Ruminations on Settings in D&D

[@fleetcenturion]

10:36 - That really happened, by the way. One of the Vikings _did_ speak Latin, which he and the real Ibn Fadlan both spoke. His narration was invaluable, when giving the first (and probably only) eyewitness report of a Viking funeral. Without an explanation, the funeral would have made no sense to a foreigner, and might have been skipped over altogether.

[@DrVesuvius70]

12:35 Just to put this in perspective for the Bloody Yanks, I can think of 7-8 different British regional cultures geographically located between Cockney London and Geordie Tyneside, each with their own distinct dialects and quirks. 300 miles is a long distance on this side of the pond. I find it interesting when official D&D settings are built on the scale of modern America but somehow still look and function like medieval Europe.

[@ChimeraArchive]

Artifact of having a nation that had less time to develop strong dialect differences except for the extreme geographic endpoints (Southern drawls, east coast pronunciation, Louisiana creole and Cajun, west coast valley speak.) There's also a small community on the East coast that has what I'm told is a Welsh accent due to its isolated location.

[@MrNetWraith]

I must agree with the premise that distinct monsters and races really can help "make" a setting. I've been trying to create a setting to capture some of that 80s neo-sword & sorcery meets high magic feel that places humans in the role of the lost elder race, and I ended up making goblinoids, orcs and ogres the major races of the setting, representing former magebred thrall races that've run wild since the creators vanished, followed by various mutant beastfolk races that emerged from the arcane fallout; firebreathing lions, decadent gnolls built around the Undead Master wizard kit, fire-worshipping Viking squirrels, Golgari Swarm-inspired ratwomen, etc. Then I started picturing the other parts of the world and the list got weirder. Want to go to not!Japan? You'll meet minotaurs based on Lovecraft's Men From Leng battling moon-worshipping rabbit samurai and four-armed serpentfolk ninjas. There's an artificial moon inhabited by abandoned arcane robots that have evolved into sapience in what is basically Cybertron and Necromunda's lovechild. A neighboring planet is a steaming primeval world full of pulp dinosaurians and lizardfolk and bug-people, with an unfleshed-out Stone/Ice Age continent on its north. Hell, I want to add an expy of Warhammer's Albion to my base setting in some way just so I can justify Thouls as a PC option.

[@docnecrotic]

Sounds groovy. And you're totally right!

[@leorblumenthal5239]

I agree that there needs to be some restrictions on options that make sense in the setting. When I run Ravenloft I usually have the PCs be natives of the Domains of Dread, rather than "Weekend in Hell" visitors. As a result I restrict PCs to Human, Elf, Half-Elf, Dwarf, Halfling and Gnome. I use a reskinned variant of the Half-Orc introduced in the 3.X material from Arthaus, called a Caliban. Other than these options, I am very restrictive. In my current campaign, which began in Greyhawk's Sheldomar Valley region, I allowed much more variety. A player wanted to play an Aarakocra Monk, and those are found in the campaign, so I allowed it. However, restrictions need to make sense. I wouldn't allow a Pixie in a Dark Sun campaign, but if a player wants to play a Half-Orc I would reskin it to be a mutated Human with all of the features of a Half-Orc. I wouldn't allow Clerics or Paladins in this theoretical Dark Sun campaign, but I would allow Warlocks and Sorcerers, two classes that didn't exist in the game in 1992, but that fit the flavor of Athas. In my 5E Ravenloft campaigns I was relatively lenient regarding classes, but not races. I used a Kopru as a villain in a Ravenloft game, which was pulled into the Mists by the Dark Powers, and couldn't leave the island it was stuck on since the water surrounding the island was frigid. Here's my attitude: does it either exist in the setting or can it be reskinned to fit? If so I don't see a reason to disallow it. And if I do disallow it, I let the players know in my Session Zero or Campaign document.

[@Kibbitz]

When you started the no no yes stuff, I was totally expecting Winona at the end. Good one, Mr Welch.

