WotC Announces OGL 1.0a and SRD Going to Creative Commons

 So, once again, I am no legal expert and certainly not one in this field. Those who are wary of celebrating any grand victory when corporate forces are in charge are right to be skeptical. However, it looks like Wizards of the Coast has reversed course.

Again, I want to seriously preface this with saying I am no more an expert in this stuff than you are. My legal background is that my mom was a lawyer who stopped practicing around the time I was born in the mid 80s - so in other words, everything I'm saying is just what I believe this all means.

The OGL, or Open Game License, is a document that WotC created detailing how other people can use the system they developed (originally 3rd Edition, but this was extended to 3.5 and 5th edition - though not, I believe, 4th). It promises, in what I believe is a legally binding way, that anyone who wants to can make products relating to their game as long as long as there is attribution, and that one does not need permission or to pay royalties. To define what "their game" means, the OGL refers to the System Reference Document, or the SRD.

The SRD is basically a giant block of text that details the rules of the game. It includes the core mechanics as well as stat blocks, spell and item descriptions - basically anything you need to run the game. There are, however, some notable absences here, which allow WotC to preserve their copyright on certain things. Creatures that are original to D&D, including Mind Flayers and Beholders, are not in the SRD, nor are named NPCs like Mordenkainen or Lord Soth (indeed, the rights to Lord Soth and Dragonlance were the source of some legal complexities due to the fact that the setting belongs to its creators, the Hickmans. I don't know if WotC fully bought them out or just got a license to make the recent adventure).

Now, as I understand it, the original plan was to put the OGL under Creative Commons, a nonprofit organization that basically holds onto licenses and other documents to protect them from being altered or rescinded by capricious corporate interests... you know, like Hasbro.

The seeming change with this announcement is that not only will the OGL be put under Creative Commons (unchanged from its 1.0a iteration, which is the one people were afraid of losing,) but the SRD will as well.

Now, I don't know to what extent it would profit WotC to retain the SRD. I suppose you could say that in theory, having the OGL unchanged but being able to change the SRD would make the OGL useless. After all, a spiteful WotC could theoretically edit the SRD to say "nothing, you suckers," and make the OGL's license to use it worthless, though that seems unlikely.

This move, though, once they go through with it (and here I understand some fear they'll pull the rug out just because, well, late capitalism is full of such bullshit, though I think they've already been bleeding from one self-inflicted wound in the foot and this would be a coup de grace) would mean that the SRD itself belongs to the public, and would thus mean that, perpetually, 5th Edition D&D remains open and accessible to anyone who wants to make stuff for it.

Now, the big question I have is whether any of this applies to One D&D.

In theory (again, remember that I'm just some dude at his computer who knows as much about this as you do) I believe the SRD as it stands is just the rules for 5th Edition (though there's also got to be rules for 3rd and 3.5). Nothing in this announcement has confirmed that the SRD for One D&D - which they claim is not going to be called 6th Edition but... sort of is, isn't it? - will also be put under Creative Commons. There's a possibility that the reason they acquiesced to the community's demands is that they only have a year or two left of 5th Edition to make stuff for before they move on, and so there's not much to win by holding it under such restrictions.

However, looking at the history of the OGL, I think it would be smarter of them to do this for One D&D as well. Yes, Pathfinder emerged as a big competitor to D&D, built as it was on 3.5 as a system, and it ate 4th Edition's lunch. But that pressure also caused them to make a much more popular system in 5th Edition, and D&D's popularity exploded to heights it had never seen before. Indeed, Paizo, which makes Pathfinder, has even started making content for 5th Edition, given the degree to which WotC has roared back into dominating the hobby.

Now, you could argue that this was really just a matter of making a better game system. But to me, it looks like the way that this sort of game thrives, you want to have a lot of people working on and designing things. If MCDM comes out with a monster book and someone got interested in Matt Colville because of his videos about 2001 a Space Odyssey, they might be interested in picking up D&D. If people watching the Legend of Vox Machina hear that Critical Role put out a book about Tal'dorei, and then realize that they could play an RPG in this setting if they get the D&D rulebooks, that's pretty great for WotC.

And, again, I think Pathfinder is one of the big reasons we got 5th Edition in the first place.

One of the core premises of capitalism is that competition breeds innovation. But over my lifetime, I've mostly seen big corporations do everything in their power to prevent anyone from competing, and to force customers down a single path, where they have no choice but to buy one company's products at the price they set.

In the short term, this strategy is, I'm sure, great for the executive class. But what it does is it erodes out the base of the business they are running, mining out the core purpose the business should be there to serve, and leaves everyone except for some CEO or Board member poorer for having lost a great product or service.

This problem of course applies to much more than just TTRPGs. But at least in this circumstance, the community has enough leverage to - I hope - hold back the tide of self-cannibalizing capitalism... on this one, small front.

Power and NPCs

 There's this inherent issue in the way that D&D (and, I think, a lot of similar TTRPGs) treat expertise and power. Generally speaking, the world is built for adventurers. As our player characters risk their lives in adventures, they gain more power. When it comes to martial classes, there's a certain logic to it - veterans perfect their martial techniques, and even just getting lots of exercise makes one stronger.

And to a certain extent, this makes sense for spellcasters as well - magic-users will get better at casting more complex magical spells in the heat of combat as they gain experience doing so.

But the odd result here is that know-how gets linked inextricably to one's experience fighting monsters. In D&D worlds, often the most powerful people are retired adventurers.

I had the following issue in the Spelljammer campaign I run on Sunday nights.

The party began at level 3, crash-landing on a colony world. Most of the monsters one faces in Wildspace are kind of geared for a tier-2 party or higher, so I decided to take a moment to introduce the characters and their dynamics via some classic grounded D&D (the players also wanted something of a space-western, and while I've leaned far more into the "X-Files/Roswell" vibe of the American Southwest, I figured we could do at least a bit of classic tier 1 "quests around a small town" thing.

To justify why they couldn't yet leave, I had their Spelljamming helm destroyed in the crash, and while they have a Living Ship (something I might already regret letting them start with - less for its ability to repair itself and more for having a treant in the hull that can defend the ship) the Helm needed to be replaced.

Now, they have an Artificer, but she'll only be able to cast the "Create Spelljamming Helm" when she hits level 17 - in other words, not for a very long time. This spell can also be cast by a Wizard, but even they would need to be level 9, as it's a 5th level spell.

