Rock of Bral as found in Spelljammer 5th Edition for Dungeons and Dragons
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 30 ก.ค. 2024
- The Rock of Bral, otherwise known as The Rock is a haven of scum and villany.. Actually, it's a lot more than that and today's video dives deep into exploring it's secrets, well.. some of them.
Spelljammer 5E : Adventures in Space : amzn.to/3bKNMKh
Spelljammer 5E Collector Version : amzn.to/3oSqYLQ
What sinister items would you expect to find in the dark alleys of The Rock?
Let me know in the comments below!
0:00 Asteroids?
0:31 History of Bral
1:19 People of Influence
2:18 Map of High City
3:21 Map of Middle City
4:07 Map of Low City
5:21 Map of Underside
5:55 Devils in the Details
Oh, and please give this video a thumbs up 👍!
Thank you kindly for watching!
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Keep up the spell jammer content! I'm running a new campaign just a few days after the books release and won't have enough time to get them before the start.
have you checked out the free Spelljammer Academy that is on D&D Beyond? That should most certainly keep players busy until your copies arrive (along with my videos hahahahaha)
"The Rock of Bral..you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villany..we must be cautious.." I will be using that line when i DM this campaign!
that was my original opening.. but I ended up going with the Asteroids opening instead :/
Hopefully they do a more detailed book on the Rock of Braal that has an adventure or multiple adventures set there. Maybe the prince calls you into his palace to ask you for a job, or gets assassinated and now you need to find a new ruler. Maybe you need to go bottom side to retrieve a prisoner that knows something. Maybe a strange ship arrives at the docks and refuses to leave but no one is exiting it.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I have a feeling DnD is moving towards a "design how you want" mentality. I mean... DMs do that already but, for me, it begs the question, why buy their stuff then? I think WotC should focus on crafting places that people can fit into their own worlds, or a setting where a custom story can me done.
I'm all for creation but I enjoy taking established material and working it into a world or story I choose. So having more detail will allow me to say, "hey I like this aspect" or at the very least it can give inspiration.
Having the Rock of Bawl created (or any place for example) could allow players to just rename things and slot it into their world. So cities don't have to be listed as "x miles from this other city" and instead outline a city and players can choose to have that in their world by the same name or a different one. i.e. Strixhaven, Ravenloft, etc.
I've seen less and less fluff from WotC of late, its a little disappointing imo.
Some changes make sense, like not having dedicated stats specific to each race and just for +2,+1 or +1x3 type of things.
I feel like WotC may be over correcting their Toril focus to having no content at all, rather than no focus.
I say give us worlds, races, items, monsters, etc. that can serve a templates or modules that can be slotted into any campaign.
good words! pretty much what I've been saying too.
It is weird that we have a dearth of information compared to all the info we get on Sharn from the Eberron book.
Eberron was a setting book 4 times the size of any of the spelljammer books. Maybe they deliberately left room for settings books for wildspace and/or the astral sea?
The spelljammer books are sufficient to play in spelljammer but including an adventure in the set and deciding to keep to three evenly (but not generously) sized books left little room for setting information.
It gives DMs a lot of rope.
Aye, this is what I was getting at in the last chapter of this video. There is no question that there is plenty of space for creators to craft up their own material (and others will most certainly eat it up).
I agree, and kinda wish these were 3 full books you could buy separately or in a boxed set similar to the core book set. but im still excited for 5e spelljammer, and not much we can do about it, this is what wotc/hasbro has decided spelljammer content is for 5e and ill take what i can get.
I really could see the city working as a place where my players could find a bunch of side quests if they so choose. I’ll just have to be a bit creative I guess, given the little information 😅
Rock of Bral can most certainly be used as a hub for adventure threads for sure, in fact, that's what it was back in the AD&D version.
I love it less fleshed out! I liked running dragon of icespire peak for this very same reason!
That was something that grind my gears about icespire but I learned to appreciate it since I put my own slice of creativity into the world
i'm on the fence about it. on one hand I like the lack of info as it makes it SUPER easy to toss into any setting, other the other hand, I'd like a bit more information because... me = lazy (sometimes)
Lack detail will make some dm squeamish but i am ok with it. However this also creates a great secondary marked for 3rd party creation.....and that is just cool. I can see already people be making up shops and other buildings shortly.
and THIS is exactly what I was getting at in that list little bit of the video, I really think this is the direction Wizards will be going... More on this subject in a video for next week! :)
wotc already stated that they want to make suplimental content to be "campaign agnostic" so anyone running anything can just take the content and put it wherever. as a DM that strictly runs homebre worlds I like this. rather than me having to change some part of my world just so this one thing can fit sucks. that said, I think wotc should go all in when it comes to specific settings. give use EVERYTHING!
@@sylvnfox I think you and I are sitting in the same boat, I appreciate the ability to toss material into my own homebrew setting, but I too want as much "official" info as I can get when a new setting comes out.
this for me; I prefer to flesh out my campaigns with my own creations so I really appreciate the direction that WotC is headed with these more streamlined setting books
Too bad 3 party creation was the thing that doomed 3.5 Edition. It s more simple than that: The Authors got lazy and never bothered to make a simple conversion.
