Whoops, Missed One: Also, Curriculum of Chaos Will Bring MTG's Strixhaven to D&D

UPDATE: I had misread! Curriculum of Chaos is not a campaign setting book! Instead, it will be an adventure! This will mark not just the first adventure book to be set in an MTG world, but also only one of a tiny number of adventures in 5th Edition not set in the Forgotten Realms (Curse of Strahd and Ghosts of Saltmarsh, I believe, being the only other exceptions, and the former more or less starts in Faerun by default.)

 Well, they told us that they weren't done with MTG settings coming to D&D, and apparently the next one is going to be set in Strixhaven. Yes, Amazon spilled the beans again here.

Strixhaven is actually the most recent setting for MTG's latest card set (the next is actually the Forgotten Realms, doing a crossover in the other direction.) Strixhaven is a university of magic on the plane of Arcavios. The university is divided into five schools: Lorehold, Prismari, Silverquill, Witherbloom, and Qunadrix (which correspond to each "enemy color" pair.)

Having only just gotten back into MTG after a few months away, I can't say much about its lore, except that I think it's a relatively low-stakes setting, acting more as a Hogwarts-like (though I think more of a college than a middle/high school) setting in which the schools or houses engage in friendly competition.

I know that Lorehold (the Red/White school) focuses on history and archaeology and I believe summoning spirits of the past to aid them. Silverquill (White/Black) is about performance and seems to have these creatures made of ink that they summon. Witherbloom (Black/Green, obviously) is all about biology and has little creatures called Pests designed to be sacrificed for magical purposes. And then Quandrix (Green/Blue) is about the fundamental forces of nature. Then Prismari (Blue/Red) is... I think, about pure spellcraft.

The main connection to larger MTG lore that I know of is that "Professor Onyx," who teaches at I believe Witherbloom (though I could have that wrong) is actually Liliana Vess, who has gone into hiding after her coerced participation in Nicol Bolas' assault on Ravnica.

While I think there's probably lots of potential here, I have to say that as someone who played MTG back in the early 90s, I feel like this is a weird choice. To risk a bit of cynicism here (and let's be clear, WotC, and especially its parent company Hasbro, are part of the cynical capitalist machine, no matter our sense of loyalty to the creatives working in said machine,) there's a whiff of cross-promotion here. I still think the best MTG setting they could do in D&D would be Dominaria, because it's the world that feels like it has the most substance for adventures.

I also think that I'm less enamored of the "wizarding school" trope than most (it doesn't help that the author of the Harry Potter books that popularized that trope so much has revealed herself to be a hateful bigot, which has somewhat chilled my formerly warm feelings toward that series).

On the other hand, the MTG books have been kind of a bonus on top of D&D's regular schedule of releases, so I can't really complain. Obviously, I've made great use of Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica (which, to be fair, was my favorite MTG setting already) and while Theros would never have been my first choice (or second) and was probably chosen mainly because Theros Beyond Death came out a little before its release, I do enjoy Greek myth.

I don't mean this post to be such a downer. In fact, I'm very excited for this book to come out, even if the nitpicker in me feels like there are other MTG settings I'd prefer. But a D&D setting book is actually a great opportunity to flesh out a world, and so we might get some really awesome details about this world.

Also, with only five schools (as opposed to ten guilds or fifteen gods) this book might be able to go very deep indeed on its setting's factions.

The Wild Beyond the Witchlight: A Feywild Adventure - The Next Book for D&D 5th Edition

 Well, Amazon has done it again. A new product page for a D&D book has come before an official announcement. And that product is called The Wild Beyond the Witchlight. By the title and its subtitle, not to mention the blurb on the Amazon page, this looks to be the big fall adventure book for 2021.

The Feywild hasn't really seen much exposure in 5th Edition - apart from some mention in the Dungeon Master's Guide and one or two of the adventures in Candlekeep Mysteries involving it, we haven't really touched on it that much.

Of course, the Feywild is D&D's version of the land of Faerie, based mostly on the Irish myth concept of the Otherworld. As one of the closest planes to the Prime Material, the Feywild is a reflection of the material world we inhabit, but the rules are a bit different.