So, I decided they would need to have an NPC come and cast the spell for them. But I also wanted to imperil said NPC (you know, for drama and to give them a reason to delve into the military base where one faction of Men in Black were being hunted by another faction of MIBs - the former being the classic "government agents trying to cover up the existence of aliens" vibe and the latter being "something deeply offputting that might be some kind of Cosmic Horror monstrosity in an unconvincing human-like disguise"). How, then, do you imperil a 9th level wizard or a 17th level artificer when the party is level 4?

The answer: maybe you don't need to be an adventurer to cast high-level spells.

See, the lens through which we see the worlds of D&D is very much built around the player characters, and the universal trait of all D&D characters, and the basis for their classes, is that they are adventurers. These are the people who delve into dungeons, fight monsters, and gain power and renown for their deeds. They're superheroes.

In the real world, you don't need to be a veteran soldier to design sophisticated computers.

So, I created an NPC, a dwarf named Erman Steelvar, who is an engineer that the government contracts with, and whom a friendly NPC had brought in to help fix the ship. Steelvar is a renowned engineer, but he's not a fighter. He's got the Commoner stat block, but has an Intelligence of 18 and can prepare and cast any Artificer spells that don't deal damage or restore hit points. And, if those spells have a casting time of less than one minute, they take at least one minute to cast.

The point is: this is a guy who understands the magic of artifice on a deep and profound level, thanks to a lifetime of study. But he's not a combatant. He's useless in a fight. Indeed, when the party found him, he had been stuffed in a closet to keep him safe during the incursion by a deadly "Division 10" agent, and when they took him out of the closet, he immediately had a heart attack, requiring the party to act quickly to save his life (here, magical healing was very useful).

I recommend looking at the possibility of expanding the world of civilians in your D&D settings. Adventurers are built to be very self-sufficient, but in most of these worlds, they're also very rare. I mean, few people would choose such a lifestyle if they had other options.

A Review of Fighting Styles in 5E

 So, while there's a lot of drama at the corporate level, I think most of us have very affectionate feelings toward 5th Edition as a mechanical gameplay system. Yes, there are some who will say that other systems are better (I think in matters of taste there is rarely anything that is strictly "better" than others) but I don't feel any qualms getting into the crunchy nitty-gritty.

Fighting Styles are options that Fighters, Paladins, and Rangers automatically get at either level 1 (Fighters) or level 2 (Paladins and Rangers). College of Swords Bards also get some of these options, and in One D&D, it looks like all three Warrior classes (Fighters, Monks, and Barbarians) will get access to them. In the latter case, we don't have a full picture of all the Fighting Styles, though the ones we've seen look pretty similar to what exists in 5E.

What I wanted to take a look at was the relative values of all these styles. I suspect that the potency can be surprising.

We'll start with those available to the Fighter, which covers most of them, and then take a look at the ones that only the Paladin or Ranger can get (which I think might be just one each).

Archery:

This is one of the most straightforward ones. You get a +2 bonus to your attacks with ranged weapons. So, how do we evaluate the power of this fighting style?

Ultimately, what it means is that whatever your percentage chance to hit with your ranged attacks increases by 10%. Let's say you have a +3 to Dexterity and a +2 Proficiency Bonus. That means that hitting a target with an AC of 16 will happen 50% of the time (11-20 on the d20). This fighting style increases that chance to 60% of the time.

I don't know that I want to go through the total math of the implications for that overall on your damage output, but overall just being able to hit with your attacks more often is going to be very good for you. So, while simple, I think this is a very strong choice if you're going to be a strongly ranged-focused character.

Let's imagine, just as a scenario, that you're a level 5 Dex Fighter with a nonmagical longbow. At this level you have 18 Dexterity (+4) and you're trying to fight a target with an AC of 18.

Without this fighting style, you will hit the target on an 11 or higher for 1d8+4 (8.5 damage on average) and crit on a 20 for 2d8+4 (13). That means 45% of the time you're dealing 8.5 damage and 5% you're doing 13, and 50% of the time you're doing 0. So, we get an average damage per attack of 4.475, doubled by your two attacks to 8.95 per turn.

With the fighting style, you're now hitting on a roll of 9 or higher, meaning you get a 55% chance to get your standard damage. That gives you an average damage per attack of 5.325, doubled to 10.65, meaning we've increased our damage per turn by 1.7.

That's honestly a little underwhelming, to be honest, though I think you could argue that any feature that lets you tack on things after you hit (such as a battle master's maneuvers) could bump this up significantly. There's also potentially a larger difference in the case of very high AC monsters and very low.

Blind Fighting:

This one's hard to evaluate on its own. The key, I think, is that characters could work synergistically to make this very potent. If you have a Warlock (with Devil's Sight) drop Darkness on the battlefield, and you have Blind Fighting, you could really wreck house together against a bunch of blinded enemies.

Indeed, this could serve well in non-combat situations as well.

Ultimately, this is situational, but in a common enough situation that I think it's a great choice (though probably for only for melee builds given its short range - 10 feet of blindsight is not going to be great for an archer.)

Defense:

This adds one point of AC if you're wearing armor. Like Archery, this is going to have a varying impact based on your own base AC and the hit bonuses of the things you're fighting. My Eldritch Knight took this as part of his quest to get an insanely high AC (this, a +1 shield, and plate put him at 22 and then he had the Shield spell to bump it to 27).

The value of this is also going to depend heavily on how many attacks you take in a round - if you're positioned to be the true tank and are getting attacked by multiple enemies, the benefit here has a real multiplier.

I will note, though, that if you're willing to spend 1500 gold on plate armor, this essentially makes Split into Plate and Chain Mail into Splint, so it's worth considering. It's also the only fighting style (except, situationally, Blind Fighting) that increases your own personal survivability.

Dueling:

The math here is pretty simple: you get two more damage per hit with an attack. If you have a longsword, you're now actually better off just using it with one hand.

Indeed, while 2 damage per hit might not seem like a lot, with multiple attacks this actually winds up being a pretty significant bonus - a flail, say, with +3 to Strength goes from 1d8+3 to 1d8+5, or 7.5 to 9.5 on average - a 27ish% increase.

Great Weapon Fighting:

On this, the math is somewhat more complicated but not by a ton. This allows you to reroll (once) 1s and 2s with any melee weapon you're wielding with both hands. Effectively, then, the way you can figure out the average damage for any die you're rolling is to first figure out the normal average (3.5 for a d6, 6.5 for a d12, etc.) and use that in place of 1 and 2 when adding up all the potential results. So, for example, our average d6 roll (such as with a Maul) would be (3.5+3.5+3+4+5+6)/6, which comes to 4.167 (4 and a sixth).

