At some point earlier this morning I hit a new milestone; 6 Million hits.
Still, it is a nice milestone to hit.
Over the weekend WotC/Hasbro and D&D team had their D&D Celebration. Lots of things were discussed including the new gift box I talked about yesterday.
Of course, the big announcement was D&D 5.5 or D&D 5 Revised coming out in 2024.
Personally, I think this is a good idea.
Right now D&D 5 is 7 years old. The "Basic Rules" PDF and the Starter Set were released in July 2014. In 2024, the proposed release date, D&D 5 will be close to 10 years old. That is about the same amount of time AD&D 1st and 2nd Ed were around each. That is counting the unofficial ".5" versions of post Unearthed Arcana (AD&D 1) and the Revised AD&D 2nd ed books. This puts D&D 5e and 5.5 combined to be the longest-lasting version of D&D.
There are a ton of reasons why 2024 is a good date for this.
The Hype
I have been saying EVERYWHERE that WotC will not do anything until the 50th anniversary of D&D in 2024. They can spend the first two-quarters of 2024 hyping D&D from its roots and evolution. Expect a huge deep dive into nostalgia. Then third quarter (or even fourth to get that Christmas dollar) D&D 5.5 will hit the shelves. The message from WotC will be clear, you have enjoyed D&D for 50 years now and THIS is the ultimate edition. It's not just good marketing, they would be negligent if they didn't do it.
The Rules
When I heard about this I mentioned it to my son last night when he got home from work. His response was, "oh cool!" I have seen similar responses from others in the D&D 5 community. With the publication of Tasha's and other books, there have been enough rule additions and alternates to make a Revised Core Rule Set a welcome publication.
Right now we are being told these are just going to be rule clarifications and reorganizations. Everything will be 100% backward compatible. This is smart given the number of people that play D&D 5 now. It also makes sense given how poorly Pathfinder 2 was received by the fans of Pathfinder 1.
Plus D&D 5 was designed to be more modular, so adding in rules should be easy. Maybe not as modular as D&D 4e was nor as modular as D&D 5 was originally advertised as, but still better than D&D 3 and anything that came before it.
Of there are critics. I note that most of the complaining is coming from people that have self-admitted that they actually don't play D&D 5. So I guess their opinions really don't matter.
Expectations
What am I expecting with these new rules?
Well, "race" will be gone and we will get something closer to the Ancestry and Culture mods other games have been doing. Mechanically speaking it will largely be the same at the end. Instead of choosing a race and getting a baked-in mod and language; you will choose ancestry, culture and there will be guidelines for mods, languages, and other features. So what if you were a human raised by elves? Or an orc raised by dwarves? These things can now happen. Well, in truth you could always do these you just needed a DM that would work out the details with you and not be dogmatic.
There will still be a Basic Rules style game with the four basic classes (Cleric, Fighter, Rogue, Wizard) and the four basic "races" (Human, Elf, Dwarf, Halfling) they will just be worked up in terms of the new ancestry rules. But mechanically a 5.0 elf will work as a 5.5 elf.
Rangers will get tweaked. Again. Cause no one is ever happy with them. This goes all the way back to the beginning really.
Warlock might get some changes, as will the monks. We MIGHT get a Core Rule psionic class, but the chances are very low.
I am expecting some new Session 0 verbiage.
Monsters will have a "typical" alignment with sentient races not having one required. The new Wild Beyond the Witchlight monsters all have alignments listed. The idea will be that Ancestry plays a role in alignment, but individuals have a choice. I DO expect to see a group of good or at least neutrally aligned Drow.
There are spellcasting changes coming to monsters that we will get a preview of in 2023 with the Multiverse of Monsters book.
I am also expecting more on non-combat play like we have in the Wild Beyond the Witchlight.
I am sure there will be more and many of the changes will be minor, less than the changes between 3.0 and 3.5 for example. OR even the differences between 2nd Ed and Revised 2nd Ed.
Looking forward to seeing what happens.
This week the social media networks were all a-buzz with a mysterious new product for D&D. Some were saying new boxed set or even D&D 6th ed (which was highly unlikely in any event) we learned today what we will be getting.
So this,
Has now been replaced by this,
The set includes Xanathar's Guide to Everything, Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, and the new Mordenkainen Presents Monsters of the Multiverse.
It was supposed to be for Christmas, but the global supply chain is still screwed up.
In any case, it looks really cool. Typically I get one for me and the special edition one for my son. But I think I might get the special ed version for myself as well. They look so great.
Ok. So I did find a Kickstarter that interested me.
ANKUR - Kingdom of the gods TTRPG 2E
Honestly, it looks like my sort of jam. In particular, it would be great for some other things I have planned.
Only 6 days left!
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| I gotta admit I love the shirt! |
I will admit, I adore Ginny Di. She has unbound enthusiasm about D&D and all things related. I know she is young enough to be my daughter and I have characters older than her, but I still think she is great.
It is so refreshing to come to her Twitter or YouTube pages and see how excited she is over something D&D-related. I'll read the posts or blogs of some of my contemporaries and wonder when the fun died in their lives leaving them as bitter old husks.
