Dragon 338: Returning to Athas, part1

[DarthMouth]

I realy hope this thread dont make the devs hold Tiefling info much longer.. im really expecting to see more of anything... long time without play D_S.. cant wait any longer.

 

[Tzarevitch]

@ Kingreaper.
It was muddy to start with. You can't make it worse.

 

[Tzarevitch]

Straw man? Isn't that when you misrepresent an opposing viewpoint in a simplistic and exaggerated way?

That's correct. I really have no idea what point he is trying to make either.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

That's correct. I really have no idea what point he is trying to make either.

His point is that some people are claiming that the only reason to dislike the changes in Dark Sun are because you're a "hater" and you hate all new things. It's not only untrue, it's also intellectually dishonest to a huge degree, especially since both he and I have stated that we have no problems with the dragonborn being added in (Shock and awe, those are new too!)

 

[Wik]

There isn't enough facepalm in the world for what you're writing Wik. There really isn't. This in particular:



This is utterly hilarious. You first start by complaining you are being taken out of context in certain quotes and then proceed to completely misquote Rich Baker with words he never said.

Well done on hoisting yourself that firmly upon your own petard as that takes a genuine amount of effort.

Okay. I paraphrased his quote. I'm sorry - I assumed everyone had read his blog post, in which he said:

Now, some of you Dark Sun purists might be inclined to say “High elves don’t have any place in my Athas!” But we think it’s important for someone who’s new to the D&D game with 4th Edition to find many/most of the things they regard as being in the core of the D&D game in the Dark Sun setting. If someone out there is a huge eladrin fan – you know, the guy or gal at the table who *always* plays an eladrin – we don’t want to give him or her a reason not to give Dark Sun a try. So that means we’d want to find a place for the eladrin to appear in Dark Sun. Only… different. If halflings are savage cannibals, and elves are nomadic thieves and raiders, we wouldn’t want eladrins to be highly civilized, graceful arcanists off in their own lush green faerie-plane. It’s an important part of the Dark Sun experience that familiar races and characters have bold new “takes” that throw them into different roles, and that means the eladrin receive an Athasian makeover too.

As this was a quote I had already quoted in this thread, I figured I would just paraphrase it.

How is that any different from what I said, in general principle?

That is Baker's inspiration for putting Eladrin in the setting. Fair enough. But I don't see why one can use that methodology and then cut out divine classes (which can be "stretched" to fit Dark Sun - 2e did it!).

I'd like to go and make some points, but I have to go for now. But, to reiterate (I feel like a broken record here):

1) I agree that the designers have done some great work.
2) I do not agree with the logic that the feywild is in the book, but I'm not upset about it or anything. I'm really just trying to approach this in a debate format. I am far from a "hater".
3) I am very excited for Dark Sun. I really am. I can imagine I'll be making some changes to it, but then, who won't be?
4) I am questioning one or two things put out by the designers that makes me wonder about their design choices. Is that really a bad thing?

 

[Wolfwood2]

It seems like the role of the Feywild in Darksun is not so much "magical desert" or "natural world turned up to 11" but more "you can't get there by just plain walking".

That is, the Feywild is the place for fortresses that only appear for one night out of the year and then vanish again. The Feywild is the place for the oasis that you can only get to if you follow a specific spiral pattern into it. Head straight there and you find nothing but empty desert. The Feywild is the monument to a lost age sticking out of the desert that only appears in the midst of the most terrible of lightning storms.

You get the idea. I can buy into the Feywild as the common mechanic for Athasian "hidden realms". It's a pretty cool concept and something that I think you genuinely _can't_ do with bog-standard Athasian desert. No matter how terrible the deserts of Athas are, they are still physical places in the real world. If you can keep putting one foot in front of the other and going in a straight line, you can always get to a specific place within them. Not so with the Feywild.

 

[Obryn]

His point is that some people are claiming that the only reason to dislike the changes in Dark Sun are because you're a "hater" and you hate all new things.

Like who?

-O

 

[MrMyth]

How is that any different from what I said, in general principle?

"But we think it’s important for someone who’s new to the D&D game with 4th Edition to find many/most of the things they regard as being in the core of the D&D game in the Dark Sun setting"

Right up front, he is saying that not everything needs to be included. Read the entire quote - only one sentence mentions the guy who likes to always play Eladrin. Several more are devoted to the real heart of the matter - that taking familiar races and throwing them into different roles has always been part of the Dark Sun experience, and that is exactly what they are working with here.

And here's the thing, regarding your specific comparison. The absence of Eladrin was never a core part of Dark Sun - just a byproduct of them not existing as a specific race at the time! But the absence of gods is a fundamental to the setting.

Thus, Eladrin can be added in to preserve familiarity without undermining the setting, while the same isn't true for divine characters. Could they have found a way to make it work if they wanted to? Probably. But they felt the element was too central to the setting to do so, and I am fine with that.

