Critical Role Tell me the selling points of Tal'Dorei / Wildemount, without mentioning Critical Role, Matt Mercer, etc.

[Umbran]

None of those are even true lol.

Mod note:
Some things are true.
Some things are false.
And yet other things are matters of interpretation and impression.

Everyone should make sure they are leaving sufficient room in their rhetoric for that last one, or problems will arise.

 

[Seramus]

No, the other settings caught on because of their quality and/or because they offered something new, not because they were attached to another property.

New-ish at the time. What usually happens is a trope is used for a while, then it suddenly explodes into popularity, then gets oversaturated. A good trope will then go through decades of falling and rising popularity as it is copied, both poorly and well, fade for a while, and come back again.

This is normal.

But in this case, New isn't even necessary. People love familiar stories told well, just in slightly different ways. Some of the most successful and famous things are just old tropes eternally retold.

 

[Clint_L]

No, the other settings caught on because of their quality and/or because they offered something new, not because they were attached to another property.

BTW they were attached to D&D. As in, directly pushed by TSR. Greyhawk was drawn from Gygax's home campaign and then brought in as the first default setting, and then Forgotten Realms was heavily pushed by TSR as the new default setting to displace Greyhawk. Neither of them "caught on" organically because of their "quality" or because they "offered something new," but because TSR, who basically controlled the market, made a marketing decision to push them.

And both are very much fantasy pastiche settings, much like Exandria. So it seems strange to have so much beef with the CR setting for being unoriginal but then champion similar settings like Faerun, which didn't exactly invent the wheel. Let's face it, WotC's D&D settings, like most of its other tropes, are heavily derivative. And that's not a criticism; they are generic by design, to make room for plenty of different styles of DMing. I think it is a strength of Exandria that it is often reminiscent of familiar settings. It's a familiar feeling D&D setting with contemporary sensibilities.

Your argument seems to be that these earlier versions of fantasy pastiche settings were better. I disagree. /shrug. Different people like different things.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

No, the other settings caught on because of their quality and/or because they offered something new, not because they were attached to another property.

They caught on because they were first, not because they were good. Greyhawk was a terrible pile of steaming garbage compared to modern settings - but that’s because a huge amount has been learned about building worlds for D&D since it was published.

 

[Necropolitan]

If you want a good generic campaign setting use The Kingdoms of Kalamar.

The main sourcebook offers an immediately usable setting on the brink of numerous adventure opportunities both large and small, there are in-universe reasons for just about any mechanically-possible character, it uses its pantheon better than Exandria in that they work like actual religions (while allowing far more opportunities for ambiguity and heresy than the Forgotten Realms), there are actually diverse cultures with various in-universe complications, and far more variety in possible villains than Exandria allows.

 

[Marandahir]

They caught on because they were first, not because they were good. Greyhawk was a terrible pile of steaming garbage compared to modern settings - but that’s because a huge amount has been learned about building worlds for D&D since it was published.

And yet -- it works well in the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide as a limited-scope setting gazetteer as opposed to justifying two whole books to cover just the Eurofantasy pastiche part of the setting (i.e., Forgotten Realms' new books).

I still think that if not for the 50th anniversary, they could have just as easily gotten away with using the Nentir Vale and surrounding areas (Mithralfast, Trollhaunt Warrens, Vor Rukoth, Chaos Scar, etc). But 50th anniversary nostalgia glasses are powerful, and they also wanted a setting that would prop up the Greyhawk pantheon propped up by Planescape, rather than one that would want to center the Dawn War Pantheon from the 2014 DMG & Explorer's Guide to Wildemount.

