Eberron: Rising From the Last War's Level 1 Adventure is a Step Up from Krenko's Way

Caveat: I've only read these two adventures, though I've seen a bit of the new Eberron one played by Saving Throw in "Dark Lanterns" on the official D&D Youtube channel - only the first episode, though.

I love the Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica. Admittedly, I was always going to be a little biased toward it given my love of Ravnica as a setting for Magic: the Gathering, but I also think they came up with a lot of interesting ways to make the Guilds really central to a D&D campaign. I've been champing at the bit to run a game set there (with plans to start one sometime next year.)

As a sort of introduction to Ravnica, the book contains a relatively short level 1 adventure called Krenko's Way (presumably a play on Carlito's Way, the crime movie.) In it, players are sent after Krenko, an escaped goblin gang leader.

While this does bring in the urban-adventure theme to Ravnica, it always felt a little flat to me. The Guilds play, at best, a supporting role in the adventure, which really feels a bit more like just tracking down a gang of troublesome goblins. Sure, goblin gangs in Ravnica are a thing, but it seems that if you're going to be introducing Ravnica to new players, you want the Guilds to play a central role in that introduction.

I'll admit that that's a difficult proposition, given that it would be hard to do all ten guilds in an adventure designed just for level 1 characters. So it might be that they were painted into a bit of a corner.

However, Forgotten Relics, the one they provide in Eberron: RFTLW, seems to nail the setting's tone in a similarly brief adventure - something you could probably fit into one or two sessions (maybe more depending on how into RP your players are.)

And to be fair, I think that this is in part because Eberron is defined more by tone than Ravnica is. Ravnica can certainly have its Noir or Conspiracy thriller genre stuff, but only if you're focusing on, for example, House Dimir. A story about the Selesyna is probably going to be very different in tone than one about the Rakdos. It is that clashing of tones and personalities that gives Ravnica its own unique feel.

Meanwhile, Eberron starts with tone - pulpy adventure, whether that be detective stories, westerns, or Indiana-Jones-style capers.

Forgotten Relics hits a number of important aspects of the setting. Starting off as a noir story, you're sent by a member of the Sharn city guard (Sharn being the biggest city in Eberron) to go find a Warforged friend of hers. You eventually find out that Warforged veterans are being exploited by a gang in the city that also kidnapped the son of an important member of one of the Dragonmarked Houses. After finding the kid, you are sent to track down major player in the gang responsible for all of this, which ends with a fight on top of a moving train.

So yeah, that's some real pulp adventure.

There's a ton of potential for weary cynicism but also opportunities for characters who retain a sense of empathy to do some good in the world.

Plus, you get your players fighting on top of a train at level 1.

Did I mention you fight on top of a train?

Anyway, I'm pretty eager to run this at some point. I'm also pretty excited that it (as with nearly anything from Eberron) could easily fit in my homebrew setting with a few proper-noun changes.

New Unearthed Arcana Brings Psionic Subclasses to Fighters, Rogues, and WIzards

Man, Wizards of the Coast is really pumping out a lot of these UA subclasses, aren't they? Makes you wonder if they're planning something like a new Xanathar's-like book.

Which I will certainly purchase immediately if it's announced.

While we've just gotten a single subclass per class in the latest round of UAs, having hit all 12 (though with the Artificer we're at 13 now - they might want to wait for some feedback on the three subclasses for that one before adding more) this time we're getting three that are tightly themed together. To be fair, we've gotten a number of Psionic-themed subclasses in those earlier UAs - like for the Monk and the Sorcerer - but it looks as if they're really focusing in on it. Is a Dark Sun sourcebook in the works? Or just another PHB supplement?

The Psychic Warrior is a Fighter subclass. Given that the Fighter is a very physical class, this subclass is largely themed around the telekinetic aspects of Psionics. The features here are a mix of offense and defense, including a very powerful one at level 3 that, if you choose the defensive option, allows you to subtract a d10 (later a d12) from damage that you or an ally takes as a reaction. There's psychic damage to be had, knocking people back and down with psychic blasts, and you also learn Mage Hand, can make it invisible, and can even shove people around with it.

The Soulknife is a Rogue subclass. This one allows you to manifest psychic blades - not only giving you non-physical damage early on, but also letting you potentially assassinate people without leaving any visible wounds. While I think you can come up with a number of heroic versions of this subclass (Jeremy Crawford suggests a Psylocke-like superhero) I also think that an NPC assassin of this subclass could make for a really interesting and scary villain (or of course you could play as an antihero or reformed villain.) You can also go invisible, in a way that suggests that you're basically editing yourself out of peoples' perception. House Dimir absolutely uses this kind of rogue.

Finally, we have the Arcane Tradition of Psionics, a Wizard subclass. The real headliner here is the ability to take a "Thought Form" where you become a kind of incorporeal avatar of your own mind, which has various benefits, including, eventually, the ability to fly.

In addition, this UA comes with a list of spell suggestions for psionic characters - pointing to spells that fit thematically with the type of magic. This also includes a few new spells, as well as two feats - Telekinetic and Telepathic.

Should We Be Concerned About the Lack of a New Class in Shadowlands?

Every odd-numbered X.0 patch has given us a new class in WoW. 1.0 obviously brought in the original nine. Then we got Death Knights in 3.0, Monks in 5.0, and Demon Hunters in 7.0 (the latter quite literally, as you could actually play your DH before the expansion proper came out.)

So color me somewhat surprised that we did not see any new class announcement with the Shadowlands features trailer. Indeed, while the premise and setting of the expansion seems profoundly cool, I'll confess that, until we have a better sense of how big a deal Covenants are going to be, the trailer felt a little thin (though you could also argue that a "going back to basics" approach to WoW in terms of how many new mechanics are in place could be a shot in the arm for the game.)

I think it was either Taliesin from Taliesin & Evitel or Matt Rossi from Blizzard Watch who made a good point: it's not clear that WoW itself needs a thirteenth class. But it might be that Shadowlands does.

Legion, as an example, was a great expansion. There was tons to do, and I'm sure some players just briefly touched a DH to check it out but then moved on. But there's something really exciting about adding a new class to the game. Even if you're not playing it (my Monk was never one of my top alts) it's sort of exciting to see them added to the mix. During Legion I got a certain rush when I was on a DPS character and we got a Demon Hunter tank (when they understood the way the class worked, like maybe use Demon Spikes instead of saving all your Pain for Soul Cleave...)

The last expansion we got in which there was no new class and no new races was Warlords of Draenor, which I think most players consider the nadir of WoW (I'm sure some will consider BFA to be that. I'll confess that while I feel less motivated to play this expansion than I did Warlords, I think that's in part due to outside things. While the Azerite system has been a train wreck, I really cannot toss out all of BFA, which introduced some really cool ideas and an interesting story - even if it's a story whose plot I wish were resolved already.)

Now, I don't think we can assume that just because it lacks races and a class that Shadowlands will be another Warlords. Warlords had three major problems going for it:

The first is that Garrisons did basically the opposite of what players wanted them to do. We wanted a highly-customizable player housing that was mostly a reward in itself - where we might be able to earn new ways to decorate it and show off what our characters would want in a home. Instead, we got something deeply mechanical and with practically zero cosmetic customization, which also seemed to solve a bunch of problems that the designers then needed to create (like the one-a-day profession reagents.)

The second is that there just wasn't as much content. For a normal expansion, Hellfire Citadel should have been the "midway raid," like Tomb of Sargeras or the Eternal Palace were in the subsequent expansions. Blizzard had apparently wanted to turn out the next expansion in a year, which, given how big Legion was, was a pretty naive goal to have. So instead, we just got less of Warlords and were left sitting with that for a very long time.

The third is that the whole reason for the very, very convoluted story was, in theory, to have us deal with these figures of Warcraft's past, but we chewed through the eponymous Warlords so quickly that we never really got a chance to get any personality from any of them, other than "this Orc is an aggressive jerk." There could have been a lot of interesting nuance and maybe even shifting loyalities to this story, but instead it was basically the heroes of Azeroth versus the testosterone brigade. And then, a jarring shift in which Grom just recognizes that we're the good guys and fights alongside us and we just go "ok, sure, all that genocide and destruction is fine now that you're a good guy."

For Shadowlands, we just don't really know what to expect, storywise. Because at this point we only have the barest idea of a premise. The major players we know are Sylvanas, the Jailor, Bolvar, and the Arbiter. Presumably there will be important characters amongst the various Covenants, but how they interact and how familiar faces like Jaina, Thrall, Khadgar, and Lor'themar will play into this story remains totally unknown.

It also remains to be seen how the mechanics develop over time. Personally, I hope they kind of nail the Covenants on the first go, and instead of further complicating them, they can do "horizontal" expansion by adding new Soulbinds or, potentially, even new Covenants if they bring in new zones. However, what's more likely is that they'll just find new wrinkles in the system for us to keep track of as the patches come out, similar to Artifacts and Azerite.

In terms of classes, I'm very curious to see what the "unpruning" looks like. If they bring back two-handed Frost for DKs I'll be very happy indeed (though I will say that I've been enjoying Unholy a lot more since the Legion-era changes. I just prefer my Frostwyrm blue!)

Still, I do feel a certain remorse. I realize that a Necromancer would be stepping on a bunch of other classes' toes (Warlock and Death Knight mainly) but it would have been cool to A: add a dark-themed healing class and B: add a new ranged spec for the first time in 15 years.

It does also make me wonder about future classes. Should we take this to mean that Blizzard just doesn't want to do more classes? Or does this instead just mean that the old, predictable schedule of their every-four-years release is no longer valid? By the end of Shadowlands, we'll have gone six years without a new class.

Homebrewing a Warcraft-Style Shaman for 5E: Should It Even Be Done?

WoW is probably the first really standard class-based, multiplayer RPG that I played. I'd played Quest for Glory back in the day - a Sierra adventure series in the style of King's Quest but with RPG elements and three classes to choose from, but which really leaned more toward the Adventure style than the RPG style.

