J. J. Abrams has often talked about a narrative convention he likes to use which he calls "The Mystery Box." Supposedly, at some carnival or fair or some such thing many years ago, he bought a novelty "mystery box" that was really just a big cardboard box with a question mark on it, and claimed to have some incredible thing inside, but you would only know once you opened it.
Abrams, realizing (almost certainly correctly) that the truth of what was in the box would be a disappointment, has kept the thing for decades, never opening it, and just allowing the mystery to be preserved.
When I was in college, I was a big fan of Lost, the show that really put Abrams on the map in Hollywood (though he had worked on other projects previously, like Felicity.) Indeed, there is a lot about the show that I still find very compelling - the beaten up, 70s/80s aesthetic of the various hidden facilities on the island, and the gradually unraveling mystery about "the Others" and such.
But like a lot of viewers, I was left a little underwhelmed by its conclusion. Partially, there was what felt to me like a superfluous element to the final season that had the unfortunate consequence of sort of, except not really, confirming the "they were dead the whole time" fan theory that had been quite popular (in fact, the preceding seasons and the "present" timeframe of the final season are implied to be totally real and on the real world), but also, the ultimate explanation for things was left vague after six years of build-up, in which we hoped to find some real answers.
The mystery box style of storytelling can be very effective as a way to start a story. You introduce an element that is unexplained but remarkable, and the audience naturally wants to keep watching/reading/playing in order to discover the truth about that what that element actually represents.
The mystery genre is built on this, but that genre is also one of the most rule-bound genres that exists - there's a promise that every notable detail will be accounted for, even if they're misleading.
Speculative fiction is the supergenre (containing within it science fiction, fantasy, and most horror) that allows the answers to those mysteries to be profoundly extraordinary.
That being said, I think you can run into issues with this device in the long run, and frankly, it's an issue I've started to have with works by Abrams and those inspired by him (though my biggest issue with Abrams is his insistence on playing things safe by just remaking movies he liked in his youth claiming them to be sequels.)
See, that promise that the truth will come out is the thing that gets people hooked on the mystery box in the first place. An audience will invest in it because of the promise of an answer. So the way I see it, if you are going to use this device, you are obligated to do one of two things:
Have an interesting answer to reveal later in the story that justifies the mysterious build-up, or
Make the mystery a revelation in and of itself.
Let me get to the point here: Half-Life: Alyx came out recently, the first game in that series in 13 years. The Half-Life games, and particularly Half-Life 2, have been hailed as masterly crafted game experiences that explored environmental storytelling and a number of innovating gameplay mechanics.
While the vast majority of these games has you shooting aliens and humans who have chosen to collaborate with the conquering alien Combine or solving various physics puzzles that are worked diagetically into the environment, there is one figure who, to me (and I imagine a lot of players) is the most fascinating character in the series: The G-Man.
The G-Man is a perfect enigma, including the fact that that name isn't even mentioned in-game, and has become just a way to refer to him.
The G-Man takes the appearance of a middle-aged, thin man in a crew cut and a dark grey suit, carrying a briefcase. The name is a reference to the image of mid-20th century government agents of the FBI or CIA. The G-Man was actually considered a sort of heroic figure, the kind of straight-talking, strait-laced guy who lives for his work, and his work is keeping America safe from authoritarian threats. Of course, in a post-Vietnam, post-Watergate world in which American trust in the government started to degrade, these figures took on a more sinister tone (considering what J. Edgar Hoover was up to when he was running the FBI, it's not as if that's undeserved.)
But in a lot of ways, the G-Man also resembles the trope of the Men in Black. While most of my generation is probably more familiar with the Men in Black from the Will Smith movie from 1999, which riffs on the notion by suggesting that the organization is actually a benevolent one that protects Earth my regulating alien visitation, the MIBs are the subject of some of the creepiest stories form UFO folklore.
The G-Man is far more than just a weird (and also kind of weirdly normal) guy who would look at home in 1949, though. Because while he can be glimpsed occasionally in the distance throughout the games (or at least Half-Life 2,) generally when he speaks directly to the protagonist (which is usually Gordon Freeman,) he does so by warping reality, playing even with the visual conventions of video games by freezing the 3D environment being simulated and seemingly occupying different places at the same time.
He seems extremely sinister, given that he has captured Freeman and transported him, perhaps through time, and certainly across great distances, supposedly "hiring" Freeman for his "employers," who seem to be above even the inter-universal Combine whose conquest of Earth takes place before the events of Half Life 2.
The G-Man appears only rarely. I believe in Half Life 2 proper, he is only there at the beginning and the end - seeming to have placed Freeman exactly where he needed to be at the start to get to where he was at the end.
And we know almost nothing whatsoever about what he is, who he works for, what he really wants, and even if he could be considered a good guy or a bad guy, in the grand scheme of things.
What I find particularly compelling is that he must be some kind of incredibly powerful otherworldly entity - an eldritch abomination, to use the TVTropes term - and yet he appears to us only ever as this odd-looking and off-putting but ultimately passable facsimile of a human man.
So, what to make of the G-Man?
The truth is, I don't think they could ever provide a satisfying answer. If we ever see a "true form" that looks like some blobby alien, it'll feel like a let-down. And if we ever find out for certain that he's evil, or for certain that he's good, it might also rob him of that mystery.
The thing is, Half Life as a game series is now 22 years old. If this were some tight trilogy released in a span of six years or so, it could be the kind of situation where one should just let the cat out of the bag finally.
And yet... at this point, the defining characteristic of him, the whole reason why the G-Man is so cool, is that we have no freaking clue what his whole deal is.
It puts me, at least, in a frustrating position. I want to know all about him, but I also think that we'd lose something if we ever got definitive answers about him.
So, I guess I'll have to give this one to Abrams.
Tuesday, March 31, 2020
Man, I'm Really Enjoying My Vulpera Rogue
The Vulpera are, obviously, adorable. Tiny fox-people who use fuzzy alpacas as their primary working animals - what's not to love?
But they are something of an oddity as far as allied races go. Mag'har Orcs, Dark Iron Dwarves, Zandalari Trolls - these have all had some sort of prominent position at least at some point in WoW's history. The Vulpera are a brand-new race as of Battle for Azeroth (and while they use a modified Goblin skeleton, they're not a "variant" like the other allied races are.)
Vulpera are, in fact, found only in Vol'dun and a few places in Tiragarde Sound as pirates. In any other expansion, they'd probably fill a role more equivalent to the Grummles of Pandaria or the Tuskarr in Northrend - a fun little animal race that we get to do quests with and then leave behind.
But now, they're a playable race, and a part of the Horde.
Admittedly, the status of allied races as core members of each faction remains a little ambiguous. Thalyssra and her Nightborne seem to be pretty prominent Horde members now (much to the chagrin of my Human Paladin who spent months helping them liberate themselves from the Legion...) But there hasn't been a ton of WoW's story dedicated to seeing how integrated the new allied races are into their factions.
Given the diversity of the world and the two factions both functioning as their own broad coalitions of people, it actually makes perfect sense to me that more people (especially given that most are related to existing races) would be joining up.
But the Vulpera really feel like a left-field entry.
Admittedly, you could compare them to the Void Elves - the Void Elves were an oddity in that they had not appeared at all in-game before they were added as a playable race. Alleria Windrunner was sort of their precedent, but she came by her void-y nature a different way, and does not have the blue-skin look of her Ren'dorei brethren, even if they look to her as a leader.
But the Void Elves have the benefit of, as individuals, having been part of Warcraft lore since WCII - though then they were High Elves, before becoming Blood Elves and then Void Elves. Indeed, the Void Elves' defection to the Alliance was really a return to their original faction. Even if at this point I'd just make playable Alliance High Elves just to get people to stop complaining, technically Void Elves fulfill that player desire (and frankly, once you get past how abruptly they were introduced, I think Void Elves are a lot cooler than High Elves would be.)
Anyway, Vulpera came in alongside Mechagnomes. Of course, the oddity of the Mechagnomes is that we've actually seen two types of creatures with that name - the originals, who were fully mechanical, and the new ones, which are really just gnomes who are essentially artificially reversing the curse of flesh through cybernetic augmentation. Given that we saw at least those originals starting in Wrath, I feel like Mechagnomes had the rough precedent to make them feel a little less jarring as a race we'll be carrying with us for WoW's foreseeable future.
But the thing is, I like the Vulpera. Their animations are good, and I love the desert-scavenger aesthetic they have. (I realize that you can remove the wagon-hood from the racial hyena mount using the "Make Camp" racial ability and clicking on the bag that appears next to the tent, but when I did, I realized that I actually liked it with the hood up.)
I'd initially been holding back one allied race alt to make sure I could try out the new starting zone when 9.0 hits, but then remembered that allied races skip that, so instead I just started it up. I'm playing him as Outlaw (after a brief attempt to enjoy Assassination) and while it's been lots of fun (things get way more interesting once you get Roll the Bones) it's kind of crazy to me that Fan of Knives, Shuriken Storm, and Blade Fury don't come until level 63 - other than multi-dotting with Rupture or Nightblade, this is your only multi-target skill, and so it means that until you're a bit into Outland/Northrend, dungeons are going to make you feel really weak (if you're watching damage meters.)
But, with the quarantine buff up, I've managed to get this guy to level 62 in just a few days, so soon that issue will be moot.
But they are something of an oddity as far as allied races go. Mag'har Orcs, Dark Iron Dwarves, Zandalari Trolls - these have all had some sort of prominent position at least at some point in WoW's history. The Vulpera are a brand-new race as of Battle for Azeroth (and while they use a modified Goblin skeleton, they're not a "variant" like the other allied races are.)
