Volo’s Guide to Monsters

>Open up new race options, including the goblin
FUCK YES!
Will Pirate upon release!

>kobolds
Which version of the Kurtulmak story will they showcase?

I really hate how they barely release any books for 5e. It's been years already, and it's, what, the second one that's not an adventure?

It'll be two years in August.

Blame WotC and the realities of the gaming market.
WotC and Hasbro has finally realized that no matter how hard it tries it can't ACTUALLY turn D&D into money maker in par with MtG and despite it's fame it's still a niche market.
Doesn't help that with MtG you can basically sell shit over and over again because it's a CCG but with D&D the costs of printing and writing and developing a book are outweighed by the fact that most people will only buy it just once and most will likely pirate it a anyway.

so a mm2-phb2 combo

I can dig it

I'll bite.

What's the gnomes version of this tale?

That Kurtulmak was jealous of the gnomes and was stealing their jewels, or that he was stealing jewels that were the souls of unborn gnomes. In same cases it's that Glittergold was just pulling a prank on Kurtulmak.

Doesn't stop Glittergold from committing genocide with no repercussions. #koboldlivesmatter

Fuck the modern kobold.

I know, right?

>we are too lazy to write up new creatures so here is 250 pages of recycled fluff that we have to put almost no effort into about creatures you already have the stats for
>plus race templates that can be thrown together in 5 minutes

You sound jaded

>t. Volo
why do we accept this kind of shilling on here again?

I really want notes throughout the book that are basically Elminster correcting Volo in the most condescending way possible and Volo being like "fuck you, old man."

I am.

5e has a lot of obvious laziness in design and (especially) editing. I cant blame them for reducing the release speed of the books but they cant even keep up with unearthed arcana. Every other month is just fucking homebrew taken from DM's guild.

So now after a SEVERAL month wait we are finally getting a new book that isn't a shitty module and we can pretty much guarantee that at least half the book will be lore that is recycled and mostly useless to people not using forgotten realms as their games setting.

can you imagine if the firbolgs get that "hold two handed weapons in one hand" trait they had forever ago?

imagine being a 10ft firbolg paladin, holding a greatshield as big as you in one hand and a maul in the other

think they don't wanna make 5e too bloated.

and as much as I'd like more supplemental shit, it's just not really a reality money wise. D&D is currently "fake nerd cool" so it gets alot of buzz but 95% of those kinds of people don't actually play and certainly don't buy anything.

I like the cover, great work.

>> Not a single mention of kobolds

The OP's post literally says "kobolds" you fucking buffoon.

>> Dive deep into the story behind D&D’s most popular and iconic monsters, including beholders, mind flayers, and the yuan-ti, as well as classics like orcs, gnolls, and kobolds.

It will be shit

This is going to be awesome!

I'm running a campaign in 2017 that will be based heavily on yuan-ti, so this is perfect.

mfw

It's just a prank, bro.

Dude, they're underground. Shevarash is the Elven deity of straight-up ethnic cleansing. Anything's possible when you just want to kill not!people living underground.

>Firbolgs are old stuff; 2e MM.
Firbolgs were included in 4e as Fey giants that were unaligned if I remember correctly.

Are you making them allied with 40k's lizardmen because that's what I'm doing because it's fucking cool

>new
>the neogi
>new
wat

Noice! Didn't we have a "WHIRR TEH FUGS MM2????"-thread just a day ago or so?
They should at least ramp up the release schedule of little tidbits of material on UeA or something. That way they could at least fight off bloat claims with "not official" or somesuch (no fucking idea how that's supposed to earn them monies though...).
5e really fucking needs some more material for the players by now.

>5e really fucking needs some more material for the players by now.
Why? Have you played all the available classes and archetypes and races already? Are you incapable of ever playing a class more than once?
You really don't need a fucking constant torrent of never-ending new rules for the the game to be enjoyable.
Sure maybe it would be nice for you to have same more stuff to read, but there's no way in hell you're actually playing through all the rules so quickly that you've gotten bored of them and now desperately need new rules to freshen things up. So fucking spare me your hyperbole. 5E doesn't "need" more material. You just need to learn some fucking patience. Maybe try actually playing the game instead of just reading the books once and then whining for more.

New to 5e dimwit, new to 5e. It helps if you actually read ALL the words in a sentence.

They were in the 3e Monster Manual II.

In 2e the 'L weapons in one hand' thing was a byproduct of how the weapon size stuff works. I can't remember how 5e does weapon size.

WotC basically relegated the D&D team to a broom closet and cut the staff to I think 8 people. Possibly less.

They're taking the laziest possible path they can to keep D&D warm. Probably waiting for the movie to give them a spike of interest, but by then there'll probably just be Mike Mearls as the sole person of the department, eating string cheese and forcing people to make perception checks to advance the plot.

>I can't remember how 5e does weapon size.
Two-handed weapons require two hands to wield.

Attacks with heavy weapons made by small creatures are made with disadvantage.

>I like to makes stuff up

That's nice.

Not him, but I don't want to learn fucking patience. I want to give them my money in return for product.

Why in the fuck are they not taking advantage of me? How often does that happen in business anyhow?

WotC has been cutting the D&D team by about 10% every year for a long time now. It's one reason there's such an anemic release schedule--there's just not enough staff available to put out content quickly enough. The conversion guide was delayed because the one guy working on it got stuck with jury duty, for cryin' out loud. What professional company gets a product stalled like that?

I suspect they opened the DM's Guild specifically to pick up the slack, which is just downright embarrassing for the flagship product of the hobby.

