#any dnd lore nerd will agree on this

[csphire]

Why you should not let Astarion ascend.

Okay keep in mind the following:

1. Mephistopheles the devil doesn't make a deal with Cazador to destroy 7k souls. They are NOT destined to be absorbed by Cazador or Astarion. It might look like that but why would a devil ever agree to let another being do that and turn over power for nothing?

2. The souls are clearly a part of a trade. All 7k souls are going to hell and probably getting minted into soul coins to fuel infernal machines. They will then be destroyed as they power those machines. Keep in mind that's a lot of fuel! A very sudden influx too. If not they'll become cannon fodder or labor for the blood war.

3. Even if you decide to keep Astarion a spawn and kill all 7k vamps some of those souls collected might end up in the hells if they were bad people or left unclaimed by a god or godness. Not as bad as all 7k but still do we want that much blood on Astarion's and the pc hands? To actually be a part of not just killing but destroying that many souls? Many of us would not.

4. True it sucks they'll kill some a lot of innocents but remember keeping them alive keeps them out of the hells. And again, keep in mind that by making Astarion into an Ascendant vampire the pc is pretty much helping Mephistopheles turn the tide of the blood war in the hells. The thing is that's a bad-really bad. The Bad (Devils) and Worse (Demons) need to keep fighting with each other so they don't turn their focus on Faerun.

This is one very pragmatic reason to not let him Ascend regardless of one's feelings towards Astarion. It's a shame the game doesn't spell this out more clearly.

[mareastrorum]

Don't forget all the racism in Warcraft's writing which has actually gotten worse over the years whilst even DnD has gotten better over the years.

I mean, it’s hard for me to say Blizzard’s racist writing got worse when Warcraft Trolls were incredibly transparent stand-ins for African and Central American cultures/races from the beginning. That’s not even getting into goblins as the banking/neutral race before a goblin faction joined the Horde. Honestly, other people have written about racism in the narrative of WoW lore at length, and I wouldn’t be able to do half as good a job since I haven’t played in a while.

A key problem with Blizzard’s writing in WoW is that there is no coherent story. It’s an amalgamation of plots conceived by writers without any accountability, which results in an absurd number of retcons and contradictions. It’s a collaborative story with no central lore document. Nothing is actually set in stone. Sometimes the change is genuinely an improvement over prior lore (shadow priests, old gods, and the Void Lords, as they were elaborated upon in Legion), sometimes it’s painfully anticlimactic and nonsensical (Tyrande fails to kill Sylvanas in the Ardenweald because her powers suddenly cut out), and sometimes it’s obvious a team got written into a corner by a different team and the plot just needs to move on (no negative repercussions for Illidan killing Xe’ra in front of her Army of the Light on their flagship). That means that some quest lines are really well done, others are plagued with racism and bullshit, and every possible mix in between.

Like, how Sylvanas was handled throughout the Shadowlands expansion is peak WoW writing. Obvious plot armor, flimsy justifications for her choices because half the writers didn’t want her to be a villain, a half-assed cardboard cutout of a redemption arc so they could fridge her for later, and the cheesiest vague dialogue possible so that future retcons wouldn’t feel as disappointing. I was so excited for her to go genocidal in Battle for Azeroth, committing to a truly evil option that the players band together to stop, and then it was followed by that. Because Blizzard decided to walk back the “genocide is bad” message. For reasons.

I haven’t played WoW since the end of Shadowlands, so I can’t speak as to the changes since then. I doubt they’re better. And I want to be clear: I adored Xal’atath. I mained a shadow priest the entire time I played, which was about 8 years total. The lore of my preferred class was all about self-worship and tapping into dark power in one’s own soul until it was retconned into worshiping Eldritch horrors, and I loved both iterations. I had several now-unobtainable PVP titles. I did BGs and Arenas. I did progression raiding. I had max level toons in every class on multiple servers. My main was in the top 10 for achievement points on our server. I had over 400 days played. I was the lore nerd of my raiding guild. I did that silly trivia bot game every time I came across it in the hub city. I collected mounts, pets (before they were even battle pets) , and toys (when they still took up bag space). I spent a lot of time playing WoW and immersing in the experience.

