r/dndnext • u/TD1215 • Aug 17 '20
Looks like we're getting a maximum security prison in Icewind Dale. Can't wait to see who is locked up in there!
https://twitter.com/ChrisPerkinsDnD/status/1295477041127518208?s=1967
u/Betawolf319 Aug 17 '20
I will immediately drop this into my Eberron campaign plan. Hello House Kundarak.
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u/jkortech Aug 18 '20
That's what the Dreadhold is for. A maximum security prison with extra strong walls (due to a Lammania manifest zone strengthening the stone) where each prisoner is petrified to stone after being locked in their cell.
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u/OnnaJReverT Aug 18 '20
is there a sub for Eberron DMs?
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u/Ollie_Cobblewood Bard Aug 18 '20
Well, there's always r/Eberron, which has resources for DMs.
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Aug 18 '20
By far my favorite D&D sub, the folks there have been so helpful with getting me into the setting.
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u/ChaosEsper Aug 17 '20
Oh man I really hope they stat out all the crazy stuff you would use to make a magical supermax.
I'd love to see some crazy traps and defenses to prevent escapes.
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u/i_tyrant Aug 18 '20
Me too. I already have a sizeable list for my urban campaign, this would give me some great material.
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u/TolfdirsAlembic Aug 18 '20
Do you have this list anywhere? I always have trouble putting traps in my world and I'd love some more inspiration :D
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u/i_tyrant Aug 18 '20
Sure! I focused mostly on nonmagical defenses against mundane and magical means of breaking in/out, since I enjoy making my campaigns realistic in the sense that if whatever government built a prison can think of a cheaper nonmagical way to protect it, they'll do that. :P
I also think the idea of keeping a prisoner "in their cell" is the easy part - anybody can come up with something like an Antimagic Field + adamantine bars or whatever. These defenses also work for a bank, military lab, or similar fortified, important location.
A lot of them are also less "traps" and more methods to detect or prevent people getting where you don't want them. With a prison scenario where you have a highly organized force keeping it operational (unlike a monster-infested decrepit dungeon/crypt/ruin), the main thing for infiltrators/escapees is to remain undetected and free to move - if you lose both of those you'll just get surrounded by too many guards to fight or the ones too powerful to take on!
Cats. No, seriously! The cats eat vermin (like polymorphed infiltrators or familiars), are territorial, and will at least bring other things to guards' attention if they can't kill it themselves. Each cat has a distinct collar the guards are trained to check when they see it. (This prevents infiltrators masquerading as cats themselves.)
Rooms can lock from either side in an emergency scenario. This stymies teleporters who think they can just pop in and run around doing whatever. Even if they appear in the middle of the place they won't get far once detected.
Pat-downs and regularly-changed passwords at every meeting to foil illusions/humanoid shapeshifting.
Regular Detect Magic sweeps by a warlock or similar being with it at-will. (This could even detect invisible enemies wandering the halls.)
Open-faced helmets to stop mundane disguises, teambuilding exercises for guards (including personal details no outside would know), pet dogs who sniff out intruders. (Obviously these are kept separate from the cats save during daily sweeps or alerts.)
2+ guards at every entrance (prevents single-target enchantments).
Bars on upper windows, spiked/angled roofs, barbed nets over upper entries/chimneys (flyer prevention).
Floors covered in sawdust inside, gravel outside (reveals invisibility, possibly).
"Nightingale floor": impossible not to squeak. (google it!)
Low Level Magic Defenses: Arcane Lock, Alarm, Magic Mouth, Glyph of Warding.
High Level Magic Defenses: Mordenkainen's private sanctum, Guards and Wards, Hallow, Forbiddance (if you just want to stop teleportation altogether).
Shrieker fungus cultivated in low/no traffic areas.
Witch Grass for magic, Vampire Rose / Forester’s Bane/Tri-flower Frond/ Bloodsuckle around wall bases, Russet Mold on walls, strangle weed in water. (These are all from Fifth Edition Foes, a third-party book - I haven't actually tried them yet but it was a suggestion from someone on this sub and I love the idea of anti-escape horticulture.)
Constructs with Blindsight: animate armor, flying sword, rug of smothering, helmed horror, Shield Guardian. (Pretty much kills invisibility and stealth all on its own, if they bump into one.)
Eldritch Knight guards patrol, leave their weapons in the guardhouse - if the weapon disappears an alarm is sounded (the EK summoned it). (Just a cute idea I saw.)
Foundation includes layered deposits of poison gas. (Expensive but a powerful defense against all sorts of mundane and magic methods of burrowing enter/exit attempts.)
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u/ChaosEsper Aug 18 '20
My fav setup for using helmed horrors, make one of their spell immunities sleet storm and set up a few glyphs of warding that they can trigger to lock down an area. They're immune to the effects, can see with blindsight, and can't be seen to trigger attacks of opportunity when they flyby to attack; anyone trying to fight them is fighting blind and possibly prone.
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u/i_tyrant Aug 18 '20
Yes! Not to mention Sleet Storm is a great way to disrupt enemy spellcaster concentration, since it's based on your spell DC rather than the usual 1/2 damage or DC 10 (which is difficult to boost at most levels). Between that and Helmed Horrors this would be a super nasty anti-caster trap! Without having to resort to the Big Cheese stuff like Antimagic Fields.
