The Lost Lands: Cool Ideas on Gods & Cosmologies

Karatha Obbaros from the Ghost of Broken Blades (Paizo)

I've talked about Frog God Games' stuff before, but that was mostly in the context of their adventures. This time I combed through a few of their sourcebooks for their overall setting, the Lost Lands. The two books in question are the Borderland Provinces and Cults of the Sundered Kingdoms.

While Lost Lands is very much a traditional fantasy setting in the vein of old-school D&D (humanocentric, Law vs. Chaos, etc), it has some unorthodox ideas in regards to cosmology, alignment, and divinity.

Heresies and Divine Power: Expanded on in Cults of the Sundered Kingdoms, the divine conduits linking deities to worshipers and divine spellcasters is an involved affair. Prayers, religious hymns, and similar rituals are a primary means of sustaining this relationship and are all specific in form and function due to the fact that deities govern different aspects of reality.

So the demonic cults of Orcus, Demogorgon, etc, hatched upon a plan to drain the power and influence of the gods. By creating false rituals masquerading as "forgotten knowledge," they can subtly pervert the rituals with bogus advice, potentially cutting off faithful mortals from their patrons. Even worse, a few of these heresies are capable of redirecting said conduits to the demon lords, thereby granting them more power to act on in the planes.

So the Lost Lands has church inquisitors and merciless heretic-hunters, but beyond doing this just to prop up the existing power structure they have a greater incentive. Heresies aren't meaningless affairs of "do we use red wine or white wine for the Winter Solstice?" but more akin to fifth columnist spies weakening the safety and security of the mortal world, if not the multiverse.

Beyond this, Frog God Games subscribes to the "alignment as cosmic allegiance" format like Original D&D. In Borderland Provinces, there's a heretic Cleric of a Lawful Good deity by the name of Bantar Prayershield who's nice, kind, and does many of the things expected of said alignment. Unbeknownst to himself, Prayershield's actually Chaotic Evil because his religious teachings are unwittingly giving power to demonic forces.

This may irk some players who are used to alignment as personality, and I get that. But when Good, Evil, Law, and Chaos are tangible cosmic forces, this idea can make a sort of sense in unwittingly strengthening one of them at the expense of the others. It may not be everyone's cup of tea, but it does set down a unique precedent.

Theomonarchy of Sorts: One of the last great empires of the known setting was the Empire of Foerdewaith, a grand human nation whose influence spread across the continent but is now on the decline. During its heyday, there were a set of three deities, Archeillus, Muir, and Thyr who played an important role in imperial functions.

Archeillus is the God of Rightful Rule and Protector of Nobility, set out the laws and customs for the empire's function. Muir was the Goddess of Virtue and Paladins and whose worshipers comprised the empire's military including an elite unit of Justiciars (a paladin subtype in the books). Thyr was the God of Law and Justice whose purview was internal order and the creation of an enlightened feudal caste system for humans where every social class had a vital role in societal stability. The book makes mention that Thyr went by different names in many lands and was once worshiped by all of human royalty in the past.

Although the Empire's decaying and new religions are supplanting traditional rule, the role of the above Three Gods gives an interesting take on things. Whereas in many settings the nobles of nations tended to be separate from the church to an extent (like historical Europe in places), the Lost Lands takes the idea of a Divine Right of Kings by making the empire's leadership connected to the gods in a tangible way, whether it's by counting members of the Cleric class among their ranks or having mortal laws spring from the penmanship of the gods themselves.

The creator of the world is an evil god: He doesn't get a lot of screentime in products proper, but the Borderland Provinces make mention and include an entry on a deity known as the Father. He existed for as long as there has been life on the world of Lloegyr and predates the concept of mortal worship. He is an embodiment of the world itself, and among the earliest civilizations he represented the harshness of the primordial world. Conflict, strife, kill or be killed, that is the Father's mantra.

Beyond this, little more is known of him; his worship faded away to become virtually unknown, and some esoteric texts mention that his true name and legacy was erased by the actions of an equally primeval good deity known as the Goddess. Over time, other more modern deities grew in worship, who are believed to be his children when he's mentioned at all, and now the Father's only known among a few decaying tribal societies.

I find this interesting in that it reminds me of the Greek legend of Chronos, the ur-deity who ate his children only to be killed by them as they became the Greek Gods. In most D&D settings the creator of the world/Material Plane is usually not worshiped at all, is very distant, or an overdeity of sorts. Lost Lands turns things on its head a bit by making their world's creator a wicked entity representative of harsher times.

