I have some questions/criticisms in regards to the monsters in S&C because I am a nerd for monsters. Since I've had the book since release, I am not sure why I waited so long to make this post, but I did want to some of my own research first.

• I somewhat expected certain monsters like the Manticore (which I expected so hard I imagined it), the Roc/Rukh as mentioned in Middle Eastern texts and by Jordanus, and the goblin/nymph-like Yaksha as nature spirits which were well-attested in Hindu Kashmir. Maybe in future books...
• What even is a Dire Ape? Dire wolves were a thing, but I have not heard of Dire Apes.
• I believe Preta and Arabic Ghuls are not that similar in their authentic lore, but I was unbothered by this since you have the Ghul-e Biyaban in the book.
• Jinn section is very solid. That said some info on the Jinn courts and kings in the otherworld and ranks/variants such as marid, ifrit, div, etc. and some details of how Solomonic Jinn binding works for PC's could be nice in the future. The Arabic sources are surprisingly inaccessible in English.
• Giant ants having a chance to have gold in their anthills as treasure based on Wonders of the East would have been neat and differed from the D&D standard.

The monsters ported over from Arrows of Indra are mostly good, but I take issue with two:

• The Garuda is clearly the more eagle-like sort of the Mahabharata and a good take from that point of view; however, S&C is a medieval game and in this period the bird-man view seems more common in folklore and iconography especially among the Buddhists widely present along the Silk Road. The fact that the enmity between the Garuda and Naga apparently goes unmentioned in the book should be a crime; that's a PC exploitable relationship.
• The Sharabha in S&C and AoI is boring. Here I find a creature described like a griffin, living near to where griffins live in western texts, with a griffin's diet but without the interesting magical uses of the L&D one. The iconography of the Sharabha can get kind of wild and leo-centaurish or be griffin-like, while in the text translations and excerpts I read it seemed more like a wild beast dwelling in mountain forests. However, I found that in these Sanskrit writings the Sharabha is almost always eight-legged and seems more associated with hunting lions and possibly elephants than men and horses (although I am sure it would not turn down the latter two). These things are interesting and distinguish it from its griffin relative so why is not described thusly? This description is even present in the Mahabharata so it is somewhat egregious to merely re-skin a griffin.

I hope I don't sound rude, got a bit passionate toward the end of that last one. Genuinely curious about your process in getting these monster descriptions.

Quote from: Crazy_Blue_Haired_Chick on April 17, 2024, 02:45:45 PMMy question is a bit more on the business side. How long can Hasbro use the D&D ip before WOTC gets entirely gutted? And will the upcoming VTT lead to further layoffs?

wotc has been gutting itself without Hasborgs help. Hasbro used to reign in wotc's stupid to a degree once they figured out just how destructive wotc can be. But round 5e's release that started to change.

Quote from: Chris24601 on Today at 10:49:03 AM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on April 17, 2024, 11:43:55 PMWotC betting it all on becoming a video game while the AAA video game industry is crashing is going to be something to behold.

The true irony is that the D&D game from Larian helped trigger that collapse.

WotC - Failure is the Only Option

Eh, not sure about that, the collapse was already under way IMHO. But it might have accelerated it.

The AI has determined that C.Williams' services are no longer required.

Quote from: KindaMeh on April 16, 2024, 10:56:21 PMI mean on the one hand, yeah, some storygames probably aren't RPGs. But I also don't think that everything that's a storygame isn't an RPG, if that makes sense? I basically feel like if it does satisfy immersion in roleplaying a character, and emulation of a living world, and has related game mechanics, then for me it's an rpg even if it has storygaming elements or is arguably a storygame...

Of course there can be degrees, instead of it being a binary yes/no proposition.  However, keep in mind that when reduced to a yes/no proposition, that's short-hand for "did a line get crossed?" 

You can be traveling due North.  You can be traveling mostly North (almost but not quite "due North") but also slightly West (thus no longer truly, actually due North, by definition).  Keep adding more West at the expense of North, eventually you aren't traveling "North" anymore by any reasonable description.  A wag can try to cloud the issue with some sleight of hand about Northwest or North Northwest or West Northwest or Up Down Sideways Northwest or however you want to talk about it. However, all that does when examined clearly is focus on which boundaries are meaningful (or not, as the case may be).

With an RPG, there's a lot more room.  At a bare minimum we have roles, play, and games--which even in their simplest forums are complex by themselves, let alone when they interact in one thing.  Then tack on the actors, audience, the GM, the accounts of what happened, when those accounts are consumed, and any meaning assigned there of.  Oh, and to put the cherry on top, the whole thing is in service to both single person and group imagination.  This is the environment that allows the wag to play semantic games.