[@brentnorton1602]

The way you described languages is the same way I describe written spells and scrolls in my world. One persons magic missile maybe have different symbols taught by there mentor, than another’s mentors

[@RoninCatholic]

In my setting, fiends are strictly immaterial. "Demon Possessed" is a possible modifier to other monsters to make them worse to fight (more cunning, more insidious, more reckless as they don't care about the well-being of their host bodies if immediate and risky brutality can further their goals, and possible Warlock spells). Ordinary priests are just common people with enough divine backing to bless holy water, preside over funerals to prevent the dead from rising as undead, and exorcize demons; some priests are warriors as well (historically many bishops were functionally knights, and high fantasy adventure land is _more_ violent than the real middle ages were), some priests are mages as well (any scholar can dabble in the arcane in a sufficiently high magic fantasy) and their religious mission often _informs_ their spell choices, but the cleric and paladin as D&D knows them are basically nonexistent. There are at maximum 13 Paladins operative within the world at a time, regardless of how the population of the world at large expands or contracts in response to catastrophe and prosperity, so outside of times of crisis many people don't believe these living warrior-saints exist _at all_ . There's exactly a single good-aligned Church that is as ubiquitous as Catholicism was in Europe (nearly identical in its dress and rites as well, just with Jesus replaced with a crystalline dragon and crosses replaced with labryses), with small pockets of faithless or heathen people in very prosperous regions where risk of demonic possessions taking over your sick relatives or livestock is low enough you can credibly discredit possession altogether and don't need to contend with the fact that pagan gods can't drive out demons because they're manmade fictions. There are four of what we might call deities in another setting, but all of them evil; one being an amalgam of all the worst aspects of manmade gods, having his way with mortals sexually at his whim like the Olympians were predisposed to, demanding live human sacrifice like the Aztec deities, and so forth. One being a sword and sorcery sacrifice machine who operates on very simple payouts, bestowing powers and mutations on people that sacrifice other people to it, and consisting of a recursive mass of sharp-toothed maws full of tentacles which are covered in sharp-toothed maws. One being the Dark Lord who rises every 900 years and some change in an attempt to establish a global empire under his rule, only to be slain once again by his Achilles Heel: being tag-teamed by a ragtag group of misfit adventurers (the more diverse the race, gender, and weapon choices of the party attacking him, the more bonus damage he takes; this ironically means that in order to have diverse stock for such groups to be pulled from, you need more homogenous homelands for their extraction). One is a deceiver who is empowered by the actions of her followers, and delights in the fact that most are her _unwitting_ pawns, not even believing in her existence whatsoever - all organized crime from mafia-like "protection" rackets to the Assassins' Guild to prostitution directly empower her. So obviously, my religious decisions for the setting being both very politically incorrect _and_ not 1:1 like Forgotten Realms or Nentir Vale puts a whole heck of a lot of people off from the setting.

[@andrewvanhorne4359]

I read "fiends" as "friends" and was like, "Damn, mine too."

[@misomiso8228]

2:41 I really agree with you on this. One of the big aspects of Dragonlance was the LIMITATIONS they put on the setting, even getting rid of the classic DnD Gods and only having ONE Pantheon. Combine this with the more 'lowish fantasy' post fantasy apocalypse setting and you had something really compelling. I would say that I think there is a place to allow players to be their 'special snowflake' unique characters, but it's the world that has to stay consistent.

[@stephenclements6158]

A lot of people don't get that LIMITING their options forces them to be more creative with the options they have, resulting in more interesting characters and stories. Since everything in the world has certain characteristics, if you make everything have every characteristic you want, it stops being that thing and becomes something else.

[@acamon]

Really good stuff. I never gave DL credit for stripping away the generic D&D stuff, that's a really good point. And totally agree that we're seeing the opposite in 5e.