The WoW Shaman is one of two nature-based classes in the game. The other, the Druid, is a more classic D&D-style class, and has some of the D&D Druid's iconic themes, like its animal forms, calling upon moonlight, and with its thematic focus on a connection to nature.

The Shaman, however, is tied to nature in a different way. While the Druid's focus is life and natural life - as well as a sort of secondary theme of celestial elements like the sun, moon, and stars - the Shaman is tied much more to the primordial elements and has a secondary theme of being tied also to ancestral spirits.

In D&D 5E, there are a number of classes that fill similar roles:

The Druid, of course, in D&D, is more versatile than the WoW Druid (to be fair, all classes are) and has access to a lot of the same elemental spells that the Shaman has. Indeed, even Wizards get things like Lightning Bolt.

I'd argue that Tempest Clerics actually might be the closest to Shamans thematically, as both a spiritual class and one that focuses on storm-themed magic. Meanwhile, the Storm Herald and Ancestral Guardian Barbarians both play into Shaman themes as well.

So from the outset, there is an argument to be made that the Shaman can already be recreated to a certain extent in 5E already, either by taking one of these classes or blending them through multiclassing.

But, for the sake of argument and the sake of an exercise, let's say that we want to make a Shaman as something separate from the Druid or Cleric (which I'd say are the two closest in nature.)

First, we should take a look at the defining themes and iconic abilities the Shaman has. We're going to be looking at the breadth of WoW history, as certain themes (you'll be able to tell which one in particular pretty easily) have been de-emphasized over the years.

Totems:

Totems are really the iconic thing Shamans put on the battlefield. Not only did it give them a niche as the people who put up stationary things as an ability, but it also played into the four-elements theme of the class.

Imbued Weapons:

Another thing that doesn't actually exist anymore was the Shaman ability to imbue weapons with certain powers. It was fun as a low level-player to have your little glowing weapon enchants long before the levels you'd actually get legit enchantments. And things like Windfury could also be very powerful effects.

Ghost Wolf:

While not the kind of combat-shapeshifting ability that Druids got, Ghost Wolf was a flavorful way to get across the battlefield or to travel before you got a mount.

Reincarnate:

The ability to self-rez is massive, and would really set the class apart in a lot of ways.

Four Elements:

This is at the core of the Shaman class, though admittedly it might be a little harder to emphasize in D&D rules. Even the modern Shaman often struggles to get each spec using all four - Enhancement and Elemental only opt in to use Frost spells rotationally.

Mystical Otherworldliness:

Admittedly something less emphasized in the abilities themselves, Shamans are lore-wise very aware of the spirit world, and thus I think it would make sense for them to have some kind of planar theme - probably focused on the Inner Planes.

With those elements in mind, I'm trying to think of how to build the class.

First off, I think that all Shamans are going to be pure casters. We should have a subclass that allows for melee characters as well as ranged casters and healers. The thing is, do we want to go the artificer route and really pigeonhole each subclass into those roles? Or should we build them to be a little more flexible?

I'm thinking we'll want one true melee subclass, which will get an extra attack and access to martial weapons. This subclass will probably focus on, or perhaps have exclusive access to, the weapon buffs.

Separating out the casting-focused subclasses, I think we could have one really focus on the spiritual side of things, while the other is more of an elementalist.

Flavorwise, I think that all Shamans are going to have some kind of Vision-quest theme, and so we can call the subclasses Vision of X.

To give the melee subclass a distinct identity beyond its mechanics, we should also come up with a lore theme. I think that it should be focused on honoring ancestors, perhaps Vision of Triumph.

The others I think would be Vision of the Primordial and Vision of Spirits.

Next, I think we would put these sub classes at level 3, with the flavor of a Shaman going through a Vision Quest as a rite of passage.

I think the Shaman would have proficiency in simple weapons, shields, and probably light and medium armor. Vision of Triumph would get Martial weapons, but I can't decide if they should also get Heavy armor. Something to mull over.

I'd also want to add a couple new spells - like a ranged Lightning or Thunder-based cantrip.

The spellcasting ability is an interesting question: Shamans in WoW sort of treat with elemental sprits, which I could see being a Charisma-based casting ability. On the other hand, they're also supposed to be attuned to the forces of nature, which makes Wisdom the more appropriate option. Wisdom would make it easier for them to multiclass with Druids, Clerics, and Rangers, but maybe that would feel redundant? (Of course, if it does, the class itself might be redundant.)

I think Wisdom is probably the right call here.

Anyway, I think this is a good start. I'll see what I come up with.

The Irony of 5E's Campaign Setting Releases

In theory, all the D&D settings take place within the same multiverse.

The "Great Wheel" cosmology places worlds like Oerth (Greyhawk), Krynn (Dragonlance), and Toril (Forgotten Realms) all in the same Prime Material Plane, separated into different "cosmic spheres" but still ultimately in the same physical reality. That means each of them is also affected by the various other planes - the Feywild and Shadowfell, and the Outer Planes like Limbo, Mechanus, the Abyss, and Mount Celestia.

Ironically, however, the two official Campaign Setting books that have come out for 5th Edition do not fit within that same cosmos.

First off: Ravnica's exceptionalism is to be expected - created originally (and continuing as) a setting for Magic: the Gathering, Ravnica naturally has to be tied to the whole Magic multiverse (which used to be canonically called "Dominia," but that's a term they probably haven't used in twenty years. The primary plane in Magic, Dominaria, is "Song of Dominia" because it was at the center of that multiverse.)

Given the, I think, canonicity of the Acquisitions Incorporated games, it would seem that it is, technically, possible to travel from the Great Wheel cosmos to the Magic multiverse, but requires crossing the Far Realm (something I did to allow my friend's level 18 half-orc sorcerer to get there for a one-shot.)

The Far Realm, in fact, works pretty well as a catch-all to link fictional universes. Because it is essentially "outside the outside," you could argue that the Far Realm is just one name for the most alien place imaginable. Indeed, my own D&D setting is technically in its own pocket away from the Great Wheel (largely because I wanted to make up my own outer planes.)

Eberron is in an odd position, though.

Created at a time when there was not the same desire to link all D&D setting together in this way, Eberron has its own planes, which work very differently than the Great Wheel. They aren't linked to alignment in the same way, and elemental planes are not all that distinct from the planes of fiends and celestials.

Eberron is, of course, one of the most popular D&D settings, but it does strike me as kind of funny that they've only done two non-Forgotten Realms setting books and neither has the same cosmology as FR.

Personally, I'd like to see something very outlandish for the next 5E setting book (which, you know, take your time - Rising from the Last War just came out two days ago.) I'm hoping for Ravenloft, Spelljammer, or Planescape, none of which take place in the Prime Material Plane.

Still, particularly if it is Spelljammer, I do wonder if we'll get some fleshing-out of rules on how to travel from one of these setting to another. In theory, I believe just normal physical teleportation allows you to go from one world in the Prime Material to another, but given that Eberron is isolated thanks to the Dragon Above and Ravnica's in a whole other multiverse, I wonder if you could really do a 5th Edition Spelljammer setting yet. Yes, Ghosts of Saltmarsh technically took us to Greyhawk, but that was certainly not a full campaign setting book.

Tool, Warforged Artificer

My Adventurer's League Descent into Avernus game is not officially meeting next week, but given that many of us will still be in LA for Thanksgiving, we're doing a sort of "off the books" game, and I've decided to try to incorporate as many non-AL-legal sources as I could (sadly, I think I only got two in.)

I'm playing a Warforged Artificer who is... a member of the Izzet League on Ravnica!

Because I was given the express instruction to come up with a dumb Warforged name, I'm going with "Tool," because between being Warforged, an Izzet Engineer, and an Artificer, I have, unless I screwed up at some point, a full seven artisan's tool proficiencies. This guy is a walking Swiss Army Knife, and can use Thieves' Tools, Smith's Tools, Alchemy Supplies, Woodcarver's Tools, Glass Blower's Tools, Tinker's Tools, and I think one more I can't remember.

I've already gotten approval to use Firearms, and as such I decided to go Battle Smith, as the most martial of the Artificer classes. Given that we're starting at level 8, I figure he's had enough time to construct a Musket (I figured limiting myself to Renaissance-era firearms would balance things decently) and he's taken the infusion that gives you a +1 ranged weapon that generates its own ammo.

What I need to figure out (or might just do on my own) is see if I can use the expanded Izzet Spell list.

Granted, as a Battle Smith, you're really going for more of a Paladin or Ranger-like build. Artillerist is more for playing a pure caster (and Alchemists are, I think, a decently viable healer.)

The Battle Smith has the following features that let you play a "no guilt" melee/caster hybrid:

You get access to Martial weapons (hello Maul for melee.)

Like Hexblade Warlocks, you get to use your spellcasting ability in place of Strength or Dexterity for your weapons (and unlike Hexblades, this simply applies to any weapon you're wielding.)

You have a robo-buddy who can impose disadvantage once a round on attacks against you.

So what I now have is a guy in half-plate that has been given a +1 infusion, thus granting 18 AC, plus my Steel Defender, which can keep me from taking too many hits. Oh, and I also have a weapon infusion that, in addition to giving his maul +1 to hit and damage, also lets him potentially blind foes that hit him.

For spells, I've gone basically all utility - which to be fair, is mostly what Artificers have anyway. Grease, Faerie Fire, See Invisibility, Enlarge/Reduce, and such are what I'm bringing.

I cannot wait to take this character out for a spin.

Eberron: Bestiary

Eberron: Rising from the Last War has a fair number of new monsters and creatures to fill out your encounters.

Again, suggesting some similar sensibilities between myself and the creators of this setting, there are a large number of Aberrations. The Daelkyr are subterranean lords of aberrations - while there are six listed, only two get full stat blocks, but you might be able to homebrew some based on them. Belyyshara is tied to Beholders - appearing as a sort of older woman with a halo of eyeballs, this is actually a terrifying Great Old One-like entity that has many Beholder-like abilities. Drynn, similarly, looks like a humanoid man but can manifest various tentacles and has a number of Mind Flayer-like abilities. Both are CR 22, offering decent "campaign boss" options.