You can insert all kinds of things into an RPG at the table that aren't really part of the RPG itself, and it still be (mostly) and RPG.  Heck, they are nearly always social things, with chatter, and food, and generally like a party.  At some point, you put enough of that in, it stops being an RPG and becomes a party.  Same with putting anything else in that isn't about you making a decision as your character or the GM controlling the world's reaction your actions.  That doesn't prove that parties and all that other stuff are RPGs.  It just proves that RPGs are resilient mediums.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on Today at 11:19:55 AM

Quote from: Ratman_tf on Today at 12:03:32 AM

Quote from: David Johansen on April 17, 2024, 08:03:49 PMFair enough, the armour's the same, only skinnier but mercenaries and all kinds of folks were using MK VI armour back in the day.

The problem is that people love the setting and are heavily invested in it.  But of course you can use Grim Dark Future for rules and buy proxies from all the NOTWARHAMMERPROXY companies.

It'd be nice if something would come along that would scratch that itch for people.  For a long time now, I've been saying the NOTWARHAMMERPROXY companies should all get behind a single new setting and system to unify their customer base instead of all having their own.

As you say, Grimdark Future from the One Page Rules line has been gaining momenum.  Espeically with GW being a major dissapointment for various reasons, not only culture war stuff.

https://www.onepagerules.com/

Grimdark Future has female space marines tho. The backstory for the battle sisters is that they were created because the god-king banned women from serving, so his girlfriend made her own queendom with female space marines. That's not a dealbreaker for me, but I can't speak for anyone else.

One Page Rules will give a gamer a "living game" that's got rules updates and they can use lore from older editions of 40k, since many of the factions in Grimdark Future are famous IP's with just enough differences to make them identifiable but not infringing on copyright.

IE One Page Rules is a way to play with your old figures and old rulebooks with a current system that means you can go to the local game store and everyone is on the... same page... ruleswise.

And most importantly, not give GW any more money.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan on Today at 10:48:02 AM

Quote from: KindaMeh on April 16, 2024, 12:46:15 PMI do think degrees of success are distinct from storygaming,

It isn't, it's just another thing Pundit is adding to the pile of things they don't like and calling it 'storygaming'.

There have been versions of degrees of success going all the way back to Chainmail, but they had a mechanical difference between the degrees (failure, drive back, success/kill). Those are different from what I was referring to, and I should have said it better. But..

I will use Cthulhu Dark by Graham Walmsley to illustrate what I was driving towards. When investigating, you will ALWAYS be successful. You get the bare minimum of what you are looking for on a 1. You get everything you were looking for on a 4, that and more with a 5 and "more" than you wanted on a 6.

It doesn't matter if you are looking for Al Capone's tax records or going through your first cousin's underwear drawer, success is one d6 roll away.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on Today at 12:03:32 AM

Quote from: David Johansen on April 17, 2024, 08:03:49 PMFair enough, the armour's the same, only skinnier but mercenaries and all kinds of folks were using MK VI armour back in the day.

The problem is that people love the setting and are heavily invested in it.  But of course you can use Grim Dark Future for rules and buy proxies from all the NOTWARHAMMERPROXY companies.

It'd be nice if something would come along that would scratch that itch for people.  For a long time now, I've been saying the NOTWARHAMMERPROXY companies should all get behind a single new setting and system to unify their customer base instead of all having their own.

As you say, Grimdark Future from the One Page Rules line has been gaining momenum.  Espeically with GW being a major dissapointment for various reasons, not only culture war stuff.

https://www.onepagerules.com/

Grimdark Future has female space marines tho. The backstory for the battle sisters is that they were created because the god-king banned women from serving, so his girlfriend made her own queendom with female space marines. That's not a dealbreaker for me, but I can't speak for anyone else.

Anyway, I've been saying for years that corpos cannot steward their IPs and we need the fans to make their own. IPs inevitably rot or get canceled for lame reasons, so you can't rely on anyone other than dedicated fans to maintain them.

We also need to reform copyright law to preserve old forgotten works, but that's gonna be harder.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on April 17, 2024, 11:43:55 PMWotC betting it all on becoming a video game while the AAA video game industry is crashing is going to be something to behold.

The true irony is that the D&D game from Larian helped trigger that collapse.

WotC - Failure is the Only Option

Quote from: KindaMeh on April 16, 2024, 12:46:15 PMI do think degrees of success are distinct from storygaming,

It isn't, it's just another thing Pundit is adding to the pile of things they don't like and calling it 'storygaming'.