#the question about my icon made me laugh so hard skfgkdsf

[andruail]

what is your profile picture lol

I may remember you saying you were a 5e hater of cos, what about it do you hate?

it's solas from dragon age inquisition skfkgfds it's from this post

and yeah there's a lot of things about 5e that i don't like.

first of all i've talked about some things here like how tracy hickman considers himself the academic authority on vampires despite there being no set vampire canon. it is also apparent from his foreword that he considers himself to be the authority on polidori's work the vampyre / his relationship with lord byron. in saying that, he seems to have a weird fixation on lord byron as if the man somehow came back from the dead and has personally gone to his home and fucked his wife. and i know he's used public perceptions (i say public because byron was considered one of the first celebrities of his time) and not academic literature of lord byron to influence 5e strahd.

5e is the first time strahd is introduced as canonically bisexual, however as i talk about in this post he fits the depraved bisexual trope which is not good. it makes him fucking suck as a character.

5e continues to be racist. the way the module treats the vistani continues to be incredibly regressive. van richten and his racist tiger. the vistani continue to emulate racist romani stereotypes. while the revamped version has fixed some of the alignment issues (originally vistani were mostly of evil alignment, and now they are neutral), the module says if you have random vistani npcs, you are encouraged to use the bandit statblock. for barovians, it is the noble statblock. ravenloft has had a long history of racism when it comes to the vistani, but somehow it finds new ways to be racist and dehumanise them. not to mention, tracy hickman on his own website still refers to the vistani with the g slur.

5e nerfed the shit out of ireena. in the original ravenloft, she was a very capable fighter and her stats were better than ismark's. in 5th edition, not so much.

the dusk elves. dusk elves were introduced in 4e. i posted about their 4e information here and made a note about how their appearance now differs in 2016 curse of strahd. which is a nice idea. however i am suspicious about why they are suddenly being annihilated in 5e and if there was any malicious intent behind certain changes considering tracy hickman makes no secret of his religion being reflected in his writing.

i personally don't like the amber temple lmao. i'm just a player but i know a lot of DMs feel the same way. it's a very controversial change from older editions but for me it's just silly. i don't like the idea of the dark powers or these 'dark gods' being something tangible that you can find in a physical place. i want something incomprehensible that comes to you when you're at your weakest point and breaks you even further.

5e strahd just doesn't fit the monster narrative for me. i want a good monster. a compelling monster. a monster that serves as a warning. 5e strahd is not that.

5e cos just isn't gothic horror to me. i want fear and haunting. i want to feel the claustrophobic past and a decaying present. i want terror and dread. if i wanted torture and mass murder and human rights violations i'd play a different campaign lmao

there's probably more but that's all i can think of right now!