New Realms = Old School

[Derulbaskul]

Very cool, Windjammer.

I would love to brainstorm some ideas for all of those locations at some point but it is really difficult on all the boards I frequent to collaborate on anything to do with FR4E because it inevitably provokes an edition war.

Hmmm... maybe over at loremaster.org?

 

[Mournblade94]

If only more people saw it that way. The 4e FRCS is exactly what a modern "fill-in-your-own-numbers" FR set in the spirit of the Grey Box should have been.

No one complains about the format of the new FR. It is the content that is fit for diapers.

Admin here - see my caution below, please. ~ Piratecat

They changed the setting to please those that wanted to swim in DM-created setting-expansion instead of ever-increasing gobs of predetermined lore. But whatever.

If a DM could not create their own setting expansions in the 3rd edition forgotten realms, than they are not very good DMs. That classic argument of 'too much lore', fails on every level. I never had a problem making my own lore for forgotten realms. I enjoyed "the predetermined" lore as well. Never once did that hurt my game.

Because there was an abundance of complainers and intellectual laziness on the part of DM's they had to completely CHANGE the realms? Doesn't make much sense.

I know of two people in New Jersey that run Mutant and Masterminds to the current Marvel Universe (One being myself). They do not change canon, and they are fine examples of how you can make expanded worlds from 'predetermined' content.

Hardest part of the M&M games was finally settling on stats for the published NPC heroes.

 

[Kurtomatic]

Thanks tremendously for posting this, Windjammer!

I've recently had two different problems: I play LFR at a local gaming clubhouse and wanted to mess around with My Realms (MYRE) adventures, but I have some creative problems fitting into the LFR format; I was also considering a West Marches-esque sandbox home campaign to make social organization of the game easier, but lack enough recruitable players to make that format really work. So thanks beaucoup for showing me how to get the chocolate in the peanut butter!

I really like the wash media texture. Its got a lot of information for a player map, though. Still, a major improvement over the uninspiring FRCG maps. Bravo!

I will definitely be paying attention to any further posts/threads on this effort.

 

[D'karr]

Very cool, Windjammer.

I would love to brainstorm some ideas for all of those locations at some point but it is really difficult on all the boards I frequent to collaborate on anything to do with FR4E because it inevitably provokes an edition war.

Hmmm... maybe over at loremaster.org?

That is a great place to talk and brainstorm about FR4E. In addition, you should see their interviews section. You get the opportunity to talk directly to a lot of the authors and designers.

I highly recommend it.

 

[rounser]

I think what the OP said was related to FR´s development as a setting. The Grey Box was a sandbox-friendly sketch of an interesting campaign world which encouraged the DM to fill in his own details. But Greenwood was a prolific author and the TSR guys stuffed all kinds of detail into the world, so FR lost that feeling and made it much harder to play in certain ways.

The new FR is mostly concerned about giving you tight little sketches of areas where your campaign can take place, and leave the rest to you. So, from the viewpoint of someone who looks at his Grey Box with a waxen, happy smile in his eyes, this IS old-school. Not temple-of-the-frog-oldschool, true. More Pool-of-Radiance oldschool.

Okay, this is nonsense. Take it from someone who ran Ruins of Adventure (the module version of Pool of Radiance) adapted to 3E, and scythed away many encounters - you have no hope of running this style of campaign in 4E because the combats take far too long to resolve in that system. 4E is not oldschool in this way, if it's oldschool at all (which I don't believe it is). For similar reasons it's not a good choice for sandboxes either, IMO.

I happen to think that the 4E enthusiasts' claims of oldschooldom are a desperate clambering for legitimacy, which speaks for itself in terms of lack of confidence in standing on it's own feet and hypocrisy in terms of trying to have your cake and eat it. On one hand you trash genuine oldschool systems in an attempt to boost 4E, and on the other try to borrow from their cachet of respect.

And if we're just afraid of change (as per your "clever" cat cartoon), then you're just a bandwagoner and a neophile, with zero judgement of objective quality in a similar way to how you imply we are.

 

[Keefe the Thief]

No one complains about the format of the new FR. It is the content that is fit for diapers.

Oooh, comparing something you don´t like to without using the word. I foresee a great post.

If a DM could not create their own setting expansions in the 3rd edition forgotten realms, than they are not very good DMs. That classic argument of 'too much lore', fails on every level. I never had a problem making my own lore for forgotten realms. I enjoyed "the predetermined" lore as well. Never once did that hurt my game.

Aahh, i expected that. "I never had that problem" = "That problem doesn´t exist." Even combined with the tried and proven "but if YOU have that problem, you can´t be a very good DM." Thank you very much.

FR is a wall, and i decide where the nails go on which my pictures will be placed. The Grey Box gave me some nails and said "you decide about the rest". After 2e and 3e publishing, my wall looked like one in a toilet: full of stuff i neither cared about nor wanted, making it really hard to see that old, weathered yet flavourful texture my wall originally possessed.

Now somebody painted my wall anew, inspired by the old painting that came before. We lost some stuff in the process, but it was for the best: the grand vision remains, and i can again decide how to expand those few yet well-placed nails the realms authors provided.

 

[Vartan]

It's part-and-parcel with the One True Wayism of the 4th Edition design team. They picked one "sweet spot" that matched either their preferences or their marketing plan and that's the only way of playing that 4th Edition is designed to support.

D&D has gone from catering to a wide audience of many different tastes to catering to a very specific and narrow audience.

I disagree: as a DM, my approach to campaign design and my group's approach to play is the same under 4E rules as it was under 2E. The designers--as always--present a playstyle "template" in the rulebooks, but that hasn't stopped us from playing a different sort of game.

While running 4E I've had to adjust my DM-ing style with regards to combat: the system assumes that PCs will use their combat resources over the course of multiple battles between extended rest, and I tend to run less combat-intensive D&D campaigns, so I'm still learning how to design challenging battles in 4E.

That being said, every system I've ever run has required me to make similar adjustments, so I don't feel like 4E's ruleset has made my job harder than did BECMI, 2E or 3E. The 4E rules also offer a lot of conveniences that were absent from those editions and, on the balance, I feel like it gives us more of the tools we need to run our style of D&D campaign than did previous editions.

I think that your perception of "one-wayism" in 4E design is just as present in the design of any edition of D&D (or any other RPG, for that matter) and that any gaming group can use those rules in the service of any campaign style they can imagine.

 

[Mournblade94]

Oooh, comparing something you don´t like to without using the word. I foresee a great post.

So if I used the word it would have been easier for you? Read the forum rules and you will see that is not grandma friendly.

Aahh, i expected that. "I never had that problem" = "That problem doesn´t exist." Even combined with the tried and proven "but if YOU have that problem, you can´t be a very good DM." Thank you very much.

Clearly the problem did not exist. Obviously you have heard this argument before and were unable to refute it then as well. A good dm certainly would have been able to work with it. Maybe old FR was like the hardcore difficulty, and WOTC felt they needed to lower the Difficulty to easymode. I don't know. I also don't know of a DM that could not handle the old realms. Also Note I never addressed *YOU* or claimed you were a bad DM.

 

[Mournblade94]

double post.

 

[jaerdaph]

"Old school" is one of those terms that even its most adamant champions can't seem to define in terms of what it is — rather they always talk about what it isn't.

"Old School" is like pornography - I know it when I see it.

(mad props and a shout out to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart.)