Larius Firetongue's School of Sorcery Excerpt: New Races

Negima: Collette by Ayaka Yukihiro of Deviantart

In standard Swords & Wizardry and other OSR games, the path of the cleric is often restricted to humans, and dwarf and halfling PCs are incapable of taking levels in magic-user.  In the early days of the world’s oldest role-playing game, humans were unlimited in their class choices to encourage the conventions of a humanocentric world.  Demi-human races often had level caps in non-thief classes to balance the human’s lack of racial abilities like infravision or the uncanny ability to hide from view in wilderness settings.

It may go against established tropes, but more contemporary role-playing games allow for more freedom in character concepts by lifting these restrictions.  For example, dwarf magic-users might be possible but instead a rarity due to cultural taboos.  This gives outlier PCs a good story hook for why they defied societal expectations and serves as a potential world-building tool.

Regarding humans, I suggest granting PCs belonging to this race a +2 bonus in the ability score of their choice to a maximum value of 18.  That way, they’re still an attractive option to pick even with the lack of being able to detect secret doors or see in the dark. I also recommend capping the max saving throw bonus one can receive from a race and class combination (such as dwarves and drow) to no more than +4 to avoid too large a change in probability.

Sample Races

In Swords & Wizardry, the dwarf and elf have three unique racial traits each, with half-elves and halflings two.  Overall most races in OSR games have three iconic traits when they’re not classes, so in the creation of new races or adaption of existing ones you should think of three abilities which best exemplify them.

Drow

Drow are the descendants of elves who journeyed deep underground after being exiled from the old kingdoms.  The harshness of underground life makes them more warlike and socially darwinist than their surface kin, and they’re quite fond using vermin such as giant spiders as pets and beasts of burden.

Traits: Drow are trained in the ability to use poison without error akin to the assassin class.  They have darkvision to a range of 120 feet, and a +4 bonus on saving throws vs. damaging spells.

Gnomes

Gnomes are short folk who live in hilly burrows and forested mounds.  It is believed that they have strong ties to the fey, and the ones who take up magical arts prefer spells of the subtler variety.

Traits: Gnomes gain a +4 bonus on saving throws vs. illusion spells and effects which would otherwise fool their minds or senses.  They can also see in the dark up to 60 feet.  Finally, gnomes have a 4 in 6 chance of understanding the purpose or workings of advanced technological and alchemical devices.  “Advanced technology” tends to cover items of a post-Renaissance nature or things uncommon in typical fantasy settings, such as clockwork, gunpowder, steampower, and the like.

Pixies

Pixies are tiny winged fey (around 2’ tall on average) with a connection the forests of the world.  They seem possessed by boundless energy, are fond of entertainment of all sorts, and innately magical.

Traits: Pixies are tiny in stature and thus can have a maximum Strength score of 11 (any amount rolled over this is treated as an 11 result).  They can fly at a speed of 30 feet, but must rest for 1 minute for every 3 minutes they spend flying.  Pixies can also sprinkle dust from their wings on weapons and ammunition once per day, which can inflict the effects of a charm person or sleep spell on a struck target with an effective Magic-User level equal to the pixie’s total class levels.

Tieflings

Magocracies often make dangerous pacts with otherworldly entities as a measure of preserving power.  Some of these pacts involve tainting unborn children with the spark of eldritch forces which manifest as demonic-like qualities in life.  Tieflings are the descendents of these cursed children, feared as demonspawn and changelings in some lands, revered by fiendish sorcerers and cultists for their potent bloodline.

Traits: Tieflings gain a +4 bonus on saving throws vs. effects of an elemental nature, such as fire, ice, electricity, earth, and air.  They have darkvision to a range of 60 feet, and can cast darkness 15 foot radius once per day as an innate ability with an effective magic-user level equal to their total class levels.

Vampires

Vampires are undead creatures who must subsist on the blood of the living.  They are quite powerful as undead, retaining their intelligence and free will and capable of performing terrible abilities even if not a spellcaster.

