Two New Settings For D&D This Year

Aldarc said:

I can't say that I agree with that, and it's also one of THE THINGS that I hate most about Planescape, namely its desire to subsume its ethos onto all other settings as an omni-setting. Destroy that disease of a thought with fire. Yuck. This is one of the biggest things that keeps me from liking this setting. (That and the sophist nihilism.)

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But that's such an easy thing to fix. "Currently there is little to no travel between Sigil and material plane X". Tada. Done. Case closed.

Yaarel said:

Yeah, if WotC is going to wade into those controversial waters of Arabian culture, I want to see a Mideast cultural ethnic diversity, including Israel.

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I have one!

It had Jews, the orthodox Greeks, the Seljuks (and many of their divisions), the Arabs, the Armenians, the Crusaders states (and the roman church), the church of the east, the Persians, the Ismaili, the Yazidi....

If I published that, it would be the last thing I ever got to publish... can you imagine the pushback? There is no way to do this "right" (it's been discussed before).

Ancalagon said:

But that's such an easy thing to fix. "Currently there is little to no travel between Sigil and material plane X". Tada. Done. Case closed.

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It's less about the travel and more about the ethos that "Planescape is always right" in how it presents itself as an omni-setting that subsumes all other settings within itself.

TwoSix said:

The fact that the kingdom management minigame could be ported (with effort) into another campaign world doesn't change the fact that Cerilia is an independent setting specifically built to support the assumptions and flavor of that minigame. Cerilia <> Faerun <> Golarian <> Greyhawk <> Mystara, despite them all being generic medieval campaign settings with a mish-mash of kingdoms.

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That's the thing. Generic medieval.

That's what is stale and boring: Pseudo-medieval and pseudo-European. It doesn't matter how you try to make the elves mysterious or add more blood and mud, it's all been done to death. It's always been recognised that D&D doesn't need to be pseudo-medieval or pseudo-European, even before Dark Sun was first published we had adventures set in Hyperboria, Atlantis, Wonderland and Blackmoor (post apocalypse with remains of advanced tech). But in the last few years we have been served and endless diet of pseudo-medievalism.

Coroc said:

@Paul Farquhar "...Arthas (I know, it's a retcon to canon),... "

I hope not.

Although if i imagine some Drizzt entering Athas by crashing his spelljammer within the cannibal halfling jungle .....

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Baldur's Gate II has Cannibal Halfings from Arthas and Solamanic knights from Krynn in a planer sphere in Athkatla (Forgotten Realms) so it wouldn't be the first time that has been violated...

Not to mention a tiefling bard from Sigil.

Ralif Redhammer said:

Nothing directly, at least that I saw. But in Mearls’ Jocks Machina session, Paul (the Big Show) Wight was playing a half-giant from Athas, so there’s that.

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Paul Farquhar said:

That's the thing. Generic medieval.

That's what is stale and boring: Pseudo-medieval and pseudo-European. It doesn't matter how you try to make the elves mysterious or add more blood and mud, it's all been done to death. It's always been recognised that D&D doesn't need to be pseudo-medieval or pseudo-European, even before Dark Sun was first published we had adventures set in Hyperboria, Atlantis, Wonderland and Blackmoor (post apocalypse with remains of advanced tech). But in the last few years we have been served and endless diet of pseudo-medievalism.

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It may not be a setting you like, but it is a setting... for all the reasons I gave earlier.

For the reference, a game of politics and kingdom building vying for power has a lot of merit. Kingmaker fits into a similar setting and is one of Paizo’s best received Adventure Paths. Game of Thrones is said to be fairly popular I’m told. Birthright had an Iron Throne over a year before Game of Thrones was first published.

If you don’t like that cool. However lots of us do.

Aldarc said:

Sorta, but where I will defend the Realms is that its cosmology (from what I recall) did not initially uphold the Great Wheel - the sort of sacred cosmology of Planescape - but, instead, it had its own World Tree Cosmology.

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Just for sake of accuracy, I'm pretty sure the World Tree Cosmology was introduced in 3e. Prior to that it was assumed the Great Wheel was the only cosmology. (So all campaign settings are really Planescape! Ha! There is no Forgotten Realms - only Planescape, berk!) Of course, many of us just see it as one big metaphysical soup that different people divide up differently. In fact, when it comes to the Great Wheel arrangement of that metaphysical soup, I blame the modrons.

Aldarc said:

Sure, but only in as much as D&D is not a roleplaying game but just a miniatures wargame.

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Yeah, there seems to be a growing theme in this thread of "If I ignore a lot of details and only pay attention to what I'm interested in, these settings look the same." Seems kinda silly to me.

