D&D 5E 16 More Details About Theros

The latest edition of WotC's online magazine contains some juicy tidbits about Mythic Odysseys of Theros!

1. It features Volothamp Geddarm.
2. It was headed up by James Wyatt, who used to work on D&D, and now works on Magic: The Gathering. He worked on the 3E Deities & Demigods.
3. It's based on a novella, which Wyatt spent considerable time researching.
4. He also read about the government of Athens, and the Greek calendar.
5. Subclasses include the College of Eloquence bard ("the philosopher ideal'), the Oath of Heroism paladin, and the Forge and Grave cleric domains.
6. The DMG piety system has been "blown up into a huge thing"... "That includes all sorts of rewards and restrictions for characters who choose to devote themselves to a god and track their piety.”
7. New magic items of the gods - artifacts and weapons.
8. “Everyone gets this extra leg up that is a gift of the gods, which is separate from the usual character background. It may be a magical thing about your nature, such as you have the mind of a sphinx and your thoughts can’t be read. Or you might be an oracle, which is an opportunity for your Dungeon Master to give you plenty of adventure hooks. It’s a straight power-up but not a huge power-up”
9. A table of omens with 100 entries.
10. Minotaurs, centaurs, merfolk (tritons from Volo), satyrs, leonine.
11. “The leonin is a different, stronger cat person, not just a tabaxi!”
12. "Satyrs are pretty much as you would expect. They’re party animals with good Dexterity and Charisma, they have a headbutt attack, they’re fast, they’re fey, they resist magic and they have musical instrument proficiency and persuasion."
13. Different lore for D&D creatures to match the Greek setting.
14. Mythic threats are boss fights. More than legendary. Aresta of the Endless Web is a spider. Has baby spiders which fight you.
15. Dyson Logos did the maps.
16. "There’s a temple of Athreos in two parts, split by the river that flows between the mortal world and the underworld."

 

[Parmandur]

The only bummer, imo, is they are sticking with the recent approach to 'old school' maps. I so much prefer the styles of Schley and Blando. They are much more evocative to me.

I like Schley's style for regional maps, but for architectural drawing barebones is much better. Now if only they returned to bluescale ..

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

17. It seem Oath of Heroism was renamed as Oath of Glory, a per this thread:

 

[LordEntrails]

I like Schley's style for regional maps, but for architectural drawing barebones is much better. Now if only they returned to bluescale ..

lol. Just take one of Dyson's maps and copy it via a mimeograph and you should be good

Different styles do translate differently depending upon the purpose and use case. Since I use FG for all my map sharing etc it does influence my desire for a style that, to me, best utilizes that format.

 

[darjr]

I like Schley's style for regional maps, but for architectural drawing barebones is much better. Now if only they returned to bluescale ..

And printing them out as battle maps saves me soooo much ink.

 

[darjr]

WotC wasn't thinking about crossing the streams when Wyatt started doing that work on his own time. His actual job after finishing the Dungeons Master's Guide and transferring to Magic was doing Magic Setting work, and he wanted to keep DMing but didn't want to split his mind too much, so he Homebrewers his day job fluff work for D&D, and then convinced his boss to let him out the Homebrew up for download with Magic stock art. And it was well received, and here we are.

In the very best of D&D traditions

 

[Parmandur]

lol. Just take one of Dyson's maps and copy it via a mimeograph and you should be good

Different styles do translate differently depending upon the purpose and use case. Since I use FG for all my map sharing etc it does influence my desire for a style that, to me, best utilizes that format.

True, and that's fair. My usage primarily tends to be analog, and a sparse style can be helpful for visualizing my own take (and repurposing without distraction).

 

[gyor]

Based on the Devotion mechanic from the Theros card Blocks, the things Wyatt was saying about the Piety system sound a bit like a Mythic style bonus advancement track, similar to the Monstrosity mechanic from the card game translating into Boss monster mechanics in this book. For reference:

Daily MTG - MTG News, Announcements, and Podcasts | Magic: The Gathering

The official source for Magic: The Gathering news, announcements, podcast, guest writers, and articles. Directly from the people who develop MTG.

magic.wizards.com

He compared piety mechanic to the Devotion mechanic, but I don't think I've seen it compared to Bestow. In fact I see Bestow being one of the inspirations for the Supernatural Gifts mechanic along side heroic and possibly others.

 

[dave2008]

Based on the Devotion mechanic from the Theros card Blocks, the things Wyatt was saying about the Piety system sound a bit like a Mythic style bonus advancement track, similar to the Monstrosity mechanic from the card game translating into Boss monster mechanics in this book. For reference:

Daily MTG - MTG News, Announcements, and Podcasts | Magic: The Gathering

The official source for Magic: The Gathering news, announcements, podcast, guest writers, and articles. Directly from the people who develop MTG.

magic.wizards.com

OK, that made almost no sense to me. I'm glad you see something in it though!

 

[Ashrym]

Thanks for responding Ashrym.


Yes, in Modern Greek, várdos refers to a "bard", but that word is tied to Celtic (non-Greek) culture. It was borrowed into late (post-Classical, Hellenistic) Ancient Greek from the Proto-Celtic language, and referred to Celtic barbarian bards. But my understanding is that the world of Theros is "all Greek."

That's also why I didn't translate "College" as kollegio--because that's a later borrowing from Latin, not really a native/ancient Greek term.



