General The Sets of 2021

When I heard about it first, I got so hyped for 2021.
Set in Northern Mythology, somewhat reminiscent of Ice Age? Yes!
Being able to draft a Time Spiral Remastered with new cards in the beautiful old frame? Yes, please!
Strixhaven, a school reminiscent of the mage schools in Urza block, and a touch of Harry Potter? That would be sooo nice!
MH2 after MH1 brought so many possibilities for cube? YES, PLEASE
D&D YEEEEEES PLEEEEAAAASE
Innistrad, the og set, is my favourite set of all time, and I love the gothic flavour of Innistrad in general (although I like Lovecraft, I despise the Eldrazi), and in every set that takes place in Innistrad bar Avacyn Restored there were tons of interesting cards for cube! I implemented werewolves and have really high hopes for Midnight Hunt! Maybe the set I'm most hyped about for this year!
And it's also likely that I'm going to like Crimson Vow, hopefully with a Burning Vengeance on a stick. :D

Hype level right now after KHM release, full TSR spoiler and a preview of Strixhaven:

1. Midnight Hunt 11/10
2. D&D 10/10
3. Crimson Vow 9/10
4. MH2 8/10
5. TSR 7/10 - I really want to draft this, but fuck covid
6. Strixhaven 4/10 - doesn't look as promising as it sounded by announcement
7. Kaldheim 3/10 - I'm disappointed
 
So what you’re saying is that the unknown is always more interesting than the things we already have? Or is it just like that for you this time around specifically with 2021?
 
The core set got replaced by the D&D set, which leaves a bad taste in my mouth, for a bunch of reasons.

Care to explain?
Wizards are hyped when core sets leave their upcoming program (like in 2016) and are hyped when they reintroduce core sets (like in 2018). I am mostly hyped when core sets leave and are replaced with a Standard set with a real story on a real plane and not the all-over-the-place-loreless set.
Tell me why I’m wrong :)
 
So what you’re saying is that the unknown is always more interesting than the things we already have? Or is it just like that for you this time around specifically with 2021?


That's definitely not what I was trying to say. A few years ago, when I revisited Innistrad as a set for draft/cube, I got sooo excited and have it 10/10 since.
Before spoilers, I'd rated Kaldheim 6/10 and Strixhaven also 7/10, TSR 8/10.
 
So from unknown to known

Kaldheim from 6/10 to 3/10
Strixhaven from 6/10 to 4/10
Time Spiral Remastered 7/10 to 8/10

I have no idea why I thought there was a pattern, sorry :p
 
Care to explain?
Wizards are hyped when core sets leave their upcoming program (like in 2016) and are hyped when they reintroduce core sets (like in 2018). I am mostly hyped when core sets leave and are replaced with a Standard set with a real story on a real plane and not the all-over-the-place-loreless set.
Tell me why I’m wrong :)


OK, as far as I'm concerned:

I've been a tabletop RPG person since... 2008-ish? And I fell out of love with D&D and its settings around 2014.

The thing about Forgotten Realms is that a surface-level visit (like what we'd get in a set) isn't going to dig into the stuff that makes the Forgotten Realms not just another generic fantasy setting. And it needs that, because the setting has been around longer than D&D, and has been influential on a lot of modern fantasy. It's going to look a lot like visiting Dominaria. Also, technically this makes Earth (yes, our Earth) canonically part of Magic's setting, since Elminster has a portal to Earth in orbit around Toril, which he used to visit Ed Greenwood and have tea with him. It was a gimmick in Greenwood's old column, and a) the setting is Ed Greenwood's baby¹ and b) I don't think anyone has actually come forward and said "no, that's not canon" (canon is... flexible... for tabletop games).

I mean, granted, it's probably more pertinent to mention that the Forgotten Realms is already embedded in its own multiverse with very different rules that aren't really compatible with the mana wheel... but I like bringing up the Elminster portal thing, because it's very silly.

From an out-of-game standpoint... I don't like crossovers in general. Yeah, sure, it's WotC's setting (Greenwood sold FR to TSR for $5k in the 80s), but the preexisting MTG-D&D crossovers have been all over the place, and this really just feels like a cash grab/consolidating WotC's two main IPs for the sake of consolidation. On top of that... there are aspects to 5e's creation and resulting popularity that legitimately anger me, so I'm unwilling to cut the corporate side of D&D any slack.

