D&D 4E Is 4E the designers homebrew coming to my gaming table?

[RPG_Tweaker]

The Great Wheel is the official cosmology used in the Planescape and Greyhawk campaign settings.

Wizards of the Coast has officially announced that in 4th edition D&D, Greyhawk is no longer the default setting, thus decoupling the game from the Great Wheel. Therefore, the new default setting has no obligation to have any resemblance to either of those two settings.

The great wheel is at least a point of reference for those of us who played. It does come with baggage but that helps everyone see things from a relatively common point of view.

Well I've played too, and I say it's a poor reference. I've eschewed it since 1E and am overjoyed to see it pushed to it's own milieu (where it should be) and replaced with something more palatable.

We shouldn't have revisionist history with 3 generations of the game preceding this one

Each of those 3 generations have experienced significant revisionist history. Every edition, every supplement, every campaign setting, each adding new rules and new (and often wildly different) theme to the game.

The Great Wheel too has witnessed numerous revisions since it's debut, twisting it further and further from its original form. Is the plane of shadow demi- or full? What about demi-planes du jour? The Blood War? Sigil? These are not from OD&D or even core 1E.

... oh and Modrons? *shudder*

The core books use of the outer planes should be written in a generic enough fashion to avoid upsetting Planescape fans. I just don't think that level of detail should be entered into.

Planescape is a separate campaign setting it's never been implicit core material. It's a game template to be laid over the core set replacing it where they intersect... just like Forgotten Realms, and Eberron, and Birthright, and Dragonlance, and etc., etc. ad nauseum.


To the specific topic:

Is the new implied setting the 4E designers' homebrew? Of course... just like the Great Wheel was Mr. Gygax's homebrew, and Eberron's cosmology is Keith Baker's homebrew.

In fact, the whole freaking game is an amalgam of numerous designer's homebrew.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

Your right Gary's DnD is not any more generic than what the 4E designers are purposing. I would hope that you would at least concede that it has historical importance and in a strange way that sort of defines the DnD. DnD at least in a very primordial sense should bear some resemblance to Gygax/Greyhawk.

Hmm. Personally, I believe that the game should only resemble Greyhawk in those aspects which are good to include in the game now and which can be found in Greyhawk.

For instance, it was Greyhawk which originated the D&D trope of clerics who worship a single god from a pantheon exclusively. That's an idea I'd like to see vanish from the game, at least as the default assumption - the default "should" (i.e., should in my opinion) be clerics which serve a whole pantheon, with a rare few who devote themselves nigh-on exclusively to single deity, and clerics who belong to monotheistic or nontheistic religions as well.

Eberron does this particularly well - but if we were to move to this model, it would mean abandoning that element of Greyhawk and consigning it to the dustbin of history. To me, this is no impediment, because I consider the replacement better (and, a bit like the Great Wheel, it can always be revived in the appropriate place - a Greyhawk Campaign Setting).

 

[HellHound]

I think your making my point for me. Leave the core vague so it doesn't create a problem. Then publish some planar stuff in a detailed book. Leave it out of core. Instead what WOTC is doing is rewriting core which I sure will make Planescapers more upset.

I think I am not.

If you make the core rules setting material so vague that it doesn't say anything, then any new player group getting into the game will not only have to buy the three core rule books, but also a setting book.

If the goal is to price the game out of reach of new gamers, it would be a brilliant tactic.

 

[Belen]

Just wondering what others think (beside Treebore and Celebrim whose opinions seem thematically similar to my own) Just kidding guys....feel free to chime in

I really like the emphasis on fluff. The 3e core books decidedly lacked flavor and I am enjoying the fact that the designers are looking at that aspect of the game now. I hope that the 4e core books do not read like a frakkin' textbook, which it appears that they are working hard to avoid.

Also, I like the points of light setting and the new cosmology even if I am against the High Elf (Eladrin) Wild Elf (elf) meme and tieflings.

 

[Desdichado]

I can't wait until May when the new books come out. The mechanics of 4E will hopefully fix many of the problems associated with 3.5 without generating too many new problems.

However, your old group is not making any plans to change over. I seem to be the most interested of anyone in the group, and I'm pretty ambivalent.

My latest reservation is some of the fluff changes they are making:

I'm indifferent to changes in fluff. Or rather, I enjoy them. Fluff is free. If I don't like the fluff, I can adopt some other fluff, or make some new fluff up. But if WotC just retreads the same old fluff, then I have less options to work with. So, even if I don't like the fluff as much as the old fluff (although in most cases, I do prefer what I'm hearing for 4e so far) I'd still rather have it than not. I've already got the older fluff.