I never played WoW for the story. The writing was always horribly inconsistent. Writers’ racial and class biases always worked their way into random quests, dialogue, and narrative beats. But you know what? I’m a POC, and that’s everywhere. WoW wasn’t unique for that.

WoW has been around for about 20 years at this point, Warcraft for even longer—so now those stances engrained in the lore aren’t as widely accepted anymore. They were always wrong. It’s just that now more people agree that it’s wrong. I’m no longer on the fringes for thinking “man, it would be nice to have a human character with my skin color” or “it would be nice to see elements of my culture shown through something other than a cannibalistic troll empire.”

D&D benefits from the fact that they release new editions, so the lore from prior editions is easier to sweep under the rug. There is no WoW 2. It’s just WoW. If D&D had taken a similar expansion process as WoW instead of editions, they’d be much more comparable. D&D racism isn’t really “better”—I just haven’t spent quite the same number of hours spent learning it to play a game.

[fitheghosty]

YES YES YES KAS!EDDIE I AGREE SO HARD. THE VILLAIN MOMENTS?! EVERYTHING. THE HEARTBREAKING INTERACTIONS IT WOULD CAUSE?! YES. A KICK ASS TURN AROUND AND HAVING HIM BETRAY THE CRUSTY SPAGHETTI LOOKIN IDIOT THAT IS VECNA LIKE DND LORE (as far as I’ve been told granted)?!! HELL YEAHHH BABYYYYY

TL:DR- Kas!Eddie is a wonderful theory and I too am going crazy over it

SERIOUSLY THO IT WOULD BE SO SAD FOR DUSTIN AND ALL OF THEM BUT SO EXCITING FOR US

HA! YES! EDDIE BETRAYING VECNA RIGHT AT THE LAST MINUTE AMD EVERYONE'S SHOCKED CAUSE THEY HAVEN'T RECOGNIZED ANYTHING IN EDDIE UNTIL NOW

I also think it would be totally cool if eddie didn't even remember who he was, like all of the kas theory fics I've read they have him remembering himself but he's just different because of vecna. but I think it's interesting to play around with the idea that eddie actually believes he's kas cause of vecna and whatever he did to mix around eddie's mind

here's a little writing thing I wrote inspired by this idea ↓ >:)

(disclaimer: I got all of the D&D information from the internet lol I'm sorry if it's wrong)

------------------------------------------------------------

Dustin faltered seeing the creature infront of him, "Eddie..?"

Dustin was a little surprised that he had made that connection himself, he looked like Eddie but... wrong. His skin was almost, well, rotted. He had fucking wings, and his teeth were as sharp as knives. So were his eyes almost. They were baring into Dustin's soul, but still he knows those eyes anywhere. It's Eddie for sure. How? He doesn't know, but what he does know is that he shouldn't seem scared infront of him, he didn't ask for whatever this is.

"No." Eddie replies.

"No...?" Dustin repeats in confusion.

"That isn't my name." Eddie— not Eddie?— says coldly.

Had Dustin got it wrong? Was this one of Vecna's tricks? He was in the upside down.. it would be easier to get him here he supposes.

Eddie goes to speak again, coming out raspier than before which makes Dustin flinch, "I'm Kas."

Look, if there is one thing Dustin Henderson is, it's a nerd. And he knows that name, he knows it all too well. Kas the bloody handed is Vecna's right hand man in his favorite game, D&D. His eyes widen, looking down to see Eddie's (Kas's?) hand laying at his side, holding a sword. Not just any sword, the sword of Kas. Any dungeons and dragons lover can tell that it's his sword from a mile away.

What was happening...? The upside down had never tried to mimic D&D before, their party had just named all of the monsters after the characters so it wasn't confusing.

