Okay, I'd say I've seen enough. From lockdown ad today It's been a month, it's time to have my say on how interested the most famous RPG in the world is, and the effect that many, many new things are having on the community. More than an article, this is a comment, out of all professionalism and without any pulpit, of a narrator like many others. About someone who has been playing the same game for years, D&D, and his amazing community!
Rime of the frostmaiden
The hottest news of all is certainly the next release regarding D&D and the new time saga, Rime of the frostmaiden. The campaign will cover Icewind Dale e Auril, the divinity of the Ice, in a multitude of horror-arctic themed adventures. Rime of the Frostmaiden (RotF) will have a background structure similar to Ghost of Saltmarsh, with a main narrative and similar in style to CoS but more modern. Something never seen before, according to the curators, in a very detached, solitary and dangerous part of the Realms. 320 pages of pure terror among secrets, entities waiting in the cold and icy darkness and much, much more. Along with the manual many creatures will come together who share the theme of frost / winter, something similar to Frostburn of the 3.5.
Honestly, I really have no idea how to take this exit; speaking of cover art and illustrations, I can only give Mega WotC a pat on the back who, as always, beat anyone. As for the content, however, I can only breathe a sigh that knows a lot, a lot, beautiful but not enough. The sport of sports is intriguing Goliath, the 50 additional promised monsters and the likely rules on adverse weather and survival. In short, the meat on the fire (or under ice) is a lot. The adventures, disconnected from each other, can be used individually or linked in a single strand. Great.
The 5E marketing strategy is a winner and I don't deny it: AP with info point Limited do so much effect drunk wife and full blow. Too bad that i Forgotten Realms now they are reduced to the Costa della Spada and that's it; the setting creaks in its entirety and the timeline falters. Will we then have 50 real monsters, or variants of the usual nano-goblin-elf? Will the conditions and route rules be fluid? Will the goat ball return or not?
Confirmed and sad news, it seems that RotF will be set in the 1450 DR, 38 years before HotDQ and therefore very limited in its insertion. But these are the words of a person archivist like myself, who for official campaigns goes to nitpick in the way that everything is as canon as possible, and deep down he knows he will like it anyway. Bet for the future? Wildemount as an official setting.
Wildemount, the Orcs and the Wizard
No one can deny that Matt Mercer has launched a good manual. Wildemount is interesting, new, pleasant and at the same time modern, fresh. Quite the opposite of Forgotten Realms which, despite the restructuring, feels the weight of age. Unfortunately, however, the recent paths taken by Wizard (starting clearly from Wildemount, but I will explain it later) seem to have kicked off the discontent.
At the time of EGTW there was only talk of Chronomant and how he was sbroccato, on the other hand. The problem seems to have come later, when the Wizard announced a couple of changes in its way of working and managing future projects. For the sake of synthesis I will report the text in English, which you can find for completeness Wed.
- We present orcs and drow in a new light in two of our most recent books, Eberron: Rising from the Last War and Explorer's Guide to Wildemount. In those books, orcs and drow are just as morally and culturally complex as other peoples. We will continue that approach in future books, portraying all the peoples of D&D in relatable ways and making it clear that they are as free as humans to decide who they are and what they do.
- When every D&D book is reprinted, we have an opportunity to correct errors that we or the broader D&D community discovered in that book. Each year, we use those opportunities to fix a variety of things, including errors in judgment. In recent reprintings of Tomb of Annihilation and Curse of Strahd, for example, we changed text that was racially insensitive. Those reprints have already been printed and will be available in the months ahead. We will continue this process, reviewing each book as it comes up for a reprint and fixing such errors where they are present.
- Later this year, we will release a product (not yet announced) that offers a way for a player to customize their character's origin, including the option to change the ability score increases that come from being an elf, a dwarf, or one of D & D's many other playable folk. This option emphasizes that each person in the game is an individual with capabilities all their own.
- Curse of Strahd included a people known as the Vistani and featured the Vistani heroine Ezmerelda. Regrettably, their depiction echoes some stereotypes associated with the Romani people in the real world. To rectify that, we've not only made changes to Curse of Strahd, but in two upcoming books, we will also show — working with a Romani consultant — the Vistani in a way that doesn't rely on reductive tropes.
- We've received valuable insights from sensitivity readers on two of our recent books. We are incorporating sensitivity readers into our creative process, and we will continue to reach out to experts in various fields to help us identify our blind spots.
Reception not too welcoming
More or less similarly to the comments about it rape in role play, similar comments flocked under various posts in communities around the world. Having mostly the Italian ones, I noticed that the phenomenon was similar; many people began to complain about the politically correct ialso imperious in mom Wizard.