Vulpera are, in fact, found only in Vol'dun and a few places in Tiragarde Sound as pirates. In any other expansion, they'd probably fill a role more equivalent to the Grummles of Pandaria or the Tuskarr in Northrend - a fun little animal race that we get to do quests with and then leave behind.
But now, they're a playable race, and a part of the Horde.
Admittedly, the status of allied races as core members of each faction remains a little ambiguous. Thalyssra and her Nightborne seem to be pretty prominent Horde members now (much to the chagrin of my Human Paladin who spent months helping them liberate themselves from the Legion...) But there hasn't been a ton of WoW's story dedicated to seeing how integrated the new allied races are into their factions.
Given the diversity of the world and the two factions both functioning as their own broad coalitions of people, it actually makes perfect sense to me that more people (especially given that most are related to existing races) would be joining up.
But the Vulpera really feel like a left-field entry.
Admittedly, you could compare them to the Void Elves - the Void Elves were an oddity in that they had not appeared at all in-game before they were added as a playable race. Alleria Windrunner was sort of their precedent, but she came by her void-y nature a different way, and does not have the blue-skin look of her Ren'dorei brethren, even if they look to her as a leader.
But the Void Elves have the benefit of, as individuals, having been part of Warcraft lore since WCII - though then they were High Elves, before becoming Blood Elves and then Void Elves. Indeed, the Void Elves' defection to the Alliance was really a return to their original faction. Even if at this point I'd just make playable Alliance High Elves just to get people to stop complaining, technically Void Elves fulfill that player desire (and frankly, once you get past how abruptly they were introduced, I think Void Elves are a lot cooler than High Elves would be.)
Anyway, Vulpera came in alongside Mechagnomes. Of course, the oddity of the Mechagnomes is that we've actually seen two types of creatures with that name - the originals, who were fully mechanical, and the new ones, which are really just gnomes who are essentially artificially reversing the curse of flesh through cybernetic augmentation. Given that we saw at least those originals starting in Wrath, I feel like Mechagnomes had the rough precedent to make them feel a little less jarring as a race we'll be carrying with us for WoW's foreseeable future.
But the thing is, I like the Vulpera. Their animations are good, and I love the desert-scavenger aesthetic they have. (I realize that you can remove the wagon-hood from the racial hyena mount using the "Make Camp" racial ability and clicking on the bag that appears next to the tent, but when I did, I realized that I actually liked it with the hood up.)
I'd initially been holding back one allied race alt to make sure I could try out the new starting zone when 9.0 hits, but then remembered that allied races skip that, so instead I just started it up. I'm playing him as Outlaw (after a brief attempt to enjoy Assassination) and while it's been lots of fun (things get way more interesting once you get Roll the Bones) it's kind of crazy to me that Fan of Knives, Shuriken Storm, and Blade Fury don't come until level 63 - other than multi-dotting with Rupture or Nightblade, this is your only multi-target skill, and so it means that until you're a bit into Outland/Northrend, dungeons are going to make you feel really weak (if you're watching damage meters.)
But, with the quarantine buff up, I've managed to get this guy to level 62 in just a few days, so soon that issue will be moot.
Friday, March 27, 2020
Legion Going to Legacy Loot Rules on March 31st, Months After I Already Got Spaulders of the First Satyr
For any transmog fans, there's some excellent news: next week, running Legion Raids will use Legacy Loot rules. That means that, like earlier expansions, bosses will now drop several items on each kill, even if you run the raid solo, making it far more likely for you to get those transmog pieces you want.
Even fairly early in the expansion, it wasn't terribly difficult to solo some of Legion's early raids, and while I think Antorus remains a pretty big challenge to solo, if you've been wanting to complete your Nighthold or Tomb of Sargeras sets, or if you have been able to do Antorus, this will be a welcome change.
To tack on a little editorializing, I'm excited for this but also feeling sort of bittersweet about the lack of interesting-looking gear in BFA. The lack of class sets - something they say will continue in Shadowlands (though I hope they change their minds on this - we're going to be done with Azerite Gear, so there's no reason we shouldn't be able to get tier sets once again) - has made much of BFA's gear feel very generic.
To me, much of BFA's raid gear looks more appropriate as blue dungeon gear, with its lack of bright colors or particle effects. Obviously, this is a case of different people having different aesthetic opinions, but I feel like epic gear ought to look epic, and some sets (particularly thinking of the Eternal Palace sets) just feel boring.
On top of that, while I understand that coming up with your 18th Warrior set (I'm not counting tier 7 - which was a retread of 3 other than the then-new Death Knights - tier 9 - which was only marginally different between classes and more similar to the current model - and tier 20 - which was a retread of tier 6, except for classes that didn't exist yet during Black Temple) might strain your ideas, but class-based sets gave the classes a chance to feel unique, not to mention it created more incentive to farm additional looks. Hell, I had the entire Ny'alotha set's LFR appearance before I ever stepped into the raid, given that they just used the same model for quest rewards.
I am excited to see the various Covenant sets, but I do worry a bit because Blizzard claimed that we'd actually be seeing more models of gear in BFA than previously, which was patently false.
Because I'm an obsessive, I'm going to count appearances between Legion and BFA to compare. I'll do this behind a cut because you don't need to see that unless you're as obsessive as I am.
Even fairly early in the expansion, it wasn't terribly difficult to solo some of Legion's early raids, and while I think Antorus remains a pretty big challenge to solo, if you've been wanting to complete your Nighthold or Tomb of Sargeras sets, or if you have been able to do Antorus, this will be a welcome change.
To tack on a little editorializing, I'm excited for this but also feeling sort of bittersweet about the lack of interesting-looking gear in BFA. The lack of class sets - something they say will continue in Shadowlands (though I hope they change their minds on this - we're going to be done with Azerite Gear, so there's no reason we shouldn't be able to get tier sets once again) - has made much of BFA's gear feel very generic.
To me, much of BFA's raid gear looks more appropriate as blue dungeon gear, with its lack of bright colors or particle effects. Obviously, this is a case of different people having different aesthetic opinions, but I feel like epic gear ought to look epic, and some sets (particularly thinking of the Eternal Palace sets) just feel boring.
On top of that, while I understand that coming up with your 18th Warrior set (I'm not counting tier 7 - which was a retread of 3 other than the then-new Death Knights - tier 9 - which was only marginally different between classes and more similar to the current model - and tier 20 - which was a retread of tier 6, except for classes that didn't exist yet during Black Temple) might strain your ideas, but class-based sets gave the classes a chance to feel unique, not to mention it created more incentive to farm additional looks. Hell, I had the entire Ny'alotha set's LFR appearance before I ever stepped into the raid, given that they just used the same model for quest rewards.
I am excited to see the various Covenant sets, but I do worry a bit because Blizzard claimed that we'd actually be seeing more models of gear in BFA than previously, which was patently false.
Because I'm an obsessive, I'm going to count appearances between Legion and BFA to compare. I'll do this behind a cut because you don't need to see that unless you're as obsessive as I am.
Wednesday, March 25, 2020
The XP Boost and Allied Races
A couple things have converged to inspire me to level up more alts: first, we're all stuck indoors while we wait out this pandemic (I'm very grateful for things like Roll20 and Zoom allowing me to keep playing my D&D games despite our not being able to meet in person,) plus we're officially in the lull stage of the expansion.
Actually, I'm a little disappointed in myself for not having finished the final wing of Ny'alotha on my main in LFR - I've really been sitting out LFR this expansion (I haven't even entered The Eternal Palace yet) and I wanted to make an effort on Ny'alotha given that there's been a decade of build-up to the raid. I only wish there had been more of a build-up in the expansion. I've done the other wings, and this is my basic impression:
Overall, this feels like a remake of Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj, which I mean in a good way. It has that ancient evil Lovecraftian city feel (ironically, while Temple of Ahn'Qiraj is the one that actually has C'thun in it, I think I like the aesthetic of AQ20 better - more Cyclopean architecture than endless generic caves). I particularly love the first wing, with its massive and oppressive black stone and gaping voids below.
But anyway, as I procrastinate (possibly to the point where actually finding an LFR group will be interminable) Blizzard has given everyone a 100% experience buff, which seems like the perfect cue to level up a bunch of allied races I never had done.
Prior to this buff, I'd gotten a Lightforged Draenei (Paladin,) Void Elf (Rogue,) Nightborne (Hunter) and Kul Tiran (Druid). I have members of all the other allied races left to go, and they're all sitting at various levels (I'm also leveling my Goblin Hunter, whom I've had now for... Jesus, ten years, but who had been sitting at 100 since later Warlords - given that there's now Goblin heritage armor).
Playing so many alts - there are now 23 playable races - does lead to some redundancies. Ever since dual-spec came out in Wrath, and particularly now that you can swap specs on the fly, it feels harder to justify having multiple characters of the same class. And ultimately, even if I really love some of the new races (I'm a big fan of Lightforged Draenei, though I hate that their heritage armor helmet cuts off the awesome beard you can get) the only character who has truly overtaken an old "primary alt" of a given class is my Kul Tiran Druid, but given that my Druid is one of my least-played alts, it's not like I'm maining a Kul Tiran now.
I was tempted for a bit to race-change my Draenei Death Knight to a Lightforged Draenei, suggesting that by confronting his literal demons on Argus, he might have finally found redemption and embraced the Light, but until 8.3, one could not be a Lightforged Draenei Death Knight, and now that you can, I've decided that it would be weird to hear a different voice from the character I've played for twelve years (I did make an alternate-universe version of him on my main server's connected server, though, and was lucky enough to have the same name available.)
