4e cosmology and old settings

[AdmundfortGeographer]

Meanwhile, Darksun/Mystara/Dragonlancece/Greyhawk (...) don't seem to mesh with something else than a prime material plane.

Mystara?

Mystara fits better than any setting with the 4e cosmology.

The description of the domains of dread (yeah, I know, clearly Ravenloft) also leave room for Castle Amber.

The Astral Sea? The description sounds exactly like how the Astral Plane worked in Mystara all these years. Each outer plane floating in an endless expanse.

Mystara does have the fairy realm The Dreamland, and its surrounding forests, this could easily be a piece of a larger plane of Feywild.

Mystara's abundance of dimensions leaves more than enough room for the Shadowfell.

The flavor change in the elemental planes is not that big of a deal, and plugs right in to Mystara's elemental planes anyway, IMO. As I said, Mystara fits so well with the 4e cosmology that I would be surprised to learn that the 4e designers went back to the BECMI/Mystara line and mined it for ideas liberally.

 

[justanobody]

Just read this article from D&D insider : Manual of the Planes Excerpts: The Shadowfell

Domains of dread... Sounds a lot like Ravenloft, don't you think ?

Sounds nothing like it at all.

TSR Dungeons & Dragons Archive: Ravenloft: Domains of Dread

Reminder to all. There is a WWW in front of wizards.com. It helps to include that sub-domain so that people visiting the pages are not logged out when trying to read something or met with some cookie error when a browser reaches the WotC website.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

Reminder to all. There is a WWW in front of wizards.com. It helps to include that sub-domain so that people visiting the pages are not logged out when trying to read something or met with some cookie error when a browser reaches the WotC website.

Works fine for me without the www.

 

[Serendipity]

Mystara?

Mystara fits better than any setting with the 4e cosmology.

The description of the domains of dread (yeah, I know, clearly Ravenloft) also leave room for Castle Amber.

The Astral Sea? The description sounds exactly like how the Astral Plane worked in Mystara all these years. Each outer plane floating in an endless expanse.

Mystara does have the fairy realm The Dreamland, and its surrounding forests, this could easily be a piece of a larger plane of Feywild.

Mystara's abundance of dimensions leaves more than enough room for the Shadowfell.

The flavor change in the elemental planes is not that big of a deal, and plugs right in to Mystara's elemental planes anyway, IMO. As I said, Mystara fits so well with the 4e cosmology that I would be surprised to learn that the 4e designers went back to the BECMI/Mystara line and mined it for ideas liberally.

This. Since the middle previews from before the 4e release, I've gotten an OD&D (Mentzer era) vibe from the crunch (in a general sense) and a OD&D Masters/Immortal set vibe from a lot of the fluff. Generally I'm not terribly a fan of recycling the old settings (I'd much rather see something new for 4e) but if they had to use an older setting, Mystara 4e would make me pretty damn happy.

 

[justanobody]

Works fine for me without the www.

must have to do with the way firefox handles cookies and subdomains then....either way it is best to be in the practice of using the full URL.

You dont get the error popup about needing to register without the WWW?

Maybe we should take this side discussion to the meta forum to not derail this one....

 

[El Mahdi]

It seems unlikely that they're going to even attempt to integrate the phlogiston into the 'new' spelljammer. Just replace 'Phlogiston' and 'Wildspace' and replace them with the Astral Sea.

This picture from 'Worlds and Monsters' says it all: http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/WorldsMonsters_Gallery/111927.jpg

What I'm curious about then, is whether you can "spelljam" from the Astral Sea to a prime material world? And what about Crystal Spheres? I guess if you wanted to keep some type of "phlogiston" you could place it in the elemental planes (especially fire).

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

Since the middle previews from before the 4e release, I've gotten an OD&D (Mentzer era) vibe from the crunch (in a general sense) and a OD&D Masters/Immortal set vibe from a lot of the fluff. Generally I'm not terribly a fan of recycling the old settings (I'd much rather see something new for 4e) but if they had to use an older setting, Mystara 4e would make me pretty damn happy.

True, plus Fallcrest feels like a renaming of Threshold (the base town in the Expert Set). Nentir Vale feels like the region deep in the Grand Duchy of Karameikos far from the coast around the Barony of Kelvin. The maps are likewise similar. It is eerie. Everything old is new again?

 

[malraux]

True, plus Fallcrest feels like a renaming of Threshold (the base town in the Expert Set). Nentir Vale feels like the region deep in the Grand Duchy of Karameikos far from the coast around the Barony of Kelvin. The maps are likewise similar. It is eerie. Everything old is new again?

Apparently the base town in Keep on the Shadowfell looks eerily similar to, IIRC, the keep in Keep on the Borderlands. I think the writers have intentionally tried to echo a lot of the past editions.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

Apparently the base town in Keep on the Shadowfell looks eerily similar to, IIRC, the keep in Keep on the Borderlands. I think the writers have intentionally tried to echo a lot of the past editions.

Also true. Have I missed it where any of these designers and developers admitted to cribbing off Classic D&D? I'm not complaining that they are, but I'd like to hear them admit it.

 

[Atomo]

My guess is that they're going to do Dark Sun

My guess is Dragonlance... but just a guess anyway.