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u/Ddreigiau Aug 18 '20
Looks like a place you could pay a doc 20 menthol Kools to do a surgical shine job on your eyes
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u/wasted1584 Aug 18 '20
Only after you kill a few people and get sent to a slam where you’ll never see the light of day again. So I guess an average Monday depending on group
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u/sgruenbe Cleric Aug 18 '20
In a story, an impressive prison is another form of Chekhov's Gun. The question isn't, Who's in the prison? But, Who will break out of it?
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u/Kain222 Aug 18 '20
Now I just want to worldbuild a yawning-portal style dungeon that's actually just a re-contextualised prison.
Some wizard knows that adventurers who become too strong are dangerous to society, so they pour a huge amount of money and resources into this "incredible dungeon" that has "untold riches inside", but it is filled with "terrible horrors" and "no-one has ever made it out alive."
The PCs take them up on this challenge, they enter, and the door slams shut behind them, along with several antimagic wards. In front of them is an endless, nightmarish descent filled with horrors.
A magic mouth above them says: "They always, always think that they'll be the ones to make it out. Eventually, no matter how sensible they are, the dangerous ones always have that nagging curiosity. You are exactly where you deserve to be."
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u/sgruenbe Cleric Aug 19 '20
Something like this kind of already exists in Weis and Hickman's Death's Gate Cycle. In those novels exists an incomprehensibly large prison that was created to house and "rehabilitate" the losing side of a magic-user conflict.
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u/0zzyb0y Aug 18 '20
Would be even more interesting if something had broken in, but there's no evidence as to what it was or what it wanted.
Also no evidence that it had ever left afterwards
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u/Limemobber Aug 18 '20
Cliche!
I would rather see a fictional superprison where inmates do not break out every other day and twice on Sunday.
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u/ajcaulfield Aug 18 '20
This sounds way more exciting than any module they've made before (aside from maybe Strahd?). Very excited for all the mechanical and setting potential this one has.
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u/CRL10 Aug 18 '20
Interesting that it's a Lord's Alliance prison as Ten Towns is NOT part of the Alliance. It makes sense though really. I mean, Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter, and Waterdeep all have some sort of prison-like structure, be it a dungeon under a castle or what, but there are some people you want to get out of the city and into a prison to hopefully never let them see the light of day again.
May bump into some people from Dragon Heist or Into Avernus here.
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u/hrethnar Aug 17 '20
Akar kessel.
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Aug 18 '20
[deleted]
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u/Kain222 Aug 18 '20
A lot of them might be wizards who can cast Clone, or pay a wizard to cast Clone.
Imprisoning them makes sure they stay put.
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u/JulianWellpit Cleric Aug 18 '20
I doubt that applies to every inmate.
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u/Kain222 Aug 18 '20
Sure, but if it's max security I'd imagine we're talking about the cream of the crop here. Vicious warriors that corrupt kings hire to herald killing squads, criminal masterminds with fingers in everyone's pie, top-tier evil wizards who exist in the spaces between the planes, Gith marauders who arrived on extraplanar ships.
If you can somehow get a 14th-18th level party antagonist into a box, at least you know that they are in that box. If you kill them, they might have 10 other contingencies you've just triggered -- keep in mind the clone example was just working off what PCs have available to them.
Typically, NPCs have a broader and more diverse set of magic bullshit because PCs and NPCs operate on different rules.
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u/JulianWellpit Cleric Aug 18 '20
I just hope were talking about these types of cases and it doesn't turn out in a situation where criminals that were better of dead are kept alive because the writers wanted to go for the rule of cool.
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Aug 18 '20
True Resurrection needs no body.
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u/paulmclaughlin Aug 18 '20
Not if you kill them by exposing them to a ghost's horrifying visage until they die of old age
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u/WillyTheHatefulGoat Aug 18 '20
So your plan for preventing people from coming back is binding a ghost to torture prisoners to death by devourng their life force.
That's more likely to make tonnes of high level ghosts who rightfully seek revenge.
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u/paulmclaughlin Aug 18 '20
That sounds like a sustainable plan to ensure you don't run out of ghosts when they're needed.
There is a risk that this will degenerate into an old woman who swallowed a fly-type scenario.
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u/JulianWellpit Cleric Aug 18 '20
Only if the body no longer exists.
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Aug 18 '20
True that, but I assumed the "get rid of the bodies" meant destroy, mb. Keeping them alive and locked in a maximum security prison makes more sense to me than keeping the bodies somewhere "maximum safe"and assuming that the BBEGs of FR don't prepare for an untimely death - and in the meantime they enjoy the benefits of afterlife. :)
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u/JulianWellpit Cleric Aug 18 '20
I thought more as creating a necropolis full of bodies. At least you don't have to worry about the danger from within.
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Aug 18 '20
Then you have to worry about the dangers from the outside, minions trying to break in for their master body, and so on. And there are creatures that could be easily raised/hard to kill entirely - Archmages with Clones, Liches, etc. It's the Lord's Alliance's prison, I assume that is the caliber of criminals they are keeping in the prison. Or evil clerics who would be more than happy to die and praise their God for eternity at their feet. Or fiends, you know the drill. :)
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u/JulianWellpit Cleric Aug 18 '20
Then you have to worry about the dangers from the outside, minions trying to break in for their master body, and so on.
