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

[helium3]

When as a DM, you decide that Tieflings suck as a race and do not include them in your campaign, but a player really really wants to play one when he read about it in the PHB.

Stuff written down in the PHB tends to be taken as gospel.

Amen Brutha!!

Though, weirdly enough, I think the significant fluff changes from 3.5E to 4E are going to make this task easier for me in the future. It'll be a lot harder for my players to get their panties in a bunch over changes I've made from the default setting when the new default setting is so different from the old default setting.

Of course, I'll still need to convince them that the changes I've made are still worth accepting.

 

[Beckett]

I threw out several lines and apparently everyone bit on cosmology (to keep the fish jokes coming). I was looking for reaction to the overall fluff. I find it a bit frustrating that in the recent playtest report:

"Bonecrusher zombies and a zombie hulk go into the reliquary. That’s a bit different than the Blood of Vol clerics I’d slotted in there, but I wanted to put the new monsters through their paces. (And a robust NPC creation system is something we don’t have… yet."

This is where changes to fluff have me scratching my head yet the NPC creation system isn't complete???

Context is key.

So back in June, they were among the first groups to try out the new rules.

Dave was writing about the start of playtesting for his group, almost four months ago. By now, I imagine they've sped up NPC creation, as well as made plenty of mechanical and flavor changes.

 

[blargney the second]

When as a DM, you decide that Tieflings suck as a race and do not include them in your campaign, but a player really really wants to play one when he read about it in the PHB.

Stuff written down in the PHB tends to be taken as gospel.

Man, I put stuff in the PHB off limits all the time. Paladins, tanglefoot bags, sometimes even raise dead. You don't want something, don't include it. Dead simple.

 

[Klaus]

I have this to say about the Great Wheel:

It got me an A+ in Philosophy 201 in college. I did an entire presentation of it, and nearly everyone in a room of 100 thought it was very cool.

Sure, I threw in some bits like Mordenkainen was a scholar from Lemuria, but still...

 

[see]

People are pointing out that the old D&D fluff is Gary Gygax's homebrew. And that's true. But it's a homebrew that created an industry, and dominated it for decades. Nothing's touched it; nothing's successfully competed with Gygaxian D&D. Forget other companies' games; even D&D settings not based on Gygaxisms didn't succeed as well (see Dragonlance, Oriental Adventures, Dark Sun, Spelljammer, Ravenloft, Birthright, and the Known World).

Forgotten Realms, you say? FR, as published, incorporated every Gygaxism in 1e. Gygaxian D&D could be played in FR with no effort at all; everything new in FR was in addition to, not instead of.

And now we're getting a new default setting which throws out large portions of the thirty-year-old default setting wholesale. Sure, it's the same game, and it's still fantasy -- but so were Dragonlance, or Sword & Sorcery Studios' Scarred Lands. And just to make sure the bets aren't hedged, the Forgotten Realms are being shaken up more than all the godly conflict of the last twenty years could do, and thrown forward a hundred years.

And yet, it doesn't seem like any of the designers realize that they're taking a New Coke-sized gamble with D&D.

 

[cthulhu_duck]

What's intuitive about five different elven subraces, two of which are near identical aside from mechanics (wild and wood), and two of which are near identical in description (high and gray), and one of which isn't called a "<blank> elf" like the others (drow)?

Not much.

I find eladrin, elf, and drow to be far more intuitive than that mess.

And I prefer my own house rules, which treats them not as subraces, but as different cultural groupings within Elvenkind.

I'd much rather see races treated in a similar fashion to 3E PHB2 classe options - where you have a base class, but with an option you can create a variant or different elf/dwarf/halfling without having to define subraces within the race.

That would also allow for humans who weren't all identical.

But I suspect Wizards will use Eladrin. It gives them another IP.

 

[HellHound]

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.

Please no.

EVERY time anything planar was published for 3.x, there was an outcry from the Planescape fans about how crappy / non-planescape it was.

If anything, getting as far from Planescape as possible is a good thing, because it means they can publish planar stuff again and people who buy it and enjoy it won't have to listen to the Planescape grognards telling them how wrong it is.

 

[Keldryn]

On the other hand, you can have something like the Nintendo Wii, which had, and still has, many "hardcore" gamers throwing hissyfits about its lack of power and unconventional controller. Meanwhile, it enjoys unprecedented success.