[@MrNetWraith]

Personally, one of the reasons that the Nentir Vale grokked for me as a setting was the way it managed to take old traditional D&D fluff, which was largely a portmanteau of Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms elements, and twist it into often surprising new directions. The traditional enmity between gnolls and minotaurs finally had a reason: Yeenoghu betrayed Baphomet back before they both were corrupted into Demon Princes, and their "gods" hatred bled through to the races - which even had a very interesting dichotomy where minotaurs were torn between "Man" and Demon and gnolls were torn between "Beast" and Demon; minotaurs tried to cling to the virtues of civilization to resist the demonic taint in their lineage, whilst gnolls instead turned to the simple purity of the wilderness to do the same. Cobalt dragons were tyrants who revered strength and set out to found mighty nations of warrior cultures. Steel dragons were firmly on the side of humanoids & freedom and so found themselves taking on the "benevolent tyranny" of gold and bronze dragons as often as they did red, blue or black dragons. Bladelings were the first race to worship the God of War and were mad as hell that he abandoned them in favor of the goblinoids, to the point they want to oust the God of War from his personal heaven and take it for their homeland, since they helped win it in the first place. Even the much-maligned dragonborn had a very solid lore that fitted them into the setting.

[@daikaijugamer]

Nentir Vale's lore was unironically kino

[@adamthaxton3157]

I didn't enjoy 4e too much but DAMN do I love Nentir Vale.

[@docnecrotic]

Nentir Vale was the best part of 4E, even if some parts (like the Nu Core races) were a little annoying... if well written.

[@adamthaxton3157]

@@docnecrotic Honestly if I was given rein over a D&D setting, it'd boil down to "Nentir Vale, but all the available ancestries are stuff D&D has that IMMEDIATELY identifies it as D&D and not other fantasy games" like dragonborn, thri-kreen, warforged, and the like. Which is probably why I'm not >_>

[@docnecrotic]

Also, restrictions can be very helpful and good. A confined space keeps you focused on what you have to work with and pushes you harder with it. A lack of that makes not just every setting feel the same, but every game. One of my own creations suffered that kitchen sink effect, until it was more directed over time. It's still a gonzo science fantasy setting with an advanced world and some dark touches though. You have the politics of a few rising superpowers locked in emerging cold war, several fallen powers seeking to rebuild or undermine competition, dots to huge masses of destroyed post-nuke wastelands (including nations wiped off the map). And for people? Tropical samurai who fight for a divinely blessed mountain, stagnant legionaries with power armor, eco-terror loving beastmen backed by the Fae, a colony of alien-blooded hippies, mutants and living dead seeking to build their own nation, a necromancer paramilitary that collects corpses to "enlist", energy infused philosophers of the desert, a Rajah-inspired ruler on the verge of a dimensional travel breakthrough, a Lich Warlord magically sealed behind an abandoned subway system and much more. And all of it makes sense from within the world. With so much already odd stuff, I don't need to include literally everything from whatever game I choose. Never had the need. As is, there are no dwarves, elves (kinda), halflings, orcs or a plethora of other things found across games (even beyond D&D).

[@cthulhupthagn5771]

In particular what they are doing to dragonlance really hurts. For any of your younger viewers - he is not understanding how powerful dragonlance was. I got into role-playing in the early 80s, and when you went into a waldenbooks they had an entire section devoted to TSR novels. Usually with a cardboard frame built around them. And Prime imagery came straight from the dragonlance novels. When he points out that it showed people that TSR wasn't some kind of witchcraft, I specifically went to waldenbooks with my allowance and bought a TSR book just to see what the fuss was about, and that was a dragonlance novel. I now have several shelves of dragonlance novels, a lot of the books and supplements from 1st edition straight through third, and I don't even have a fraction of what's out there. Dragonlance got an animated feature that while it was not a great game it was voiced by Kiefer Sutherland and other great actors. They had a Nintendo game that also wasn't great, and they had a bunch of gold box computer games. The franchise was so popular that Third Edition supplements were published by Margaret Weis directly, and for 4th edition they tried to use their crappy Saga game system to try and get people to buy it. When Weiss and Hickman pushed to write their fourth Chronicles novel, there was a huge outcry for it even though it had been over twenty years since the trilogy was published. And when he talks about how passionate the fans can be about it, people were so upset at the changes made to the setting in that fourth novel that years later a Trilogy was written by them to bring everything back. Dragonlance novels were being published long after they had become Wizards and nobody else cared. I honestly believe that the changes they're making now they are making purely to piss people off. Wizards has become largely staffed by people that see everything in terms of Outreach and hitting the right metrics on social media. Heck with the changes they've made the Kender, there are people complaining that the characters are basically license for somebody to be an asshole, and they're further claiming that the entire special ability of a Kender is to Gaslight people. You can't make this stuff up folks. Now I got mine, so I can live with what I have because there's plenty to enjoy but I really feel bad for people coming into the hobby now that hear all of these great stories and great concept and then they go to see what Wizards has on the shelf and it's crap

