What should the default setting be for 4th edition?

[JVisgaitis]

Violet Dawn, yeah right... Can I vote Scarred Lands too so Nightfall doesn't have to? On a serious note, Eberron is too weird with the Warforged and Action Points. I'm fine with no implied setting, but I wouldn't mind Greyhawk staying in there.

 

[Byrons_Ghost]

Much as I would love to see Mystara/Known World return, I voted "none implied".

Really, I shudder to think what the current cheese-splat proliferation would do the Known World. It's probably better off staying where it is.

 

[Gargoyle]

It strikes me that a good way to include Greyhawk without it being overbearing is to give it the treatment that the Rules Cyclopedia gave Mystara. Just add a 15-20 page appendix with a quick overview of the world and a few maps. If the players want more, they can buy some Greyhawk products or poke around online.

I would be fine with that option, whether it was Greyhawk, Mystara, FR, or Eberron. Or Birthright. I would be particularly happy if they split it up so that player material like incomplete maps were in the PHB, and DM material like complete maps and an adventure, were in the DMG. But if they don't do it right, they should just leave it all out and give us more tools to build our own.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

I voted GreyHawk - provided they keep the current scheme going.

I like how it is now: They use a pretty vanilla setting (Greyhawk, without any funky stuff), and only use a wee bit of it - just enough to have examples for everything.

Eberron

No way. It would stop to be D&D. Eberron might be a great setting for some people, but it sure as hell isn't for everyone. It has too much stuff that isn't normal. Warforged, Magical Trains, all that.

I wish them all luck with the setting, but it better remain optional.

Plus Ironwolf wants Warforged as a core race.

I don't. The core races are fine as they are (minus that half-orc, maybe).

Even without sourcebook support from wotc, I suggest that Greyhawk is actually in a new golden age of popularity. Look at all of the love that Dungeon gives it. FR and Eberron don't have 20 level mega-adventures published for them.

FR gets something like that around Cormyr. Mysteries of the Moonsea is a campaign arc, and City of the Spider Queen isn't exactly small.

I think the default setting should be SpellJammer, personally. That or Ravenloft. It would be different!

That's the point. It would be different. The standard setting is not supposed to be different. It's supposed to be as vanilla as it can get. It sets the baseline. Optional campaign settings can be as funky as a bad LSD trip, with magical spaceships, living land that both punishes and rewards evil deeds, robots that are alive, running luggage, drugged-up children that think they're angels and whathaveyou.

Actually, I expect 4.0 to be setting neutral, and I expect FR to be the only WotC campaign setting.

I don't. they've been pushing Eberron pretty hard. I fear it will be around for a while (but I don't mind, as long as they don't force us to use that crap.

 

[Garnfellow]

My own personal preference for campaign settings leans toward a homebrew, Greyhawk, or Wilderlands game. Despite this, and though I haven't played it, everything I've seen suggests that the best base setting for a new edition of D&D would be . . .

Eberron, because it was actually built with the D&D game in mind.

It seems like every other setting is either actively running away from D&D (We're nothing like the D&D game, see, because our elves are EVIL, and can FLY! And our halflings are GREEN and CANNIBALS!) or at least suppressing many of major tropes of D&D. Both Greyhawk and the Forgotten realms have this weird tension between the D&D rules and a low-magic, ye olde medieval/Tolkeinesque ideal.

I think Eberron's embracing of D&D "reality," along with its emphasis on wild and wooly pulp-style exploration, makes it a great candidate for being the default setting for D&D.

I also think you want to have your default setting be a pretty broad and shallow one, allowing individual DMs plenty of latitude to make it their own. I don't think you would want a deep, intricate setting with layers and layers of detail, metaplots, and so on -- too much of a burden. In this respect, I think Eberron's relative newness works in its favor, while Faerun's long and detailed history works against it. The Wilderlands is great in terms of this broad and shallow nature, but it also is a little further down on the low-magic, grim-and gritty, and science-fantasy axes than what I think of as "baseline D&D."

 

[Crothian]

No way. It would stop to be D&D. Eberron might be a great setting for some people, but it sure as hell isn't for everyone.

Greyhawk isn't for everyone either. I'd perfer they have a default setting that people actually play and there is support for. One that actually reflects the rules as a world and not just a bunch of meaningless names.

 

[pawsplay]

I don't think Eberron is the answer to the so-called "tension." It's a kind of lunatics-running-the-asylum answer.

No, give me Greyhawk or Mystara, turn some of those dials down, and get permanent magic and magic items under control. Bring monster hit dice, particularly dragon hit dice, back into the realms of logic. Excise every prestige class that is "X, but magical!" Like the assassin... a character with sneak attack, but magical! The vigilante... a fighter rogue, but magical! It would go a long way toward grounding D&D in its pseudo-medieval roots if Prestige Classes emphasized non-magical abilities.

 

[mattcolville]

Should Greyhawk stay on as the default setting for D&D? Personally I would prefer that D&D be as world neutral as possible.

I voted FR, but now I want to change my vote.

FR is a much larger brand than Greyhawk and that's a damn good reason, whatever else you think of the two settings, to attach it as the base setting for D&D.

However, that's also part of the problem. For most people, D&D *is* roleplaying. They're the same thing. WotC currently benefits from offering players a choice of settings and if they went with FR as the base setting, they'd be taking the two strongest brands they control, and implicitly saying "these are the same." In new users' mindsets, the idea of setting would dissappear. D&D and FR would become the same thing. In fact, I'll wager there's been discussion at WotC at some time in the past about marrying the two brands.

And part of me believes that Greyhawk is a better setting because it's more open, more Conany, more Dying Earthy, and the brand is well suited for that.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

I voted Eberron. I just want them to drop GH and hopefully sell it or license it to someone who will do it justice other than having some names attached to prestige classes. Heck they can't even get the gods right in the PHB. Is Cuthbert still LN?

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

I would far prefer Mystara/Known World. But if the "implied" setting in the Core rules gets treated like it treats Greyhawk, then I would want no implied setting at all. It is embarassing what the Core 3.x rules does for a setting. The Rules Cyclopedia did it right.

So I voted no implied setting.