D&D 5E Wandering Monsters: Monster Mashups

[Orius]

Wyatt and Mearls are talking about the same thing this week for some reason. Here's my response from the L&L thread so i don't have to type it all out again:

The ettercap description here is interesting, at least more interesting than the ettercap has been in the past. I like the idea of them herding spiders, twisting forests, and collecting fairy dust and trading it with hags (maybe the hags give them something that helps them twist the forests). I can see them collecting the dust like how birds will take shiny stuff to put in their nests. The aranea link though isn't needed, araneas are their own seperate race of shapeshifters that resemble spiders, they don't need a link to ettercaps.

Dafuq did I just read there, Wyatt? What I need from you guys running the D&D game is not a consistent experience. What I need form you guys is the tools to give my players and I the experience WE want. Which, I can guarantee you, is going to be wildly inconsistent, because sometimes we want Tolkeinesque flowery high fantasy and sometimes we want to kill a T-rex and make wang jokes all night and even I don't know what it's going to be until I'm doin' it. That absolutely means giving us a sort of an "example orc." But the distinction I made earlier between an example and a default is critical, because that orc is not to be your assumption, it is to be your "you can do it like this, and we think this is pretty cool."

That's not what I read from the column. Sounds like they're establishing a vanilla baseline for core which will be used in FR, but not necessarily Dark Sun or another setting. He also specifically stated this doesn't necessarily apply to homebrews.

This does look like branding, and upon reflection, it doesn't necessarily seem like a bad thing. We've talked in the past about how Hasbro has $50M and $100M brand. D&D though isn't big enough to be a $50M brand with just the tabletop game. It doesn't sell the same way as a toy or mainstream boardgame brand. It's still a valuable IP for licensing, though, and I think that's where the bigger profits can come from. Having a consistant brand helps to avoid crap like the infamous D&D movie, which should be generally positive.

I just see, if they maintain this...all monsters need stories to link them to other monsters, in short order we'll all be sitting around our respective tables having conversations like this:

P1: "Wow. Killing those four ettercaps was tough."
P2: "Was their eight giant spider pets that nearly did me in!"
P1: "No joke. So we loot the lair. Where's the pixie dust?"
DM: "Huh?"
P1: "Ettercaps trade in pixie dust, remember? So they must have some around here someplace."
P2: "Aw crap."
P1 & DM: "What's wrong?"
P2: "There's gotta be a hag around these woods somewhere. I hate fighting hags."
P1: "That's right! They'll have treasure for sure...and more pixie dust. We go find the hag!"
DM: Looks at the players...

Blinks twice...

Twitches his nose...

Tosses campaign notes into the air and goes out for a drink and smoke.

That DM should turn in his DM card! Sounds like some good player paranoia there to exploit. I'd just give the players an evil grin, they'd assume that means
there's a hag waiting to ambush them immediately when there's no such thing in the adventure and they'd spend the rest of the session wondering when it's going to strike. I of course would do absolutely nothing to disabuse them of the notion and just sit behind the screen evilly chuckling about it.

"Gorged in magic: ettercaps that maintain a steady diet of pixie flesh eventually warp into eldritch creatures themselves, gaining shapeshifting powers and illusion magic. These eldritch ettercaps use the statistics of an aranea."

Now this approach doesn't bother me.

 

[Balesir]

Hmm, I think I'm sort-of in the same position as [MENTION=2067]Kamikaze Midget[/MENTION], but more so. I read this article as "the designers want to do fun world design and sell you that rather than providing a solid base of rules for the game - what do you think of that?"

Blegh. One or two ideas are cool (pixie dust as a currency collected by ettercaps by trapping pixies in webs - but then again it's not that different from a "residuum as currency distinct from gold" that I'm playing with for 4E, already), but the idea of locking down all the fluff to a specific setting is, for me, a world book, not a core rules thing.

