This isn't even Scooby Doo. The 5e ravenloft was Scooby Doo; this is like, Glee or something. Or whatever new high school drama show where everyone is non-binary.
This ends with a TPK upon entering Barovia. The party is captured. The bird is defeathered and cooked. The town has been suffering a famine. The three on the right are burned alive for being demons. The woman crucified.
It's hard to have a scary gothic horror from the Ravenloft campaign setting if the players keep raising their X cards and skipping entire parts of the adventure...
I'm surprised they didn't make Strahd a trans-woman (who never had the benefit of hormone blockers in a pre-industrial society) and/or a PoC (vampire of color?) that would be wrong for the PCs to slay.
Oh, I think it will at some point. First, society is starting to shift back into a Thermidorian Reaction against the woke terror. Second, given enough time it's probably inevitable that Hasbro will farm out D&D. How fast depends on when it fails catastrophically.
The absurdity of this self-obsessed postmodernism is nowhere more visible than in the insistence that fantasy worlds be remade to reflect that worst things in the modern world.
Wait, that was a novel shown in Diversity and Dragon's video? As for that claim in the description about the novel writers not understanding horror, it's obvious the D&D 5e writers didn't understand it when writing the Curse of Strahd and Ravenloft setting books. A lot of the horror elements such as corruption from using the evil Dark Powers didn't show up in the books there either.
I have two 2e Ravenloft boxed sets and a host of modules and extras. If I was to DM again and run Ravenloft it would absolutely be deadly and have potential diminishing pc sanity in it.
An entire adventure built around everybody being Hungry Hungry Hippos? o_O! How the heck does a Kenku make a viable cleric??? They can't say prayers unless they heard somebody else say that prayer 24 hours or less ago and they can't say the verbal components of spells unless they heard somebody else say it in the last 24 hours.
Heck, I’d argue a lot of them are cultural appropriation, just whites appropriating other whites so nobody cares. Like what happened to Thomas the Tank Engine.
To me it's the humanoid selection. Ravenloft is heavily based on xenophobia and superstition. If it's got horns it dies. That kenku is gonna have a hell of a time in Barovia all the others would probably be burned at the stake for flaunting magic. They just don't understand these days.
Diversity and Dragons had a good video today about this phenomenon. The short version is TTRPG players or even just gamers are no longer the target audience. This is all made for the players that tourists call tourists.
@RPGPundit nothing wrong with parallel thinking. Unless you're OGGM or Clowndor who think speaking on any topic tangential to something they said is "content farming "
Beyond the stupidity of it being modern day, the look of the game as gotten dumb and cutesy too. All of the new art looks like something from a preteens book and everything looks more Fantasy Victorian than anything else.
There's nothing victorian about that art. It looks like 2000s generic fantasy crap art. If you want to see what great Victorian/Edwardian fantasy looked like, see the art of Waterhouse, Fournier, Judd Waugh, Payne, Klimt, Poynter, etc
More the reason we need Lion & Dragon Adventures in Wallachia. Dracula, meaning little dragon, having a draco-vampiric monster form would be awesome too.
@@nosotrosloslobosestamosreg4115 Some of the rules, for sure, but Vald III died around end of 1476. Lion & Dragon being more Renaissance makes more sense.
Again, there's nothing stopping people from running that in Dark Albion right now! It literally happened in the original Dark Albion campaign, the PCs were sent to kill Vlad Tepes after he'd become a powerful Upierz Lord.
i have always played evil characters in dnd. ravenloft was the first setting where i felt the urge to play a good alligned char. there is really something special about ravenloft
Thanks for this video. Being a HUGE fan of Ravenloft 1e & 2e and the novels, this one gets me. All the other products of WOTC (even the two Ravenloft RPG books) just made me roll my eyes and proved me right for not supporting them and buy OSR and Independent products. But this cover, this... thing... that's the first time that I actually feel angry. I still read the PN Elrod and Christie Golden novels, I still play 1e and 2e Ravenloft. The team on the cover of the new novel would have been the "comic-relief-cannon-fodder" for an intro of one of my games; brutally murdered by an average Random Encounter. And my poor Strahd, once so Gracefull, Dangerous, Mighty lord, turned into a dollar store cosplayer. Anyway, enough rants, thanks for the video.
Thanks to a friend, I shifted over to Pathfinder 1e. Kept my AD&D books for reference and modules for conversion but started playing exclusively PF1e games. Never looking back.
