James Wyatt - Story Team

[Plane Sailing]

I'm not sure if I am going to like that. I defintiely can, since I loved it in the old boxed sets, where race was your class, but I am concerned that it will make races so malleable that they aren't truly races anymore.

On the contrary, it seems that the aim is to make race matter throughout all levels (unlike now, when it pretty much becomes invisible which race someone is)

 

[The Grumpy Celt]

Story team is the secret fluff treatment.

That makes then sound like fluffers.

I suspect the story team will be the ones developing story arcs for campaign settings and so forth, something similar to the adventure paths. This may or may not include gaming supplements and novels.

 

[Imruphel]

For a preview of talent trees and what it might mean for race to matter more, check out Dawnforge by Fantasy Flight Games.

 

[Charwoman Gene]

My instinct says they are the ones creating the default setting, the unnamed D&D default world.

 

[grimslade]

If Greg Nard is in charge of the math and algorithms of D&D classes, feats and stuff, the story team gives the reason for needing the math.
Story Team: The Sword of Kas is an artifact wielded by a Vampire Lord. It cut of Vecna's hand and plucked out his eye. It is a diabolical blade of kick-assery and it bleeds cool. Numbers Boy! Make it so.
Greg: Yes, boss.
click click whirrr +5 Unholy Avenger Cusinart with a special purpose of mutilating liches

 

[Arashi Ravenblade]

I was never a greyhawk fan but dont make an original one. use one we already have. Eberron, FR, Greyhawk.

 

[Baby Samurai]

I was never a greyhawk fan but dont make an original one. use one we already have. Eberron, FR, Greyhawk.

I think it will be purposely vague.

They don't want the default D&D campaign setting to be a sprawling mass of magical kingdoms and empires, it sounds like they want a dark land, where monsters and heroes are rare.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

They said the core books will be setting-free, but that the general assumption will be "points of light in a dark world".

 

[Mouseferatu]

They said the core books will be setting-free, but that the general assumption will be "points of light in a dark world".

Hmm...

I didn't get "100% setting-free" out of the seminar. I got "mostly setting free, to the same extent as 3E, but the few default details that are there will refer to a new, bare-bones setting in which the points of light metaphor holds true."

I don't think it's really possible for the core books to be completely free of a default setting, if only because they're still going to have things like deities to refer to. (Also because the standard D&D names, like Mordenkainen and Tenser, are still going to appear in the spell list. And Vecna is likely to exist in some form, though possibly not as a god.)

 

[mhacdebhandia]

Oh, yeah. The full thing was, what? "Setting free, but we're using classic D&D personalities like Vecna, Bigby, et cetera."

I guess what I'm envisioning is something like the world you'd get if you took all of the proper names in the core rules (minus the Greyhawk gods, per the mention of Thor and Odin and co.), and created a bare-bones setting where Mordenkainen and Tenser were great mages of the past, and Asmodeus rules the Nine Hells while Orcus prowls the Abyss, et cetera.

A lot of very early Third Edition campaigns were like this, although they used the core pantheon - they weren't Greyhawk games, they were homebrew settings, but they used these proper names because they were in the rules.

Edit: I guess the Greyhawk personalities in the spell list muddle the issue a little, but otherwise you can imagine a world that's located within the D&D cosmology - uses the Great Wheel, for instance - without actually being a specific, published setting.