Traits: Vampires do not need to eat, sleep, or breathe as undead beings, but they must subsist on a pint of blood every week or suffer the effects of starvation.  They have a natural bite attack which deals 1d4 damage on a hit; a vampire can suck the blood out of a helpless or willing target healing 1 hit point of damage for every 2 points dealt via a bite.  Vampires can also take the form of a bat or wolf as per polymorph self with an effective Magic-User level equal to their total class levels, although they’re still treated as undead in this form as well.

Note: In typical OSR games, vampires come with a variety of powers and weaknesses beyond the template presented here.  It is assumed that the vampire “race” presented above is a fledgling barely coming into their powers; as a result they still possess enough qualities from their old life to not worry about sunlight, garlic, and the like.

If this doesn’t seem authentic, you can introduce this rule for vampire weaknesses: vampires in prolonged contact with hostile elements take 1d4 points of damage per round of contact.  Vampires reduced to 0 hit points from this type of damage crumble into dust.

My Upcoming Magic School Campaign Sourcebook: Larius Firetongue's School of Sorcery

Wizard's Academy by kalessaradan of Deviantart

Note: this is not official artwork for my book

Once I wrote my Playable Monsters for Fifth Edition sourcebook, I was at a temporary loss on what to write next. I had a lot of ideas, but aside from a few exceptions most of them would have to start from scratch. But then I recalled a certain topic which I talked a lot about in the past, both on this blog and in various gaming sessions and message boards.

After gathering the necessary material together, I realized that by volume of content I had enough to make a large sourcebook, but even then I had to manage and streamline things out so as to make it presentable. I can tell that it's going to be much larger than my previous works I put out, but my passion for the genre will be the muse which helps drive me forward!

Larius Firetongue's School of Sorcery is a magic school sourcebook and hex crawl for Swords & Wizardry but can be converted to other OSR games easily enough.

Overview

The book can be more or less split up into two major sections: new rules material and the sample setting.

New Rules: The first section of the book is dedicated to material specialized for creating OSR magic school campaigns. An example is the use of treasured tomes, books which impart in-game benefits to diligent readers. They range from the mundane to the magical; a Chiurgeon's Textbook can grant the ability to heal a patient of 1d4 hit points of damage once per day, while Secrets of the Pactmaster treats your Charisma score as 2 points higher for social interactions with extraplanar beings (perfect for summoners and demon-binders!).

Another example utilizes the partial separation of race and class common to Swords & Wizardry. I noticed that the "core races" have around three dominant traits: for example, dwarves save great vs magic, can see in the dark, and detect abnormalities in interior and underground environments.

I extended that further with new playable options for more exotic inhabitants of a sorcerer's academy, such as beastfolk, pixies, and tieflings who all have three traits along these lines.

Finally, and most thematically, the adventures students may go on may differ a bit from standard adventuring. PCs may go into the deepest, darkest reaches of the forests to pick a rare flower which blooms only on the winter solstice for a valuable spell component. Arcane Lore (based on an earlier blog post) grants an effective gold piece value to treasure of a magical nature, which can be used for personal growth in magical potential in leveling up and resources for creation by "spending" it on facilities and magical research.

The Setting: The setting takes place in the lands of Frelundia, a rural barony home to a few modest cities, deadly wilderness, and a militaristic nation to the north threatening its borders. Larius Firetongue, a sorcerer of no small fame discovered through years of research that the magic ley lines of the world converge heavily in this backwater land. Seeking like-minded souls in hopes of unlocking their secrets, he built an academy and used his name recognition to recruit talented minds from lands far and wide to make a full-fledged school dedicated to the magical arts.

The PCs are assumed to be newcomers to the Academy, and don't necessarily have to be of the Magic-User class. Clerics, Druids, and other magical traditions are present among the student body. The Academy acts as a "hub" of sorts for the party, and while there's plenty of adventures and schemes going on within its halls the outlying barony has its fair share of locations to explore in true hex crawling fashion.

One week the PCs might be heading off to the Desert of the Valiant Rose in search of the Library of Mede. The next week they may head off into Direblack Swamp on the hunt for spell components to bolster their magical abilities, or hear rumors among the student body of an eternal torrent of rain above the Green Ruins threatening to flood Moonshade Forest. A few of the adventure locations may be connected, but a lot of them are meant to be stand-alone, the better to insert into one's home campaigns and to let PCs visit places which sound of interest to them instead of leading them along a linear path.





I will go into more specific detail on sections of the book in future blog posts, depending upon the factors of personal whim and reader interest. If there's any particular aspect you want to hear more about, feel free to leave a comment in the section below!

