4th ED Vision of Mystara

[Magus Coeruleus]

I think the best thing to happen is that fans create their own competing 4e versions of things and post them on the Mystara fan site for everyone to see, compare, discuss, and *yoink* as desired. If enough people have a consensus I'd love to see it as a more formal looking document, but in reality I wouldn't feel compelled to go with it. I'd just take a somewhat closer look at it than the efforts of individual DMs.

I hope the races in the PHB including Dragonborn and Tieflings (which I would not use) give a good indication of what sort of balance of abilities make for a good package of bennies for a race, so that Mystaran hin, elves, etc. can be created. Of course if the DMG and/or MM provide some help with how to do this that would be wonderful.

 

[havard]

How was the 2e version regarded by Mystara fans?

2e Mystara is held in a very low regard by the general Mystaran community, perhaps even infairly so. This IMHO has very little to do with what rule system was used and more to do with the fact that it seemed like a pale imitation of the Gazeteer line. There were many reasons for this, but I believe alot of it had to do with the fact that the designers lacked the familiarity of and love for the setting. The fact that Bruce Heard and Aaron Allston were no longer involved was a great loss.

IMO this problem continued over into 3E as the official 3E Mystara stuff (from the paizo magazines etc) relied solely on 2E sources.

I would love to see a 4e take on Mystara.

Havard

 

[glass]

2e Mystara is held in a very low regard by the general Mystaran community, perhaps even infairly so. This IMHO has very little to do with what rule system was used and more to do with the fact that it seemed like a pale imitation of the Gazeteer line.

Would the imitation have been a little better if there had been more of them? Eric A seems to be of the opinion that the boxed sets pretty much were the gazetteers, just tarted up a bit* and with AD&D stats. Would the conversion have been better regarded if TSR had been able to make 20 of them instead of 2, thereby expanding the setting again back to its former glory?


glass.

 

[havard]

Would the imitation have been a little better if there had been more of them? Eric A seems to be of the opinion that the boxed sets pretty much were the gazetteers, just tarted up a bit* and with AD&D stats. Would the conversion have been better regarded if TSR had been able to make 20 of them instead of 2, thereby expanding the setting again back to its former glory?

Possibly.
I guess another reason for their lack of appeal was that they offered so little new.

Personally, much rather than a rerun of the gazeteer series, I would have liked to see one boxed set giving an overview of the Know World (perhaps with a few few paragraphs detailing other regions like the Hollow World and the Savage Coast). Also the designers seemed to want to portray Mystara as a generic fantasy setting. All features that made Mystara different from every other setting were downplayed in the 2E version. IMO they should have gone the other way around putting an emphasis on the features that made Mystara different from say Greyhawk and the FR...

Its not that Mystara 2E sucked. Its just that if you were familiar with the Classic stuff, you knew it could have been so much better.


Havard

 

[jeffh]

I hesitate to use that word, since the 3E "conversion" of Mystara fell so flat...

(On the assumption that you mean the "official fan conversion"...)

As a one-time participant in it, I must agree. I don't know what convinced them that game design by committee was a good idea, especially by a committee of people who clearly knew nothing about game design. I don't know which is more sad, how little they produced or how underwhelming what they did produce was. And my blood pressure *still* goes up when I think about the stupidity of creating a prestige class to cover the (minor) differences between the rogue and the thief, or (most of all) the STUPID arguments that eventually won out regarding the handling of the planes. "We can choose not to use stuff from the MotP, but we're not allowed to change anything we do use!" (based on a tortured reading of one sentence). I quit after unsuccessfully attempting to introduce some sanity to the latter debate (and after my long, thoughtful letter on this to the head of the project, who is supposedly "always open to feedback", went unanswered).

EDIT: I can't even find the old Yahoo group for it! I knew it was for all practical purposes defunct, but is it literally and completely defunct too? Can't say I'd mourn it, but there were a few old posts I'd have liked to be able to see again.

 

[havard]

(On the assumption that you mean the "official fan conversion"...)

As a one-time participant in it, I must agree. I don't know what convinced them that game design by committee was a good idea, especially by a committee of people who clearly knew nothing about game design. I don't know which is more sad, how little they produced or how underwhelming what they did produce was. And my blood pressure *still* goes up when I think about the stupidity of creating a prestige class to cover the (minor) differences between the rogue and the thief, or (most of all) the STUPID arguments that eventually won out regarding the handling of the planes. "We can choose not to use stuff from the MotP, but we're not allowed to change anything we do use!" (based on a tortured reading of one sentence). I quit after unsuccessfully attempting to introduce some sanity to the latter debate (and after my long, thoughtful letter on this to the head of the project, who is supposedly "always open to feedback", went unanswered).