In addition, the Quori are a different sort of Aberration, coming from the plane of dreams. These are essentially living Nightmares, and are allied with the "Inspired," which are humans who have taken these beings into themselves. Excellent villains, especially if you have any Kalashtar party members, who are basically like the Inspired but who are bonded to a benevolent dream creature.

Of note, there are a fair number of very high-CR monsters here, many of which are specific legendary creatures. There are also generic stat blocks for NPCs from the new Eberron races.

While a lot of this is tied into the lore of the setting, you can easily loot a lot of these if you're looking for some new things. In particular, I like the Radiant Idol - which is basically a fallen angel - and the Undying, which are good-aligned undead animated with energy from the Positive Plane.

Also, there is a fun template for Living Spells, which allows you to take damaging Evocation and Conjuration spells and turn them into monsters that you can fight (or potentially employ?)

Finally, one that really excites me is the Warforged Colossus. Notably, the Colossus is also considered an adventure location. Most of these are thought to be inactive ruins that can be explored like a derelict Jaeger from Pacific Rim, but if you come across one that still works... make sure you stay on its good side because these things are CR 25.

Aside from actual new monsters and stat blocks, I really like the way that Eberron treats its creatures. While in other settings, Gnolls or Beholders would always be dangerous evils, here they can potentially be just people, and potentially allies. Notably (and I might cover this in a future post) in the very Noir-ish level 1 adventure they provide (which, having run neither, feels more interesting than Krenko's Way in Ravnica) they have the party assaulted by a group of criminal gnolls, but shortly thereafter, a civilian gnoll comes to aid them if they get attacked, just as a good samaritan bystander.

This book is massive, and I've jumped around a little. I've got a ton more to read, but so far I'm really enjoying it.

Eberron: Rising From the Last War - the Artificer

My copy of Eberron arrived about an hour ago and I've been reading through it. This thing is a thick tome, and while some of the content is covered by the Wayfinder's Guide to Eberron, there have certainly been some significant changes - notably, the Warforged no longer have subraces and their integrated protection feature has been seriously nerfed (though possibly buffed if you're tier 4 and getting a bunch of +3 armor and +3 shields.)

Anyway, while there's a ton here that interests me (Eberron is probably the "mundane reality" D&D setting that speaks the most to my own sensibilities) obviously, if you've read this blog for my World of Warcraft musings, you'll know I freaking love it when RPGs add new classes.

The Artificer feels, at a glance, like the ultimate toolbox class. It shares that category with the Wizard, and while the latter has access to higher level spells and a broader array of magical abilities, the Artificer is going to be very customizable on the go. You can swap out your Cantrips!

Here's Artificers in a nutshell:

They're half-casters like Paladins and Rangers, except they get spells at level 1 and have Cantrips. But it's not just that: they also have a lot of non-spellcasting abilities that allow them to really customize their loadout each day.

First, at level 2 you gain the ability to infuse nonmagical items with magic. You pick a number of infusions to learn, and you learn several more as you level up. Then, you can turn a certain number of items into magic items (the magic lasts until a little after you die, or until you go one past your limit on infused items, at which point the oldest infusion fades.)

You also eventually get the ability to put 1st and 2nd level spells into non-magic objects that can then be used by anyone - maybe you give your Barbarian or Rogue or other character who's harder to put down a nice "Cure Wounds" staff should you or your Cleric be knocked out. These also don't count against your spell slots, so you effectively get more spells to cast.

One thing I adore about the class is the implication that you are not casting spells in the typical way - you have to use a spell focus, but that spell focus is a set of artisan's tools - meaning that you can effectively flavor your artificer as carrying a giant set of devices that each cast different spells - I'm just imagining how I would flavor, say, my "Fireball tosser."

Also, if you want to steal this class for Ravnica, holy crap do these guys fit in with the Izzet League.

Interestingly, there's also an optional rule that says that if your setting uses Firearms (described in the DMG) Artificers start out proficient with them. (And the "Repeating Weapon" infusion makes it very easy if firearms are extremely rare, as the weapon will generate its own magical ammo.)

Artificers also get to attune to additional magic items (and their infusions let them get more of those even if the DM is being stingy with them.) At level 20, they get a bonus to their saving throws based on how many items they have attuned to them, which at that point can be up to 6.

The three subclasses for Artificers are Alchemists, Artillerists, and Battlesmiths.

Alchemists have a great deal of healing ability, and focus on acid and poison damage. You can create what is effectively a random helpful potion every day, and as you level up, this potion will get additional bonuses. And of course, there are other benefits.

Artillerists' big feature is that they can summon turrets that fire upon enemies (or bolster allies.) Basically, if you want to make Torbjorn from Overwatch, this is your subclass. You'll also get some bonuses to your spell damage.

Battlesmiths' signature feature is that they can create a Steel Defender - basically a robotic pet that will make all those Beast Master Rangers very jealous. If Alchemists have enhanced healing capabilities and Artillerists can nuke things from afar, Battlesmiths have a tankier feel, getting martial weapons and having their pet, which has, essentially, the Protection fighting style.

All subclasses come with a set of spells that you always have prepared and don't count against your prepared spells, which means that you're going to have a ton of options available to you.

The Artificer feels very different from existing classes, and while I think it might be a little complicated for a new player (this ain't a Champion Fighter) I think players who like versatility will really enjoy this one.

Non-Mortals and the Shadowlands

Despite being closer to WoW's "Outer Planes" than its Shadowfell, the Shadowlands are nevertheless distinct from them.

Here's what we know:

When a mortal dies in the Warcraft cosmos, their soul goes to Oribos, the city at the center of the Shadowlands. There, it goes before the Arbiter, an eternal and ultra-powerful entity that can, in an instant, determine what sort of person that soul was in life.

The Arbiter then sends that soul on to an appropriate realm of the Shadowlands. The zones we're going to see in the expansion are five of those realms, but Blizzard has been very explicit in saying that there are many more - which both frees them up to add more to this location and also to create more Shadowlands lore.

The Shadowlands, as Bolvar tells us in the features trailer, are infinite. But they are also limited in the sense that they are there only for mortals. The Shadowlands is a plane of death, but one of the intriguing elements to it is that while this is, yes, Death with a capital D, it's not all dark torment and menacing skeletons. There is beauty and peace to be had here, because after all, there are good places for the dead to go as well.

Indeed, one of the realms we'll be seeing, Ardenweald, is not even a permanent home for the dead - it's there to prepare souls for reincarnation or rebirth, and to send them back to the land of the living with new life.

In the Demon Hunter starting experience - specifically the Mardum part of it - if you die (which might happen as a part of quests, as you need to either sacrifice a fellow Demon Hunter or yourself to open a portal, and obviously you should choose yourself) Illidan will comment that you actually have a demonic soul, which means that you can't truly die (unless you're in the Twisting Nether, presumably.) While this is a justification for a mechanic that already has an alternate justification for other player characters, it's interesting.

Knowing more about the Shadowlands, we know that Demons to not go here after death. They, of course, go back to the Twisting Nether. But if killed there, it seems as if they simply cease to exist.

Most demons we've encountered are former mortals. Kil'jaeden was an Eredar (which is what the Draenei truly are) and Xavius was a Night Elf. It seems likely that Felguards, Succubi, and Imps were probably all once mortal races that were corrupted by the Burning Legion or perhaps pre-Sargeras demons. But if a single individual in the span of a decade or two can have their soul turned into a demonic one, one imagines that this process easily could have taken hold in demonic races.

I suspect that when we go to the Shadowlands, we're really only going to encounter the living and the undead. I don't know how all the entities within the realms will count - I imagine there will be variety for the sake of variety - but it would make sense for everything there to count as undead.

The thing is: we also know that, while not destined for the Shadowlands, some demons must have been able to get there.

The Lich King was the creation of Kil'jaeden. He tore Ner'zhul's body apart and planted his soul in a suit of armor, which was capped off by the Helm of Domination. And we now know that Frostmourne and the Helm of Domination (and possibly the rest of the armor, but those pieces were the really important ones) were created in the Shadowlands.

Did Kil'jaeden actually go there, then? (I may be misremembering things - it might have been a group of Nathrezim who did so, but that leaves the same questions.) Naturally, we're going to be seeing Demon Hunters entering the Shadowlands, but given the way that the veil between worlds was shattered, that makes sense. After all, the Living aren't meant to be going there, but we'll all be making our way. In fact, only the Forsaken and the Death Knights really seem like they should be capable of entering unimpeded.

I do wonder to what extent Ny'alotha is related to the Shadowlands. The Shadowlands have sort of functioned as an opposite to the Emerald Dream, but the recent reveals about it suggest that they're much bigger than the Dream. That being said, I've often wondered if Ny'alotha is something like the Shadowlands equivalent of the Nightmare - an afterlife for the Old Gods, which explains why Ilgynoth went there. (On the other hand, Ilgynoth died in the Nightmare, which might connect Ny'alotha there instead.)

The Jailor appears to be some entirely new lore figure - unrelated to the Old Gods or to Sargeras. On the other hand, we know so very little about him that it really remains to be seen. After all, when we went to Pandaria, what appeared to be totally new lore stuff turned out to be deeply tied to the Titans and Old Gods.

On the other other hand, though (the first hand?) Pandaria was ultimately just another continent that had been isolated for ten thousand years. The Shadowlands is a whole new plane of existence, beyond anything we've seen in WoW before.

It does make me wonder, though. Consider the Bridenbraid quest line in Icecrown from Wrath. Unable to free his body from the Scourge plague, we ultimately call upon A'dal and the other Naaru to carry his soul into the Light. I know this quest is from over a decade ago, and likely a lot of this lore had yet to be established. But did the Naaru effectively steal him away from his proper afterlife? And if they did that for him, why not take figures like Uther?

When looking at the Shadowlands in terms of its villainous threats, it's easy to distinguish between the various bad guys and say that demons and Old Gods are not going to be much of a thing there. But what about the "good" guys? The Wild Gods, for example, seem to rejuvenate in Ardenweald. But is that just because they're on the same life-death spectrum? How do the Titans, and for that matter, their Titanforged creations, interact with the Shadowlands? And do the Naaru come there?

