Only the Lonely: Why We Demand Official Product

[jmucchiello]

I'm not arguing for D&D to become a medieval simulation, I'm arguing that it would be braver for WotC to stop thinking about the market and make whatever products they think are cool - whatever that means. If that includes a a medieval simulation, great. But saying a medieval simulation should not be made because it is inclusive is cowardly. I'm not arguing they shouldn't be inclusive if that is what they want and fits within their image of the setting they want to design. I'm saying, they should make what they want - everyone else be damned.

Poor business advice, but I have no attachments to Hasbro as a company. I'd rather see designer's creations that are a labor of love than a mass produced product. Many aspects of D&D today, such as the way errata had been handled, reek of corporatism.

And when the division's performance tanks and Hasbro shuts it down. Then there's no office D&D anything for the rest of time. (Hasbro never sells IP it has hoarded.) Then what?

 

[Henry]

Well, WotC did rewrite that for 5e, it's called The Lost Laboratory of Kwalish. No homicidal exercise androids i'm afraid, but it is still a crashed 'planar craft'.

whats funny is that you just reminded me that someone did release a 3rd party conversion of Barrier Peaks on DMsGuild. Not related to the thread, but now I have a VERY strong desire to run a 5e version of Barrier Peaks for a group as a limited series. Limited because I don’t want to deal with the consequences of releasing all those tech items into a long campaign.

 

[jmucchiello]

Limited because I don’t want to deal with the consequences of releasing all those tech items into a long campaign.

"Batteries" aren't a thing. Instead they are broadcast power amplifiers. So they still have charges and need recharging but they don't work more than a mile from the ship's broadcast antenna.

Simple.

 

[Fenris-77]

The WotC version doesn't have the crazy sci-fi tech, some of it's gone and the rest has been reskinned into more fantasy friendly stuff. I believe the 3PP version does keep the tech level though, so you have your pick of which you want to run. I'm going to run it as the third module in a campaign I'm running for my kids, I'll run them through Keep on the Borderlands and Isle of Dread first, and set them loose on the barrier peaks. Very old school, kind of.

 

[jmucchiello]

I was assuming @Henry meant converting it to 3E themselves.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

You have to notice high-tech breaks the balance of power. You should imagine how it would be if your players are the barbarian or triben facing alien invaders. A sniper from the top of a tree or a window, a remote-controll turret or a flying drone with canons are fatal for PCs without ranged weapons. Its rating challenge should be more as surviving a trap than facing a monster. If you can use a ray gun to kill a monster with only one shot then the most of creatures become walking free XPs. Even a simple civilian vehicle could be used to rune over an enemy, for example a horde of zombies.

Do you remember when PCs are saving the best consumable magic item for the final fight against the dungeon boss? Well, the firearms are the cheaper version. Try to imagine a Savage Coast/Red Steel adventure about pirates vs jungle men and a character is an artificier crafting "upgraded" firearms from d20 Past.

Let's imagine you are playing the postapocalypse Gamma World. If you are a one-man-army gunner then the ammo are spent too soon, but if you use a melee-fighter or martial artist (because you don't want to worry about saving bullets), then the GM will use enemies with ranged attacks.

 

[billd91]

For those of us who don't have that time, the issue is that existing settings that don't have a 5e update were developed by multiple developers and influenced across multiple Gencons or multiple in-house TSR campaigns. The source gets corrupted in a whisper-down-the-lane across later publications.

Greyhawk is relatively clean in comparison to Forgotten Realms, but it is still in need of a good scrub. I'm not talking about RSEs that may not be popular amongst those with experience in prior products (such as the Greyhawk Wars or the 4e FR treatment), but basic failure to do research when writing a new product or failure of the publisher to maintain continuity of the lore.

So use the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer. That should count as a 3e era "good scrub". Why would doing it again in 5e be a better "good scrub" than that one?

 

[Doug McCrae]

I think "baseline" D&D is anti-medieval, especially in Forgotten Realms. They're are big cosmopolitan cities

The largest cities in medieval Europe were much bigger than those in either Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms.

Rel Astra* - 63 900
Waterdeep** - 100 000+

Constantinople (1000) - 500 000
Constantinople (1100) - 300 000
Constantinople (1200) - 400 000
Paris (1300) - between 228 000 and 300 000
Paris (1400) - 280 000

Source

*1983 World of Greyhawk boxed set
**1987 Forgotten Realms boxed set

 

[Azzy]

So use the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer. That should count as a 3e era "good scrub". Why would doing it again in 5e be a better "good scrub" than that one?

Right? There's virtually no mechanics in the LGG, so it is pretty evergreen and usable for any edition (or game system) you want to play. The authors also scoured all the prior GH material in an effort to reconcile any issues from prior books. It's a dry read, but if you want to play in that era, it's pretty thorough.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

The largest cities in medieval Europe were much bigger than those in either Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms.

Rel Astra* - 63 900
Waterdeep** - 100 000+

Constantinople (1000) - 500 000
Constantinople (1100) - 300 000
Constantinople (1200) - 400 000
Paris (1300) - between 228 000 and 300 000
Paris (1400) - 280 000

Source

*1983 World of Greyhawk boxed set
**1987 Forgotten Realms boxed set

On the D&D website, Waterdeep is stated as having 2 million people.

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I won't quibble over that though; the more anti-medieval piece there is that so many cultures and races are able to coexist so peacefully, practically like today's New York.