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D&D 5E Discussion

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Irenaeus

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Irenaeus What kind of setting would you make?

Idk... Low magic in some parts and mythical in others. Difficult travel and communications for ordinary people outside the few major spots of civilization. Lots of hidden secrets and mysteries to explore. Certainly deadly. Just things out the top of my head.
 

Caim

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I really like how the DMG treats the multiple settings already published and helps you develop your own. It almost makes me develop my own setting just for fun.
Yeah, I've seen the 5E DMG be praised for helping a lot with worldbuilding. Which it kinda needs because there's no default setting thus far.
 
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Irenaeus

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I really like how the DMG treats the multiple settings already published and helps you develop your own. It almost makes me develop my own setting just for fun.
Yeah, I've seen the 5E DMG be praised for helping a lot with worldbuilding. Which it kinda needs because there's no default setting thus far.

There's at least 7 official settings from earlier editions. Use them if you feel so lost.

You can buy them here: http://www.dndclassics.com/

Here is a classic for $9.99 http://www.dndclassics.com/product/17267/Planescape-Campaign-Setting-2e?it=1

Or if you are really roots, I recommend this one for $9.99 http://www.dndclassics.com/product/17392/World-of-Greyhawk-Fantasy-Game-Setting-1e?it=1

If you don't mind something newer, I heard this one is quite popular for $15.99 http://www.dndclassics.com/product/28729/Forgotten-Realms-Campaign-Setting-3e?it=1&filters=0_0_44702
 
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Grunker

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^ My personal favourite for new players as far as standard fantasy is Forgotten Realms 3E campaign setting. So, so, sooo easy to use. The 2nd ed. content is way, way better of course, but it's a little harder to get into.
 
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Ulminati

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Because FR3E is just all the shit someone felt like stealing crammed into the same world. You don't have to worry about consistency.
 

Grunker

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P. much. You need PLOT DEVICE X in a pre-generated structure that has you covered? FR3E's got ya.
 

Melan

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I would rather see a good bottom-up mini-setting for a change. Something that's relatively light on the big picture (mostly to help players get their bearings, give them a selection of gods to worship and organizations to join), and focused on things which are immediately relevant to playing the game and having adventures. Not necessarily as micro level as the Wilderlands of High Fantasy, which goes down to the encounter level, but something that gives you a self-contained sandbox where you get a few established bases of operation (cities, strongholds, villages, temples; that sort of thing), places where you can get into trouble, a few sample organisations to join forces with or confront, encounter charts, rumours, and a handful of readymade mini-adventures to start with before you start adding your own - with lots of ideas and suggestions for the GM to develop things further. There have been fairly good attempts at creating something reasonably similar, but very few of them have been really good, and none hit all the right notes.
 

nikolokolus

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For third party settings, I really like the Frog God Games stuff. They have a few mega-modules that form the background of their Lost Lands setting that I've found easy to use (For Pathfinder and Swords & Wizardry, but easily adaptable to other versions of D&D).
 

Night Goat

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It seems 5e has a conservative release schedule on purpose; they would like to avoid inundating the market. (Although this was also the plan with 3.0, and look where that ended.)
So, they're intentionally leaving money on the table? A campaign setting isn't the same as the shovelware that characterized late-stage 3e, it's pretty important for any DM who doesn't want to make up a setting from scratch.

But do we really need official 5e settings? For generic D&D fantasy settings, it is more important to teach GMs to develop their own from the ground level. For something more out there, there is a wealth of published worlds which can mostly be used with any edition after minimal conversion. I don't know how a True Official 5th Edition Approved setting (likely another rehash of GH or FR) would help.
Yes, 5e needs official settings. Homebrew settings have their appeal, but so do published ones, especially for players who want to create detailed backgrounds for their characters. Forgotten Realms is already the default setting of 5e, and if you want to really use it you have to track down a book from 15 years ago. Other settings like Eberron had a lot of unique mechanical content that would have to be converted, and are also out of print. A PDF can't compare to having an actual book at the table.

I think 5e is in trouble, not only because of the issues I have with the game's mechanics and design philosophy, but also because the D&D division of WotC is incompetent when it comes to project management. They stopped putting out new 4e books in 2011, had three years to do nothing but work on 5e, and still ended up with a game that isn't really finished and had a DMG delayed for months. The fact that there's nothing but adventures on the horizon should be a cause for concern.
 
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Irenaeus

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encounter charts

There are encounter charts in the DMG.

Forgotten Realms is already the default setting of 5e, and if you want to really use it you have to track down a book from 15 years ago.