Indeed, the very concept of Allied Races bumps into this issue: you cannot unlock them unless you have invested heavily in content from Legion or Battle for Azeroth (I pity anyone who didn't play much in Legion and wants to have a Void Elf) but most people who have gotten that far are probably pretty invested in their existing characters.
So to an extent, I'm really just leveling these guys up for the sense of accomplishment, and it's likely that most of them will be sitting on my character select screen and just showing off their heritage armor, rather than playing through into future expansions.
Perhaps if I weren't already so invested in existing alts, I might be more motivated to play these ones. Admittedly, it's fun to get the ding-satisfaction of leveling them up through the old content, but on the other hand, the power level at those low levels (after leveling so very many characters up over the almost fourteen years I've been playing this game) can get pretty frustrating (Rogues don't get any sort of AoE other than multi-dotting until level 63!)
I'm eager to see how leveling feels in 8.0 and beyond. I imagine that if you can get from 10 to 50 in just a single expansion's quests, it'll make this current buff feel like nothing (consider that if you choose BFA to level through, that means you could level up 13 times just doing Drustvar).
Still, WoW currently has a huge benefit - you can see your friends and fight alongside them without any risk of spreading this deadly virus.
Actually, I'm a little disappointed in myself for not having finished the final wing of Ny'alotha on my main in LFR - I've really been sitting out LFR this expansion (I haven't even entered The Eternal Palace yet) and I wanted to make an effort on Ny'alotha given that there's been a decade of build-up to the raid. I only wish there had been more of a build-up in the expansion. I've done the other wings, and this is my basic impression:
Overall, this feels like a remake of Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj, which I mean in a good way. It has that ancient evil Lovecraftian city feel (ironically, while Temple of Ahn'Qiraj is the one that actually has C'thun in it, I think I like the aesthetic of AQ20 better - more Cyclopean architecture than endless generic caves). I particularly love the first wing, with its massive and oppressive black stone and gaping voids below.
But anyway, as I procrastinate (possibly to the point where actually finding an LFR group will be interminable) Blizzard has given everyone a 100% experience buff, which seems like the perfect cue to level up a bunch of allied races I never had done.
Prior to this buff, I'd gotten a Lightforged Draenei (Paladin,) Void Elf (Rogue,) Nightborne (Hunter) and Kul Tiran (Druid). I have members of all the other allied races left to go, and they're all sitting at various levels (I'm also leveling my Goblin Hunter, whom I've had now for... Jesus, ten years, but who had been sitting at 100 since later Warlords - given that there's now Goblin heritage armor).
Playing so many alts - there are now 23 playable races - does lead to some redundancies. Ever since dual-spec came out in Wrath, and particularly now that you can swap specs on the fly, it feels harder to justify having multiple characters of the same class. And ultimately, even if I really love some of the new races (I'm a big fan of Lightforged Draenei, though I hate that their heritage armor helmet cuts off the awesome beard you can get) the only character who has truly overtaken an old "primary alt" of a given class is my Kul Tiran Druid, but given that my Druid is one of my least-played alts, it's not like I'm maining a Kul Tiran now.
I was tempted for a bit to race-change my Draenei Death Knight to a Lightforged Draenei, suggesting that by confronting his literal demons on Argus, he might have finally found redemption and embraced the Light, but until 8.3, one could not be a Lightforged Draenei Death Knight, and now that you can, I've decided that it would be weird to hear a different voice from the character I've played for twelve years (I did make an alternate-universe version of him on my main server's connected server, though, and was lucky enough to have the same name available.)
Indeed, the very concept of Allied Races bumps into this issue: you cannot unlock them unless you have invested heavily in content from Legion or Battle for Azeroth (I pity anyone who didn't play much in Legion and wants to have a Void Elf) but most people who have gotten that far are probably pretty invested in their existing characters.
So to an extent, I'm really just leveling these guys up for the sense of accomplishment, and it's likely that most of them will be sitting on my character select screen and just showing off their heritage armor, rather than playing through into future expansions.
Perhaps if I weren't already so invested in existing alts, I might be more motivated to play these ones. Admittedly, it's fun to get the ding-satisfaction of leveling them up through the old content, but on the other hand, the power level at those low levels (after leveling so very many characters up over the almost fourteen years I've been playing this game) can get pretty frustrating (Rogues don't get any sort of AoE other than multi-dotting until level 63!)
I'm eager to see how leveling feels in 8.0 and beyond. I imagine that if you can get from 10 to 50 in just a single expansion's quests, it'll make this current buff feel like nothing (consider that if you choose BFA to level through, that means you could level up 13 times just doing Drustvar).
Still, WoW currently has a huge benefit - you can see your friends and fight alongside them without any risk of spreading this deadly virus.
Tuesday, March 17, 2020
Explorer's Guide to WIldemount: First Impressions
My copy of EGW arrived today, and it's sure nice to have some new stuff to peruse while under the general plague quarantine.
Like Acquisitions Incorporated, this book carries a black banner at the bottom, identifying it as a collaboration, in this case with Critical Role.
Much of the book's length is a thorough description of the continent of Wildemount on the world of Exandria, where the second CR campaign has mostly taken place. It's divided into four broad regions: The Menagerie Coast, which is governed by a confederation of city-states called the Clovis Concord, the Dwendalian Empire, which is a more traditional feudal society ruled by an emperor king (though there are various organizations within the empire that try to run things behind the scenes,) the lands of Xhorhas, ruled by the Kryn Dynasty, a sort of religiously-backed monarchy of so-called monstrous races like the Drow, and the Greying Wildlands, which are more wild and ungoverned.
There's a long description of organizations and important NPCs (funnily enough, you could consider some of these spoilers as to the alignments of various NPCs from campaign 2, though I think they're playing a more nuanced game with alignment than "chaotic evil" would normally suggest. Also of note, Khary Payton's guest character Shokaste is listed among the NPCs.)
The Gazetteer, which goes through the various locations in Wildemount, is very detailed (don't trust the distance scales on the maps, though, as an error led to cities like Port Damali being thousands of miles across.)
What I love about this section is that just about every location has multiple quick prompts for DMs to build adventures - these are just single sentences like "a coven of sea hags has been secretly sabotaging the docks here" or the like, but it's a great way to allow your players to explore where they want to go and have something ready for them.
There are four 1-3 adventures set in each of the major regions of the continent, each with its own tone and vibe and story to play through.
For character options, there are three new subclasses, all themed around the magical discipline of Dunamancy (think of it as a third branch after divine and arcane magic, rather than a school of magic.) The Echo Knight is a very cool Fighter subclass that allows you to summon a shadowy copy of yourself from an alternate timeline, with lots of really fun shenanigans like swapping positions with your copy and choosing whether you or your copy is making attacks.
Chronurgists and Graviturgists are two Wizard subclasses. The former gives you ways to manipulate time on the battlefield. The latter lets you manipulate mass and gravity.
Additionally, there are various Dunamancy spells. Again, these are not a new school, but they tend to have fairly interesting effects, manipulating space and time.
Another very interesting addition here is the Heroic Chronicle. Given how story-focused Critical Role is, it makes sense that they'd come up with a system for creating a rich backstory for your character, and should help your character both fit into the setting as well as giving the DM plenty of ways to make adventures that will revolve around the players. I haven't read this in depth yet, but I might make a separate post about it.
Additionally, there are some new backgrounds: the Grinner, members of the Golden Grin, who are performers that also secretly fight tyranny and communicate through coded songs, and Volstruckers, who are magical assassins that serve the Cerberus Assembly.
There are also a number of magic items to be found here, and this, I'd say, is some of the most epic content in the book. If you've watched campaign one, you'll remember the Vestiges of Divergence - legendary items that get upgraded over the course of the campaign. While you won't see those particular items here (they might be in the Tal'dorei guide, which was not published through WotC, though I don't have that) there are a number of new Vestiges that are quite interesting, especially several weapons that served the Betrayer Gods and are each inhabited by a fiend. These weapons begin in a Dormant state, and can then be upgraded to Awakened and then Exalted, growing more powerful each time.
Finally, we come to monsters. While not quite as extensive as what you'll find in Ravnica or Eberron, there are still quite a few really cool monsters. I'm particularly enamored with the eldritch "Core Spawn" aberrations. There are also fast-moving Husk Zombies that have a built in contagion mechanic to turn others into zombies (I believe these are the first monsters the party fights in episode one.)
What Wizards and Critical Role have delivered is a very fleshed-out world that could support all manner of campaigns. I will, of course, need to do a deeper read through this, but I'm really enjoying it so far.
Like Acquisitions Incorporated, this book carries a black banner at the bottom, identifying it as a collaboration, in this case with Critical Role.
Much of the book's length is a thorough description of the continent of Wildemount on the world of Exandria, where the second CR campaign has mostly taken place. It's divided into four broad regions: The Menagerie Coast, which is governed by a confederation of city-states called the Clovis Concord, the Dwendalian Empire, which is a more traditional feudal society ruled by an emperor king (though there are various organizations within the empire that try to run things behind the scenes,) the lands of Xhorhas, ruled by the Kryn Dynasty, a sort of religiously-backed monarchy of so-called monstrous races like the Drow, and the Greying Wildlands, which are more wild and ungoverned.
There's a long description of organizations and important NPCs (funnily enough, you could consider some of these spoilers as to the alignments of various NPCs from campaign 2, though I think they're playing a more nuanced game with alignment than "chaotic evil" would normally suggest. Also of note, Khary Payton's guest character Shokaste is listed among the NPCs.)
The Gazetteer, which goes through the various locations in Wildemount, is very detailed (don't trust the distance scales on the maps, though, as an error led to cities like Port Damali being thousands of miles across.)