[@nicholascarter9158]

To be fair though, that criticism of kender is absolutely 100% objectively and universally true because for everyone eight years younger than you and below, we have never lived in a world where kender weren't a way to break up a party and get a campaign cancelled by playing a narcissistic sociopath.

[@derekburge5294]

Excellent. Nothing to add; just excellently done, good sir.

[@NemesisOwl]

Hit the nail directly on the head!

[@korge1184]

I got my players to play in the Grand Duchy of Karameikos by describing it as fantasy Serbia and all traladarans must use a Serbian name. They loved it.

[@strategicviewpoint6672]

Two of my most favorite modules of all time are X10 Broken Arrow Red Shield where you get to participate in a continent wide war and CM1 Test of the the Warlords where you get to carve out dominions in Norwold as well as being introduced to the Thyatis / Alphatia conflict

[@MrNetWraith]

It's surprising that everybody remembers tinker gnomes, kender and gully dwarves, but few people remember that as early as the original Dragonlance Adventures boxed set for AD&D 1st edition, players were given the mechanics to play Krynnish minotaurs and Irda (proto-ogres who avoided devolving into deformed savages through the influence of evil, essentially giant elves with an extra dose of Mary Sue). Honestly, with a pedigree like that, it surprises me that it took until 3rd edition for Draconians to be playable... though I will die on the hill that the 3e converters really flubbed the conversion for them by failing to grasp that AD&D forced DMS to jump through hoops to emulate giving monsters the equivalent of classes, whilst 3e simplified that whole mess, resulting in draconians falling afoul of level adjustment.

[@shinrafugitives3880]

I'd say they did draconians justice with their level adjust. Their racial hitdice doubled as caster level for sorcerers, so a draconian could take levels in sorcerer after gaining all its racial hitdice and add that to his caster level.

[@adamthaxton3157]

@@shinrafugitives3880 You're still three levels short for sorc than anybody else, though.

[@Bluehairedgirl89]

Thank you for all the work you put into this Mr. Welch. I really enjoyed it and it does help me with my own writing and world building. I don’t agree with you on all your points but still there is a lot for me to think about and consider.

[@powerist209]

Speaking of Drow, just seems that Wizards seem to have hard-on against Eilistraee. And definitely not nude dance since Drizzt-era Drow had orgies and incest with scantily clad female drow sacrificing third-born infants for giggles. That or player wanted to be moping Dark Elf than someone being friendly while nearby denizens running away in fear. Heck, maybe a group of Dark Elf exile forming a community, maybe popping out half-Drow because Human Bards do join Eilistraee and got too friendly with a worshipper, which involved befriending surface people and aiding the exiles to readjust their life (sometimes with nude dances, but they do counseling and schooling).

[@comstr]

You should do a review of "The World Builders Guidebook".

[@JoshuaVonNoctis]

Hahahaha! This is video is great! Reminds me of one my acquitances wanting to playing a Changling with all this undead stuff in Eberron. I told him no and he was very upset. Had to remind him this wasn't the realms. :) Good vid.

[@nicholascarter9158]

Playable undead and playable changelings *are* Eberron choices though?

