Titansgrave and why 5E needs a setting (or two) (and another take on a suggested product lineup)

[iserith]

I suspect that's a result of Wil's style of GMing... which (now that I've seen the Dread episode of Tabletop plus these first two eps of Titans Grave) tells me that I don't think he's very strong at creating atmosphere. I've haven't really enjoyed his two forays into GMing onscreen thus far to tell you the truth, and it's because he seems either reticent or incapable of setting a deeper mood. Even his NPC voices and characterizations are a bit shallow to me.

But then again... that's almost definitely based upon my own experiences in what I've found in the games run by the GMs I've latched onto... so just because Wil's not really engaging me, doesn't mean what he's doing is bad by any stretch. I'm sure there are plenty of people out there watching it that think he's amazing. But when I see what Matthew Mercer is doing in the Critical Role livestream... his is a style that grabs me more as a listener and as a player. And a game set in Titans Grave run by him would be a much different experience.

I think it's less about that and more of a disconnect between what I took to be a somewhat grimdark setting and the beer-fueled comedic fantasy that ensued. I'm all for zany comedy adventures and characters, but I like a setting that supports it.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Is FR not a setting?

You've got two adventure path style full-campaign adventures set there, you've got lots of AL adventures of varying length set there. Seems like a setting + adventures to me.

FR has already been heavily developed and it's not like all that fluff and background has to change just because mechanics are slightly different now than they were 20 years ago. Adapting an old setting or module is really pretty easy.

 

[Agamon]

Well, my intention was not to really compare the two shows, but rather the styles of the two DMs. Wil has this habit (which to be fair is one that Chris Perkins has too) when talking as an NPC he starts most lines with "He says..." and then drops into his character voice. Whereas Matthew (and the DMs I play with in my home games) stays in character through several lines of back and forth dialogue (if not entire conversations). As a roleplayer who is also an improviser, staying "within the scene" is something I've come to more greatly enjoy as a technique. Thus Wil's tendency to sometimes break out of a conversation to give a quick third-person narrative before going back into "Then he says..." just disengages me as a viewer. Again... nothing at all wrong with his particular technique and style, it's just one that I find is distancing and thus a bit shallower. For me, the mood is harder set when you are wanting conversations with these NPC characters but they get broken every line or two by switching to narrator-voice. Just my opinions on what I prefer.

I haven't watched any of this yet, but this reminds me of when I was listening to Wil's reading of the Redshirts audiobook. So many "he said"s and "she said"s. It got a bit aggravating, but I was more thinking it was a problem with Scalzi's writing than Wil. But maybe it's the way he says it, who knows.

 

[Jester David]

And I'd like a diamond pony. One that vomits treasure.

But, seriously, who's going to write all this stuff?
WotC is down to two actual staff writers of content, both rules guys. And some contractors. They cut their editors and lost some people. I'm sure the D&D team would love to put out more stuff but the management seems uninterested in staffing that division.

As has been mentioned many times before, apart from 4e, no other edition of D&D has had a campaign setting product released less than a year after the Core rulebooks. Because they are a LOT of work and cannot be written overnight.
Why should we expect this D&D team - smaller than any prior team - to be able to produce a book faster? Until November, they were hard at work on the DMG and it takes a least a month for a finished book to be printed and another month (at least) just to do layout. Are you really expecting them to crank out a 320-page campaign setting from scratch in just six months?! Even TSR apparently gave five months for a 160-page boxed set.

 

[SubDude]

... but this reminds me of when I was listening to Wil's reading of the Redshirts audiobook. So many "he said"s and "she said"s. It got a bit aggravating, but I was more thinking it was a problem with Scalzi's writing than Wil. But maybe it's the way he says it, who knows.

Totally agree. Never really noticed that in any other audible books. I will check out the book itself next time I'm at a B/M book store.

 

[Jester David]

Okay, now that I have more time, some extra thoughts.

I do feel setting is rather lacking from the D&D products.
Some of this is because D&D is so very generic. I imagine Fantasy AGE will also be super generic. Because most people will set their campaigns in their own world or won't use the default setting. But settings are still important.
But even the adventures we have gotten have been fairly generic. They're set in the Realms but only very, very, very loosely and it's super easy to port them into other worlds. They're not Realms adventures so much as D&D adventures that just happen to be set in the Forgotten Realms. None of the story elements or plot points have really tied into the Realms. None of the villains have been established figures or groups (apart from the Cult of the Dragon, but even then their movies and modus operandi entirely changed). None of the stories have been stories that could only have been told in the Realms and not Greyhawk or Dragonlance with just a few simple name changes. Which, I imagine, is the point. But it does leave the adventures a little flat and generic.
But I imagine they're waiting until they get some feedback and see how people feel about the Realms before the slip in a little more world specific flavour.