How porous is the Shadowlands for "planar outsiders?" We're told that Oribos is filled with soul-traders and travelers. Are they just traveling in between the various Shadowlands or are they from yet more exotic parts of the Warcraft multiverse?

Warcraft lore might be getting way, way bigger in Shadowlands. But that means there are a lot of new questions to ask.

Races of Ravnica

It's a ways off, and I have yet to finalize who, exactly, is playing, but some time next year I am planning on starting a Ravnica campaign, designed specifically to allow adults with complex schedules to not have to be there every week.

But there is one issue that I figured it would be good to figure out ahead of time: Races.

Ravnica is, after all, its own world. And while it shares a lot of traits with D&D settings, there are some exceptions.

For example, one of the most iconic races you'll find in D&D is Dwarves, who date back to the kind of holy quadfecta established by Tolkien - Humans, Elves, Dwarves, and Halflings. But Magic, for a while, including when Ravnica was introduced, had kind of put the kibosh on Dwarves.

A big part of that was due to the color pie. Dwarves were historically Red creatures, largely due to their propensity for living in mountains. But Red is also the color of passion and chaos, and Dwarves are usually depicted as quite lawful and staid. Because Goblins fit the "red creature" bill much better, they tended to dominate as the default red humanoid creature type.

Dwarves have started to come back in more recent sets (likewise Orcs, who fit Red perfectly but I think mostly had a bit too much of an overlap with Goblins) but when Ravnica came out, Wizards of the Coast felt that Dwarves didn't really fit - they were really white creatures that lived in red environments.

In Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica, there are a few playable races listed: Humans, Elves, Half-Elves, and Goblins make up the standard D&D ones that were published elsewhere (most in the PHB, but Goblins came in Volo's Guide to Monsters.) Then you got Minotaurs and Centaurs, which exist in D&D but not typically as playable characters, and then you got Magic-specific creatures: Vedalken, Loxodon, and Simic Hybrids - the last of which isn't really a creature type. Instead, cards with such beings are often "Merfolk Elf Mutant" or "Vedalken Crab Mutant." (Actually, Merfolk were only introduced to Ravnica in the Return to Ravnica block, because like Dwarves, Merfolk were generally phased out at a time when they didn't think it made sense for aquatic people to fight on land - until someone had the rather obvious idea of making Magic Merfolk amphibious and bipedal.)

These are the races that are officially allowed in Ravnica as a setting.

But a lot of my players have expressed interest in playing, for example, Dwarves or Halflings.

So first off, I've expanded the race options to cover races that are clearly present in Ravnica. Simply re-skinning things, we've got Merfolk available as a re-skin of the Triton (which, frankly, is basically a Merfolk as seen in Magic anyway.) Next, Viashino are easily represented by the Lizardfolk (again, that's pretty much what they are already.)

The third race I added is Vampires. Now, this is a bit more of a stretch. I've based them off the Ixalan Plane Shift article's Vampires, but divided the race into two subraces - Blooddrinkers and Minddrinkers, as those two are clearly delineated in Ravnica. The one little hiccup is that the player race is still considered humanoid while the monster statblock is Undead. I think that shouldn't be too much of an issue, but I might need to make up some lore reason for this.

That basically covers all the standard humanoids that are depicted in Ravnica. But what about other D&D races?

I'm a little torn here. My own setting is very liberal in terms of playable races - I've always been happy to justify people playing what they want. But Ravnica, being an official setting, is one I wonder about being more strict toward.

On the other hand, however, Ravnica is also a city whose population has to be in the trillions. If we assume Ravnica's surface area is even a quarter of the size of Earth's, the level of urban density means that the numbers would be utterly staggering. The population density of the Earth is about 15 people per square kilometer. The population density of New York City is 10,194 per square kilometer. New York is 783.8 square kilometers. The earth's is 510.1 million square kilometers.

So if we assume that Ravnica has the same population density of New York (which it appears to,) a Ravnica the size of the earth would have 5,199,959,400,000 people (that's 5.2 trillion.) So Ravnica, if it is as big as Earth, has the population of about 675 Earths.

That's a lot of people.

And for that reason, I think it's totally reasonable for there to be some populations that we just didn't see depicted on cards.

So even if I want to fight hard to make sure that it feels like Ravnica - I don't want anyone talking about growing up in the wilderness or living in some isolated monastery far from the city - I think we can allow for other D&D races to find themselves in Ravnica.

Dwarves, for instance, would probably be very at home in the Boros Legion. Rock Gnomes would probably fit in very nicely with the Izzet League. Orcs make perfect sense in the Gruul Clans (as well as the Boros, actually.)

I think the key will be to ensure that players still buy into the idea of the Guilds and how their membership within a guild is a core to their character's identity.

And that everyone's a city person.

Toragar, Minotaur Ranger

We had a sort of session zero last night (with a short introduction) to our Tomb of Annihilation game last night. With other players picking Artificer, Rogue, Cleric, and Wizard, I decided we could use a beefy tank character, and so I picked one of the three options I had been looking at - a Ranger.

Yes, Rangers are often... ranged characters who focus on Dexterity, but instead, I'm going to be focusing on a dual-wielding strength-based build. And mostly for aesthetics but also because the stats are good, I went with the Minotaur race from Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica. (If Joe Manganello can do a Minotaur PC in the Forgotten Realms, so can I.)

First, the build:

We rolled stats, but while I had no negatives, I only had one +2 and a couple +1s and +0s (before racial stat bonuses,) so I invoked our house rule and took the standard array, dumping Charisma. So he's starting with +3 Strength, +3 Constitution, and the +1s to Wisdom and Dexterity, with a +0 to Intelligence and -1 to Charisma.

I do realize, of course, that Rangers, especially Strength rangers, actually need a lot of stats to be high (Dex only needs +2 to max out medium armor, though.) And on top of that, I'm going to want to take the Dual Wielder feat probably as soon as I can.

So:

The plan is to go with two weapon fighting as his fighting style, which allows the offhand strike to add the damage bonus from Strength.

He's currently got four axes - two handaxes and two battleaxes, the latter he'll have to wait for the feat to start using. (He's also got a bunch of javelins for ranged situations.)

The idea then, is that, after level 5, he'll be hitting twice with his main hand battleaxe and once with his off-hand, each hit doing 1d8+3... but wait! There's also Hunter's Mark, which will make it 1d8+1d6+3. That means an average of 11 damage per hit, and thus 33 per turn (assuming all attacks hit.)

Now, he'll also be going Gloomstalker. This has a number of effects. First, it makes choosing a race without Darkvision feel less like a self-handicapping, as Gloomstalkers get Darkvision (and if you're a race that already has it, you get a longer range on it.) But you also get a bonus that could be insane: if you're in darkness, you are invisible to creatures that rely on Darkvision to see you. So as long as the lights are out, you're just invisible, but you can see everyone. It's like the Warlocks' Darkness/Devil's Sight combo but just as a ordinary subclass feature.

The one problem is that our party is: Myself, the minotaur, a Tortle, a Firbolg, and Air Genasi, and a Human. So yeah, we're probably going to be producing light. This might be more powerful situationally than be overpowered given this group.

Conceptually, I'm playing this character as the classic Rambo-style 80s action hero - a veteran of a deeply traumatic and poorly-executed war who went out to the woods to live out a life of solitude only to be called back into action by his superiors. Part of his look is a bandana that he wears on his head (which Heroforge actually has!)

For now I'm leaning into the cliche of it, but as I develop a real backstory, I'll try to figure out some of the nuances.

That said, this is Tomb of Annihilation, so I'm also definitely going to try getting too attached to this character.

Naturally, like any big commitment to a character, I'm feeling a bit of "grass is greener" remorse. One of the other characters I was thinking of playing was a Druid, and I figured it would be fun to play a full caster. But I also think that this should hopefully have some insane damage output. He won't have very high AC, but I'm hoping that with a d10 hit die and +3 to Con he'll at least be a little hard to kill (if I can get him one more point of Dex and up to 4 for the dual wielder feat, he'll have 17 AC. And then with Half Plate I could get that up to 18. 15 at level 1 is respectable.

We haven't had any combat yet, so it'll be at least a session before we hit level 2, but I figure I should start planning out spells now. Obviously, Hunter's Mark is first. But given that we have a Chef (the Tortle Artificer is a Cook Guild Artisan) and I can hunt, we might not want much for food, so Goodberry might not be necessary. (I hope I can pick up a Component Pouch before we leave Port Nyanzaru or else my spells will be limited.)

Stealing the Power of Death

It's funny, about Val'kyr.

When we were first introduced to the idea of Val'kyr, it was purely in the context of the Scourge.

The Vrykul underwent two transformations. First, the Curse of Flesh afflicted them, transforming them from ageless constructs of metal and stone into beings of flesh and blood. The Vrykul civilization lasted long enough after this to develop a distinct culture, separate from the Titanforged one that they had started with. Thanes and Kings arose, and there was a sort of Vrykul diaspora across the seas. The Vrykul were already around, of course, by the time of the Sundering, and the Curse of Flesh obviously came before that event. So that suggests that the Vrykul witnessed the destruction of ancient Kalimdor.

We've seen the Vrykul show up in a few regions, though most are on the eastern side of Azeroth. Northrend was clearly their primary home, with settlements ranging from Howling Fjord to Storm Peaks to Icecrown. We found Vrykul in Stormheim on the Broken Isles as well, apparently a group that had followed Odyn in his departure from Ulduar. We also know that some branch of their culture went to the islands that would come to be called Kul Tiras and became known as the Drust. It's not clear why they took this separate name (Blizzard was a little coy with their origins until more recently.) And while those like Gorak Tul consider their people to have all died out following the conquest of the land by Kul Tiras, the towering, bulky build of the Kul Tirans (at least the playable ones) suggest that, in fact, it's far more likely that many intermarried with the humans and produced mixed offspring.