Thus, with 2d6 as the damage dice, a Greatsword or Maul goes from 7 average to 8.33, bumping damage for the dice alone by about 19%. When we account for Strength (let's look at a base of +3) that means 10 damage becomes 11.33, for a bump of 13% more damage.

Now, this will affect crits in a way that Dueling does not. Jeremy Crawford has said this is meant to only apply to the damage of the weapon itself, and not secondary effects like Divine Smite or Battle Master Maneuvers (or even Improved Divine Smite). I'd argue that in that case, while this is the only fighting style that pushes for maximizing damage with the hardest-hitting weapons in the game, it falls short of being really exceptional. However, if you home-rule it (like I do) to work with those other damage sources, it starts to look more appealing.

For instance, my Paladin has a +2 Greatsword. If she smites against a vampire spawn (she's in a Curse of Strahd campaign) at 2nd level, that hit would do 2d6+7+4d8. Without this, the average damage there would be 7+7+18, or 32 total.

With this, the 2d6 is now an average of 8.33, and the d8s are now going for 5.25 each, so the smite is now 21 damage, giving us a total damage of 36.33, which is... ok, it's 13% more damage.

Dang, maybe this fighting style just isn't that good?

Interception:

This is a fighting style I slept on until I saw both of our Paladins in our Wildemount campaign take it. And holy crap, folks. With this style, you can use your reaction to interpose a shield or melee weapon when another person within 5 feet of you is hit with an attack, reducing the damage of that attack by 1d10 plus your proficiency bonus.

Now, let's consider what this effectively means: on average, that's 5.5+PB, so at level 5, it's 8.5 damage reduced on average.

Another way to think about it: you get a potentially more powerful cure wounds as a reaction every single turn as long as you use it immediately.

Our party does not have a Cleric or a Druid or a Divine Soul Sorcerer, but our tactics are typically to have the two wizards far outside the fray (it's not a balanced party) or for us to each huddle up with a paladin. The number of hits that have been utterly negated by this fighting style is high. And even just reducing a hit from, say, 10 damage to 3 makes it a far less scary encounter.

Now, this will lose value as you start fighting creatures that hit harder (we'll compare it with the next one,) but this is still potentially a huge amount of damage negation without really any serious limitation on its use. I think this is a top-tier fighting style.

Protection:

The older cousin of Interception, this works similarly except it requires a shield (can't use this is you've got a two-hander) and rather than reducing incoming damage, this imposes disadvantage on the attack.

The math of advantage and disadvantage is complicated, but one of the issues you can have with this is that it might wind up not really doing anything - if the monster rolls two high rolls or two low rolls, you haven't really changed anything (you can ruin a sneak attack, potentially).

In theory this should be more useful if the monster is hitting so hard that 1d10+PB isn't really a significant chunk of the damage, but I think Interception is probably better than this in most cases.

Superior Technique:

I'd actually forgotten this exists. This basically lets you use a Battle Master maneuver once per rest, with a d6 superiority die to fuel it. Oddly, this might actually be best on a Battle Master, because I think you can use the maneuver you learn with this style using your other superiority dice.

I'd also consider taking this and Precision Attack if you are going with the Great Weapon Master or Sharpshooter feat, and thus potentially negate the downside of the -5 element of those feats.

Maneuvers are versatile and useful (and I think it's possible the One D&D Fighter will get them as a base Fighter feature,) making this a potentially exciting option - though it's also a little dependent on how often you take rests in your campaign.

Thrown Weapon Fighting:

This allows you to draw a thrown weapon with each attack, and gives you a +2 bonus to the damage of your thrown weapon attacks.

I think this would be great if there were better support for thrown weapons. The problem here is that past level 4 or so, you're probably looking for a magic weapon that you can use repeatedly. If you have an Artificer (a class that doesn't get Fighting Styles) to give you a Returning Weapon, this could be fun, but I think this is almost never going to be optimal. At most, it makes a thrown-weapon-based character just barely viable.

That, to be fair, is pretty cool. But this is still a big commitment just to be kind of on par with other playstyles.

Two Weapon Fighitng:

The math here is actually pretty simple - this will give you 5 extra damage per turn once your Strength or Dexterity is maxed out. With the One D&D changes to light weapons, dual-wielding looks a lot more viable as a playstyle, though with the 5E rules requiring a bonus action, it's a little more restrictive.

Still, given that we've shown that Great Weapon Fighting only adds 2 2/3 damage per round (with two attacks) and Dueling only adds 4, this starts to look pretty good. The one class I'd really not recommend it on is the Fighter if you plan to go to level 11 or higher, because as that class gets more attacks (not to mention action surge) beyond the normal two, this loses value while things like Dueling and Great Weapon Fighting get better (though even with three attacks, GWF still only gives you 4 more damage per turn).

Interestingly, at least in the 5E rules, Paladins don't get this, despite the fact that dual-wielding on a Paladin (or a Barbarian for that matter) is actually a pretty good choice, thanks to getting more chances to crit (and thus crit-smite) and the bonus damage of Improved Divine Smite.

Unarmed Fighting:

This gives your unarmed strikes a d6 damage die rather than being just 1, and adding Strength as usual. You can also deal 1d4 bludgeoning damage at the start of your turn to a creature you're grappling.

So, this is largely redundant to a Monk, who don't get Fighting Styles in 5E anyway.

This is niche, though while the Thrown Weapon style is not one I think there's much of a build for, you could definitely take this if you wanted to be a really grappling-heavy character. While there's some redundancy with the Tavern Brawler feat, there's also some synergy here, as well as the Grappler feat.

    So there you have it. Perhaps in another post we'll compare and contrast this with the One D&D Fighting Style feats and see whether their value rises, falls, or stays the same.

Vault of the Incarnates Wing 3

 So, Raszageth is not messing around. We managed to down the first boss on the first pull, but then it took us nine pulls to get the final boss of the raid down.

Let's do a quick overview of that first one though. I should say, though, that I broke my mental health rule on this one and tanked it the first go around - though honestly there's only one ability that really taxed me tank-wise on the final phase of Raszageth. Otherwise it wasn't too stressful (other than just watching my health ping-pong - seriously, she hits hard.)

Broodkeeper Diurna:

Diurna's kind of old-school in that they actually, genuinely, have the tanks do different tasks. One tank holds onto the boss more or less in the center of the room (maybe moving away from the adds when they spawn? I wasn't on this task). The other tank runs to where the various torch/brazier/spiraly stone things are around the room and picks up the adds that spawn near there.

