D&D 5E Does it seem like Nerath was dropped like a bad habit?

[Steely Dan]

So, from the standpoint of a fan, the Nentir Vale and Nerath and all its associated proper nouns and cosmologies and histories and events are absolutely a distinct, different, unique, D&D setting. It's among the pantheon of Basic Fantasy Settings -- Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, and now Nerath.

That just does not seem to be the case, not nearly as definitive or iconic, yeah "...Nerath…what…?"

 

[I'm A Banana]

That just does not seem to be the case, not nearly as definitive or iconic, yeah "...Nerath…what…?"

Sure, with the word "Nerath," but talk about the elements of 4e, like, say Bael Turath or the Elemental Chaos of the Astral Sea, and you'll get a lot of folks who know what you're talking about just as if you said Neverwinter or Ansalon or Oerth.

 

[Tony Vargas]

It's a shame that 4E is such a pariah among editions, because it really did contribute and innovate D&D in some great ways: the Points of Light/Ruins of Nerath setting, the World-Axis cosmology, and the simplified default pantheon are all great examples.

The Dawn War was a pretty decent creation myth, as well.

 

[thewok]

The Dawn War was a pretty decent creation myth, as well.

I have adapted the Dawn War to my world and still use it as the Creation "myth." I'll be sticking with the cosmology of 4e as well. I prefer it to the great wheel. I am in the process, though, of "reordering" the world, replacing deities and even adding some that used to be PCs.

I make ample use of that CoN map, though. I got the jpg that had no borders around the regions. Good stuff there.

 

[Jester David]

There are a few problems with Nerath.

First, that's not the name. It alternates between "Nerath", "Nentir Vale", and "the Points of Light world". It didn't really have a brand name to reference.
Second, WotC really seems to want to double down on the Forgotten Realms and use the established world. They name drop Greyhawk and Dragonlance (two very, very popular settings) but don't reference many others like Birthright, Mystara, Ravenloft, and the like.
Third is the hard feelings regarding 4e. While they're not dropping everything related to 4e, they're not emphasising it either. Which is fine as they're working to win back lapsed players at this moment, and will likely give some 4e people some love later.

I have no strong feelings regarding Nerath. It was okay, but I imagine the strength of the setting - what made people like it - was being able to make the world your own. Which makes it hard to update or reference. It was a lovely example of a Tabula Rasa setting.
My problem with the setting was also one of my problems with 4e: the concepts of that world became the baseline. Nerath has a world axis cosmology and so Dark Sun gained the world axis cosmology. Nerath was a point of light world and so Eberron became a point of light world. Nerath had the Dawn War at the start of time, and so the Realms had the Dawn War at the start of time. Some of it worked (Dawn War in Dark Sun) but sometimes it didn't (Forgotten Realms as a PoL world).

 

[drjones]

I don't know that it was so much a casualty of 4e association as it was of just being less well known. They tried to mine every edition for 5e and went with what was probably most well known and had the most non-RPG tie-ins. I have a DDI account, read a bit of 4e Dungeon, played 4e for years and still had to remind myself what Nentir was. I always thought of it as Generic Town to stick into whatever campaign you wanted.

 

[Serendipity]

Despite the fact that ultimately we didn't change over to 4th ed, I still found that the PoL / Nerath setting-not-setting far more compelling than any of the big ones save Eberron honestly. The good news is that the parts I liked weren't mechanical for the most part so I can still get lots of mileage out of them.
That said, I rather doubt we'll ever hear of the setting again, at least officially.

 

[Haffrung]

Nentir Vale was the only thing I liked that came out of the 4e era. I was really disheartened when they canceled the setting book... Monsters of Nentir Vale was an awesome book.

Yep. I really liked the practical, scaled-down Nentir Vale as a location to start a campaign in. I'll be disappointed if WotC sets every adventure they publish in the Forgotten Realms by default.

 

[johnmarron]

Despite the fact that ultimately we didn't change over to 4th ed, I still found that the PoL / Nerath setting-not-setting far more compelling than any of the big ones save Eberron honestly. The good news is that the parts I liked weren't mechanical for the most part so I can still get lots of mileage out of them.
That said, I rather doubt we'll ever hear of the setting again, at least officially.