¹ He started writing stories in it when he was like six, and TSR made it part of their setting catalog after he wrote some very popular articles about DMing Forgotten Realms. He's also a dirty old hippy, and it shows if you go digging through the setting.
 

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
On top of that... there are aspects to 5e's creation and resulting popularity that legitimately anger me, so I'm unwilling to cut the corporate side of D&D any slack.
As someone who thinks 5E is legitimately the best edition they have published to date (and I started playing when Advanced D&D was the current edition), I would love for you to expand on this.
 
Okay, I have to bite. What is it about 5e that chips your teacups? I've never played it, but it seemed like 4e bones with 3.5e meat over them.

For reference, I played a small amount of 4e, a lot of 3.5e as a kid, and in college I either played 1e (yes, really.) and something that was half Pathfinder half me pulling numbers out of thin air. I've glanced at 5e and it seemed...forgettable, but at least better than 4e's World of Warcraft nonsense. (No hate towards WoW, I just think that those sort of things work best when your party isn't static/when you play up the technical optimization side of things, whereas tabletops are best at telling stories
The two aren't entirely mutually exclusive, but they're certainly different.)
 
Spoilers because this goes places.
So... opening up my first printing copy of the Player's Handbook and looking at the credits page, there are a few names on there that aren't in later printings.

One of those names, Zak S., was taken off for very good reason. He has (had? I'm not sure if it's still a thing) a popular OSR blog called D&D With Porn Stars, and was basically the face of the OSR community, so WotC decided to pick him up as a consultant. What's the worst that could happen, right?

Did I forget to mention that it was an open secret in the tabletop community that Zak S. was a toxic creep? We're talking stuff like "outing another RPG writer who happened to be trans and running her out of the industry", "encouraging his fans to stalk another RPG author, including one guy who sent him a picture of his kid's school", and other such dickish behavior. But that's just drama, right?

Oh right, I neglected to mention that he was sexually abusing his girlfriend, which came to light after 5e came out? After faking her identity for literal years to write a blog about how he was a great guy? And that he proceeded to use loopholes in Commonwealth libel laws and his personal fortune to force people via court orders to apologize for reporting this? That's ultimately why his name was removed from the credits page.

"But Mapi", I hear you say, "you can't blame WotC for associating with someone who was later discovered to be an utterly garbage person". No. I can't. But I can blame them for not cutting times with him when this came out until there was enough pressure on Mike Mearls for him to throw his buddy under the bus and stop covering up his non-sexual-abuse stuff. Because the whole "drum people out of the hobby with witch-hunts" thing had already been going on for years at that point.
I mean, I also find 5e to be really bland mechanically, and I find streamed actual plays to be misleading at best, but the spoiled bit is what soured me on the edition.
 
I've run a 50+ session campaign in 5e. 5e's combat is so boring it hurts me to remember the combat. There are lots of problems with it. Off the top of my head:
  • system is balanced for 6 combats a day, which pushes the game towards a lot of combat
  • battle's tension goes down as it goes it, and it feels like a drag.
  • monsters are mostly just piles of stats. You can write adventures around one, sure, but each day you need 6 combats...
  • lots of monsters have annoying stun abilities
  • maps are small for the movement, so without obstacles being ranged has no advantage
  • wizards get OP after at mid levels and do a lot of fun stuff while martial classes get no non-combat abilities
  • yoyo effect when Healing Word revives anyone with a bonus action
  • Polymorph is OP
  • rangers are terrible
Mostly, combat for martial classes, has no agency. The DM needs to go out of their way to design interesting combat scenarios, or you can fight on autopilot.
I miss more options for character building too, though that's also part of the strength of the system. You can start a character making very few decisions, so it's extremely accessible.
 
are all of the above points based on pre-con instances japahn? The "6 combats a day" thing is news to me. I've seen plenty of DMs roleplay through days way more than that. I'm also having perfectly good luck with a ranger so far, do they drop off at higher levels or something? Or does this have to do with the small maps/ranged is bad thing. Because I usually just jump into a tree/similar via acrobatics, safely out of (most) melee range.
 
are all of the above points based on pre-con instances japahn? The "6 combats a day" thing is news to me. I've seen plenty of DMs roleplay through days way more than that.