But that brings up this second transformation, and it's the reaction to that that led to the vrykul becoming pawns of the Scourge. King Ymiron, convinced that their people were cursed after they gave birth to what we would now recognize as ordinary humans, elected to have his people sleep under stasis for thousands of years - to wait out the curse and presumably hope that the Titans would return to fix everything.

Of course, the Titans were busy being sort of dead and imprisoned in Antorus by that point. Instead, what came was the Lich King and the Scourge.

As players, having sort of Viking-themed giants to fight made some kind of undead equivalent to the Valkyries sort of thematically fitting. The Lich King convinced the Vrykul that he was a Death God (which... might not have been exactly a lie) and used the Val'kyr to create a kind of vetting process to empower his most elite champions. The Vrykul, reawakened after all these years, basically built their new culture around impressing the Lich King enough to be chosen as one of his elite Ymirjar.

The Val'kyr would continue to play a significant role in the story moving forward. Nine of them chose to serve Sylvanas, ostensibly to be free of the Lich King's control. And it was really after they joined Sylvanas that the Banshee Queen started transforming from problematic antihero into full-on villain.

Still, at the time, the story was really just that these were some undead vrykul women whom the Lich King had empowered to raise people from the dead.

Legion (and Chronicle, which came out shortly beforehand) threw us the first huge curveball in this story.

After meeting a number of Titan Keepers themed after the Norse Pantheon, it was perhaps funny that there wasn't any real clear equivalent to Odin (I think back then I had thought Hodir might have been it, though then I later realized there is also a Hodir in Norse myth.) In Legion, we met Odyn and discovered that the entire ritual - of Vrykul warriors proving themselves and being judged by the Val'kyr to be raised as elite warriors beyond death - was stolen by the Lich King from Odyn. It was Odyn who had discovered this power (and we're going to get to that part) to create Val'kyr, and thus he was able to create an army of his legendary Valarjar. The pieces were all in place, and now it makes perfect sense that the Vrykul would key into this practice when the Scourge woke them up - they'd already known about it.

Somehow, the Lich King had usurped Odyn's position in this process and tradition, but the end result was not entirely dissimilar.

But here's the thing:

Odyn didn't invent it either.

We knew even as of Chronicle that Odyn had only gained this power by journeying into the Shadowlands and meeting with a mysterious figure to whom he gave his eye in exchange for knowledge. The whole "trading his eye for knowledge" thing is straight out of Norse myth, though what that knowledge contained and to whom he traded it are quite different.

Odyn's actions were then totally heinous - he forced Helya to become the first Val'kyr against her will, essentially both murdering and enslaving his adopted daughter. Odyn might not be Arthas, but he is not a good person.

It's really odd, though, to think about the idea of appropriation and perversion. After all, the Scourge was all about perverting the sacred into the profane. And it looks very much like the creation of the Ymirjar was a perversion of the creation of the Valarjar. But the Valarjar were already a profanity in their own way. Helya would go on to create her own profane version of the system in stealing the souls of the Vrykul to create her Kvaldir (who are, oddly, not considered undead for some reason.)

There are some major questions to be asked, and that look like they could be answered, in the upcoming Shadowlands expansion. We have yet to know who Odyn gave his eye to. We know that the Kyrians of Bastion - the heavenly realm of the Shadowlands where souls who dedicated themselves to service live on in light and righteousness - are somehow related to the Val'kyr, perhaps as sort of inspirations or prototypes.

So was it here that Odyn learned how to make the Val'kyr? That seems like it's probably only partially true. One imagines that a place like Bastion would not promote the kind of perversion of death as Odyn created it. After all, while it's a benign and good place, Bastion is still a place of death magic, and as the place where the souls of the selfless go, they would probably not be happy about someone diverting those souls.

Which suggests to me that some more sinister entity was probably helping Odyn as part of a plot against the Kyrians - stealing their power and ways for this entity's own ends, and likely using Odyn as a pawn.

Now, setting the Val'kyr aside, we also know that Maldraxxus had a deep connection to the Scourge. We have yet to learn a ton about this place or its Necrolords covenant, but the aesthetics of Maldraxxus are extremely reminiscent of the Scourge. It is said that it was from here that the Scourge drew much of its power and even forces. While obviously most of the Scourge was made up of the people it had killed, I'd assume this means that its ghostly spirits - those that had nothing to do with Azeroth's dead - were drawn from here.

And so I wonder, then, if this power was also stolen.

We know Kil'jaeden put Ner'zhul's spirit into the armor that would be the first Lich King (I wouldn't be shocked if they retconned it to really just be the Helm of Domination that held the Lich King.) We don't know how a demon - a being of Fel that, while once mortal, was no longer bound for the Shadowlands once it became a demon - managed to get there, or what kind of deals, manipulations, or strategies he employed to forge the Helm or Frostmourne (I could be misremembering - it might have been some Nathrezim who did the actual forging, but the scenario remains.) Kil'jaeden was obviously very powerful, but I do wonder if perhaps he also had to make some kind of a deal. Maybe a deal to... steal some of the power of another important covenant.

We know that the Jailor is the big bad of the Shadowlands expansion (unless Sylvanas takes over that role.) So it might be coy not to simply say that the Jailor could be the one who is helping others steal these powers of death.

But given that we know next to nothing about the Jailor - basically, that he's an incredibly powerful entity from the Maw that the rest of the Shadowlands treats like the bogeyman, and that Sylvanas has been working with him since the end of Wrath of the Lich King - it's really interesting to consider what his M.O. is.

If he is both the being that taught Odyn to make Val'kyr and the one who helped Kil'jaeden create the Lich King, that suggests that he likes to help beings from outside the Shadowlands steal its power.

To what end?

Well, that's a very open question. But it is remarkable to see that he's already helped weaken two of the Covenants in this way. Is it possible that he's doing the same with the Venthyr and the Night Fae?

And is it possible that we've already seen some of the results?

I think Shadowlands has the potential to be one of those expansions that brings together a ton of very long-running plots and connect them in ways we wouldn't have suspected.

With WoW's multiple, unrelated big bads, there is always a chance for the major evil powers to step on one anothers' toes. I don't think it's likely that the Jailor has anything to do with the Void Lords or Old Gods, and I suspect his only potential connection to the Burning Legion was making a deal with Kil'jaeden (and man, there's a negotiation between very powerful figures.) Still, not only are we going to have a chance to talk to characters who have been long dead, but we might also discover things we hadn't really thought about for a while suddenly getting picked up again. Like Ephial!

Or, Mueh'zalla!

Cosmic Horror in the Sky: My Latest D&D One-Shot

While we were not able to finish the adventure due to my roommates both having gotten about three hours of sleep last night, tonight our regular DM for our Sunday game was out so I put together a one-shot.

Giving my players four "genre" options for D&D adventures, between "Cosmic Horror," "Airship Shenanigans," "Western," and "Post-Apocalytpic," I got votes for the former two, and so decided to combine the them.

The party finds themselves aboard The Futurist, a new luxury airship that they're taking down to a city where they are hoping to be hired for an "Excavation Company" to plunder ancient ruins for advanced technology.

However, little do they know, their would-be employer has actually been manipulated by Ilithid, who seek to send a supernatural beacon to a particular point in the sky where a rift into the Far Realm can be opened.

The party hobnobs (and plots to rob) some of the well-to-do passengers until, at dinner, the captain is found dead. Despite showing no signs of injury, his death is mysterious.

Indeed, what they will eventually discover (or kind of have already) is that the captain's actually been dead for a while, and that the "body" they discovered was actually the projection of a horrible aberration called an Oblex (found in Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes) that had been severed.

We didn't get to finish the game (players needed to roll up new characters, which ate into the time) but they actually stumbled into the final boss as their first fight, and I'll say this: an Adult Oblex (CR 5) is pretty tough on a group of five level 3 characters, at least when the players are rolling pretty garbage attacks.

Still, with the exception of one pulled punch (using Hold Person on just one target, as opposed to several, which the Oblex can,) the thing finally went down after the rogue landed a critical hit.

The party really only just discovered the aberrant nature of the threat aboard, but while they might think the problem is solved, there remain a few issues: namely, several Oblex spawn that have started eating other passengers and crew members, as well as Goliath being puppeted by an Intellect Devourer. I'll probably give them a short rest, though, after the grueling fight they just went through.

But even with all the monsters dealt with, they have to deal with the fact that the ship is still heading toward the rift, and wouldn't you know, but that Goliath man has gone up and sabotaged the navigational controls on the bridge!

I love genre-bending in D&D. My previous one-shot was a wild west showdown against a crew of outlaws led by a barbed devil. This time, we've had an Agatha Christie murder mystery that very quickly transformed into an H. P. Lovecraft story.

N'zoth, Ny'alotha, and the Setting Up Villains

It's a catch-22.

Because World of Warcraft is designed to basically last forever, with a new expansion coming out every two years, they need renewable villains.

In the early expansions, when I don't think Blizzard had a sense of how much of a perpetual motion machine this thing was, they were killing off major lore figures left and right. BC saw Kael'thas, Vashj, and Illidan all die (Kael'thas briefly got better, Illidan did much later on.) Wrath had us tear through Malygos, Yogg-Saron, Kel'thuzad (a second time - and we didn't find his phylactery that time,) Anub'arak and Arthas himself.

Obviously, enemy recycling was not a totally new practice, but Cataclysm in particular made two of its five raids sort of sequels to Vanilla raids with the same final boss. Nefarian was resurrected (and he brought back his sister Onyxia!) and Ragnaros came back as well. But even Cataclysm was burning through established lore figures. Ragnaros met his final end (until they say it wasn't final) and we also saw Cho'gall and Deathwing killed.

Mists of Pandaria really broadened the lore, giving us new figures like Lei Shen and the Sha. And they even saved its final boss to appear in the next expansion. But Warlords and Legion both did a bit of "boss recycling," or if not boss recycling, then at least villain recycling, having us face off against Gul'dan's alternate universe doppelganger and fighting Kil'jaeden once again (to be fair, they were pretty explicit about his surviving the Sunwell raid.)

