What should WOTC do about Golden Wyvern Adept? (Keep Friendly)

[Najo]

The bottom line is it forces DMs to adapt their fluff to the fluff in the core books. Until now, D&D has not done that to its DMs to this degree. Sure, a few spells and gods, but not key building blocks for players to make the characters from. It is a hassle for a DM who doesn't want to have his campaign take these orders or other fluff driven feats into his game. This sort of naming belongs in setting books or sidebars.

The pro-GWA camp make it sound like this is not an issue, or that we are overreacting. But once this box is opened, it can continue to fighting styles, thieves guilds, churches, and other fluff driven by this smattering of assumed setting D&D is placing on the game now.

Even planes of existance and races are not as big a deal. Campaign Setting books usually replace those with their own, but key feats that affect basic class abilities is a big deal and impossible to ban and replace without causing confusion.

Likewise, the customer most stepped on by this is the homebrew DM. The one who has been playing for years and years, loyal through all editions he played. With years of creative and hard work, similar to a writer or artist, he is being told to alter that creation or ignore a potential intrusion into his game.

Should Forgotten Realms or Dragonlance drop these orders into their settings now? Should every D&D setting? I be curious what Tracy Hickman and Margret Weis think. How about asking Ed Greenwood and R.A. Salvatore? At that point, these orders become boring and old hat, impossible to get away from. Next time the creative teams at WOTC start cooking up new settings, they are going to have their hands much more tied than those who worked at TSR. They will see the mistake then.

This issue is bigger than people realize. It smacks in the face of the creative design side of the D&D rules, forcing the DM to use elements against his will. That is a mistake all in all, and steps on the most valuable resource D&D has, its commited and creative Dungeon Masters.

 

[Najo]

Again, I agree that for many DM's world building is a sacred cow. Yup, I remember that thread. But, again, with 150 000 RPGA gamers, this sacred cow may only be sacred to a small number of gamers. Like hardcore gamers who take the time to post on message boards.

That might be, except that one DM is more important and outweighs all those other players that outnumber him. He creates new players everytime he lets someone new play. DMs spend 5-10 times as much on their gaming materials as a common player too. Players who do not DM do not do this. WOTC has confirmed this is true. So, those DMs are more important than you are making them out to be. This direction in fluff directly steps on most of those DMs and is offensive to their commitment and hardwork.

That is why this is so important. You piss those DMs off enough to stick with 3.5 or move to another game and 4.0 is going to take a solid hit.

 

[rounser]

As I stated in my earlier post, there are just as many problems for worldbuilding if you use flavorless names.

I dispute that. What if it was a Gold Adept or Gold Magic, rather than Golden Wyvern Adept? Much less intrusive, and yet still somewhat flavourful. Just not jarringly flavourful.

Probably not trademarkable, though, which is probably why we're not seeing it.

 

[jensun]

By flavoring the core mechanics, WOTC is forcing us to use salt everytime when I rather have pepper sometimes. What is so wrong about using sidebars or even the flavor text beneath the feat to convey the fluff instead of the actually mechanics name itself?

I am curious about those who hate the name.

Did you have similar problems incorporating Mordenkainen, Bigby, Drawmidj (bloody stupid anagram names), the Eye and Hand of Vecna, the Apparatus of Kwalish, Keoghtoms Ointment, Ehlonnas Quiver or a chunk of the Greyhawk Pantheon? That is just the stuff out of the core material, every splat book has added a load of new organisations to use or not as you see fit.

As I understand it we know that the feat is not tied into an organisation it is simply an unusual name. Personally i think it is a bit of a daft name but it is as easy to ignore as the rather silly Machine of Lum the Mad.

 

[Hussar]

Okay, you're right that there've been non-WOTC settings. Their fate sort of speaks for itself, though - are there many left in print, still d20'd?

How many settings, other than FR have ever stayed in print? 2e saw a raft of settings, all have vanished or at least greatly reduced in presence.

