general

oh no

Are any of you guys into D&D or other RPGs of the sort? Cuz I'm sperging out here at lore changes to several very common, important, and/or iconic monsters in the new errata for Volo's Guide to Monsters.

It was bad enough that they made Drow a playable race in the core Player's Handbook, even outright saying, "Though Drow are almost ALWAYS evil, there ARE Drow that aren't necessarily evil. There's Drizzt, and, uh....."

Ah yes, I did kinda see something about WoC doing more of the dumb shit they've been doing for years now

It's real sad seeing DnD, pathfinder, and others become so overly sanitized and infantile

So, making Drow a core sub-race for elf is bad enough, but now retconning Drow so that SOME of the oldest Drow cities have been corrupted by Lloth, with Drow in other campaign settings being completely separate and no inherent evil whatsoever, when in ALL of any official D&D material, be it novel, adventure module, etc, there has been ONE notable Drow that was NOT evil?

But even worse, they're doing it to stuff that ARE monsters still, not made into PC races: https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/rg4idx/writeup_of_all_the_lore_thats_beeing_removed_from/

Alignment in D&D is more mechanical than thematic; the reason orcs are chaotic evil is so you can use holy and axiomatic weapons and magic against them to greater effect

Other settings? WoC have more than one in 5e now?

I know there used to be many

Though them being forgotten and not messed with by wizards is probably better

Is there even an official setting for 5e?

If it wasn't obvious, I don't care for modern WoC. They've been fucking with all their IP's

Uh yeah, all the official content was from the same setting. Well... I guess ravenloft is technically something in-between realms (different settings)

there was what.... 2 in 4e?

I don't look much into pre-made mods - I barely even write the adventures I run myself until after they've already happened, only writing a few key points, because I'm good at improvising without a structured plan, but bad if I have one and the players go off the beaten course - but the core rulebooks mention Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, Krynn, Ravenloft, they released a book for Eberron

There's also, what is it called, Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide? Which the Sword Coast is a small part of Forgotten Realms.

as far as I know, aside from the small bit of ravenloft recently, it's all been in the same place, I forget which one it is. I know it's not Greykawk

is it FR?

or eberron

idk, I don't look at them

By core rulebooks, I mean Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, and Monster Manual. They make mention of all these different campaign settings. As for official published adventures, I don't know; I'd be extremely surprised if Curse of Strahd doesn't take place in Ravenloft, and I'd be extremely surprised if Ghosts of Saltmarsh doesn't take place in Greyhawk.

Yeah Curse of Strahd is in rraverloft, the rest of the adventures are in the same other main place

After WotC acquired D&D and put out 3e, I believe Greyhawk was the official setting at first, then eventually became Forgotten Realms, though Living Greyhawk stayed Living Greyhawk until 4e, when Forgotten Realms was the official setting and it changed to Living Forgotten Realms.

It's probably still forgotten realms as the only other one I think they'd do is eberon and I don't think there's prevalent airships

Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide covers just a portion of Forgotten Realms, Eberron is a completely different setting

At the end of the day, The basic rules and Homebrew settings are all that matter

...So in an effort to remove "racist" stereotypes,

they've turned orcs - the monster race, not half-orcs, the PC race(which are no longer composed of almost nothing but rape babies) - into stereotypes of tribal Africans or Native Americans.

Yeah, like I said, Wizards doing dumb shit and making issues where there weren't any

Finally

The two boomers have met

Glorious reunion

Am I the older of the boomers?

Not a question for me

I only know people based on age in relation to the release of Minecraft - 13

Minecraft was released in 2008, right?

At least in beta.

All I know is that I paid $8 or $9 for it when it was in beta I was in high school, and it's now, what, over $30?

It’s like

25 I think

This is legit making me sperg out, and I'm sorry, but the scene from THACO: The Movie, where the dude freaks out after finding out that in 3rd edition they got rid of THAC0 in favor of ascending AC and to-hit bonuses, is completely how I feel.

