WotC So, when do the announce the July book? Guesses on what it'll be? 🤔

[LuisCarlos17f]

The X-Men cartoon from 90's was a fabule about a "mature" thread, the intolerance, and even there was an episode about slavery, in Genosha. When I bought the 2nd Ed DM screen there was a little module about exploring underground, and there were drows with slaves mining. What about all those old movies of "swords and sandal"? The movie "Lethal Weapon 4" was about Chinese slavery. "Anne", the first episode of the 3rd season of Buffy Vampire-Slayer was about slavered victims send to work to other dimension. I can understand some parts of the Mark Twain's "the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" are not politically right nor now neither in the past (the rude languange) but this doesn't mean now it has to be in a list of forbidden books.

Sensitivity doesn't mean to cancel and censure all I don't like, but the right strategy should be to promote the respect for the human dignity. Without this we are only replacing a poison with other, but the things aren't fixed really. We have to avoid frivolity when certain threads may be linked with suffering by people from real life, but the key is about to raise awareness for defend ethical values, as the mentioned respect for the human dignity.

We should be allowed to tell some horrible things happen in D&D if we aren't too explicit. Hasbro wants D&D to be a family-friendly franchise, but we need enough good sense to avoid innecesary taboos. The cartoon "the prince Valiant" was for (+7) children, but it also showed some horrible things also happened, even innocent people suffering serious injustices.

Didn't you watch the cartoon "Once Upon a Time...Man"? It was designed to teach History for children, but some scenes were violent for that age (Anime was almost totally unknown but Mazinger Z and Dragon Ball hadn't arrived yet). "Once Upon a Time..Space" was not either very right for a preschool audence.

We can talk about certain threads in D&D, if we have got enough good sense and we take care. We need enough serenity if we want to fix the things.

And I demand a positive discriminative quote of morrion wearers in the side of the cool and noble heroes. Why only bad guys can wear morrions? (Disclaimer: I am kidding, and for this reason I have used italic letters).

 

[Reynard]

Maybe, maybe not. The thing is, those new books have that content. It exists.

Much of it still oriented toward players. Moreover, there are major missing areas of support still, this deep into the edition. But like high level play support, it is one of those things that WotC doesn't view as particularly valuable or worth their time to develop, so it is left to third parties, DMsGuild creators and the community at large. The "play a pre-canned adventure for 18 months then move on to the next" model doesn't require either advanced DMing support or high level support, so there's that.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

I still think that Darksun would be a big hit for WotC with the younger generation (which at 31 y.o I still consider myself part of). You just have to lean hard into the ''oppose the systemic oppression trope''. Dont play on the grey morality, grimdark edgyness. No. You are a big damn hero (yet fallible), a point of light in a dark place, an eco-warrior Conan.

Then, hot take, you go hard on the exploration rules. Screw the corrupted cities; they are the enemies. You venture into the waste to find a way to revive your world from the brink of ecological collapse, somehow. You'll most likely fail, but this is the only hope to break the grasp of the Kings on your society. Oh, and Muls breed true, but it doesnt mean the horrible Kings to have their own mul-ranch to bolster their armies. They are monsters, after all (the Kings, not the Muls).

I think the only thing that would be lost is the Corrupting magic for the players. I keep it as a evil-NPC template.

Bref...the themes are:

• Opposition to systemic oppressions
• Ecological awareness
• Exploration adventures (think M.E: Andromeda)

That would sell to the new generations of fans that werent even born when the old-school, sword-and-sandal, Darksun was ''a thing''.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

WotC's core market for D&D is early teens. And they typically have the books bought for them by their parents. So they are going to remove anything that will offend the parents of early teens.

Players are free to add in whatever they want from there (hence the guidelines on setting boundaries), but WotC are going to aim for a pretty inoffensive baseline.

It's really surprising to me how few people seem to grok this. I could see it eventually changing, but only if that core market starts to age up and not be replaced. It's not like TSR from the mid-80s onward was any different really, it's just that what people might find offensive was somewhat different (probably about the same number of things, but different things). 3.XE was, I felt (and we'd need someone like Ryan Dancey to confirm/deny this), directed at a slightly older (not really more mature, but older) market of late teens and early twenties people with a side of nostalgia-bait for people in their thirties (gotta remember it was 20 years ago!), hence we got stuff like the Book of Vile Darkness. Not so 4E or 5E though.

 

[Parmandur]

Much of it still oriented toward players. Moreover, there are major missing areas of support still, this deep into the edition. But like high level play support, it is one of those things that WotC doesn't view as particularly valuable or worth their time to develop, so it is left to third parties, DMsGuild creators and the community at large. The "play a pre-canned adventure for 18 months then move on to the next" model doesn't require either advanced DMing support or high level support, so there's that.

For player use, sure, but mostly I see the DM buying the books and letting players know what options exist.

They tested two different mass combat systems prior to Xanathar's Guide, and neither passed muster. They would have printed them if people wanted them as is.

They did end up printing a mass combat system partially in Ghosts of Saltmarsh after it tested well, and had hinted at maybe more coming in the future. I suspect that got cut from Tasha's just as it did from Xanathar's.

 

[Reynard]

For player use, sure, but mostly I see the DM buying the books and letting players know what options exist.

Here is part of the disconnect: I do not agree with part of your definition of DM resources because they are, in fact, player facing resources. You example of spells as a DM resource makes no sense to me because DMs don't need spells. They can give NPCs and monsters any abilities they want. Players need spells (and feats and subclasses and so on).

 

[Parmandur]

Here is part of the disconnect: I do not agree with part of your definition of DM resources because they are, in fact, player facing resources. You example of spells as a DM resource makes no sense to me because DMs don't need spells. They can give NPCs and monsters any abilities they want. Players need spells (and feats and subclasses and so on).

In my experience, players will not know about spells beyond the PHB without the DM letting them know what's out there. That may be because in my experience, there is a strong correlation between "reading/owning any of the books" and "being the DM," but I suspect that is not unusual.

Monsters also use Spells, and magic items are entirely in DM control.

 

[Reynard]

In my experience, players will not know about spells beyond the PHB without the DM letting them know what's out there. That may be because in my experience, there is a strong correlation between "reading/owning any of the books" and "being the DM," but I suspect that is not unusual.

I feel like that is less true than it used to be but that's probably anecdotal.

Monsters also use Spells, and magic items are entirely in DM control.

Sure, monsters use spells, but not new spells and they don't need them at all. if I am not running on a VTT where the information is coded in, I generally don't have monsters use spells. I have them possess appropriate thematic abilities instead. I am not looking up spells mid combat for things like demons. it is an utter waste of time and effort, and it is boring to boot.

I totally agree about magic items, despite what some players would have me believe.

 

[Parmandur]

I feel like that is less true than it used to be but that's probably anecdotal.

Sure, monsters use spells, but not new spells and they don't need them at all. if I am not running on a VTT where the information is coded in, I generally don't have monsters use spells. I have them possess appropriate thematic abilities instead. I am not looking up spells mid combat for things like demons. it is an utter waste of time and effort, and it is boring to boot.

I totally agree about magic items, despite what some players would have me believe.

It is anecdotal, but it would explain a lot about WotC product design if that is the actual norm among most tables, so I put that forward as a viable hypothesis.

I usually just memorize spells and their effects, with spell cards as a quick reference to double check.

 

[Reynard]

I usually just memorize spells and their effects, with spell cards as a quick reference to double check.

"Spell like abilities" are a pet peeve of mine and always have been. I think it is lazy monster design and lazy writing. Monsters and enemies benefit from cool, unique abilities that tell the players something about the monster. Having to flip pages is just an added annoyance.