What's your point? You said that there were not many settings out there. There's as many settings for 3.5 as there was for 2e and FAR more than there was for 1e.

Najo - about the RPGA. You do realize that RPGA has DM's right? That of those 150 k players, 1/5th are DM's (or thereabouts?).

I question your assumption that world building DM's are a large group in D&D. I think the far larger group is the patchwork DM who steals and borrows whenever he wants and only creates setting material when forced to. There's also a sizable section of the hobby that uses pre-published settings.

I would hazard a guess, based on what WOTC is doing, that the world building DM is actually a very small minority of the hobby. That possible losses in this group will be offset by potential gains in the patchwork DM group.

The problem is, catering to the worldbuilding DM makes the game harder for new DM's. After all, why would I spend all the money getting into D&D, only to have to spend dozens, if not hundreds, of hours detailing a world before I can even start to play? The new DM just wants to play. But, the 3.5 DMG tells me, as a new DM, that I should create an entire world (either top down or bottom up - doesn't matter). It goes into pretty large detail - demographics, political entities, economics etc. That's very, very daunting to a new DM.

Why not make D&D much easier to play out of the box? Why cater to a small section of the fans, when those who use published settings, and those who use patchwork settings, couldn't care less about the level of flavour in the core rules?

 

[Hussar]

I dispute that. What if it was a Gold Adept or Gold Magic, rather than Golden Wyvern Adept? Much less intrusive, and yet still somewhat flavourful. Just not jarringly flavourful.

Probably not trademarkable, though, which is probably why we're not seeing it.

I'm sorry, but, how is that less intrusive or jarring. How many campaigns out there DON'T have wyverns? Seriously? I'm betting that the overwhelming majority of campaign worlds out there have wyverns in them. So, adding the word "wyvern" to the title isn't going to have any impact in the vast majority of campaigns.

Or at least, it would have exactly the same impact as Gold Adept.

 

[Najo]

I am curious about those who hate the name.

Did you have similar problems incorporating Mordenkainen, Bigby, Drawmidj (bloody stupid anagram names), the Eye and Hand of Vecna, the Apparatus of Kwalish, Keoghtoms Ointment, Ehlonnas Quiver or a chunk of the Greyhawk Pantheon? That is just the stuff out of the core material, every splat book has added a load of new organisations to use or not as you see fit.

As I understand it we know that the feat is not tied into an organisation it is simply an unusual name. Personally i think it is a bit of a daft name but it is as easy to ignore as the rather silly Machine of Lum the Mad.

Spells have the names of greyhawks uber wizards, characters that were tributes to Gary Gygax and the other creators of the game. I get that. If I use them, they seem like weird ancient wizards lost to time, if I don't them and I drop them from my game, they are hardly noticed being gone.

Same thing goes with magic items, more weird names and references to obscure things from an unknown past or a long dead wizard. For the ones that are really bad, I can choose to use them or not or I can easily rename them. Like available spells, I as DM can control their inclusion in my game with very little effort.

A pantheon, that is easy to plug or un plug. The rest of the game does not use the pantheon in its mechanics or hardly at all. There is very little, must be a cleric of pelor type of feats or other abilities. Most D&D pantheons are designed to plug in and out. Every campaign setting changes them around, along with the planes of existance and how planar magic works over all. Again, this is standard fair for the D&D DM who makes his own worlds or uses a published campaign setting from WOTC or a 3rd party publisher.

Organizations, again, either I use them or don't. They do not tie to game mechanics. They are prebuilt ideas for me to change around and play with as I wish. I can use the maps, I can use the npcs, I can use concepts etc. Easy to rename and so on.