I agree, I found the 4E PoL setting very evocative and inspiring, more so than the heavily detailed settings. For whatever reason, I really find the maps of Fallcrest that Brandon Kruse did to be very inspiring. I'm currently playing in a 5E game (playing through the starter set now and plan to move on to Hoard of the Dragon Queen), but when I start up my own 5E game eventually, I plan to use the Nentir Vale as the setting. With Dragonborn and Tieflings in the PHB, and Eladrin an easy conversion from High Elves, I think all of the mechanical bits I would need are already in place.

 

[Tony Vargas]

There are a few problems with Nerath.

First, that's not the name. It alternates between "Nerath", "Nentir Vale", and "the Points of Light world". It didn't really have a brand name to reference.

That's like saying Forgotten Realms alternates between that, Toril, and the Sword Coast.

Second, WotC really seems to want to double down on the Forgotten Realms and use the established world. They name drop Greyhawk and Dragonlance (two very, very popular settings) but don't reference many others like Birthright, Mystara, Ravenloft, and the like.

I guess there's only so many gratuitous mentions they could throw in. Maybe they'll get around to Dragonborn from Arkhosia or whatever, eventually. Probably not, because...

Third is the hard feelings regarding 4e.

Between 4e fans necessarily including all those D&D-loyalists who adopt each new edition with enthusiasm, and there being no legal possibility of a Pathfinder-like alternative for any 4e holdouts, it was probably a no-brainer for WotC to decide to cater heavily to those feelings.

 

[Jester David]

That's like saying Forgotten Realms alternates between that, Toril, and the Sword Coast.

Not... really.

In the Realms "Nerath", "Nentir Vale", and "the Points of Light world" would equate with "Netheril", "Silver Marches" and "Kitchen Sink".
Forgotten Realms is the brand name, which means nothing in-world. Nentir Vale doesn't have that. Toril is the name of the planet. Nentir Vale doesn't have that, it was always just "the world".

They could give it a name or some branding, but the world was meant to be generic, so there's little they could call it that wouldn't either be gibberish or extremely hard to trademark.

I guess there's only so many gratuitous mentions they could throw in. Maybe they'll get around to Dragonborn from Arkhosia or whatever, eventually. Probably not, because...

Adding too much flavour to the Point of Light world was tricky, as it defeated the purpose of the setting: a blank canvas that DMs could make their own. It's like releasing a full-colour colouring book.

Between 4e fans necessarily including all those D&D-loyalists who adopt each new edition with enthusiasm, and there being no legal possibility of a Pathfinder-like alternative for any 4e holdouts, it was probably a no-brainer for WotC to decide to cater heavily to those feelings.

From what WotC has said about the response to their surveys, it sounds like the majority of players are not edition warriors who really hew to a single edition. So focusing a concentrated effort on 4e fans seems unnecessary as just making a new edition will attract most.
Lapsed fans are someone they do need to target, as they're not currently customers.

Six months from now, when the DMG is out and everyone's seen what they can do with 5e (or can't) is when WotC will likely take stock of the situation and see how everyone feels about the game. If 90% of former 4e players came along with the update and seem happy then making a concentrated and focused effort for those remaining 10% seems unnecessary. If 75% updated to Next and there's some unhappy grumblings from that group, then maybe something extra can be done.

Yes, it would be nice if WotC supported 100% of fans of all editions and settings, but that's unlikely to be financially viable.

 

[Malshotfirst]

So far I'm liking what I'm seeing in the PHB but I noticed one thing that kind of bothers me. There is mention of Dragonlance, Greyhawk, and of course Forgotten Realms all through the PHB but NOTHING about Nerath. Now I understand that this world never got a setting although the Monsters of Nerath gave us a lot of that and of course all of the adventures did as well. It just seems like omitting mention of Nerath is telling that we won't be seeing that world and I think that's a mistake. Nerath has advantage of barely being used except for John Roger's comic series (and possibly a novel that I didn't read?) and it's ripe for a GM to use that Points of Light idea that 4th edition brought to us. It would be a shame if it was just dropped from supported worlds just because it hasn't spilled over the other mediums that WotC is trying to cover.