It being understood that we will also speak of this politically correct word, of which many and too many abuse without really knowing the meaning, I was disappointed with this behavior. I have long noticed that the imprint of the D&D player's manual, as well as many humanoid monsters, was terribly stereotyped; all dwarves were like that, all elves were like that. Every drow he was bad (and yet Driz'zt is famous for not being), every orc stupid and savage. A sort of definition of right and wrong that was very clashing with my narrative. In fact, it would clash with any narrative; the BBEG is bad because it holds up when you are 13, not 24.
Yet, faced with this breath of fresh air, many have turned up their noses. "We want only evil orcs!" "Where is the Evil Matriarchy?" "We yearn for all rough dwarves and all elves!" Phrases symbolic of a community that I hoped was healed and that, however, still has something old inside. Let's also insert a recent attack on a playroom and here are the factions in the field: on one side me and on the other my enemy, Ciccio Pasticcio, who is forty-three years old and plays only barbarian orcs.
I do not understand. I don't understand how the beginning of no limitation can make people feel limited. How a more inclusive writing manages to make people feel more excluded. How the absence of penalty can be seen as a penalty.
And above all because Ciccio Pasticcio wants to feel free to be forced to play as the D&D manual tells him.
Of all this, I just have some doubts about the revision of the Vistani, which were quite fascinating in the days of ad & d (as far as I remember, because it's not like I memorized all their culture 😛).
Let's see what they will get out of it, maybe they will leave the charm by correcting only the shot.
Regarding the vulgar conservatism of a fringe of players, unfortunately it seems to me that there is nothing new under the sun, whether it starts from the mechanics or the "flavor text", let's say: I remember that, at the time of the fourth edition, some complained about the the fact that all classes were strong and useful, while some liked the useless mage at the beginning and strong at the end (and the warrior, vice versa).
The changes I have read in the English text don't seem too bad, you have to see what they will mean in practice.
I personally support your final remarks. However, the discussion becomes broader at the very exact moment in which we consider the absence of a school education that makes it clear what a "problem of substance" is, linked to concepts and terminologies that are widely outdated - both from an anthropological and biological point of view. Inclusiveness is essential to undo the knots present in society, which are reflected between the dimension of the game and that of one's daily life. RPG is emulation, even simulation, so why be conservative? Why insist on twentieth-century fantasy traditions? Why contextualize "race", as well as for gender and sex, to a very sad and very old conception?
Progress is the evolution of concepts and ideologies (not ideas, attention) towards the most total inclusivity. Point.
Perhaps the combination is not the best but, all in all, it is what keeps alive most of the certainties to which the people in question are attached, more than the substance. Or at least, I like to think so; were a real (and not derived) problem of substance, my confidence in improvement would run out in a few short moments.
The big problem is to understand that it is permissible to change one's point of view once previously dormant and unknown knowledge has been reached, which many do not accept; many, especially in this case, simply close themselves in their soap bubble, often doing enormous damage to others rather than to themselves. My (and my colleagues) was a simple wanting to prick that bubble, that's all
We will talk about it later, but what struck me was this very deep division in the community, starting from the ideas. And to say that they can still send everything to cow as they have already done (excellent conditions and vulgar results) and yet the common man from D&D kills himself as soon as he sees that they pull away the -2 from the intelligence or allow the eladrin to change sex at will.
They weren't even obligatory things (it's still all about optional) and yet ...
At a certain point, it would be better obligatory: the optional brings with it the limit of two words, or "for whom?", Given that even today it is not taken for granted that the "adjustable" parts of the system and setting foresee to consider the opinion of who is not the GM / DM.
To say, I didn't know anything about the elven possibility of changing genres (I'm not following D&D) but I guess the question is not asking how "everyone decides for the character they control".
If I am wrong, I will certainly not be offended.
Maybe someone might bother that this trait exists in the species of his PC regardless, even if he doesn't use it on his own? It would not surprise me (I would well see an encroachment of this quality on human beings, perhaps descendants of the half-elves, but usually D&D sets tighter stakes between the… let's call them origins).
The optional is the key, in my opinion, to keeping that slice of conservative nerd on the game rather than fooling them with their standardized fantasy ideals. And WotC has been working for about 6 years to scrape off that old stuff from itself and from those who use its products. Honestly, I do not understand this annoyance even a little, and I fear it is the result of the classic phrase "eh ok but if it bothers me that others have a chance that I would have anyway?".
A phrase that says a lot about the thinking of those who say it, and that I honestly don't mind moving away from role play. If I have to decide between greater freedom in fantasy and imagination and a fantasy that is the same, the same broken for thirty years, I much prefer the former. We will make a reason for the disappearance of the second.
... yet ...
The direction of this blatant pandering of a tiny minority that see injustice within a game based on fantasy and imagination will see the quality of the genre diminish.