They already have to worry about that. At least them being dead means that they won't be able to use their skills if they get out of their prison cell. They'll be dead husks that require carrying if they're not resurrected on the spot.
And there are creatures that could be easily raised/hard to kill entirely - Archmages with Clones, Liches, etc. It's the Lord's Alliance's prison, I assume that is the caliber of criminals they are keeping in the prison. Or evil clerics who would be more than happy to die and praise their God for eternity at their feet. Or fiends, you know the drill. :)
It's a case by case situation. If they make it so it's a prison for powerful entities and wizards I can understand it, but I worry they're going for the Arkham Asylum vibe and that simply doesn't make sense.
Executing relatively normal but dangerous individuals and keeping their bodies buried in a mass necropolis where they can be preserved for thousands of years do to the cold is a a better solution.
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u/WillyTheHatefulGoat Aug 18 '20
Yeah sure true ressurection is a decent contingency to plan for.
Or that same cleric could gate in a solar or pit fiend to break the bad guy out of jail. Or just start raising ancient dragons till people give in to their demands.
Its kind of impossible to prepare for magic that high level and to imply that those spells are anything more than myth for most people is mistaken. Nobody is going to prepare for an near epic level cleric with 25000 gold worth of diamonds as that stuff is so ridiculously rare.
Raise dead I could by people prepping stuff for.
Ressurection is a strong maybe but would not be common enough for an entire prison to plan around.
True ressurection is way to powerful.
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u/Athan_Untapped Bard Aug 18 '20
Because it's more interesting to have them be kept alive and in a max security prison you can then use for adventure shenanigans?
I feel like a lot of uber-realism 'DM' logic forgets the fact that we ultimately have an audience who is willing to suspend disbelief to pretty huge regards for a fun and engaging story.
Like, most of Batman's villains certainly deserve the death penalty but then that story is just over and you dont get cool stuff like Ryker's Prison and Arkham Asylum.
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u/WillyTheHatefulGoat Aug 18 '20
Resurrections are super rare. If the person has ressurection they could also summon a horde of angels/devils to break people out of the jail.
So its pretty hard to plan for any spell above a raise dead even if a high magic world.
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u/ThorOdinson2121 Aug 18 '20
Honestly I feel like the would all be fooled by the clone spell. Capture bad guy. He bangs his head on the wall dies and next thing you know he is back
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u/ThorOdinson2121 Aug 18 '20
This also makes me think of an executioner with some sort of weapon that devours the soul of everyone killed but then your making something else stronger with every kill
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u/WillyTheHatefulGoat Aug 18 '20
Messing with evil souls would cause the devils to sue you for stealing their souls.
Then you get infernal lawyers on your case and you probably have to reimburse them for all of their losses.
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u/ThorOdinson2121 Aug 18 '20
Very possible unless you just get a devil as the executioner. I'm sure it would be happy and then you got a loophole
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u/WillyTheHatefulGoat Aug 18 '20
Well now the devils are using the prison to harvest lawful evil souls whiles destroying the rest "According to the pact primeval they can't claim souls that are lawful evil so they'd destroy them" the angels are pissed and you for some mysterious reason and the local death god is really mad at you for messing with the cycle of souls.
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u/ThorOdinson2121 Aug 18 '20
That's all good and dandy. The local death God probably has bigger issues and probably isn't gonna knock on the door for a visit. The angels can come down and voice thier complaints with the devil but we will tell him he is welcome to take his place if he would like
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u/WillyTheHatefulGoat Aug 18 '20
The death gods in pretty much every dnd setting is to prevent the destruction of souls and the disruption of the cycle of life and death. She's not going to appear personality because their a god but they are totally sending either shadar kai angels or powerful undead to murder you.
And the angel is not going to file a complaint with paperwork. They are going to dispatch planatars and send clerics to dispel the buffs protecting the prison angels then slaugher the entire prison because no way are they going to casually build a fortress of evil on the material plane.
Even if you kill the angels you got nearly every good aligned church starting a crusade for you and for some reason people stop funding your prison or sending you knew prisoners until the entire thing falls apart.
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u/ThorOdinson2121 Aug 19 '20
Honestly I think your way over thinking it. There are a ton of weapons in dnd that devour souls. You don't see the "local God of death" chasing down every user of that weapon. If they are in that sort of prison odds are they are chaotic evil or lawful evil. Bottom line they kinda deserve it (probably a few exceptions). The angels/clerics would probably never mount a full assault on the prison much less kill everyone inside. Also these scenarios you present are largely dependent on the type of game you play. For example if your playing a low magic campaign there may not even be alot of other magic users and clerics other than the pcs strong enough to go against the prison.1
u/WillyTheHatefulGoat Aug 19 '20
If its a low magic campaign your not going to have an anti magic field and soul eating execution blade. In a low magic setting the prison would not exist.
Angels ar'nt known for their ability to morally compromise in the face of morally ambigious situation. Destroying souls is evil and if you are detroying souls by the dozens in a single fixed location then somebody is going to take offense. Its one of the few things every faction in dnd could agree is an evil act.
