D&D 4E D&D Fluff Wars: 4e vs 5e

[76512390ag12]

I didn't really play D&D until recently. I was exploring Glorantha, the Young Kingdoms, Tékumel and Talislanta.
So, now I have picked up D&D and am grokking it, I am loving ALL the fluff and lore!
D&D has really developed a great depth and breadth of lore and fluff over the 43 years and I kinda enjoy it being NEW to me.

Posted by C4-D4RS on the MetroLiberal HoloNet

 

[Aaron L]

To be fair, Tolkien did that a lot, he just didn't translate 'em back unless the result sounded cool. Mordor = "Blackland"; not cool. Isengard = "Ironfort"; not cool. Amon Amarth = "Mount Doom"; effin' metal.

...but yeah, "Shadowfell" and "Feywild" are awful names.

Names notwithstanding, I like them a lot better than their earlier counterparts. Faerie didn't even really exist in the Great Wheel, unless you count Arborea which was trying to be too many different things (a common problem with the Wheel planes). And merging Shadow and the Ethereal was a good move; it made both of them more interesting. Previously, "ethereal" was not so much a plane as it was a status effect. (And alongside "incorporeal", a redundant status effect.)

If I were inclined to get offended about such things, I would not be happy that Nirvana is depicted as a stodgy clockwork universe populated by insane robots. As is, I'm mostly just confused by it. Better not to use names for things that the planes transparently aren't.

Those kinds of names don't bother me, as they're just descriptive. Now, if they were rendered as "LanDark" or "FortIron" it would come across as incredibly cheesy to me. Not saying anything objective about, just my personal taste, and to me that feels incredibly twee.

As for Nirvana, I totally agree. I've never liked the presentation of the plane since the original Manual of the Planes turned it into The Steampunk Dimension. Giant cogs floating in space? No thank you. But the Modrons I like, just not the way they're presented... I reimagine them as sapient representations of Platonic Solids, not silly geometric robots; crystalline structures of digital perfection (no arms or legs) that think and communicate in binary and mathematic code, with the entire plane presented as an expression of mathematical perfection in the form of crystalline structures in perfect Platonic geometric shapes, not giant cogs. Now, that may just be substituting ideas of modern and digital technology for gears and cogs as an analogue for "Order" but it seems much more fitting to me somehow, with crystals being much more evocative of a natural form of order and math being a universal constant and all.

As for Faerie, I wouldn't ever imagine it as an Outer Plane, more like an Inner Plane coexistent with the Prime Material (yeah, I still call it the Prime Material, along with the Positive and Negative Material Planes.) I really love what they did in Pathfinder with the First World, the original "rough draft" of the Material Plane that somehow still persists, combining ideas of Faerie, Lewis Carroll's Wonderland, and Machen's weird "The White People" style fey creatures, with unsettling connections to the Cthulhu Mythos. I actually don't have a real problem with the way the plane was presented in 4E, but the name Feywild just sticks in my craw. Just call the damn thing Faerie (or even Fairyland!) As I said before, Feywild is just too, too precious and twee.

 

[Parmandur]

Those kinds of names don't bother me, as they're just descriptive. Now, if they were rendered as "LanDark" or "FortIron" it would come across as incredibly cheesy to me. Not saying anything objective about, just my personal taste, and to me that feels incredibly twee.



As for Nirvana, I totally agree. I've never liked the presentation of the plane since the original Manual of the Planes turned it into The Steampunk Dimension. Giant cogs floating in space? No thank you. But the Modrons I like, just not the way they're presented... I reimagine them as sapient representations of Platonic Solids, not silly geometric robots; crystalline structures of digital perfection (no arms or legs) that think and communicate in binary and mathematic code, with the entire plane presented as an expression of mathematical perfection in the form of crystalline structures in perfect Platonic geometric shapes, not giant cogs. Now, that may just be substituting ideas of modern and digital technology for gears and cogs as an analogue for "Order" but it seems much more fitting to me somehow, with crystals being much more evocative of a natural form of order and math being a universal constant and all.



As for Faerie, I wouldn't ever imagine it as an Outer Plane, more like an Inner Plane coexistent with the Prime Material (yeah, I still call it the Prime Material, along with the Positive and Negative Material Planes.) I really love what they did in Pathfinder with the First World, the original "rough draft" of the Material Plane that somehow still persists, combining ideas of Faerie, Lewis Carroll's Wonderland, and Machen's weird "The White People" style fey creatures, with unsettling connections to the Cthulhu Mythos. I actually don't have a real problem with the way the plane was presented in 4E, but the name Feywild just sticks in my craw. Just call the damn thing Faerie (or even Fairyland!) As I said before, Feywild is just too, too precious and twee.

Making names is hard; some few have a real knack for it. Feywild and Shadowfell are just...the worst. Doubly so because perfectly normal names for them that are quite evocative are already current in the English language.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I wonder of WotC developers aren't suffering from a bit of "name shock" after having to name zillions of M:tG cards? "...er... Proppernoundian Verbinator..."

