Spelljammer [Spelljammer] Illithid to Remain "100% bad guys" -- Neogi maybe not?

[Ruin Explorer]

well what else can they do that is evil that does not take three paragraphs to explain?
the image of the baby neogi for completness
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Christ I thought that was Mirt as in Mirt the Moneylender for a minute there, and they were just straight up situating Spelljammer in the Forgotten Realms, but it turns out it's another Mirt.

 

[Vaalingrade]

ugly equal evil is not only a dnd thing it is near omnipresent in earth media.

Do you find the halfling that bad? honestly, it does not beak my top fifty and the top ten are the stuff of nightmares.

The only one higher on my pieces of hated D&D art is 3x's gorillatuar.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

The only one higher on my pieces of hated D&D art is 3x's gorillatuar.

3.XE had some truly spectacularly bad pieces of art, made all the more bad by often being pretty competently-drawn, just unbelievably hideous.

Don't get me started on the covers.

 

[Vaalingrade]

3.XE had some truly spectacularly bad pieces of art, made all the more bad by often being pretty competently-drawn, just unbelievably hideous.

Don't get me started on the covers.

I really like the classic book covers. They looked like actual magic books.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I really like the classic book covers. They looked like actual magic books.

Maybe I'm just too much of an art student, but the 3E covers looked to me just like someone's first-year-at-art school attempt to make an objet trouvé-based quasi-collage to rather cheaply and obviously evoke magic-book tropes. I mean, I get what they were going for, but I give them a C- at best.

 

[Havrik Stoneskimmer]

Christ I thought that was Mirt as in Mirt the Moneylender for a minute there, and they were just straight up situating Spelljammer in the Forgotten Realms, but it turns out it's another Mirt.

Was that sarcasm? In case not, it is the same Mirt, and Spelljammer Academy (like all Adventurers League material) starts in the the Forgotten Realms. "Realmspace" has always been a thing in Spelljammer. One of the reasons for the setting was to link the existing campaign settings.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

Assuming they're wanting to excise the slavery aspect, I might be inclined to make Neogi ruthless gourmands who love to feast on humanoid flesh - that way they still have motivation to hunt people down, they'll still be almost universally hated, but they probably won't be quite as much of a hot button issue.



I'm actually a little disappointed at the answer re:Illithids. One of the more interesting aspects of the original Spelljammer was the ambiguity surrounding that race - it wasn't quite as obvious as before that they were monolithically evil. They're very much the Vorlons of the setting.

Glad we live in a world where cannibalsm of sentient beings is not a hot button issue.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

ugly equal evil is not only a dnd thing it is near omnipresent in earth media.

Do you find the halfling that bad? honestly, it does not beak my top fifty and the top ten are the stuff of nightmares.

I dislike every piece of 5E halfling art that I have seen, with the exception of the fabulous Guild Artisan.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

Christ I thought that was Mirt as in Mirt the Moneylender for a minute there, and they were just straight up situating Spelljammer in the Forgotten Realms, but it turns out it's another Mirt.

No it's Mirt the Moneylender. Mirt the Merciless is another title of his. Also the Spelljammer Academy Adventure is outright stated to start in the Forgotten Realms, which has always been connected to the Spelljammer (Realmspace was a book for a reason)

 

[delericho]

Glad we live in a world where cannibalsm of sentient beings is not a hot button issue.

It may be weird, but cannibalism just isn't a hot button issue in gaming in the same way as slavery.

As a consequence of Black Lives Matter, WotC have decided that racial tensions, and especially slavery, aren't suitable fodder for their entertainment products. They've been strongly de-emphasising, if not outright removing, them ever since. (The same has been happening with sexual traumas, due to MeToo.)

There's no equivalent mass movement decrying centuries of cannibalistic oppression. Which, when you think about it, is a good thing.