The Feywild's inhabitant are the Fey - a fairly common creature type. Fey are most classically represented by sprites and pixies, and if we get the playable races that were presented in the Folk of the Feywild Unearthed Arcana, there may simply be a Fairy race. Among monsters that D&D parties tend to face, the most iconic fey tend to be hags, who represent the classic "wicked witch."

We know nothing about the adventure itself beyond its setting, though we can probably infer that hags will play a part, given the idea of the "witchlight."

While the Feywild is known for its bright colors and whimsy, it's not a safe place. You could argue it's a place defined largely by chaos, though it might be less that it's chaotic and more that the laws there are profoundly different from what mortals are used to. The fey have very different expectations of behavior, and so things that might seem somewhat arbitrary to us - like giving gifts or attending parties - might be seen as more important than life or death.

In an earlier post, I suggested one way for a fey character to become an antagonist purely through the oddities of different ethical and moral systems, rather than true malice. The characters gets invited to a party at an archfey's house. While at the party, they are asked if they are enjoying themselves. The correct answer is to just change the subject, because if they say they aren't, then the archfey becomes profoundly depressed at his failure to entertain such esteemed guests and decides that no one can be allowed to survive, as he could not allow his reputation as a gracious host to be sullied by a bad party. On the other hand, they also can't say that they are enjoying it, because then he will decide that he must never let them leave - if they leave, it means they're no longer enjoying the party, after all. And he'd much rather the adventurers die before they can grow bored, as the latter would be a much worse fate, wouldn't you agree?

So, the fey can be treacherous and dangerous without any malice, and navigating the complexities of fey etiquette could be one of the challenges to the setting.

Of course, it's also home to creatures who are perfectly malicious, like Hags, who just plain enjoy making people suffer.

Indeed, while the Feywild might look like the good mirror of the Shadowfell, the truth is that it can be just as scary and dangerous. It just might be a bit more colorful.

Anyway, I'm pumped for this new adventure, though it won't be out until September.

The Priests of Osybus - The Implacable Foe

 As much as Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft avoids dwelling on what stat block you should use for your Darklords (giving suggestions that are often lower-level than you'd expect a primary villain to have, but with suggestions on how to use an underpowered villain to still pose a major threat to the party) the book does also contain some really brilliantly cool and original monsters.

The Priests of Osybus have a pretty fantastic lore background that goes into the deep history of the Ravenloft setting.

Osybus was a powerful necromancer who bargained with anyone who would grant him power, seeking to attain immortality. He attracted a cult that sought to share in his power and immortality, and eventually he became a Lich. Among the powers that Osybus dealt with were the Dark Powers themselves... before the domains of dread were even a thing.

In fact, Osybus had as a nemesis one Strahd von Zarovich - before his transformation into the first vampire. Strahd and his allies in the Ulmist Inquisition hunted Osybus down, ultimately defeating him thanks to the betrayal by his priests, who feared he would one day consume their souls.

As he was slain, Osybus cursed his betrayers, that the immortality he had shared with them would fail them when they least expected it. The curse took hold, and the priests turned to the Dark Powers for a way to break the curse. The Dark Powers gave them a mission in exchange for this service - to find a champion who could conquer the world in their name. The priests chose Strahd von Zarovich for this role, and guided him to the Amber Temple, where he would fall to evil and become a vampire.

But little did they know: Osybus had, in fact, become one of the very Dark Powers with whom they had bargained, and their mission was doomed to fail, as Strahd's fall to evil led to the Mists of Ravenloft swallowing up Barovia and the priests with it.

Priests of Osybus are a great villainous organization to throw into a Ravenloft campaign - they're sort of an independent evil, working against the Dark Powers, but not with any sort of good motivation. They seek to break Strahd out of the Mists and unleash him on the world.

I think an interesting way to use these priests as treacherous allies - you could have some named NPCs representing them that present themselves as experts who can help a party navigate and, they'll claim, eventually escape the Mists, while their true goals are quite malevolent.

But what about the stat blocks?

The central and most horrifying thing about a Priest of Osybus is that you're going to have to kill them over and over if you want to be sure they're dead. When a living one dies, you roll on a table, and they rise with half their maximum hit points, becoming undead and getting a random buff depending on your roll. This continues every time they die until they roll a buff that they already have, at which point the priest dies. Still, that means that at bare minimum, you're going to have to kill one of these guys twice if you want to be rid of them, and likely many more times.