The thing is, with all these villains coming back for us to fight them again (and given that we're going to the land of the dead in Shadowlands, don't be surprised if some major villains are familiar faces,) it has gotten to a point where we can't always trust whether something is dead or not.

And a ton of that confusion has surrounded the Old Gods.

For one thing, it seemed early on that if the Old Gods were killed, Azeroth would die - she couldn't take another wound like the one she suffered after the destruction of Y'shaarj. Thus, a lot of players have assumed that by defeating C'thun and Yogg-Saron, we weren't really killing them so much as injuring them. These things, after all, are meant to be utterly enormous - it's implied that Yogg-Saron's mass stretches underneath all of Northrend - and even if we fought the "head," their alien biology could easily suggest that there's plenty left to regenerate.

I do think there is a problem also in the way that players perceive themselves. There's a mentality that "if we were able to fight it, it can't have been all that powerful." The thing is, player characters in WoW have been essentially "tier 4" characters (this is a D&D term representing, for example, spellcasters having the most powerful spells in the game, and is generally when you start traveling between planes and fighting gods) since Burning Crusade. At some point, you just have to accept that we adventurers are utter badasses.

And yet, given how persistent the Old Gods have been in the background of Warcraft lore, it also feels weirdly anticlimactic for us to actually be done with them.

Theoretically, defeating N'zoth in Ny'alotha will mean that all the Old Gods on Azeroth are dead.

Why does that feel bad?

I think a big part of it is the build-up, but also the lack thereof. Let me explain:

N'zoth was first introduced conceptually to us in Cataclysm. He was mentioned in the Dragon Soul dungeon journal and some of the bosses mentioned him. C'thun and Yogg-Saron were both introduced in the same expansion where they died, while N'zoth is something they've been talking about for about a decade. Likewise Ny'alotha.

Despite being referred to as the "weakest" of the Old Gods, it's also implied that that referred strictly to his physical strength and the size of his armies. The implication is that N'zoth was always scheming, always actually controlling things behind the scenes, and was always willing to play low status with the other Old Gods in order to achieve his ends (he's very House Dimir, for you Ravnica fans.)

And that means that N'zoth is the Old God that seems to have the most personality. Frankly, in the Azshara Warbringers short, I've also thought that N'zoth's slick "I like deals" voice (which is closer to voice actor Darrin DePaul's real voice) is his true one. (Actually, in general I dislike how they made Yogg-Saron's voice into a generic screaming monster. C'thun's super-creepy whispers feel way more appropriate for an eldritch abomination.)

It is tough, to be fair, to do a big build up to a character whose whole deal is manipulating things behind the scenes. The whole point, after all, is for you not to realize that he's been behind things.

The problem, though is that now N'zoth feels as if he's kind of tacked on to this expansion. And that feels like a wasted opportunity given how interesting a villain he should be.

Here's the thing: BFA's story is a bifurcated mess. I know it's always a danger to suggest that you, an audience member, know how a plot should have been written, but let me pitch you an alternative:

N'zoth should have been the one behind this war. He should have been the one manipulating it behind the scenes. He should have corrupted people in the inner circles of the Alliance and Horde to drive the war forward. We should have spent much of the war campaign discovering the plotting behind the scenes like some kind of conspiracy thriller, and at the end of 8.2, we should have come to the shocking realization that this war has all been serving N'zoth's purposes - maybe mining all that Azerite (and destroying it, given how we seem to be making explosives out of the stuff) has weakened the World Soul's defenses enough that N'zoth is finally able to make his final push to corrupt her.

And that would create great urgency for the final raid, in which we race to kill N'zoth before he can fulfill his ancient mission.

And given that it's N'zoth, he might have some contingency plan in place (to be fair, that could still be true.)

We know almost nothing about the Jailor in the Shadowlands, but it feels as if he's actually doing the sort of things that I'd have expected N'zoth to do. I'm super excited to go to death world and everything, but it does feel as if N'zoth is getting short shrift, even if he's the first Old God to be the final boss of an expansion.

Tier Sets and Class Identity

We didn't get tier sets in BFA.

After an expansion in which one's class was central to the experience of the game, with three true raid tiers complete with class-themed sets as well as an Order Hall set (which, to be fair, was just downgraded versions of the Challenge Mode dungeon sets from Mists, except of course the Demon Hunters') it was kind of a rude shock to find that BFA would not have any class-themed sets.

Instead, we got what will ultimately amount to four raid armor sets - one for each armor type for Uldir, Dazar'alor, Eternal Palace, and Ny'alotha.

Now, not to sell Blizzard short, we also got heritage armor sets for all the allied races as well as, by 8.3, six of the pre-established races, as well as the Warfront sets.

Still, I think I'm not alone in being pretty underwhelmed by the sets - specifically the raid sets - this expansion.

And here's an area where the question of flavor versus mechanics comes into play.

I understand why they didn't do tier sets - with three pieces of gear that traditionally have made up three of your five set pieces taken up by Azerite armor, it wouldn't make sense to throw that stuff on top of tier set bonuses.

Sure, Azerite Armor wound up being a cumbersome system (and a classic example of design for design's sake, rather than for compelling gameplay) but with it in place, there wasn't really much of a space to do set bonuses.

But frankly, that's never what I really liked about tier sets.

Different raids have given us different takes on our classes. In Wrath, despite having four raid tiers (though I think these days they would have made Trial of the Crusader into a "minor raid") we only got two brand-new tier sets, given that Naxxramas really just updated the original tier 3 sets (crazy to think that the original Naxx was only three years earlier, roughly) with the obvious exception of the Death Knight's set, which was original. And of course because Trial of the Crusader technically gave each class its own models (and very different models depending on your faction) but really just did alternate color schemes for classes within the same armor type.

Still, I think that the two totally original and specific paladin sets from that expansion, tiers 8 and 10, really showed what you could do with class-themed tier sets.

Tier 8 is one I'd love to see updated with modern 3-dimensionality and textures. It makes you look like some kind of walking titan-made furnace. It's one of my favorite paladin sets and the only reason I don't use it for transmog is that it's just kind of dated (I'm also not really crazy about the "plate skirt" look they often give Paladins.) But it feels inextricably linked to Ulduar as a raid with its futuristic magitech feel.

Tier 10, though, is grim. I always thought it was a shame the set wasn't called Ashbringer, and instead has the rather dull name "Lightsworn," because it literally depicts skulls that have been shattered and are now on fire. Paladins, after all, are the ones with a steely resolve to fight evil, and that resolve allows them to channel the light to smite their foes. Tier 10 felt perfect for Icecrown, not only because of this undead-smiting look, but also because it actually looked very warm to wear (not just because of the fires in the shoulderpads and helmet) and I've always assumed Icecrown is like 50 below zero at its warmest.

But despite how profoundly different these both look (though both have that plate skirt thing) they both feel very right for a paladin.

And so I think that's a fun challenge: what does a paladin set look like in this context?

Now, shortcuts have been taken many times in the past. Legion, like Wrath, did an update of a tier set, taking the tier 6 sets and upgrading them to modern graphical standards (tier 6 for paladins is what I think of as the definitive paladin set, and the only thing that frustrates me about the new version is that you can't really naturally get a mix of the blue and the gold unless you go for the Mythic version, which then does weird things with the helmet and shoulders.)

I think one of the things the game often struggles with is that sense of class identity. Regardless of whether you're playing a classic good guy class like a Paladin or Druid or if you're playing a dark class like a Warlock or Death Knight, the story remains the same, and you wind up being the same basic mercenary who will kill anyone for a new pair of pants.

At the end of the day, though, I think the reason I care about class tier sets is that it gives us variety. I like when my Rogue and my Demon Hunter look really different.

But speaking of Demon Hunters:

When they first announced BFA wouldn't have class sets, they said that they'd already done enough variations on what, for example, a Warlock set could look like. That's all well and good for the classes that have been there since day one, but Demon Hunters only ever got the three tier sets. I guess we should be grateful they're still making Warglaives and not just forcing DHs to wield swords or axes like a common Rogue, but still, I'm sure that there are other angles on the Demon Hunter's armor (and to lesser extents Monks and Death Knights) that haven't been explored.

The set bonuses are fun. But I also see how they're sort of obsolete in the era of artifacts and that kind of new mechanic.

But I'm much more interested in the art and look of class sets. I'd like to see them return, please.

The Covenants: What Do We Know Of Them?

The biggest core mechanic to the upcoming Shadowlands expansion (it's always a little bit of a let-down to remember that after an expansion is announced, you usually have to wait a year for it to come out - I need to focus my hype on Ny'alotha!) is going to be the Covenants. Essentially starting from the "zone reputation faction" concept, in Shadowlands we'll be picking one of these factions to really align ourselves with, and our choice will, it seems, be something like a class order hall that we choose.

The details are still a bit sketchy, and it would seem that at the time of announcement, a lot of them were still being worked out.

So I'm not going to get into the mechanics of the system. I heard promising things about having caps on how much you could progress mechanically while offering the ability to continue grinding for cosmetic things, which sounds great.

Each of the zones in Shadowlands is a different afterlife. While in Christian/Islamic cosmology there's basically just heaven and hell, and maybe purgatory, the Shadowlands seem to take a similar approach to D&D's outer planes, by breaking things up into myriad different realms (the Outer Planes are not just there for dead people to go after death, though. They're also the homes of gods and other supernatural creatures and are tied deeply into the concept of alignment.)

So in the Warcraft cosmos, the Shadowlands being plural is very important. When things are working right, every mortal that dies (and doesn't get resurrected or raised as undead) goes on to the Shadowlands, where their first stop is Oribos, the city in which the Arbiter reigns, and she then looks at your soul, judges you, and sends you on to an appropriate fate.

The zones we're getting in this expansion are explicitly said to be only five out of a potentially infinite number, which does free up a lot of future lore and even just new zones to add in future patches.

What we see are Bastion, Ardenweald, Maldraxxus, and Revendreth. What do we know of them?

Bastion:

Bastion is one of the clearly "good" afterlives to be sent to. It's reminiscent of the Halls of Valor, but with a slightly more naturalistic color scheme and seems to be up in the clouds. This is a place where people who have dedicated themselves to service of others go.