My first book for 5th Edition is out

For the longest time I could remember, even before I got into Dungeons & Dragons, I always loved the idea of being the monsters for a change. Taking on the role of a mighty golem or brooding vampire seemed appealing to me, and the limited choices of races in most official sourcebooks seemed at odds with fantasy settings populated by all manner of intelligent beings.

Official sourcebooks' attempts to do this resulted in mixed success. The truth is that a lot of monsters had abilities which would be game-breaking in the hands of players, or in some cases the options were made weak so as to discourage too much deviation from the Tolkinesque Player's Handbook races. While working with Oslecamo on Min-Max Boards on designing monster-based classes for 3rd Edition, I came upon a realization: the majority of monsters both original and drawn from folklore were known for a limited set of abilities as defining features. Harpies are known for being winged sirens whose melodies could entrance people, not their +3 natural armor bonus and racial hit dice.

Taking this idea, I boiled down the abilities of several popular monsters into a smaller framework, getting rid of extraneous mechanics. Eventually I designed Playable Monsters, Vol. 1: Fantasy Iconics & Mythology for the Pathfinder Role-Playing Game. Then I made a version for Old School Monster Classes. Both proved to be popular sellers, and now that 5th Edition is out, I figured that making a version for that game would be a good idea, especially given the fact that monstrous races don't really exist as an option in most official or third-party material from what I've seen.

Here's the OneBookShelf link to the title. It was tiring yet worthwhile to make. If PC-friendly harpies and vampires sound right up your alley, then I hope my book brings more fun and excitement to your gaming circle!

A Belated Swords & Wizardry Appreciation Day

Although it was yesterday, I don't think anyone will hold it to me that I'm contributing 24 hours later. The truth is that I have much more playing experience with Labyrinth Lord than Swords & Wizardry, although the two games are similar enough that I poached plenty of material from the latter. The things I like most about Swords & Wizardry may be far different than other bloggers' thoughts, but I feel that they work.

Race and Class: In most OSR games, nonhuman races are locked into a type of role; there are no dwarven thieves or spellcasters, and elves are fighter-mages. Although this has been preserved to an extent in the Core Rules and White Box, S&W Complete and Core actually separate race from class. Instead of locking dwarves, elves, and halflings to their own full class, it presents three or four qualities for their races. A halfling cleric or dwarven thief isn't really game-breaking, and it provides an interesting springboard for making your own races.

The Single Saving Throw: Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess have 5 saving throws. 3rd Edition and Pathfinder 3; 5th Edition has by far the most, with 6 saving throws. Swords & Wizardry boils it down to 1; and to simulate different key resistances, certain classes get a bonus on said Saving Throw against certain phenomena, like traps or spells.

Again, the single Saving Throw is a minimalist yet elegant design element, while still allowing for some variety with classes getting situational bonuses.

Comprehensive Projects: Labyrinth Lord may be the king of 3rd party OSR projects, but the ones that exist for Swords & Wizardry tend to be large and broad in use. A large part of this is thanks to Frog God Games, whose Lost Lands campaign setting gave us sandbox adventures such as the Sword of Air and megadungeons such as Rappan Athuk and Slumbering Tsar. There are also 2 large bestiaries full of several campaigns' worth of monsters, Swords & Wizardry Monstrosities and Tome of Horrors Complete. The latter updates a lot of classic D&D staples from earlier official materials such as the Fiend Folio, so it's got hundreds of converted material ready-made for you.

Then there is also White Star, a space opera retroclone which has a lot of nifty ideas and support from many publishers. So the third party support gap might be closing up after all, if more due to sci-fi material.

Outsider-Friendly Options: By 'outsider,' I'm referring more towards mechanics which make it easier for players of other Edition and retroclones to jump right in. Namely ascending armor class and Challenge Levels for monsters. One of my major critiques of OSR retroclones was the use of a to-hit matrix for combat, which was a lot more cumbersome than the ascending AC of newer games. Lo and behold, Swords & Wizardry had a good idea with this rules variant, allowing you to just roll a d20, add relevant modifiers, and compare the result to the enemy AC. I found that this was a lot easier to grasp for gamers from Pathfinder, and to continually use for campaigns.

