4th ED Vision of Mystara

[OrcSmash]

Maybe it's just nostalgia speaking, as it was the first setting I played in back in OD&D, but I've always been very fond of the Mystara setting. So, in the spirit of Najo's setting posts: You are working on the WOTC staff incharge of making the campaign guide for the 4e Mystara setting. What changes do you make to the setting? What do you focus on for the players to do? How do you change D&D game play? What changes do you make to the story? What sort of content do you plan for the campaign guide?

 

[Navior]

Maybe it's just nostalgia speaking, as it was the first setting I played in back in OD&D, but I've always been very fond of the Mystara setting. So, in the spirit of Najo's setting posts: You are working on the WOTC staff incharge of making the campaign guide for the 4e Mystara setting. What changes do you make to the setting? What do you focus on for the players to do? How do you change D&D game play? What changes do you make to the story? What sort of content do you plan for the campaign guide?

There's still a lot not known about 4E, so it's difficult to really say what you could do. I think it would be very important, though, to keep the flavour of the setting and so throw out any 4E fluff that is incompatible. Mystara always had its own separate cosmology, different to the Great Wheel (albeit with a few similarities like the inner planes), so the 4E changes to cosmology really wouldn't affect Mystara at all. Mystara could just keep its own cosmology.

Racial changes shouldn't be a problem either. There's a plethora of strange races on Mystara (lupins, rakasta, tortles, ee'aar, enduks, etc.). It wouldn't be too hard to add dragonborn to some currently unexplored region of the world. Tieflings could just be diaboli.

The rather large changes to some classes like wizard might require some rethinking of places like Glantri. The important thing would be to minimize any changes necessary to keep as much of the original flavour and history as possible. But without knowing more in-depth information about wizards and others classes, I can't really say more beyond this.

I use Mystara for my own games, but I'm not personally planning to switch to Fourth Edition. However, I'm sure that with a little bit of work, anyone wanting to use Mystara with 4E could probably do so.

 

[edemaitre]

D&D4e Mystara

I would also be interested in eventual conversions of the "Known World" to "Dungeons & Dragons" Fourth Edition! Perhaps we can hope that it will eventually get official support from Wizards of the Coast in a subsequent D&D4 PHBx? Yeah, I know that the Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk are more popular than Mystara, but I liked that world's blend of classic D&D with lightly reworked real-world cultures and mythology.

 

[Lurks-no-More]

I use Mystara for my own games, but I'm not personally planning to switch to Fourth Edition. However, I'm sure that with a little bit of work, anyone wanting to use Mystara with 4E could probably do so.

Agreed. Mystara has always needed quite significant houseruling and tinkering with if you've used it with anything except the BECMI rules; the fans are used to adapting it to whatever version of the rules in use.

 

[Byrons_Ghost]

My thoughts on Dragonborn would be to have them in the area of the Plain of Fire and the Great Waste, and to have been a servitor race originally created by the Nithians. Alternately, if we're sticking with the "remnants of ancient empire" idea, then they could be from someplace like Davinia or the Arm of God, and simply recently arrived in the Known World.

Same goes for the tieflings. They look like diaboli alright, but the mechanics might be hard to do (not sure what the tiefling's racial attributes are in 4e). Also, I seem to recall that diaboli were immune to Mystaran magic, which could definately make for some balance issues.

As for wizards, I don't think the changes will be too bad. OD&D didn't have spell schools for instance, so losing those simply makes things more like the Great School of Magic in GAZ3. Secret Crafts can probably be covered by paragon/epic paths, and it sounds like those would be a better fit than prestige classes.

If I've been reading correctly, the paths are extra powers that the characters get on top of their normal progression, which is pretty much what the Crafts were. And the two paths gives you 20 levels of progression to play with instead of just 10. Some of those 4th and 5th circle abilities should definately be epic! Paths could probably also be used to reinstate the original Companion rules for druids and paladins, where one had to work toward those classes instead of starting as one.

Changes to other classes wouldn't be too bad, I don't think. Warlocks seem like they would fit in well, with all the Immortals and other extra-planar weirdness. Dividing the warlocks up between the Spheres would be interesting, but there could be others. Since Mystara's cosmology is so open, just about any of the new planes and entities that WotC comes up with could fit.

Really, I never had any problem with running Mystara in 3e. I just had the players make the characters they wanted and we found a way to fit them in. Monk was from Ethengar, paladin served Ixion, etc.