The problem with Ravenloft the setting has always been that there are two very distinct interpretations of Ravenloft, and they are not necessarily compatible. You had the original "Weekend in Hell" style, where you would play heroes from one of the ACTUAL D&D worlds and the different Domains of Dread were just glorified dungeons to run them through. And then you had the "Ravenloft as a real world" style; most of the truly Gothic Horror tropes like Powers Checks didn't exist until this incarnation developed over the course of Ravenloft's lifespan, being cemented by the Domains of Dread boxed set and built upon by White Wolf's 3rd edition update. It is this secondary incarnation, which does lean more deeply into Gothic Horror elements, which pushes for a rejection of the more overtly fantastical elements of D&D like demihumans and playable wizards or clerics, that is more synonymous with the setting amongst actual Ravenloft fans. But it is the first incarnation that is more recognizable in pop culture. It is the first incarnation that WotC deliberately tried to invoke with their warped 5e "reimagining" of the setting. And, sadly, that party on that novel is a perfect fit for Weekend in Hell Ravenloft. Because Weekend in Hell Ravenloft isn't a "Victorian Horror Setting". It's just a clumsily slapped-together excuse for various flavors of spooky dungeon crawl. That's all it's ever been. You go in, you beat up the Darklord, and then you go back to the real world for real adventuring.
This cover really does not match the style of the setting in my opinion. People should go back and look at the covers of Knight of the Black Rose, Vampire of the Mist, Heart of Midnight, etc. Ravenloft can definitely have romantic imagery, but it is always sinister and period appropriate. Also one other observation, the old novels usually had one figure in them. I am not a stickler for having just a single style, but compositionally I think it worked better for the line than a whole party (especially for the books where I don't necessarily think of it as being about a party of adventurers). one point on the victorian thing, and you probably meant this but it was a minor side issue and not worth getting into, technically the domains of Ravenloft are set in different time periods, but there was always a gothic aesthetic that pushed everything into the 18th and 19th century. By the text it might be describing something that sounds like it is set in medieval eastern europe or England, but then there is a guy in the art with a suit and top hat. So the line had this thing going where they would sometimes be medieval yet there would be many things you would find in victorian setting. Later they started clarifying tech levels in domains. But early on it was kind of trying to do both things at once (which oddly worked for it)
Yes, but the inspiration of the Ravenloft genre was always that kind of Victorian Horror that later evolved into the Hammer Horror films. There's some outliers, but all the most famous parts of Ravenloft are basically that style.
@@RPGPundit That is definitely true. It is why the setting is so schizophrenic on this timeframe I think. All the big horror inspirations, are from periods after gothic. And the art was always suggestive of Victorian. They even ended up doing an actual Victorian Horror version called Masque of the Red Death (it was quite good but not as good as the original setting).
I thought the potion girl was riding a horse on my first viewing. It wasn't until I looked a second time to try to guess their classes that I realized there was a cutesie kenku bird hero.
I'll continue reading the classic Spanish novel , Don Quixote by Miguel Cervantes. Sure it's about a man enamored with knighthood so badly he deludes himself that he is a knight errant and gets himself with all sorts of blunders for it...but you can sympathize with him a lot more than the people making current D&D.
El Quixote is fascinating in that it became the main "Culture Novel" for Spain (like Shakespeare did for England), and how it marked the Spanish character from then on. Its obviously better in the original language. Spread the word, share the video!
I'm glad I got rid of my 5E Ravenloft book and kept my classic AD&D Ravenloft stuff. Last Tuesday I ran 'A Light in the Belfry' as a Hallowe'en game with my RPG group using the Dragon Age rules. It was one of those packs that came with an interactive audio CD with spooky, ominous sounds that gave it ATMOSPHERE! We played it under minimal lighting and the group loved it! The narrator did his best Vincent Price impression which really added to it. The 5E version had NO atmosphere at all and was more concerned about not harming the delicate sensibilities of players that we have to tone down the settings original themes. What a way to kill atmosphere! When the 5E Ravenwoke book made an obvious little hidden dig towards Call of Cthulhu, I got finally rid of it.