There's also the weirdness of copyright or trademark law. Did they come up with stuff like Feywild, because they couldn't get any protection at all for "Faerie?" IDK.

"Shadowfell," I kinda liked more than "Plane of Shadow" or "Shadowlands," though.

 

[cbwjm]

Making names is hard; some few have a real knack for it. Feywild and Shadowfell are just...the worst. Doubly so because perfectly normal names for them that are quite evocative are already current in the English language.

I'm the other end of the spectrum. I really quite like the names for feywild and shadowfell.

 

[Parmandur]

I wonder of WotC developers aren't suffering from a bit of "name shock" after having to name zillions of M:tG cards? "...er... Proppernoundian Verbinator..."



There's also the weirdness of copyright or trademark law. Did they come up with stuff like Feywild, because they couldn't get any protection at all for "Faerie?" IDK.



"Shadowfell," I kinda liked more than "Plane of Shadow" or "Shadowlands," though.

Pretty sure the trademark issue is at play; I mean, Elemental Chaos works OK, and that probably exists for the same reason.

 

[Parmandur]

I'm the other end of the spectrum. I really quite like the names for feywild and shadowfell.

Well, different strokes; Feywild gets me on particular, since it is just Fairieland with trademark opportunity, which make s it slightly less mythical.
.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

As for Nirvana, I totally agree. I've never liked the presentation of the plane since the original Manual of the Planes turned it into The Steampunk Dimension. Giant cogs floating in space? No thank you. But the Modrons I like, just not the way they're presented... I reimagine them as sapient representations of Platonic Solids, not silly geometric robots; crystalline structures of digital perfection (no arms or legs) that think and communicate in binary and mathematic code, with the entire plane presented as an expression of mathematical perfection in the form of crystalline structures in perfect Platonic geometric shapes, not giant cogs. Now, that may just be substituting ideas of modern and digital technology for gears and cogs as an analogue for "Order" but it seems much more fitting to me somehow, with crystals being much more evocative of a natural form of order and math being a universal constant and all.

I don't think you fully got my point. Yes, what you describe seems like a much more satisfying vision of the plane of perfect and eternal Law...

...but Nirvana is not "the plane of perfect and eternal Law", whatever it looks like. Nirvana isn't even a place, much less a place associated with those ideals. You might as well call the plane "Inebriation" for all the sense it makes.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I think I'm just tired, but I'm confused by your response.

We're having one of those non-linear conversations. I'm talking about one thing (at best tangentially related to the topic at hand), you're talking about something else at best tangentially related to that - neither of us is giving in and addressing what the other has to say. Danger of the medium, really.

I was talking about Damage and skills being the major two things that non-casters should be good at.

D&D does tend towards modeling combat effectivness mainly with damage. But it's not the only way to do so in D&D, and the existing non-magic-using sub-classes don't do much to reach beyond it. Similarly, skill checks are OK as far as they go, but that's not very far.

Imagine an extremely hypothetica d20 game where the only caster class is a Mage and it has one sub-class that only got the equivalent of Eldritch Blast (with the proviso that, once you killed the sucker, you could have any weird magical thing happen to him) and another that only got Prestidigitation (with the proviso that you could make skill checks with it and describe whatever weird magical thing that represented). Now, one could claim that anything you could think of some magicky type doing to an enemy could be covered by the former, and most anything else by the latter.

But that'd be a tiny corner of the potential design space compared to what casters have in 5e.

I think it is the last sentence, that there are other systems that rely on other powers and extraordinary feats that we don't have designed yet. I can't disagree with that, their could be a few things like that.

Not only could, in theory, but have been in past editions.

...but Nirvana is not "the plane of perfect and eternal Law", whatever it looks like. Nirvana isn't even a place, much less a place associated with those ideals. You might as well call the plane "Inebriation" for all the sense it makes.

The Plane of Inebriation could work. Casting Plane Shift to get there sounds like a little more fun than usual...

An extra-dimensional place of Platonic solids and other perfect first-principle ideals? Might as well go with Odyllic Plane.

 

[Chaosmancer]

No, new rules are being worked on now for a future UA, different approach apparently.

That’s good. I really want a good system for the “Defend the Town from the Army” session. I can make it work to a degree, but some really good mass combat rules that don’t have the DM spending the majority of the time playing with himself would be so welcome.

I'm the other end of the spectrum. I really quite like the names for feywild and shadowfell.

I agree. Plane of Shadow is decent, but bland to me. Faerie just begs to cause problems, as now you go to Faerie to meet the Faeries in the Court of the Faerie Queen.

I find Feywild to be evocative of the place they are presenting. Thick jungles and rampant growth, populated by a variety of Fey including the Faerie. It isn’t the best name ever, but it does the job and is memorable enough not to get confused with other things.

We're having one of those non-linear conversations. I'm talking about one thing (at best tangentially related to the topic at hand), you're talking about something else at best tangentially related to that - neither of us is giving in and addressing what the other has to say. Danger of the medium, really.

Okay, that makes sense, and I agree with your example of the hypothetical d20 game. Thanks for talking things through.