Now, feats. Specifically feats that do basic core mechanic/ base class modifications (i.e. spell areas of affect) and ties it to a wizard tradition/ order/ etc by a fluff name.
1) because it is player chosen, I can not control its placement
2) because it is a core mechanic (spell area effect) I can not replace it easily. I either have to rename it or get rid of it, and thus complicate things for my player or my campaign.
3) because it has a fluff name, even though the character might call it something else, the players are going to constantly be using the term "golden wyvern adept" when refering to it. So your campaign is forced to bring in these fluffy feats. Because of the nature of the feat building fluff into the character, it is very likely a player embraces the concept of the feat (being an adept in a Order called the Golden Wyverns or learned from an ancient form of magical schooling called the Golden Wyvern technique or whatever). This colors and flavors the campaign setting in ways the DM can't control. It places setting elements just by a character making reference to it, which then leads characters to wonder at the nature of such a group or school. This in turn places the Golden Wyverns (and like named feats) into EVERY D&D campaign running in 4.0. As roleplaying reflects storytelling in all its forms, this is a short sighted and silly thing to do with core rules at best.
4) because, feat and talent reference is necessary for the rules to core rules to function. Everything else can be ignored, but classes and their abilities cannot. If the feat is kept like this (and even worse considered product identity) then 3rd party publishers are done for.

Renaming core rules on a character that the player choose and brings into play without the DM placing it in game is going to cause frustration. Not renaming those elements is going to frustrate the DMs who work hard on their worlds they have crafted and told stories in, It is going to frustrate many of the fans of official settings that suddenly have these shared ancient orders and identical magic in each setting. This just seems like a bad idea.

Why do that to those DMs and those campaign settings. Why take away a key part of D&D, the appearance of a rules set that for the most part lets you tell fantasy stories with your friends in creative ways.

There is actually very little fluff in the 3.0 and 3.5 books. The designers knew that, and only put in a small amount in places the DMs were not bothered by it.

As for Golden Wyvern Adept not being an order, an adept is typically a member of a group who follows certain teachings when referring to the practice of magic. WOTC could be meaning it as an expert in Golden Wyvern techique, but I doubt it considering they have already referred to these as wizard orders with distinct training.

 

[Najo]

Post from MindWandererB on Andy Collins Site

This is a direct quote from a poster named MindWandererB on Andy Collins website regarding the built in fluff, it illustrates the point and my concerns of losing these sorts of DMs. Please read, he has a very valid point and clearly expresses our concerns:

I've said it in other threads, but since the topic is up again: the core setting both is and is not a setting, and that makes a big difference.

When a bunch of players is getting together to run H1: Keep on the Shadowfell, then the core flavor is fine. The wizard schools can have proper names, the dwarves can be former slaves of giants, the tieflings and dragonborn can have their ancient war, the eladrin can half live on another plane, it doesn't matter. That's fluff, and when you're playing a "generic" game, it doesn't matter.

When those players are playing a campaign designed by their DM and set in Faerun or Eberron, it's a little harder. Maybe some of that exists, but some doesn't. New players will read that dwarves used to be slaves of giants, and they'll be very confused when that isn't true in their FR game. Worse, they may have written a character background that involves a piece of history that didn't happen. Longtime players will know better because they know the settings already. But when your products have to say, "that bit you already learned, it's wrong here," it's confusing and a hassle. New players will be more easily overwhelmed, and you'll have a hard time getting them.

When the players are playing a campaign set in an entirely novel setting created by the DM, it's a lot harder. The DM has to present the players with a bible saying why everything they know is wrong. And that's before they can learn anything new about the setting. If I want to create a generic setting that uses all the core rules but maybe adds one or two options, I'll still have to un-teach all my players all the flavor material in the PHB. In 3e, that's not an issue, because there is no setting-specific flavor in the PHB except the gods, and those are really easy to replace. In 1e-2e, it was even easier. Putting setting-like material in core makes things harder on experienced DMs who don't use published settings, and makes things harder on their new players who get contradictory information. Only experienced players, who know that they should probably ignore all that fluff in the PHB, will be okay (and even then it's a minor hassle).