Despite playing D&D since 1983 I never experienced Ravenloft (other than discussion & some related spin-off scenario) Recently I decided I should change that & got the I6 reprint. Then thought I would get CoS & go all in... Im now beginning to regret that. CoS is, IMO, a load of fairy tale Disney crap. Witches that bake children, monkeys in tutu's? Quests to fetch wine? WTF? Part of me wants to abandon this campaign only 8 sessions in & the other half of me says, _"no I can just alter it how I like."_ But IDK, this makes me lose enthusiasm & its already so much work to read & learn each section, then change it. Ive also noticed a lot of mistakes in CoS, I had no idea but things dont match up ~ I realised they must have changed the ethnicity of several NPCs but forgot to update the descriptions & lore. Now Im struggling to explain why I described someone as black earlier being the spitting-image of someone who has powder-white skin. huh? I have no problem with the ethnicity changing, I welcome it, but they messed it up so badly!
The Montey haul D&D (5E) continues to get more ludicrous by each and every product they put out. I think I will play a half living spell, have duargar sorcerer. I can enlarge myself at will expanding my natural fireball form. Of course I can somehow twist and contort myself that none of my party members are hurt. Lol
Why would his offspring rise up against him? Doesn't make sense as presumably they would have some of his corruption, and if you're corrupted you can't fully exterminate evil from the world.
I don't hate the idea of a tiefling paladin but then I see it as them embarking a great undertaking in the name of holiness and goodness to redeem their soul which was blackened at birth. Somehow I think my interpretation is not what they are going with.
Lets just be honest here : You're seeing what happens to hobbies (ttrpgs, comics, etc) when they become popular enough that the portion of the population most invested in social belonging, fads and social conflict (drama : because they don't carry the mass for real conflict) rushes in. To which you might respond : " Not true, I can name a few folks within that crowd that were old schoolers that fit right in " I'll give you that many of those folks were exceptions, but I'll also tell you that they were exceptions within their group too -- Which is why they fit in.
Dawson's Star Wars Rise of the Red Blade was actually pretty good. In fact, the only non-Legends SW book I was able to finish. Dawson is a talented author, but I will not hold my breath for this one. This looks (judging a book by its cover....) absolutely terrible. As far from Ravenloft as you can get.
Took a second to notice her, but character on the far left; spunky, barely feminine, irreverent sorcerer chick with The Haircut. Maybe *this* one will break the mold and be trans AND bisexual! Won't that be novel and interesting! I know I can't wait to find out!
I wonder why many heroes of this modern TTRPGs or CRPGs have horns. Why not typical easily to recognize classes like knight, paladin, sorceress or races etc. I cannot easily say what taks in the party they have.
I don't see anything wrong with it. Looks like a Human Alchemist, Kenku spell caster, Half Orc spell caster, Tiefling Fighter and, Drow Warlock. This could be the party in any 5e campaign.
@@Gangrel442003 You can disagree with me and, you can state that you disagree with me but, when you use terms such as "fighting words" that imply my opinion is physically assaulting you that is an SJW tactic.
Honestly its not too bad. Like they all have "main character" vibe cranked up to 11 and thats about it. The book will still probably be woke and i dont like the idea of Strahd having a heir but at the end of the day the cover is probably going to be the least of these issues.
The cover is just representative of the content. The point is that the weirdo races of 5e are just humans in drag, and symbolic, if anything, of people's personal (gender, sexual, etc) expression. Its a substitute for having an actual personality. That DOES NOT WORK with Victorian style morality play fantasy. Ravenloft only makes any sense if it's about a battle between the Holy and the Unholy.
The virtual world of D&D to be turned in to D&D crossing the playful friend adventure build a house make friends and make friends with the miss-understood vampire or ork, correct the ways of the that very naughty boy that necromancer.
The thing is, D&D is decentralized these days. Yes, WotC D&D is terrible, but unlike video games or comics, they can't control the monopoly over it. Hence, we have the OSR, which is full of amazing products and supplements, and anti-woke sentiment.
@ That one isn’t the newest movie anymore and is not even canon. They made a new film or two in the original timeline and they’re much better or at least inoffensive.
Oh no don't tell me... it' s woke right? No way, how could it be, a woke book... impossible... Ravenloft is ruined... but how can it be ruined if a previous book ruined it already? And D&D is ruined, destroyed even... and it has been for YEARS now... and nobody cares about star wars which is why people who hate new star wars keep making videos about it... cause nobody cares! Anyway oh... here is meatball buy my book
@@nosotrosloslobosestamosreg4115 the old stuff wasn’t that good either. But things change . Warcraft made it possible for people to play monsters. We’re in a post warcraft world. Dnd is just changing with the times. Sorry. You’re just old
@biokido575 the old stuff was made by people who walked many paths in life, bringing a real diversity of experiences unlike your generation, which abhors from non-urban environments, railroaded from kindergarten to college getting all of you a grey-goo'd notion of days passing by, later landing on jobs that require to create stories and consequences, thing you never experienced. Sorry, you're just a NPC without any any spark. Getting old is great because you're set free from lust.