What I love about this section is that just about every location has multiple quick prompts for DMs to build adventures - these are just single sentences like "a coven of sea hags has been secretly sabotaging the docks here" or the like, but it's a great way to allow your players to explore where they want to go and have something ready for them.
There are four 1-3 adventures set in each of the major regions of the continent, each with its own tone and vibe and story to play through.
For character options, there are three new subclasses, all themed around the magical discipline of Dunamancy (think of it as a third branch after divine and arcane magic, rather than a school of magic.) The Echo Knight is a very cool Fighter subclass that allows you to summon a shadowy copy of yourself from an alternate timeline, with lots of really fun shenanigans like swapping positions with your copy and choosing whether you or your copy is making attacks.
Chronurgists and Graviturgists are two Wizard subclasses. The former gives you ways to manipulate time on the battlefield. The latter lets you manipulate mass and gravity.
Additionally, there are various Dunamancy spells. Again, these are not a new school, but they tend to have fairly interesting effects, manipulating space and time.
Another very interesting addition here is the Heroic Chronicle. Given how story-focused Critical Role is, it makes sense that they'd come up with a system for creating a rich backstory for your character, and should help your character both fit into the setting as well as giving the DM plenty of ways to make adventures that will revolve around the players. I haven't read this in depth yet, but I might make a separate post about it.
Additionally, there are some new backgrounds: the Grinner, members of the Golden Grin, who are performers that also secretly fight tyranny and communicate through coded songs, and Volstruckers, who are magical assassins that serve the Cerberus Assembly.
There are also a number of magic items to be found here, and this, I'd say, is some of the most epic content in the book. If you've watched campaign one, you'll remember the Vestiges of Divergence - legendary items that get upgraded over the course of the campaign. While you won't see those particular items here (they might be in the Tal'dorei guide, which was not published through WotC, though I don't have that) there are a number of new Vestiges that are quite interesting, especially several weapons that served the Betrayer Gods and are each inhabited by a fiend. These weapons begin in a Dormant state, and can then be upgraded to Awakened and then Exalted, growing more powerful each time.
Finally, we come to monsters. While not quite as extensive as what you'll find in Ravnica or Eberron, there are still quite a few really cool monsters. I'm particularly enamored with the eldritch "Core Spawn" aberrations. There are also fast-moving Husk Zombies that have a built in contagion mechanic to turn others into zombies (I believe these are the first monsters the party fights in episode one.)
What Wizards and Critical Role have delivered is a very fleshed-out world that could support all manner of campaigns. I will, of course, need to do a deeper read through this, but I'm really enjoying it so far.
Monday, March 16, 2020
Wildemount, Theros, and What Might Come With 5th Edition
D&D 5th Edition is now about 5 and a half years old. For a number of reasons, it has been D&D's most popular edition, likely due to its relatively simple rules system and the advent of "actual play" streaming shows like Critical Role (personally, it was Acquisitions Incorporated that got me to try it, which began to promote the then-new 4th Edition before transitioning to "D&D Next" which became 5th.)
As the number of 5E books grows, there are a few questions as to what we can expect to come in the future. Theoretically, there's a 6th Edition that will eventually come out, but I suspect they're going to be hesitant to push that too soon.
Historically, most D&D editions have lasted about a decade. First Edition is a little complicated given that there was D&D and AD&D (I'm given to understand the latter was the popular, definitive version of the game.) 2nd Edition launched in 1989, 15 years after the original D&D, and 12 after AD&D (looking through the history, it's AD&D when the Player's Handbook, Monster Manual, and Dungeon Master's Guide became the core three books.)
3rd Edition came out in 2000, but was updated to 3.5 in 2003. Then, 4th Edition came out in 2008. Finally, 5E came out in 2014.
Which means that every edition has come out faster than the previous one did. If that trend were to continue, we'd need to see 6th Edition within the next 6 months or so, which I find very unlikely.
But given 5E's massive popularity, I suspect they'll be sticking with it for a while (sorry, Rangers.)
The 5E books that have come out over the past five and a half years can be broken down, I think, into four categories: Core Books, Supplement Books, Adventure Books, and Campaign Settings. Here's what we have so far, including announced but not-yet-released books (though tomorrow one of those will be out.)
Core Books:
Player's Handbook
Monster Manual
Dungeon Master's Guide
Supplement Books:
Volo's Guide to Monsters
Xanathar's Guide to Everything
Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes
Adventure Books:
Hoard of the Dragon Queen
Rise of Tiamat (these two later published in a single volume as Tyranny of Dragons)
Curse of Strahd
Princes of the Apocalypse
Out of the Abyss
Storm King's Thunder
Tomb of Annihilation
Tales From the Yawning Portal
Waterdeep: Dragon Heist
Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage
Ghosts of Saltmarsh
Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus
Campaign Settings:
Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide
Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica
Acquisitions Incorporated (sort of? It's in the Forgotten Realms but is a sort of different tonal setting.)
Eberron: Rising From the Last War
Explorer's Guide to Wildemount
Mythic Odysseys of Theros
So, clearly, Adventure books have been their focus for much of the edition's lifespan so far. However, I find it very interesting that campaign settings are coming out much more frequently now. Of those five books, only one was published before 2018.
Personally, while I enjoyed playing Descent into Avernus, I'm always going to prefer a campaign tailored for the players and their characters, which makes the Supplement books the most exciting products for me. I also love the campaign setting books - while I am now running a Ravnica campaign (that is off to a shaky start thanks to a pandemic and we can stop talking about that now) I'm much more likely to pillage these books for things in my home setting - I've already started integrating elements of the Mournlands into my own setting's post-apocalyptic wasteland region.
I am curious to see what they do with campaign setting releases.
Perhaps to the chagrin of some older veterans, 5th Edition has only released setting books for two pre-established settings - the Sword Coast of Faerun in the Forgotten Realms, and a book for Eberron, which was introduced in 3rd Edition.
Two of its setting books are imported from Magic: The Gathering. Now, the remaining one - Wildemount, which is part of the larger Exandria setting, feels like a great addition to the canon of D&D. Critical Role has been such a popular and popularizing element of the D&D global community that I think it makes sense as both a place people might be interested in playing in and part of the legend of D&D.
Now, as a nerd who really likes weird things, I'd love to see updated content for Planescape and Spelljammer. And I'm hoping that, as we see more campaign setting books being pushed, we'll see some of those oddballs. Remember, after SCAG, we went for a long time without any other campaign setting books. But between Eberron, Wildemount, and Theors, we're getting three within the space of a single year.
I'm also hoping for another broad character-option book with as many new subclasses (or at least a comparable number) as Xanathar's Guide to Everything. The campaign setting books have given us new class options (or in the case of Eberron, an entirely new class) but typically only two or three. (SCAG actually provided a fair number, but many were sort of unpopular, and the ones that were popular largely got reprinted in Xanathar's.)
I think we can expect new adventure books to come out at a regular rate. These are, after all, the most "consumable" of the 5E products. But homebrewer that I am, I'm really eager for more content I can remix for my own purposes.
As the number of 5E books grows, there are a few questions as to what we can expect to come in the future. Theoretically, there's a 6th Edition that will eventually come out, but I suspect they're going to be hesitant to push that too soon.
Historically, most D&D editions have lasted about a decade. First Edition is a little complicated given that there was D&D and AD&D (I'm given to understand the latter was the popular, definitive version of the game.) 2nd Edition launched in 1989, 15 years after the original D&D, and 12 after AD&D (looking through the history, it's AD&D when the Player's Handbook, Monster Manual, and Dungeon Master's Guide became the core three books.)
3rd Edition came out in 2000, but was updated to 3.5 in 2003. Then, 4th Edition came out in 2008. Finally, 5E came out in 2014.
Which means that every edition has come out faster than the previous one did. If that trend were to continue, we'd need to see 6th Edition within the next 6 months or so, which I find very unlikely.
But given 5E's massive popularity, I suspect they'll be sticking with it for a while (sorry, Rangers.)
The 5E books that have come out over the past five and a half years can be broken down, I think, into four categories: Core Books, Supplement Books, Adventure Books, and Campaign Settings. Here's what we have so far, including announced but not-yet-released books (though tomorrow one of those will be out.)
Core Books:
Player's Handbook
Monster Manual
Dungeon Master's Guide
Supplement Books:
Volo's Guide to Monsters
Xanathar's Guide to Everything
Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes
Adventure Books:
Hoard of the Dragon Queen
Rise of Tiamat (these two later published in a single volume as Tyranny of Dragons)
Curse of Strahd
Princes of the Apocalypse
Out of the Abyss
Storm King's Thunder
Tomb of Annihilation
Tales From the Yawning Portal
Waterdeep: Dragon Heist
Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage
Ghosts of Saltmarsh
Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus
Campaign Settings:
Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide
Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica
Acquisitions Incorporated (sort of? It's in the Forgotten Realms but is a sort of different tonal setting.)
Eberron: Rising From the Last War
Explorer's Guide to Wildemount
Mythic Odysseys of Theros
So, clearly, Adventure books have been their focus for much of the edition's lifespan so far. However, I find it very interesting that campaign settings are coming out much more frequently now. Of those five books, only one was published before 2018.
Personally, while I enjoyed playing Descent into Avernus, I'm always going to prefer a campaign tailored for the players and their characters, which makes the Supplement books the most exciting products for me. I also love the campaign setting books - while I am now running a Ravnica campaign (that is off to a shaky start thanks to a pandemic and we can stop talking about that now) I'm much more likely to pillage these books for things in my home setting - I've already started integrating elements of the Mournlands into my own setting's post-apocalyptic wasteland region.
I am curious to see what they do with campaign setting releases.
