What other settings should get the FR treatment?

[Dausuul]

Dark Sun. Bring back the post-apocalyptic feel of the first boxed set and undo the damage done by the novels and the second boxed set.

Seconded. Dark Sun needs a time-jump backward 100 years instead of forward, and a total wipe of the messed-up backstory that got tacked onto it. No more Rajaat, no more Champions, no more bizarro everybody-used-to-be-halflings origin. Back to the basics: a world sucked dry by sorcery, ruled by corrupt sorceror-kings and haunted by fearsome beasts.

 

[Silverblade The Ench]

Seconded. Dark Sun needs a time-jump backward 100 years instead of forward, and a total wipe of the messed-up backstory that got tacked onto it. No more Rajaat, no more Champions, no more bizarro everybody-used-to-be-halflings origin. Back to the basics: a world sucked dry by sorcery, ruled by corrupt sorceror-kings and haunted by fearsome beasts.

*3 cheers for Dausuul!*
And just for you...
http://www.silverblades-suitcase.com/darksun/dark_sun_dead_oceans.jpg

 

[Shemeska]

OTOH, I could see running a Planescape campaign. More than enough freedom there. Sure, there's lots of canon, but, most of it has been out of print for a decade or more, so, who cares really?

It hasn't been a discrete product line since the late 90s, but every 3.x planar book that WotC put out has been a continuation of the same planar setting (with varying degrees of success). Heck, the Fiendish Codex I & II are about a year old, and they're directly in line with the Planescape material. The material is much more recently tapped than you imply.

Any WotC attempt to force the PoL cosmology on a setting that its very core is about a different cosmology with 30 years of development would be a train-wreck. They could have a 4e PoL planar setting, but make it its own thing rather than shove it onto Planescape.

 

[DaveMage]

To be honest I'd rather see new settings. I think it would have been so much more exciting to see a new setting designed for 4E as the first campaign sourcebook for the 4E era.

Completely agree. 4E needs to find its version of Ptolus.


(Although if there were ONE to convert, it would be Birthright - no one played it in 2E anyway, so no one would be upset. )

 

[yogipsu]

Completely agree. 4E needs to find its version of Ptolus.


(Although if there were ONE to convert, it would be Birthright - no one played it in 2E anyway, so no one would be upset. )

Yeah, pretty much. Still, BR's my favorite setting and quite honestly fits exceedingly well in the 4E mold: the various states of the regions serve as Points of Light among rival and monster states. The setting lends itself well to both adventuring and ruling. Further, awnshegh (the monsters) are poster boys for exception-based design.

(And, three words: ershegh epic destinies.)

Not to mention the fact that blood abilities would fit fairly easily into PCs as either replacement powers, additional feats, or both.

Add in a streamlined chapter on domain rules - or, even better, considering we're in pipe-dream land anyway, crunch the math on DDI - and I think the setting would be a winner.

And to top it all off, BR-style games are excellent at PBEM/online play . . . which is exactly what WotC wants the DDI to support.

This needs to be done. Now.

 

[Kaodi]

Perhaps I am a bad person to comment on this because I have never really read the Planescape and Spelljammer books (though I do have Shadow of the Spider Moon from Polyhedron), but my feeling from what I have learned of the settings over the years leads me to believe that a new setting that meshed the best themes of Planescape and Spelljammer into the new 4e Cosmology could be quite scrumptious.

 

[Serendipity]

The purpose of a time jump should be, IMHO, to recognize what has gone before without feeling utterly slaved to every last detail. It's an alternative to retconing aspects of the setting and saying "they never happened" which is a HUGE pet peeve of mine.
That said - the aspects of 4e I really like are the ones that remind me of the Mentzer era boxed set D&D - so Mystara gets my vote. Though tonally, I think the ruleset encourages the sort of play that I used to enjoy with Spelljammer.
Why "PoLarize" every setting? That'd be.............dumb.

 

[Hussar]

It hasn't been a discrete product line since the late 90s, but every 3.x planar book that WotC put out has been a continuation of the same planar setting (with varying degrees of success). Heck, the Fiendish Codex I & II are about a year old, and they're directly in line with the Planescape material. The material is much more recently tapped than you imply.

Any WotC attempt to force the PoL cosmology on a setting that its very core is about a different cosmology with 30 years of development would be a train-wreck. They could have a 4e PoL planar setting, but make it its own thing rather than shove it onto Planescape.

Reread what I said. "Most" material has been out of print for a decade or more. Not all.

Great Modron March, Orcus/Teneberous, most of the faction stuff, all from out of print sources. Heck, other than the Hells/Abyss, what setting stuff got updated for 3e? Sigil and even that was pretty basic.

Oh no, you'd actually have to have goals for the groups other than, "Well, I'm evil, so I guess I do evil stuff".

Ok, that's hyperbole, since Planescape DID have lots of goals for the groups beyond their alignment. I'm not seeing where you'd actually lose anything by taking PS to 4e mechanics.

What can you do with PS with 3e mechanics that you expressly cannot do with 4e?

 

[GSHamster]

I don't think that advancing Planescape's timeline by 1000 years actually changes anything. Factions come and go, various powers rise and fall, but to truely change Planescape you'd have to change the underlying philosophies.

The Unity of Rings, the Rule of Three, Center of the Multiverse and maybe the Blood War are the constants of Planescape. However, changing those completely changes Planescape to something that is not-Planescape.

So on one level, you could do a new Planescape, with all new factions and philosophies, but it's still the same old Planescape, if that makes any sense.

 

[El Mahdi]

. . . I can't at all get behind the argument that it's somehow "unfair" to the fans of that setting. After all, if the line simply ended, they wouldn't be getting new stuff either. This way, there's still new material. Some people will love the new setting, some people will borrow from the new stuff to run the old stuff, and some people will ignore the new stuff and only use the old stuff--but nobody has lost anything that they wouldn't also have lost if the line simply stopped.
. . .

I agree 100%. If there was no new material for a campaign setting, fans would either let it die a quiet death, or make up there own stuff. If a campaign is updated, and people don't like it, they can either let it die a quiet death (or complain loudly for a "not so quiet death"), or make up there own stuff. Same thing either way. So how does this hurt anybody or come off as unfair.

As far as resetting a campaign back to zero, I think this would be absolute suicide for a game company. If you do this you have only two options:

1. Take the campaign back to the beginning - keep everything that happened in the previous timeline as canon - essentially reprint all of the old material, but updated for your new system - and then have everybody play back through events that are already written in stone.

2. Take the campaign back to the beginning, and then start anew - creating new history and events (a complete retcon and re-envisioning).

The problem with #1 is very few people enjoy running campaigns and adventures where they have no control over major events (as has been said by a lot of people on these forums - example: FR Avatar Crisis adventures). I just don't see how a game company could make adequate revenue off this approach.

The problem with #2 is, if fans feel abandoned and betrayed when a campaign world is updated, imagine the feelings if their favorite campaign, the one for which they have a library of source material, is completely retconned, absolutely invalidating their library of "canon" materials. I don't see how a game company could make any revenue off this aproach.


If a company has a property that has been a fan favorite, and bottom line, a good revenue producer, they are going to keep using it. They'd be stupid not to. If you don't like it, don't use it. I just can't understand feeling betrayed or cheated by this.

(Now if the product is meant to be a sourcebook, but doesn't have all of the info needed to be a complete sourcebook, and that info can only come from another product that you also have to buy, that's not cool. But then again, that's another thread entirely.)