As I said earlier, I personally don't see what makes Greyhawk unique, but I also willingly admit that's MY limitation, not Greyhawk's. I'm sure a Greyhawk fan could talk my ear off for hours on all of the fun and interesting aspects of Greyhawk that they are passionate about and I'm certainly not going to be a jerk and tell them they are wrong just because I didn't see it before. (If anything, that sort of excitement is usually contagious and would likely make me more of a Greyhawk fan.)

Aldarc said:

It's less about the travel and more about the ethos that "Planescape is always right" in how it presents itself as an omni-setting that subsumes all other settings within itself.

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Originally that was because Gary Gygax only invented one cosmology and didn't think you needed more. It had nothing to do with Planescape.

Planescape actually started the shift away from that and was more about a theme that was equal parts "Everyone is right!" and "No one really knows!" The Manual of the Planes was clear that this was the one true way and Planescape followed that mechanically because there simply wasn't any other options until 3e. But thematically, in the flavor of the setting, the entire point of Planescape was about those equal parts "Everyone is right!" and "No one really knows!" Sure, it liked to joke around with the term "clueless prime," but if you pay attention, a lot of the time it's used ironically to show how clueless the planar NPC actually is.

Sure, Planescape unified all the settings, but so did Spelljammer - both with very different styles, and both entirely preserving the original settings. Being the connective tissue doesn't mean it's suddenly everything and subsumes it all. Highways unify cities, but that doesn't make every city suddenly just a highway. Each city still has it's own character, and the highways themselves can even have their own character as well.

Planescape was always presented as a unique setting that occurred in the Planes rather than just any adventures in the Planes (just set any version of the Manual of the Planes next to any Planescape product, and the differences can be pretty clear if you look). Spelljammer was also presented as a unique setting that occurred in space. Both can touch other settings and are easily accessible back and forth, but saying that just because Spelljammer linked all settings, it subsumes them and all settings are just Spelljammer completely misses everything that makes Spelljammer unique (as well as all of those settings unique). It's the same with Planescape. Both were presented as ways to unite the settings, not replace them.

kenmarable said:

Just for sake of accuracy, I'm pretty sure the World Tree Cosmology was introduced in 3e. Prior to that it was assumed the Great Wheel was the only cosmology.

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Not too familiar with FR prior to 3e, so that may be the case.

(So all campaign settings are really Planescape! Ha! There is no Forgotten Realms - only Planescape, berk!) Of course, many of us just see it as one big metaphysical soup that different people divide up differently. In fact, when it comes to the Great Wheel arrangement of that metaphysical soup, I blame the modrons.

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Your Planescape-slanted explanation kinda rubs me the wrong way, especially when it comes to Eberron's cosmology. We don't need some sort of grand unifying explanation as to why the cosmologies are different anymore than trying to explain Star Wars' concept of the Force into Star Trek. It strips a lot of the individual charm out of settings, again imposing Planescape norms on other settings.

As I said earlier, I personally don't see what makes Greyhawk unique, but I also willingly admit that's MY limitation, not Greyhawk's. I'm sure a Greyhawk fan could talk my ear off for hours on all of the fun and interesting aspects of Greyhawk that they are passionate about and I'm certainly not going to be a jerk and tell them they are wrong just because I didn't see it before. (If anything, that sort of excitement is usually contagious and would likely make me more of a Greyhawk fan.)

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I would suggest that Greyhawk's idiosyncratic value is more about tone and focus rather than content. It was the world of '60s-'70s fantasy pulp and sword-and-sorcery murderhobos. Less about the world-saving heroic epic fantasy of Forgotten Realms and more about schmucks the likes of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser looking for their next score. It's also the setting of the most iconic dungeons and adventures. It's a Points of Light setting where towns, heroes, and dungeons can just be dropped almost effortlessly into the map. So in some respects, Greyhawk is a DM's paradise as it exists less as a storied "setting" - though I am sure someone more knowledgeable will debate that point - and more as a sandbox and GM toolkit. The more that I GM, the more that I appreciate Greyhawk-style settings.

Paul Farquhar said:

That's the thing. Generic medieval.

That's what is stale and boring: Pseudo-medieval and pseudo-European. It doesn't matter how you try to make the elves mysterious or add more blood and mud, it's all been done to death. It's always been recognised that D&D doesn't need to be pseudo-medieval or pseudo-European, even before Dark Sun was first published we had adventures set in Hyperboria, Atlantis, Wonderland and Blackmoor (post apocalypse with remains of advanced tech). But in the last few years we have been served and endless diet of pseudo-medievalism.

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That's fine, but being in the same general genre doesn't make two things the same. I understanding you're being intentionally hyperbolic, but you're watering down your point by doing so, in the same way that [MENTION=58172]Yaarel[/MENTION] is by saying every polytheistic setting is Forgotten Realms.