'Known World' - OD&D

[Estlor]

If not for the other random changes making it far more vanilla than necessary

Glantri became anything but vanilla after WotI and the move to 2nd Edition. If possible, it became MORE Glantri than ever before. A night dragon in human form charmed her way into the Council, gained emotional control over Jaggar, drove him to do some very evil things, and (of all things) turned Malachi du Marias from a run-of-the-mill "I'm a nice werewolf, respect us" guy into an honest to gosh hero... even though he resisted it all the way. Plus there was the "is he or isn't he" aspect about Etienne d'Ambreville that was capped off with the only respectable 2e Mystara adventure. Plot hooks were just dripping from the country. Could Malachie and his allied princes find a way to prove the night dragon was an evil monster? How much lower would Jaggar dip? What would Jaggar do if he found out his "love" was using him? Would it even matter to the common folk? And how the tension between Belcadiz, Erewan, and Kolland? Would the Erewan elves leave to join their Alfheim bretheren? What happens when Etienne makes his grand return? Would he do it openly, or plot and plan behind the scenes? Would he make a mad grab for power, trying to become an Immortal again? How about the ever-present threat of war between Glantri and Ethengar, a nation largely untouched by the Great War?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Yeah, 2e Glantri was DARK, which really helped the region, IMO.

And with so many Mystara monsters in the 3e and 3.5e Monsterl Manual (like nightshades, chokers, etc., etc.), I don't think much conversion really was necessary. Honestly, prestige classes for the secret crafts in Glantri would pretty much cover it.

The conversion folks seem to want to redo 3e to simulate Basic D&D, and absolutely prohibit things like dwarven wizards, etc., instead of just saying there's an enormous cultural bias against them in Rockhome, to the point of them being essentially unknown.

And yeah, the strange desire to model Immortals rules before getting the pre-epic stuff done was one of the reasons I checked out early. For some reason, though, I still haven't dropped off the MML or M3E mailing lists yet, although I'm strictly a lurker in both cases nowadays.

And yeah, it's me. I guess I WAS the only person who ever spoke up most of the time in favor of the boxed sets.

 

[Cthulhudrew]

Yeah, 2e Glantri was DARK, which really helped the region, IMO.

Funny you should mention "dark". I was actually working on a 3E version of the setting called "Dark Glantri" at one point. Cthulhianic monsters, nightmare creatures, undead, sanity rules... it's pretty remarkable how well the setting lends itself to a horror campaign.

And with so many Mystara monsters in the 3e and 3.5e Monsterl Manual (like nightshades, chokers, etc., etc.), I don't think much conversion really was necessary. Honestly, prestige classes for the secret crafts in Glantri would pretty much cover it.

Which are not easy to do, frankly. The Secret Crafts were such a mixed bag of powers, with very little in the way of balance to them (in retrospect) that I've had a heck of a time trying to convert them. For one thing, the Illusionist was basically just the Illusionist from AD&D (which had no analogue in OD&D), so converting it now- well, most of the powers are already spells. The elementalist- the Elemental Savant in 3E is a good start for this one, but even there, some of the circle powers are too broad. The ones I've had the most luck with so far are the Witch, Illusionist (albeit with a different twist), the Necromancer, and the Dracologist, but even those aren't quite right.

The conversion folks seem to want to redo 3e to simulate Basic D&D, and absolutely prohibit things like dwarven wizards, etc., instead of just saying there's an enormous cultural bias against them in Rockhome, to the point of them being essentially unknown.

This, despite the fact that new rules were constantly being created as the setting developed, in order to do things that were outside the existing (OD&D) ruleset. Mystara was breaking the rules all along- 3E broadens the rules to a great degree, so why break the 3E rules?

Yeah- one of my biggest gripes about the conversion team.

And yeah, it's me. I guess I WAS the only person who ever spoke up most of the time in favor of the boxed sets.

That, and your mention of the Shires. Nobody- I mean *nobody*- else has ever bothered with the Shires.