I actually want to see Strahd knock over the Wheelchair Paladin, yell "LOOKS LIKE YOU'VE POPPED A WHEELIE!", and then run away laughing like Skeletor.
LOL. Spread the word, share the video!
In real Ravenloft all of these characters would be lynched by a mob panicky villagers thinking monsters were about to invade the town.
Amen. Spread the word, share the video!
@@VisionStorm1 At best, the villagers would run the characters out of town once they started talking about their pronouns.
It's not Bram Stoker.
It's Scooby Doo.
This isn't even Scooby Doo. The 5e ravenloft was Scooby Doo; this is like, Glee or something. Or whatever new high school drama show where everyone is non-binary.
@@RPGPundit And the people who did American Horror Story were the same people who did Glee
This ends with a TPK upon entering Barovia. The party is captured. The bird is defeathered and cooked. The town has been suffering a famine. The three on the right are burned alive for being demons. The woman crucified.
Lol did you jerk off writing this ? Chill out dude
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I made the comment about this novel on a different board: it looks like Strahd is the principal of a middle school in a bad 80s Saturday teen comedy…
Gambit...🙄
Yes, or more accurately a 2024 woke remake of an 80s teen comedy. Spread the word, share the video!
Ravensoft.
Well put. Spread the word, share the video!
It's hard to have a scary gothic horror from the Ravenloft campaign setting if the players keep raising their X cards and skipping entire parts of the adventure...
Yeah, really. But the point of Ravenloft isn't about being scary anymore, bigot! It's now about being a FABULOUSSSSS EVIL GIRL BOSS!
@@RPGPundityaaaass queen!
I'm surprised they didn't make Strahd a trans-woman (who never had the benefit of hormone blockers in a pre-industrial society) and/or a PoC (vampire of color?) that would be wrong for the PCs to slay.
They race and gender-swapped a bunch of the other Dark Lords in their 5e ravenloft book. Spread the word, share the video!
I don't think D&D will get back to normal heroic fantasy, but that's ok the OSR will have that covered.
Oh, I think it will at some point. First, society is starting to shift back into a Thermidorian Reaction against the woke terror. Second, given enough time it's probably inevitable that Hasbro will farm out D&D. How fast depends on when it fails catastrophically.
The absurdity of this self-obsessed postmodernism is nowhere more visible than in the insistence that fantasy worlds be remade to reflect that worst things in the modern world.
Amen. Spread the word, share the video!
I keep saying modern writers are like writing fan fiction except they're not actually fans of the source material.
If you're lucky, they just don't understand the appeal of the source material. If you're not, they're anti-fans.
It's Anti-Fan fiction.
Wait, that was a novel shown in Diversity and Dragon's video?
As for that claim in the description about the novel writers not understanding horror, it's obvious the D&D 5e writers didn't understand it when writing the Curse of Strahd and Ravenloft setting books. A lot of the horror elements such as corruption from using the evil Dark Powers didn't show up in the books there either.
I specifically homebrewed the dark powers and corruption for my players because of how bizarre it was not to have decent rules.
Apparently he and I released a video at the exact same time. Yes, the photo was in his video about the destruction of D&D.
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I have two 2e Ravenloft boxed sets and a host of modules and extras. If I was to DM again and run Ravenloft it would absolutely be deadly and have potential diminishing pc sanity in it.
That is the way.
An entire adventure built around everybody being Hungry Hungry Hippos? o_O!
How the heck does a Kenku make a viable cleric??? They can't say prayers unless they heard somebody else say that prayer 24 hours or less ago and they can't say the verbal components of spells unless they heard somebody else say it in the last 24 hours.
That's probably changed now because all races are exactly the same and no races can have disadvantages
Evil benefits greatly by having us think it doesn’t exist but goodness never benefits by hiding itself
The Kenku is cultural appropriation. Was the author Japanese?
Doubt it. Spread the word, share the video!
Didn't look like the 1st and 2nd edition kenku...
Heck, I’d argue a lot of them are cultural appropriation, just whites appropriating other whites so nobody cares. Like what happened to Thomas the Tank Engine.
7:27 Those guys look like up and coming Darklords, already corrupted by the Dark Powers.
Well, pathetic for dark lords, but I get what you're saying.
Are you kidding? Once the Dark Powers got a good look at these guys, they'd be ejected and then banned from ever entering the demiplane again.