Plus she seems to irritate the right people, so that is a bonus all on its own.
The fact that she also loves her witches has almost nothing to do with it. Well...maybe a little.
I have already posted about her or her projects in the past.
This week Ginny is back with Morelia the Wood Witch in a POV roleplay. It is a fun little bit video, but it really helped me cement the idea that Morelia would be a great NPC in my War of the Witch Queens.
Content Warning to Bitter Old Grogs Who Are Dead Inside: The video features a shop where an NPC Witch SELLS POTIONS! Gasp, the Horror! The audacity! The cheek of it all!
Anyway. She is fun. She is funny. She has a ton of enthusiasm and I think she is great. In fact, I even sought out items she has been sponsored by at Gen Con because she made them look really fun.
So check her out. If you don't like her ask yourself, when did I die inside?
Ginny Di online
Give her a follow or a like or something.
Since I have completed all the myths in the Deities and Demigods the initial goal of One Man's God is now complete. I might, after this, look to other editions of (A)D&D, in particular, 2nd and 3rd but for now, I want to explore some other topics that came up in my OMG posts.
One of those topics is syncretism.
Syncretism is the combining of gods or beliefs into a new set of gods and/or belief systems. This is something that happens in the real world all the time, though maybe less so now as the prevalence of monotheism is worldwide. We do see it more modern times in the cases of religions like Vodun and SanterÃa.
While you typically don't see syncretism in AD&D there is at least one excellent example of it. Going all the way back to Dragon #54 from October 1981, we have Ed Greenwood's Down-to-Earth Divinity.
I am not sure if this article lead to the later developments of what the Cleric can do with their gods or not, but it was most certainly ahead of it's time. A quick reminder, while Greenwood has been telling us about his campaign for a bit now, the Forgotten Realms, as a product, was not due till 1987.
I covered this in an early This Old Dragon, here is what I said about it then:
Up first in real articles we have something from Ed Greenwood. So this year (2017) I have been spending some time expanding my knowledge of the Forgotten Realms. This article is one of the earliest articles on the Realms I know of. Down-to-earth Divinity discusses how Ed has put together his Pantheon of Gods. You can easily see how this evolved into the gods of the Realms. I found it interesting that he includes the elemental gods from the Melnibonéan mythos. There are a lot of "reskinned" Deities and Demigods gods here too (which is the point of the article). I liked that Ed specifically mentions that witches worship Selûne. The article is long and seriously good.
I feel I undersold how good this article is for my purposes. So not only can use this as a One Man's God entry in the pure sense it is also the perfect place to discuss syncretism. The insight to how the Realms gods took shape is fascinating, the implications of what is going here are much more interesting.
For the sake of today's discussion, let us just focus on the Faerûnian Pantheon as a whole. While they have evolved much since this article (and a further point in my case here). For modern examples, I will refer to the Faerûnian pantheon at the Forgotten Realms wiki.
Faerûnian Gods
In this article, Greenwood details how he created the Gods of Faerûn. Many of these gods are "reskinned" versions of Earth gods. While there is a very practical game-design reason for this there is also an implied in-universe explanation; clerics of those gods came to Toril and brought their gods with them. We see this in books, like Neil Gaiman's "American Gods" and we see it later in the Realms itself with the Mulhorandi pantheon, which are the Egyptian Gods, not even changed all that much.
For his Gods, Greenwood choose to stick pretty close to the first printing of the Deities and Demigods. Again there are very practical reasons for this. Here is a breakdown of the "immigrant" gods to Faerûn.
| Faerûn | D&DG | Pantheon | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Azuth | Aarth | Nehwon | Direct port, concept-wise |
| Bane | Druaga | Babylonian | Human form |
| Chauntea | Demeter | Greek | Direct port |
| Gond | Hephaestus | Greek | Direct port |
| Ilmater | Issek of the Jug | Nehwon | Some aspects |
| Loviatar | Loviatar | Finnish | Direct port |
| Mask | Hermes | Greek | No Justice domain |
| Mielikki | Mielikki | Finnish | Direct port |
| Milil | Bragi | Norse | Changed |
| Oghma | Oghma | Celtic | Direct port |
| Silvanus | Silvanus | Celtic | Direct port |
| Sune | Aphrodite | Greek | Direct port |
| Talona | Kipuytto | Finnish | Direct port |
| Talos | Storm Gods | Many | Combined aspects of other gods |
| Torm | St. Cuthbert | Greyhawk | Concept only |
| Tyche / Tymora | Tyche | Greek | Direct port |
| Tyr | Tyr | Norse | Direct port |
| Elemental Lords | Elemental Lords | Melnibonéan | Direct port |
| Cults of the Beast | Beast Lords | Melnibonéan+ | many sources |
This is not to imply that all Gods in Faerûn are imports. Far from it! Many of the gods discussed in the article are different enough from their sources to be considered new gods. Which is exactly what syncretism does. There are also plenty of brand new gods. For example, Mystra is nothing at all like Hecate.
What About Demons and Other Gods?