Good to see you around, though.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Bah, the Five Shires RULE. One day, I'll figure out how to communicate why being rural heroes in a (nearly) tamed land is so cool -- I suspect all the people who love low-level adventuring would probably find a lot to like in the setting, though.

At least I was able to contribute a few cool years to the almanacs. Of course, now I wonder if the Turtle ever made it to the hin homeland in the south ...

 

[frankthedm]

My players have a hyper paranoia of Glantri. They hear all the bad press about the place and avoid it like the plague. Not that many of the stories are false... Tawil At Umr is the main deity in the place

 

[Alan Shutko]

The conversion folks seem to want to redo 3e to simulate Basic D&D, and absolutely prohibit things like dwarven wizards, etc., instead of just saying there's an enormous cultural bias against them in Rockhome, to the point of them being essentially unknown.

Well, it was part of the backstory that Rockhome dwarves were reengineered from the earlier dwarf race to be resistant to magic and other energies. That seems like a perfectly valid reason to me to say "Dwarven mages? Sorry, can't exist. Unless you find a Hollow World dwarf...."

Racial class limitations have always had some logic behind them in KW (if only retroactively) in that the demihumans are all created races, created by immortals for certain things. Except maybe halflings... I can't remember their creation myth.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

No one knows the halfling creation myth, including the halflings.

That's why I stuck a "quest for our origins" halfling plot line into one of the almanacs I worked on. There's a ship full of halflings, sailing south into a whole lot of danger (I intended to spring the Jerren from the Book of Vile Darkness on them along the way) even now ...

 

[Cthulhudrew]

That's why I stuck a "quest for our origins" halfling plot line into one of the almanacs I worked on. There's a ship full of halflings, sailing south into a whole lot of danger (I intended to spring the Jerren from the Book of Vile Darkness on them along the way) even now ...

I was writing a story with Geoff Gander on the MML a long time ago, and I was going to bring a Davanian halfling into the mix. He was going to be a black halfling, from a very different culture than the Shires halflings. Never got around to doing much with that, though.

 

[Nisarg]

I think teh basic problem with that project is that it's not really necessary anyway; you can play a 3e campaign in Mystara/The Known world fairly easily, just using old materials. It's not really all that different than using Greyhawk at present, since the only 3e sourcebook for Greyhawk is virtually devoid of 3e crunch.

I strongly disagree. Part of what failed in the 2e conversion (other than, admittedly, the generally bad marketing and writing) was that Mystara was a setting molded around the concepts and mechanics of OD&D. As soon as you switch it to 2e you add certain complexities of 2e and remove certain complexities of OD&D, and you end up with a highly different setting that just doesn't seem to quite fit the system.

It would be the same in 3e. Too much of the backstory of Mystara depends upon certain conventions that make perfect sense in OD&D, that would make no sense at all in 3e without massively changing the 3e rules, or creating serious inconsistencies in the Mystara setting.

I sort of imagine that a setting like Eberron, which has truly been created for the 3e system, might end up suffering a similar fate if 4th edition ends up being radically different. Say, if 4e doesn't use prestige classes, removes monster templates as a concept, and revamps the magic system to work on a freeform basis, or something like that.

Most settings are settings before they're attached to any system (ie. Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk). Some are made with a particular system in mind. But very few are done to maximize all of the quirks, possibilities, and details of one particular system. Mystara (for OD&D) and to a slightly lesser extent Eberron (for D&D 3.x) are the only two I can think of at the moment that were designed in this way.

Nisarg

 

[fanboy2000]

I think your on to something Nisarg. Most of the setting glut that happened during 2e probably falls into this catogory to a lesser extent, settings like Spelljammer, Dark Sun, and Ravenloft. Of course, all of these settings were designed to buck certian D&D trends, so it's not as prominent as it is with Eberron and Mystara. Greyhawk does ok because every edition of D&D sence AD&D is designed to emulate it.