In the Manual credits they explicitly tell You to look at the original Spelljammer box set or Terror of Athas for some Monsters if you want more content.
Sure!
The overdetailing started back with Forgotten Realms and though a lot of nice books came out, they just kept coming. To such a degree that a DM would be scared of getting it wrong or of making something about an area not yet covered, because surely it would...
It made one long back for the Greyhawk days 🙂
ya know.. THAT is an excellent point! I do remember seeing a lot of information pushed out for FR back in the 90's.. I don't know that I ever considered myself to be scared of getting it wrong, BUT I did, at that time, stick heavily to the modules and written lore, it wasn't until the late 90's that I really started to develop my own campaign world (that pulled the stuff I liked from various locations). THAT all happened because my players, as much as I liked them, were reading the content and using that info to their advantage.
Please do the second edition version. I want to run this when the books are out and more info helps to bring life to the hub world.
fooof.. i'd love to do a 2nd edition version.. might be a 2 or 3 hour video tho haha
@@gamemasters ha can't blame you. If you do make it though ill watch it regardless of length.
Thanks!
Great video here. Getting ready to dm a Spelljammers game for my dnd group and loooing for solid notes online for some tips. Appreciate what your doing here
you gotta return and let us know how it all goes down! I gotta know too.. .will they blow up the rock of bral hehehe!
Great video and thank you for covering the new SJ books; Im now more inspired than ever to run my next D&D campaign through this.
nice! You gotta return once you start up your SP campaign and let us know how it goes!
I like the "skeleton" structure of dnd when paired with "setting campaigns". My best example of this is Waterdeep Dragon Heist. The campaign is a fairly short adventure with an unusual structure but it also contains more plot hooks, npc's and locations than you'll ever use in a single campaign. It spcifies so much the book is a fantastic setting book on its own. RotFM is similarly deep when it comes to Icewind Dale.
When you specify too much without there being an attached adventure, the details become more limiting tha helpful imo, but when paired with how that fits into a specific adventure, it feels more natural, and if you're writing your own adventure, it allows the world to feel more alive as the characters often have motivations built in to the other adventure you're not even running. It works really well for my style of DMing
agreed. I do like being able to craft my own world but there are times where I (to be honest) get lazy and having "instant info" to pull from can go a long way.
Dragon heist I would argue is the best written thing in 5e.
Good stuff. Thanks for the video.
Thanks for watching!
I love your spelljammer videos! I would love a video all about hadozee, keep it up!
the hadozee changed a bit from the UA version. I really want to do a comparison vid showing the difference of each new race from the UA to this, but that's going to be a much longer video if I include all of them. I'm still chewing on how to tackle that..
Really good content!
thank you kindly!
Happy Tavern!
The skeletal structure of the locations and adventure, are reminiscent of salvage world‘s adventure edition. That game system has one page adventures.
I just checked them out... interesting for sure
When I look at the map I see a lot of buildings with no details and I think "That is mine and that is mine and that will be my meadery"
I do too! hehe
I've only been a DM for a year and a half. I would prefer they provide a lot more locations, and detail than they are as it's really handy when coming up with hooks to hang my story from. What we do have is so brief that it's not really useful.
While it would be ideal for me to hand craft everything, it's very hard with work and other commitments to do as good a job as I would like. And I often get stuck for inspiration on how to proceed towards the next major plot point. With some of the older supplements I've been happy to find things that I could repurpose.
In the end the DM can discard anything they decide doesn't fit their campaign, you aren't forced to follow what is written in any of the official books. So I'd rather they include more useful information on locations and NPCs, and let DMs decide what to use and what to redo or discard.
I think this has been my number 1 gripe with 5E : Lack of detailed settings. I look back at the 2E material and that stuff went IN DEPTH, almost overboard with excess information, but that's what we loved!
I'm familiar with the 2nd Edition version of the Rock of Bral, but haven't had my copy of the new 5E books arrive yet. Does Bral have an Underdark in this version? I always thought that was pretty interesting, given how relatively small a place it is...but it also makes a strange sort of sense! ;)
negative, it does not (that I have found anyways - might be some mention in the adventure itself, I am still reading through it).
Keep it up, oh wise one
oh, I'm far from wise..
I agree some dms will be fine with filling in the gaps, but the main issue is many of the dms that rely on setting books and pre-written adventures are expecting to get a fully formed world when they are buying this stuff. It makes it a harder sell for some that are uncomfortable with making up things as they go, or that buy prewritten materials because they simply lack the planning time to create their own content. The fact that this is one of 3 books for spelljammer not sold separately helps, but i dont think this would fly if it were an individual full 150+page setting book. I know they want this to be accessible and price is part of that but I almost would have preferred 3 full spelljammer books than 3 mini books. I excited to have spelljammer in 5e regardless and look forward to getting my books tomorrow.
currently the price for the box set is $42.00 USD (as of 8-16-22), which I think is on par for what you get, 3 books, a DM screen, and the slipcase. Yeah, the books are short being only 64 pages long, combined that's 190 pages. BUT I do also like that they are separate books.