"How about instead of saving throws, we close our eyes and hope REALLY HARD not to get hurt?"

If you were playing alpha, 2010ish, beta is up til late 2011

"Should we trade spell levels for affirmation, and hit points for hugs?"

You have to get the players consent to attack them

First made public in May 2009, so I was 16 or 17 when I bought it.

It's ableist to not let a level 1 ranger to not use level 10 spells

If you want to cry about ableism as a ranger in 5e, all you have to do is roll beastmaster and you're good.

I blame critical role for this

CR seems fine, but they did play a part

mainly in just normalizing it, so shitters want in and change it

I've watched like two videos of it, and I think the issue is, is that pretty much until Critical Role(actually, Big Bang Theory had a hand in this before Critical Role, but it didn't showcase RPGs the same way, just mentioned them) came out, if you were into D&D, you were considered such a nerd that you're essentially a social pariah.

yeah

same thing with video games

If people don't pay any attention to you anyway, it's a lot harder to get swept up in sterilization, cancel culture, "wokeness," etc

it was inevitable

You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him dox

don't... most people just homebrew shit and make their own rules anyway? who cares what 'changes' get made in the official stuff

It fucks with the community since it’s the official material

What's really funny is all the shit ActiBlizz is doing to make WoW as sterile as possible(besides, yknow, nonstop race war, civil war, genocide, anything besides high-scale physical violence), yet in FFXIV, you have multiple main scenario quests that mention rape or attempted rape, and half the arcanist class quest line is about rescuing an arcanist who has been kidnapped and is about to be forced into sex trafficking.

spoilers

jeez

Sorry, didn't even think about it. Edited.

Damn, I can’t believe ffxiv has rape in it

Poor cloud

But maybe, just maybe, instead of doing all this fucking bullshit, WotC could just do what pretty much every OSR game that has law/chaos and good/evil axes does: Flat out say, "Alignment is both objective and subjective in this game - there is objective alignment, which is used for magical abilities based on alignment, and subjective alignment, which is your character's tendencies in acting, not their entire personality. You can be a good character that has to do something evil and vice versa, but a Beholder is evil so a paladin can do big dam with Smite Evil against it."

"Clone is no longer restricted to medium size–allowing halflings and gnomes to immortalize themselves forever as flesh pods waiting to be made into people." This errata I'm fine with, because it's actual mechanical errata, not removal of lore, integral game systems, or trying to make the game puerile(outside of the fact that a fuckton of the game is about killing shit in most campaigns)

So, if orcs are no longer chaotic evil by default, how long before orc is a core race?

Like, there's absolutely no reason for orc to not be a core PC race if their alignment is presented the exact same as how half-orcs have been presented since they became a PC race.

Sorry, last thing on Drow: Drizzt Do'urden is the most popular character in D&D lore. His entire backstory is based on the fact that he's a Drow, that is not evil. With this retcon, Drizzt is just like any other Drow.

And TSR and WotC have made WAY more money on D&D novels than they've ever made on rulebooks, adventures, etc(at least before DNDBeyond, not sure about it now)

make homebrew, kill all the midgets

Real talk about midgets for a second? In the... 17-18 years of running homebrew adventures, I've never built a consistent campaign setting, just generic fantasy setting with random locations with names that are not recorded (unless that adventure is made into a module for distribution), I'm just now working on building a consistent campaign setting with its own lore and allows for adventures from the lowest tier of high fantasy to the most epic tier

And my brain decided that halfling fighters and barbarians should be common. ._.

They should be sorcerers

Like, looking at shit mechanically in books, Stout halflings get a constitution bonus, are resistant to poison damage, have saving throws against being poisoned. "Why should that be?" asks my brain. The solution it gave? "Stout halflings tend to live in jungles & swamps, are more tribal than their Lightfoot cousins, so they've become hardier and resistant to poison."

halfling barbarian you say