One Man's God is supposed to be about gods and demons right? Certainly, the demons of the Monster Manual ARE the demons of Faerûn. We know that Orcus has had a lot plots and schemes in the Realms since the very start. And in the opposite direction, One Man's Demon is another's God, Asmodeus went from the Arch Duke of the devils to a God of Evil. The details of his rise and fall have been dealt with in many books, but the best ones for my money come from the Brimstone Angels series by Erin Evans.
Evans also shows how imported gods can work. The Pantheon of the Untheric Gods, which were the Babylonian Gods, were re-adopted by the Abeir Dragonborn living in Tymanther. In her book "The Devil You Know" Evans shows Untheric/Babylonian gods first as human-like then as Dragonborn-like as more of the Dragonborn living in Djerad Thymar came to believe in them, in particular the God Enlil. Is it possible then that Bane IS Druaga, just evolved through the ages that his form has changed? Isn't that also syncretism?
Nothing Like the Sun...
I have been going over this article for a very long time. There is quite a lot here to tease out and use if you are willing to take the time. A good example of this comes from a tiny tidbit of information found in the paragraph for Selûne, then just Selune. We are told that Selune is "revered by witches (and a few may worship her)." Later on, in the Deity/Character Relationships table, we are told that the witches used are the ones from Dragon Magazine #43.
Reading through the various works on the Moon Goddesses, Selûne and Shar, and the Elven Sehanine Moonbow, there is a lot of back and forth on who is an aspect of who and what not. This all lead me to a bit of syncretism of my own to combine all three goddesses into one Goddess of the Moon with three aspects. I detailed this years ago in my "Chanel Divinity" article Nothing Like the Sun. Each goddess represents the aspects of the triple Goddess; Maiden, Mother, and Crone or Sehanine, Selûne and Shar respectively. Here they are more than just the Goddesses of the Moon but the Goddess of Witchcraft as well. The waxing crescent is Sehanine and her "moonbow." The full moon is the Mother Selûne in her full glory. The waning crescent is Shar and her sickles to reap the souls of the dead. But like their Goddess they are reborn as the Maiden once more.
Realms diehards might ask how can these Goddess exist? Well, I also ask why does Zeus-Serapis exist when, supposedly, Zeus, Serapis, and Osiris also still exist? I like my Gods and Goddesses to be mysterious and strange and maybe a little contradictory.
For a little under 9 pages of text, Ed Greenwood really delivered here. So much so that in truth this blog post was started months back. I wanted to go back and reread posts I had made about this, posts I had made influenced by this, and more Forgotten Realms information. In truth, I could go on much longer about this topic just in the Realms themselves, the world is much more dynamic that I had given it credit for, but I am going to stay on topic here and move on to other worlds and other gods.
So. Thank You, Ed Greenwood. This is quite a quality bit of work.
But I am still here doing what I do!
Today is the Autumnal Equinox for the Northern Hemisphere and the Vernal Equinox for my friends in the Southern Hemisphere.
For me, this brings the march to darkness and of course my favorite time of year. The spooky season of Halloween.
And do I have a lot in store for you all this year! Starting off with a couple of hosting I am doing all October.
October Horror Movie Challenge
I have been doing the October Horror Movie Challenge n for years now. I just got a new DVD in the mail today of one I have been searching for forever so I thought today would be a good day to announce that this year I am hosting my own Horror Movie Challenge.
I am not doing anything wildly different than in previous years, and I am largely following the rules as set out by Krell Laboratories.
You have 31 days, October 1st to October 31st, to watch 31 Horror movies. At least 20 of these need to be first-time views.
Currently, I am working on my list of movies. I wanted to do a Lovecraft film fest. But I am finding that there are quite a few Lovecraft-themed movies I just don't have access to. So I am going to expand my list a bit.
I have even created a new banner image to use.
If you want to copy this to your own posts then here is the HTML code!
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://bit.ly/OctHorrorMovie" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img alt="2021 October Horror Movie Challenge" border="0" data-original-height="687" data-original-width="563" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmymZC-oZM6wAtTQFryQnipqy4Pq7L7OeHRbB6dfk20qvLT0yJ-gSoK5aUWCt_vpP4KXhvBR_3CYxh5jd4LiS-kAZJPRq7RamQBVZDUfsz9IPmySBxDiUb-tx6TpGav_B8jJR-4b-L-Uw/w328-h400/October+Horror+Movie+Challenge+2021.jpg" title="2021 October Horror Movie Challenge" width="328" /></a></div>
Just copy and paste that into the HTML editing window of whatever you are using to post.
But that is not all that is happening here.
This October I am also hosting my first ever RPG Blog Carnival. This October will be all about Horror in RPGs. So kinda what I like to do anyway, but now you can join me. I will have an official post going up on October 1st for you to see all the details and link your blogs/vlogs/social media posts back.
You can check out the details at Of Dice and Dragons the home of the RPG Blog Carnival.
I plan to talk a lot about horror and how you can use it in your games. I am also going to spend quite a bit of time with other horror games and how they can be mined for ideas.
Once again October is going to be a very busy time here. Hope you all join me!