I still have hopes for a Nentir Vale Gazetteer book that clocks into the 2024 Revised 5e rueleset. I think the main thing going against it is that it was pastiche of FR, Greyhawk, Eberron, Dragonlance, and Ravenloft elements, so as to center in all the important modules of D&D history, but with Greyhawk present not in the 2024 rules, they can just put places like Sunless Citadel or Tomb of Horrors or Temple of Elemental Evil back in their home setting (and in fact, already did so with anthologies like Tales From the Yawning Portal or Quests from the Infinite Staircase). That said, they also tried to squeeze those same modules into Toril in AL seasons such as Elemental Evil, Chult, and most notably when they made a season around TFtYP and put follow-up adventures to several Greyhawk-set epics but the follow-ups are in Faerûn for some reason). That would suggest that it's okay that these adventure destinations have echoes on multiple worlds. Elemental Evil and Chult AL Seasons even said as much that they do. So that opens the door for 4E's premiere campaign setting to get some love at SOME POINT.

I still expect Dark Sun and another Critical Role book, and another Planescape book, all well before then. Dark Sun is a given, but Planescape feels like the space they can expand in the most while being useful for home games due to DMG-enforced shared assumptions of the Great Wheel. We got a heavy focus on Sigil and the Outlands, but a true Manual of the Planes diving deeper into the Inner and Outer Planes, give us Ardlings and Glitchlings and throw Plasmoids in thoo to rempresent Limbo, and now we're cooking with spam!

Critical Role getting another official book is almost a given – especially since they've moved onto a new world in Campaign 4 (Aramán). Marquet was included in Call from the Neverdeep and Tal'Dorei's remastered 3rd-party settingbook has been released on D&D Beyond, so whether they'd do another EXANDRIA book is up for question. I think you could do an Exandria-wide Gazetteer updating material from Explorers of Wildemount like the Pallid Elves, Draconbloods, Ravenites, Graviturges, Chronurgists, Echo Knights, etc, and updating non-EoW player material like the Cobalt Soul Warrior, the Gunslinger, and the Blood Hunter. Such a book would not be able to go as deep into Wildemount or Tal'Dorei as their respective books do, but it would let players get a sense of the entirety of Exandria now that CR has moved onto new worlds.

 

[Clint_L]

I would love to see a setting guide built around Vasselheim, along with a series of short adventures. It's one of the first Critical Role settings, played a big role in Campaign 1 and a significant role in Campaign 3, but has lots of room for development.

 

[Aurel Guthrie]

If you want a good generic campaign setting use The Kingdoms of Kalamar.

The main sourcebook offers an immediately usable setting on the brink of numerous adventure opportunities both large and small, there are in-universe reasons for just about any mechanically-possible character, it uses its pantheon better than Exandria in that they work like actual religions (while allowing far more opportunities for ambiguity and heresy than the Forgotten Realms),

The pantheon is literally just preference. I personally think all the gods being interlopers is interesting. It's different from other pantheons usually seen in other dnd settings, like the faerûn pantheon which I personally find very generic (which is also not a bad thing).

So you've said before that the setting doesn't do anything unique that would make people want to play there, but when it actually does something unique and interesting, it's suddenly bad?

There are actually diverse cultures with various in-universe complications, and far more variety in possible villains than Exandria allows.

On Exandria we have the more generic fantasy Emon, the ancient religious city of Vasselheim that could be its own setting, the city of Ank'Harel based on real world arab culture, the dwendalian empire with high tensions with the Kryn dynasty which is led by the Drow and accepting of species typically seen as monstrous outside of it, amongst many others, all with their own diverse cultures and complications. Would you like to elaborate why you imply the cultures in Exandria are not actually diverse, or why you think they don't offer a variety of villains? I'm interested in seeing why you have these opinions, when I and many others in this thread seem to think the complete opposite.

 

[zakael19]

Ank'Harel

Right! That's the city in Call of the Netherdeep that had a gazetteer and hooks that were more interesting than the actual campaign plot, lol.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I personally think all the gods being interlopers is interesting.

This bit of lore isn’t actually in the setting book. I assume they are getting it from the the Critical Role stream, and is therefore not relevant to the OP. The setting has to be taken only on material in the source books. Clearly it’s a meta reference to the deities being lifted from Netir Vale and Golarion.