A stereotype is not inherently negative; all cultures have some measure of idiosyncratic behavior: I've lived and worked in the Middle East for a decade, and will unabashedly proclaim that stereotypes of Arabs (both positive and negative) are true to form. It's not an attack on Arabs as a culture, racial group, or any other distinction, in fact, it's the opposite. The idiosyncrasies and peculiarities of different cultures, is what makes the world diverse - not the creation of a melting pot when all individuality and originality, and eventually m, diversity, is lost.
In terms of the forgotten realms settings, Orcs, goblins, ogres, etc are racial phenotypes that we're initially created to be opponents of the player characters. Drow have a fascinating lore behind them of a matriarchal spider-worshiping cult with totalitarian authority over their populace, and the persecution of males within its society. The majority of drow behave that way because they have been immersed in a particularly brutal culture for their whole lives. As with orcs. Dwarves, elves, Genasi, etc also each have their own lore that makes them interesting.
To simply do away with all of this rich lore and create a dystopian hell of social justice where racial features are relegated to archaism, and all character races and archetypes have the same values, cultures, social reception, and any other variable you can think of simply annihilates an interesting story and environment for characters.
I recall playing a half-orc some years ago, in a campaign set in Baldur's Gate, and the distrust and prejudice applied to being of orcish origin was worked into the NPCs response; and it was fantastic storytelling.
'A Dwarf, an Orc, an Elf, and a Tiefling walk into a bar… and no one cares because the bartender is an Ogre cleric, the waitress is a Kenku Sorcerer, and there's a group of Drow discussing the charitable work they've been doing in the city recently '… It's garbage, and utterly crappy storytelling. If they want to create a social justice dystopia in Wildemount, then by all means, do so. Leave the Forgotten Realms as they are… it feels like an Orwellian re-write with what they're doing to Curse of Strahd, Trans-drow in Waterdeep, and same-sex couples wandering around in Icewind Dale.
As a fan of the old Icewind Dale games on PC, I've purchased RotFM, and it will be the last item I purchase from them. Tasha's Melting Pot of universalism, and non-sensical lore is an atrocious concept, and it's ruined D&D, along with the recent 'innovation' and 'progressive wokeness', and the silent majority are of the same opinion. Wizards will kill their customer base with this idiocy - catering to the noisy few.
Each community has its own chubby people, the scientific community has flat-earthers, the RPG community has that of gamers who think imaginary fantasy races are racist. The only difference is that in this case the flat-earthers make a big voice on the internet and the publishers of atlases, for fear of not selling, remake the maps showing the flat Earth.
I'm afraid you missed the fact that nobody is changing anything, but possibilities are being added.
By and large I agree not in "rehabilitating" evil races but in giving them a depth equal to that of the player races. Not all orcs are savage killers just as not all dwarves are boorish drunks.
I just have one doubt (based on nothing at the moment, we'll see when these new products come out) About “full customization” by region, and the redistribution of feature bonuses. I would not like to go towards a "homologation" that would completely cancel the racial differences, dropping the choice.
On this point I would much prefer that emphasis be placed on interpretation, and the creation of modules and adventures focused on collaboration and dispelling stereotypes.
The problem is purely mechanical, in reality. You can't force people to act in a certain way, but you can allow, with personalization, various people to act as they like without feeling constrained by a mere number. The elf will remain the elf, the ogre will remain (in appearance) the ogre, but it seems that the choices on attributes will change (or expand). Not that it's critical (half the times I've seen a character play attributes were as important as the two of clubs with trump cards) but it increases the chance of classes / races, without affecting anyone.
From what I remember, already in the 3.x manuals races such as orcs and drow were marked as "generally evil" that is, there were subjects of those races of other alignments, albeit in a minority. Unlike the evil outsiders who (so far but I fear that too will change) were intrinsically linked to the evil of their plane of belonging.
In Eberron this discourse has become wider with all races, even some monsters, which could be of any alignment they wanted.
Different speech instead is for the grayhawk drow that were necessarily evil, but honestly I don't remember why and therefore I could be wrong. Or those of Golarion (pathfinder) who are elves who have become evil because of a curse.
So I don't understand the reason for this obligation to change the culture of orcs and drow just to have good characters. Among other things, in an online comic they made fun of the fact that everyone was doing good drow.
What you miss is that you are simply adding things, not taking things away. We are thinking of giving depth to the most known humanoid races precisely because most of the players were intrigued by the combination of evil society / good character, as shown by Drizz't and most of the monstrous creatures used as characters. You want to try to give more depth to certain breeds by stopping using "it's bad because yes" as a motivation.
I honestly don't understand why there is all this hatred when WotC tries to destroy the good / bad binomial, when forums are chock full of alignment issues ...