4e / GSL Will 4E Eberron be as bad as FR?

[Chaoszero]

I thought the FR books were well written and formatted. Not a giant encyclopedia for me to wade through before I can run a setting.

Eberron has always been good to me, ever since its release. I have high hopes for the setting but am very willing to houserule away any new rules they implement to make the setting marketable.

Any race can have a dragonmark? Not in my game.

Also, I think people are overreacting to the 'push the setting forward three years' thing. Everyone acts like its going to destroy the setting. Its only three years. And yes, I know that in a politics-rich environment that is a long time, but its not 100 years. If they don't advance the timeline, what are they going to write that hasn't yet been covered? Whats to sell? Why not just run Eberron in 4e without the new books?

I digress.

[Kamikaze Midget]

Originally Posted by Felon

4e did what so many folks had been begging for for oh-so-many years: it put a lot of the sacred cows out to pasture. The Seven Sisters and Elminister no longer run around making everything all right. Drizz't is still around, but he never had the kind of world-hopping juice that made people wonder why low-level heroes were ever needed to handle a big crisis. Lots of gods got wiped too, which was less necessary, and probably did more to ruffle feathers. I, for one, am glad Mystra bit the big one. Something as important as magic doesn't need to be lorded over by one god with a good or evil agenda.

Basically, this fell into the same trap that, I think, 4e in general did. The squeaky wheel got the grease; they responded to the criticisms.

What they didn't do so well was provide a reason for someone who was already chugging along just fine with the game to update.

The fine line between killing the sacred cow and shooting the faithful dog was, perhaps, crossed too often, and 4e FR, I think even moreso than 4e D&D in general, alienated the previous fanbase.

You're going to alienate SOME of the fanbase no matter what you do, and hopefully you'll bring in enough new people to make up for it.

What 4e in general, and 4eFR specifically, didn't take into account as well is the idea that the best way to attract new fans is to keep the old ones -- those dedicated fans are what bring in new players, so you should be careful not to alienate what is, ultimately, your best recruiting tools: people who like the game they play.

This is coming from someone who wouldn't play in FR if it wasn't for those changes. Of course, I won't play in FR with those changes, either (with the exception of the campaign I ran in 3e specifically exploring what kind of ramifications those changes would have, mostly as a lark). I mean, why do I need to play in FR? I don't really care about any of the characters or things that go on there. The people who do -- the fans of the setting, the fans who bring in new fans -- are going to care about it. They're easier to chase away.

Eberron dodges this bullet on a few levels. It doesn't need a big shake-up. A lot of its assumptions are also 4e assumptions. The fanbase isn't nearly as rabid or, probably, as loyal as the FR fanbase. It doesn't have the same deep roots.

So, in many ways, it's harder to screw up Eberron than it is to screw up the Realms.

I don't think WotC will be able to really nuke Eberron like they nuked FR. The worst-case scenario is more of a gradual shift full of rules that 4e Eberron players ignore if they don't like 'em, probably more like the shift to 4e in general. There will, almost assuredly, be some changes to the world that I will facepalm at, but they probably won't affect daily campaigns in Eberron the way that the FR changes affected daily campaigns in FR.

I'm honestly more scared of what they'll do to Dark Sun, which is my wager for the 2010 setting. While there might not be as many fans to irk as there was with FR, the possibility for 4e's good-intentioned hell-paving "everyone can use everything" philosophy for leaving only a palette-swap game where you fight different monsters in different-looking dungeons is very high, and the potential awesome that would be wasted with that approach would be almost criminal.

Eberron won't be blown up (at least, not as badly). But you do have cause to fear for those updates to 2e settings that they're likely to do.

Still, maybe the Eberron CS books will show that they're starting to change tactics with their setting books. One can hope.

[Mr. Wilson]

IMHO, I don't think they will screw it up quite as badly as they did the Realms.

First of all, there is no time leap to mess with the metaplot.

Second, Eberron is fairly new and has room for new ideas.

It is of my gaming groups opinion that WoTC should have led off with Eberron before tackling FRs, as Eberron seems to fit the 4E playstyle like a glove.

In general, I can't wait for Eberron to come out and I think they'll knock it out of the park (I hope).