I mean, c'mon. Even the Dark Powers have standards.
😒
Party looks like a Critical Role freak circus
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Looks like a Hanna-Barbera cartoon - Ravenloft High! With Shaggy and Scooby Doo as teacher assistants, and Strahd as the Principal.
Its worse, its like Glee or something. Woke adolescent garbage focused on the narcissism of the characters.
To me it's the humanoid selection. Ravenloft is heavily based on xenophobia and superstition. If it's got horns it dies. That kenku is gonna have a hell of a time in Barovia all the others would probably be burned at the stake for flaunting magic. They just don't understand these days.
@@troybrewster102 They don't want to understand.
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I wish they have the same results with the new rpg sensibilities that Concord & Dustborn have had with the pc & console gamers
Diversity and Dragons had a good video today about this phenomenon.
The short version is TTRPG players or even just gamers are no longer the target audience. This is all made for the players that tourists call tourists.
Yeah I saw. It came out at exactly the same time as my video. Makes me wish I'd debuted it an hour earlier...
@RPGPundit nothing wrong with parallel thinking.
Unless you're OGGM or Clowndor who think speaking on any topic tangential to something they said is "content farming "
Beyond the stupidity of it being modern day, the look of the game as gotten dumb and cutesy too. All of the new art looks like something from a preteens book and everything looks more Fantasy Victorian than anything else.
My thought was that it matched the style of _Dragon Age: The Veilguard._
There's nothing victorian about that art. It looks like 2000s generic fantasy crap art. If you want to see what great Victorian/Edwardian fantasy looked like, see the art of Waterhouse, Fournier, Judd Waugh, Payne, Klimt, Poynter, etc
Every group is a traveling freak show. Every tavern, a space port from Star Wars.
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More the reason we need Lion & Dragon Adventures in Wallachia. Dracula, meaning little dragon, having a draco-vampiric monster form would be awesome too.
Oh my God I so want to run a vampire monster whose vampire form is draco! Yes I'm in love with this idea!
Baptism of Fire would fit there also
@@nosotrosloslobosestamosreg4115 Some of the rules, for sure, but Vald III died around end of 1476. Lion & Dragon being more Renaissance makes more sense.
Again, there's nothing stopping people from running that in Dark Albion right now! It literally happened in the original Dark Albion campaign, the PCs were sent to kill Vlad Tepes after he'd become a powerful Upierz Lord.
In my current campaign the PCs are deep in the Carpathians and just encountered a witch cult with a very powerful Upierz.
No forgiveness... And no fucking mercy...
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That cover is prime 2024 Tumblr D&D art. We need D&D to get out of the hands of WotC and out of Seattle.
The only way to do that for now is by leaving D&D for the OSR.
They missed the burning ballot box in the cover pic! 😜
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i have always played evil characters in dnd. ravenloft was the first setting where i felt the urge to play a good alligned char. there is really something special about ravenloft
As I said, it is the most good vs evil setting D&D ever made.
Not sure if that cover is AI art, or art that explains why it's so hard generating good AI art.
It doesn't say, but people have noticed weird details that make them think it is.
Currently smoking, midnight (local blend), with a Joh's Church Warden pipe
Awesome. Spread the word, share the video!
@@RPGPundit I did, on Elven Maid's Inn
Thanks for this video. Being a HUGE fan of Ravenloft 1e & 2e and the novels, this one gets me. All the other products of WOTC (even the two Ravenloft RPG books) just made me roll my eyes and proved me right for not supporting them and buy OSR and Independent products. But this cover, this... thing... that's the first time that I actually feel angry. I still read the PN Elrod and Christie Golden novels, I still play 1e and 2e Ravenloft. The team on the cover of the new novel would have been the "comic-relief-cannon-fodder" for an intro of one of my games; brutally murdered by an average Random Encounter.
And my poor Strahd, once so Gracefull, Dangerous, Mighty lord, turned into a dollar store cosplayer.
Anyway, enough rants, thanks for the video.
Thank you! Spread the word, share the video!
Thanks to a friend, I shifted over to Pathfinder 1e. Kept my AD&D books for reference and modules for conversion but started playing exclusively PF1e games. Never looking back.
Have you looked at the OSR? Baptism of Fire, for example?
