D&D 4E 4E and Nitro's Kraag World

[Celebrim]

How's that for bait?

I hate to disappoint, but this is not a flame. If you are looking for a flame, don't bother reading. This is a musing I've had that I wish to put down because I want to think about it.

Let's head off misunderstanding by stating right off the bat that I really like the 'Points of Light' setting from what little I know about it. Alot of it reminds me of things I've always tried to achieve with my own home brew inspired by faerie tales, greek myths, Tolkien, Dunsany, Dickens, Lovecraft, and various other influences. It's certiainly not 'crap' or even childish. It's good stuff.

Yet I still find it offputting.

For those that don't recognize the title, there is a character called 'Nitro' in KotDT. (For those not familiar with KotDT, go google it and familiarize yourself now, not because it is necessary to understand what I'm writing, but because you are really missiing out.) Nitro is a rather dysfunctional DM with an even more dysfunctional group, and he's supposedly based off a real person and a real life gaming horror story. Nitro is remarkable in several ways, but one of them is that his home brew setting is really off the wall. Most notably, it features 'Andy Warhol' and other 20th century media/historical figures as dieties.

The thing that always struck me about this is that as excrutiating as this sounds it is also a really good idea. Nitro himself may have been a terrible DM, but his fundamental idea is about as sound as it gets. Not only is such a setting highly original, but its not so completely original that a player can't possibly get the sense of it. Not a one of us here could encounter 'Marilyn Monroe', 'Elvis Presley', or even 'Kurt Cobain' as a deity and not know something about the character and what they represented. The basic idea of the spirit of say 'Lucille Ball' standing in for the pagan gods of old is something that has been explored in interesting ways in works like 'American Gods'. I see a lot of possibility in such an idea. The fundamental idea of such a setting is IMO sound, however bad the execution appears to have been. I potentially could get behind even a setting book for 'Kraag World' - if someone better at expressing themselves than Nitro was behind it.

Yet, I would also find it rather off putting to find out 4e had adopted Nitro's Kraag World as it is fundamental setting, as I suspect would most everyone. In fact, it might well turn out that I'm one of the few people who find the idea of such a setting intriguing in its own right, and could overlook the oddity of an obviously real world inspired 'Elvis Presley' being the god of dance, male virility, and savoire faire in a land called Virnagin which is inhabited by say centaurs, elves and this not being played for laughs (usually).

I suspect 'Scattered Lights' is going to be a lot easier to digest than that, but fundamentally it is of the same character to me. However intriguing I may find it, it nonetheless remains that I feel that it is being foisted on me in a way that Dragonlance, Dark Sun, Birthright, Planescape, Eberron, and even Greyhawk weren't. All of these settings in one way or the other were interesting, but I wasn't forced to partake of them. They were not core to the game. Most of them in fact grew out of what was core to the game like hybridized flowers in a common flower bed. Everything that gave each of them a particular color was off in supplemental material, and usually supplemental setting material. For the first time, D&D seems to be departing from that standard tried and true formula and insisting that what is needed to make D&D great is a core setting to accompany its game rules.

This is just my personal opinion. And I hope I've made it clear that it is not a negative and dissmissive opinion. I even have a good measure of a respect for Nitro Fergueson's body of work, and a good bit more for the designers. But I feel nonetheless as if 'Nitro Fergueson' has been given creative control of the D&D brand. 'Nitro' is the sort of guy so caught up in how interesting his idea is, that he can't seem to understand it might not be for everyone. He's made originality a vice. (He also seems to have made one other DM virtue - instilling a sense of wonder and mystery - into a vice, and the two in combination are frightening even in settings far less original.) So interesting and original things are afoot, and I might well even enjoy playing in the designer's homebrew (as I've enjoyed other DMs original ideas) - but that doesn't mean I necessarily want to buy it.

Ok, gripe over. I hope I provoked more thought than emotion. Mostly I've always wanted to make my observations about 'Nitro' and musing about 'Golden Wyvern Adepts' lead me to notice the similarities to 'Andy Warhol'.

 

[Voss]

I honestly don't see the connection. Partly because I don't see any indications the PoL concept as being fleshed out, even in a half-arsed way, in the core books. Certainly not any more so than Greyhawk was, in theory, the core setting for 3rd. It seems more concept than concrete, if you take my meaning.

Partly I think its because I don't see the Golden Wyvern type stuff as being part of core setting or the Points of Light concept. Its just the designer's attempt at fairly light flavor that isn't really tied into any actual setting, and just failing to understand that the problem is that they just can't come up with good names. Or shake some people's sense that they're forcing organizations on the customer base.