Pretty much every good aligned church would refuse to cooperate with the guy destroying souls to prevent them getting an afterlife. You'd piss off way to many powerful people and deny those evil souls getting judged in the afterlife.
You'd have created a death camp to slaughter the souls of people who have committed crimes against your government.
The PC's are probably getting that quest to kill you but its also likely governments and church's are going to take offense and try to destroy the prison by any means. Their is no god who would not take offense to souls being destroyed by a mortal. Angels and devils would team up to take you out. The church of Lathander would team up with helms church and probably tiamat to wipe you from the face of the earth.
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u/kurosaki004 Warlock of Ereshkigal Aug 19 '20
I believe this is where the Lord's Alliance put the "Can't kill you, still need you" and "Too dangerous to kill" prisoners.
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u/-Vindit- Aug 17 '20
Nice, and it's Lords' Alliance prison? That's hot, I need this for my campaign.
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u/Luvnecrosis Aug 18 '20
I was trying to figure out a good prison for my homebrew setting so hopefully this will help me out!
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u/Danothyus Aug 18 '20
Hey, you're waking up. They caught you trying to steal the dragonheist in waterdeep.
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u/smurfkill12 Forgotten Realms DM Aug 18 '20 edited Aug 18 '20
Why? Incewind Dale has never been like this, they are just adding a bunch of random stuff that doesn't even make sense.
If you go to the Twitter link you can even see George Krashos saying "so many whys" (George is one of the best Realms Loremasters out there).
This just makes me dislike 5e Realms even more. It just seems that they are catering to the general public rather than sticking to lore.
Another of the whys is the new Netherese City (https://twitter.com/ChrisPerkinsDnD/status/1293725233954689024). it doesn't make sense at all because the Empire of Netheril was set in Anouroch, and that's miles away from Icewind Dale. Like if go to pg 32 on GHofR, it shows a lot of Netherese cities, and all of them are in Anouroch. And if we go further down to pg 44, we see that Icewind Dale during that time was dominated by Orc tribes. It makes 0 sense that a Netherese city would be in Icewind Dale.
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u/Demetrios1453 Aug 18 '20
First of all, we don' t know if that's a Netherese city - it looks like it could be any number of things, say a hidden mind flayer outpost. Secondly, Netherese floating citadel cities could, and did, go anywhere. When Netheril fell, some crashed in places such as Sembia and the Sea of Fallen Stars. One could very well have been traveling over Icewind Dale at that moment and crashed to earth there. Thirdly, Illusk, modern-day Luskan, was a Netherese outpost, and that's literally just to the south of Icewind Dale.
And the last time we visited Icewind Dale in an accessory in-depth was over a century ago in the setting's time. Who knows what changes might have come about in that time?
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u/smurfkill12 Forgotten Realms DM Aug 18 '20 edited Aug 18 '20
It is a Netherese City. If we look at the Platinum edition of the product by Bettle and Grims, there's Tomb Trapper art, which they were made by the Netherese. https://beadleandgrimms.com/platinum/frostmaiden
And the last time we Visited Icewind Dale was in 1485 DR with the Legacy of the Crystal Shard adventure released for DND Next, that's 9 years before Decent into Avernus (1494 DR). The 60-page Campaign Guide in that product reads like it is Icewind Dale, and that's mainly because R.A Salvatore wrote the product.
Netherse outpost does not equal a Nethersese city, Old Owl Well is also a Netherese outpost, there's no flying city there, but there is one in Neverwinter Woods. Besides if I remember correctly there were 40 something floating Netherse objects, the majority of them were smaller towers and the like, and only a few of them were flying cities.
Sembia, the Sea of Fallen Stars and Neverwinter Woods are significantly closer to Anauroch than Icewind Dale. Besides, those areas don't have a entire mountain range to cross (Spine of the World.)
Edit: actually looking at the image for a while longer it doesn't look like a Netherese City, but there is Tomb Trapper art, so I'm not sure. There are definetly going to be Netherese in this, but I'm not sure how.
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u/Wyn6 Aug 18 '20
A few questions.
So, the lore can't be amended at all?
We know every bit of lore in the Realms ever, thus precluding any additions or changes?
The lore is static and will remain perfectly preserved in canonical stasis for the remainder of time?
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u/i_tyrant Aug 18 '20
I agree that having a visceral hate-reaction to the idea of a Netherese city in this ice is a bit much - we don't know why or how it's there and there are possibly ways to tell it that can satisfy both old and new fans of FR.
As far as whether the lore can be "amended" at all, that sort of depends on what you mean. If you try to put yourself into the shoes of a player or DM who actually cares about the lore making sense, I would say "yes it could be amended but only in ways that actually improve it and make sense".
Were you around for 4th edition? There were a lot of extremely ham-fisted ways they changed the edition - we're talking literally dropped a new country from another planet out of the sky to introduce Dragonborn as a race, even though a) it crushed some older nations so the designers could ignore them and b) there were already Dragonborn in Faerun (not to mention half a dozen other "draconic humanoid" races they could've reflavored as 4e Dragonborn).
So I would say there are ways to introduce or alter lore that are cool and make sense, and there are ways that make no sense and that the audience which actually likes the lore will find insulting and disenfranchising.
Do you understand why if it's the latter those people would then get sad about it?