[JackSmithIV]

I think the Forgotten Realms issue is a little overplayed. It really comes down to a few very basic things:

1. Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide for 4th Edition is, by itself, a great product. It is a wonderful setting book that both inspires as GM, and allows him the freedom to build a campaign.
2. If there was no Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting previous to this edition, it would be widely loved, and wouldn't be judged as a poor product because of it's immense differences with a completely different product (yes, I understand that they are for the same setting).
3. Your opinion of the product is going to be almost entirely colored by your previous experience with Forgotten Realms. If you have no previous experience, you're likely to enjoy the product and make good use of it. If you were attached to the lore of the setting for a long period of time before this edition, you are likely to not agree with the changes, which some feel (with legitimacy) throw away everything good about the old setting.
4. It is ok to be upset about the changes. I can empathize with this frustration, and felt much the same way myself. Some people know enough about Forgotten Realms to have a doctorate in Realms lore, and for these people, the Spellplague might as well have actually happened to them. Just because others like the new setting doesn't mean that there's something wrong with your dislike of it.

I just hate thread titles talking about how "bad" new Forgotten Realms is. New Forgotten Realms is friggin' awesome! But it's the worse thing in the world if you go in looking for old Forgotten Realms.

[EDIT]: Also, 4th Edition Eberron will be awesome. 4th Edition and Eberron are like Peanut Butter and Jelly. And they're not making any major changes, so it'll appease both new and old fans. I've literally planned by FR campaign to end in June.

[Fallen Seraph]

Originally Posted by JackSmithIV

I just hate thread titles talking about how "bad" new Forgotten Realms is. New Forgotten Realms is friggin' awesome! But it's the worse thing in the world if you go in looking for old Forgotten Realms.

I can't comment personally on this since only thing I really cared about when it came to FR was Calimsham. But I have actually found some of my friends who enjoy the lore/know quite well the old FR a new kind of fun in 4e FR.

For them it isn't about playing in a place they know well, or know what will be around the next bend so to speak. It is in that, they know what once was and they find it interesting and neat to explore what has happened since. So lets see what happened to Waterdeep what happened to Baldur's Gate, etc. That is their fun in the new version seeing what has come to pass.

So it is their knowledge and such of the old Forgotten Realms that causes them to have fun with the new one. Since if they didn't well, these places wouldn't matter and thus the impact of seeing the changes wouldn't be as big.

[JackSmithIV]

Originally Posted by Fallen Seraph

I can't comment personally on this since only thing I really cared about when it came to FR was Calimsham. But I have actually found some of my friends who enjoy the lore/know quite well the old FR a new kind of fun in 4e FR.

Oh, I perfectly agree! I'm quite the same way. I just ran a game tonight in Candlekeep. The same Candlekeep I used to love when I DMed years ago. I rediscovered the world in the new Forgotten Realms.

My post was largely a generalization. There are people who (unlike my two above archetypes) are new to FR and hate it, and who used to love it and still do. I even use the old guide as a more detailed history reference when I need to expand upon an existing idea. But the new setting is my current campaign bible.

[Baron Opal]

As long as I get a good mechanic and power list for the dragon marks, I'll be happy. I just need the bits and pieces to make Pattern and Logrus adepts from dragonmarks and spellscars.

The PHB2 will give me what I need to stat giants and sibeccai. After that, the only other books I think I will need are the Shadow class book, MM2 and the aberration book should it come out.

[Wraith Form]

Originally Posted by JackSmithIV

[*]If there was no Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting previous to this edition, it would be widely loved, and wouldn't be judged as a poor product because of it's immense differences with a completely different product (yes, I understand that they are for the same setting).


New Forgotten Realms is friggin' awesome! But it's the worse thing in the world if you go in looking for old Forgotten Realms.

Like much in life, it's all in your perspective and your attitude. I agree with Jack 100%--if we didn't have the emotional and intellectual ties to the previous FR incarnations, if this was a setting released entirely independently, I think the reception would be more positive. (Which is not to say 'overwhelmingly'...just more positive.)

I mean, a world that was slightly out of phase with itself? Kinda like the Star Trek: TNG episode where Jordi and Ensign Ro were out of phase with the Enterprise? Face it--that's pretty flippin' cool.

This comes from someone who now realizes: I need to jettison all my old concepts of FR. I need to let go of the previous incarnations. I "discovered" the FR in 2nd edition, fell in love with it, then rapidly fell out of love with the setting in 3.x. It's a different place, now, and we can enjoy it for what it is.

Advance the timeline 100 years? Nifty! Instead of focusing on what's crap about that, instead compare it to our real world. Look how much has changed from 1909 to 2009. The Realms, if it is a 'living' intellectual property, likewise needs to change drastically.

Did people put up this much fuss when Elder Scrolls choses to advance it's timeline from Morrowind's period to Oblivion's? Or any other widely-known setting that leaps forward in it's timeline?

Eberron...well, I was pretty meh about it in 3.x. There were parts I liked, there were parts I despised. I'm not going to weign in on that one as I likely won't buy the CS when it's released.

