D&D 4E Do you really want Greyhawk and Dragonlance for 4e

[Jan van Leyden]

Stretching a timeline by adding a few more things isn't exactly keep with the rich and deep history of the Realms when those entries are only a few paragraphs long. When you compare books like the 3rd edition Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide and Lost Empires of Faerun then there is no comparison.

Many many characters who have had ongoing stories in the Realms were killed off with no known story as to what happened to them. People that are new to the game may see an extended timeline for the Realms but no real knowledge of all the history that came before unless they somehow find out about the old books and get their hands on them. I know it mentions the Grand History of the Realms in the campaign guide, but that book is no longer in print.

We essentially have several different versions of the Forgotten Realms. The first would be pre-Times of Trouble, then something(s) intermediate, and finally the post-scourge world of 4e, disregarding stuff like Lost Empires for simplicity's sake. These different game worlds share some facts, but each is distinct on its own.

I see this is a great solution with lots of opportunities. Pick the rules version you're most comfortable with and select the world version you like best. Want to play Times of Trouble with 4e? Just ditch Dragonborn and Tieflings and off you go.

 

[Raikun]

I mean, it's much cooler to be able to raid the old dead wizard's fortress to find Elminster's pipe than it is to know that, if you fail your mission, Elminster and his other epic allies can fix everything with a wave of their collective hands.

This. So very much this. It felt hard to describe any kind of legitimate threat to Faerun that the characters could face, while knowing if the threat was big enough one of the many godlike heros of Faerun would take notice.

 

[malraux]

Also - WoTC doesn't have to do it. 4e doesn't have the 3e OGL, but third-party content is still doable. Just don't know if the amount of work it would take for a third party would be worth the returns. Not having the marketing suport or the "official" branding that WoTC has alone will make it difficult to sell beyond a nice market (a niche among fantasty RPGers, who are themselves, a niche market)

WOTC also owns the rights to the name dragonlance and all associated plots, characters, etc. If it's obviously dragonlance it'll get some form of legal action.

 

[Dykstrav]

No.

Not just no, but hell no.

I'm a huge Greyhawk fan myself. I'm currently running a Pathfinder game set in Greyhawk, circa 594. After seeing what happened with Forgotten Realms, I don't want to see how Greyhawk would be updated. There's already plenty of division amongst Greyhawkers about various canonicity issues (such as pre-war versus post-war, whether or not Living Greyhawk is canon, and so forth). One of the first things people ask about Forgotten Realms games in my enck of the woods is "pre-spellplague or post-spellplague?" Heck with that--I'd rather it stay out of print and lie fallow rather than cause another schism within the already-small Greyhawk fan base.

I don't really want to see Dragonlance updated either. The original campaign (what we could call an "adventure path" these days) was awesome. Although there have been some good Dragonlance products since, they always had to try and out-do the last world-shaking threat. It would've been best to let it step down gracefully rather than keep it going into the War of Souls and SAGA system and all of that.

My first preference for 4E would be to see a brand-new setting, built from the ground up with 4E's design concepts in mind. To an extent, the default Nentir Vale setting does this, but there's just not that much development on it yet.

I might be interested in seeing a 4E Greyhawk or Dragonlance product if they set it in a region of the world that has never been explored/dealt with before, and so distant from the Flanaess/Ansalon as to essentially qualify it as a separate world. But I still think it'd be best to explore new worlds, make new classic adventures, and otherwise add to D&D's legacy of great settings and adventures rather than constantly re-inventing the wheel.

 

[Mapache]

And thank god for that. A D&D game should be about the pcs, not about Ed Greenwood's nigh-infinite supply of Mary Sues. YMMV, of course, but Elminster, Khelben and all those guys never had a positive influence on any game that I've run, played in or seen. If anything, they make for great background stuff- and IMHO that element is only improved by their deaths. I mean, it's much cooler to be able to raid the old dead wizard's fortress to find Elminster's pipe than it is to know that, if you fail your mission, Elminster and his other epic allies can fix everything with a wave of their collective hands.

I only wish that they would actually kill off Elminster, but I'm pretty convinced that nothing ever will, at least officially. Hell, reducing him to ash didn't do the job- and why? Because he's a Mary Sue. That's all.