Perhaps to the chagrin of some older veterans, 5th Edition has only released setting books for two pre-established settings - the Sword Coast of Faerun in the Forgotten Realms, and a book for Eberron, which was introduced in 3rd Edition.
Two of its setting books are imported from Magic: The Gathering. Now, the remaining one - Wildemount, which is part of the larger Exandria setting, feels like a great addition to the canon of D&D. Critical Role has been such a popular and popularizing element of the D&D global community that I think it makes sense as both a place people might be interested in playing in and part of the legend of D&D.
Now, as a nerd who really likes weird things, I'd love to see updated content for Planescape and Spelljammer. And I'm hoping that, as we see more campaign setting books being pushed, we'll see some of those oddballs. Remember, after SCAG, we went for a long time without any other campaign setting books. But between Eberron, Wildemount, and Theors, we're getting three within the space of a single year.
I'm also hoping for another broad character-option book with as many new subclasses (or at least a comparable number) as Xanathar's Guide to Everything. The campaign setting books have given us new class options (or in the case of Eberron, an entirely new class) but typically only two or three. (SCAG actually provided a fair number, but many were sort of unpopular, and the ones that were popular largely got reprinted in Xanathar's.)
I think we can expect new adventure books to come out at a regular rate. These are, after all, the most "consumable" of the 5E products. But homebrewer that I am, I'm really eager for more content I can remix for my own purposes.
Wednesday, March 11, 2020
Tabletop Gaming in an Age of Plague
Hey, so, there's this virus going around.
I don't think I have anything particularly new to say here. I'm really just bummed that I'm missing out on my usual Wednesday table at my local game store to play Adventurer's League. We finished Descent into Avernus a couple weeks ago, so it's not as bad if I get bumped from the table next week because of store policies.
I'm missing the game because I have a cold. It really seems just to be a standard winter cold - bit of sore throat and congestion, but none of the fever or shortness of breath that seems to come with Covid-19. Still, to be better safe than sorry, I'm trying to avoid leaving the apartment as best as I can and washing my hands periodically and not just after using the bathroom or before eating.
It's funny, thinking about how WoW, an MMORPG, was probably the video game that drew me into the idea of playing tabletop RPGs. I still love WoW, but I've definitely been far more attracted to the way D&D works.
I'm a storyteller, or at least I like to think I am, and D&D is a great medium to tell a story, especially given that you are tested by having to deal with the decisions of your players. The game is so customizable because it leverages the most powerful rendering engine known to exist - the human mind. Yes, I'm aware how cheesy that statement is, but it's actually quite true.
I mean, if I wanted to play a steampunk robot who would spend their time between adventures building an airship, in WoW I'd have to pick a race - maybe Mechagnome - and simply imagine that as his backstory without really getting to engage with it in-game.
But in D&D, I can just talk with a DM and figure out how they want to handle that mechanically and then roll up my Warforged Artificer that I really, really, really want to play.
Of course, getting together with others to play is harder than logging into a game where there are thousands of people per server. There's also a fair number of things one can do as a solo player (I've been going whole hog on Horrific Visions, unlocking Faceless Masks and such.) Indeed, I think one of the big ideas behind computer/video game RPGs is that you essentially have a pre-programmed, computerized DM (or GM if we want to use the general term.)
It's a lot easier to hop in and play WoW for a couple hours if you want to. But I find D&D far more rewarding given the human element of it.
With the plague going around, we really don't know how serious it's going to get. People have died, and I don't want to minimize that. It's likely that a massive number of people will get sick with this, and while only a small minority are likely to die from it (biggest of knocks on wood) it will, at the very least, be a big disruption to social gatherings, not to mention businesses (I won't be super shocked if we have another market crash like in 2008,) and thus people will have less money, which is going to make it harder for them to make time for stuff like D&D.
My friends are very much in the gig economy churn, and with events getting cancelled, it's going to hit them pretty hard.
But on top of the economic hardships, there's also just the fact that we don't want to spread the sickness.
Again, I do not think I'm infected with Covid 19, but given how broadly it's spreading, it makes social gatherings like a D&D night feel potentially irresponsible. Sure, we might be a bunch of healthy folks in our 20s and 30s, but there's always a chance that someone might have a weak immune system or they might simply interact with older or infirm people who are more vulnerable.
Really, this is all just a rant about how I'm bummed that I don't get to go roll some dice and imagine I'm some badass fantasy hero. I'm hoping this crisis ends soon, primarily so that fewer people get sick, but I also think it'd be nice for people to just feel free to go out and socialize without fear or guilt.
I don't think I have anything particularly new to say here. I'm really just bummed that I'm missing out on my usual Wednesday table at my local game store to play Adventurer's League. We finished Descent into Avernus a couple weeks ago, so it's not as bad if I get bumped from the table next week because of store policies.
I'm missing the game because I have a cold. It really seems just to be a standard winter cold - bit of sore throat and congestion, but none of the fever or shortness of breath that seems to come with Covid-19. Still, to be better safe than sorry, I'm trying to avoid leaving the apartment as best as I can and washing my hands periodically and not just after using the bathroom or before eating.
It's funny, thinking about how WoW, an MMORPG, was probably the video game that drew me into the idea of playing tabletop RPGs. I still love WoW, but I've definitely been far more attracted to the way D&D works.
I'm a storyteller, or at least I like to think I am, and D&D is a great medium to tell a story, especially given that you are tested by having to deal with the decisions of your players. The game is so customizable because it leverages the most powerful rendering engine known to exist - the human mind. Yes, I'm aware how cheesy that statement is, but it's actually quite true.
I mean, if I wanted to play a steampunk robot who would spend their time between adventures building an airship, in WoW I'd have to pick a race - maybe Mechagnome - and simply imagine that as his backstory without really getting to engage with it in-game.
But in D&D, I can just talk with a DM and figure out how they want to handle that mechanically and then roll up my Warforged Artificer that I really, really, really want to play.
Of course, getting together with others to play is harder than logging into a game where there are thousands of people per server. There's also a fair number of things one can do as a solo player (I've been going whole hog on Horrific Visions, unlocking Faceless Masks and such.) Indeed, I think one of the big ideas behind computer/video game RPGs is that you essentially have a pre-programmed, computerized DM (or GM if we want to use the general term.)
It's a lot easier to hop in and play WoW for a couple hours if you want to. But I find D&D far more rewarding given the human element of it.
With the plague going around, we really don't know how serious it's going to get. People have died, and I don't want to minimize that. It's likely that a massive number of people will get sick with this, and while only a small minority are likely to die from it (biggest of knocks on wood) it will, at the very least, be a big disruption to social gatherings, not to mention businesses (I won't be super shocked if we have another market crash like in 2008,) and thus people will have less money, which is going to make it harder for them to make time for stuff like D&D.
My friends are very much in the gig economy churn, and with events getting cancelled, it's going to hit them pretty hard.
But on top of the economic hardships, there's also just the fact that we don't want to spread the sickness.
Again, I do not think I'm infected with Covid 19, but given how broadly it's spreading, it makes social gatherings like a D&D night feel potentially irresponsible. Sure, we might be a bunch of healthy folks in our 20s and 30s, but there's always a chance that someone might have a weak immune system or they might simply interact with older or infirm people who are more vulnerable.
Really, this is all just a rant about how I'm bummed that I don't get to go roll some dice and imagine I'm some badass fantasy hero. I'm hoping this crisis ends soon, primarily so that fewer people get sick, but I also think it'd be nice for people to just feel free to go out and socialize without fear or guilt.
Thursday, March 5, 2020
Handling Planar Travel in the Magic Multiverse
With Mythic Odysseys of Theros, we're getting the second official guide for a Magic: The Gathering plane.
In D&D, all (or rather, most) campaign settings exist within the Prime Material Plane. The worlds of the Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Dragonlance, Exandria, etc. all share that plane. In fact, the Spelljammer campaign setting is actually a means to link these various settings together and travel from one to another. Meanwhile, Planescape, another setting, is another sort of meta-setting, expanding beyond the Prime Material to include all 16 - or rather, 17, given the Outlands as the True Neutral plane - Outer Planes, as well as the various Inner Planes and the Prime Material.
While there are some settings that have their own cosmologies, this is typically explained away by having them inhabit some odd part of the overall D&D multiverse. Eberron, for instance, appears to have its own various planes, but to weld that into the overall D&D cosmology, I believe it is canonically a kind of bubble inside the Ethereal Plane - in the Deep Ethereal.
My own homebrew setting, Sarkon (and the greater Celestial Expanse that it exists within) is one I decided is itself in a bubble in the Far Realm, making it very difficult to reach from the canon settings, but not strictly impossible. (I've considered retconning this fact to take advantage of the chance to cross over into other settings, but I also like that, for instance, my Lawful Evil plane was long ago conquered by the undead led by the Angel of Death, who I think make much more sense as LE than CE, and it also means that Hell has literally frozen over and also we have some fun with Devils in exile.)
The thing is, the planes of Magic were not invented to be D&D settings, and for over a quarter of a century, the creative team on Magic has built their own cosmology.
You could, of course, simply smash Ravnica and Theros onto the Prime Material Plane and treat them like any other D&D setting, but I think the lore of Magic is rich enough that they deserve to be portrayed as part of their own multiverse.
The Acquisitions Incorporated games are at least partially canonical (Omin Dran, Jerry Holkins' character, is canonically one of the masked lords of Waterdeep) and when they've traveled to Ravnica, they've done so by traveling across the Far Realm.
