Do certain settings come out better in certain editions?

[Ravellion]

Hello folks,

I lately have seen a few people on these boards say that Dark Sun would be great in 4e. I remember having trouble running Dragonlance around the War of the Lance era in 3e, while loving said setting and era in 2e. Forgotten realms worked better in 3e than in 2e. It was certain small things in the setting that just seemed to click into place. 3e allowed faster leveling and easier magic item creation - it seemed Faerun was a good fit. Dragonlance had a lot of the game's 1e and 2e rules built into the flavour of the game and vice versa, such as faster advancement for the black robed wizards, or wizards not being able to use anything other than a staff or a dagger. 2e Dark Sun started PCs less fragile to survive the miserable place that is Athas. 4e just starts PCs less fragile. Is there a match there? If these or other examples hold true, I might just be tempted to dust off an old campaign setting for my next campaign, and play it in an edition it wasn't written for.

In a way, what I want to bring up is the system over setting debate we have had on these boards earlier. But what I would really like to know are there settings you would like to try out in an edition you haven't played in (yet), or are there settings that you would never want to play outside of the editions that spawned them? If there are, why? Or perhaps you already converted a setting to a new edition and liked or disliked it. I'd just like to hear your thoughts.

 

[Dragonbait]

I start this one out as a YMMV

As a fan of Planescape, I always thought that 3ed would have been a great fit for the setting. Feats, Prestige Classes, and so on seemed perfect for Factions. However, Factions, when presented in 2ed, were meant to tack on to a character. They provided additional abilities, restrictions, and quirks about a character independent of race or class. Almost everyone in Sigil belonged to a Faction, and while most did NOT have any special ability tied to their Faction, the PCs represented characters that were more than just Namers (people who claimed to be of a particular faction but have done nothing to raise in the ranks). The setting was pretty specific: all PCs should be a member one of the Faction.

In 3E, by making Faction powers into feats, they start to change some fundamental functions of some classes (like fighters). Some classes (again, fighter, for example) have to sacrifice function so that they could have powers and abilities that represent their preferred faction. Also, limiting a Faction to a Prestige Class or feat chain limited the appeal of many Factions depending on your class/skill selection. In my experience, few people were willing to sacrifice all that it took to become a member of a Faction (beyond Namer status) and those that were began to view Factions as an association to a specific classes.

 

[Spatula]

Mechanics definitely inform flavor and vice versa, so I think you're correct that the rules matter. Just about any 1e/2e setting was built up with certain assumptions in place, and those assumptions don't necessarily make much sense in other editions. I suppose it works in reverse, as well. Eberron depends on the existance of some feat-like mechanic for personal abilities such as dragonmarks, which doesn't work very well in 1e/2e.

Dark Sun is probably the prime example, being the ultimate "out there" setting. The barren, alien setting and the bizarre races were fine in 2e, which had a strong story-over-rules vibe to it (just as well, since the rules were awful). But it works less well with 3e/4e's obsession with balance and 4e's insistance that players always get what they want.

 

[pawsplay]

Potential conflicts between Dark Sun and 4e:

- Equipment scarcity.
- Multiple power sources. Right off the bat, everyone was psionic, but on top of that, multiclassing was very common.
- Dirty tactics and trumps emphasized. For instance, you used psionics on magical beasts, magic on psionic ones, turned the gladiator after the physically fragile opponents, etc.
- Different cosmology. I don't remember much plane-hopping stuff in Dark Sun, and the elemental clerics had a very different feel than 3e clerics and presumably 4e ones as well, unless you wanted to build entirely new power lists.
- Lack of magical conveniences. In Dark Sun, magic is a tool of the powerful and secretive. A lot of "handy" magic items just wouldn't make sense, and even unscrupulous wizards would be loathe to burn magic on minor effects.

Dark Sun really screams out to me for a retrofit based on True20 or Modern d20. Or Hero System, with prebuilt psionics. I don't know how this would play out, but in terms of design, I think Castles & Crusades matches it philosophically.

 

[Keefe the Thief]

I´d argue that a lot of settings didn´t even fit their original rulesset. Planescape was never a good fit for AD&D - you simply need more flexible rules for magic, more monster race options and more weirdness for this setting. The first Planescape novel had an intelligent manta ray as a party member - try playing that in AD&D.

Dark Sun did fit, and is IMHO the easiest to port to 4e. Just go easy on the planar stuff - remember, every world has it´s own Shadowfell, and what exists in the core world doesn´t have to exist on Athas. The powers system and the greater freedom at monster creation mean all the weird stuff coming in from the desert can be easily described. As long as they try to emulate the first box, they´ll be golden.

Dragonlance... thats a problematic one for me. On the one hand, you see how Raistlin is influenced by vancian magic rules in his abilities - seems like a good fit for AD&D. On the other hand, in game terms he was never as powerful or special as the novels described him. The effects of the moons are easy to emulate in 4e, and Cam Banks had a couple of excellent ideas for 4e Dragonlance over at the Dragonlance nexus. I think it will be in the details: Artwork (grunge elves, weird knights) and implementation (boring prestige classes define everything!) will show if a 4e Dragonlance is better than the 3.x corebook.

I´ll keep my fingers crossed: IMHO 4e is flexible enough to describe all those settings mentioned. Now, Wotc just has to make them.

 

[S'mon]

I agree - some rulesets just click with some settings. For instance I found this recently running Castles & Crusades with the 1e box set.

 

[Derro]

I start this one out as a YMMV

As a fan of Planescape, I always thought that 3ed would have been a great fit for the setting. <snip>

In 3E, by making Faction powers into feats, they start to change some fundamental functions of some classes (like fighters). <snip>

Snipped for brevity not relevance.

I totally agree with you. When the Planar Handbook came out and had so many familiar faction prestige classes I was excited to play some 3e Planescape. On further examination it just seemed like a lot of shoe-horning was required to give the characters the names of previously familiar archetypes without the real worth of what the factions were about. I wasn't too interested in playing in Planescape where anybody of the same faction were so similar as to qualify for a prestige class.

I found the most elegant fix on Planewalker. In their massive campaign document (which is just full of awesomeness) they give factions as bloodlines as per Unearthed Arcana. Beautiful. Check it out if 3.x Planescape is still your bag.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Dark Sun really screams out to me for a retrofit based on True20 or Modern d20. Or Hero System, with prebuilt psionics. I don't know how this would play out, but in terms of design, I think Castles & Crusades matches it philosophically.

I ran a RQ2 conversion which worked brilliantly. It helped with the whole 'fragile weapons', 'scarce metal' thing nicely, battlemagic was flavoured as psionics, rune magic was flavoured as 'magic spells' and you couldn't want for a grittier system!

Cheers

 

[slwoyach]

It's mainly about how worlds are presented. There's nothing about Dragonlance that makes it inherently a poor fit for 3e, but the 3e books were just god awful and often a radical departure. They especially fumbled the Solamnic Knights.

 

[Kzach]

IMO, yes, editions and systems can definitely fit various settings better or worse depending on how they play. If that wasn't the case, we wouldn't have customised systems for settings like the Game of Thrones one coming out from Green Ronin. We would be happy with GURPS or some equivalent for every game we played.

I'm actually really happy with 4e primarily because, with a few minor changes here and there and some conceptual guidelines, it fits my homebrew setting extremely well, whereas I could never have pulled it off with 3.x or 1e/2e.