I don't have an issue with you questioning the designer's decisions here, or stating that you prefer an Athas without a Feywild. You certainly aren't coming off simply as a hater, but... you also aren't particularly coming off as arguing in good faith. There have already been a lot of good responses in this thread explaining why many people are perfectly happy with an Athasian Feywild, and excited to see it in action. Shrugging those opinions aside while fixating on a single quote of the designer (and ignoring all the other reasons the designer is giving), declaring the opposition's viewpoints for them (saying that wanting to use the Feywild means a DM isn't willing to think outside the box), or making complaints based on information that isn't remotely available to us as of yet (how Eladrin's Fey Step will work) hasn't helped your point much, either.

 

[I'm A Banana]

* A sidebar world
* A known quantity
* Usable by the PCs, and
* Available for escape from Athas?

Or, for that matter, a device as useful as a cell phone in a horror movie?

Because I trust you, Obryn....

• A Sidebar World: The feywild is another plane of existence. It's not Athas. It's somewhere else. So it is its own place, alongside the place of the Dark Sun campaign setting. It's somewhere else to go, with its own factions and threats and problems. It's not part and parcel of the setting, it is beside the setting. It doesn't have sorcerer-kings. It doesn't have half-giants. It doesn't have kanks. Or maybe it has super-powered magi-kanks. Either way, it's not part and parcel of the setting, but alongside it.
• A Known Quantity: Anything the PC's use becomes something of a known quantity. If an eladrin PC teleports through the Feywild once per encounter, he's doing it 2-3 times per session, over and over again, over the course of every encounter in the entire campaign. It becomes something of a trusted tool, that obeys some rules very familiar to at least that PC, and, via that PC, the entire party. It's also true that it is a known quantity of the back-story of any Eladrin PC, making it at least a tangential element of one character's practical knowledge.
• Usable by the PC's: Again, the blink elf teleport. Which is part of why one of my own ideas for using eladrin in Athas that I gave above (because, as will be familiar to those reading my posts, I don't think that's really a bad idea) was to refluff it as a bralani-style whirlwind. This keeps eladrin with essentially the same ability (maybe they can't go through walls?), but doesn't use another plane to achieve the effect. Bralani exist already in 4e, so this wouldn't even be out-of-product-identity territory for the eladrin.
• Available for Escape from Athas: If it's a place you can travel to for short periods, or in background material, it's a place you should be able to travel to for long periods, in play. Even at .1%. It would be a desirable place to travel to (no sorcerer-kings ruling over you, protective psionic eladrin, no harsh sun, no harsh weather, no raiding groups of barbarians). Thus, it would be the goal of many characters aware of it. Any group with an eladrin PC is going to be aware of it, because such a PC makes frequent use of it, and likely includes it to some degree in their back-story. Such a group is more likely to want to use this to get out of this horrible place, into some place a little less horrible. It's certainly not inevitable, but I imagine the eladrin characters that the party interacts with that are totally OK with not being in the feywild would be a minority.
• Like a cell phone in a horror movie: Because of the availability of escape, if I as a DM wanted to instead focus on the problems of Athas, rather than of the sidebar world of the Feywild, and the party wants to escape Athas by use of the Feywild, they're forced to contrive some method to prevent the PC's from accessing it in any way more significant than the mechanics of a teleport or two.

Like I said right in that first reaction post, this isn't even a dealbreaker for me as a DM. It's easy enough to declare my own eladrin different, my own Dark Sun feywild nonexistent, my own world free of cell phones. But it does suck that the official design team isn't doing the work for me, that eladrin are less awesome than they could be, and that the official setting has this big elephant in the room that, I think, kind of messes with the feng shui of the place. And it does make me skeptical of the ability of the official team to produce truly unique settings within the framework of 4e (though, again, like I pointed out early on in this conversation, a departure like Gamma World might scratch the spot nicely).

If that fairly reasonable dispute about a fairly minor point in what looks to be something I'm going to be overall a fan of makes me a hater in someone's mind, I think that poster may need to re-calibrate their Criticism Detector. Because "I think adding the Feywild hurts the feel of Dark Sun" is at least a notch or two below a Helen Thomas-level scandal, though you wouldn't know it from the tone of some of the reactions here.

 

[Kingreaper]

Because I trust you, Obryn....

• A Sidebar World: The feywild is another plane of existence. It's not Athas. It's somewhere else. So it is its own place, alongside the place of the Dark Sun campaign setting. It's somewhere else to go, with its own factions and threats and problems. It's not part and parcel of the setting, it is beside the setting. It doesn't have sorcerer-kings. It doesn't have half-giants. It doesn't have kanks. Or maybe it has super-powered magi-kanks. Either way, it's not part and parcel of the setting, but alongside it.

In order to get from one bit of feywild to another, you have to travel through athas proper.

So, no, it isn't a sidebar world. You could call it 10,000 sidebar worlds, but it's certainly not A sidebar world.

And each bit of feywild is quite small, so I doubt you'd be able to live there.
Especially with those damn Eladrin trying to drive you out.