Here is the tracking: http://www.dndclassics.com/product/28729/Forgotten-Realms-Campaign-Setting-3e?it=1&filters=0_0_44702

A PDF can't compare to having an actual book at the table.

You can print a PDF.

I think 5e is in trouble, not only because of the issues I have with the game's mechanics and design philosophy

Maybe this is not a good system for you, it's very good to me and others. Stay playing Pathfinder, I won't shitpost your threads with whining about every little shit I don't like about it. Take Ulmicati with you.
 

LeStryfe79

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I don't think 5ed is in trouble. This is one of the few times I've believed a company when they said something was more successful than they had planned. I really disliked WotC for a decade, and had about a dozen threads closed immediately on enworld for being vocal about it. That somehow led me to this magnificent place(notice I joined a few months after 4ed released). We all need to remember that WotC is owned by Hasbro which stands for HAS been BROfisted a lot. They made mistakes in the past and the future is anyone's guess, but they're clearly taking things slow in an effort to not fuck up this time.

Roll for 5ed (DC 10)
 

J1M

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Yeah, well, calling someone a troll is a bannable offense on enworld so I don't know why anyone would want to post there.
 

LeStryfe79

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I also said most girls I met that played pnp were either hideous or posers and asked them why this was. Of course this was deemed a heinous opinion instead of the fact that it is and I got harassed by those pieces of shit. Fortunately i like getting harassed, so I've paid them $6.99 for gold status ever since.
 

LeStryfe79

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I owned Birthright, Mystara, and Planescape, while everyone else in my group owned that popamole shit.
 

mediocrepoet

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My group was into Birthright, Dark Sun and Ravenloft. One guy owned Planescape, but he couldn't sell the rest of us on it and there's only so much money in the world...

The sad thing is, whatever you think of the various campaign settings of 2E, they were all different in so many ways. The game really suffered over the years from losing that variety of fairly high quality published settings.
 

Ninjerk

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DnD in general has really suffered from
:decline: of CRPGs using DnD rulesets in high quality published settings :negative:
 

Keldryn

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I would rather see a good bottom-up mini-setting for a change. Something that's relatively light on the big picture (mostly to help players get their bearings, give them a selection of gods to worship and organizations to join), and focused on things which are immediately relevant to playing the game and having adventures. Not necessarily as micro level as the Wilderlands of High Fantasy, which goes down to the encounter level, but something that gives you a self-contained sandbox where you get a few established bases of operation (cities, strongholds, villages, temples; that sort of thing), places where you can get into trouble, a few sample organisations to join forces with or confront, encounter charts, rumours, and a handful of readymade mini-adventures to start with before you start adding your own - with lots of ideas and suggestions for the GM to develop things further. There have been fairly good attempts at creating something reasonably similar, but very few of them have been really good, and none hit all the right notes.

I thought that The Nentir Vale, introduced in the D&D 4th Edition DMG, was a pretty good bottom-up mini-setting. It wasn't particularly unique, but I think that it did a great job of incorporating all the right thematic elements for running a D&D campaign. The later Monster Vault: Threats to the Nentir Vale book provided the villainous organizations (rather than just being a book full of monsters with no context).

I didn't actually like 4e as a game very much, but I did really like the setting that the design team created for it. It was archetypal and generic enough that it was easy to get in to, but it also had much more coherent thematic and mythological elements than your typical "kitchen sink" fantasy settings like the Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk. The "Worlds and Monsters" preview book (from late 2007, I think) talked about this aspect quite a bit. The conflict between the gods and the primordials (the Dawn War) was a key background element of the setting and it helped unify the cosmology, gods, races, and monsters of the world in a way that doesn't happen in most D&D campaign settings. And some of the character classes, too (the PHB2 ones in particular). Many longtime gamers hated the changes that the 4e designers made to the lore, but I actually really liked most of those changes because it gave the game a mythology that felt coherent for a change.

The DMG provided just about the right amount of detail on the setting to start up a campaign, and enough plot hooks to keep it going for a while. The DM was free to design the lands beyond the Nentir Vale as he wished, should the players ever decide to explore further from home.

And going way back, GAZ 1 The Grand Duchy of Karameikos hits most of the right notes, especially if you keep it self-contained and make it a true frontier land.
 

Night Goat

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Stay playing Pathfinder, I won't shitpost your threads with whining about every little shit I don't like about it.
Why? Pathfinder if my game of choice, but I'll be the first to admit that it's hilariously bad in a lot of ways. Have at it.
 

Night Goat

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Has anyone played the Tranny of Dragons adventure path? Those guys I mentioned in Blogdex are interested in running it.
 
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Irenaeus

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I have the first book, but never read it beyond the first few pages.

hwBljaT.jpg
 

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