The local denizens are called the Kyrians, and it's pretty obvious that Odyn and Helya's val'kyr (and later the Lich King's) are based on these people. While the Naaru, to me, are the most obvious "angel" analogue in Warcraft lore (especially given how bizarre they appear - seriously, if you read mentions of how angels look in the Bible, they do not look like attractive 16th century Italian dudes with wings,) the Kyrians are another clear "angel" equivalent.

It appears the villains we find in this zone are the "Forsworn," who appear to be Kyrians who have abandoned their dedication to service and are thus screwing up the very nature of this place.

Bastion seems like a good choice for your classic Lawful Good types. The blue and white color scheme feels very appropriate for Paladins, and the fact that Uther the Lightbringer is one of the souls that came here makes it feel pretty paladin-friendly.

Maldraxxus:

Maldraxxus is going to be one of the "darker" zones that we come to in the Shadowlands. Described as Eastern Plaguelands turned up to 11, it's here that we will likely encounter some deeper lore about the Scourge. Apparently the Lich King drew power from this realm to swell his army. Indeed, it also could explain how Death Knights are able to summon armies of the dead even where there aren't a bunch of corpses to raise - they just come from Maldraxxus.

The aesthetic of Maldraxxus is very strongly aligned with the Scourge, and its inhabitants, the Necrolords, really seem to follow the same aesthetic (I'll just pipe in as a giant nerd to mention that they originally said stuff like Naxxramas and the various stone towers of the Scourge were repurposed Nerubian architecture, but they might be retconning that to have it drawn from here.)

Despite the very dark look of this zone, the Necrolords are not explicitly bad guys. Indeed, in a realm of death, the morals we've developed in the land of the living might not exactly apply. The Necrolords don't value cruelty or terror, but instead prize relentless endurance, which is why Draka, Thrall's mom, of all people, is found here.

We don't really know what the plot will be here, but given that the place is filled with plague, abominations, and necromancers, I don't think we'll want for dangers.

Still, I'd like to know more about the Covenant itself - while the Kyrians are sort of obvious good guys, I want to see what would convince a heroic Azerothian adventurer to say "yeah, these are the guys I want to hang out with."

Ardenweald:

Blizzard seems to have decided on a "half pretty, half spooky" ratio for this expansion. Ardenweald looks very much to be of the former variety. While Bastion is a classic celestial heaven kind of place, Ardenweald is much more of a land of faeries - to the extent that its inhabitants are literally called the Night Fae.

While the Emerald Dream is the clearer "Faerie Otherworld" realm in the Warcraft Cosmos, we never really got to explore it except where the Nightmare corruption was worst. In Ardenweald, we're finding that the Dream has a sort of mirror in the Shadowlands - where the Dream is a place of renewal and growth, Ardenweald is an autumnal land of decay that then leads into rebirth.

The "associated lore soul" for this zone is actually Cenarius, who most recently was seen rescued from the Nightmare and very much alive. However, we're told that after he was killed by Grom Hellscream, he recuperated here in Ardenweald before his rebirth in Cataclysm. Presumably the same was true for Malorne or other Wild Gods who have died and then come back.

And that is kind of interesting - it suggests that, depending on your personality and what forces you're tied to, the trip to the Shadowlands might not always be a permanent one when you die. It suggests to me that Druids and other nature-aligned entities are merely going there as part of the process while they wait for reincarnation. I feel like there's a really huge potential to go into the lore of Night Elf wisps (and maybe explain why Blood Elves or other elves don't become them at death) here.

We also know that we're going to encounter Bwonsamdi here. While the look of the zone as we've seen it so far feels very strongly Night Elf, I'm really curious to see how it ties into other races. We got one screenshot of an area in the zone that is far less blue/purple and pretty, with a bit more of a Spire of Arak-style dry and brown. It makes me wonder if we might also get more lore on the Drust and the druidic magic of the Thornspeakers (even if I suspect that Thros might be its own Shadowlands realm.)

Revendreth:

Maybe the zone I'm most excited for (ok, almost certainly,) Revendreth, unlike the previous three, is emphatically a bad place to be sent. While even the dark Maldraxxus is still just a place that's supposed to be appropriate to the person's personality, Revendreth is explicitly a sort of purgatorial plane (I'm just going to start calling them planes now.) It's there to punish those with crucial personality flaws, but the intention is not to just torture them for all eternity (though I suspect the zone's villains might decide to do that instead) but instead to rehabilitate the souls of the dead so that they can move on to a better afterlife.

Kael'thas Sunstrider is going to be the guy we meet here.

The inhabitants, the Ven'thyr, are gothic vampires, and apparently the expansion's intro raid (equivalent to the Emerald Nightmare or Uldir) is going to be a big gothic castle with strong Dracula vibes.

I'm, again, really curious to meet these characters and see what their deal is. Obviously, being in the Shadowlands, the Ven'thyr aren't exactly like classic vampires, which in most portrayals are just pure parasitic predators. The Ven'thyr have a higher purpose. I also don't know what happens (or is supposed to happen) when they're done with the process of purging the flaws from the souls in their "care." Does such a soul then become a Ven'thyr? Or do they get sent on to a better afterlife?

Indeed, it remains to be seen exactly what the inhabitants of the Shadowlands are. Were they just always there, beings of pure magical death essence? Or is the eventual fate of those sent to these planes to become like its inhabitants?

There are stereotypes about vampires that seem really appealing to a few of my characters (I'm thinking my Rogue and Demon Hunter in particular) but to what extent are these Ven'thyr the sophisticated hedonists we tend to picture vampires as?

I'm sure that most of the details on these factions are going to remain a bit mysterious until the beta begins - something I doubt will happen until at least next spring. But Blizzard has offered some really tantalizing details.

One Key to Being Alt-Friendly: Give Mains a Chance to be Done For Now

There are a ton of systems in Battle for Azeroth that are "alt unfriendly." There's the Azerite treadmill element: needing to keep up in Azerite in order for new gear with the same bonuses but higher stats to actually be useable for your character. The Essences introduced in 8.2 were certainly more interesting than the original Azerite traits, but while they've created a kind of interesting scavenger hunt (though also forced some players to do content they weren't interested in if they want the best essences) it's also meant that you need to do a bunch of those activities you might not be so crazy about on multiple characters. I unlocked a second essence slot on my Shaman only to realize he only had the one essence, and so I quickly ran a bunch of Island Expeditions in order to get the Worldvein Resonance one just to fill in the slot.

One of the big questions Blizzard developers have tended to ask of players who want things to be more alt-friendly is why they want to skip over the resource-and-power gathering activities that, you know, are the game.

But I think that what we're dealing with is actually a kind of referred problem. It's not that the game is too hard on alts. It's that the game demands too much of mains.

And I'll add in the caveat here that your mileage may vary quite a bit. There are some players who pick a character and just stick to them. They want to invest everything in that character and just see the game from that perspective, trusting other players to enjoy being other classes, races, or what have you.

Here's the thing, though:

For much of WoW's existence, you basically had one system to increase character power, which was gear. You simply ran dungeons and raids, or sometimes crafted items, and when you got better stuff, your character got more powerful.

What that meant was that there was a certain plateau you could hit. I don't remember the exact item level it was (and since the item squishes and level scaling, it's very hard to look it up,) but in 3.3, for example, you could basically farm the ICC-affiliated dungeons for... 245 gear? And you could spend your Emblems of Frost on 251 tier pieces or 264 non-set pieces (ok, I guess I do remember.) But once you got all those pieces - all the drops you wanted from the dungeons and all the gear from the vendors - your only route to greater player power was to run the raid.

And it was a fantastic raid, mind you (it's the one I've spent the most time running in a raid group.) But, for example, on my Paladin main, I got to a point where I really only needed to break him out once a week to run that raid with the guild. The rest of the time, I could focus on my other characters. My guild even had a weekly alt-run where I took my Death Knight (who got to a similar gear-plateau.)

And frankly, it felt great. Our mains were utter beasts and our alts could get pretty powerful as well.

Now, I adore Legion - it finally unseated Wrath as my favorite expansion - but the introduction of Artifact Power did also introduce some new problems. The way things are set up, there's really no end of usefulness to more artifact power. And that means that any time you're not playing on your main, there's some power you're effectively leaving on the table.

In Legion, though, there were at least breakpoints. You could finish up your artifact's traits, and while yes, you'd eventually get to that 20-rank "you're just more powerful" rank, the diminishing returns were enough of an issue that I think only the really hardcore raiders were fixated on maxing it out.

But still, in principle, it was problematic. Legendaries in Legion were also a big issue - the pieces themselves were often quite fun, with cool effects, but the completely random nature of their acquisition was infuriating.

The point is, I think that WoW is more fun as a game when you can look at your character and say "ok, good enough." Certainly, if you're a mythic raider that point will come later than it will for other players, but there's nothing that will make a player feel more comfortable working on an alt than letting them feel they're not neglecting their main by doing so.

Imagining a New D&D Setting

When I first started playing D&D, the first thing I did was homebrew a world. I don't know how most people do it, but I feel like creating your own setting is one of the big joys of being a DM.

My setting is called Sarkon, and I've been running a campaign set there for a few years. It's not the first fantasy setting I've come up with, and in a lot of ways I built it specifically to work for D&D - my settings tend not to have elves and dwarves and such, but I figured that we should embrace that in this case.

Despite the medievalism that comes with D&D, I've created a sort of "schizo tech" setting in which a long-lost civilization's relics are sparking a condensed industrial revolution, so you have knights in armor fighting robots. While I get that a Game of Thrones-style commitment to medieval technology and social concepts can make for a compelling setting, I've never really felt that this approach is actually better than an alternate take on things. Given that Stephen King's Dark Tower series is one of my biggest influences, this shouldn't come as a surprise. (If you're not familiar with the series, it's about a post-apocalyptic Gunslinger - a cross between a knight errant and, well, a wild west gunslinger - on a surreal quest to save the multiverse that involves time travel and universe-hopping, and most of the other major characters are from a version of our world. His world, which may or may not be a far-future version of our own - though I lean toward not - saw the downfall of a technologically advanced civilization that then led to a medieval knightly culture that arose after, which eventually evolved into something more like the wild west, until that civilization also fell, and the protagonist is the last Gunslinger from that time.)