As for Challenge Levels, the Challenge Rating system of 3rd and 4th (and likely 5th) Edition gets a lot of flak, but used ideally it's a good abstraction for a ballpark estimate of monstrous power. Swords & Wizardry's system is actually keyed to the 'dungeon level' format, where the deeper levels tended to have stronger monsters, and was built from there. So with Challenge Levels for monsters from the core and new sourcebooks, you can get an inkling of when to deploy that monster in your campaign.

It's Got a Nifty Compatibility Logo: Specifically, the one I'm thinking about from Gamers & Grognards Studios. It's free and open source for self-publishers to use, but its design is quite eye-catching:

Hey folks, let's talk

So within the last week a bunch of things happened in the tabletop fandom. Instead of replying immediately I thought to wait and give the issue some time so as to formulate my responses.

Then another thing came up, which is a separate issue yet reflects the greater issue at hand. Again I thought to revise my post and possibly tie in the two together. And so I waited. I did the same thing several times the past few months, worried about kicking the hornet's nest.

Back in 2013 I used to be a poster on Giant in the Playground, a rather large community of folks with a shared appreciation for Dungeons & Dragons, Order of the Stick, and similar things. It was a good place, full of homebrew and neat discussions; the moderators kept the peace by putting a lid on controversial topics such as politics and religion. This is a reasonable thing, not at all uncommon on most message boards.

Yet there was a troubling trend I saw board topics revolving about gender and women in game of an oddly regressive nature. They were springing up every week or so; the most blatant I remember was a player asking for help in a campaign where his adventuring party saved a baby from an evil cult and were now hiding out in the woods miles away from civilization and being hunted by said cult.

His major concern? The adventuring party was all-male, and thus wouldn't be adequately suited to taking care of the baby and wetnursing it.

Then another thread followed about Strength caps for women, and whether you'd tolerate a group whose DM mandated it. Sadly, there came many board regulars rushing to the defense of said hypothetical DM as though those people who stuck to such a regressive rule were being unfairly attacked.

This kind of shit was going on GiantITP for a while, and prompted me to write up a large post about it. At first restricted to said site, I decided it was a larger issue and reposted it on as many message boards as I could find. I did my best to word things in a calm way, in a way which wouldn't condemn a person for enjoying games with problematic material.

I got many people agreeing with me. But in spite of all that, in spite of being a male poster with no visible indicators of belonging to a minority group, there were gamers who got very, very angry at my post. I was told that I was a hyperactive woman who nursed a vendetta against the entire male gender, was told I was starting up a witch-hunt even though I named no names in my post, and accused of trying to force irrelevant political issues into a gaming forum.

It's been 3 years and the dialogue hasn't changed. But even more so outside media is focusing upon us due to the most recent incidents. And regardless of our desire to wash our hands and stay out of the way, such things have an effect on us all. Like it or not, tabletop gaming and broader nerd fandoms are engaged in the middle of a culture war, and the more reactionary elements are paraphrasing any criticism of troubling behavior as an outside attack against nerddorm from barbarians at the gate.

Look at this response to Ed Greenwood's Facebook post regarding a transgender NPC in Siege of Dragonspear. Just as importantly, look at the amount of upvotes his post got:

There are jerks in every hobby; there are bigots in every hobby; there are people who style themselves as 'open-minded' and 'liberal' yet who interpret greater attempts at inclusiveness as a zero-sum game which will somehow hurt the end product. These aren't fringe voices, either. They're trolls whose sole purpose is to get people upset, but they're also folks with years-long membership in communities and who can be completely reasonable when talking about other issues.

They're folks who won't out-and-out say that they want gaming to remain the domain of a "guys' night out" or get uncomfortable when gay and trans* NPCs show up, but will rephrase their opposition under the guise of something nobler. That it's about freedom of speech, or opposing Cultural Marxism, or something which sounds better than "I don't like X people and I don't want them showing up in my escapist fantasies."

Sometimes they're a great homebrewer with a 10+ year membership on a popular messageboard, a man married to a wife with three daughters, but who says that women gamers should put up with sexual harassment due to a "boys will be boys" attitude.

Sometimes they're folks who are kind to you, offer you advice and help spotlight your product on the Internet, but whose social media posts expressing extreme hatred towards Muslims makes you realize that associating with them won't be a good idea for publicity or one's own scruples.

Sometimes they're CharOps folks who contributed a lot of value to their website with useful Handbooks, but unironically calls someone a "vagina-fearing sissyboy" in an argument about healthcare.