 

[Cthulhudrew]

My thoughts on Dragonborn would be to have them in the area of the Plain of Fire and the Great Waste, and to have been a servitor race originally created by the Nithians. Alternately, if we're sticking with the "remnants of ancient empire" idea, then they could be from someplace like Davinia or the Arm of God, and simply recently arrived in the Known World.

A couple of options for dragonborn come to mind.

First (and notably) would be to either use them as a substitute for the chameleon men of the Savage Coast (who are dragonkin and had a great empire in ancient times, before the aranea destroyed their civilization).

If you didn't want to do away with the chameleon men, you could still keep them there on the Savage Coast/Arm of the Immortals area, and have them be a related group that similarly fell into decline when the aranea cast their spell way back in the day.

Alternatively, the dragonborn could be the Carnifex, who are a race that is only mentioned (canonically) in module M5 that were a powerful saurian race that wielded magic and were such a potent threat that the Immortals arranged for their imprisonment in another dimension.

Same goes for the tieflings. They look like diaboli alright, but the mechanics might be hard to do (not sure what the tiefling's racial attributes are in 4e). Also, I seem to recall that diaboli were immune to Mystaran magic, which could definately make for some balance issues.

The diaboli immunity to Mystaran magic was removed in their 3rd Edition conversion, but I definitely take your point (it should also be noted that Prime creatures were similarly immune to diaboli magic).

I think the tiefling/diaboli comparisons are pretty good, and I hadn't thought of them myself. It would take some tweaking to fit, though, as Byrons_Ghost notes.

For anyone that's interested, there is an ongoing effort over on the Mystara forum at Wizards/Gleemax to compile what is basically an introductory guide (mechanics free) of Mystara, with an eye towards using it as a possible basis for a 4E "conversion" effort.

(I hesitate to use that word, since the 3E "conversion" of Mystara fell so flat, and I don't see this project as- hopefully- trying to scrunch and stretch mechanics to fit so much as just provide a comprehensive and singular descriptive source of the world that people can use regardless of rules mechanics.)

 

[BASHMAN]

Put all the Dragonborn, Tieflings, warlocks, wierd dreadlocked river kender, and various other things that are "Not D&D" into hollow world, claiming they were all destroyed by the great cataclysm (well, maybe cataclysm is the wrong word... what is the opposite of cataclysm?)

The immortals put them in hollow world on a small continent called "Mistakia" which they sealed off from access by mortals.

Warforged could exist as remnants of old Blackmoor still kicking underneath Gliarntri City. In Gliantri, and Alphatia, wizards have different, rival traditions (with Gliantri having a fire-based one and Alphatia having an air-based one, hopefully).

Weapon Mastery rules would still exist. Every 3rd Level, a character chooses a new weapon "slot" to give a mastery level to. Each Master level confers +1 to hit with that weapon, and increases its damage by a die type. Fighters can select 2 weapons to slot every 3 levels, and Wizards only get a slot every 4 levels.

"REAL" Halflings (not those kenderized mutants)-- aka Hin-- still live in the 5 shires. They have the following abilities:
+2 Con
+2 Dex

Stealth-- All Hin get the stealth skill for free in addition to any other class skills they have. When outdoors, Hin get a +5 to their Stealth checks.

Ranged combat-- All hit get +1 to hit with all ranged weapons.

Saves-- All Hin get a +2 bonus to thier Fort, Reflex, and Will Defenses.

Hard Target-- All creatures larger than man-sized get a -2 to hit Hin in combat.

"NO!"-- 1/ Encounter, as an immediate action, while in the Five Shires, a Hin can counter a spell being cast by an enemy spellcaster as if the Hin were a spellcaster equal to their character level.

Hin Master Epic Destiny--
More on this later...

 

[Voss]

*cough* As much as I think (hope?) that your halfling write up is tongue in cheek, referencing the made up FR term Hin as 'real' halflings made me laugh.

 

[Navior]

*cough* As much as I think (hope?) that your halfling write up is tongue in cheek, referencing the made up FR term Hin as 'real' halflings made me laugh.

Actually, the halflings of Mystara were also called Hin. I'm not sure which setting the word first appeared in; however, its first Mystaran use was in the Five Shires Gazetteer, coincidentally written by Ed Greenwood.

 

[frankthedm]

Well, I think one thing that can be on the chopping block is the maps and their scale. The maps are nice, and much thanks are owed to Thorfinn Tait, but the countries are too close to one another and not enough space was given to some of them like the broken lands, the northern reaches and Ylaruam.