D&D 5E (2024) Unconfirmed Dark Sun World Book

[Parmandur]

Autocorrect strikes again! I had a friend complaining about a weak performance from Taliban in Shakespeare's The Tempest yesterday for similar reasons.

I swear if you go back and look my spelling was better before I switched from Motorola to Samsung.

 

[Parmandur]

Especially when they're quite subtle or complex in the ways they don't work. Like, the strongest criticisms of TLJ, the hardest to argue against, are around pacing and structure. I loved TLJ (as did my wife) genuinely on first watch, but on re-watches, the structural and pacing issues are pretty noticeable (and I think Johnson struggles with this a little even in his well-regarded mystery movies, I note).

Brandon Sanderson is not a hater and actually liked Last Jedi fir what it was going for...but he started using it as an example to dissect in his college writing lectures on pacing.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Brandon Sanderson is not a hater and actually liked Last Jedi fir what it was going for...but he started using it as an example to dissect in his college writing lectures on pacing.

Yeah that tracks honestly. Every time I've rewatched it's been more and more noticeable how messed-up the pacing is. And I will credit Sanderson with this - whilst I think he's messed up pacing plenty of times, he has managed, even in 1200-page behemoths which should have been edited to like 400 pages, to keep the pace juuuuuuuuuuuuust high enough that you don't go "Okay, you know what I've had enough of Kleric Guudgye, his incredibly annoying sprite Jarmani Krikat and his assorted Proper Nouns! I'm done with Lashings!" and slam the book shut! So I respect his opinion on that.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I swear if you go back and look my spelling was better before I switched from Motorola to Samsung.

Total aside but wife switched from Motorola to Google Pixel and has had way more issues with autocorrect since. Maybe Motorola has the least-offensive autocorrect on Android?

 

[Parmandur]

Yeah that tracks honestly. Every time I've rewatched it's been more and more noticeable how messed-up the pacing is. And I will credit Sanderson with this - whilst I think he's messed up pacing plenty of times, he has managed, even in 1200-page behemoths which should have been edited to like 400 pages, to keep the pace juuuuuuuuuuuuust high enough that you don't go "Okay, you know what I've had enough of Kleric Guudgye, his incredibly annoying sprite Jarmani Krikat and his assorted Proper Nouns! I'm done with Lashings!" and slam the book shut! So I respect his opinion on that.

Thing about the Stormlight Archives, itnis Sanderson’s experiment to try and push the envelope of long form storytelling. It is only halfway down, had the Empire Strikes Back moment after over 2 million words...and it is shocking how much of the apparently stretched out narrative is load-bearing.

But I just finished his Young Adult star pilot sci-fi series...and he knows how to be fast paced and to the point when thst is his intention. His lecture series is free on YouTube, and a pretty interesting master class on narrative.

 

[Parmandur]

Total aside but wife switched from Motorola to Google Pixel and has had way more issues with autocorrect since. Maybe Motorola has the least-offensive autocorrect on Android?

I have occasionally thought about changing my keyboard App, but that feels like a rabbit hole into madness.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

It is only halfway down, had the Empire Strikes Back moment after over 2 million words...

Well, too bad I'll never get to see that lol because the digressions in book 3 were just a step too far (but I did finish the book, I'll give him that!). When he put out the first book I had six RL friends reading it. The last gave up after book 4.

Maybe he can do an experiment in condensing his own work in a few years and I'll find out what happens to ol' Kleric!

His lecture series is free on YouTube, and a pretty interesting master class on narrative.

Ooooh I might have a look!

 

[Zardnaar]

Thank you.

I'm not trying to point this out to be mean or w/e, but I think it's pretty important to separate out what the actual D&D team members might want and what their skills might be from what WotC and Hasbro want and require from them. Especially as most of those designers will likely eventually move on from WotC.

