What should the default setting be for 4th edition?

[Staffan]

The problem with 2nd edition was that the core books mentioned priests of specific mythos, but provided no useful guidelines to build them. When they did introduce specific priests in the Complete Priest's Handbook, most of the new classes made the cleric irrelevant.

I think you're mistaking Complete Priest's Handbook for Faiths & Avatars. The CPHB is one of the few splatbooks ever published that actually reduces the power of the splat it is meant for.

Here's an example of a priesthood from CPHB, with the flavor text and stuff removed:

Community

God of a specific city.

Alignment: Most are TN, but they can be any alignment. Ditto for the priests.
Minimum Ability Scores: Wisdom 10, Charisma 12. Wisdom or Charisma 16 means +5% experience: Wisdom and Charisma 16 means +10% experience.
Races Allowed: All. Might be limited based on the community (e.g. a primarily dwarven city might only allow dwarven priests.)
Nonweapon and Weapon Proficiencies: Nonweapon Proficiencies Required: Local Hisrory, Nonweapon Proficiencies Recommended: Etiquette, Heraldry, Ancient History, Reading/Writing, Religion. Weapon Proficiencies Required: None. Nonweapon Proficiency Group Crossovers: priest, General.
Weapon and Armor Restrictions: Weapons Permitted: Dagger/dirk, knife, and any two from the following list (the DM decides based on which weapons are most representative of the city in question: at least one weapon should be in the 1d8 or greater damage range): Battle axe, bows (all), crossbow, flails (both), harpoon, lance, mace, morning star, net, polearm, quarterstaff, spear, sword/bastard, sword/cutlass, sword/long, sword/rapier, sword/sabre, sword/short, sword/twohanded, trident, warhammer, Armor Permitted: All armor and shields. Oriental Campaigns: Also added to choices list: Bo stick, daikyu, katana. All together, these constitute Good combat abilities.
Other Limitations: Priests of a civic deity must always wear clothing indicating their priestly status when appearing in public.
Spheres of Influence: Major Access to All, Creation, Healing. Minor Access to Combat, Protection. These choices don't give the priest access to very many spells, so this priesthood will have good Granted Powers.
Note that the DM may wish to substitute some other choice for the Major Access to Creation and the Minor Access to Combat if the civic deity that he has created has secondary attributes not reflected in this listing.
Powers: Incite Berserker Rage (as per the Designing Faiths chapter), Soothing Word (as per the Designing Faiths chapter). Turn Undead (the Community is a gathering of the living, and so priests of this sect are no friends to the undead).

I especially draw your attention to the anemic spell selection this priesthood has. A first level priest of a city god has 10 spells to choose from: Bless, Combine, Detect Evil, Purify Food & Drink, Magical Stone, Shillelagh, Cure Light Wounds, Endure Cold/Heat, Protection from Evil, and Sanctuary. A regular cleric would have 19 (with reservations for some spells that might be in more than one sphere). This deficiency gets bigger at higher levels: A city priest has access to exactly two spells at 4th level (Cure Serious Wounds and Neutralize Poison), while the cleric has 16.

Heck, the CPHB even had a section dedicated to explaining that in the context of the book, the generic cleric class was overpowered and should have its spell selection cut back severely.

Now, other books (notably the F&A series) had priesthoods that were a lot more powerful than this, but the CPHB is one of the "tamest" splatbooks ever.

 

[an_idol_mind]

I do not believe this to be true. As I recall, Ryan Dancey mentioned this way back when. I think the rights to publish the novels are partially held by a publishing house (Random House? I don't read D&D fiction, so I'm not sure.) I wasn't suggesting Ed Greenwood held any rights to FR.

But if you can cite something that proves me wrong, I'd love to see it.

I own several Realms novels, and none of them mention any other publishing house rights that do not belong to WotC. I have similarly noticed no notations in the game material. If there was a rights issue, I imagine it could be found at least in the fine print of the material somewhere.

I'd also love to see some proof that FR is actually still a cash cow, if in fact it ever really was. Finally, the novels could continue to make money for decades, but that wouldn't guarantee that FR would make a viable setting for gaming books, in the eyes of Hasbro and their lawyers.

The Realms is the only setting to have survived all three editions of AD&D. It is also one of the biggest marketing names that WotC has. Its novels are consistently best sellers, and it also benefits from many successful translations in other areas -- most notably computer games, where franchises like Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, and Neverwinter Nights have cleaned up.

As far as actual sales numbers, the game material seems to be selling well on Amazon (which is unfortunately one of the only places I can get hard sales numbers for these things). Given the amount of marketing and longevity of the Realms, I would say that one would have to more to disprove its success than to prove it. If the Realms were ever doing poorly, it would not have survived this long, especially considering the many other settings that got axed when WotC took over TSR.