As I said in my previous post, they're likely still working on a setting book. The OP mentions Titan's Grave but rather than release both a rules book and a setting book, Green Ronin (one of the larger RPG publishers out there) is releasing a small 144-page rulebook and a tiny 96-page setting book.
Part of this is likely to see how well the setting sells. Since they likely have no idea how fans will react. And part of this is likely that they could not develop a larger world and write a longer book in the year since they signed with Wheaton for his series.
And yet WotC is expected to do it in half the time...

 

[Henry]

One other point - Wil Wheaton's show purpose is to show the fun of an RPG - Wil knows that he has willingly or not taken the role of an Ambassador for gaming, in a way - there are quite a few people whose first intro to RPGs was Fiasco or Dragon Age thanks to Geek and Sundry Tabletop.

Critical Role on the other hand strikes me as geared towards an audience more versed with RPGs - plus because of Twitch it's less polished and more real time. Titansgrave is edited and cut to 45 minutes or less, Critical Role is more raw feed, it seems, and seems geared toward someone who doesn't need to be told what an RPG is.

As for Mercurius's suggestion, I sort of agree, but I'm just happy with ANY content I can get nowadays - I'm pretty much giving up on any new material, and just converting what I need, because Princes of the Apocalypse burned me a bit.

 

[Sunseeker]

I don't understand your complaint, more than ever WOTC is focusing on a single world and an evolving storyline to it. Short of making the D&D ruleset completely intertwined with the setting, which even Pathfinder doesn't do, I'm not sure what else you want.

I really don't want to see D&D become ultra-niche ala many of the other RPGs out there that are entirely single-setting reliant.

 

[ninjayeti]

The thing is - a SETTING IS NOT MECHANICS. A setting isn't prestige classes. A setting isn't statblocks.

A setting is places and people and stories and conflicts. None of that has changed in 5E. There are dozens and dozens of setting books for D&D available as cheap PDFs (or on EBAY if you must have hard copies). Sure you might have to convert a bit of crunch for some of the non-standard settings, but really that is the least important aspect and the easiest part to do on your own.

 

[Staffan]

One other point - Wil Wheaton's show purpose is to show the fun of an RPG - Wil knows that he has willingly or not taken the role of an Ambassador for gaming, in a way - there are quite a few people whose first intro to RPGs was Fiasco or Dragon Age thanks to Geek and Sundry Tabletop.

Critical Role on the other hand strikes me as geared towards an audience more versed with RPGs - plus because of Twitch it's less polished and more real time. Titansgrave is edited and cut to 45 minutes or less, Critical Role is more raw feed, it seems, and seems geared toward someone who doesn't need to be told what an RPG is.

I thought Fiasco and Dragon Age were more entertaining than Titansgrave - perhaps because Wil was a player in those, not a GM. But I'm sort of hoping that these first two episodes are just introductory stuff, and that we'll get to the real meat soon. I also think part of the problem is that Wil... I guess you could say that he describes what his NPCs do and say, rather than just do and say it. It's more "The Beer Baron thanks you for a job well done, and gives you the 5 gold you agreed on. He then asks you if you would join him for the evening's celebrations." than "Thank you, you have done a wonderful job getting me and my goods home safely. As we agreed, here is the 5 gold I owe you for a job well done. I'm throwing a party tonight to celebrate my return, would you care to join me?"

The editing, I'm not convinced it's doing the show any favors. Notably, I don't really like the way they cut out almost anything that smells of a rule more advanced than "roll and tell me what you got". When the PCs use a special ability, I want to know what that special ability does. I don't want to hear "I'm using pin-point shot", I want "I'm using pin-point shot so I'll be doing an extra d6 damage." I also don't want to hear "And I get a three-point stunt", I want "I get three stunt points, so I'm spending them on making a knockdown attack."

I'm also not convinced Titansgrave is going to be more successful in creating new players - the Twitter feeds for Critical Role are fairly full of people saying "Hey, love your show, and here's my new Starter Set!" And a few weeks ago, when a bunch of the players were unavailable, Mercer had something of a workshop on playing and running the game, and ran a short (and very weird) adventure for some of the G&S Twitch crew. I loved the workshop by the way, and his world-building advice reminded me of nothing so much as Bob Ross.