[Nymrohd]

Strangely I find that most of the things that were added in 4E in the past of the timeline, fit very well with the secrets and mysteries of the setting. Abeir explains so much about the strange magic of the Creator Races, as does the shunting of the Feywild. The Spellplague is a brutal and inelegant way to change the magic system, but it is not a first (neither in FR nor in settings anywhere) and I cannot see how the change from 3.5 magic system to 4E could have been done with something less violent. What really gets me is the 100 years we lost. FR history in the end of the 3.5 timeline was at a very interesting point of its history. We had two new kings fans were waiting to see for a long time (Cormyr and Impiltur), the elves were returning, Shar was finally making her move and Thay finally imploded (which I considered inevitable tbh). The years that were skipped were the years I had been waiting for, when several plotlines would finally take form, all of which made for many interesting campaigns to come. And what we got was all this time getting skipped entirely. I don't at all mind the Abeir transplants, since Chondath was boring, though I would have liked to see some resolution of the Unther story first. I would have liked the setting a lot if the timeskip was not this extensive and if they had not decided to butched the pantheon left and right (I expect the empyrean trilogy to explain this but still not a fan of this development, especially the "these deities were actually this other one all along".)

[Shemeska]

Originally Posted by Kamikaze Midget

Eberron won't be blown up (at least, not as badly).

I'm still worried, given that we've already been told that Eberron's unique cosmology is going to be sacrificed on the altar of 4th edition.

[JPL]

Originally Posted by Mistwell

I like the new FR, and I have not seen some preponderance of critics panning it more than praising it, at least not any more or less than 3e FR.

If you don't like 4e FR, fair enough. But speaking on behalf of most critics, players, and DMs?

I think for this kind of product, it's kinda far fetched to make those kinds of claims with out some pretty extensive proof along with links and statistical counting and direct comparison to equivalent data from 3e.

Without that level of proof, I think you would be more persuasive if you just gave your personal opinion, rather than the false appeal to authority that you made.

As for Eberron, since I liked FR, I hope Ebberon lives up to 4e FR

Man, you can always spot a lawyer on a message board, can't you? With your evidence and your burden of proof and such . . .

[Kamikaze Midget]

Originally Posted by Shemeska

I'm still worried, given that we've already been told that Eberron's unique cosmology is going to be sacrificed on the altar of 4th edition.

Which is one of my aforementioned facepalm moments. But I don't think they'll be changing the idea of conjunctions and the like; they'll keep the essential unique properties of the setting, even if they (rather pointlessly) change the way it all looks on paper. The daily playing of an Eberron campaign won't be affected by it, I think, just because most Eberron campaigns aren't directly affected by cosmology models. They're more worried, for instance, about the damage you take falling from a speeding lightning rail as it plummets over the edge of the gorge because some political splinter-sect bombed the bridge.

[Drkfathr1]

I've never been a big fan of FR, but I can understand why fans of the setting would be upset with the changes that were made. Pretty drastic changes.

I don't think they intend to go as far with Eberron, so it should come out much closer to its previous incarnation, but we'll see. Maybe they've learned a little about what NOT to do after the feedback that's come from the FR releases.

[rounser]

What 4e in general, and 4eFR specifically, didn't take into account as well is the idea that the best way to attract new fans is to keep the old ones -- those dedicated fans are what bring in new players, so you should be careful not to alienate what is, ultimately, your best recruiting tools: people who like the game they play.

I suspect that they're trying to emulate Games Workshop: sell them stuff for a year or two, then make their stuff obsolete. Don't try to retain your old customers; they weren't buying much anymore anyway, and some will hang on and buy more. Hey, it works for selling miniatures, and 4E is clearly designed to do that.

I don't think WotC will be able to really nuke Eberron like they nuked FR.

So far as I can see, Eberron turned out to be what I suspected it was: a manifesto on what the current design team believed about D&D, and a harbinger of what was to come (the direction the game was going in). I disagreed with many of the underlying assumptions and philosophies behind Eberron, and can see it mirrored in 4E and what was done to FR. You're right that less will be done to Eberron, because apart from what will be required to bring it into line with the quirky and arbitrary 4E implied setting, it already reflects what WOTC believe about D&D.

1. Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide for 4th Edition is, by itself, a great product. It is a wonderful setting book that both inspires as GM, and allows him the freedom to build a campaign.
2. If there was no Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting previous to this edition, it would be widely loved, and wouldn't be judged as a poor product because of it's immense differences with a completely different product (yes, I understand that they are for the same setting).
3. Your opinion of the product is going to be almost entirely colored by your previous experience with Forgotten Realms. If you have no previous experience, you're likely to enjoy the product and make good use of it. If you were attached to the lore of the setting for a long period of time before this edition, you are likely to not agree with the changes, which some feel (with legitimacy) throw away everything good about the old setting.
4. It is ok to be upset about the changes. I can empathize with this frustration, and felt much the same way myself. Some people know enough about Forgotten Realms to have a doctorate in Realms lore, and for these people, the Spellplague might as well have actually happened to them. Just because others like the new setting doesn't mean that there's something wrong with your dislike of it.