"Hardcore" gamers are whiny, selfish dorks who can and will complain about anything and everything that isn't to their exact specifications.

I agree that it isn't Greyhawk, but Greyhawk sort of was the original setting for 1E and as a result the Great Wheel is "generic" DND cosmology.

The thing that a lot of people are overlooking is that what is "historical" or "conventional" D&D "fluff" to them is not necessarily so to other gamers. It all depends on when you started playing and what settings and rules you used.

I started playing with B/X/C/M D&D, and the first time I saw the "Great Wheel" was either Best of Dragon Vol. 1 or the 1e DMG, a good couple of years after I started playing.

The "Great Wheel" was thus not the standard cosmology for The Known World (Mystara), even in its AD&D 2e incarnation.

It wasn't the cosmology for Dragonlance; at least not in its original incarnation. "The Abyss" was about the only plane referenced, at it was the home of Takhisis (Tiamat), a Lawful Evil goddess. The Great Wheel might have been tacked-on to the setting later though.

I don't think it was the standard cosmology for Dark Sun. Perhaps not for Ravenloft or Birthright either.

And in 3rd Edition, the Forgotten Realms and Eberron have already ditched it.

This is where changes to fluff have me scratching my head yet the NPC creation system isn't complete???

Fluff changes don't require playtesting and R&D time. They probably have guidelines for creating NPCs, but not a "robust" system for generating them very quickly.

What I want is a super generic DnD core books. I thought the Greyhawk gods were too much in 3.0. They should have had generic gods without names and basically left their portfolio such as healing, justice, etc. If they want they could throw in example names form GH, greek mythology, etc.

I couldn't disagree more. I don't want the D&D equivalent of the GURPS Basic Set. D&D as simply a toolset is dry and boring. Even if I don't use the fluff of the core rules, they at least provide some inspiration and context. I think the 4e core books should contain a playable "default" setting with enough flavour to be able to pick it up and play it. It doesn't need to be a massive tome like the FRCS; a short chapter in the PHB giving the players the important background info and a slightly longer chapter in the DMG to complement it would be sufficient. Give the new players something they can work with right out of the core books instead of requiring them to buy yet another book just to get a world to play in.

It's easy to replace the fluff of the core books with a homebrewed setting, or the Realms, or whatever else I choose.

The elemental planes on the other hand may not seem sexy or fun but I would guess like many gamers they have little relative impact on your game. They do however provide a historical point of reference that many of us older players can refer to on a common level. If their not core than they are certainly canon. I would argue they are both.

If an aspect of the game is boring or uninteresting and goes unused by the majority of players, then I would consider that a problem. Make them interesting and more appealing so that they are used by more players. Don't keep stuff around solely as a "historical point of reference" for an incredibly small percentage of players to wax nostalgic about. There is very little in any edition of the game that couldn't be improved upon in some way.

 

[Keldryn]

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. I would have no objections to changing the GW but describe why it happened....Asmodeus staged a coup d'etat and took over the nine hells. Don't just suddenly appear with statements about cosmology as if it never existed. We shouldn't have revisionist history with 3 generations of the game preceding this one

The problem with that is that for those players who aren't familiar with the 30-year history of the game don't need to deal with the clutter from previous editions. It's just a bunch of filler to have to sift through to get at the meat of the setting. Veteran gamers should have enough of an imagination to fill in the blanks themselves as to why and how the cosmology changed, if it really gets them that hot and bothered.

Unless you're converting an existing campaign to 4th Edition rules, why on earth should there be any need to have an explanation of why the cosmology or other fluff aren't the same as they were in completely different campaigns? It's a new set of rule, it's a new campaign... what's wrong with just saying this is the way it's always been? There's no inconsistency or continuity errors. Just excess baggage that veteran gamers insist on dragging around.

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.

With all due respect to the Planescape fans, they don't represent a large enough percentage of the customer base to warrant writing things to avoid upsetting them. If they don't like it, they can change it back to the way they remember. 3e's incarnation of The Great Wheel isn't really Planescape anymore at this point anyway.

 

[Branduil]

Intuitive how?

What is intuitive about an Eladrin?

What is intuitive about a Tiefling?

The word Elf is intuitive. The word Dwarf is inituitive.

Intuitive and/or attractive. I think many newcomers would find the idea of playing a character with demonic or angelic heritage attractive. Much moreso than playing a Gnome, probably.