4E Campaign Announcement Time/Date
- Thread starter Hawke
- Start date
I doubt it's a new setting, since one of the points we know is that old schoolers will be happy about it. I can't see old schoolers getting THAT excited about a new setting.
I don't know, as much as they completely butchered Forgotten Realms, the news that they *weren't* destroying another old setting would be a relief for fans of it.
I'm hardly old school since I'm 25, I was like 11 when the setting came out, but I like Planescape, for example. I shudder to think what a 4e treatment would do to it and honestly hope that what they've kludged into 4e so far is gonna be the extent of it.
Problem with UA was that it tried to be like PoLand for the Real World. It failed at that because unlike other modern fantasy settings like World of Darkness, it was too disconnected, refusing to use real locations or entities even when it would make sense to do so. Later books attempted to flesh it out better, as well as some excellent Polyhedron articles, but the damage was done and the system was dying.
If they were to tighten it up and make it an actual setting instead of a generic framework for a setting, that would probably work a lot better. Anyway, anything else on this subject should be forked.
If they were to tighten it up and make it an actual setting instead of a generic framework for a setting, that would probably work a lot better. Anyway, anything else on this subject should be forked.
That's something I will never understand... The old books won't be burned by WotC fire squads. If a new edition of a setting is published that does not fit your taste, just ignore. The very idea that peoples prefer that their setting die of neglect rather than differs from their cannon is strange.
It's somwhat obvious that a 4e Dark Sun would be very different from the 2e version. The rule system is completely different and the core assumption of the games would imply change. So what ? The new version can as well be more interesting than the old(s). And if it is not, you can just plunder what you need and keep the old background.
I'm A Banana
Potassium-Rich
I'm not much older, I'm a huge Planescape nut, and I think PS4e could be pretty solid, actually. The multiverse being "only a model" works well in Planescape, since distances and relative layout are basically meaningless (you can't walk from the Abyss to Carceri, without passing through some portals). Assuming everything still exists, somewhere, and that Sigil is the center of the campaign, you can get a lot of milage out of 4e PS. The one thing that would need to change is that "tieflings" would be re-fluffed for the setting, away from their Sword & Sorcery 4e change toward a more "urban outcast" feel for PS.
But I think the chances of seeing an official PS4e setting are pretty low. Planescape elements are being worked into the core, so I don't know what a setting book would hope to add that a "Philosophical Power" splatbook couldn't add. I also think that's why Ravenloft and Spelljammer are fairly low on the list: the stuff is core, now, and not off on it's own.
Greyhawk I wouldn't worry too much about. Dragonlance would probably be fine, too. I doubt Urban Arcana would find its way in (too modern), though I wouldn't be too surprised to hear some sort of Modern 2.0 system in the works unrelated to the next setting. Dark Sun I could see, but I worry about it, because it is dumb to make the setting fit the "everything is core" straightjacket of 4e, and, IMO, that would reduce the awesomeness of the world by a very large degree.
I don't trust Dark Sun to WotC's current plans. I could see most other settings that they would do working fine (Ravenloft would suffer the same fate, but I don't think they're likely to do a Ravenloft setting). DS would make me nervous. They would have to show me flexibility when it came to making the setting trump the rules, which they haven't. With FR, they showed that they were eager to make the rules trump the setting, in fact. If they've reversed that philosophy, it could work and be good, but Eberron kept that philosophy (even if it used a lighter touch), and nothing so far has demonstrated any sort of intention to reverse it or a questioning of their own belief in it.
I am concerned, because Dark Sun should not be a world that I would expect, for instance, any player characters with the Primal or Divine power sources. It would go a long way to ruining the feel. But 4e's philosophy to date has been to make the setting fit the rules. Which is problematic here (but it certainly isn't everywhere).
So it wouldn't be Dark Sun. It would be some other post apocalyptic setting that ripped off Dark Sun. If you're going to do that, you might as well drop the Dark Sun name and trot it out as something "Dark Sun-Esque" without essentially ripping off the title.
If you're going to call your setting Dark Sun, make it Dark Sun, or call it something else. It's like the whole Archon or Eladrin debacle. If you're going to use a name, it should convey the same meaning, and if it's a new thing, it should have a new name, not the same name as something else just because your crew lacks enough imagination to throw letters together without making it NounVerb AdjectiveVerber.
I'd have respect for a dark-sun-inspired setting that still worked with 4e's default assumptions. I don't have respect for someone putting ripped shorts and bronzer on an Eladrin and saying "HEY EVERYBODY IT'S DARK SUN!"
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Shemeska
Adventurer
A generic 4e PoL cosmology exists, but it isn't Planescape. Different cosmology, different in-game history, no Blood War, the goofy 4e alignment system, etc. It ripped a few scattered things out of Planescape, but then scrubbed off lots of details like serial numbers for a stolen gun at a shifty pawn shop. They warped things to fit the 4e default, rather than adapting the 4e rules to fit setting material, which is utterly backwards to me.
They've put Planescape through the 4e setting chopshop to plug bits into the default PoL World Axis cosmology, which to me makes it pretty clear that they won't release a 4e Planescape, because it would compete with the 4e default cosmology.
It's really a pity that they did the generic 4e cosmology before they knew the reaction that their treatment of FR would gather, and then presumably learned some lessons about what not to do to settings (which they seem to have learned at least some things on for 4e Eberron). If they had, they might have left Planescape alone or actually done a Planescape setting as itself. I don't think the current design team would handle Planescape well (the 3e Planar Handbook and BoED came largely from the same group, and were not exactly received well), especially given the design precepts in 4e that so far seem to dictate that settings will adapt to core 4e, with setting detail and continuity taking a back seat to force-fitting generic 4e concepts in.
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