"We'll have the fans do our work because I suck at my job." - Mike Mearls, probably.

>one of the latest DM's guild homebrew spotlights was a subclass for druid that gave them a balanced animal companion that makes the BM rangers look like garbage
Isn't there an easier way to say that you are bad at your job

Sometimes I worry D&D won't last the 8 years to its 50th anniversary. Why don't Wizards just license the name to somebody?

>What professional company gets a product stalled like that?
One that doesn't care about the product because it owns Magic the Gathering.

because wizards is owned by Hasbro who is more jewish than the nation of Israel

But if they license it, they get money for not doing any work. That's one of the most Jewish things going. And it's not like Hasbro don't already do that with Transformers.

The Jews at hasbro would rather lose money than help someone else gain money.

Sure they would make money out of the deal but that means whoever they licensed it to makes money as well.

They would rather let it die out for a decade or so and then make a big ass deal about making more DnD and advertise the shit out of it to get hype.

You say that like making BM Rangers look like garbage is a particularly skillful thing to do.

>remember D&D?
>we're bringing it back for the 50th anniversary!
I could see that.

>PHB
>Two years of nothing.
Contain your mad, bro.

>two years of nothing
SCAG and EEPC.

Not to mention all the Unearthed arcana and other supplements they've thrown out for free.

There's plenty of content for 5e, and there's no way anyone has played it all yet.

Gross

Protip: the world does not actually revolve solely around you.

Your single purchase does not constitute a guarantee of a product's profitably. Just because SOME people will buy something doesn't mean it's actually cost effective to make and sell it.

So quit your petulant whining and fucking grow up.

Look, the thing you need to understand, is that right now, everything is working as intended. You need to see things from Hasbro's perspective. WOTC is not Paizo or Onyx Path. They are a tiny part of a vast corporation. Hasbro isn't interested in the amounts of money that Paizo and Onyx Path make. Those amounts are enough for those companies to keep hiring freelancers and scraping by, but to Hasbro that's money that's not worth the effort needed to bend over and pick it up. It's nothing to them.

MTG money is the kind they're after, and rpgs, as they've always been published, just don't make that much. Nowhere near it. Which is why with 4E they tried the whole online subscription model of DDI in an effort to turn D&D into an MTG style moneymaker.

But, it didn't work. So with 5E they're trying another new business model for rpgs. They've downsized the actual R&D of the game and slowed it's release schedule, because they don't actually expect to make money from the books. They hope to make money from the licensing, all the products that surround D&D: the books, board games, computer games, maybe a film, t-shirts. All that. To Hasbro, the actually game itself is more like advertising for all the licensed products. The license is valuable, the game is not.

It's actually identical to the way that Disney own Marvel comics and WB own DC comics. They don't give a shit about the pittance that the comics make, they're interested in the licenses. Actually, the same thing also applies to White Wolf being bought by CCP, except in that case CCP ended up shutting it down after they got the license. So it could be worse.

>I want to give them money, but they're making it so hard. Why can't they just sell me what I want?

Hey reddit.

Man you assholes are super salty about 5e being the DM edition.

There is so much content to make *games* but people only care about making 30 character sheets without background stories on mythweavers.

Link?

In the /5eg/ MEGA folder. Rulebooks/Unearthed Arcana/May 2016 Dungeon Masters Guild Review. Circle of the Beast, I think.

Firbolgs were made a playable race in the book Giantcraft (I could be remembering the title wrong). It was a FR book explaining the Ordning, rune magic, why giants are tolerated in some areas, etc.

They were 8 to 10 feet tall, had +strength but -charisma due to no one liking giants.
They could wield two handed weapons in one hand, were never allowed to wear armor (natural ac of 3), had "monstrous size", and were always LG.
Their society was based almost entirely on honor and charity, and they were considered enemies of other giants for not only being impure Giantkin, but also for the fact they ignore the Ordning.

Volo is still alive?
I thought he died during the events of Throne of Bhaal or during the shitstorm that was 4th edition.

>special ability
>something any L-size creature gets for free
Quality game design there.

Not in AD&D.
Firbolgs also did double damage if they two-handed a weapon.

I would think it'll be one of his many unpublished works that was found again years later.
Like his guide to all things magical being his first book fluff wise, but was the last one published.

>Not in AD&D.
Weapon Size: All weapons are classed according to a size
category—S, M, L, G, or H. Small (S) weapons are approximately
two feet or less in size; medium (M) weapons are two
to five feet long; large (L) weapons are generally six feet or
greater in length. Giant (G) and huge (H) weapons are not
found on the lists, since these are items normally used by
ogres, giants, and even greater creatures. They are not items
of equipment a PC can normally buy!
A character can always wield a weapon equal to his own
size or less. Normally this requires only one hand, except for
some missile weapons (bows and crossbows in particular). A
character can also use a weapon one size greater than himself
although it must be gripped with two hands. Beyond this
size limit, the weapon is not usable without special means
(most often magical).

From the 2e PHB. 8'-10' is L, and a 2h sword is L, so the Firbolg's special ability doesn't mean shit.

>Firbolgs also did double damage if they two-handed a weapon.
I don't see that in FOR7, where is it?

My bad, I'm on mobile so I was using lomion.de/cmm/gianfirb.php to quickly remind myself of their stuff.

On the weapons, I honestly have no idea how I forgot that rule, and was just thinking about how I remembered some monsters (iirc most giants, trolls, etc) specifically mention they can do it in their rules text.