In TTRPGs, there's essentially only one "corporate" RPG company, and that's WotC. A couple of others might heading that way, but they're still a fundamentally different kind of company, and not owned by a larger company whose sole and entire concern is short-term shareholder profits (a narrow concern that has lead Hasbro to screw itself - and sometimes WotC - over, quite a number of times).

So with a different, non-corporate company, it might be much fairer to blame "the writers" or the lead designer of a product. Here though we must look at the corporate goals and leadership.

I do think that whatever the cause, WotC have had a bit of a curve on the quality of the setting-type products, it started with a lot of fairly decent or at least moderate quality settings (including most of the MtG settings), but reached its nadir with Spelljammer, which experienced the incredible triple-threat of putting gimmicky format ahead of function (three identical-page-count slim hardbacks in a slipcase is... not a good format for a D&D setting book, sorry - almost anything not that would be better - like not making them identical page count even!), of experiencing some deeply and frankly easily avoidable idiocy with the monkey-people, and also a clear late-in-design change of direction which lead to faux-Athas being destroyed where they'd clearly originally intended it to be just straight-up Athas, right down to specific monsters. Every setting book before that was at least somewhat better (even if the general direction was decline), and every setting book after that has been better (that I'm aware of, anyway).

(Re: Spelljammer, I daresay the bizarre format choice was 100% on WotC leadership and 0% on the D&D team or what they wanted. The monkey business was clearly on the D&D team though, and the Athas thing... I have no idea. Did corporate at that time want to bury Athas, and the D&D team convinced them otherwise but too late to redesign? Or the exact opposite? Or something even more odd?)

Hopefully that up-curve continues and the inevitable Dark Sun book is good. I am skeptical, but I do hope. There are ways it could be done even within the strictures of WotC's goals, and still be good, but are they going to let people find those ways, or just enblandify it? We shall see.


I did until you asked me! Then I immediately forgot! THANKS!!! Classic ADHD brain-fail I admit.

So I had to look it up, and I was like "Oh yeah I knew that at some point!".

But as you say, I did have to look it up, you have me there! Raedra Obarskyr for the record. And to be fair, she sounds absolutely as insufferably flawless, smug, smarmy and eye-roll-inducing as every other bloody ruler of Cormyr, so Cormyr-fans, who clearly love insufferable twerps*, should embrace her!

* = (because what else is Cormyr about if not being insufferable in virtually every possible regard? Every awful trope of ultra-romanticised faux-medieval Britain and equally romanticised rural Midwestern America somehow rolled into one place)

I knew because Cormyr is sponsoring the PCs bastions in the Stonelands and her names on the charter.

I may have looked up Cormyr on the wiki and the old 2E product. Bought a few pdfs as well.

 

[Parmandur]

Well, too bad I'll never get to see that lol because the digressions in book 3 were just a step too far (but I did finish the book, I'll give him that!). When he put out the first book I had six RL friends reading it. The last gave up after book 4.

Maybe he can do an experiment in condensing his own work in a few years and I'll find out what happens to ol' Kleric!

Part of it is that I have a pretty high patience for large meandering narratives, but I loved book 4 and 5: Sanderson went out of his way to basically break down and destroy everything.

In all likelihood, there will be a TL;DR explanation of the Vorin Star Empire's history and Mythos in the final Mistborn trilogy, as the entire point of the SA is to provide a deep explanation for the Klingon warrior civilization in his Space Opera phase.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I knew because Cormyr is sponsoring the PCs bastions in the Stonelands and her names on the charter.

Such a Cormyr-ass thing to do! Always with the bureaucracy, always with the charters! smdh

(I kid but goddamn, I swear if 3E hadn't come out one of my 2E campaigns would probably have involved with the very high level PCs overthrowing the Obarskyr dynasty out of sheer annoyance with them, annoyance which I admittedly rather shared. It all started with the Azure Bonds y'see... < goes on for 10000+ words >. I hope Azoun IV knows WotC saved his faux-English ass!)