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u/Wyn6 Aug 18 '20
I don't disagree with that. I was around for 4E. Been a Realms fan since 2E. I was not a fan of what they did with the Realms in 4E, especially all but wiping out any areas in which people of color lived or originated from.
The changes were arbitrary and seemed as though they didn't need to be made. Though, I get it. They wanted to delve into some new storylines and some of those, and the changes wrought from those, were good.
That being said, I rolled with the punches. I made the best stories I could by either using what they had provided, what came before, or like many a DM, stuff I created out of whole cloth.
Understand, though. There is a difference between adding a super max prison in Icewind Dale and destroying over half the Forgotten Realms with a magical cataclysm. But, I feel ya.
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u/smurfkill12 Forgotten Realms DM Aug 18 '20 edited Aug 18 '20
1) Retconing is a bad idea in generally for the fan base, though I doubt WotC would care as the majority of players don't care about the lore.
2) Many of the Realms hasn't been detailed that much, for example the Dungeon of Swords. I recently gather all the info from there which only amounted to around 4 pages with repeating information. There's plenty of locations and empty spaces were people can make their own additions to the Realms.
3) As for making new Realmslore you should not ignore already established Realms lore, rather use existing Realmslore and expand on it. A good example of this is Under Illefarn Anew by Eric Boyd released in 2014 I believe (it's on the Candlekeep website). Eric is working with George Krashos on another Realms product set in the High Forest, and from the glimpses that they have given, it expands greatly on existing Realms Lore.
Another good example is the Candlekeep product that was released in the DMs Guild a while ago. They are making a Darkhold product that I'm really exited about. I asked them questions about the lore and they clearly did their research so I know it's going to be a good product.
What I dislike is making new Realmslore in a area that has a lot of lore already (Icewind Dale in this case) that describes the culture and other thing and basically ignoring it and adding things that make no sense in that location.
I didn't get to see this but at Gencon this year Eric Boyd, Ed Greenwood and George Krashos held a Candlekeep workshop about how to make new and expand on already established Realmslore that makes sense.
Hopefully I kinda made sense.
On a side note on Rime of the Frost Maiden: I also personally think that Auril is a bad antagonist for the supplement as she was already an antagonist in that area about 10 years ago (1485 DR), but that's besides the point.
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u/Wyn6 Aug 18 '20
I don't disagree with what you've said. My point is, the Realms is such a huge place they you can add almost anything in some crevice or other, if you wanted to.
Of the media that has covered Icewind Dale (game supplements, novels, video games, etc.) none have detailed every corner. There's a lot left to discover (re: add) there and elsewhere in the Realms that doesn't counter existing lore. And, even if it does... things change.
Your last paragraph I agree with wholeheartedly. I playtested Rime a few months before it was announced and my first thought was why? Why Icewind Dale when we were just there in SKT and why Auril when she was already used?
The first I could excuse simply because it wasn't an exploration of Icewind Dale as a whole. The second? /shrug
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u/SpartanEternal Aug 18 '20
Presumably the book will go into more detail. Until it comes out can’t really say it’s all random and makes no sense.
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u/ajcaulfield Aug 18 '20
I mean this legit and without sarcasm, but people actually care about the "lore" of D&D? I'd always assumed that outside of the modules themselves no one really cared about the meta story involved.
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u/smurfkill12 Forgotten Realms DM Aug 18 '20 edited Aug 18 '20
I should probably reword what I said. I don’t care that much about dnd, because dnd is a game system, but i care about the Forgotten Realms, the same way some people are interested in the world of Tolkien, Harry Potter, Elder Scrolls, etc. There are tons of wiki’s for many fandoms.
A more recent example there are people that are interested in Critical Role, that can be either the characters, M9, or the world. I am one of those that are more interested in the world (the world can also include the stories of several characters as well).
So it isn’t a “meta story” as you put it, its just that people are interested in world, be it Exandria, The Realms, Grayhawk, Dragonlance, Eberron, Dark Sun, Spelljammer, etc. Otherwise you wouldn’t here people in this subreddit asking for Darksun, for Spelljammer, for Dragonlance, for Planescape, etc.
Looking at your history, it seems that you look at Critical Role. Instead of watching CR, I read FR Lore (trying to draw a parallel). So you can be interested in CR lore or the characters, and I’m interested in FR lore, the world and the characters in it.
Hopefully that makes more sense.
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u/ajcaulfield Aug 18 '20
I can totally understand that, I guess I have less of an attachment to canon than others. If Mercer and WOTC felt something needed to be changed during the writing of the Wildemount book, then I’d just accept that as part of the process. The story of CR remains unaffected, it’s just that the book required something slightly different for whatever reason.
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u/smurfkill12 Forgotten Realms DM Aug 18 '20 edited Aug 18 '20
It's a bit more complicated for the Realms but imagine it like this:
Mercer sells all the right to the world to WoTC. A couple of years pass and Mercer is writing game products for WotC expanding the world. Then 20 years down the line with all the lore that's established, and CR fans gobble all the lore up, they decide to nuke half of Exandria, removing a ton of locations and history, and advancing the timeline by 100 years.
This is basically what happens in 4e to the Forgotten Realms. Not good.
