop culture impact that's basically been forgotten by time" or "You wanted to play your characters? Tough, you're all marionettes now" or "Man this is just racist and will not fly in the 20s". Thankfully its Ravenloft which has, ever since its origin, had a reason made solution for all that in "The Darklords got bored and changed things up".

Even the best remakes change things from the past. The Thing is a remake of Thing from Another World, but everything is different outside of "A UFO is found and people are isolated in the frozen wilderness trying to deal with the resulting alien who has a weakness to fire". The place each one is in is even different

 

[Micah Sweet]

Based on the number of hard pulls they did and the fact Azalin's roaming around as a "Hey you can meet him" NPC while his realm cracks from whatever latest "Get the hell out of Ravenloft" plan he has cooked up, along with adding in a whole mini-domain for the "Cyre got sucked into Ravenloft" theory indicates, yeah, they do

However, let's be completely honest here? A lot of old Ravenloft is bad. There's only so much you can do with "Hey here's a horror movie from the 70s with no pop culture impact that's basically been forgotten by time" or "You wanted to play your characters? Tough, you're all marionettes now" or "Man this is just racist and will not fly in the 20s". Thankfully its Ravenloft which has, ever since its origin, had a reason made solution for all that in "The Darklords got bored and changed things up".

Even the best remakes change things from the past. The Thing is a remake of Thing from Another World, but everything is different outside of "A UFO is found and people are isolated in the frozen wilderness trying to deal with the resulting alien who has a weakness to fire". The place each one is in is even different

If you don't like old Ravenloft, let it go and make a new setting. Heck, they could have 5e'd Innistraad and gotten just as much creativity and value out of it, without irritating old fans (or at least irritating them less). Or, they could have publicly stated that they were making radical changes to Ravenloft and why. They didn't, and instead actively chose to disrespect and in fact butcher the past for a quick buck, and now I'm angry about it.

 

[Shardstone]

Did the designers express any appreciation for the work of their predecessors, and a desire to respect it? The Planescape people did.

Sorry, but I reject the assertion that you need to publicly post about your appreciation for a work order for appreciation to exist. That's kind of gross, man.

 

[Hussar]

Did any of those things make the previous history not have happened? No.

True from a certain point of view.

 

[Mecheon]

If you don't like old Ravenloft, let it go and make a new setting. Heck, they could have 5e'd Innistraad and gotten just as much creativity and value out of it, without irritating old fans (or at least irritating them less). Or, they could have publicly stated that they were making radical changes to Ravenloft and why. They didn't, and instead actively chose to disrespect and in fact butcher the past for a quick buck, and now I'm angry about it.

How did they butcher it? They reinvented it for a new audience that has different expectations of horror given its the 20s and not back in the 90s. That in of itself is enough reason to say why you're making radical changes, because times change. We've had 30 years of changes in the horror genre, and Ravenloft was not timeless enough you can just plug it in today.

The Core in of itself was a retcon by itself, the original Ravenloft stuff didn't have that. Vlad's "Oh its a tyranical government!" schitt doesn't work as horror in a day when it very easily just veers into politics and "Boy how many various people across the world can I describe that fit this exact stereotype", Victor's one made Adam the Darklord because apparently they never read Frankenstein when they were writing Ravenloft (and this ia day and age where the monster is viewed far more sympathetically) and that's before we get into the weird anti-athiest angle it had, Tristen didn't even do anything to become a Darklord and was a victim of 'oh the curse passes down how spoooky~' which flies in the face of Ravenloft's whole entire concept to begin with (where the Darklords have damned themselves to this hell by their actions, not just gotten unlucky), Tsien was a racist pulp villain that you could smell the orientalism coming off (You remember how much of a stink OA got for being put up on the DMs guild, do you honestly think they'd just drag this back?) and I'm 90% sure she was just an old comedy horror movie reference. I can keep going if you want, Ravenloft has problems for days and I haven't even gotten to the Dreamland's frankly insulting depiction of indiginous Australians, because 2E was incredibly weirdly racist at how it portrayed them twice

If Ravenloft wanted more respect, it should have been better written for play and not a "Ohhh its a brain in a jar! Take a horror check for hearing of such a terrifying concept~!"

 

[DEFCON 1]

They didn't, and instead actively chose to disrespect and in fact butcher the past for a quick buck, and now I'm angry about it.

Oh, I'm sure the buck wasn't quick. They probably took the usual 18 months or so to make it.