Ruin Explorer
Legend
This thread was caused by thinking about this post:
Now, let it be clear that I don't dislike Dragonborn and I like the concept of Tieflings (albeit not the particular "look" they have in 4E), but I do think that Green Adam is on to something here. Now, fantasy is inherently "far out" to some degree, but what I'm wondering is, is 4E's basic setting so far out that it loses touch with reality entirely and becomes hard to relate to? Obviously, I'm actually interested in opinions, because I can see it both ways, myself. Is it still grounded enough but perhaps teetering on the edge of "too unreal", I wonder.
I wonder because most popular non-gaming fantasy, whether it's LotRO, or Harry Potter, or what-have-you, posit human-o-centric universes, and previously D&D very much did this. In 4E, it explicitly doesn't, the assumption being (according to the setting development book, at least), that non-human is always more interesting than human. Why have a human miner when you can have a dwarven miner? etc.
Personally, I can certainly feel that as a factor pushing me away from the default setting, and to a lesser extent away from the game as a whole. It's not the rules, let's be clear, they're fine. It's the setting, and it's explicit ultra-high fantasy-ness. It's hard to put the feeling into words without slipping into false perjoratives or using dodgy examples, so I'll try to avoid that. I look at the art of 4E, though, and I very much do see Star Wars, and a world that's extremely distant from ours, almost incomprehensible on any level other than as part of game. I think the difference between 4E and previous editions of D&D isn't so much that this stuff wasn't there before - it mostly was - but rather that it's deeply integrated in the game and kind of present from the get-go. I guess what I'm saying is that the basic level of fantasy in D&D 4E seems so high that I can't really get a handle on how life would be in such a world, and I suspect that it's likely to actually kind of shock any non-gamer coming to D&D.
I mean, coming from something like WoW, you're going to be fine. D&D's implied setting and level of species diversity is very much "on-par" with WoW. Coming from say, a fantasy lit. reading background, or from watching things like LotRO and Harry Potter, though, I think it's going to be a bit wild and extreme, and coming from outside fantasy entirely, I think the world 4E portrays implicitly is so alien that it would extremely difficult to meaningfully connect with. Maybe that's not a big deal, though, given 4E's focus on just providing a good game.
What are your thoughts? Did 4E hit exactly the right level of fantastic-ness? Too much? Too little, even? Does this really matter to 4E's long-term success? Is 4E even likely to meaningfully expand D&D's market anyway, I guess is perhaps another valid question. I wonder perhaps if there's room for a more human and grounded, but equally playable fantasy RPG out there. I think 4E's general rules design makes it wildly more capable of getting new players in and having fun than other RPGs (including 3.5E, Pathfinder, Runequest etc.), but just as much I wonder if the setting is helping or hurting.
Now, let it be clear that I don't dislike Dragonborn and I like the concept of Tieflings (albeit not the particular "look" they have in 4E), but I do think that Green Adam is on to something here. Now, fantasy is inherently "far out" to some degree, but what I'm wondering is, is 4E's basic setting so far out that it loses touch with reality entirely and becomes hard to relate to? Obviously, I'm actually interested in opinions, because I can see it both ways, myself. Is it still grounded enough but perhaps teetering on the edge of "too unreal", I wonder.
I wonder because most popular non-gaming fantasy, whether it's LotRO, or Harry Potter, or what-have-you, posit human-o-centric universes, and previously D&D very much did this. In 4E, it explicitly doesn't, the assumption being (according to the setting development book, at least), that non-human is always more interesting than human. Why have a human miner when you can have a dwarven miner? etc.
Personally, I can certainly feel that as a factor pushing me away from the default setting, and to a lesser extent away from the game as a whole. It's not the rules, let's be clear, they're fine. It's the setting, and it's explicit ultra-high fantasy-ness. It's hard to put the feeling into words without slipping into false perjoratives or using dodgy examples, so I'll try to avoid that. I look at the art of 4E, though, and I very much do see Star Wars, and a world that's extremely distant from ours, almost incomprehensible on any level other than as part of game. I think the difference between 4E and previous editions of D&D isn't so much that this stuff wasn't there before - it mostly was - but rather that it's deeply integrated in the game and kind of present from the get-go. I guess what I'm saying is that the basic level of fantasy in D&D 4E seems so high that I can't really get a handle on how life would be in such a world, and I suspect that it's likely to actually kind of shock any non-gamer coming to D&D.
I mean, coming from something like WoW, you're going to be fine. D&D's implied setting and level of species diversity is very much "on-par" with WoW. Coming from say, a fantasy lit. reading background, or from watching things like LotRO and Harry Potter, though, I think it's going to be a bit wild and extreme, and coming from outside fantasy entirely, I think the world 4E portrays implicitly is so alien that it would extremely difficult to meaningfully connect with. Maybe that's not a big deal, though, given 4E's focus on just providing a good game.
What are your thoughts? Did 4E hit exactly the right level of fantastic-ness? Too much? Too little, even? Does this really matter to 4E's long-term success? Is 4E even likely to meaningfully expand D&D's market anyway, I guess is perhaps another valid question. I wonder perhaps if there's room for a more human and grounded, but equally playable fantasy RPG out there. I think 4E's general rules design makes it wildly more capable of getting new players in and having fun than other RPGs (including 3.5E, Pathfinder, Runequest etc.), but just as much I wonder if the setting is helping or hurting.