That's all fine for Theoretical Land, but unfortunately for your argument we live in the real world, which has a history and expectations connected to certain branding. WOTC's problem is that they want to have their cake and eat it: the sales of D&D and FR from the name and logo, but without enough of the hallmarks of the brand that make it deserving of that title. Yes it would have been better received if it was Donjons & Dragonborn and the Misbegotten Regions, but without the D&D and FR names, those games would probably sink into the morass of RPG sales mediocrity without much trace. You probably wouldn't even bother to get on the bandwagon with "Poison Ivy Press" if those names weren't involved. And what you're being told here is that the new product doesn't do what it says on the tin.

[fba827]

Regardless of my personal opinion on FR in general or the specific changes that were made, I believe that the first setting that WotC published -had- to conform to as much of a 'general base line' as possible in order to accomodate as many people. You can't make your first published setting be a 'niche' setting, it's just not usually a feasible way to do things. I would expect that later settings can be more niche.


As a matter of personal taste, I don't often like published settings (to DM or Play) because it is hard for me to remember history and places and people that i did not make up myself (i sucked at history subjects in school for that same reason). So I stick to homebrewed stuff. I did get the FRPG for the crunch (specifically the swordmage class) and honestly, the fact that the setting was more "novice friendly" is the only reason I would consider playing in an FR setting (as a player; though not as a DM, for the above stated reasons).

For future settings, I would hope/expect that they be a bit more 'niche' I don't want to see another FR setting released with the names changed - it has to _feel_ different.

Having said all that, I can understand how long-time fans would be annoyed by such sweeping and drastic changes. It's all a matter of how attached someone is to the original.

[Wraith Form]

Originally Posted by rounser

That's all fine for Theoretical Land, but unfortunately for your argument we live in the real world, which has a history and expectations connected to certain branding. WOTC's problem is that they want to have their cake and eat it: the sales of D&D and FR from the name and logo, but without enough of the hallmarks of the brand that make it deserving of that title. Yes it would have been better received if it was Donjons & Dragonborn and the Misbegotten Regions, but without the D&D and FR names, those games would probably sink into the morass of RPG sales mediocrity without much trace. You probably wouldn't even bother to get on the bandwagon with "Poison Ivy Press" if those names weren't involved. And what you're being told here is that the new product doesn't do what it says on the tin.

I'm relatively sure that's not what Jack's saying. I believe he's saying that if the new FR book was released by WotC similar to, say, the way Eberron was touted with none of your emotional ties and campaign investments, a brand-new setting with no prior history, you might like it better.

(Based on most of the reactions around here, probably not.)

[rounser]

I'm relatively sure that's not what Jack's saying. I believe he's saying that if the new FR book was released by WotC similar to, say, the way Eberron was touted with none of your emotional ties and campaign investments, a brand-new setting with no prior history, you might like it better.

I understand what he's saying. I'm just saying in response that WOTC can't have their cake and eat it. If there is Forgotten Realms written on the cover (and there is), then what he's saying is irrelevant, because in a theoretical world where there wasn't FR on the cover, many of us would probably ignore it, mostly. I know I've ignored Eberron, and that doesn't seem to be anywhere near as big a brand as FR.

[Nymrohd]

I cannot agree that it was a good book even if we ignore the past setting. The writing and the ideas were . . .cheesy.

[Spatula]

Originally Posted by Chaoszero

If they don't advance the timeline, what are they going to write that hasn't yet been covered?

Firstly, people will want mechanical updates of 3e Eberron ideas. Dragonmarks, artificers, kalashtar, etc.

Secondly, there's still a lot of the world (and all of the planes) that haven't been explored: Aerenal, the Demon Wastes, the Shadow Marches, the Eldeen Reaches, Droaam, Zilargo, Darguun, Valenar, Q'barra, the Mror Holds, the Lhazaar Principalities. Although it seems likely that we're still not going to get any kind of in-depth treatment of Eberron's cosmology, now that all of the planes have been mapped to the stock spindle ones. "Kythri, the Churning Chaos: see the Elemental Chaos in Manual of the Planes for more information."

[Nymrohd]

We know we will get origins for the PHB races (and that the Hellcow feels they fit well, especially eladrin). We will get a couple new villains (something about another pirate prince, cannot remember).