Plus, we have that cool Conquest of Nerath board game that no longer has any connection to the rest of DnD.

That was SUCH a good comic. I'd rather have a one hundred more issues of Fell's Five than the pathfinder comic. The only thing that comes close is Rate Queens, from Image.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I sold all my 4E materials early on, but I definitely think it's a mistake to not have any Nentir Vale/Nerath material in 5E. At the very least, it seems like a great Web product for WotC to whip up.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Yes, it would be nice if WotC supported 100% of fans of all editions and settings, but that's unlikely to be financially viable.

Depending on how complete the canceled Nentir Vale 4E setting book was, releasing it (either as a 4E or 5E product) at RPGNow seems like a no-brainer.

Of course, they still haven't finished off their older materials -- there's still no Thunder Rift, for instance, which is arguably an ancestor to Nentir Vale and was designed to serve the same purpose for BD&D.

 

[Jester David]

Depending on how complete the canceled Nentir Vale 4E setting book was, releasing it (either as a 4E or 5E product) at RPGNow seems like a no-brainer.

Of course, they still haven't finished off their older materials -- there's still no Thunder Rift, for instance, which is arguably an ancestor to Nentir Vale and was designed to serve the same purpose for BD&D.

They had a campaign setting book? I hadn't heard that. When did they say that?

 

[Agamon]

Nerath is a bad "example" world. It was meant to be open and a canvas for the DM. People and places get mentioned over and over in the PH from FR, GH, DL, RL, etc because they have a rich history behind them. Nerath didn't, that wasn't the point of it. So that we haven't heard about it makes sense.

I wouldn't be surprised if Nerath/Nentir Vale are mentioned in the DMG as an example of creating your own setting.

 

[Remathilis]

Nerath is the complete opposite of what the designers were going for in this iteration.

The Nentir Vale is a great sandbox, but much of the world beyond it was a hodge podge of famous D&D names ripped out and reused without original context (Tomb of Horrors, Isle of Dread, Soth, Strahd, Pelor, Bane) as if to create a "best of" album. On the one hand, being generic and open allowed DMs to fill in the blanks. On the other hand, it didn't do a lot to make it unique against Faerun or Oerth.

I imagine Fallcrest and Nentir might again appear somewhere, But its hard to name check it when a lot of its names come from other places anyway.

 

[thewok]

That was SUCH a good comic. I'd rather have a one hundred more issues of Fell's Five than the pathfinder comic. The only thing that comes close is Rate Queens, from Image.

Indeed. I loved that group. The Pathfinder comic is okay, but Fell's Five was awesome.

 

[Dungeoneer]

1) I agree with [MENTION=37579]Jester Canuck[/MENTION] that Nerath/Nentir Vale/Points of Light had a branding problem. In my game group we refer to it as Nentir Vale or PoL. I feel like PoL is probably as close to an official name as it has.

2) Unlike most settings, which are grand, sweeping things, the Nentir Vale was designed to be local local local. I was always under the impression that the idea was that you could drop it into just about any established setting with very few changes (aside from the World Axis cosmology, which is not really necessary to make things work). I would argue that by the end of 4e it wasn't, strictly speaking, a tabula rasa. The parts of it that were detailed were quite detailed and extremely flavorful. It's just that it didn't go out of its way to define every ancient religion, every god in its pantheon or seventeen millennia of history and backstory the way other settings do.

3) Although NV never got its Gazetteer, it did get the Monster Vault: Threats to Nentir Vale, which actually winds up being an excellent setting book. Additionally, virtually all the official 4e modules carve out little sections of the NV. The end result is a setting that is fairly well documented, in a highly distributed sort of way.

4) The Dawn War is awesome and needs to be part of the D&D cosmology forever and ever. It's a brilliant re-imagining of the classic D&D cosmologies. People who hate on 4e just don't know what they are missing.

 

[Beleriphon]

4) The Dawn War is awesome and needs to be part of the D&D cosmology forever and ever. It's a brilliant re-imagining of the classic D&D cosmologies. People who hate on 4e just don't know what they are missing.

I did like the Dawn War immensely. I even like its inclusion in the Forgotten Realms. Seriously, Mt Hotsenow blowing up becaues a Primordial started to wake is awesome!