Yes. The committee thing was a good way to ensure heated discussions and not much else. The fans would probably have been much better off from having an official, but controversial conversion that each of us could crticize, tear apart and modify to our own preferences.

For a 4E official adaption I would like to see the following:
* Sourcebooks centered around greater regions like The Known World, The Savage Coast, Norwold, Alphatia, the Hollow World etc.
* Rules generally assumed to conform to standard 4e, but with special rules to cover a handful of unique features of the setting such as The Radience, Immortals, Demihuman Relics and the Red Curse.
* Rakasta, Lupin (and possibly Aranea and Diaboli) incorporated as standard races of the setting.

Havard

 

[Cthulhudrew]

Would the imitation have been a little better if there had been more of them?

From my understanding of how things played out, a lot of the problem with the 2E material came from the way it was decided by TSR to handle the line, and not with the designers themselves.

James Mishler has talked in the past about how Jeff Grubb, the designer behind the Kingdom of Karameikos boxed set, had much grander plans than he was allowed to eventually do. He evidently wanted to do a larger world book (not unlike, I'd imagine, the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting book for 3E) and then have subsequent products expanding things like the Gazetteers did.

Unfortunately, he was told that the plan was to release one product per nation at a time (essentially), so he could only do the Kingdom of Karameikos; other products would be the Principalities of Glantri, etc.

Further to that, he wasn't even allowed to do much to advance the timeline from the Gazetteers, despite the fact that the Almanacs had already done so. Hence, there had been no civil war from the fractioning of the Church of Karameikos (which, from what I understand, he wanted to do) among other things.

Some of his plans I think did make it through- his descriptions of the Immortals and how they differ from Gods, etc. helped to differentiate the setting, but were a pale imitation of what a world book could have accomplished. You can also see some of Grubb's plans for dealing more fully with Karameikos in the two Dragon articles he wrote for the setting, which were pretty good.

I haven't ever seen any discussion by Monte Cook about it, but I'd imagine he was probably similarly constrained in his design of Glantri.

The end result, basically, was that the 2E products were a rehash of the BECMI products, and thus did not a) appeal to the existing fan base, who had followed the world through all of the Gazzes and the Wrath of the Immortals, and who wanted to see the setting continue to grow and thrive and change, and it also didn't b) appeal as much to new fans, who were only getting piecemeal introductions to the world, with no larger context in which to differentiate them from all the other existing TSR settings; they had no basis for comparison between say, FR or Greyhawk.

The products themselves weren't bad, per se: I've come to appreciate and like most of the Joshuan's Almanac (and it is actually not a bad "intro" product itself), and the original parts of the Karameikos and Glantri boxed sets had some really good stuff in them as well.

 

[havard]

Cthulhudrew brings up some excellent points. Bruce Heard also mentioned making a FR style sourcebook rather than reprints of the gazetteers as one of the things he had in mind when he was still involved in the process.

Jeff Grubb's idea of pushing the timeline a few years further into the future also made sense. Wrath of the Immortals may not have been such a bad Mega-Adventure, but it doesnt really do a good job at setting up an interesting setting in its immediate aftermath.

Grubb's ideas of emphasizing existing conflicts and building them up at the start of the boxed set era (like the Church War) would have helped make the Known World more interesting again, instead of basing alot of it on resloved conflicts from WotI. Having Clerical practices legaized in Glantri for instance is one of those things that make post WotI Glantri less interesting than it was 10 years earlier. I mean, whats more fun, playing a Cleric who is accepted, or one who works in secret to further his patron's cause in a country where he could risk being burned at the stake if the truth came out?

I agree that the Almanacs were decent products, but there should have been many more products geared towards the players with new races, kits etc.

For a 4e Mystara I would like to see it set a few decades into the future so new conflicts could be introduced, or in AC1000 keeping true to the Gazetteer era, but focusing on introducting more player options (races, feats) that build on the unique features of the setting, perhaps fully incorporating the retrofitted elements like Lupins, Rakasta, Air Ships etc.

I think any new version of Mystara would cause some controversy among fans, but I would rather have high quality controversial products than vaguely uninteresting ones.

Havard