The adds will get some kind of defensive buff if they're near the boss, so you need the raid to separate into two groups and have one group focus on taking adds down while the other focuses on the boss.

One mechanic I didn't interact with is that players will need to get some kind of laser beam to focus on them and destroy eggs that Diruna tries to empower.

After hitting some health percentage (I want to say around 30%) the fight basically becomes a tank-and-spank with a taunt-swap and the adds stop spawning. Again, DPS might have a more complicated task vis-a-vis egg destruction.

Raszageth:

You ready for this? There are five phases to this fight.

Phase One: You're on the platform where she starts the fight. Tanks will need to swap on each use of the Electric Jaws attack - relatively simple, it leaves a DoT on you, so healers will need to continue healing the off-tank.

Periodically, random (non-tank) players will be hit with an ability that leaves a kind of puddle/cloud of electricity on the ground that slows you and does damage to you. You want to place these in a kind of arch around the boss toward the edge of the platform. (They don't last forever).

You'll need these clouds/puddle things because periodically, the boss will knock everyone back, potentially off the platform to their deaths, but if you are knocked into these puddles (or get in before she does) you'll be stopped. (I actually recommend stepping in beforehand, as you won't be knocked back at all.) Much like on Dathea, Ascended and Sennarth, the Cold Breath, Death Knights can use Death's Advance to be immune to this external movement and ignore it (my co-tank was a DK who just got to chill out with the boss).

Additionally, on this phase, there are little blue circles that will briefly stun you if you get hit by them. Not terrible, but something to avoid.

Finally, when her energy fills, she'll summon a little storm sphere add at each player's position. These cast a spell that will do a bunch of raid damage, but if you interrupt them, they'll die instantly. Any sort of AoE stun or silence or what-have-you can be very useful here.

At 65% health, Raszageth will knock people off the central platform. Here, you'll need to figure out ahead of time how to divide the raid so that half get knocked to the left platform and the other half get knocked to the right.

Phase 2:

The divided raid needs to kill three big air elemental adds. Each has a shield that makes up about 20% of their health. When that shield goes down, eight or so Primalist adds show up, about half of whom are spellcasters. Kill all these adds and the big one and then move onto the next air elemental and repeat.

During this phase, Raszageth will strafe the platforms with her lightning breath, so keep an eye out for where she's coming from and move out of the way.

Once all the adds on your platform are down, you can step onto a teleporter to go to the fourth platform, where phase 3 begins.

Phase 3:

This phase is actually very similar to phase 1, though the knockback is less powerful and can just be run through (it might do more damage, though). Again, you want to interrupt the adds to kill them. When she gets down to I think 25% health, she'll fly away and phase 4 begins on the same platform.

Phase 4:

A giant air elemental will spawn in the center of the platform. You'll want to DPS it down while dodging the ball lightning it sends out in a circle from it, which stuns anyone it hits (briefly, at least on LFR).

The big thing here is that periodically the elemental will teleport away and spawn a bunch of tiny elementals that run directly to it. If they hit the big elemental, they heal it and also increase its damage done. Use any sort of AoE stuns, slows, roots, whatever to give yourself time to kill these quickly before returning to the big elemental.

Raszageth will also strafe the platform like she did on phase 2.

When the elemental is dead, everyone needs to group up on the side of the platform facing the original platform, because Raszageth will knock everyone back, ideally having them land on that final platform. (And not, you know, dying.)

Phase 5:

Ok, this is similar to phases 1 and 3, but there's one major thing tanks need to worry about. She'll do something called Thunderous Blast, which will hit the tank hard and then do raid damage based on how much damage it did to the tank. So tanks will want to save big damage reduction cooldowns for this moment, because the raid damage is enormous. Even with Guardian of Ancient Kings, the damage from this took out a lot of raid members on our last pull.

This is a mad rush to the end, and given how long the fight lasts, you might even get a second Bloodlust/Heroism/etc.

And with that, the first raid of Dragonflight is finished. We can talk about the lore implications in another post.

D&D Campaign Setting Books of 5th Edition

 It's a weird time for D&D fans. I'm stuck between a "internet mob mentality is blowing this out of proportion" position and a "well damn, this is a real shitty move on WotC's part" one. There's even an argument I've heard that all of this consternation is ultimately moot not justbecause the original OGL that people like is theoretically irrevocable, but that it might not even be necessary (under the theory that game rules is a process and you can't copyright a process, which is why "Words with Friends" never had to pay any money to whoever owns Scrabble).

The thing is, the deep lore and story of D&D dates back to well before WotC even owned the franchise. The specifics of the settings and lore are, in fact, something that company can and does have a copyright to.

Now, I actually prefer homebrewed settings in general as a DM. While my Ravnica game is now almost three years in and thus might actually be my longest-running campaign (of like three, one of which is running concurrently and started more recently) I love being able to throw my own lore around and really get into my own anachronistic blend of classic fantasy, sci-fi, and David-Lynchian weirdness.

WotC was fairly slow to release campaign setting books for 5th Edition. The Edition first came out in 2014, and for the first four years, the only campaign setting books was Sword Coast Adventuring Guide.

Sword Coast Adventuring Guide:

This one is an odd one. For one, it's surprisingly short given that it is a sourcebook for such a storied region. Interestingly, despite its short length, it has a wealth of subclasses - a feature found in most setting books, which I like even if there might be a cynical motivation (to encourage non-DMs to buy them as well - though honestly, I don't think most non-DMs even have the Player's Handbook).

In terms of information about the setting... ok, let's be honest, I haven't read this one in a long time. It touches on a lot of places, though perhaps only lightly. Really, of note, there are a lot of subclasses here that vary vastly in terms of power and satisfaction. I'll single out the Purple Dragon Knight as possibly the worst subclass in all of 5E.

The odd thing, though, is that because the Forgotten Realms and in particular the Sword Coast was more or less the primary setting for 5th Edition, this meant that most of the published adventures effectively expanded upon FR as a setting, making this book arguably less useful - if you want to know about Waterdeep, the gazeteer in Dragon Heist is probably more useful. Candlekeep? Look at Candlekeep Mysteries. Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale have a lot of details scattered in their adventure books.

Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica:

It was a full four years after the launch of the edition that we got a true sourcebook for another setting (though Curse of Strahd was obviously a Ravenloft adventure). This was a big controversy given that it was importing a setting from another IP, and particularly because Eberron got a relatively short PDF released around the same time (though WotC was clear this was a kind of preview of a full Eberron book, a lot of D&D purists were enraged, as purists are wont to be).