Elemental planes more hospitable, demons/devil changes, eladrin/teiflings in the core, silly named magic traditions, points of light campaign model, cosmology/great wheel changes, etc.

I actually prefer all of those to the former status quo.

I don't feel that these were broken issues and that the DnD community was clamoring for them to be fixed.

They may not have been clamoring, but that doesn't mean that they weren't a problem. If we have elemental planes that are difficult to use, people may not be clamoring for a fix to their elemental planes, but it's still a problem that's better solved rather than left open ended. For example.

I think tieflings as a core race, without an LA, is also a really good idea. They're a popular race (it seems) yet the LA +1 is a hindrance to using them.

Maybe making them core wasn't the solution, but I think a problem with some of the planetouched LA +1 races was certainly begging to be solved. As another example.

Devils and demons who's only distinguishing feature is the law/chaos axis of their alignment in an environment where the law/chaos axis is poorly defined, always argued over, and alignment itself is increasingly seen by many in the community as a poor tool---I dunno. Again, maybe the solution wasn't the best one ever, but I think there's a problem there begging to be solved if you look just below the surface. There may not have been droves of players running around saying, "crap; I just can't figure out what to do with demons and devils the way they're written!" but there doesn't need to be for a problem to be obvious just under the surface.

 

[JustinM]

Because all this stuff is imaginary (though the concepts they are derived from may not be) hasn't D&D always been an issue of folks playing in Gary Gygax's, Mike Mearls', Monte Cook's, etc. homebrew games? Of course this is unless one creates a entire setting whole cloth which is possible of course.

Beat me to it.

It's all homebrew anyway. Just not my home or your home. In fact, I'll disagree with the post I'm quoting--even creating settings whole cloth is still just homebrew.

In the end, it doesn't matter. Not one whit.

 

[RFisher]

My prescriptivist nitpick for today: Inanimate things cannot be intuitive; they can be intuitable.

It all depends on when you started playing and what settings and rules you used.

Heh. I switched from Basic/Expert to Advanced before Mystara (the Known World) was anything more than a brief example. I never used the Great Wheel. I can't remember any other DMs I played with using the Great Wheel.

Heck, I might not even know. I'm having a real hard time remembering it ever mattering in play. Cosmology really seems like the worst example for this thread.

I don't want the D&D equivalent of the GURPS Basic Set.

I have mixed feelings about that.

I can't deny, however, that games like D&D that seem to fall somewhere in the middle of the "include/exclude a setting" continuum seem to be the most successful.

I guess the thing to me is that I'd like the books to do more to set a player's expectation that any example fluff won't be used by the DM. It should be tagged with a "check with your DM; this is only an example". Maybe even differentiated typographically.

If you make the core rules setting material so vague that it doesn't say anything, then any new player group getting into the game will not only have to buy the three core rule books, but also a setting book.

(O_O)

I've played a lot of fantasy under GURPS, yet I've never seen Yrth used. A prefab setting is hardly required for new groups.

 

[Desdichado]

Honestly, if you've already gotta buy three hardback books just to play, then buying one more isn't a stretch.

It's still a pet peeve of mine that you need three hardbacks to play, though. Games like Star Wars d20 or d20 Modern or d20 Call of Cthulhu can do it in one using pretty much the same system.

Granted, their spell lists and magic item lists and monster lists aren't nearly as rich, but it's only the monsters that I'd really miss. And they'll be plenty of time to add more of all of the above back in other supplements.

 

[RFisher]

It's still a pet peeve of mine that you need three hardbacks to play, though. Games like Star Wars d20 or d20 Modern or d20 Call of Cthulhu can do it in one using pretty much the same system.

Yeah, but since 2e you haven't really needed more than the PHB.

& there's a counter argument to make that other games might sell better if they had a cheaper player book so only the GM had to pay the price of a bigger book.

I have a 3.5 PHB (well, actually, the Mongoose Pocket PHB) so I can play in 3.5e games, but I didn't bother with the MM or DMG.

 

[FabioMilitoPagliara]

in the end every campaign is homebrew, but the core rules should be oriented at maximum flexibility and adaptability

all the full so far is in this direction, it's more playable for the new, offers new idea for the old (like me, started more than 20 years ago)

what should they do keep doing copy and past with a cosmology that don't match with the new alignaments?

they are doing a great job in taking the old and building with it and on it to make a game that is still dnd but have a lot of new turns and points of view (of light