The Far Realm is fairly convenient - many fantasy properties include some sort of "ultimate outer plane" where Lovecrafitan cosmic horror can be found. Given that it's the ultimate "outside," it also sort of works as a bridge between canons. The eldritch nature of the Far Realm means it could be truly infinite in size (or if infinity isn't enough, it could be basically infinity to the infinite power.)
But to scale back down again, what about the Magic multiverse?
Specifically, how do spells like Etherealness, Plane Shift, and Astral Projection work in the Magic multiverse?
I think it depends a bit on how canonical you want to get.
First off, the Magic multiverse currently does not have any canon name like "The Great Wheel" or anything like that. However, in the early days of the game, it was called Dominia, and the primary setting of Magic for its first ten years (with a couple excursions to other settings) was Dominaria - a plane whose name meant "Song of Dominia." Dominaria was at the nexus of the multiverse, though in practice that just meant it was the important setting.
In a lot of ways, what distinguishes Dominaria from the other settings is A: it's got the most fleshed-out history, geography, and map and B: it's the most generic of the settings, existing as a kind of catch-all fantasy world, because for many years, it was all the game had (well, except for "Rabiah," which I think was basically a retcon to justify the Arabian Nights set, which was Magic's first "expansion set".)
In the lore of MTG, the various planes are all distinct worlds, but they're less interconnected than those in typical D&D. Gods that are worshipped in one world are unheard of in others. Indeed, the existence of other planes is unknown to the vast majority of people in MTG worlds.
Travel between those planes is also extremely rare, and typically can only be done by a Planeswalker.
Now, planeswalkers have existed in two major forms during Magic's canon.
In both cases, a planeswalker has what is called a planeswalker spark - a latent potential to become a planeswalker. Usually, one is simply born with this by chance, though there are cases of people gaining a spark through some artificial means - including the most famous planeswalker of Magic's early days, Urza.
Prior to an event called The Mending, Planeswalkers were essentially gods who had been born as mortals. Planeswalkers could create entire planes, and were immortal and incredibly powerful.
It was also before the Mending that other creatures could more easily travel between planes. The evil biomechanical Phyrexians had planar gates that allowed them to jump between worlds. But also, a planeswalker could summon individuals from one plane to another to fight for them (though some canonical sources suggested that summoning a creature was really more like making a copy of them.)
However, after The Mending, the old planar gates stopped working, and Planeswalkers degraded from living gods to something more like superheroes - powerful, sure, but still mortals.
In this state, it seems as if Planeswalking is the only way to go between the Planes, and that puts some limits on your player characters in a D&D campaign. Unless you flavor your planar travel spells as allowing the character to become a Planeswalker, it's not clear that you could be consistent with the lore and allow your players to travel between the planes.
Now, there is already one canonical exception that allows some things to travel between planes without being Planeswalkers. In last year's War of the Spark event, the evil Elder Dragon Nicol Bolas used a Planar Gate created on the Steampunk-India world of Kaladesh to bring his army of metal-plated mummy-warriors from Amonkhet (a world he had basically Bene-Gesserit-ed for centuries to view him as their God-Emperor before wiping out most of its population and raising them as undead) to invade Ravnica.
If it's just that the old planar bridges don't work and new ones can be built in a different way, then perhaps the planar travel restrictions can be lessened.
I'm investigating that possibility for the future of my Ravnica campaign (no one is over level 2 at this point, so I've got time.) However, I did come up with a quasi-consistent-with-canon possibility:
I have created a Feat called Planeswalker Spark. I won't go through all the details, but here's the gist of it:
When you take the feat, you get to raise one ability score of your choice by 1. Then, at a time determined by the DM (when the player is subjected to a moment of profound stress,) a couple things happen: the Planeswalker spark ignites, healing them to full. Immediately, the players then involuntarily casts Plane Shift to a plane determined by rolling on a random table.
Counting this involuntary one, the player can now cast Plane Shift once per long rest on themselves, with no required material components. Returning to their home plane (Ravnica) is easy, but traveling to planes they haven't been to before has a chance to fail and send them to a random one instead.
Where we start to break canon is that they can spend the time it would take to learn a new tool or language proficiency to become "proficient" with Planeswalking, allowing them to draw upon the mana of the land to summon allies with them as they go (or send an unwilling target elsewhere.)
We're, of course, pretty far from players learning all those other planar travel spells, but I'm hoping to have a robust system in place - not to mention some go-to locations and scenarios for all those other planes.
In D&D, all (or rather, most) campaign settings exist within the Prime Material Plane. The worlds of the Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Dragonlance, Exandria, etc. all share that plane. In fact, the Spelljammer campaign setting is actually a means to link these various settings together and travel from one to another. Meanwhile, Planescape, another setting, is another sort of meta-setting, expanding beyond the Prime Material to include all 16 - or rather, 17, given the Outlands as the True Neutral plane - Outer Planes, as well as the various Inner Planes and the Prime Material.
While there are some settings that have their own cosmologies, this is typically explained away by having them inhabit some odd part of the overall D&D multiverse. Eberron, for instance, appears to have its own various planes, but to weld that into the overall D&D cosmology, I believe it is canonically a kind of bubble inside the Ethereal Plane - in the Deep Ethereal.
My own homebrew setting, Sarkon (and the greater Celestial Expanse that it exists within) is one I decided is itself in a bubble in the Far Realm, making it very difficult to reach from the canon settings, but not strictly impossible. (I've considered retconning this fact to take advantage of the chance to cross over into other settings, but I also like that, for instance, my Lawful Evil plane was long ago conquered by the undead led by the Angel of Death, who I think make much more sense as LE than CE, and it also means that Hell has literally frozen over and also we have some fun with Devils in exile.)
The thing is, the planes of Magic were not invented to be D&D settings, and for over a quarter of a century, the creative team on Magic has built their own cosmology.
You could, of course, simply smash Ravnica and Theros onto the Prime Material Plane and treat them like any other D&D setting, but I think the lore of Magic is rich enough that they deserve to be portrayed as part of their own multiverse.
The Acquisitions Incorporated games are at least partially canonical (Omin Dran, Jerry Holkins' character, is canonically one of the masked lords of Waterdeep) and when they've traveled to Ravnica, they've done so by traveling across the Far Realm.
The Far Realm is fairly convenient - many fantasy properties include some sort of "ultimate outer plane" where Lovecrafitan cosmic horror can be found. Given that it's the ultimate "outside," it also sort of works as a bridge between canons. The eldritch nature of the Far Realm means it could be truly infinite in size (or if infinity isn't enough, it could be basically infinity to the infinite power.)
But to scale back down again, what about the Magic multiverse?
Specifically, how do spells like Etherealness, Plane Shift, and Astral Projection work in the Magic multiverse?
I think it depends a bit on how canonical you want to get.
First off, the Magic multiverse currently does not have any canon name like "The Great Wheel" or anything like that. However, in the early days of the game, it was called Dominia, and the primary setting of Magic for its first ten years (with a couple excursions to other settings) was Dominaria - a plane whose name meant "Song of Dominia." Dominaria was at the nexus of the multiverse, though in practice that just meant it was the important setting.
In a lot of ways, what distinguishes Dominaria from the other settings is A: it's got the most fleshed-out history, geography, and map and B: it's the most generic of the settings, existing as a kind of catch-all fantasy world, because for many years, it was all the game had (well, except for "Rabiah," which I think was basically a retcon to justify the Arabian Nights set, which was Magic's first "expansion set".)
In the lore of MTG, the various planes are all distinct worlds, but they're less interconnected than those in typical D&D. Gods that are worshipped in one world are unheard of in others. Indeed, the existence of other planes is unknown to the vast majority of people in MTG worlds.
Travel between those planes is also extremely rare, and typically can only be done by a Planeswalker.
Now, planeswalkers have existed in two major forms during Magic's canon.
In both cases, a planeswalker has what is called a planeswalker spark - a latent potential to become a planeswalker. Usually, one is simply born with this by chance, though there are cases of people gaining a spark through some artificial means - including the most famous planeswalker of Magic's early days, Urza.
Prior to an event called The Mending, Planeswalkers were essentially gods who had been born as mortals. Planeswalkers could create entire planes, and were immortal and incredibly powerful.
It was also before the Mending that other creatures could more easily travel between planes. The evil biomechanical Phyrexians had planar gates that allowed them to jump between worlds. But also, a planeswalker could summon individuals from one plane to another to fight for them (though some canonical sources suggested that summoning a creature was really more like making a copy of them.)
However, after The Mending, the old planar gates stopped working, and Planeswalkers degraded from living gods to something more like superheroes - powerful, sure, but still mortals.
In this state, it seems as if Planeswalking is the only way to go between the Planes, and that puts some limits on your player characters in a D&D campaign. Unless you flavor your planar travel spells as allowing the character to become a Planeswalker, it's not clear that you could be consistent with the lore and allow your players to travel between the planes.
Now, there is already one canonical exception that allows some things to travel between planes without being Planeswalkers. In last year's War of the Spark event, the evil Elder Dragon Nicol Bolas used a Planar Gate created on the Steampunk-India world of Kaladesh to bring his army of metal-plated mummy-warriors from Amonkhet (a world he had basically Bene-Gesserit-ed for centuries to view him as their God-Emperor before wiping out most of its population and raising them as undead) to invade Ravnica.
If it's just that the old planar bridges don't work and new ones can be built in a different way, then perhaps the planar travel restrictions can be lessened.
I'm investigating that possibility for the future of my Ravnica campaign (no one is over level 2 at this point, so I've got time.) However, I did come up with a quasi-consistent-with-canon possibility:
I have created a Feat called Planeswalker Spark. I won't go through all the details, but here's the gist of it:
When you take the feat, you get to raise one ability score of your choice by 1. Then, at a time determined by the DM (when the player is subjected to a moment of profound stress,) a couple things happen: the Planeswalker spark ignites, healing them to full. Immediately, the players then involuntarily casts Plane Shift to a plane determined by rolling on a random table.
Counting this involuntary one, the player can now cast Plane Shift once per long rest on themselves, with no required material components. Returning to their home plane (Ravnica) is easy, but traveling to planes they haven't been to before has a chance to fail and send them to a random one instead.
Where we start to break canon is that they can spend the time it would take to learn a new tool or language proficiency to become "proficient" with Planeswalking, allowing them to draw upon the mana of the land to summon allies with them as they go (or send an unwilling target elsewhere.)
We're, of course, pretty far from players learning all those other planar travel spells, but I'm hoping to have a robust system in place - not to mention some go-to locations and scenarios for all those other planes.
Wednesday, March 4, 2020
Spell-Storing Items Are Insane
The Artificer is a half-caster, like the Paladin and the Ranger. You'll never get more than 5th level spells with it, and you'll have to rely on other class features (like the very nice Artificer Infusions) to keep up with pure casters.
Looking through those features, though, one of them stands out as really, really good: Spell Storing Item.
Once you hit level 11, when you finish a long rest, you can touch an item and store a spell of 1st or 2nd level in it - it can be any artificer spell of those levels; you don't need to have it prepared. The spell needs to have a cast time of 1 action, though, so no Shield.
Anyway, anyone can use this item to reproduce the spell, using your spellcasting stats (your spell attack bonus and your save dc, and if it's cure wounds, it uses your Int modifier to determine the bonus to the heal.)
What's crazy about this is that you get to use it a number of times equal to twice your Intelligence modifier - and all you need to do to recharge it is rest.
What this does, effectively, is give you 10 extra 1st or 2nd level spell slots. Admittedly, you have to pick the one spell you'll be using for all 10 of those slots, but that's still 10 more spells to cast than you would otherwise have - and you can even hand it off to others (for instance, you can give a Cure Wounds canister to your monk, who can then zip around healing folks if they go down.)
If you're an artillerist, you get Shatter as one of your Artificer spells, which is 2nd level (it's a 10-ft radius sphere within 60ft that does 3d8 thunder damage, with a Con save to reduce that by half.) While at level 11 3d8 might not be a ton of damage (your Firebolt by that point will be hitting for 3d10+1d8 if you use your Arcane Firearm) but given that it's an area-effect spell, the damage gets multiplied by how many targets you can hit - and if you have a swarm of enemies, that can get really high.
Invisibility is another option - with ten charges, you (or an ally) can drop out of invisibility without too much fear.
The really excellent thing about this is that you can also spread concentration around. Let's say you want to be concentrating on some other spell, but also want to maintain, say, Enlarge/Reduce on your Monk or Fighter. Just let someone who doesn't need to concentrate on one of their own effects do it for you.
Going back to invisibility, you can simply have each player concentrate on their own invisibility spell so the whole group is much better at sneaking.
Like basically all Artificer features, this is also one that I really think you can get creative with in terms of flavor. I like the idea of making metal canisters for various spells, or rigging up some kind of wrist-mounted squirt-nozzle to shoot grease at an area. Maybe your alchemist makes Enhance Ability into a bottle from which you drink to cast it on yourself.
As a half-caster, you miss out on 6th-9th-level spells, but while those are unquestionably more powerful individually than a couple of 2nd (or 1st) level spells, the fact is that the actual, raw spellcasting ability of the Artificer is increased by 67% from this feature (and at the level you get it, it's doubled!)
The Artificer is really a great Swiss Army Knife class. If you are able to figure out things you might need ahead of time, this feature could be incredibly powerful.
Looking through those features, though, one of them stands out as really, really good: Spell Storing Item.
Once you hit level 11, when you finish a long rest, you can touch an item and store a spell of 1st or 2nd level in it - it can be any artificer spell of those levels; you don't need to have it prepared. The spell needs to have a cast time of 1 action, though, so no Shield.
Anyway, anyone can use this item to reproduce the spell, using your spellcasting stats (your spell attack bonus and your save dc, and if it's cure wounds, it uses your Int modifier to determine the bonus to the heal.)
What's crazy about this is that you get to use it a number of times equal to twice your Intelligence modifier - and all you need to do to recharge it is rest.
What this does, effectively, is give you 10 extra 1st or 2nd level spell slots. Admittedly, you have to pick the one spell you'll be using for all 10 of those slots, but that's still 10 more spells to cast than you would otherwise have - and you can even hand it off to others (for instance, you can give a Cure Wounds canister to your monk, who can then zip around healing folks if they go down.)
If you're an artillerist, you get Shatter as one of your Artificer spells, which is 2nd level (it's a 10-ft radius sphere within 60ft that does 3d8 thunder damage, with a Con save to reduce that by half.) While at level 11 3d8 might not be a ton of damage (your Firebolt by that point will be hitting for 3d10+1d8 if you use your Arcane Firearm) but given that it's an area-effect spell, the damage gets multiplied by how many targets you can hit - and if you have a swarm of enemies, that can get really high.
Invisibility is another option - with ten charges, you (or an ally) can drop out of invisibility without too much fear.
The really excellent thing about this is that you can also spread concentration around. Let's say you want to be concentrating on some other spell, but also want to maintain, say, Enlarge/Reduce on your Monk or Fighter. Just let someone who doesn't need to concentrate on one of their own effects do it for you.
Going back to invisibility, you can simply have each player concentrate on their own invisibility spell so the whole group is much better at sneaking.
Like basically all Artificer features, this is also one that I really think you can get creative with in terms of flavor. I like the idea of making metal canisters for various spells, or rigging up some kind of wrist-mounted squirt-nozzle to shoot grease at an area. Maybe your alchemist makes Enhance Ability into a bottle from which you drink to cast it on yourself.
As a half-caster, you miss out on 6th-9th-level spells, but while those are unquestionably more powerful individually than a couple of 2nd (or 1st) level spells, the fact is that the actual, raw spellcasting ability of the Artificer is increased by 67% from this feature (and at the level you get it, it's doubled!)
The Artificer is really a great Swiss Army Knife class. If you are able to figure out things you might need ahead of time, this feature could be incredibly powerful.
Tuesday, March 3, 2020
The First Session of Jace's Irregulars
We had the first session of a campaign I have been planning for months, and it went well!
The party arrived at the Chamber of the Guildpact, the office in the center of Precinct One in the Tenth District, where they've been assigned by their guilds to work for the organization that keeps it all balanced. The Guilds each have their own opinion of the organization, but even the more chaotic ones want to have some representation within it to ensure that the bossy guilds don't just use it as a bludgeon to infringe on their freedoms.
I have a large number of players officially in the group, but with a rotating cast as players' availability changes.
Tonight, we had:
Bob, a Vampire (homebrew/modification of the Ixalan vampire) Sorcerer with the Izzet League
Niko, a Vampire Rogue with the Cult of Rakdos
Hados, a Loxodon Barbarian from the Selesnya Conclave
Dahn, an Elf Druid from the Golgari Swarm
Sestri, a Vedalken Sorcerer with the Izzet League
and Ararara, a Vampire Fighter with the Simic Combine
(Note that just in case other players stumble across this, I'm not going to note if any of these characters are actually in House Dimir until they get officially unmasked in-game.)
The party is sent to an Izzet power station in Wayport (Precinct Six), where electrical power is harvested from (quite happy, friendly) Galvanice Weirds. A sewer line burst next to the station's basement, and it's caused a great deal of damage to the station, shutting it down. But when the Izzet contacted the Golgari to fix it and clean it up, the Golgari denied having any sewer lines running through there, and thus have refused to do anything.
In goes the party, who discover that the fungal growth in the sewage has animated the dead bodies found in there, and they're forced to fight a group of zombies and violet fungi.
This fight wound up being way tougher than I expected, first because two of the fungi rolled to do 4 attacks on their first turns, and second because the last zombie kept rolling insanely high on its Undead Fortitude saves. I believe three people went unconscious in this fight, but I gave everyone healing potions to start with, so it wasn't terrible.
Taking a short rest after this fight, the party considered just claiming it was the Golgari to blame, but then decided to investigate a broken wall in the side of the basement, which led to a defunct Izzet access tunnel and then to a busted sewage tank in which the missing Galvanice Weird (Frosty) was sitting in a panic. Two characters managed to do very well calming the Weird down, and led him back to the station.
Exploring a hatch in the top of the tank, the party came upon a ruined old Izzet station and found a former Golgari Swarm member who was camped out in a tent, trying to start a Rot Farm near the surface after her family was targeted by a rival in the Swarm and her old properties were seized in a hostile takeover (which, for the Golgari, often means sending assassins.)
In the middle of their conversation, a pair of Kraul Warriors came in through a big gap in the wall and attacked, trying to kill the Devkarin woman. The party managed to defeat them, just barely saving the woman's life (she had 1 hp at the end of the fight.) Upon searching the Kraul, they found one had a sort of ritual scarification (tattoos don't take very well to chitinous exoskeletons) in the shape of a circle with a big line going down the center.
With the mystery solved, and the Devkarin woman offering to help clean things up after her failed Rot Farm caused all this damage, the party completed their mission and our first session came to an end!
The party arrived at the Chamber of the Guildpact, the office in the center of Precinct One in the Tenth District, where they've been assigned by their guilds to work for the organization that keeps it all balanced. The Guilds each have their own opinion of the organization, but even the more chaotic ones want to have some representation within it to ensure that the bossy guilds don't just use it as a bludgeon to infringe on their freedoms.
I have a large number of players officially in the group, but with a rotating cast as players' availability changes.
Tonight, we had:
Bob, a Vampire (homebrew/modification of the Ixalan vampire) Sorcerer with the Izzet League
Niko, a Vampire Rogue with the Cult of Rakdos
Hados, a Loxodon Barbarian from the Selesnya Conclave
Dahn, an Elf Druid from the Golgari Swarm
Sestri, a Vedalken Sorcerer with the Izzet League
and Ararara, a Vampire Fighter with the Simic Combine
(Note that just in case other players stumble across this, I'm not going to note if any of these characters are actually in House Dimir until they get officially unmasked in-game.)
The party is sent to an Izzet power station in Wayport (Precinct Six), where electrical power is harvested from (quite happy, friendly) Galvanice Weirds. A sewer line burst next to the station's basement, and it's caused a great deal of damage to the station, shutting it down. But when the Izzet contacted the Golgari to fix it and clean it up, the Golgari denied having any sewer lines running through there, and thus have refused to do anything.
In goes the party, who discover that the fungal growth in the sewage has animated the dead bodies found in there, and they're forced to fight a group of zombies and violet fungi.
This fight wound up being way tougher than I expected, first because two of the fungi rolled to do 4 attacks on their first turns, and second because the last zombie kept rolling insanely high on its Undead Fortitude saves. I believe three people went unconscious in this fight, but I gave everyone healing potions to start with, so it wasn't terrible.
Taking a short rest after this fight, the party considered just claiming it was the Golgari to blame, but then decided to investigate a broken wall in the side of the basement, which led to a defunct Izzet access tunnel and then to a busted sewage tank in which the missing Galvanice Weird (Frosty) was sitting in a panic. Two characters managed to do very well calming the Weird down, and led him back to the station.
Exploring a hatch in the top of the tank, the party came upon a ruined old Izzet station and found a former Golgari Swarm member who was camped out in a tent, trying to start a Rot Farm near the surface after her family was targeted by a rival in the Swarm and her old properties were seized in a hostile takeover (which, for the Golgari, often means sending assassins.)
In the middle of their conversation, a pair of Kraul Warriors came in through a big gap in the wall and attacked, trying to kill the Devkarin woman. The party managed to defeat them, just barely saving the woman's life (she had 1 hp at the end of the fight.) Upon searching the Kraul, they found one had a sort of ritual scarification (tattoos don't take very well to chitinous exoskeletons) in the shape of a circle with a big line going down the center.
With the mystery solved, and the Devkarin woman offering to help clean things up after her failed Rot Farm caused all this damage, the party completed their mission and our first session came to an end!
Monday, March 2, 2020
Mythic Odysseys of Theros - Official Announcement of D&D's Second MTG-Crossover Campaign Setting Book
While it was leaked a couple days ago, we now have the official announcement that Mythic Odysseys of Theros is real and will release on June 2nd (just in time for my June 8th birthday!)
Theros is one of the planes in the multiverse of Magic: the Gathering. Inspired by Greek mythology, Theros is a land deeply tied to the Gods, where mortals are blessed or cursed by Gods in their quests for glory and fame.
The Gods of Theros inhabit a realm beyond the world known as Nyx, which manifests in the constellations seen at night. Additionally, Theros has a vast Underworld, where mortals go after they die, and from which various terrible monsters emerge.
According to the announcement, MOoT will bring a few new features to the game:
Supernatural Gifts will help distinguish players from ordinary people, with similar mechanics to races. I suspect this might be, essentially, the Theros equivalent of Eberron's Dragonmarks, which are essentially several variant versions of existing races or subraces.
There will also be new races: the listed ones on the announcement are Satyrs and Leonin (the latter being lion-people who are found in many Magic worlds.) Given their Greek mythology origins, I highly suspect that we'll also see Minotaurs and Centaurs reprinted in MOoT, as both races are found with some abundance in Theros.
New subclasses include the Bard's College of Eloquence and the Paladin's Oath of Heroism, both of which we've seen tested as part of Unearthed Arcana. The former seems fitting for the Theros equivalent of the Athenian Agora (which I was lucky enough to visit back in 2018) while the latter is built around the Classical ideals of heroism.
There are also new mythic monsters, which the announcement claims are beyond legendary. I don't know if that implies some new mechanical distinction or if they're just drumming up excitement for them. We'll see!
Finally, there are god-weapons, which are the iconic arms of the gods of Theros, and will presumably be some very exciting artifact-level magic items. I'm curious to see how these compare to the Vestiges from Exandria, which becomes an official D&D setting once the Explorer's Guide to Wildemount comes out later this month.
I'm literally beginning a Ravnica campaign tonight (even if we had a little preview-session as a last minute thing a week ago for some players) and while I'm sure I'll have plenty of material for that on Ravnica itself, I've definitely intended to expand into the greater Magic multiverse (which I still call Dominia, damn it!) and even came up with a special Feat that allows players to become Planeswalkers, so it'll be good to have a bunch of material for any adventures that take them to Theros - even, possibly, having players create Theros-natives who join the party if people want to make "alts" or their characters die or retire.
Theros is one of the planes in the multiverse of Magic: the Gathering. Inspired by Greek mythology, Theros is a land deeply tied to the Gods, where mortals are blessed or cursed by Gods in their quests for glory and fame.
The Gods of Theros inhabit a realm beyond the world known as Nyx, which manifests in the constellations seen at night. Additionally, Theros has a vast Underworld, where mortals go after they die, and from which various terrible monsters emerge.
According to the announcement, MOoT will bring a few new features to the game:
Supernatural Gifts will help distinguish players from ordinary people, with similar mechanics to races. I suspect this might be, essentially, the Theros equivalent of Eberron's Dragonmarks, which are essentially several variant versions of existing races or subraces.
There will also be new races: the listed ones on the announcement are Satyrs and Leonin (the latter being lion-people who are found in many Magic worlds.) Given their Greek mythology origins, I highly suspect that we'll also see Minotaurs and Centaurs reprinted in MOoT, as both races are found with some abundance in Theros.
New subclasses include the Bard's College of Eloquence and the Paladin's Oath of Heroism, both of which we've seen tested as part of Unearthed Arcana. The former seems fitting for the Theros equivalent of the Athenian Agora (which I was lucky enough to visit back in 2018) while the latter is built around the Classical ideals of heroism.
There are also new mythic monsters, which the announcement claims are beyond legendary. I don't know if that implies some new mechanical distinction or if they're just drumming up excitement for them. We'll see!
Finally, there are god-weapons, which are the iconic arms of the gods of Theros, and will presumably be some very exciting artifact-level magic items. I'm curious to see how these compare to the Vestiges from Exandria, which becomes an official D&D setting once the Explorer's Guide to Wildemount comes out later this month.
I'm literally beginning a Ravnica campaign tonight (even if we had a little preview-session as a last minute thing a week ago for some players) and while I'm sure I'll have plenty of material for that on Ravnica itself, I've definitely intended to expand into the greater Magic multiverse (which I still call Dominia, damn it!) and even came up with a special Feat that allows players to become Planeswalkers, so it'll be good to have a bunch of material for any adventures that take them to Theros - even, possibly, having players create Theros-natives who join the party if people want to make "alts" or their characters die or retire.
Folks, Baldur's Gate III Looks Really Good
I am no veteran of the Baldur's Gate games. I got "Enhanced Edition" when it became available and could never get past the tutorial phase of the game. I'm sure that it's a great game when you get used to its systems, and it's one of those games I'm constantly imagining I'll return to and try out "for real," but I haven't been able to get myself to do so. When the game first came out, I don't think I even registered it - it was around the time that I had finally gotten a video game console, and I was probably more excited about games like Mario 64, Ocarina of Time, and Perfect Dark.
But a couple things: one is, I've now become far more well-versed in D&D - both its (5th Edition) mechanics and the lore of the Forgotten Realms.
I've literally just finished playing Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus (which, to be fair, is only in Baldur's Gate until you hit level 5 - then you go to the titular first layer of the Nine Hells) so I have a much better sense of the eponymous city (it's not great!)
So my interest for this new game is piqued in a way that it certainly wasn't when the original came out over 20 years ago.
But what has really been encouraging me is seeing the way the developers are talking about it.
Naturally, behind-the-scenes stuff is part of marketing, especially on a project that is awaited but not coming out for a while. They want us to feel that there are passionate and talented people working on the project.
But I also think that you don't often get to see that "how the sausage is made" stuff unless they're feeling good about what they've made. What they've shown off is a game that looks like a labor of love, as well as one in which they're proud of what they're producing.
Anyway, I'm feeling pretty excited about this game. We might have something really great here, which is nice given that I don't feel like there have been many "really great" games coming out lately.
But a couple things: one is, I've now become far more well-versed in D&D - both its (5th Edition) mechanics and the lore of the Forgotten Realms.
I've literally just finished playing Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus (which, to be fair, is only in Baldur's Gate until you hit level 5 - then you go to the titular first layer of the Nine Hells) so I have a much better sense of the eponymous city (it's not great!)
So my interest for this new game is piqued in a way that it certainly wasn't when the original came out over 20 years ago.
But what has really been encouraging me is seeing the way the developers are talking about it.
Naturally, behind-the-scenes stuff is part of marketing, especially on a project that is awaited but not coming out for a while. They want us to feel that there are passionate and talented people working on the project.
But I also think that you don't often get to see that "how the sausage is made" stuff unless they're feeling good about what they've made. What they've shown off is a game that looks like a labor of love, as well as one in which they're proud of what they're producing.
Anyway, I'm feeling pretty excited about this game. We might have something really great here, which is nice given that I don't feel like there have been many "really great" games coming out lately.
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