Right, those are pretty good too. I looked them up, and see...

Aiodos mean 'singer', and is the oldest term, dating to the Homeric age. This one is very good, because of its ancientness and genericity.

A Rhapsode is a later term which speficially refers to a a performer of epic poetry. It's not as generic as aiodos.

Citharode refers specifically to a musician who plays a cithara.

So of these, I think Aiodos is the best. I went with the more generic "musician", because presumably many different 5E bardic colleges and types of bards, playing many different kinds of ancient Greek instruments, with voice or without, are going to be 'legal/recommended/converted' to Theros.



It's interesting to see how official 5E foreign language translations deal with D&D terminology. As far as I know, sometimes they strive for cognates, other times they will go with a native word which is unrelated to the English term. But in this case we're not just doing a translation into Modern Greek -- if we were, then we'd definitely go with words like Vardos and Paladínos. For the Theros book, we're translating into Ancient Greek. There were no "bards" in Greek culture, and no "paladins" until Carolingian French myths were translated into Greek in medieval times. And so ideally, for an Ancient Greek setting such D&D terms would be represented by their closest ancient analogue. So Hippótēs "knight, horseman, heroic champion" instead of Paladínos. And Aiodos or Mousikos instead of Vardos.



Yeah but all the D&D class names are 'abstracted / iconic' names which don't necessarily encompass all the non-heroic characters who have a similar profession. There people are who fight who aren't Fighters. There are acolytes and priests (and thus, 'clerics') who aren't Clerics, there are wise-men who aren't Wizards, and there are Celtic musicians and poets (and thus 'bards') who aren't Bards. Any number of synonyms could've been chosen as the D&D class name. It's just that by the Gygax's (and other D&D designers') whim, we have 'Bard' instead of, say, Minstrel or Troubadour.



I totally agree. I looked at the Greek-language Wikipedia article on Orpheus, and he is referred to as a 'poet' (poietes) and 'musician' (mousikous) , but not a 'bard' (vardos).

"Ορφέας θεωρήθηκε ένας από τους βασικούς ποιητές και μουσικούς της αρχαιότητας..."
"Orpheus was considered one of the foremost poets and musicians of antiquity..."

I'm going to head you off a bit here. DnD uses "bard" with the roots in the fili, skald, and jongleur. That was expressed in the original version. DnD also specifically called out Orpheus as an inspiration and has stated in the pasts the class broadly encompasses other cultures even though the name came from specific cultures, and rhapsode was listed among other examples.

DnD isn't Celtic, Welsh, Scottish, Greek, or anything else. The names of the classes are attached to the Dnd settings as it's own basis. A person could run a home campaign and rename them based on the settings but a musician still wouldn't be a bard. At least not until the term musician was reestablished with additional connotations. In DnD terms, musician falls under the entertainer background instead of a class.

Here is a bit of Greek correlation from that line of inspiration, however:

In the worlds of D&D, words and music are not just vibrations of air, but vocalizations with power all their own. The bard is a master of song, speech, and the magic they contain. Bards say that the multiverse was spoken into existence, that the words of the gods gave it shape, and that echoes of these primordial Words of Creation still resound throughout the cosmos. The music of bards is an attempt to snatch and harness those echoes, subtly woven into their spells and powers.

That's a slight variation on music of the spheres as per Pythagoreanism music purified souls and the universe was sustained by harmony. The DnD bard is doing the same thing the Pythagorean philosophers when they were researching and applying music as a fundamental binding force. By purifying souls they were evoking emotional responses with music. Not all singers or minstrels were Pythagorean philosophers either.

True bards are not common in the world. Not every minstrel singing in a tavern or jester cavorting in a royal court is a bard. Discovering the magic hidden in music requires hard study and some measure of natural talent that most troubadours and jongleurs lack. It can be hard to spot the difference between these performers and true bards, though. A bard’s life is spent wandering across the land gathering lore, telling stories, and living on the gratitude of audiences, much like any other entertainer. But a depth of knowledge, a level of musical skill, and a touch of magic set bards apart from their fellows.

I bolded a key point for emphasis. Bardic traditions require special training beyond learning music. Bards study magic (among other things). Musicians entertain audiences.

Bards are preservers of ancient history, their songs and tales perpetuating the memory of great events down through time – knowledge so important that it is memorized and passed along as oral history, to survive even when no written record remains.

Bards are historians, magicians, healers, advisors, teachers, and more. That's not what musicians do. Musicians do evoke an emotional response like bards do with music or poetry but musicians are not chronicling history or teaching through parable. The bard's purpose goes beyond entertaining.

Picking a musician as an inspiration is not a bad method, of course, but I'm pointing out musician does not equal bard. A closer comparison would be a Rabbi if that helps people understand the difference in function.

It's like calling someone who goes hunting a police detective because they both shoot guns.

To be clear, I do not want to tell you how to have fun. I just like to make sure people understand the difference between a bard and a musician. A bard is it's own real-world thing like a priest or a warrior, and like both it benefits form folklore and myth in a fantasy game.

I also don't want to derail the thread. It would be better to make a different thread or PM if you want to discuss it further.

 

[Parmandur]

He compared piety mechanic to the Devotion mechanic, but I don't think I've seen it compared to Bestow. In fact I see Bestow being one of the inspirations for the Supernatural Gifts mechanic along side heroic and possibly others.

Yeah, I threw Bestow in there too since that seems relevant.