Why now..? Why this..? Why...Eddie? He died.

"Uh- I gotta go." Dustin said, scared. He needed to get back to the others.

Eddie grinned with giddy eyes, "You're not going anywhere."

Dustin didn't recognize him anymore.

[kuzupekos]

maybe people like the game/system for dnd for how easy to learn it is despite not caring about the setting? genuinely i cannot understand why, if they have the interest in running games, people wouldn’t want to homebrew their own settings in literally any ttrpg and just ignore the original lore. literally every group my friends and i have been in does that no matter the game/system. like that seems infinitely more to the spirit and appeal of tabletop to me you know?

holy shit did you just call dnd easy to learn??? it’s the most complicated system ive ever fucking seen and most dm’s i speak to say they don’t even know half the rules and are winging it most of the time. matthew fucking mercer, professional dm and decades long dnd nerd, gets the rules wrong sometimes live on his show where he plays dnd for a living. literally all this ask tells me is you’ve never played a game other than dnd.

i run a lot of pbta games. i pretty much play them exactly as written, because they’re already fun when i bought the book. the settings are fun and interesting but with enough flexibility that i can have a good time creating a sandbox that i then let my players run loose in. all really interesting stories with mechanics written to enhance the stories, not be a simulation of how many feet you can move in a few minutes or how hard you can hit someone. they’re easy enough to pick up that i can teach people how to play in 20 minutes or less and we can jump right into the story, no two hour long character creation period or multiple sessions dedicated to people finding their feet. it’s a lot less work for me as a gm. it’s a lot more fun for me as a gm.

i’m not a game developer. i am interested in game development and find it very interesting, but that's not really where my skills are. if i buy a game i want to be able to play it, not rewrite the setting and rule book. i don’t know why you’re giving devs so much credit for a game that, by people’s admission, is not fun until you fuck with it so much it barely resembles the original. like... the only thing i can really think to compare it to is skyrim, which everyone says they don’t play until they’ve modded it until it breaks, but everyone at least agrees that skyrim is a bad game and todd howard is a hack.

listen, if you like high fantasy combat and want a heavily simulation-based experience, dnd is the perfect game for you. that’s what it’s written to be. it likes to pretend it can be anything, but it is a combat simulator at its core and the moment you try to play a character or story that doesn’t want to engage in combat it becomes incredibly clear that dnd is not, in fact, for everyone. which is fine. it doesn’t have to be for me. one of my favorite things about watching critical role is how much the cast absolutely delights in dnd as it is written. but when you start taking a hammer to the lore, the mechanics, homebrewing everything, essentially rewriting the game before you can play it... why not just play a game that suits you better?

[gloompun]

??what were those posts about?

its just like… like every fucking moment on this website abt like. Ambiguous Bad Shit and the person making the post can 100000% be in the right but theres just this. snarky fucking tone thats so fuuuucking exhausting.

the post that sparked that last one was ppl just being blatantly negative abt the new taz comic like. yeah, the designs arent the Best, and antisemetic undertones are there and thats obviously bad, but theres a huge difference i think between the tone of “:/ disappointed with the designs” and taking a screenshot of the tweet w/ some kinda sarcastic fucking caption. like you dont SOUND like a concerned activist you sound like someone who wants to make a post that other ppl will find amusing and agree with. and obv im not going to confront any of these people cause thats none of my fucking business but oh my GOD im so fucking TIRED of seeing that kinda shit

it reminds me of the fucking foolish comeback against green taako that “uhhhhh sun elves in dnd arent green :/” like, youre right, and your core message is still right and i agree BUT you know how fucking foolish you like trying to one up someone w/ nerd shit???? tryna back up your legitimate social activism with some nerd shit???? and like again same difference if someone politely informs you, its still ridiculous but theres 0 things wrong with it, if they mean it seriously they sound sooooo pretentious. not everyones well versed on there dnd lore