But beyond these buffs, the priest has some nasty abilities. Its main melee attack is a dagger that, when it hits, automatically paralyzes the target (no save against this). Furthermore, if that dagger reduces the target's HP to 0, it automatically kills them and the character's soul becomes a magical tattoo on the priest's body - which it can then turn into a Shadow with a bonus action (on a recharge.)

It can also effectively cast two tier-3 Chill Touches per turn if it's not attacking with the dagger.

While only CR 6, I'd be cautious about throwing too many of these at a party, given that each of them can potentially be as many as seven fights in one, getting more powerful with each death. I'd also think about having them play dead (especially if they can "die" by falling off a cliff or otherwise being inaccessible) and coming back later as an undead menace.

If you want to run a Ravenloft campaign that gets really into the broader fantasy underpinnings of the setting (as opposed to just using it as an excuse for horror adventures) these folks are a really great group to use.

Are Tritons Seriously Underrated?

 Volo's Guide to Monsters was a huge expansion of playable races in 5th Edition. It gave us official stats for Aasimar, Goliaths (ok, that was technically a reprint), Kenku, Tabaxi, Orcs, Goblins, Hobgoblins, Bugbears, Yuan-Ti Purebloods, Kobolds, and the subject of this post: Tritons.

Essentially merfolk but with legs instead of a fish-tail, I don't think I've ever seen any other players pick this as their character's race. And frankly, I'm kind of surprised.

Obviously, in D&D, race choice is often based on thematics and aesthetics, and building a story around them. The classic races like dwarves, elves, and such, come with a lot of lore and attitudes built in. Personally, I'm weirdly drawn to the most mundane (human) and the most outlandish (things like Warforged, or the awesome new Gothic Lineages in Ravenloft).

Tritons, at least in the games I've played, have kind of slipped under the radar, but I think they're really cool. They come with a whole host of really awesome features.

First off, there's the obvious: as underwater people, they have an innate swim speed and can breathe underwater. That might seem so-so, but take the following into account: Creatures with an innate swim speed don't get disadvantage on weapon attacks underwater. And creatures who can breathe underwater are unimpeded in spellcasting with verbal components. Yes, you can take care of the latter with a water breathing spell, but there's nothing stopping a Triton from wielding a Greatsword just as well below the waves as they do above them, which is pretty sweet.

Next, they have cold resistance, which is one of the most common forms of magical damage, and furthermore protects you from exhaustion if you ever go to a place of extreme cold. If you're playing Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden, a Triton (or Silver/White Dragonborn or Goliath) is not going to have to worry about the chill.

And they have darkvision, which is not, like, rare, but still nice to have (Tritons having darkvision and Goliaths having cold resistance were both errata'd into Volo's when they were slightly updated in Mythic Odysseys of Theros and Rime of the Frostmaiden, respectively).

But the hits keep coming:

Like tieflings and drow, you get some innate spellcasting, getting access to fog cloud, gust of wind, and wall of water.

And finally, just like Aquaman, you can communicate simple ideas to aquatic animals, though like with Firbolgs, the ideas you can convey are limited, and you don't get to understand their responses.

The default ability score increase for Tritons is a +1 to Strength, Constitution, and Charisma, which makes them obvious candidates for Paladins, but thanks to the Tasha's rules that let you reassign these scores, like any race, they can go with any class (though given that it's a 3-ability spread, they might be best suited for classes that want decent scores in many abilities, like a Barbarian (S/D/Con) or a Ranger (D/W/Con).)

Most fantasy worlds don't really go into detail about civilization beneath the waves - given our own world and its decidedly non-amphibious humanoid population, I think most fantasy creators think of oceans as mostly negative space on their maps.

But I think there's a ton of really fascinating potential in underwater societies that have their own cultures and histories, perhaps interacting with the surface but also distant from them. In fact, given that the sea-dwelling humanoids are the ones who can operate in both worlds, there might even be a haughty superiority to them. Of course, as also seen in Volo's description, Tritons are often forced to deal with threats from the deep that the rest of the world doesn't even know about.