The problem with Ravenloft the setting has always been that there are two very distinct interpretations of Ravenloft, and they are not necessarily compatible. You had the original "Weekend in Hell" style, where you would play heroes from one of the ACTUAL D&D worlds and the different Domains of Dread were just glorified dungeons to run them through. And then you had the "Ravenloft as a real world" style; most of the truly Gothic Horror tropes like Powers Checks didn't exist until this incarnation developed over the course of Ravenloft's lifespan, being cemented by the Domains of Dread boxed set and built upon by White Wolf's 3rd edition update. It is this secondary incarnation, which does lean more deeply into Gothic Horror elements, which pushes for a rejection of the more overtly fantastical elements of D&D like demihumans and playable wizards or clerics, that is more synonymous with the setting amongst actual Ravenloft fans. But it is the first incarnation that is more recognizable in pop culture. It is the first incarnation that WotC deliberately tried to invoke with their warped 5e "reimagining" of the setting. And, sadly, that party on that novel is a perfect fit for Weekend in Hell Ravenloft. Because Weekend in Hell Ravenloft isn't a "Victorian Horror Setting". It's just a clumsily slapped-together excuse for various flavors of spooky dungeon crawl. That's all it's ever been. You go in, you beat up the Darklord, and then you go back to the real world for real adventuring.
You have something of a point there, though the very first original Ravenloft Module still had all the trappings of a hammer horror movie.
This cover really does not match the style of the setting in my opinion. People should go back and look at the covers of Knight of the Black Rose, Vampire of the Mist, Heart of Midnight, etc. Ravenloft can definitely have romantic imagery, but it is always sinister and period appropriate. Also one other observation, the old novels usually had one figure in them. I am not a stickler for having just a single style, but compositionally I think it worked better for the line than a whole party (especially for the books where I don't necessarily think of it as being about a party of adventurers).
one point on the victorian thing, and you probably meant this but it was a minor side issue and not worth getting into, technically the domains of Ravenloft are set in different time periods, but there was always a gothic aesthetic that pushed everything into the 18th and 19th century. By the text it might be describing something that sounds like it is set in medieval eastern europe or England, but then there is a guy in the art with a suit and top hat. So the line had this thing going where they would sometimes be medieval yet there would be many things you would find in victorian setting. Later they started clarifying tech levels in domains. But early on it was kind of trying to do both things at once (which oddly worked for it)
Yes, but the inspiration of the Ravenloft genre was always that kind of Victorian Horror that later evolved into the Hammer Horror films. There's some outliers, but all the most famous parts of Ravenloft are basically that style.
@@RPGPundit That is definitely true. It is why the setting is so schizophrenic on this timeframe I think. All the big horror inspirations, are from periods after gothic. And the art was always suggestive of Victorian. They even ended up doing an actual Victorian Horror version called Masque of the Red Death (it was quite good but not as good as the original setting).
pastel puke color pallet, style that just screams kill me...i hate all the new art
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I thought the potion girl was riding a horse on my first viewing. It wasn't until I looked a second time to try to guess their classes that I realized there was a cutesie kenku bird hero.
It's not even good art. Spread the word, share the video!
Yeah, the Overton Window is different these days.
It's starting to accelerate back the other way, hard. I'm optimistic.
I'll continue reading the classic Spanish novel , Don Quixote by Miguel Cervantes. Sure it's about a man enamored with knighthood so badly he deludes himself that he is a knight errant and gets himself with all sorts of blunders for it...but you can sympathize with him a lot more than the people making current D&D.
El Quixote is fascinating in that it became the main "Culture Novel" for Spain (like Shakespeare did for England), and how it marked the Spanish character from then on. Its obviously better in the original language. Spread the word, share the video!
Thanks for the shout-out! This Seattleloft thing sounds like anything but Gothic horror.
It sure isn't gothic horror.
I laugh hard with my players when I said, that MG shouldn't make players feel fear and horror in new Ravenloft.
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Why Drows aren't black any more? They were somewhat... whitewashed?
And since when are they "barbarians"?!
I'm glad I got rid of my 5E Ravenloft book and kept my classic AD&D Ravenloft stuff. Last Tuesday I ran 'A Light in the Belfry' as a Hallowe'en game with my RPG group using the Dragon Age rules. It was one of those packs that came with an interactive audio CD with spooky, ominous sounds that gave it ATMOSPHERE! We played it under minimal lighting and the group loved it! The narrator did his best Vincent Price impression which really added to it. The 5E version had NO atmosphere at all and was more concerned about not harming the delicate sensibilities of players that we have to tone down the settings original themes. What a way to kill atmosphere! When the 5E Ravenwoke book made an obvious little hidden dig towards Call of Cthulhu, I got finally rid of it.