[@JoshuaVonNoctis]

@@nicholascarter9158 I'm not dealing with the gender ideology that he wants to try and use.

[@nicholascarter9158]

@@JoshuaVonNoctis Gender Ideology? All of the gender ideologies I can think of are attributed to changelings in the original Eberron.

[@JoshuaVonNoctis]

@@nicholascarter9158 And I blocked all of that.

[@nicholascarter9158]

@@JoshuaVonNoctis Oh. You could have saved me and him a lot of time by just starting with "I am a bad DM who doesn't care about what makes this setting interesting, but train go brr"

[@Darkwintre]

I remember Dragonlance fondly.

[@herddragon9215]

good thing i saw this. because i was about to enter the prosess of washing down the unique aspects of my setting to make it fit better with dnd as im running some one-shots in a setting i made for fun but unrelated in any way to dnd. but what i'm now hearing is now that the players have gotten off the train and headed out into the world i should not dull down the setting but instead just go with the craziness i've made.

[@camerongunn7906]

Yep...5 games in 3 seasons is definitely grounds for self deletion in Texas. Football there isn't a game, it's a religion with Immortals all it's own. I keep expecting WOTC to pop out 5.5 or 6th edition at any moment. 13:49, so yes. I didn't realize that particular piece had been seared into my brain.

[@adamthaxton3157]

5.5 is coming out in 2024, though later this year Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse comes out on its own, and that's changed a LOT of the ancestry rules.

[@cakeboss4194]

*Laughs madly in guns designed to shoot dragons out of the air* I think I've got the unique angle covered for my project.

[@cyberninjazero5659]

6:30 Kraven wasn't brought back as a Spider-Man hating mad man, he's one of the few characters whose death was handled respectfully in comics, there is a story where his family resurrects him but he's unhappy with it and goes back to being dead at the end of the arc upset at them for bringing him back. There is a new character that is a Kraven clone though

[@cthulhupthagn5771]

Not quite true. Craven was resurrected from the dead by the witch calypso, who was his girlfriend. He came back existed for a while and wasn't quite right in the head. I believe he eventually insisted that he get put back down, there was a clone of him as part of a reboot of the clone saga because why not bring back the most hated element of Spider-Man's history. And I think currently it's his son that's running around

[@DIEGhostfish]

@@cthulhupthagn5771 His normal sons are all dead, he SOMEHOW managed to coerce the fucking HIGH EVOLUTIONARY to make him a bunch of clones (Instead of devolving him to protoplasm) One of which hunted down all the others. ANd finally he managed to re-die and now that clone son is the new one.

[@stygggian]

I don't think I could agree more.

[@TurboWulfe]

Well done, 😎 🤘 🍻

[@S810_Jr]

Needs more blank space at the end so youtube doesn't throw a video over Winona's face.

[@Mr_Welch]

Learning the software won't make the same mistake time

[@S810_Jr]

@@Mr_Welch Not your fault, it's just youtube changing how they end videos by plastering shit over someone's content instead of just adding onto the end of it. Who knows what they'll change it to down the road lol. Maybe you can find some angry Winona faces looking in the direction of where youtube puts video popups at the end of all your videos hehe.

[@dane3038]

People who were shocked by Craven's suicide must have missed Iron Man issue 200.

[@Winterydee]

LMFAO! At that ending bit! I love Mel Brooks and his movies. That is a brilliant reuse of the Madeline Kahn's Empress Nympho selecting scene in "History of the World part 1"! Thank you Mr. Welch for giving me a reason to laugh today! I totally agree that setting is very important but what makes settings unique is as much what's not in them and what is in them. If everything is in every setting with all of them having the exact same parameters... then what is the point of switching settings?

[@MykeDiemart]

Fun ending. Too much just muddies the waters

[@perplexedmoth]

I think of the three (not quite) aspects of each setting: 1) Men & Magic, 2) Monsters & Treasure, and 3) Underworld & Wilderness. All these three should be re-told, otherwise the setting is incomplete. Ideally, each should be more than letter-sized 64 pages.