 

[The Ubbergeek]

Partly I think its because I don't see the Golden Wyvern type stuff as being part of core setting or the Points of Light concept. Its just the designer's attempt at fairly light flavor that isn't really tied into any actual setting, and just failing to understand that the problem is that they just can't come up with good names. Or shake some people's sense that they're forcing organizations on the customer base.

I see it just as a suggested example and all taht.

 

[Celebrim]

I honestly don't see the connection. Partly because I don't see any indications the PoL concept as being fleshed out, even in a half-arsed way, in the core books.

Perhaps you are right, but if I have a false perception then I can explain where it comes from. So far the previews have focused quite heavily on the new setting of D&D compared to its new rules. Hense, my perception that the new edition focuses a compartively large portion of its material on a new well integrated setting. Indeed, even existing settings like FR are undergoing extensive fluff and flavor overhauls, which suggests to me that they strongly want to integrate existing settings to new flavor tied mechanics.

Also, from a business perspective, if you are going to have a big 'digital initiative' where you are trying to secure D&D's place in an increasingly 'paperless' world, it makes sense to want to have a single setting and rules base unifying your digital and paper products.

 

[Spinachcat]

I think it is fair to say PoL will be the default setting.

If you go back into AD&D 1e, the PoL as default was not expressly stated in the core books....but it was in many modules. Quite often, modules saw the PCs travelling far and away before encountering anything but monster filled wastelands.

I suspect PoL was chosen because it makes it easier for the GM to drop published stuff into his campaign world.

Judges Guild certainly ran with the PoL concept and their campaign setting is STILL a great playground for anyone wanting to play a PoL game.

However, I would not worry about it. In a few months post-launch, FR 4e will be released and more Eberron stuff, both settings which are essentially anti-PoL.

As for Golden Wyvern Adept...yeah, I'm queasy too...but I reserved judgement until I play the final product.


PS: Nitro Rules!!! I would love to play a Cleric of Elvis!

 

[Aloïsius]

PoL will not be enforced by 4e more than Greyhawk was by 3.5.
They spoke a lot about it because :
1) It's "new" and cause a lot of buzz.
2) It does not say anything about the rules.

So, be sure that the way "fireball" works in 4e won't stop you from running urban adventures, or that the new warlock class won't force you to remove civilized lands from your world.

 

[Voss]

Perhaps you are right, but if I have a false perception then I can explain where it comes from. So far the previews have focused quite heavily on the new setting of D&D compared to its new rules.

Again, not trying to be a jerk, but can you point me to the setting heavy previews? I know the playtests mention a fair amount of campaign specific stuff, but those struck me as essentially homebrews of whoever was running the playtest. But apart from golden wyvern and emerald frost things in the wizard implement previews, I honestly haven't seen a lot of setting material. Haven't seen a lot of crunch material until lately, admittedly, but most of the early previews just struck me as 'Here is some vague information on rules we can't go into detail on'.

Thanks

 

[WayneLigon]

I don't see any connection between the two, since 'Points of Light' isn't going to be an actual setting but more of a design philosophy that can be discarded or not, just like using the Greyhawk gods in 3E was. It's a placeholder, so to speak, just like the Greyhawk gods: something there to give a little framing device so a new GM doesn't go into the thing totally cold. Shoot, most of the Basic D&D stuff had the Known World as it's explicit setting and no-one ever complained about that as being a bad thing.

 

[Cadfan]

I think the OP post completely misses the point.

1: Points of light isn't a setting, its a design principle. Its the idea that by presuming that towns and cities are separated by wilderness and that people don't travel a bunch at low levels, you can write the areas that are important to you up front, have adventures in them, and leave a lot of blank space on the map to fill in later if it becomes important. This is a GREAT way to run campaigns. Fully fleshed out worlds require a lot of work, and if they're homebrew its difficult to translate all that information inside your head to the minds of your players. A "points of light" type setting avoids those problems, and lets you write as you go. There's really no way this can be foisted on you, but it makes an excellent core assumption for WOTC because it makes settings almost modular. Now they can write material, like adventures, and it will slip right in to a blank space on your map if you are doing a "points of light" style setting. This is much like how things are now, actually, except that now its being done intentionally instead of kind of growing that way organically. Which is certainly an improvement in my book.

2: The default cosmology IS a setting. If you're going to complain, complain about this. I will probably ignore you because I like my characters to have abilities which interact with their setting, and having these abilities requires there to BE a setting. The Feywild, Shadowfell, etc, fill those functions in 4e. In 3e those functions were filled by the Plane of Shadow, the Elemental Planes, etc. I see this area of the game as a decent development, one I happen to like, but one that will be just as easy to ignore as the 3e versions of the same thing were for me before now.