So the only people who benefit from this approach are totally new players who don't use any campaign setting at all, whether they run published adventures, generic one-shots, or even campaigns set in "Points-of-Light Land." Groups of experienced players are at best paying for printed pages they'll never use, and at worst will have to go through the books and line-item veto it. Mixed groups of new and experienced players have it worst of all, because the experienced players not only have to rewrite all the flavor material, they have to teach it to the new players, who won't understand why what their DM is telling them doesn't match up with the book.

When I learned of this new approach, I knew I'd never open my campaign setting notes again. I designed a campaign world back in 2e, converted it in 3e, and have used it many times (even though my campaigns never last very long). But since my players are inexperienced, I've decided that my only option in a 4e game is to set it in Points-of-Light Land. It's the only way I'll be able to avoid:

"Actually, the Dragonborn and the tieflings never had a war."

"No? But it's in the book."

"I know, but in my campaign setting, it didn't happen."

"Why not?"

"Because that's not what I wanted to happen here."

"Why not? Why change it? What's wrong with what's already there?"

"I just wanted to do something different, that's all."

"Why mess with something you've never tried?"

"Aargh! You just don't get it!"

"Not unless you explain it to me."

"I'm trying!"

Creativity: zero payoff. And creating worlds is the main joy I have in being DM. The way things are in 3e, I can write stuff, give it to my players; if they read it, great, and if not, then there's no problem because at least they don't have any misinformation. In 4e, it just won't be worth it. And while I love the mechanical improvements, this makes me really sad.

 

[Maggan]

Like available spells, I as DM can control their inclusion in my game with very little effort.

When it comes to this, I am of a different mind (which of course will not surprise you). The spells available in the PH are as available to the players as the feats. Or as un-available.

You come back to the idea that placement of spells is controlled by the DM, but Feats aren't.

But both elements are present in the PHB, so players will be aware of their existence.

So the spells are known to the players, and they might want to use them at one time or the other. This is simple to control according to your thinking; just disallow them or don't include them in your home brew.

But I just can't get my head around the idea that you can't treat feats the same way. In my mind they are player chosen on the same level as spells, they sometimes even have prerequisites that you can use to limit access (no Golden Wyvern organisation in your world, then no Golden Wyvern Adept either), or you can just exercise the right of the DM to say no.

There will be parties without this feat, so the game will work without it. Hence, it is possible to remove it altogether, which would be akin to running a party of adventurers who never chose the feat in question, much the same situation as for a spell.

So it has to be prefectly possible to run a home brew without this feat. And I just don't see that it has to be incorporated in each and every published setting, much like the pantheons aren't the same in each and every setting.

As a side point, you have explained your reasoning clearly. Kudos. I just don't agree with the idea that you can't drop the feat.

/M

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

The bottom line is it forces DMs to adapt their fluff to the fluff in the core books. Until now, D&D has not done that to its DMs to this degree. Sure, a few spells and gods, but not key building blocks for players to make the characters from. It is a hassle for a DM who doesn't want to have his campaign take these orders or other fluff driven feats into his game. This sort of naming belongs in setting books or sidebar.

But I think here is one assumption that is wrong: Just because there is something like a "Golden Wyvern Adept" feat does not mean that the DM has to include some organisation behind it.
"Gold Wyver Adept" is just a name used for a certain kind of alteration to magical effects. There might have been an organisation, there might have been a train of thought. But the name doesn't imply that much.
It can imply that there exists a large "Gold Wyvern Academy", most members focussing on the war applications of combat, and known for their pivotal role during the second Orc invasion after the fall of the city Mythandor. Or it could refer to an ancient book written by a mage that was refered to as "The Gold Wyvern", a book that is still studied today for its comprehensive teachings about area spells.

The feat name in and on itself serves as a starting point for the DMs creation. "So, there is apparently this Gold Wyvern thingy, but what does this mean to me, in my campaign?", or for the player "hmm, Gold Wyvern Adapt sounds interesting, what's the story behind it?"
"Fluffy" names with little description attached will serve as a spark for the readers imagination. While "Spell Shaper" just sounds like from a technical handbook and only tells you "WoW, another power I can get!"