Mike Mearls is a Genius

[mythusmage]

I for one find "core stories" to be unnecessary limitations to a game. One thing I've always felt as being the major weakness of Shadowrun, for instance, was the fact that you HAD to play with shadowrunners, you couldn't play, for instance, a troop of the UCAS army trying to locate a rogue dragon that has fled to Aztlan or somesuch. Which is why I liked the Beyond the Shadows book.

That's more a limitation on who you need to adventure with, not on why you're adventuring. The typical Shadowrun adventure required shadowrunners because of what you were getting into. The failure here was due to lack of imagination and daring in adventure writing.

The feeling I got from Shadowrun was that it was designed and written by people under the impression we live in a continuous city. Much like Trantor of Asimov's Foundation stories. No working knowledge of the world outside the city. It is an urban game, with urban themes and urban perils. It is not designed to deal with anything outside the city. It appeals to those with an urban mindset, and has a hard time dealing with anything that is not city.

I have been in the wilderness all by myself. No one in sight, no one within hearing, and it is a very different place. The city is of our making, we control it. The wilderness made us, we do not control it. We live in the city on our terms. We adapt to the wilderness, or we die.

We limit what our children experience, and their imaginations are stunted thanks to our need to control.

 

[Rasyr]

Sorry, should have said: Having said that, there are some r...Shadow World, the continent is called Folenn.

 

[Keeper of Secrets]

My only problem with a game design company proposing a core story is that it can often get out of control, ala Forgotten Realms.

 

[ColonelHardisson]

I posted about this elsewhere, but I'll post about it here, too.

I think it's very interesting, but I'm not sure why he has a problem with finding a core story for Eberron. I'm not all that immersed in the setting, but my first thought was: "Adventurers seek fame, fortune, and possibly an empire in a post-cataclysmic-war world, a world which seems to actually encourage derring-do." His ability to find one in Forgotten Realms - which, to be honest, I simply didn't see - seems more to do with familiarity as a fan and rationalization than anything else.

 

[DaveMage]

So - I have not heard - has Eberron been deemed a success or failure by WotC? (Or something in between?)

Or is this a question of the setting's sustainability?

 

[Gez]

It's still too soon to tell, I think.

The fact that Five Nations, the Explorer's Handbook, Magic of Eberron, and others are planned for Eberron IMO proves that it is not deemed a total failure at this point.

 

[MerricB]

I thought the core story of Eberron was:

PCs are hired by a patron to find something, kill monsters and take their stuff (and the original thing), but an opposing force comes to stop them - and the patron might not be a nice guy anyway.

Cheers!

 

[VirgilCaine]

Just read the whole thing. I think it's a mistake to say WotC doesn't know about having a core story for Eberron -- if you read the proposals published in that mega-PDF (available for free from RPGNow.com), you'll see that WotC asked all the designers who the heroes are and what they're meant to accomplish. That's one way of asking what the core story is. (And the bizarre replies they got from most of the contributors published in the PDF shows why most of them didn't get past the first round and also suggests that WotC needed to do a better idea explicating this argument.)

And what might this .PDF be called? Are you sure it's still available, because I can't find it.

 

[A'koss]

You know, the only thing that stood out to me is that Mearls is studying up for a job interview. I thought he was fulltime in Monte's shop?

I believe I read his contract is up and is looking at a game designer position with WotC...

 

[Klaus]

That's more a limitation on who you need to adventure with, not on why you're adventuring. The typical Shadowrun adventure required shadowrunners because of what you were getting into. The failure here was due to lack of imagination and daring in adventure writing.

The feeling I got from Shadowrun was that it was designed and written by people under the impression we live in a continuous city. Much like Trantor of Asimov's Foundation stories. No working knowledge of the world outside the city. It is an urban game, with urban themes and urban perils. It is not designed to deal with anything outside the city. It appeals to those with an urban mindset, and has a hard time dealing with anything that is not city.

I have been in the wilderness all by myself. No one in sight, no one within hearing, and it is a very different place. The city is of our making, we control it. The wilderness made us, we do not control it. We live in the city on our terms. We adapt to the wilderness, or we die.

We limit what our children experience, and their imaginations are stunted thanks to our need to control.

I hear you.

The longest running (and most enjoyable) Shadowrun campaign I played disn't have any shadowrunning. The GM started the game at 20xx (before the awakening of magic) and the party was a platoon of USA soldiers fighting against the separatists that eventually became the CAS. There were lots of war stuff, then we retired, got drafted again for a government job, got frozen for a few years and the campaign ended just after we actually started shadowrunning. I played Richard Whitecloud, a Native American who eventually became a physical adept.