I can't find where it is exactly, but it's stated explicitly somewhere in the DM's guide that it's 6 to 8 combats a day. Of course you can stray away from that, and I did more like 1-3, but that really unbalances the game because spell slots, per-day abilities and rests are not scarce anymore. I think I would've benefitted from house ruling long rests being equivalent to short rests and requiring like a week of downtime for a proper long rest.

I don't think most people actually run 6-8 combats a day, because the pacing gets miserable. Off-the-shelf adventures do follow this though, and my worst adventure was trying to run one of them, even after removing half the combats.

I was working on altering 5e so it works with fewer combats, and so that martial classes are more interesting in and especially out of combat:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1p0u3S8h2j5wfdgEH13Nvd1DgO4BR6SACWtE13sIiPyk/edit?usp=sharing

From that experiment, what worked best was the fatigue system. The lack of having a list of gambits to choose from and the difficulty with managing a lot of skills made me decided to try Pathfinder instead, but that was March 2020...

I'm also having perfectly good luck with a ranger so far, do they drop off at higher levels or something?



Rangers are kind of like worse fighters with some bells and whistles, but they scale worse,a s they get an extra attack on lvl 5 and fighters scale up to 3 extra attacks (!). They have abilities that don't help much unless your campaign is a lot about survival. When creating one, you choose a favored enemy, but then it's up to the GM to put some of those in the adventure so your ability does anything, and it's not that great. People though the ranger was so bad that Wizards revised it: https://media.wizards.com/2016/dnd/downloads/UA_RevisedRanger.pdf

It's not unplayable of course, it just feels bad to play one because it's situational, and at almost all times feel strictly worse than a fighter or druid.

Or does this have to do with the small maps/ranged is bad thing. Because I usually just jump into a tree/similar via acrobatics, safely out of (most) melee range.

It doesn't have much to do with the size of maps. Rangers aren't necessarily ranged and fighters aren't necessarily melee. A fighter is better with a bow than a ranger.

The issue with maps is... well, look at the Lost Mines of Phandelver (5e intro campaign) combat maps and think that a human PC walks 6 tiles each turn without any cost in actions:

https://gamenightblog.com/lost-mine-phandelver-campaign-resources/ (search for Cragmaw Hideout)

In a turn, you've in melee range, always, unless something is blocking your path or you are in a particularly large place. I've resorted to drawing huge maps and sometimes doing a 10ft sq scale so battles had some sort of positional strategy besides "tanks blocking the way".
 
I guess ranger's feel more suited to a role-playing style of campaign for me. Their abilities tie into things that aren't necessarily combat. I've never played a fighter, but it seems like a character without anything fun to do besides use weapons a lot. Totally subjective on my part, but I can see how that tilts 5e per standard play style into the fighter's court.
The ranger, of course, requires a DM that works with ranger abilities. Yeah if they just ignore the facets of your character of course it'll suck. That's true of many classes. Natural Explorer: desert -> never puts the group in a desert, for instance (or doesn't discuss with the player during creation about environments that will actually show up).

I'm pretty sure I've just automatically used the revised version. Everything I'm doing with my ranger I see in that revision document. So I'm guessing dndbeyond etc. just use the revised stats now.
 

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
See, I'm a veteran D&D player, so I build my own campaigns... and monsters, I guess, so some of these problems I simply sidestep :) By and large, though, 5e feels a lot more balanced out of the box than anything before 4e, which was too balanced. It's basically a redo of 3.5, but they kept the awesome additions of 4e (like at will spells) and added attunement (for Magic items) and concentration (for powerful spell effects that last a while), which fixes a lot of the problems 3.5 had. I mean, if you think that Wizards are overpowered from the mid game on in 5e, you haven't played 3.5! Melee characters are way more useful in the mid to late game than they were in 3.5.

In the end, the 5e rules are mostly about combat (as D&D has always been). The idea is that roleplaying doesn't need many rules, and looking at my own D&D campaigns this is true. I've had an awesome session last Monday, and it didn't feature a single combat!

