D&D 5E Wandering Monsters: Morons and Salads

[billd91]

So, the choice is this: Let them sit off to the side a bit for the people who love them to get to use them, more or less unmolested, or WotC will tinker with them -- or, in all likelihood, them up beyond all recognition of the people who love them today -- in the hopes of reaching a broader audience.

Of those two, for the people who love them, putting them off to the side is the better option, IMO. It's certainly what I would have preferred with gnomes in 4E.

Well, here's hoping they don't screw them up in the hopes of reaching a broader audience. Let's face it, creatures that are the embodiment of law or chaos in D&D aren't exactly a major draw. Law and chaos, as D&D moral orientations, aren't nearly as compelling as the divide between good and evil.

 

[GX.Sigma]

KM, I think the problem that I have with your argument is that anything which is established, can never be changed once established.

I think that's as it should be. This is a rule for all forms of fiction--once something is established, it is canonically true. If you retroactively change the continuity (retcon), people get mad.

But it's even worse for D&D, because people are still playing in those worlds. If Marvel decides Spiderman goes back in time and never breaks up with Mary Jane, then at least that's part of the evolving story (which you are reading from afar). But if the Forgotten Realms suddenly change, that directly affects the game you're still playing--the world you're still in. I thought they learned this.

But really, I can't get too mad about it. If you're running a Planescape campaign, you already have the Planescape material, so it won't be a problem to use the "true" versions of the creatures. It just feels kind of that they're changing established stuff when they could just leave it and make new stuff.

 

[pemerton]

This is a rule for all forms of fiction--once something is established, it is canonically true. If you retroactively change the continuity (retcon), people get mad.

But it's even worse for D&D, because people are still playing in those worlds.

I don't think that this approach is necessarily the best one for growing the market for the game, though. Who wants to start buying into a fiction where all the important stuff has already been decided by those who were invested in it 20-odd years ago?

 

[Cyberen]

Interesting thread !
I think one of the underlying issues is the one of implied setting. The main strength/feature of D&D is its lack of hard-coded setting, thus potentially encompassing all trends in heroic fantasy, and more. At the same time, in order to appeal to new players, D&D has to be playable out of the box, and has to offer strong story hooks in the "core" books. I think 4e "Points of light" fulfilled this agenda quite well : both lightweight AND hooky, and [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] explained it quite well in another thread. Unfortunately, 4e wasn't careful enough whith renaming iconic things. Those issues have to be taken of carefully, but the setting model proposed by 4e is IMHO excellent. In the core, monsters should be statblocks+hooks. Then, each and every setting (WotC, 3rd party or homebrew) should sort this mess of critters in flavourful storylines. This is one of the reasons I'm not too keen on using FR as the base setting for Next : the kitchen sink model doesn't teach anything to new DMs concerning worldbuilding, as opposed to Darksun, Dragonlance or Eberron which make strong design choices. I think the very nice idea of a MM written as a bestiary take full sense at the setting level, not in the core rules.
Concerning Modrons, I should add that this monster totally blew my mind when I first met its description in ADD (was it in the Manual of the planes) : pure Law as mathematics (platonician solids), and its tools are the embodiment of these perfect shapes, give a very strong image of the nature of Law, and of the outer planes of the Great Wheel, and of their denizens. Of course, it's not really playable (but the ideas concerning Modrons as robots given in this thread are !), and not really well executed (Modrons should be made of force, use Fly and Telekinesis, not sprout arms/legs/wings like walking M&Ms !). The idea of such a Nirvana, and of a less perfect shade of it made of mechanical models of these solids, drifting in the Ethereal Sea, is pure awesome, even if PC never get to interact with them.

 

[Viking Bastard]

I think that's as it should be. This is a rule for all forms of fiction--once something is established, it is canonically true. If you retroactively change the continuity (retcon), people get mad.

I tend to look at edition changes more like DC's cyclical reboots. It's kinda the same universe, but it's also kinda not exactly. It's a new version of the universe. Wally West is Kid Flash; is Flash; never existed.

Multiversal baby!

 

[Hussar]

I think that's as it should be. This is a rule for all forms of fiction--once something is established, it is canonically true. If you retroactively change the continuity (retcon), people get mad.
/snip.

Sort of. I'd say that with all the reboots of different IP's in the past ten years, they've certainly had their share of gold (and turds as well). I mean, Batman is a Ninja, now, to a lot of people. Battlestar Galactica is significantly different from the original series, much to the better. Or at least a heck of a lot more successful than the original series.

We'll see how Superman changes this summer. And, while I know it's contentious, from a business standpoint, the changes to Transformers can only be seen as a success.

You bring up comic books, but, comic books are famous for retconning all sorts of things. How old is Aunt May? Well, depends on which version of Spider Man you are reading this week.

 

[avin]

It's easier for people who dislike Planar games agreeing to change Modrons, because they are niche, they never used them and they could change the race to something they could use.

What I'm curious about is how people react when something closer to them, something they use (even if it's niché) is changed?

