Orius
Legend
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:
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.
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.
Now this approach doesn't bother me.
me said: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.