If you do want to change things though, I've found 5e is a great system for house rules. I do agree 6-8 combats in a single day every time feels like a slog, and while I've not personally had any problems with running less combats in a day, one of my groups recently switched to a system of... delayed long rests? Basically, we do the 6-8 combats recommended for a single day, but we don't do them in a single day. Spells can be used out of combat, and depending on the situation this might or might not cost you a spell slot. After all, if you are spending a few days in between combats you could easily cast that raise dead under the normal rules :) It works pretty well, no forced combats, you are exhausting your resources, melee characters are more important because they are such a dependable source of damage, unlike spellcasters which are much more burst-oriented.

The great thing about that healing word being a bonus action is that healers can actually do something else besides being a medic all of the time, but if you want to slightly discourage people from dropping to 0 on purpose so healing has full effect (and I've been there), you could introduce a house rule that limits a character in some way when they are revived. Note that you already drop prone when you fall unconscious, so the first thing a character typically has to do is spend half their movement speed to stand up. Maybe you can only take basic actions as you reorient yourself (cantrips or a weapon attack, no bonus action)? I've tried handing out an exhaustion level for dropping to 0 hit points, but the lasting negative effects mean you're more likely to drop again, so you get a negative feedback loop, plus exhaustion typically hits melee characters way harder than spellcasters, and melee characters are more likely to drop in the first place because they're in the frontline. So, that house rule wasn't fun for the players. A small penalty like the one above might do the trick though!

For DM's, I highly encourage watching this video:
. This is a great way to make your monsters more memorable!
Another great resource is this one: https://theangrygm.com/series/5e-boss-fight/
 

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Spoilers because this goes places.
So... opening up my first printing copy of the Player's Handbook and looking at the credits page, there are a few names on there that aren't in later printings.

One of those names, Zak S., was taken off for very good reason. He has (had? I'm not sure if it's still a thing) a popular OSR blog called D&D With Porn Stars, and was basically the face of the OSR community, so WotC decided to pick him up as a consultant. What's the worst that could happen, right?

Did I forget to mention that it was an open secret in the tabletop community that Zak S. was a toxic creep? We're talking stuff like "outing another RPG writer who happened to be trans and running her out of the industry", "encouraging his fans to stalk another RPG author, including one guy who sent him a picture of his kid's school", and other such dickish behavior. But that's just drama, right?

Oh right, I neglected to mention that he was sexually abusing his girlfriend, which came to light after 5e came out? After faking her identity for literal years to write a blog about how he was a great guy? And that he proceeded to use loopholes in Commonwealth libel laws and his personal fortune to force people via court orders to apologize for reporting this? That's ultimately why his name was removed from the credits page.

"But Mapi", I hear you say, "you can't blame WotC for associating with someone who was later discovered to be an utterly garbage person". No. I can't. But I can blame them for not cutting times with him when this came out until there was enough pressure on Mike Mearls for him to throw his buddy under the bus and stop covering up his non-sexual-abuse stuff. Because the whole "drum people out of the hobby with witch-hunts" thing had already been going on for years at that point.
I mean, I also find 5e to be really bland mechanically, and I find streamed actual plays to be misleading at best, but the spoiled bit is what soured me on the edition.
Oh wow, that's nasty. Yeah, we don't need despicable criminals (because that's what abuse is, criminal) like that around influencing D&D. Sadly, there's enough examples of toxicity around, but I refuse to let assholes like that spoil my fun. There are a lot of wonderful people involved with D&D as well, and I thoroughly enjoy this edition up until at least 14th level. I'm currently in a campaign at 19th level, and combat breaks down a bit at that point, mainly because of silly loopholes like wish for simulacrum. I think that level needs some creative house ruling plus thoughtful encounter design to remain fun.
 
Echoing what Onderzeeboot said, that's really foul. I knew that D&D was a crusty old boys' club, or at least had guessed, but had no idea it was that bad. Thanks for writing this all out, LadyMapi and Japahn! I agree that the tactical puzzle in D&D gets really boring after a while, which is part of what makes Gloomhaven so appealing--I get a chance to minmax my numbers to my heart's content without worrying about it running into my RPG.
 