 

[Twiggly the Gnome]

I chose no implied setting. I'd favor a toolbox approach to the core books. Let the DM and players decicide if their D&D includes archetypes patterned after Sir Galahad, Qui Chang Kane, Talos, and/or Bilbo Baggins.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

I do not believe this to be true. As I recall, Ryan Dancey mentioned this way back when. I think the rights to publish the novels are partially held by a publishing house (Random House? I don't read D&D fiction, so I'm not sure.) I wasn't suggesting Ed Greenwood held any rights to FR.

I'm just holding Bloodwalk, one of the most recent FR novels. It says "Published by Wizards of the Coast, INc. Forgotten Realms, Wizards of the Coast, and their respective logos are trademarks of WIzards of the Coast, INc., in the U.S.A: and other countries.

I con't see any company mentioned in there except Wizards.

In Lost Empires, a pretty recent FR supplement, there are a couple of distributors mentioned, but I don't think they have any rights to it.

Besides, you were saying they could keep distributing novels even if they stop doing the supplements. How is this relevant if you think they own the setting but not the novel rights? Wouldn't it be logical to stop the novels (because of the rights issues) but not the supplements?

Besides, as I said, even if there were rights issues, they can't be enough stop making a product. They would have stopped long ago then.

I'd also love to see some proof that FR is actually still a cash cow, if in fact it ever really was.

Remember when they discontinued all those settings? Ravenloft was given away, dragonlance was given away, Dark Sun, Mystara, Spelljammer, and others were completely abandoned (aside from fan projects) and Planescape gets a treatment not unlike GreyHawk gets.

They kept making new editions and supplements for the Realms. Why would they do that if the Realms wasn't their best racing horse?

And of course, there are the novels. There's something approaching 200 novels for the Realms - more than for the next three ranking settings combined - and the number keeps growing. Why would they commission or write that many novels for something that doesn't generate a lot of income?

Finally, the novels could continue to make money for decades, but that wouldn't guarantee that FR would make a viable setting for gaming books, in the eyes of Hasbro and their lawyers.

Since when do lawyers make business decisions?

Anyway, I think the two product lines are connected: The novels increase the sales for RPG material, and the RPG material increases the novels' sales. It's cool to read about characters in a rich, detailed gaming world, and then being able to explore that very world, or read novels about characters that live in the very world you play each week.

 

[ssampier]

At least I'm not calling warforged robots - how mature is that?

But really, I gave my reasons why I voted Eberron. The fact that some posts are ripe with Eberron hate wasn't really a factor. To each his own.

Right. Warforged are not robots, they are sentient constructs. Regular golems are closer to robots than warforged are (not having a will of its own). They are probably closer to cyborgs, but they lack technology since they are magically created.

 

[wingsandsword]

The core rules of D&D should be as setting neutral as possible. Provide examples of things that could be used in the core rules, with the caveat that not everything there has to be, or even should be, in the same setting, like deities, an assortment of generic deities similar to deities from the main settings (a sun god like Lathander/Pelor for example) and D&D staple deities that cross between settings (Bahamut, Tiamat, Lolth, Grummsh, ect.), elemental spirits, and some from myth and legend (Thor, Osiris, Zeus, ect), and examples of religious orders not inherently tied to an anthropomorphic deity.

I would personally like to see it be Forgotten Realms, but I know rationally that it's probably not good business sense, since the realms do have their haters as well as their lovers.

If they made Eberron the 4e core, that would be a big reason to ignore 4e as far as I'm concerned, or at least an admission that D&D is going places I'm totally uninterested. Robot PC's and NPC item factories into the core PHB? No way!

To please the most people, or at least displease the most people the least, the D&D core should probably be as setting-neutral as possible.

 

[wingsandsword]

Right. Warforged are not robots, they are sentient constructs. Regular golems are closer to robots than warforged are (not having a will of its own). They are probably closer to cyborgs, but they lack technology since they are magically created.

Actually, by d20 Modern/Future rules, robots are type Construct: sentient constructs, the Biodroid and Bioreplica robots are even PCable at ECL +0, sounds like they're pretty much the same as Warforged to me.

 

[Turanil]

Just to add an opinion, since I am not interested in 4e...

Default setting should be FR, because it is widely supported, where Greyhawk is not. Eberron seems too special for being the default setting of D&D. Of course it could also be setting neutral, but since D&D has become its own genre, it doesn't hurt to be rooted in a setting. For me FR seems the most logical choice (even if I never liked FR...)

 

[an_idol_mind]

One of the most important things to keep in mind with a core setting for D&D is that it needs to turn as few people off as possible. Eberron and the Realms both have large factions of players who don't like those settings, so they aren't really viable unless WotC wants to turn off a good portion of its potential audience. A setting like Greyhawk or Mystara make decent core settings because they're so generic that almost no one hates them. The biggest problem they face is that some people are just really, really indifferent to them.

 

[jdrakeh]

Personally I would prefer that D&D be as world neutral as possible.

Well, I'd agree, but -- even without a list of gods D&D, as a rule set, already makes some pretty specific setting assumptions (e.g. the existence of demi-humans, magic being based on memorization and/or prayer, black and white morality, all priests being spell casters, etc).