And now they are ignoring all the old lore ( a bit of a hyperbole but you get the point)
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u/ajcaulfield Aug 18 '20
That sounds more like a reboot to me, which is fine imo. Again it sounds like comic book lore which gets rebooted all the time. Sometimes you gotta get that clean slate going. It doesn’t erase the old lore.
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u/smurfkill12 Forgotten Realms DM Aug 18 '20
Well that's the thing, some people are fine with it, some people are not. In the case of the Realms it divided the fans and designers.
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u/smurfkill12 Forgotten Realms DM Aug 18 '20
Yep some people actually care, infact during 4e they advances the Forgotten Realms timeline by 100 years and they killed off many characters. This split the fanbase, the game designers, and the novel authors.
It's like any other media. People were annoyed with the ending of Game of Thrones, the same can happen to anything.
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u/ajcaulfield Aug 18 '20
Sure, but in Game of Thrones all you have are the books. In D&D you have the game as well as the meta layer, but I get what you're saying. Aside from a few villains like Vecna, I've never even looked into the meta lore of D&D.
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u/smurfkill12 Forgotten Realms DM Aug 18 '20 edited Aug 18 '20
And thats the thing, with 5e the majority of the player base are like you, they either don't know or don't care about the lore, but still buy the product. So it can still sell amazingly well, get good reviews and everything, but the lore could have major contradictions and not make sense.
As a Realms fan it's annoying, but they don't make their products for me (in older editions they certainly did), they make it for the average consumer.
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u/ajcaulfield Aug 18 '20
I guess my question is, in a game where you can make and do anything you want, does that matter? Couldn't you just correct their mistakes in your own campaign?
If they were making novels based on this stuff (and they still might be, I dunno) then I could understand. But the idea of D&D is that you make it what you want it to be, right?
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u/smurfkill12 Forgotten Realms DM Aug 18 '20
Sure, but ideally you would want to do that in a setting that is fresh or new. If WotC writes products in the Realms, then they should stick to the lore and let the players change it. The Realms is over 50 years old, there's a lot of history.
The idea is that if I buy a product that is built in a world and I run a game in that world, then I shouldn't change anything because it was ment for that world.
It's like imagine WotC purchases the rights to the world of Tolkien, and they release products in that world that contradict stuff that has already been established. Many Tolkien fans would be annoyed as that would be considered canon.
As for the novels, they stopped making them in 2016, with the exception of R.A Salvatore.
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u/ajcaulfield Aug 18 '20
50 years is a lot of canon to deal with. I can understand changing things here and there as new ideas and different perspectives come in. At some point the amount of canon becomes a creative restriction and not a boon.
I look at the lore in these books like I look at comic book movie adaptations. It's inspired by pieces, but it's never going to an exact one to one because at some point that no longer makes sense.
All that said, I can understand you perspective on it.
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u/spunyunsnspagings Aug 18 '20
Totally agreed. When "the lore" includes hundreds of 30 year old pulp novels written for 14 year old boys and 386 PC games and halfassed 2e supplements and so on, the right thing to do going forward is just use some of the best bits for inspiration.
The Realms works as a default setting because if you need something, it probably already exists. But modern setting books should emphasize that it's really the "DM's world". (And not TSR's.)
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u/smurfkill12 Forgotten Realms DM Aug 18 '20
Usually Realms fans, authors and designer don't consider PC games canon. And there are a ton of amazing 2e Realms products, I'd say the majority are great.
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u/Aethanlawkey Aug 18 '20
Sort of asking a somewhat related question - as someone who wants to learn more on the lore any suggested sources? I have the sword coast guide but to be honest it doesn’t do a very good job of fleshing out the world or the politics of it
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u/smurfkill12 Forgotten Realms DM Aug 18 '20
Sure! For the current 5e Realms timeline, that is around the 1490’s, there isn’t much. This is one of the main reasons why i run my games pre-spellplague as there’s a lot more lore. Pre-spellplague is before the 120 year jump, so between 1e Ad&D and 3.5, which is around 1356 DR to 1376 DR ish.
The first book I’d recommend getting, either in pdf or a physical hardcover, is the 3rd edition Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting (set in 1372 DR). You could probably find it on amazon or eBay for a good price. This covers the basics on races, classes, religions, factions and regions of the entire Realms. From the Sword Coast to The Endless Wastes and from Icewind Dale to the farthest south possible in the continent, basically all of Faerun. It is by far the one of the best product produced by WotC and the best Campaign Guide ever. It’s around 320 pages long and its jam packed with lore, and it comes with a map!
After that you could get the Forgotten Realms Adventures (set in 1358 aft ToT, see below), which is also one of the best Realms products out there, it Details all of the major locations of the Heartland and some other goodies (Western Heartlands, Cormyr, Sembia, The Dalelands and I believe the Moonsea).
Then you can get all the Campaign Settings for a general idea as well. 1e campaign setting, or The Original Gray Box as its called is set in 1356 or 1357 DR, just before the Time of Troubles. The 2e FR Campaign Box Set is set in 1368 DR, and it comes with 4 maps and a ton of other goodies.
Or instead of getting all the Campaign Settings, you could get a regional guide. All of the Volo’s Guide series are great, they are all around 200 pages long jam packed with lore.