 

[I'm A Banana]

So if the GSL or equivalent for this edition didn't shoehorn you into the strict MM version of an orc, what's to keep your game from playing another version when you want to? Especially if it's specifically stated that you can do so? What's wrong with the DM who doesn't want to build his detailed version of an orc and would rather be able to "go with the default" as it were. There's a hell of a lot of those types of DMs I think, who'd be disadvantaged more if left with no default than the guy who wants to input his own type of orc.

It's not a fear of the Fun Police that makes me grumpy about this, it's a fear of 5e as published being limited and monolithic in some ways instead of modular and flexible. I'm not too worried about my own games, I'm more worried that The D&D Orc™ becomes the only orc any D&D game or D&D supplement is expected to provide (unless Our Orcs Are Different!). That's not useful or realistic or interesting. As one example kind of orc, great. That's something lazy DMs (which typically includes me) will be able to use. Just go with the example. As something that's supposed to be associated with anything with the D&D logo on it (except when said product likes to break with tradition!), no good.

But if they can provide Dark Sun style elves and dwarves in a DS supplement that exist alongside regular style FR elves and humans, what's the problem?

The problem is that there's still more than those two options. It's not a choice between the default and an alternative, it's a choice between a galaxy of potential kinds of elf.

Actually though KM's argument does make sense to me in some regards enough that it almost makes sense to me to just say FR is the "default" setting since it's really the only one supported with new product at launch, and foreseeably the entries in the MM won't contradict anything in current FR lore. Then you could just say "we're not playing in that setting" when a problematic player says "Orcs aren't like that!" or "according to the MM, Aranea's are evolved forms of ettercaps!"

Yeah, sure. I mean, we'd have the slight problem of any setting considered default, but at least it'd be clear that non FR games aren't necessarily expected to use the same stories for the critters just 'cuz they're still D&D games.

Not sure that solution really makes me happy though. I don't know if there is an optimal solution, but I think having a clear brand identity across settings is obviously something WotC has decided to go for, and I can't fault them for it.

This does look like branding, and upon reflection, it doesn't necessarily seem like a bad thing.

I'm not against branding per se (like I said: FR should have a certain kind of orc associated with it, and a D&D movie series should have a particular kind of orc that it uses that works for it), I'm against it when it has the potential to hurt the gameplay experience because the brand must be associated with a particular identity, and individual games gain no benefit from the designers' adherence to that identity. There's a lot more I can gain as a DM from an infinity of types of orcs than I gain from The D&D Orc™ being assumed.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

I'm not against branding per se (like I said: FR should have a certain kind of orc associated with it, and a D&D movie series should have a particular kind of orc that it uses that works for it), I'm against it when it has the potential to hurt the gameplay experience because the brand must be associated with a particular identity, and individual games gain no benefit from the designers' adherence to that identity. There's a lot more I can gain as a DM from an infinity of types of orcs than I gain from The D&D Orc™ being assumed.

Except, there's absolutely no evidence that this is occuring. In fact, I looked back at both articles and neither uses the term 'default' in regards to the monster write-ups. Wyatt does use the term 'example' though. They're building a core game with core creatures that will be used in core products. Non-core products were specifically mentioned as examples of when non-core versions of creatures would appear. And he notes that many DMs will ignore this material and other will complain that the material is a waste of space. But they have heard what I've heard for years: people complaining on messageboards that the monster entries were too dry. I may not use every bit of material. I may not like each thing they create. But I applaud their effort.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Except, there's absolutely no evidence that this is occuring.

Semantics aside, there is.

When players explore the Forgotten Realms setting or the rest of the multiverse, it's important that they have a consistent, coherent experience

(meaning: It's important that all orcs are the same for a consistent, coherent experience. A diversity of orcs means these experiences are not consistent.)

We want to present orcs in all those games and expressions that are recognizable, so if you move from Neverwinter to the tabletop game, for example, you see orcs you recognize

(meaning: D&D orcs = FR orcs, because they must be recognizable between the two. A diversity of orcs means that the videogame and the tabeltop game might be different.)