[@IvoryKnight22]

Im reading this as Im just about to start up world building for an ACKS game. Pretty useful and nice to help with a few ideas.

[@Fernoll]

Spot on. My elves are more fae-like and harder to pin down. No Drow, but Unseelie elves who serve as dark reflections of the more traditional kinds. Goblinoids are former fae that somehow got themselves kicked out of the twilight kingdom. Vampires are broadly divided into western, eastern and southern breeds, each further divided into seperate bloodlines, not unlike VTM. Kenkus are creatures of the far east, Tabaxis populate the undiscovered jungles of the west. Also, no bullshit races (Dragonborn, Warforged, 5e Firbolgs, post 3e Tieflings). Deities are primal forces given form by the different cultures and races. Egregores, essentialy. Using magic can, and often will, go wrong.

[@stephenclements6158]

A sad fact is that a lot of players don't even know settings outside the Forgotten Realms exist. I've seen this in newer players and even older players. I'll ask them, "What setting are you playing in?" or "What's your favorite campaign setting?" and they'll look at me with a vacant stare.

[@nicholascarter9158]

Most home games take place over a space so small that a larger setting is a distraction, and the only non realms non barovia first party adventure came out a week ago.

[@ballisticus1]

Good advice, but extra credit for the History of the World Part 1 homage!

[@Zeithri]

I agree with this. Obviously.

[@idontno6d105]

in my setting, I don't have language based on locale or race, instead I have them based on profession with one common tongue used by everyone. I'm now reconsidering the lack of locale/racial languages (I'm keeping the profession-based ones I really like those)

[@springheeledjackofthegurdi2117]

when it comes to setting books how would you rank the amount of content you get compared the books of 10-20 years ago?

[@Mr_Welch]

It's a weird case you got feast-or-famine and nothing in between. 5th edition sourcebooks don't go into a lot of detail on really anything. We've got Cliff Notes on some cities on the sword Coast mainly. The end. Compare that to 3rd Edition where they flooded the market. Everywhere in the Forgotten Realms got a book. For the people that like to read it for the story it was fantastic. But all the extra rules broke the back of the game. They were two extremes on the same line. There's got to be a healthy balance somewhere in between

[@springheeledjackofthegurdi2117]

@@Mr_Welch would Gazateers be a good alternative?

[@Mr_Welch]

@@springheeledjackofthegurdi2117 Yes, but they are also of wildly varying quality and information. 2nd edition probably did the background information better than the rest, but that was because Ed Greenwood was at his prime.

[@bonbondurjdr6553]

Québécois ! Yes!

[@qwertystania]

It would be really weird for a society to use electrum coins but not gold coins on account of the fact that electrum is a gold/silver alloy.

[@Mr_Welch]

There's actually precedent for it. Nations would mix the two so they could control the amount of gold compared to silver. One of the earliest forms of currency manipulation. You could say the nation was restricting the gold supply in its treasury for a host of reasons.

[@Wraithing]

Cliff & Norm ("Norman")!

[@Dudeosaurus]

Rocky VII: Adrian's Revenge

[@tssteelx]

Isn't there a video about how incredibly difficult it is to plane travel into mystra? Like you have to sacrifice half a worlds population to generate enough power to punch through the barrier. What did norm do???

[@Mr_Welch]

Only for certain creatures. Ierendi literally has a tourist Resort for fire Elementals

[@tssteelx]

@@Mr_Welch i don't think norm is a fire element. He's not hot enough.

[@Mr_Welch]

He's consumed enough alcohol eventually be a fire Elemental

[@tssteelx]

@@Mr_Welch good thing he doesn't smoke.

[@strategicviewpoint6672]

Pretty certain there is a volcano in the Wyrmsteeth Mountains in Norwold that is a portal to the Plane of Fire as well. Also by the time of characters obtaining Master and Immortal levels, planar adventures are pretty common

[@KeyserSoze1972]

I started my players on Mystra and took me forever to move, my players wanted 2nd Edition....

