D&D 4E Tropes of the Nentir Vale

[Garthanos]

I suppose its 4e specific

Nentir Vale (Tabletop Game) - TV Tropes

A campaign setting for the Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) fantasy role-playing game. When the game was updated into its 4th edition in 2008, Wizards of the Coast decided to do something special. The previous edition had used a setting that was …

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[Parmandur]

Really cool setting: what impressed me the most about the Points of Light idea when 4E first came out was how it mirrored the way my College group was "playing in Greyhawk" supposedly. Also a fan of how the metaphysics of the Dawn War setting make any sort of sense (though nonsense metaphysics are very fun too).

 

[Garthanos]

Really cool setting: what impressed me the most about the Points of Light idea when 4E first came out was how it mirrored the way my College group was "playing in Greyhawk" supposedly. Also a fan of how the metaphysics of the Dawn War setting make any sort of sense (though nonsense metaphysics are very fun too).

I think maybe we are snagging things from mythology cause I also found strong parallels all the way back.

 

[Ancalagon]

I really like how there was a dragon in almost every direction - a land bounded by dragons...

 

[S'mon]

Love Nentir Vale, and its forerunner Elsir Vale - GMing Red Hand of Doom in 5e right now. I should run a 5e Nentir Vale campaign some time. Threats to the Nentir Vale would convert to 5e easily enough.

 

[Aldarc]

Currently running a 5e campaign in the Nentir Vale. I'm a big fan of the setting as a PoL sandbox setting.

Overall, there was a lot of influence from real world mythology, particularly the motif of the Chaoskampf, that I particularly liked. One of the prevalent ideas within the "Chaoskampf" worldview in a lot of West Asian (e.g., Judean, Babylonian, etc.) and North African (e.g,. Egyptian) ancient worldviews is that 'chaos' remains a pervasive threat in the world that could potentially undo creation. This requires the vigilance of mortal forces of order and stability (e.g., kings ruling, cities protecting, priesthood performing sacrifices, etc.) to bring and maintain order in the world. The threats of chaos experienced in the mortal world represent a microcosm of the grander cosmological macrocosm.

So you got smatterings of Greco-Roman, Levantine-Mesopotamian, and Indo-Iranian mythology in the mix. Plus, similarities with the beloved Scarred Lands campaign setting, for obvious reasons. What this meant for the Nentir Vale is that everything in the world had a "place" within the cosmic struggle, even if you are only seeing it from the grounds-eye perspective of mortals in the countryside. THAT is sorta what living in a world with a mythological worldview should feel like.

That's what I liked about the Nentir Vale. It felt less embedded in the Good vs. Evil moral axis, but, rather, on the Law vs. Chaos axis. The order of the Vale exists under a threatened state by chaos. The empire of Nerath had collapsed under a constant onslaught of invading gnolls. The wilderness is chaotic. One of the major settlements, Fallcrest, had been overrun by orcs about 80 years prior. So there is feeling of vulnerability even when one resides in these "Poli of Light."

I could keep going, but I'll just say that there is a lot that I absolutely love about the Nentir Vale from the perspective of a GM. I'm not entirely sure if Mike Mearls "got it" when running his Nentir Vale campaign. I do think that Mearls had some GREAT innovations (e.g., the god Torog pulling things down into the Underdark and pushing things up from the Underdark), but the idea of having the gods all be ascended mortals was almost a shark-jumping moment that undercut the entire mythos of the Vale. Todd Kenreck, who took over for Mearls after he left the game, seemed to have far less of an idea what the Vale setting was about - I believe that he even just nuked Fallcrest - and I think he even just teleported the players to Forgotten Realms instead.

 

[MonkeezOnFire]

but the idea of having the gods all be ascended mortals was almost a shark-jumping moment that undercut the entire mythos of the Vale.

I'm curious, what makes you say this? The deities of the Vale always struck me as closer to being real characters than the faceless representations that other settings have. In the Dawn War they actually struggle at first to put aside their differences and actually work together to fight the primordials. That's a detail that reveals these entities are not perfect and are actually quite flawed individuals. So having them be originally mortals doesn't seem a far cry from the default to me.

Mind you I didn't really get into the Nentir Vale until after 4e was finished and I haven't gotten my hands on much of the material past the core books which are pretty vague. Most of my info comes from tertiary internet sources.

 

[S'mon]

I'm curious, what makes you say this? The deities of the Vale always struck me as closer to being real characters than the faceless representations that other settings have. In the Dawn War they actually struggle at first to put aside their differences and actually work together to fight the primordials. That's a detail that reveals these entities are not perfect and are actually quite flawed individuals. So having them be originally mortals doesn't seem a far cry from the default to me.

No, they are 'characters' in the manner of the Greek Gods.

 

[MonkeezOnFire]

No, they are 'characters' in the manner of the Greek Gods.

Exactly. And the Greek Gods are very powerful but they also have a tendency to behave irrationally much like a mortal would.

 

[Aldarc]

I'm curious, what makes you say this? The deities of the Vale always struck me as closer to being real characters than the faceless representations that other settings have. In the Dawn War they actually struggle at first to put aside their differences and actually work together to fight the primordials. That's a detail that reveals these entities are not perfect and are actually quite flawed individuals. So having them be originally mortals doesn't seem a far cry from the default to me.

Sure, but they are sentient agents with volition, so they will naturally have a certain reminiscent degree of "mortal behavior" to them. So there is a logical gulf between saying "these gods behave irrationally as humans would" ergo "what's wrong with the Dawn War pantheon being ascended mortals?" The vast majority of the Greco-Roman pantheon are not ascended mortals (e.g., Hercules, ~Dionysus?), though they behave irrationally and often "act as mortals." It's understood that the Gods are divine beings/powers that (mostly) descend from the Titans. There is a sense that the predate humanity.

In the Dawn War pantheon there are or were even a few gods who were ascended mortals (e.g., Nerull [deceased] and the Raven Queen), but the mythos of the Dawn War Pantheon pointed to a pre-mortal state of the cosmos of which the gods were a part. The Prime Material world of mortals derives from the gods playing around with the world the primordials created, and it is this mixing of the divine and the primordial that really gives rise to mortals and the Spirits. Mearls change kinda puts the mythology into an odd place: mortals ascend to become gods and then create mortals? The change creates a lot more problems than it solves, which is basically nothing.