My friends and I are in the very early stages (as in, we don't have a full player list) of putting together a Wildemount campaign that I'll be playing in, and I'm starting to lean heavily toward playing a Triton, likely living somewhere in the Menagerie Coast (perhaps the son of an ambassador or something.)

The Climax of Critical Role's Second Campaign (SPOILERS)

 Critical Role's second campaign started three years ago in January of 2018. They've now had what is presumably the "final boss" fight of the campaign, with what is likely to be a denouement episode to close out the campaign next week, similar to how things worked out in the first campaign.

Campaign two has been a fairly different experience than the first one for a few reasons. The first campaign jumped in in the middle of it, when the players were already level nine or so, and with a home game that had already gone on for a few years prior to the stream. Apart from a few sessions with pairs or one trio of group members at level 1 to get a feel for the characters, the second campaign started things off more or less at the beginning, with the whole group getting together in the first episode.

Structurally, the first campaign also felt, at least in retrospect, to be a bit more about world-spanning, universal threats, connected to the player characters but less directly. Meanwhile, campaign two was almost entirely based on plots and arcs that centered around its characters, which reached its logical conclusion in the campaign's final boss.

Let's get into spoilers.

Ok, Apparently There's Been a Manual of the Planes Almost Every Edition Before 5th

 A quick look on Dungeon Master's Guild informed me that apparently there have been many editions of Manual of the Planes, such that it might as well be a standard book for every edition like the DMG, PHB, and Monster Manual (do we call that the MM?) 2nd Edition did not have one, it seems, but there were many Planescape products that detailed the many planes (as a 5th Edition baby, I'm sometimes blown away by all the publications TSR put out for individual campaign settings.)

Anyway, as I've written about before, I think it would be great if we got an updated Manual of the Planes. Not every campaign that travels to the Outer Planes needs to involve the specifics of Sigil and its various factions - we've seen how campaigns can just touch on various ones, like Critical Role's first campaign involving sojourns to Elysium, the Nine Hells, and eventually Pandemonium.

The DM's Guild page for the 4th Edition Manual of the Planes details some of the philosophy behind the revamped cosmology - the "World Axis" - that was a big controversy and was basically reverted by 5th Edition (though 5e has also emphasized that the universe is whatever you want at your table).

And while I've gotten used to the idea of the Great Wheel, I do actually kind of get the idea behind smashing it - the complaint was apparently about "needless symmetry" - that there were so many good-aligned planes where it seemed unlikely for players to get into the sort of conflicts that drive adventures.

And frankly, I get it. I think you could have easily made only nine outer planes, with just one for each X,Y coordinate on the alignment chart. Are Bytopia and Arcadia all that necessary, or could they have just been folded into Mount Celestia?

Humans love patterns, and complete sets, and that structure can sometimes lead to great things, such as the Guilds in Ravnica, which are only the combination of each two-color combination in MTG. 4th Edition tried to boil the planar system down to the necessities.

The concept of the World Axis is that the Material World exists between the Astral Sea and the Elemental Chaos. The Nine Hells and The Abyss are both preserved here, but it places the Hells within the Astral Sea - a realm of gods - as a plane/world within the Astral Sea that is home to corrupted divine servants - aka Devils, whereas the Abyss is in the Elemental Chaos, and it defines Demons as corrupted elementals.

The Feywild and Shadowfell were mixes of existing concepts like the Plane of Faerie and Arborea (though Arvandor, part of Arborea, also exists in the Astral Sea) in the former case or the Plane of Shadow and Negative Energy Plane for the latter.

I can understand the backlash, but at the same time, if this were the cosmology that were presented to me when I first got into D&D, I would probably find it just as cool.

While I think 5e is going to stick with the classic Great Wheel as established originally in the 1st Edition Manual of the Planes, I'd love to see a new take on it, perhaps one that explores the potential for nuance.

For example, when we say that one of the Planes is Good - take The Beastlands as an example - what does that mean for mortals?

I think it's important that places like Carceri or Gehenna are clearly bad places to be, as they're evil planes. And in contrast, I think it's important that the Upper Planes are truly good.

But there's potential for the idea that pure goodness is not exactly compatible for the complexities of mortal life.