Eladrins rubbed people the wrong way not just because they stole other race stuff but because High Elves suddenly get teleport.

There are good arguments why Modrons should change, in this very topic, but still I fail to see why insist in alienating part of the fanbase just because there are people who doesn't use Modrons.

 

[Hussar]

Avin - as I said, I don't feel that just because it was a certain way before gives something any special protection. Nostalgia only goes so far. At some point, you have to step back and say, "Look, gnomes have been in the PHB for thirty years and have NEVER gained any traction beyond a tiny niche. Let's chuck them out and put in something that we think will gain a lot of traction."

Thus we lose gnomes and gain dragonborn. And, I think that was a very good exchange. I've seen more dragonborn in games over the past two or three years than I saw gnomes in thirty years of gaming. I'm the only person I know who ever played gnomes. Heck, I LIKE gnomes. I think they are cool. But, I don't let "because I like them" stand in for any sort of objective judgement over whether or not gnomes should stay.

"Because I like it" is never a good enough reason.

 

[Celebrim]

[MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]: Maybe not surprisingly, but I disagree with pretty much all of that except that you don't have actual data to back it up. I don't think it is likely that Slaad will ever be a major monster, but I equally don't think that Law/Chaos will ever be as evocative of a conflict to most players and Good/Evil except by dressing the conflict in the trappings of good/evil. Frankly, for most Western players, angels and demons are just always going to dominate the stage as 'outsiders'. There is nothing that can be done to change that. Slaad and Modrons aren't famous because they are bad and they can be fixed. They aren't famous because they aren't in a niche most people care about. Changing up their flavor or mechanics or anything else won't fix that. The are in a small niche, that's why they are fairly obscure. Capturing more of that would be about making people care more about the law/chaos conflict and about nuetral outsiders. That's probably beyond the scope of the game.

I'd say, at this point, it's going to take a lot more than some fancy backstory to change that.

Well yeah, but it's going to take a lot more than replacing them with something else in the sme niche too.

Take Eladrin. Now, I've got no actual data to back this up, but, my gut feeling is that when you say Eladrin now, most people think elf, and not extra-planar kinda angel.

I think you are wrong. If you google the term Eladrin, most websites are using it for 'extra-planar good aligned fey inspired outsiders'. The PC race just has less written about it. Eladrin didn't gain a lot of traction with the rewrite - the already familiar term elf just gained a synonym. Most people think 'elf' and treat it as such. The overwhelming majority of the images in a Google image search were creations of the WotC art department (and its subcontractors). All the image search shows is that WotC poured a lot more effort into the artwork of a PC race than it ever did into the artwork of an outsider. Is that a big surprise?

Darkmantles are sufficiently different to peircers that I don't see the resemblence and if I wanted to use them would happily use them alongside each other (the best predecessor to a darkmantle is an executioner's hood, not a peircer, regardless of what thet design team says). Eladrin as PC race I don't need because I already have elves and I don't have 4e racial mechanical requirements, but if I wanted to use them I could easily use the PC race as a subset of the Eldarin race as a whole - the PC race is native outsiders, a lineage of elves that has interbred with creatures of the fairy realms.

(House rules: They are naturally skilled at Planeswalking - +2 racial bonus to the skill and it is always a class kill and +2 racial bonus to Knowledge (Planes) and it is always a class skill; otherwise similar to elves. Viola.)

The existance of these new ideas can be treated as elaboration rather than replacement.

 

[I'm A Banana]

KM, I think the problem that I have with your argument is that anything which is established, can never be changed once established. Someone, somewhere, probably likes just about everything. So, you can never take anything and rework it and possibly make it better.

I don't necessarily see this as a problem. Everything is a remix, so if you take chaos-toads and twist and warp them through layers of Lovecraft and body horror so that they're not really the same anymore, just give them a different name. Give them a whole new story and a whole new style. Let them be independent. Don't tether yourself to the past, invent from it.

Because the slaadi as they have existed don't NEED to be "improved" for many tables. They're fine as they are.

Given the massive amounts of stuff for D&D, that kinda means that we're getting a narrower and narrower field to work with. If we want to make new Abomination Toads that Impregnate People, and we cannot call them Slaad, then we're back to throwing things at the wall and hope that something sticks. Slaad aren't terrible. They are pretty cool. There's nothing wrong with changing them so that more people might think they are even cooler.

The truth is that when you make a drastic change, you're still throwing things at the wall and hoping that it sticks, but you're also making people who loved the original not want to use your version anymore. So you end up not getting the tag-alongs that you hoped to bring along, and still facing the same "new critter" prospect with those who aren't married to the name, but now with an added serving of acrimony and ire in the blender.

If that means that your Chaos Toads from the outer planes become a bit more Lovecraftian Horror Toads, is that really a bad thing?

It's worse than just keeping them Chaos Toads and inventing some new Lovecraftian horror. It introduces confusion, frustration, antagonism. Chaos Toads don't have to be loved by all to be a valuable addition to the game. There's plenty of monsters that you'll never use, including Slaadi in that lump isn't going to hurt you at all.