This. I don't give a crap about NPC antics and centuries of painfully detailed history. Settings are a tool for telling good stories, which are about characters. If you're writing a novel or making a TV series, the setting is there to serve the needs of the specific story you're telling. If you're writing an RPG, the setting is there to act as a toolkit for telling many different stories about characters you, the author, don't know about yet. Trying to cram in too many pre-existing stories to an RPG setting just stifles the people who will actually use it. Filling a setting with book after book of excess detail that amounts to bad fiction also produces a bad setting.

This is why licensed settings often make bad games. The problem is that the settings had a story in them, and it already has been told. In order to do something interesting, you need to go off and play in the distant, unexplored corners of the setting that might as well be an entirely different setting.

Dragonlance in particular has this problem. It's not really a setting. It's a story, and not a bad one, but it's done. It's an adventure path that consumes its setting. When it's done, it's done. Move on.

As far as all the metaplot crammed into Forgotten Realms and Greyhawke, I don't care, at least as far as settings are concerned. There may be some good novels in there, or there may not, but the settings just look like two slightly different Ye Olde Generick Fantasy Settynge with a bunch of overwrought junk I'm going to ignore or forget. The sorts of stories I can tell in either can fit perfectly well into the other with just a change of place-names and people. I don't need both, and frankly don't really need either, as the vague outlines of the default 4E world in the PHB alone are enough for me to riff off of years. Dark Sun offers Ye Olde Post-Apocalyptic Fantasy Setting and Eberron offers Ye Olde Industrial Revolution Fantasy Setting, so they justify themselves by providing tools to tell new sorts of stories that wouldn't fit into the first three. If WotC wants to sell me another new setting, it has to provide a setup for new kinds of stories that don't fit into their existing settings. I don't want a new version of old tropes, because I don't care about the versions themselves—I care about what they let me do.

 

[wedgeski]

I am (or at least I was) a bit of Dragonlance nut and would certainly not *complain* about a 4E DL sourcebook, but honestly you could quite easily create the mechanical backdrop of the setting from what's out there right now. The fact that Knights and Wizards and Artificers would all drop straight into Krynn with barely a scratch says everything about how the setting is too similar to what has come before to justify a new project. Let's leave it alone for a while.

 

[Zaran]

Different strokes for different folks. What made Forgotten Realms unique as a setting was it's deep and rich history. When that was removed, the heart of the campaign setting was removed and the setting wasn't the same. Since this was the decision, the designers should have just retired the setting instead of changing it the way it did. i know some people enjoy the new setting but you can look at the various boards and see a big decline ever since the new realms came out.

I just never understood why both types of player's couldn't be catered to. For the people who want lot's of fluff it would be there and for those who didn't, you just wouldn't use what was there.

My name is Zar and I approve this message.

 

[Scribble]

I just never understood why both types of player's couldn't be catered to. For the people who want lot's of fluff it would be there and for those who didn't, you just wouldn't use what was there.

Well- kind of for the same reason saying "You can just make it all up" to someone who likes lots of flavor text is annoying to that person.

For someone who doesn't like a ton of flavor text for settings, dealing with the extra stuff isn't as easy as "just ignoring it."

It's there- That might seem like a small thing, but for someone like me? It gets in my brain and "infects" it. No matter what I try to do, it's always there lingering, and subconsciously pushing out other thoughts I might have.

Players also tend to just expect it. Try as you might to say "Elminster doesn't exist in this world." It's just not that easy. They build their characters or take actions sometimes based on flavor they expected was true. They don't even think to ask "What is X" when there is already a pre-baked answer. They just assume the written flavor is true, and I have to spend more time undoing that.


For someone like me- I just want the start of an idea. It kicks off my imagination and I start filling in the gaps.

Now that doesn't mean I don't want ANY support for the setting. I love things like the old Elminster's Notebook articles in Dragon. They give you a little snippet of an idea, but not the entire thing. Just enough to hook you and make you think what IS that thing anyway.

 

[Subtlepanic]

I actually find the idea depressing.

Everything nowadays is all about reboots. Here we are, desperately reliving our lost youth, constantly disappointed, grinding along on a giant hamsterwheel that turns endlessly on a journey to nowhere.

 

[wedgeski]

Everything nowadays is all about reboots. Here we are, desperately reliving our lost youth, constantly disappointed, grinding along on a giant hamsterwheel that turns endlessly on a journey to nowhere.

Speak for yourself.