[@ChimeraArchive]

Oh God... history of the world flash back... "Jewish, huh?"

[@NefariousKoel]

You men go north! You men go south! I'm just gonna walk around here in a circle.

[@danielk7774]

Agree 100%. And oooo Madeline (rip)

[@MrNetWraith]

Pyre elementals were horrifying? Really? They were just chaotic evil Fire Elementals that could slowly burn through armor (-1 AC value on each strike if the suit failed a save vs. magical fire)... okay, 3e swapped that out for the ability to animate nearby corpses as burning zombies & skeletons, but still.

[@Mr_Welch]

When you are just starting to explore Ravenloft and get set on by a giant flaming funeral pyre while the entire party's dice go cold you remember the near tpk

[@davemills8193]

HeHe you said "Fiendish taint"

[@manarayofhope2374]

😈

[@JeanPhilippeBoucher]

I agree with most things, except Quebecois are not optional and should be part of every setting.

[@nordicmaelstrom4714]

That is one thing I utterly hate about wotc and 5E.They make everything flipping generic! Nothing is special anymore! I am so glad I don't play 5E or any wotc stuff. I love the fact wotc cannot mess with my games nor my settings.

[@adamthaxton3157]

5e is a set of mechanics, you can do whatever you want with them? Like, WotC can't mess with your games or settings, because they don't send out ninjas to see if you're doing things. On the other hand, I'd hardly call things like Wild Beyond the Witchlight "generic" though.

[@Mr_Welch]

Palladium is far more likely to send out ninjas than Wizards of the Coast is if you stray from Canon

[@nordicmaelstrom4714]

@@Mr_Welch Never played any of their games. Are they any good? WOTC couldn't bother my games anyway given the books I have were made before they even existed. I love that fact I have no ties to WOTC.

[@adamthaxton3157]

@@nordicmaelstrom4714 Ok? I own a lot of pre-1997 D&D stuff, too. I'm happy about a lot of 5e, myself, it's a perfect blend of old and new - you do you, though, games are for having fun. Palladium has decent settings (the worldbuilding is simultaneously both incredibly awesome and horrifically planned) but terrible rules, SWADE has an official Rifts conversion for it that's actually pretty good, and I use that one.

[@Mr_Welch]

@@nordicmaelstrom4714 good from a game design point of view? No the balance is notoriously bad. Will you have fun playing the games? Yes. The games are some of the most over-the-top RPGs written

[@docnecrotic]

Honestly, WizBro is a lost cause for setting. I'm convinced that undermining them in addition to liking/playing better games is the best way forward. Don't fight them like in D&D, face them like Vampire the Masquerade lol.

[@SerpenThrope]

Well. I just checked and the seventh MCU movie was Iron Man 3, so my favorite Part 7 would probably be The Force Awakens. Sadly, Star Trek: First Contact is a Part 8. Lol.

[@recursivecoin359]

You know what is so familiar it's contemptible? You what as diminished to the point of no return? Hating on 5e and waxing nostalgic for the good old days of D&D.

[@recursivecoin359]

So... I listened til the end. The last 3 minutes had useful ideas.

[@chaosincarna]

Do people really need adventures scripted out for them to DM? Do they really need a laundry list of creatures and exactly what they have going on with them to DM? I think a logical aspect of DnD should be creativity and making it yours. I think it would be a good idea to not make a setting an exact replica, there should be variation, aspects that are not the same that will keep your players on their toes. Gnolls explode if you want, sure. But DnD settings having a cookie cutter concept of monsters makes sense, with the expectation someone uses common sense and creativity to spice it up. A logical conversion in the game would be something to help you change what some races and monsters might have and vary. I don't own any Adventure guides except a random one my friend saw clowny circus crap on the front and thought, "hey you like clowns and DnD, here." I've never felt an impulse to follow any of these adventures, though the art and concepts are interesting for the adventure options and creatures, I just feel lazy going verbatim or remotely close to those adventures.