But it occurs to me that maybe I wasn't even going far enough.

I've become more comfortable homebrewing things like playable races and monsters lately. I haven't really done much in the way of homebrewing rules systems, but I do like to play a lot in tone and setting.

Personally, I've always been fascinated by mid-20th century American culture. I guess it makes sense given that that's the era that my parents grew up in. My first memory of the Cold War was its ending (I was in kindergarten and remember seeing a newspaper on the kitchen table talking about the Soviet Union collasping.) But there's something I've always found really compelling about that period - one in which American simultaneously felt supremely confident after emerging from World War II relatively unscathed but also incredibly paranoid due to the fears of Soviet influence and infiltration.

This was also the era of Roswell, and one in which the public imagination began to run wild. Sure, you had Lovecraft decades earlier, but the 50s really saw science fiction become a cultural phenomenon - a perfect genre for exploring the fears and hopes of that period.

Given that it's an era more closely associated with Sci Fi, you could make the argument that there are better systems than D&D for an RPG set in that era.

But I'm interested in finding the intersection between the two tones. To be clear, what I am not doing is just recreating America in the 1950s. My intention is to create an original setting that looks like that period.

And while Sci Fi will certainly be an influence, I aim for it to truly be a fantasy setting. Magic exists, gods influence things in undeniable ways, and there are supernatural monsters both major and minor that one encounters.

So where do we start?

1. I think the defining characteristics of the mid-20th century are the following:

2. There has just been the end to a major war.

3. There is now an uneasy geopolitical state where spycraft and technology are how things are being fought more than armies and weapons.

4. There is a state of mistrust and paranoia.

5. There is a strong desire for conformity, largely due to the previous two characteristics.

6. Major social changes are coming to the setting, and there's a backlash to them.

7. The public imagination and culture is changing far faster than previously.

Now, obviously, there's some overlap here between this concept and that of Eberron. Eberron has its catastrophic Last War, but unlike WWII, which had a profoundly definitive ending, the Last War ended without any real victors or any real resolution. Still, it works perfectly as a set-up for the Noir-ish detective stories where you can play a traumatized veteran like a lot of classic Film Noir.

And that's obviously a popular genre that it makes sense to interact with. But I think I'm more interested in the kind of conspiracy-thriller, alien cover-up stories that grew out of that period.

Admittedly, the real golden age of the conspiracy thriller was the 1970s, thanks to Watergate (one wonders if we're going to see a resurgence of them these days) but mid-20th century doesn't just have to be the 40s and 50s.

As a bit of a tangent (not to get into the weeds here,) I do think an important step here is to create a distinction between demons and aberrations. Given D&D's distinction between Devils and Demons (and other fiends like Yugoloths,) the place for its Lovecraftian monsters is always a little tricky - despite the fact that two of its most iconic monsters, the Beholder and the Mind Flayer, are aberrations. But when you have things like Demogorgon's sigil working basically like Hastur's does from the Lovecraft mythos, or when you have Tharizdun, the most Yogg-Sothoth/Azathoth-like entity in the game also tied to the Abyss, it makes things a little less clear. Indeed, just having Devils to play the more classic "horns, wings, tail, hooves" role already makes demons into something a little more Lovecraftian and alien than other fantasy settings might do with them. I'd lean strongly on aberrations playing the role of flying-saucer aliens (which, if you actually read Lovecraft stories, is actually how a lot of his monsters come off. Also, there's lots of racism, which is unfortunate.)

So, the seven characteristics I listed above are pretty key to giving it that 20th century feel. I think the other important factor would be technological and cultural. Democracies, nation-states, cars, telephones, radios, television, and neon lights are all things that I think would be very important to giving the setting real signifiers that it's not your classic knights-in-castles kind of setting.

But once you've done that, you then need to consider how those fantasy elements are going to work in. Because just from the mechanics of the game, you've got people fighting with swords, wearing armor, and casting spells.

On the matter of firearms, this is something I've already written about before. You could simply give some story reason for why they don't exist - either they never got invented or some big cosmic thing got rid of them (I kind of like the idea of some good-aligned god watching whatever big war just happened and saying "ok, we're going to just take these away thank you very much.") Or you could try the various things I suggested in that post.

This is all kind of a jumping-off point. I imagine I'll continue to mull this concept over for a while, but it's something I've been wanting to do for a long time.

Ephial's Master and Shadowlands

In Warlords of Draenor, when we came to Spires of Arak, we found that Admiral Taylor, the veteran Alliance officer with whom we had survived Vashj'ir and who led troops into Pandaria, had fallen after someone within his garrison betrayed him.

Investigating the ghost-filled garrison, we eventually discovered that there was a necromancer hidden among his ranks named Ephial who had turned Taylor's troops against him, ultimately resulting in everyone dying and Taylor, along with three of his officers, being transformed into a Marrowgar-style bone construct. Defeating the construct and Ephial, we freed Taylor's ghost, and he actually wound up helping us as a follower, at least for the Alliance. But it did leave this tantalizing mystery: Ephial referred to his "master" and we have yet to know who that master is.

The big caveat here is that this might not actually be relevant. It could be a dangling plot thread that they've decided to just snip off. The plot comes out of the blue and then doesn't really go anywhere. We hear about how Taylor had captured Wrathion, been warned about betrayal by the dragon prince, and then died shortly after Wrathion escaped. And then Wrathion failed to show up until the upcoming 8.3 patch.

With a renewed theme of death and necromancy, I do wonder if we could connect that thread to what we're learning with the new expansion. It's still very little to go on, though.

For one thing, it looks more and more like Bolvar was ultimately just doing his job as best he could. The raising of the Four Horsemen and the attack on the Ruby Sanctum appear to have been the sort of "greater good" calculations rather than some sinister plot. So it seems unlikely that he was behind the destruction of Taylor's garrison.

I had thought that perhaps Kel'thuzad was the one behind all this. And his fate remains a big question mark. While we've fought him twice now (though in the same raid just at different levels,) we most definitely did not find his phylactery when we defeated him in Northrend. Liches are pretty much defined by their ability to revive if their phylactery is intact, and they even made that explicit when it came to Kel'thuzad in Wrath, which means that he is definitely still around.

But so far at least, we really haven't heard any news of his involvement in what has been happening with Sylvanas or the Jailor. That could be that we're just lacking details - one theme of this year's Blizzcon was really exciting announcements with scant details - but it also really raises some interesting questions about KT's loyalties and goals. Kel'thuzad was the founder of the Cult of the Damned and deeply loyal to the Lich King - but perhaps specifically Arthas. Given that Shadowlands is going far beyond the prime material plane and the Scourge and instead dealing with the otherworldly kind of essence of death, it's not clear where Kel'thuzad fits in.

I'm not super confident we'll ever get illumination on this matter. But the fact that Ephial was not just some rogue necromancer wannabe lich but instead referred explicitly to a "Master" has been bugging me since 2014.

Luigi's Mansion 3

In 2000, I remember getting Rogue Squadron II a couple days before the Nintendo Gamecube came out, arriving in the mail a little early. I wouldn't actually go out to the store to pick up my console (that I'd saved several months' worth of allowance to buy) until later. The Gamecube, as it turned out, wound up being an ok but not particularly important Nintendo console. While it gave us Smash Bros. Melee and a few other games that are near and dear to me, it marked a decline that forced Nintendo to go out of its way to be the unconventional video game company after having been the titan of the industry.

Anyway, the point is, there wasn't actually a major Mario launch title for the Gamecube. Mario Sunshine, which was the console's primary 3D platform adventure, came later. Instead, we got this really weird game called Luigi's Mansion, in which you played as Mario's sidekick brother trapped in a mansion filled with ghosts, armed only with a Ghostbusters-inspired flashlight/vacuum cleaner combo.

While the series has, I think, been well-liked, it's odd then that we're now only getting the third game in 19 years. Also, I feel profoundly and tragically old to think that the Gamecube came out almost two decades ago, because I was already a teenager then and now I'm sad.

I also haven't actually played either of the series predecessors - for some reason I never wound up getting the original, and aside from the hybrid home/mobile console that is the Switch, I never got any of Nintendo's portable systems and thus never played the second game in the series.

I'm about an hour and a half into the game. Mario and company are on a vacation and go to stay at a big fancy hotel out in the country. The hotel is a big skyscraper tower, and the huge reception everyone receives and the weird lack of any other guests should probably key you into the notion that this place is actually quite sinister.

Eventually, obviously, it turns out that it's a bunch of ghosts who have lured you there, and everyone but Luigi gets trapped in magic paintings (there's a brief intro chase early on with what I assume to be a nonstandard game over where Luigi gets trapped as well - it's the only time yet I've "died" and it was at the very first moment that was possible. So that's fun.)

The game has you exploring the haunted floors of the hotel, looking for gadgets to help you fight more ghosts and hoovering up the ghosts you encounter. Freeing Professor E. Gadds (introduced in the original game, and also seen in Mario Sunshine) gets the ball rolling, where you establish a safe home base in the parking garage under the building that you can return to for the Professor to send you off on further missions.

The environment is full of details and hidden treasures and secret doors, and it's pretty hilarious how much damage Luigi can do to the rooms with his vacuum pack. It's clearly built on a sort of Metroidvania model where you get new tools that allow access to new areas over time, and if you return to previous areas, you might be able to get treasures that were previously inaccessible.

One of the showcase new features of the game is "Gooigi," which is a sort of gelatinous homunculus you can create and pilot that can, T-1000-style, squeeze through bars and stuff like that.

The game, like a lot of 1st party Nintendo stuff, just drips with charm (and goo) and I'm very excited to see more. So far, difficulty is not super high, but I'm still in the early stages. Also, it's a very kid-friendly game, so I'm not exactly expecting Dark Souls here.