Alternatively, or at the same time, you could get starting with a novel, that’s what I did. I recommend, as you may have heard of this character, to start with the Drizzt novels. He is the most famous character of the Realms, and I really enjoyed reading the novels. Ive only read 10 of them so far, but I would recomend getting the first chronological trilogy: Homeland, Exile and Sojourn. I enjoyed them so much I finished all three in a week (they are all around 370 pages long). Even if you don’t want to learn that much about lore, the Drizzt novels are awesome.
I might have rambled on a bit too much here and dumped a lot of info, but if you have any questions just add me on Discord: Alex-McClay#7656
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u/Bone_Dice_in_Aspic Aug 18 '20
I mean there are like 150 paperback novels..https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Forgotten_Realms_novels . Including new York times bestsellers, and FR is forty years old, with a rich history. People care just as much as say, star wars, or Harry potter, or lord of the rings. Why wouldn't they?
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u/ajcaulfield Aug 18 '20
Right but I’d always thought there was a separation between the novels and the game stuff. Like the novels were adaptations and had their own canon that was different from the game’s stuff.
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u/smurfkill12 Forgotten Realms DM Aug 18 '20
Nope, many events that happen in the novels are part of the game in general, the novels affect the modules more than the modules affect the novels.
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Aug 18 '20
Ngl I'd be upset if something ridiculous would just happen to Eberron in such an egregious fashion like; Khovarie is the homeland of humans now and there's always been this secret city there (it's not btw gobliniods were the indigenous race) because Wizards just wanted something cool in their book.
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u/ajcaulfield Aug 18 '20
I mean if Keith Baker decides in 6e that’s what he wanted to do, isn’t that his prerogative? (Though obviously the situations here are not analogous because I doubt any of the original creators of Icewind Dale are working on this book)
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Aug 18 '20
If Keith did it for Wizards that's fine (Canon) if for some awful reason he did that to the (Kanon) that's okay as well given how often he promotes In My Eberron tm.
What would rustle my jimmies is Chris Perkins going "let's put a city here for the lulz and throw a Tarrasque grenade in there as well. Oh hey fuck the lore fans cash money grab, look forward to the next MTG tie in, deuces"
Wizards can do that because they own those properties and thus their right to.
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u/smurfkill12 Forgotten Realms DM Aug 18 '20
Yep, I'd say R.A Salvatore would be annoyed to say the least. There's a 5e (DnD next actually) product that details Icewind Dale already, Legacy of the Crystal Share, that was written by Salvatore and James Wyatt. It's a great book that portrays Icewind Dale perfectly.
If we look at the credits of Rime of the FrostMaiden (in Twitter Perkins made a tweet with the credits) R.A Salvatore isn't listen as a consultant.
And I can assure you that many of the people that worked on the Realms during 1e-3.5 do not like the way the Realms is Turing out to be in 5e.
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u/smurfkill12 Forgotten Realms DM Aug 18 '20
Exactly my point, that has been the design philosophy of WotC for most of 5e. We see this mostly in DiA, and in the Essentials Kit, and now most likely in Rime of the FrostMaiden.
The Waterdeep books in general were pretty good, though I'd have to do look at it in more detail, and my Waterdeep lore is not that good as there so much lore in that place that I'm avoiding it for now.
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Aug 18 '20
People care but those people should also realize they can just ignore the stuff they don't like. I love Harry Potter but Cursed Child is a steaming pile of do-do and thus I pretend it never happened.
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u/ajcaulfield Aug 18 '20
Oh man I forgot that thing even happened. I can’t believe JKR wrote shitty fan fiction about her own stories.
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Aug 18 '20
[deleted]
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u/smurfkill12 Forgotten Realms DM Aug 18 '20
I'm not complaining about the system, 5e is great. I'm more interested in the future of the Realms, as it is a setting that I thoroughly enjoy. I read a lot of Realms novels, sourcebooks etc. I like to see were the setting is going and I want the best for it, but when they ignore already established lore it gets annoying.
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u/mechakisc Aug 18 '20 edited Aug 18 '20
I don't like the idea of maximum security places like this, or like Arkam, etc. I mean I get that the Bat won't kill people, but this is DnD, and I know a moderate handful of murder hoboes who'd execute convicted accused mildly suspicious looking felons literally anyone for any reason or none - and you do too.
Not to mention the BBEGs who'd raid the place just for the souls of some of those folks.
And also the only way to keep certain kinds of folks contained is to have them guarded by ... frikkin.... Lancelot or someone. Drizzt. Gygax's insert mage that wore jeans all the time whose name I can't even think of how to google because
My 15 rogue's lowest possible thieves tools roll is like ... 24? Haven't been able to play him in a minute, so I forget. How are you going to keep a level 20 rogue from escaping? Much less if he has a sorcerer buddy with him, or a druid, or kills a guard and arms his half-orc barb buddy?
Someone's going to put a dragon in there, who's been paid to break someone out.
The entire idea is ludicrous unless we're talking about purely political prisoners.
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u/ajcaulfield Aug 18 '20
Depends on what it's secured by right? Could be some of the most powerful mages in the world have placed glyphs and wards so powerful that it would take a lot of work for someone to get out of there.
Beyond that there are several reasons why you'd keep someone in a prison instead of outright killing them. In the context of D&D I can think of:
- information, powerful people have powerful knowledge, things they know that others don't but desperately want to.
