The D&D Iceberg Explained

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Today we dive into the D&D Iceberg, going over the unique history, community members, and obscure rules that have sunken over the years.

[WolfBoy-omdw]

The quote Gary gygax says at 18:09 about people blaming D&D for their failures as parents is so true and I couldn't agree more

[sailorenthusiast]

Listening through, I was surprised just how much stuff in this iceberg were considered obscure. Though, perhaps that’s just a sign of how deep into the DnD rabbit hole I’ve gotten, eheh.

[schemage]

As a DM, I kinda really like the notion of the 2e Druid title hierarchy. The idea that there might only be a handful of these insanely powerful spellcasters and if you wish to gain that power you must seek them out and defeat them in some form of ritualised challenge, is awesome world building. In worlds where magic actually isn't dirt common, this really shows how rare it is, narratively and mechanically.

As a player, I can appreciate that it might have sucked, though.... Especially if the DM wasn't willing to allow you to seek out these more powerful druids.

[jclarkev]

16:50 you know someone plays a lot of DnD when they say “un-martial” instead of “un-marital” 😂😂😂

[Meanlucario]

Honestly, a campaign focus on the party exploring Netheril ruins sounds like a fun module. Just history nuts and their guards searching ruins for the lore.

[DuskoftheTwilight]

I guess it falls into the same category as the peasant railgun, but I was hoping for a mention of Pin Pun, the kobold with arbitrarily high stats due to some unintended rule interactions

[prostatus]

I'd say Rangers are Bad is now replaced with Monks are Bad now by most of the dnd community, which I believe is the more popular sentiment now

[Meanlucario]

Funny thing about No Dragons: Early D&D lack a focus on dragons, so they hired the couple who made Ravenloft (the first appearance of Strahd von Zarovich) to make a setting focused on dragons. That's how Dragonlance was started, which also had a much more structured narrative than modules at the time (and its first module was more flexible than the second, which was written by someone else).

[Lrbearclaw]

29:00 - Two of my friends backed high enough for the (canceled) red carpet and one of them is listed as an Executive Producer in the credits of LoVM.

[herogohome]

RE: the spell names, I don't know about Mordenkainen and Tasha, but Bigby and a couple of others were the names of prominent player-characters in the earliest campaigns (back when the game was first being developed) who had spells named after them.

[adriannaranjo]

2:21 Tier 1
14:05 Hello Fresh sponsorship
15:13 Tier 2
29:10 Tier 3
39:43 Tier 4
46:45 Tier 5

[TheFoxfool]

Another tip about the Peasant Railgun: Because you're having something thrown by a peasant, it still is an Improvised Weapon, and therefore despite the physics involved, it still only deals 1d4 bludgeoning damage with an effective range of 20/60...

[MichaelStJohn-lrel]

This may be mentioned in the 200+ comments already made, but the original alignments in 0e D&D were Lawful, Neutral, and Chaotic. Good and Evil were added later. Aside from that, there were very few things I didn't know... I think a second Iceberg could be made regarding lore regarding specific campaign settings, monsters, and characters. There's enough material about Forgotten Realms alone for its own iceberg, and I think people would be surprised to learn how much Realms lore influenced changes made in later editions (See: Drizzt and Dual Wielding Rangers).

[Liquidor]

pretty good. except for the Good / Evil being first. The first rulebooks only had Law/Chaos. TSR resisted Good/Evil until the 80's and the 2nd or 3rd printings of 1st.

[AtelierGod]

I learnt of D&D from being given a PDF of the core rule book after being invited to a one shot Pathfinder 1e game back in 2015 and that’s about how I got into D&D.

[glarak]

When Stereotypes where brought up, I thought "You all meet in a tavern" would be brought up as well

Amazing video, knew quite a lot, and didn't realize how deep in the rabbit hole I already were

[JakeTheBeastDelta]

Here's some even more obsure d&d things. The most powerful character in d&d: in 3.5 a build was made that was called Pun-Pun using the kobald race and several obcure and neche abilities created a character that can gain almost infinite stats, can get any monster's feature, and infinite spells known and castable. Tucker's Kobolds where the DM Tucker used a dungeon full of kobolds using traps and trickery made a high level party use most of their resources and retreat from the dungeon in the end.

[jakerenwick]

Glad you took a chance with a longer video, it was great! Keep up the good work Blaine!

[carpedm]

You could probably put in "Gary X" the dragon god of war domain who is "definately not a self insert"
Or "Gary Gygax's first character", which is the one and only Mordenkainen

[krinkrin]

In the same vein as the Peasant Railgun there is the Locate City Bomb. Basically, there is a spell called Locate City, that normally does exactly what the name implies. However, the rules technically allow you to stack a bunch of modifiers on top of it to give it damage based on range. Since Locate City has a range of several miles, the resulting damage ends up being enormous, enough to pulverize everything within that area.