There are a lot of things to like about GGR. Primarily, they give you a great sense of the different guilds that are so crucial to the setting. Player options, NPC stats, and even adventure concepts are all arranged by guilds, so you have tons of tools with which to build Ravnican adventures.

What I think the book lacks is a bit about the actual places in the setting and the history. Now, worlds for MTG tend to be more about high concepts that fit into the mechanics of that game (something the guilds did very elegantly). Running my campaign, I've had to invent a massive host of lore for the setting.

Nevertheless, the format here was a successful one, and I think this counts as one of the better books in the edition.

Explorer's Guide to Wildemount:

This book makes a solid argument for Exandria being your go-to standard D&D setting. Like the Darrington Press-published Tal'dorei Guide that came out later (itself a revamp of the older Tal'dorei guide) Wildemount is built to be very friendly to the DM running things in the setting. Every location on the map has a sample adventure hook or two, or three. And the book comes with a system to build deep character backstories that will allow for a very personal, character-driven campaign.

If you're a Critical Role fan, especially if you liked the second and (what exists so far) of the third campaign, one of the big appeals is how seriously the players and DM take the characters, and this book is there to help you tell a dynamic and interesting story.

And on top of that, it has cool subclasses, monsters, and magic items. As a note, the only campaign I'm in right now as a player is set in Wildemount, and it's been a really great experience.

Eberron: Rising from the Last War:

Eberron was first released for 3rd edition, and was very popular. I don't know if it's been quite as popular with its 5E release. Now, I like Eberron, but I think Rising from the Last War as a book is... it's dense. If you really love the setting already and want to pull all kinds of details from it to build your campaign, I'm sure it's great.

But as someone who had a vague sense of the setting, I don't think I was ever able to get through the whole damned thing. You get your money's worth in terms of sheer density here, of course, but for my actual tastes and style, I don't know if this book was the right format for me.

Still, it gave us the Artificer, which I adore, and again, I mostly like it (it also has some really cool monsters).

Mythic Odysseys of Theros:

So, I was surprised by this one. While Ravnica is a very original setting (though one could argue it borrows a lot from Sigil, the planar hub city of the Planescape setting) Theros is MTG's take on Greek Myth, and thus, I think, suffers a bit from being, well, something you could already approximate in D&D anyway.

Theros does make the Gods a much more important part of the game - it's rare that I run a game where anyone who isn't a Cleric or Paladin cares about religion (though refreshingly, in the Spelljammer game I'm running, all four characters have a preferred patron deity).

I know this came out around the time that MTG revisited Theros, but even if I like the book all right (and it did introduce Mythic Monsters - a concept I think is very cool for encounter design) I still wonder if it was the best choice for another MTG crossover.

Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft:

I. Love. This. Book. As I argued in an earlier post, I think its format could be the model for future setting books. The book takes great care to not just throw a bunch of lore and stat blocks at you, but it really delves into a discussion about the horror genre itself.

Van Richten's acknowledges that Ravenloft is not just some other world - it's not really a world at all, but a nightmare.

So, not only do we get a substantial chapter for several domains of dread - some new and some classic (though many of the classic ones have been given a clearer horror hook, like Falkovnia) but there's also lots of horror mechanics - I haven't played with the Dark Gifts, but I'd eager to use the Stress system.

Spelljammer: Adventures in Space:

This suffered from a couple problems, the first being the build-up. WotC's announcement that this would be three different books seemed to imply that we'd get something really substantial. However, given that each of its three volumes was only about 60 pages, the total page count wound up being lower than most other books. And that lack of page count showed.

It's actually a shame that the whole set has been derided because two of its three component parts are quite good. Boo's Astral Menagerie has a lot of very cool, new, interesting monsters in it (though it doesn't seem like tier 1 adventures in Wildspace are really viable using the material here.) And Light of Xaryxis is actually a really cool structure for an adventure that feels truly easy to break up into single-session episodes.

The problem, though, is that while the new playable races (species? We haven't yet got the official name they're sticking with yet) are cool, that was kind of it for player options. A big chunk of the Astral Adventurer's Guide is dedicated to the ships, which... are sort of boring, to be honest.

Other that the Rock of Bral, there's not really any "Setting" to this setting book.

I think very few people got what they really wanted out of this box set, which is a shame, given how much excitement built up toward its release.

Quasi-Setting Books:

So, you'll notice I haven't mentioned Strixhaven or Dragonlance here, or the tiny sliver of Greyhawk that is Saltmarsh. I'm trying to stick strictly to full campaign setting books. Strixhaven is actually the one 5E book that I haven't gotten (actually, scratch that - I never got Call of the Netherdeep, but I'm a little inundated with adventure books I might never run).

The Dragonlance book's setting lore really just gives you enough to run the adventure - you'd likely need some older edition stuff to put together a full homebrew campaign set there. Strixhaven, as I understand, has tons of cool stuff for the setting that is then completely unused in the book's campaign.

Now, part of the reason I did this review is in anticipation and excitement for this year's 5th Edition Planescape book. Last year I read a bunch of old 2nd Edition sourcebooks for the setting, and while the mechanics made no sense to me (did creatures not have creature types back then?) the concept of these planes was super cool (I'll admit I was always a little less interested in the places where explicitly real-world mythological figures popped up, though you could argue that the line between that and D&D stuff is blurry.)

I've written before about what my biggest hopes for a Planescape book would be. The Spelljammer release, though, left me underwhelmed, so I'm hoping this is more akin to Van Richten's in terms of quality.

The OGL and the Future of D&D and TTRPGs

 So, right off the bat I want to make a disclaimer here that I'm not any sort of expert or authority on this. I'm mainly absorbing information about this topic through the D&D social media community.

Here's the basics: Wizards of the Coast is planning on announcing a new version of the Open Game License. The OGL was originally published with 3rd edition and established 3E as something akin to open-source software, though in published RPG book form. The general elements of 3E were free for any other game publishers to use and to create content for. If you wanted to make a monster book for D&D, you could publish it without needing permission or paying royalties to Wizards of the Coast.

There were a few things that remained restricted - you couldn't put out an adventure about Beholders or Mind Flayers - monsters that originated with the D&D IP - and you had to change the names of spells like Bigby's Hand to things like Arcane Hand to essentially scrub any copyrighted stuff. But you could make fully compatible content.

When 5th Edition came out, they extended the OGL to apply to it. As such, once again for the last 9 years, publishers have been able to put out their own content.

Now, however, it looks like WotC is preparing to publish a new OGL which will be more restrictive - it will require those publishers earning over a certain amount to pay them royalties, which also means that they'll require strict earnings reporting.

I don't know all the nuances of what will happen because of this. One thing that's interesting to note is that the original OGL was announced as being basically irrevocable - that users of the license were entitled in perpetuity to ignore any future OGLs they didn't like - something that almost seems like future-proofing for just such a scenario.

The general discourse here centers around Hasbro (who own WotC) pushing to squeeze more money out of the brand, but in doing so, stabbing basically an entire industry in the back.

I will bring up one note, though, in WotC's defense, that this may have been in part inspired by attempts by heinous people to use their brands and associated IPs in terrible ways. For example, a company calling itself TSR (the publishers of D&D prior to WotC, though this is not the same company) was publishing a new version of Star Frontiers (TSR's old sci fi TTRPG, many parts of which were reintegrated into the D&D Spelljammer setting) that had profoundly racist elements (I won't repeat them here, but suffice it to say that it broke humanity down into different playable races as if defined by a full-on Nazi). You could argue that the current OGL offers little recourse if someone makes a D&D supplement that is full of hateful, racist content, which I think WotC can legitimately argue would harm their brand.

But, it seems most likely that the biggest factor here is Paizo. Paizo publishes Pathfinder, which was built on the bones of 3E using the OGL and was popularly considered a preferably alternative to 4th Edition when it came out. Indeed, before 5E came out, I nearly joined a Pathfinder game (it never came together) and when I asked about why we wouldn't play D&D, the would-be GM said "well, no one really plays D&D anymore."

WotC has cited that they don't want to basically be supporting their competitors, though I think this sentiment flies in the face of the spirit of the original OGL.

TTRPGs as a hobby have become far more popular in recent years, and yes, 5th Edition has been a huge part of that. I think the philosophy behind the OGL was that a rising tide lifts all ships - after all, you get more people going into game stores and you'll get more people seeing and checking out more games.

I think that there's a certain worldview on the corporate side of WotC that would very much like D&D to be the only game in town, but I doubt that the creative side is interested in that - after all, Jeremy Crawford has said that he's constantly trying out new game systems, which seems a wise thing for a game designer to do.

It's unfortunate that this weighs down on some of the excitement about D&D that has been building around One D&D and even the D&D movie (that, shockingly, looks like it might actually be good? Or at least not gratingly terrible?)

So, WotC must know that news of this new OGL has gone over like a lead balloon, but given the absolute shitshow that is our late capitalist system, I'm skeptical things are going to all get better.

We'll have to see how things go down.

From my perspective, I think there's a lot of inertia with gaming groups. For example, I've wanted to run a Starfinder game for a while, but it's just so much easier to get people to run a 5E Spelljammer game instead, even if I'd like to run a game with a more explicit sci-fi genre feeling. (And I honestly have no idea how I'd convert our Paladin and our Monk to Starfinder classes).

So I'm a little skeptical that any other game is going to take over due to community outrage.

In an ideal world, we'd see a blossoming of the TTRPG scene, with D&D becoming just one among many successful and popular game systems (while there are other successful systems, nothing as far as I can tell comes remotely close to D&D's popularity). I'd also be relieved if WotC listens to this and revises their new OGL to fit in better with what the community wants.

But I also think it's important that we figure out what, precisely, we want. I don't have earnings reports for Critical Role or Paizo or anything. And I'm no lawyer - my instinct is that the OGL is old enough and established enough and very clear in its irrevocability that WotC can't really change the deal here, but on the other hand, WotC has the full might of Hasbro behind it, and sometimes fancy lawyers can make a simple case advantageously more complicated.

Really I think what sucks here is that WotC stands to lose a ton of good will from the community and the industry - and I genuinely don't know enough about that industry to know if the changes they are proposing are reasonable or not.

Vault of the Incarnates Wing 2

 Well, we're at the very end of the first week this was open, but I've also run this thing on... yes, every character I've taken to the Dragon Isles. I've been sick this week, with nothing to do really, so I've been going full altoholic mode (see the name of the blog) and running it on a grand total of nine characters.

While my main is a protection paladin, I've made an allowance for myself to run LFR as Retribution on the first week and not stress out about the complexities of tanking these fights until I've got a sense of how they work. It's been quite illuminating, even if I find myself sometimes frustrated that some tanks still can't understand how to do a tank swap, a mechanic that has basically been on every raid boss since... Wrath?

Anyway, let's look at these bosses!

Terros:

This enormous earth elemental is the simplest in the wing, but still requires a little attention. The key to the fight is managing the pillars that he conjures at the locations of certain players. The players who get this debuff (which happens around the same time there's a big "stack up to soak this" swirly circle) should clump up, in a line radiating from the boss if possible, so that the pillars are all near one another. The tanks will then periodically get a big line reticle on them for a big ability that will shatter any pillars that it hits.

The pillars will pulse raid damage, so you want to try to keep them minimized by shattering them with this ability. When they are destroyed, there'll be a brief period of increased raid damage for each pillar shattered, but this only lasts a couple seconds (way better than having them continue pulsing for the rest of the fight).

At 100% energy, the boss will do a giant 90-degree cone that puts a permanent damage zone where he's pointing. He'll turn about 90 degrees when you move out of it, so basically once he's done this four times, you've hit the enrage timer.

The rest of the fight is pretty straightforward, with obvious things to dodge.

Sennarth, the Cold Breath:

Terros was pretty straightforward. This fight is not.

When the fight begins, Sennarth is hanging from the ceiling and there's a big spider with a bunch of smaller spiders on the platform. The big spiders are the top priorities for dps, and you'll get a couple of them as you climb the room.

Yes, this fight is a big climb to the top of the spiraling path.

Sennarth itself will attack the tank and periodically spit webs at them as well as random players, which give you a DoT when you stand on them that stacks up. (On higher difficulties, this debuff is also necessary to avoid the thing I'll mention next, but on LFR you just want to avoid these as best you can).

Sennarth will periodically shoot strands of web at every raid member and try to pull them into the hole in the center of the room. You just need to run away from her when she does that.

What makes this all a bit more difficult is that the path up gets strewn with ice, which makes movement tricky - basically, it'll take a while for you to get up to full speed and it'll also take you a while to stop.

Sennarth herself moves gradually up the spiraling path. She also has an energy bar, and when it fills, she summons one of the big spiders.

These spiders have a cone attack and put more ice on the ground, and I think they also just pulse frost damage, so you want to burn them down asap.

The big spiders come with small spiders. These can basically die to incidental AoE, but if you have high stacks of the web DoT, you can stand in their green death-burst to instantly clear those stacks. (This is, I think, a more important mechanic in higher difficulties, where you need the web debuff to avoid getting pulled into the pit).

Eventually, when Sennarth makes it to the top of the path, she'll climb down to engage you directly. The entire floor here is icy, and rather than pull you, she'll periodically push you away, so you'll want to line up right in front of her and run forward when she does this. Here, it's a damage race, as the raid will get a stacking debuff that increase their cold damage taken. I recommend saving Heroism/Time Warp/Blood Lust, etc. for this phase. This phase will, however, go quicker the more damage you put on her during the climb, so your mileage may vary.

Kurog Grimtotem:

At any given time, this fight is relatively simple, but overall it's very complex. That's because there are a lot of abilities to deal with.

The bigger picture is that Kurog will need to be tanked in one of four quadrants of the room (never in the center, or you'll get a ton of raid damage and wipe very quickly). Each of these quadrants is affiliated with a different element. While he's in a quadrant, he'll get a stacking buff that increases the damage he does with that element, and he'll also have abilities that are associated with said element.

When he hits 100 energy, he'll go to the center and summon two big adds based on the two quadrants he absorbed the most energy within. You need to kill these adds to get him to come back.

So, basically, tanks need to move Kurog around in a big circle over the course of the fight. If he hits 100 energy a third time, he enrages.

Oh, and in all phases, Kurog periodically does a cone attack that you'll want to only hit one tank, and then have them switch. Try not to hit any of the raid with the cone.

First, let's talk about the quadrants, then we'll talk about the adds. Then we'll talk strategy.

Air Quadrant: This is often a good place to start. There will be pulses of nature damage to the raid, and sometimes he'll summon three little circles that a player will need to soak to avoid have the raid take a bunch of damage. I think that might be it for Air.

Earth Quadrant: Periodically, Kurog will create radiating concentric circles of earth, similar to the Khajin the Unyielding fight in Halls of Infusion, where you need to step out and then in to avoid getting hit. He'll also summon two earth elementals (not to be confused with the big adds during the transition phases) that need to be picked up, tanked, and burned down.

Frost Quadrant: To the best of my knowledge, the only major ability here to look out for is that he'll put a swirly "stack here" debuff on two random raid members. People should stack up to share the damage, but you want to do this in two groups so that no person is getting hit with both when they go off.

Fire Quadrant: While he's in here, Kurog will create pools of lava where some people are standing, and then periodically send out temporary blasts of fire to where every raid member is standing multiple times - you should run away from him when he does this and just avoid getting hit by any of the fire.

Now, let's talk adds:

Air Elemental: This guy's most annoying property is that he'll teleport around. He'll periodically zap a random party member with a channeled spell that deals damage to them and anyone standing near them. If you get this on you, you'll want to run away from the raid while healers put a little extra focus on you.

Earth Elemental: This guy will periodically pick a few random raid members and give them a couple seconds before they put a giant earthquake-like zone on the ground where they're standing, which does damage to anyone standing in it, and then eventually kind of detonates them to do a ton of damage to anyone standing in it. If you get this, run to the edge of the room to place the zone out of the way.

Frost Elemental: This one will periodically channel a big storm that does massive frost damage to the raid. However, if you stand near him, you'll take far less, so the raid needs to stack up on him when he does this.

Fire Elemental: I honestly don't remember what this guy does, but it's not as big of a deal as the others'.

Bringing it all together: So, yeah, Kurog's complex overall, but simple most of the time. The timing of the quadrants is mostly about which adds you want to get together. I recommend going with Air-Earth-Water-Fire, because both the Air and Earth adds on the transition phases have "spread out" mechanics while the Water (Frost) add has a "stack up" mechanic. On one pull, we got Earth and Frost together, which was disastrous.

Tanks will want to pull him from quadrant to quadrant, generally starting on Air/Storm and going clockwise. Pull him to the next zone when he gets to 50 energy, and then start in the next one after the first add phase.

And phew! That's six of the eight bosses in Vault of the Incarnates covered. This wing is definitely more complex than the previous one (though Primal Council might have the most potential for other raid members to drive you insane).

Dragonflight Story - What Are We Missing?

 On its surface, the story of Dragonflight has been pretty straightforward in this first patch (I'll state here I've done the Renown 11 campaign quests for the Vadrakken Accord and Iskaara Tuskar). The Dragon Isles have awoken, and the Titan machinery has been reactivated, which has allowed the dragons to return to their ancient home, and we've come along for the ride.

Then, we've also got the Primalists - both the proto-dragons and their mortal followers - who want to make war on the dragons and undo the Titanic ordering of Azeroth and restore it to its previous elemental chaos.

But will the story remain so simple? I'm almost certain it will not.

So, I wanted to talk about things I've noticed - loose ends and complexities that might inform the ongoing story of the expansion.

Where Did the Humanoid Primalists Come From?

The first question to look at is where all these primalists came from. We know that the Primal Incarnates were around in the distant, pre-War-of-the-Ancients past, and had a conflict with the Aspects, which the Aspects wound up winning (evidently with some help from the Old Gods, though only Neltharion was aware of that bargain). Kurog Grimtotem, who you can now kill in LFR, shows up during the Evoker starting experience and frees Raszageth, who then goes to the Vault of the Incarnates to free the other three Incarnates.

What do we know about the Primalists as a faction - the ones who are not dragons themselves?

The Primalists use elemental magic similar to shamanism, and seem to be made up of a limited number of Azeroth's playable races. By my count (and it's possible I've missed some) I've seen Night Elves, Dwarves, Draenei, Tauren, Trolls, and Vulpera among the Primalists. What's interesting about this is that these are all races that can be Shamans, with the exception of the Night Elves. This is not, however, all the races that can be Shamans - I don't believe we see any Orcs, Kul Tirans, Zandalari Trolls, Dark Iron Dwarves, or Highmountain Tauren.

Now, given their use of elemental magic and their chaotic bent, one might be tempted to think that they're the remains of Twilight's Hammer. However, there are quests in the Waking Shores that imply that Twilight's Hammer is a faint shadow of its former self - a single ogre uses illusion magic to try to convince a group of dragonkin to do his bidding, but you can take him out and they'll become neutral to you.

While most bad guys think they're the good guys in the real world, in WoW there's a tendency to have a fairly mustache-twirling quality to evil factions. Here, though, the Primalists are constantly admonishing us for being deceived and manipulated - one random enemy in a quest in Azure Span's dying words were "For Azeroth." And really, their claimed purpose isn't entirely unsympathetic: they claim to be champions of nature and the natural order, and believe the Titans imposed a cruel and unnatural system upon the world.

So, where did all these people come from?

Kurog's last name associates him with one of the longest-running and most elusive villains in WoW. Magatha Grimtotem has been around since vanilla, and while she's been behind such evil acts as having Cairne secretly poisoned in his Mak'gora with Garrosh (a fight he might have won, despite his age, and whose death by that poison robbed Garrosh of a clean and honorable victory... who knows, maybe Hellscream wouldn't have become such an asshole if he'd been able to feel secure in his legitimacy? Or maybe he'd just be dead and the Horde would have had the wisdom of Cairne guiding it for this past decade.) Despite being pretty explicitly evil, Magatha has positioned herself in such a way that we've never really been in a position to fight her - she even winds up one of the Shaman class champions in Legion.

Magatha was associated with Twilight's Hammer, but seemed to never really be loyal to the cause or subservient to Cho'gall. When we see her in Thousand Needles, we wind up helping her deny them a powerful destructive artifact (that she just so happens to take for herself).

The only reason I'm skeptical that she's really behind this is that I think she's not one for ideology - rather, she's in it for personal power. And you really have to respect someone who has remained a mortal enemy of basically the entire Horde for this long and hasn't yet been taken down.

Was Tyr Really a Good Guy?

The general impression we've gotten about Tyr is that he was a great guy - of all the Titan Keepers of Ulduar (which was the command center of the Titanforged on Azeroth... and also the prison of Yogg-Saron, which... maybe wasn't the best idea?) Tyr seems to have cared the most about helping the mortal races. He's also strongly associated with the dragons, because he was the one who facilitated the uplifting of the Dragon Aspects.

But there are some things that are a little unsettling about the process.

The Primalists attack the Ruby Life Pools claiming that they want to rescue the eggs and whelps from Titanic corruption. We learn that the waters that flow down from Tyrhold (or Uldorus, as it's officially called) instill Order magic (aka Arcane) into the eggs, and basically create a predisposition toward order within the dragons who hatch from those eggs.

That's... kinda shady, is it not?

Now, to be fair, reading the various books one can find in the new Uldaman dungeon, it seems that the truly shady figure here is Odyn - something we've kind of known since he was introduced in Legion.

Tyr is, of course, also associated with human culture on Azeroth - Tirisfal is called that because it's where Tyr fell, and the tradition of Paladins is deeply tied to symbolism related to Tyr - the Silver Hand, etc.

Now, given the direction of the campaign quests in 10.0, it's likely we're going to have a chance to get to know a lot more about Tyr pretty soon. What is it about what Tyr did that the Primalists object to so much?

What's With All the Whispering Shards?

The story in Ohn'aran Plains is relatively straightforward - the Nokhud Clan of Centaurs allies with the Primalists and tries to conquer the other clans. But there are a couple of quests in that zone that deal with something else - a number of weird crystals and shards that seem to tempt and corrupt people they encounter. In one case, a wounded centaur takes one of these crystals and jams it into his wound, which "heals" him enough to go out hunting, but he's so supercharged with power that he winds up hurting his brother. Another is found by the Sundered Flame and seems to be compelling anyone who finds it to obsessively hold onto it.

Now, this expansion shares a lot of DNA with Cataclysm. Both are expansions about dragons that are also heavily about elementals. Deathwing's legacy is a huge part of what's going on - indeed, Alexstrasza's goal is to try to regain the power the Aspects lost when they gave it up to defeat Deathwing.

Cataclysm was also, in part, about the Old Gods. Deathwing had been driven to madness by them (N'zoth in particular, if memory serves,) and it was actually in Cataclysm's final raid that we first heard about N'zoth.

Of course, as of the end of Battle for Azeroth, the four Old Gods of Azeroth have all been slain... right?

Y'shaarj was killed in the very ordering of Azeroth (before the Dragons were even uplifted,) and then we adventurers have taken down C'thun, Yogg-Saron, and N'zoth.

But the Old Gods are so weird and alien and insidious that one wonders if they're truly gone. Y'shaarj left behind the curse of the Sha, after all.

And let's not forget all the stuff surrounding The Blade of the Black Empire, and our discovery that Xal'atath was merely an entity that was trapped within said blade - and who now walks freely in the body of an elf that it possessed.

It seems highly possible that N'zoth's essence now sits within that blade, almost like a Lich's phylactery.

But regarding these shards on the Dragon Isles, do we even know that these are associated with the Void? There's also a cursed spellbook of some sort that captures the souls of various Sundered Flame folks in Azure Span, and that seem very much an Order/Arcane item.

Murozond Rises?

So, I'll confess that I've been a bit obsessed with time travel since I was a little kid and saw Back to the Future and Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. As such, the Bronze Dragonflight are by far my favorite dragonflight, and I'd be all in on a time-travel expansion that actually leans into those tropes, unlike Warlords of Draenor, which did everything it could to pretend like it wasn't a time-travel expansion.

The leveling campaign in the Dragon Isles ends with the Bronze and Infinite flights, and even has us part... not exactly amicably, but non-aggressively with Eternus, and with Chromie's resolution to find some way to rescue Nozdormu from becoming Murozond.

Now, is that just a coincidence?

It's also Nozdormu who is featured in the Dragonflight animated shorts with Emberthal, delving into the history of the Dracthyr - sure, he's one of the Aspects, and one of only two of the originals still left, but should we read anything into the focus on him?

Another thing I think is worth noting is that the Primalist Future we visit in the Thaldraszus campaign quests remains visitable - it's even where this week's world boss dragon is found, and is a location for Primal Storms. Is Blizzard trying to remind us that the timeways are open in this part of the Isles?

    Overall, my suspicion is that this expansion has a lot of hidden details that aren't going to make themselves apparent until we get farther in. I haven't even touched on the Brackenhide Gnoll's use of Decay - our first explicit mention of this force since the introduction of the concept in Chronicle Volume 1 (though I think we had retroactively associated it with Dark Shamanism and the pollution of Garrosh's "True Horde" shamans).

I also haven't gotten through all the renown campaign quests (though the Iskaara Tuskar one at renown 11, while dramatically satisfying, didn't feel like it was blowing me away with any big new lore drops,) so it could be that there's big information I'm missing that's even available in-game already. But we'll see how things go over the coming months.