Some parts of the multiverse are very different from others: elves and halflings in the Dark Sun setting are barely recognizable next to the ones in the Forgotten Realms setting. That's OK, and it's OK if the world you create for your game is just as different. But when it comes to the many and varied expressions of D&D, we need a consistent baseline, even if we vary from it when we turn to something like the Dark Sun setting.

(meaning: We'll have exceptions to the general rule, and there's no fun police. This doesn't mean there isn't a general rule that we're going to be using in our design, because of the benefits above)

Oh, and here's a bonus round from Mearls's cosmology article:

Ideally, our approach allows Dragonlance, Eberron, Forgotten Realms, the world of the Nentir Vale, Greyhawk, Mystara, Dark Sun, and your own campaign setting to work with the basic assumptions we make about the planes.

(meaning: there is only one D&D cosmology that all D&D worlds will use)

Since this is the "feedback" portion of the playtest, I'm giving my feedback that I think this is a really dumb idea, driven by marketing concerns, that is going to weaken the modularity, flexibility, and variety we find in the published D&D material. It has the potential to hurt the game.

This potential has been realized in the past. To see why this concern may be relevant, see the "you can't redefine elves" thing in the GSL and more broadly, the entire 4e approach to setting, races, and cosmology (ie: "Of course we're going to cram the Dragonborn into FR, and somehow wheelde the Feywild into Dark Sun!") which can be seen as part of the same philosophy, and had the same result. Five years now where there's little possibility in the published material of NOT having 4e's core assumptions in your own game.

One of the D&D game's big selling points is being able to make the game your own. Heavy-handed critter branding cripples that.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

One of the D&D game's big selling points is being able to make the game your own. Heavy-handed critter branding cripples that.

I think that, although it is possible to make the game your own, it's never been a huge part of D&D as written.

In 2e, the books explicitly stated that all the worlds were connected via portal, spelljamming, and any number of other ways. The Prime Material Plane was described as having infinite worlds: FR, Greyhawk, Dark Sun, AND whatever world you came up with.

Although the system encouraged you to make up your own worlds and our group certainly did, we never considered it possible to have different planes. Not until I joined the internet and started talking to other people who were doing it. After all, the point of D&D(at least to our thinking and our reading in the books) was that all worlds took place in the same universe. The Spelljammer books stated that many of the races got to various planets through spelljamming and planar magic. So, Orcs were the same from one world to another because often they had come from a common place. This was also why a lot of the same gods from the Deities and Demigods book were worshiped in every game we played in regardless of the DM.

When we created worlds, we also defined them by what was different: "In my world, it's just like every other D&D world but my Orcs have red skin and are twice the size because they went through a ritual to change their appearance sometime in the distant past."

This always brought me great comfort. I knew that when I joined a D&D game run by someone I didn't know, I could be assured that 95% of everything I knew about D&D would be true in this game. That at a core level, D&D was always the same. Each world was more of a "what if" scenario on the generic D&D rules.

We used to sit around and discuss things like "What would happen if Drizzt fell into a portal and ended up on this world? Imagine the havok that would cause!" We had one campaign where we all went from FR to Dark Sun and spent a while trying to find our way out. I love the idea that Ravenloft has domains stolen from FR, Dark Sun and Dragonlance. I like interconnectedness.

I know you don't like it, but I'd like to state that to me, "critter branding" IS one of the basic tenants of D&D to me and it's decline in the last couple of editions has made me sad. I'd like to see a return to more hard core critter branding.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I think that, although it is possible to make the game your own, it's never been a huge part of D&D as written.

I think that there have always been more people playing a house ruled or alt version of D&D than have ever played it strictly by the book. Because nothing written by some bloke in Redmond or in Lake Geneva, no matter now well written, is ever going to work for everyone playing D&D. The OSR, the Open Gaming people, even the Fourthcore folks.