Well, you definitely made a good choice there. Spread the word, share the video!
You have to do an ebook reading of this. It will be so funny
LOL. I'd probably get sued or something. But hey if I can find excerpts of the text of this thing, I'll do a part...
Despite playing D&D since 1983 I never experienced Ravenloft (other than discussion & some related spin-off scenario)
Recently I decided I should change that & got the I6 reprint. Then thought I would get CoS & go all in...
Im now beginning to regret that.
CoS is, IMO, a load of fairy tale Disney crap. Witches that bake children, monkeys in tutu's? Quests to fetch wine? WTF?
Part of me wants to abandon this campaign only 8 sessions in & the other half of me says, _"no I can just alter it how I like."_ But IDK, this makes me lose enthusiasm & its already so much work to read & learn each section, then change it.
Ive also noticed a lot of mistakes in CoS, I had no idea but things dont match up ~ I realised they must have changed the ethnicity of several NPCs but forgot to update the descriptions & lore. Now Im struggling to explain why I described someone as black earlier being the spitting-image of someone who has powder-white skin. huh?
I have no problem with the ethnicity changing, I welcome it, but they messed it up so badly!
The earlier boxed set was quite good, from the 2e era.
The Montey haul D&D (5E) continues to get more ludicrous by each and every product they put out. I think I will play a half living spell, have duargar sorcerer. I can enlarge myself at will expanding my natural fireball form. Of course I can somehow twist and contort myself that none of my party members are hurt. Lol
Remember that South Park mantra about modern media “put a chick in it, make her game, make it lame.”
It was meant to mock Kathleen Kennedy, but it would have worked just as well as a parody of Cynthia Williams... or Jeremy Crawford.
Nothing made by wizards of the coast is worth anything since 2007 pre fourth edition.
Seattle in Renaissance clothes.
Precisely. Spread the word, share the video!
And said clothes aren’t even in good condition.
Heir of Strahd?
Why would his offspring rise up against him? Doesn't make sense as presumably they would have some of his corruption, and if you're corrupted you can't fully exterminate evil from the world.
@@MatthewCenance Daddy issues.
Yup, apparently. Spread the word, share the video!
I noticed that Meatball left the moment you begin discussing the fact that she had at one point been connected with academia.
Like myself, it's an embarrassing detail of her past.
I don't hate the idea of a tiefling paladin but then I see it as them embarking a great undertaking in the name of holiness and goodness to redeem their soul which was blackened at birth. Somehow I think my interpretation is not what they are going with.
Except that in post-modern nu-D&D, Tieflings have no evil inside them. The very idea is bigoted.
@RPGPundit and once again they have destroyed any unique appeal that something has in the name of progressivism. What a bunch of clowns.
Lets just be honest here : You're seeing what happens to hobbies (ttrpgs, comics, etc) when they become popular enough that the portion of the population most invested in social belonging, fads and social conflict (drama : because they don't carry the mass for real conflict) rushes in.
To which you might respond : " Not true, I can name a few folks within that crowd that were old schoolers that fit right in "
I'll give you that many of those folks were exceptions, but I'll also tell you that they were exceptions within their group too -- Which is why they fit in.
There's normies that get interested, and then there's Activists who engage in entryism.
Dawson's Star Wars Rise of the Red Blade was actually pretty good. In fact, the only non-Legends SW book I was able to finish. Dawson is a talented author, but I will not hold my breath for this one. This looks (judging a book by its cover....) absolutely terrible. As far from Ravenloft as you can get.
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Took a second to notice her, but character on the far left; spunky, barely feminine, irreverent sorcerer chick with The Haircut.
Maybe *this* one will break the mold and be trans AND bisexual! Won't that be novel and interesting! I know I can't wait to find out!
LOL. Spread the word, share the video!
I wonder why many heroes of this modern TTRPGs or CRPGs have horns. Why not typical easily to recognize classes like knight, paladin, sorceress or races etc. I cannot easily say what taks in the party they have.
The left loves abominations.
I don't see anything wrong with it. Looks like a Human Alchemist, Kenku spell caster, Half Orc spell caster, Tiefling Fighter and, Drow Warlock. This could be the party in any 5e campaign.
That's EXACTLY what's wrong with it.
Those are fighting words Kuality. You sure you wanna die on this hill?
@@Gangrel442003 You sound like an SJW.
@@kuality1416 We playing the word salad now? In what way do I sound like them? Please, elucidate...