Humans (and humanoids as seen in D&D) are complicated, and even people with the best intentions have their own flaws and faults. I think you could get plenty of mileage out of the notion that any mortal who has not died and undergone the purification process of being reborn as a Petitioner carries danger into the Upper Planes, and that the denizens of those planes will fight to contain the contamination. Sure, they might be quicker to cast spells like Banishment than outright kill people, but there could be plenty of well-intentioned (and even possibly well-resulting) actions that Celestials of the Upper Planes take that is at odds with a D&D party's intentions. You might encounter an Angel who knows that a good-aligned party member will wind up a Petitioner in a heavenly plane, and thus decides that it'd be best for everyone if the angel killed that person now, sent their soul through the process, and got them fast-tracked for heaven - but in a way that could seriously disrupt, you know, their life back on the Material Plane and the mission that the party is on.

What I'd love is a source to talk about these sorts of things.

Naturally, the Lower Planes are much more obvious adventure locations, given the malevolent hostility of most creatures you're likely to encounter there (though hey, you might need to buy something at the markets on Grazz't's layer of the Abyss - doesn't all have to be demon-slaying).

Anyway, this isn't to complain or anything - I'm still really bubbling with excitement over Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, which is freaking good. But I hope that we get a Manual of the Planes or something like it in 5th Edition.

Myst Nostalgia and the D'Ni Numerical System

 Myst came out when I was 7 years old, and Riven, its first sequel, came out four years later when I was 11. While I played the third game, it's these first two that had huge influences on my general aesthetic tastes. I loved the weird sort of "fantasy technological" style of it, where it wasn't really science fiction in any serious way, but there was still sort of futuristic technology amongst the broad 19th Century furnishings.

Anyway, in the second game, taking place in the "Age" (which might be thought of as a world or plane) of Riven primarily, one of the important things to discover is the workings of the D'ni numerical system. The D'ni are an ancient civilization that discovered or developed the magical art of Writing, which allows the creation of linking books that can take a person between Ages.

Anyway, using a creepy children's toy that has what looks like sacrifices being dropped toward a carnivorous fish or shark, you can work out the basics of five symbols that correspond to the numbers 1-5. Each is just a couple of lines drawn within a square, but it gets slightly more complex. The number system is kind of simultaneously a base 5 and base 25 system (our own number system is base ten, because once we hit 10, the "counter" resets and we add another place to the number - the digit to the left of the original one now indicates how many times the original counter has cycled through its 10 symbols, going 0123456789).

The Roman Numeral system ran into an issue when it got to certain amounts, due to the fact that it needed a new set of symbols for each multiple of ten, whereas the Indian/Arabic numerals can represent arbitrarily large numbers. The D'ni system can as well.

The reason I say the D'ni one is sort of both base 5 and base 25 is that there is a kind of reset every five numbers, but you only add a new digit to the number every 25 counts.

Every digit is represented as lines within a square. The "one" digit is a vertical line that cuts the square in half. The "five" digit is a horizontal line that cuts it in half, but the truth is that really what it is is the "one" rotated counterclockwise 90 degrees. Thus the "six" is a square cut into four segments by a vertical and horizontal line - representing effectively "five plus one." When you reach ten, you instead rotate the symbol for "two" counterclockwise 90 degrees, and overlay the other digits rightside up to say "ten plus X".

Eventually, when you get to 24, you have the symbol for 4 (a rectangle that covers the lower right corner of the square, a little taller than it is wide) along with itself rotated 90 degrees counterclockwise (hence representing "four-time-five plus four")

But when you hit 25, there's no more room for this - you can't just rotate another 90 degrees because your vertical line will just become vertical again, so now we finally move on to another digit - but the "digits," which, again, are all within squares, are now bound, sharing a "wall" to make it clear these are part of the same number. The first position, like in Arabic numerals, represents the highest order of magnitude, while the next represents the next lower. So 25 is thus just the "one" digit followed by an empty square, representing zero. In this sense, it's the equivalent of 10 (which is just a one followed by a zero) except that, being a base 25 system, it represents a value of 25.

Anyway, I just ran across a website that will convert Arabic numerals into D'ni ones, and I'm kind of delighted by it.

If you are running a TTRPG and want to play around with codes embedded in numerical systems, I'd recommend stealing this wholecloth. You could also take it as inspiration to make other systems - maybe a base 12 system or something else.