Could we get a short video on Ssurrans as weren't they dark sun creatures which makes me interested in them as I don't know much about dark sun
hrm... hmm... to do it right, I'd like to compare the old version with the new, HOWEVER, I might have a sneaky way of bringing them into a current video that I'm working on..
I dont mind them giving us a framework to imagine out from. I do mind them charging full price tho.
Overdetailing is a massive danger to various game systems and in-game worlds.
D&D's Forgotten Realms and TDE's Aventuria are just two prominent examples. I always love to read inspirational texts and descriptions BUT many people take that stuff as gospel and become really upset when a GM changes, adapts or discards such. I have seen game groups disintegrate because the GM changed things in "the official" background.
Basically, I would love to see the more flexible approach in all the essential publications AND then see additional publications that explicitly state they are not official canon containing two or three versions of the various information. Like:
"... The King of XYZ is Klaus the unruly. He is known for his leniency in handling taxes, thus the state has become almost broke. ..."
"In an alternate world Klaus the unruly is not known for that at all, he is known to be unwilling to make decisions and thus the country is de facto ruled by the Lord's council, who are very struck with taxes."
Back in the 80, I bought various universal stuff like city books etc. I liked that open approach, that offering of ideas for a GM to build upon and I would love to see many of the official stuff for my various games go more in that direction.
That is a very valid point. I can recall one game session where we had a new player join and got beyond upset because I moved Waterdeep onto the bottom side of the Rock of Bral. It was really the first time I had encountered that... degree of someone being upset.
I'm not sure about WotC and freedom to the DM, or just lazy.? I've heard both
I really think there could / should have been a bit more information included with this boxed set. I'm thrilled that it came out, but...
My fiance is about to start running me a Spelljammer session as my Assassin Rogue/"Thoon Seeker" Cleric. I'm a Shadow Illithid seeking Quintessence in the astral as a way to build power for all mighty THOON!! Except none of these words I just said exist in 5e, and that's the issue I have with this book. Mind Flayers literally RULE THE ASTRAL, yet there's nothing in the book about them. No new lore, nothing about their Creeds, and certainly nothing about their MANY various races and cultures. They're as wide and varied as Humans! They're a true People, not just some monster squid being! They're also not inherently Evil! There's so many Illithids with various Alignments, and always has been in actual D&D lore. But yet all we get is Lawful Evil purple squid. No black Shadow Rogues. No Abathur birthing chamber creature that spits out Squiddies like in the past.
As happy as I am to FINALLY have something about the Astral for 5e (since it apparently doesn't exist, according to all past books that refused to mention it ever), I'm still very disappointed. If I could play older D&D, I would have never gotten into 5e. But being Autistic makes playing older editions impossible, and even 5e is a major struggle. This is why I play solo games only, with my fiance helping me homebrew OUT the math most of the time. I just wish I could handle the better versions of D&D, because they definitely do not slack on lore!
I too am a bit disappointed over the lack of mind flayer info. Maybe in the future they (wotc) will give us an illithid guide book covering all things about them.
So Lake Bral is a Futurama joke???
I don't follow.. (never really watched futurama) but I can say that Lake Bral has been there since the AD&D version.
@@gamemasters In futurama there was a joke that to keep earth cool and to avoid sea levels form dropping they had to get a bunch of ice from a comet every so often. SO that comment reminded me of that joke from futurama.
I just watched that part, to be honest, with how the book is set up, it would not surprise me in the slightest if this WAS an in-joke reference to Futurama. We know that the Space Clowns are a direct reference to Killer Clowns from Outer Space too, so yeah, I'd say it's a good bet this was a reference to futurama.
I view the lack of information as being a bit of a drawback and is part of the reason I loved Dragon Magazine so much and why the Forgotten Realms wiki is such a useful utility these days. It isn't actually that bad in this case because there is a lot of lore on the Rock of Bral but still, it is a concerning patern in recent publications.
World building is a long process, especially if you have have players that really dig into the world. Imagine if your players were about to go fight a foe was facing a threat from an enemy that was susceptible to lightning damage. As a DM if you weren't prepared for this eventuality and are tired from a long day of work then you might simply inform them that they can pay a local wizard to set them up. Alternatively, if you have ample lore, with little effort you could insist that they hunt down a Behir to harvest the components of its body so that with those and a bit of gold they can do what they want! They could research the ecology of the creature to know where it lives, what it hunts etc and suddenly you have a session of the players own creation that required no real work from the DM!
I love when things like that happen because with minimal effort required for the DM the players have a fun experience and feel rewarded for their creativity with most of it being thanks to having an abundance of information prepped for you!
don't get me wrong, I LOVE homebrewing the tar out of stuff and.. okay, for ME it breaks down like this, I really do like this new Spelljammer, but as a setting all unto itself, it just won't work as is. I'll talk more about it next week...