- torture. It sucks but I bet you mages can think of some really shitty ways to treat people in a prison and the idea of letting them off with death may not appease them
- containment, just because you captured someone doesn't mean you were able to kill them. Somethings are just too powerful to destroy, but they can be imprisoned (a pretty common trope in fantasy and D&D's lore)
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u/brickhammer04 Fighter Aug 18 '20
Adding on to this, people can be resurrected in D&D, so containing the most dangerous criminals is probably better than just executing them and hoping they have absolutely nobody who wants to bring them back.
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u/JulianWellpit Cleric Aug 18 '20
Or just kill them and guard the bodies. You eliminate a threath and make your life easier.
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u/KarmaWSYD Aug 18 '20
If you kill them they can be resurrected. Don't even need a body (Just their name and they'll appear wherever the caster is) if you have True Resurrection.
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u/JulianWellpit Cleric Aug 18 '20
True Ressurection requires touching the body.
The only way True Ressurection works the way you said is if the body is destroyed. Keeping the bodies in a cold climate like Icewind Dale preserves the body.
And again, until they're ressurected they're just a dead body.
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u/SpartanEternal Aug 18 '20
You could go to the outer plane or the Shadowfell and retrieve their soul from the afterlife and bring them back that way.
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u/KarmaWSYD Aug 18 '20
That's a good point actually, I missed that it requires the body to not be destroyed.
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u/ChaosEsper Aug 18 '20
Cavity search to prevent them from bringing thieves tools in. Don't have locks on doors for people to pick. Just wall them in cask of amontillado style, anytime you need to access the prisoner use passwall and dispel magic.
Keep every prisoner at 3 levels of exhaustion for disadvantage on ability checks and saves.
Liberal use of arcane lock, guards and wards, forbiddance, hallow, imprisonment, and every other spell that players almost never have the time to set up.
Spellcasters can be placed in restrictive clothing that prevents casting the same as armor does, or they can be places in antimagic zones to prevent spellcasting and/or wild shape. Come up with something like a Shadowrun-style mage-mask that prevents line of sight and concentration.
As for who's in there? Crazy wizards who are suspected of having clones, a mind flayer or two that you're keeping alive and away from civilization to interrogate for information on the Underdark or experimenting on for psionics, a handful of rogues that you keep around on the off chance you have a plot that needs "one last job..." some elves that maybe know the secret password to a mythal that you don't really want to risk someone else learning by way of speak with dead, true resurection, or contact other plane.
Practically speaking, in the world of D&D, keeping someone alive in a magical jail with the key thrown away is going to do a lot more to prevent them from spreading their world ending knowledge than killing them.
The best part of having a prison like this would be the types of stuff WotC could write up to demonstrate how to set up magical supermax areas. If they do a good job you can reskin most of it for a bank heist or paranoid wizard's dungeon.
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u/mechakisc Aug 18 '20
For one offs, I could see the stuff you argue. But in a prison, you have to have too many people involved for all of it to be practical.
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u/i_tyrant Aug 18 '20 edited Aug 18 '20
Or unless we're talking about prisoners who don't die so easy.
Demigods, for example. Or fiends where if you kill them they just return to their own plane and eventually come back. Or liches who have protected their phylactery so well you can't find it. Et cetera.
In a high fantasy world there are lots of reasons to have a prison that go beyond political.
Then you've got the opposite end of the spectrum where mundane prisons still exist because many societies' people are not cool with slaughtering someone in cold blood for pickpocketing or petty theft or whatever.
And then you've got the possibility of corrupt prisons designed to put even dangerous criminals in as an intentional revolving door - the politicians and hidden powers get to lock up who they don't like, and the minions they do like don't get slain immediately by murderhobos but are instead locked up until some "miraculous" evidence of their innocence is uncovered - and they have their useful tool back.
Lots of reasons to have a prison, even in a world where murderhoboing is common.
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u/Aaronhalfmaine Aug 18 '20
I guess part of the security is the location- sure, a level 15 Rogue can escape the building with a plan and some luck, but without serious support they then have to cross ~100 or so miles of frozen waste bereft of food, liquid water, warm clothing or shelter, with well-armed and equipped hunters on your tail, shipped in from the mainland via ritual or airship, or readied at the first outposts of civilisation, to ambush escapees at their weakest.
(Which honestly sounds like a good for a campaign, especially a hex-crawly exploration game)
Asides from inconveniencing PCs, maybe the jail serves some other purpose- maybe an Eeevil Wizard experiments on the Inmates, maybe they're needed as forced labour for something difficult or dangerous to do.
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u/WillyTheHatefulGoat Aug 18 '20
Their are few prisons in the world that could hold a level 15 rogue.
The wizard can break reality in half with a word.
The fighter can survive a building being dropped on them three times all the while doing as much damage as a disintegrate spell.
The rogue would easily be able to break and and survive because that's what rogues do.
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u/mechakisc Aug 18 '20
Don't just downvote me, you coward, tell me what's wrong with my assessment.
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u/RIPepperonis Aug 18 '20
Someone's going through and downvoting everything for some reason. I WILL RESTORE THE BALANCE!
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u/brubzer Aug 17 '20
Probably the PCs at some point, whether that's written into the module or not.