@@Gangrel442003 You can disagree with me and, you can state that you disagree with me but, when you use terms such as "fighting words" that imply my opinion is physically assaulting you that is an SJW tactic.
Honestly its not too bad. Like they all have "main character" vibe cranked up to 11 and thats about it. The book will still probably be woke and i dont like the idea of Strahd having a heir but at the end of the day the cover is probably going to be the least of these issues.
The cover is just representative of the content. The point is that the weirdo races of 5e are just humans in drag, and symbolic, if anything, of people's personal (gender, sexual, etc) expression. Its a substitute for having an actual personality.
That DOES NOT WORK with Victorian style morality play fantasy. Ravenloft only makes any sense if it's about a battle between the Holy and the Unholy.
You don't just point a camera at books. You have a surprise guest Meatball.
Only when she decides she wants to.
The Dread Domain of Portland.
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First reaction was, that’s gay. Second thought,Top half of the image is fairly cool.
I think that Strahd looks way too metrosexual
@ perhaps, but he’s an extremely BA metrosexual. Likely the only BA metrosexual ever!
They win the fight with kindness. That's why they're smiling, silly you XD
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The virtual world of D&D to be turned in to D&D crossing the playful friend adventure build a house make friends and make friends with the miss-understood vampire or ork, correct the ways of the that very naughty boy that necromancer.
Forgot to add you have to tell off that very bad paladin for not respecting pronouns and not believing that a man can be lez non-binary tran woman.
Itd make for a great book if the point is sustaining the eternal barovian meat grinder of strahd squashing the quirky happy go lucky party
There is zero chance that's how it goes.
How can Dracula be transphobic, he IS a Trans...ylvanian. :3
I see what you did there. Spread the word, share the video!
HR team comes for Strahd!!!!
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Also yeah the cover is a bunch of weirdos and misfits.
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Thanks for the video! It was pretty hilarious - mostly because it's true.
Thank you! RUclips doesn't promote me much, so please share the video!
@RPGPundit I did. 👍 One of my friends favorite setting is Ravenloft. 🤣
Sad to send him such crappy news.
Just give up on D&D it joins Star Trek, Star Wars, Ghostbusters, and all the rest. Just bury it.
The thing is, D&D is decentralized these days. Yes, WotC D&D is terrible, but unlike video games or comics, they can't control the monopoly over it. Hence, we have the OSR, which is full of amazing products and supplements, and anti-woke sentiment.
Ghostbusters managed to escape, actually. Or was it too late for you? I’d replace that with Thomas the Tank Engine.
Do not know about Thomas too old my daughter is 30. Ghostbusters with Melissa Mccarthy is the one I meant.
@
That one isn’t the newest movie anymore and is not even canon. They made a new film or two in the original timeline and they’re much better or at least inoffensive.
Does it include a random gender & sexual orientation generator?
No, it's a novel, not an RPG adventure or supplement.
Up next from the final boss of DND Karens...
How the BROSR plays Ravenloft wrong!!!
I'm pretty sure the BroSR don't play ravenloft.
Oh no don't tell me... it' s woke right? No way, how could it be, a woke book... impossible... Ravenloft is ruined... but how can it be ruined if a previous book ruined it already? And D&D is ruined, destroyed even... and it has been for YEARS now... and nobody cares about star wars which is why people who hate new star wars keep making videos about it... cause nobody cares!
Anyway oh... here is meatball buy my book
Seems like a fine book.
stop it. It's a dnd novel that represents the current character selection. yes, it looks lame. SO is gen z. You're just old.
Implying current year stuff is good.
@@nosotrosloslobosestamosreg4115 the old stuff wasn’t that good either. But things change . Warcraft made it possible for people to play monsters. We’re in a post warcraft world. Dnd is just changing with the times. Sorry. You’re just old
@biokido575 the old stuff was made by people who walked many paths in life, bringing a real diversity of experiences unlike your generation, which abhors from non-urban environments, railroaded from kindergarten to college getting all of you a grey-goo'd notion of days passing by, later landing on jobs that require to create stories and consequences, thing you never experienced. Sorry, you're just a NPC without any any spark. Getting old is great because you're set free from lust.
You must be that modern audience I keep hearing about. What are your preferred safety tools, and do you allow heterosexuals in your gaming group?
@@steelmongoose4956 this whole tupac thing showed us that the guys who are most homophobic are the most gay, did it?
Thank Takhisis Lord Soth was spared this kind of indignity. 🫣
He did nothing wrong to deserve this kind of treatment.😊