Preview: Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide

This is an interesting product. Green Ronin is teaming up with Wizards to produce the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide. This is a book that brings the "adventure area" of Faerun to players with an up-to-date guide, sort of like a soft reset on the Sword Coast area to bring it up to date with the videogame releases of Neverwinter and Sword Coast Legends.

The spellplague, second sundering, time of trials, crisis of the gods, and all the other game rule inflicted disasters are covered, and that has always been a sore point with me and Faerun, all of the world-changing disasters have been inflicted on this world for game-related reasons. It feels very direct and the "we're changing things" disaster 5.0 always feels like it is around the next corner.

Contrast this with Lord of the Rings, or even Pathfinder's Golarion. Those worlds feel stable, and we don't really need huge changes done to them repeatedly to account for another rules change. The settings are what they are, and even in the case of Golarion, I doubt Paizo would feel it necessary to 'change the world' with a disaster if a new version of Pathfinder came out. Even in the Lord of the Rings videogames, if a game's interpretation of the world is slightly different, it is no big deal and not something worthy of a global change to the lore.

Will I be getting this book? It is hard to say because I really don't know what the value is to me. I am a fan of the lore and world, and it would be good to keep up with things, but I haven't played those two videogames yet so my interest is a little dampened.

I don't really want the D&D 5 classes or rules, and "purple dragon knight" sounds a bit silly to me and I have no idea what that is supposed to be. A swashbuckler class, okay, but really, that is a rogue to me. Pathfinder is guilty of this too, taking a thesaurus to the list of classes and coming up with new classes just based on a slightly different version of the base class. What this does is weaken the base class, and complicate character design. And you know any "thesaurus class" will come with extra added power creep to sell the book - it is inevitable with RPG designers to do this. What that does is it destroys the value of the original book's content, and weakens the game overall.

A fighter with a bow is a fighter. Not an archer, non-magic ranger, bow-ist, crossbowman, target shooter, bow-slinger, marksman, field archer, bowman, arrow-slinger, sniper, bow master, fletcher, close-quarters bowman, or any other word meaning the same thing. Rangers? Maybe, but they have to be more than "a slightly weak fighter who can use some low-level magic user spells." Some games do ranger right, and others don't put the effort in.

As for the other content? I will need to wait and see. I have enough background data to run a campaign in this area, but I don't feel the need to go out and gather more background data without a current campaign running. Part of me hopes with is more like a Dragon Age style hintbook thing that gives you great background data on the world and factions.

Of all things, I want a strong world with strong characters and factions. That gets me interested, and that is driving my interest in games and worlds like Dragon Age and others. The book has to answer the question, why not just get videogame hintbooks for Neverwinter and Sword Coast Legends and play with those? If they do the "let's water down important NPCs so the players feel important" thing I am less interested. I like strong characters, and I am not afraid of them.

So I am tossed up about this one, and I will wait for the non-5-star reviews to come in so I can make my decision. I am not buying expansion splatbooks for D&D 5 because I am sticking to the original three. If I am going to buy books to collect, they will be Pathfinder because I am bought in already and following along. With D&D 5, I don't have the interest or shelf-space to start collecting again. This book feels like a D&D 5 splatbook that you buy for new rules and the background and world data feel like add-ons. I would be surprised if they made this highly useful with NPCs, places, maps, plots, and other high-value content.

But this is a different company, Green Ronin, and I like their stuff, so I may be wrong and in for a pleasant surprise. We shall see, and this comes out in early November.