If they want to design the best game of D&D that they can design, they are going to have to embrace the fact that all of our games are different. All lemonade is local. Anything less than that is going to be sub-par.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

I think that there have always been more people playing a house ruled or alt version of D&D than have ever played it strictly by the book.

I think this assumption comes from having played that way. It might be true. But given the number of D&D groups out there, it would be impossible to prove. Most people assume everyone is doing whatever they were doing.

Like I said, the idea that someone would invent new planes was something I assumed NO ONE did until I came to the internet and found out a bunch of people did. Our group used to run into people who had learned to play with other groups and used to be APPALLED that they'd changed the rules that much. Especially because our group considered the rules sacrosanct.

Once, a player bet the DM(who didn't know the rules that well) that a +1 weapon added to both hit AND damage. She(the DM) said "No, they only add to damage, not to hit". He bet her that he was correct and if he was, he got to bring in a new character with a list of equipment he made up. She looked it up and immediately allowed him to bring in his new character. She was the DM and really could have just said "That's the way it works in my game". But the contract amongst our players was that the rules were the rules. We all had to play by them to make the game fair.

We assumed everyone else was doing the same thing and that houseruling was extremely rare. We all just assume our situation is the default one.

Because nothing written by some bloke in Redmond or in Lake Geneva, no matter now well written, is ever going to work for everyone playing D&D. The OSR, the Open Gaming people, even the Fourthcore folks.

If they expect to help us play our games, they are going to have to embrace the fact that all of our games are different. All lemonade is local.

Yet all of those games still came from the same original set of rules. We were all able to get along just fine back in the day, regardless of the fact that the rules DIDN'T embrace the fact that all our games were different(you certainly didn't see a 2e Planescape book or Spelljammer book say "This is the way things work...well, unless you want something different in your game"). Why would that need to change now?

If, while 1e or 2e was out, people could look at the rules and say "regardless of what it says in the book, we are doing THIS instead"...why do the rules for D&D Next suddenly have to say "The rules are up the the air, everyone's going to do different things with them anyways, so let's just give you 10 rules and let you pick amongst them?"

I suspect that for people who were playing very houseruled games, the 2e rulebook still helped them play their game. Or they wouldn't have continued to play D&D.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Yet all of those games still came from the same original set of rules.

Sure. But then those rules were adopted for an individual table. Having One Kind of Orc hurts the ability to adapt orcs to your own table, because it limits the diversity of published orcs and reinforces the concept that only one orc is meant to be used in D&D.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

Sure. But then those rules were adopted for an individual table. Having One Kind of Orc hurts the ability to adapt orcs to your own table, because it limits the diversity of published orcs and reinforces the concept that only one orc is meant to be used in D&D.

All of my experience with 1E begs to differ. One kind of each monster was presented in the MM. World supplements were typically the place that might change. Ocassionally the standard would change in a published module. Nothing they've said regarding the matter leads me to believe this will be any different.

Despite your "evidence," which I can only ascribe to our point of views differing, not actual empiral evidence, I see things continuing in the spirit of D&D.

RE: Neverwinter and the tabletop providing a consistent experience. Both are FR, one by design, the other by default.

RE: The "general rule." They've alread expressed that they understand that you might have different orcs and that they will have creatures that differ from the norm.

RE: Cosmolgy. That's a different matter. They approached that topic from a different angle by trying to build a single cosmolgy that is all-inclusive. It's not the "FR cosmology" forced upon all worlds. And when the setting calls for it (say Eberron), I'm sure they will not cram the baseline cosmolgy where it might not fit.

EDIT: Hadn't read the Q&A yet, so they are. Still, I agree with others in the Q&A thread that the One Cosmology seamlessness will be on a rules level, allowing you to use other cosmologies without changes to the rules.


You're stating much of your position as absolute truths, when really it is just your different POV.