Dungeoncraft article: Shifters in MM, deities mentioned

[Plane Sailing]

First off, here is a link to the article.

Bloody stupid wizards website. Changed the login process, don't appear to have bothered migrating accounts and I CAN'T REGISTER AGAIN BECAUSE THE WEBSITE IS CLOSED FOR MAINTENANCE. AGAIN.

Please excuse my shouting, but I've never come across any other website, in the whole world, which spends so much time shut for business as the wizards forums.

Gah.

 

[DandD]

If your password was smaller than 6 letters, don't even bother trying for the migration process.

 

[WhatGravitas]

Bloody stupid wizards website. Changed the login process, don't appear to have bothered migrating accounts and I CAN'T REGISTER AGAIN BECAUSE THE WEBSITE IS CLOSED FOR MAINTENANCE. AGAIN.

One rarely sees a mod that un-moddish (quoted, in case you want to change this)!

For the article: The article delivers. James Wyatt still knows how to write properly (i.e. I like the style and flow) and gives a good outline of the concept. And it's an article that I needed, because I'm indeed outlining the first concepts for my first 4E campaign.

And it is filled with nice artwork (the human/half-elf/elf-heads) and there were information about 4E in it. And yet the article has perhaps more use than a pure 'what's in 4E' article.

I like this very much, perhaps the best DDI article so far, except for Mouseferatu's Tsojancth-article.

Cheers, LT.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Having made six attempts at migrating via gleemax I decided to register from scratch, to find that my old screen-name there was available (so my migration attempts were doomed to failure anyhow).

So, I'm registered again there at last. Now to read the article.

One rarely sees a mod that un-moddish

Ah, we are only human As a professional web developer I get overly frustrated by websites which, IMO, underperform for one reason or another. Mea Culpa!

 

[Plane Sailing]

Having got in there, I agree that it is an excellent article.

It reminds me very much of the first, really excellent Dungeoncraft articles by Ray Winneagar(sp?) - very much the same approach that he took, apart from the excellent idea Ray had of creating a 'secret' for every notable campaign thing.

Cheers

 

[Baby Samurai]

So that gives us confirmation on the following PHB races:

Dwarf, Eladrin, Elf, Half-Elf, Halfling, Human, Tiefling

I believe Halflings are in too, so maybe our new iconic characters will be:


-Human Rogue

-Dwarf Wizard

-Eladrin Fighter

-Elf Cleric

-Half-elf Fighter

-Halfling Warlord

-Half-orc Warlock

-Tiefling Paladin

 

[Klaus]

One thing I noticed, in the human/half-elf/elf line-up pic -- the "grid" on which the faces are drown remains of constant (or nearly so) width, yet the faces grow, i.e. half-elf face is larger than the human one, and the elf is larger than the half-elf.

I'm probably reading a bit too much from this, but could it be that the 4e elves are larger than humans?

EDIT: Oh, and the tieflings are definitely more than a "human with a fiend somewhere in its anbcestry" now. The article mentions "crumbling ruins left by the ancient empire of the tieflings". That (for me, anyways) strongly implies they're a separate, full-fledged race.

Not really.

When comparing proportions, you must adjust all heads to the same size of one dimension (in this case, width). What the (very nice) grid shows us is that if humans, elves and half-elves had heads of equal width, elven heads would be longer and more angular.

 

[PieAndDragon]

Very useful article. The sort I would happily point a new DM to if they asked my advice for starting a campaign.

There may well be several 4E campaigns which start at a village, on a crossroads, with halflings on rafts, a chasm nearby, and similarly named towns lying at the end of the four roads.

 

[DarkWhite]

EDIT: Oh, and the tieflings are definitely more than a "human with a fiend somewhere in its anbcestry" now. The article mentions "crumbling ruins left by the ancient empire of the tieflings". That (for me, anyways) strongly implies they're a separate, full-fledged race.

I had hoped we might get different flavours of Tieflings, decended from different fiendish ancestors - some with horns, some with wings, some with cloven hooves etc - and a similar variety of energy resistances, spell-like abilities, breath weapons etc. Probably we still will, via racial feats. But Tieflings as one unified race? I prefer them as fragments of their former ancient empire, now secretly hiding among human (and other) societies, with appearances and powers that vary vastly due to a diluted gene pool.

 

[WayneLigon]

A couple more articles in that vein placed in the DMG would be an excellent first-timer's guide to campaign creation. This first article really does spell out the most important aspect: you don't have to treat the books like they are carved in stone.