Also, technically this makes Earth (yes, our Earth) canonically part of Magic's setting, since Elminster has a portal to Earth in orbit around Toril, which he used to visit Ed Greenwood and have tea with him. It was a gimmick in Greenwood's old column, and a) the setting is Ed Greenwood's baby¹ and b) I don't think anyone has actually come forward and said "no, that's not canon" (canon is... flexible... for tabletop games).

I mean, granted, it's probably more pertinent to mention that the Forgotten Realms is already embedded in its own multiverse with very different rules that aren't really compatible with the mana wheel... but I like bringing up the Elminster portal thing, because it's very silly.
Luckily, according to the Universes Beyond announcement made by Wizards of the Coast last month, Adventures in the Forgotten Realms is not going to be part of magic's canonic lore. To quote WOTC directly:
Whatzee said:
To that end, it's worth noting that the upcoming Magic set Adventures in the Forgotten Realms is not part of Universes Beyond. For now, we're reserving the Universes Beyond branding for worlds outside those built by Wizards of the Coast. As to whether the Forgotten Realms are now canonically part of Magic's Multiverse, for now, the answer is no. But we may change our minds in the future if it makes sense and is a fun net positive for Magic and D&D.
So while it is possible they may decide to merge the multiverses in the future, for now, both worlds are separate.
 
Good ol' offtopic Riptide ;)
I'm mostly with LadyMapi here, I can't play D&D anymore except begrudgingly. I DMed and played for too many campaigns until I realized that while I initially enjoyed the PowerMaxing and the character creation as a young lad it never stuck with me. I started when I was 15-ish with 1 session in 3.5 before we switched to Pathfinder 1E, that was... interesting, not really my group and they were much more into combat than I was.
DnD never really employed what I wanted out of a TTRPG. I ran one DnD 5E game during college, and after I stole my players character's parents' souls and sent a helicopter with a railgun pointed at their small children characters during a modern Fantasy based game based off of Earthbound... I realized DnD may not be for me. I played wayyyyy too into the cinematics and goofy-fun combat. One of my players built cloud-steps to get a vantage point (cuz we were using the UA Psychic) and another player was like, "could I use that to jump into the helicopter?" and for me... I was so proud. So I only made them do an Athletics check and that was enough for me, no statistical calculations trying to figure out how high you can jump, no need. I let them jump into the helicopter and they beat the heck out of them and almost died.

So I played some other stuff and settled on FATE for a couple years and after I needed more structure I tried out Fellowship (which is good but your players really need to be good at improv-ing entire histories and races... which only some of mine are). And for now I've settled on hacking City of Mist. I understand that a lot of players play DnD like I do, and that's fine cuz it's a gateway game and some people don't even know there are other TTRPGs out there. I personally look back at DnD like, "Man... I'm glad I don't have to worry about HP anymore" but if you have fun with it, great! I stopped having fun and as a DM I don't think that's a good mindset, you need to have twice as much fun as your players cuz you do twice the work lol. Anyways, that's my offtopic contribution.

Back on-topic
I'm excited for dungeons and dragons MTG, mostly just because we're likely to have at least 5 new dragons in a cycle, and that's enough for me to be excited for a Set :p
But if we don't get one Beholder, preferably this one, I think I'll be a bit peeved
 
Luckily, according to the Universes Beyond announcement made by Wizards of the Coast last month, Adventures in the Forgotten Realms is not going to be part of magic's canonic lore. To quote WOTC directly:

So while it is possible they may decide to merge the multiverses in the future, for now, both worlds are separate.


Somehow this actually annoys me more, and I can't articulate why.
 
That’s new.. normally Standard released sets are canon unless they’re reprint sets. At least until Sarkhan travels back and time to change the present and future. I find it a bit sad that we’ll have a set that isn’t canon.

Maybe it will be a good thing for the game overall. It could be that D&D is such a crazy different set and setting that they needed it to stay out of the story. Maybe we’ll be playing the set a lot different from a normal Magic set. Or maybe it’s just because Earth is canon in D&D and Wizards don’t want Earth to be part of MtG.
 
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