Fomorians article on DDI

[lutecius]

Hey, I like symmetry. The Wheel didn’t work for me because it was built upon that wonky alignment system, had all sorts of redundancies and contradictions piled up over the years and hardly fitted any real world cosmology... nothing to do with symmetry.

But I still found this Feydark uninspiring and counterintuitive.
If they wanted an Unseelie Court why not keep the dark elves? They scream dark fey to me (~"fey-dark" get it?). If there is some place in the feywild that eladrins cannot reach, I don’t see why the drow wouldn’t occupy and rule it.

Actually the whole drow underdark would work much better if it was in the feywild for the most part, but connected to caves throughout the world. Geologically speaking, vast subterranean interconnected kingdoms in the material world are not that credible.

As for the Fomorian enemies of the Eladrins, I understand they are meant as an allusion to the war between the Fomóiri and Tuatha Dé Danann in Irish myths but they could still be the drow’s servants or allies.
I think they were associated with the sea rather than the underworld anyway, and some had animal heads.
They would have made cool beastmen à la Warhammer, related to minotaurs as well as cyclops. Twisted evil beastmen would have been perfect for the feywild and more interesting than crazy giants.

 

[Stogoe]

I, for one, will be calling it the Gl'ack-XSp'attle D'zuuutunork.

Because that's much better, and it perfectly describes what the place is about.

Or, you know, not at all.

 

[Exen Trik]

Underhill is good. Feydeep or feydepths wouldn't have been too bad either. But it's hardly important, I think anyone who wants a different name for it will just make one up.

 

[Lizard]

I have zero intent of using the fluff as written, or anything close to it, but the feywild/feydark thing, parallel worlds, all that jazz, I really like.

 

[Kishin]

Is complaining about nomenclature in 4E one of the in things? I never remember hearing clamor about names in fluff until this edition, even though I can think of much worse. *coughHeironeouscough*

 

[Lizard]

Meh, Feydark is fine. The name was used for 9 years in Everquest without anyone even raising a single snarky comment.

THAT'S why it's so familiar! Damn! No wonder it didn't bug me.

 

[Lizard]

Is complaining about nomenclature in 4E one of the in things? I never remember hearing clamor about names in fluff until this edition, even though I can think of much worse. *coughHeironeouscough*

The fluff in prior editions wasn't nearly so intrusive in the core books. For 3e, they just used a few dabs of warmed over Greyhawk. For 4e, they are purposefully and deliberately creating fluff and integrating it with the rules. Thus, it gets a lot more criticism; it's a major part of what distinguishes 4e from 3e, and so, it gets focused on.

You never heard any pre-3e hype about the 'assumed setting', and I doubt the designers of 3e spent 1/10th the time on the setting material for the core rulebooks that the 4e designers did. If they're going to shove the fluff in our face as a selling point, we're going to pick it apart like we do the rules changes.

 

[Scholar & Brutalman]

Is complaining about nomenclature in 4E one of the in things? I never remember hearing clamor about names in fluff until this edition, even though I can think of much worse. *coughHeironeouscough*

"Heironeous" has been sanctified by immemorial tradition, reaching back almost 30 years.(*)

I figure if other posters can whine endlessly about tiny rule changes then there's a whole lot of complaining about nomenclature available for me.

(*): this is sarcasm.

 

[Scholar & Brutalman]

Eh. Compared to Rakshastan, this is Joycean.

Here I was thinking "They should get the people who wrote Exalted to think up cool names for them!"

Memory, she is fickle...

 

[Campbell]

Is complaining about nomenclature in 4E one of the in things? I never remember hearing clamor about names in fluff until this edition, even though I can think of much worse. *coughHeironeouscough*

Brand new game elements tend to be scrutinized harder than more traditional elements. Still, I recall some controversy over 3e using Greyhawk as an assumed setting. Most of the nay saying I heard about 3e fluff was that it was being included at all. I remember a observing a number of arguments over the fact that 3e was including a sample pantheon at all.