Sometimes they're bloggers who have a lot of creative ideas, but interpret a self-publisher's hiring of cultural consultants from non-European societies as being discriminatory against whites.

Sometime's they're a third party self-publisher who sells a product for Pathfinder but includes a tentacle rape feat with no hint of forewarning to readers that his sexual fetishes are present in the book.

The thing about tabletop is that those with such views rarely take pains to hide them, and can easily be spotted if you know what to look for. Their boldness is in part due to common Geek Social Fallacies. It's easy to imagine us going "fuck you, get out of here" to one of these folks if they're a total stranger or act like jerks all the time. But when they're fixtures of their small communities, or people you know and shared fond memories with, or who the moderators won't bother to sanction, it can be harder for a lot of people.

Refusing to say or do anything never fixes the problem, but at the same time I understand why people are afraid to go forth. It's these voices in our hobby which make it a worse place, who cut off so many potential new gamers who are made to feel unwelcome and unwanted. Some people don't want to get caught in the middle of drama, receive hatemail, or creeps stalking them and their friends on social media for speaking out. Some are worried about weighing in prematurely and end up tainting someone's reputation.

I get that.  The claim that "to be silent means to support" is a statement I never agreed with, for not everyone can be a crusader when it means risking their own mental well-being and that of their loved ones.

But you can help in your own way.

You can show support to companies who take a stand against the regressive elements in the hobby, like Posthuman Studios and Paizo. And at the same time you can tell gaming companies who reinforce and defend toxic voices that they just lost a customer.

If you see a fellow gamer who's given shit because of an aspect of their identity they have no control over, you can let them know that there's a gaming table with an open seat for people like them.

You can petition the moderators of message boards overrun in prejudice to enforce the rules they have against "racism, sexism, homophobia, etc" by reporting the many troublemakers. And if they don't enforce their own rules, point the victims over to message boards and circles you know are more inclusive and tolerant.

And lastly, whenever you see a Gaymer X convention or Female Pathfinders group, instead of waxing despair over "unnecessary divisiveness," instead ask about the circumstances which led to their creation and what we can do as a community to make them feel like comrades in greater geekdom once again.

Fifth Edition Feats and the Danger of Straight Conversions

When browsing the 5E storefront on Drive-Thru RPG, I notice that a lot of the material is geared towards crunchier aspects; ones useful to players especially so. This is in contrast to Wizards of the Coast adventure-focused release schedule, so I get the feeling that the PC-friendly material's being left to third party publishers.

5th Edition has feats, but only one of them is OGL. Even including the full array, there wasn't much. Total Party Kill Games came up with a product to address this, with an array of new "core feats." It's extremely popular, regularly in the top 10 5E-Compatible category and already a best silver seller. Two out of the 2 reviews as of this posting are 5 stars.

However, I noticed that over on Amazon a softcover version's available for sale. In contrast the reviews are not so kind. A running theme among them is that many feats are pulled straight from 3rd Edition without the proper rewording of mechanics so as to fit inside the new game's framework. Additionally several are copied directly out of the Player's Handbook for 5th with some slight variations, which is problematic as only Tavern Brawler is OGL. The four and five star reviews on both sites are extremely vague as to why they enjoyed the book in question.

I'd also like to note that this isn't the first instance with Total Party Kill Games. They did a similar book of feats for Pathfinder which I reviewed in-depth, and sold itself on the idea that all of their feats are viable at every level and can effectively replace magic items. Keep in mind that Pathfinder has a wealth-by-level format which makes such a suggestion a tall order. Turns out that most of their feats fell short of the mark, so I'm not surprised to see history repeating itself here.

I do not own the book myself, but I do think it serves as a valuable object lesson for folks doing conversion work. Such a process is like translating a language: you want to make sure you get all the nuances as well. I once asked some questions on things to look out for when jumping into 5th as a 3rd Edition fan on Reddit, and there were quite a few small things which seem similar on the surface but in reality add up to big changes.

What does interest me is that in spite of this, TPK's feat-based sourcebooks are popular sellers all the same. I do worry about quality control, in that this plagued the D20 Boom in the early Aughties and led to a Bust down the road. There's only a few 5E compatible books which grab my eye, and I haven't even bothered with the DM's Guild.

Or maybe it's a case where books are popular in spite of reviews, in that many consumers grab it up all the same without such problems?

I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts!