D&D 4E Mouseferatu weighs in on 4e

[BryonD]

I compare my early RPG'ing in the 1970s, and D&D had pretty much no implied setting at that point (although I gather that eventually supplements about Greyhawk appeared?). When Runequest appeared with its built-in setting and lots of implicit plot hooks my friends and I migrated to it with joy. We thought that RQ was a stronger system anyway, but the excellent implied setting gave us *more* spurs to create adventures than we had with the OD&D/AD&D.

Which is why Runequest took over the #1 RPG slot I suppose...

Seriously though, it seems obvious that 4E will included a fair amount of implied setting. That doesn't mean that there isn't a better balance point for the level of bolted on stuff.

The kind of people who are likely to become DM's are, in my experience, the kind of creative people who are going to create new stuff anyway - but having a good foundation to work from provides more springboards for their imagination.

Cheers

I agree completely there. But I think we disagree with what constitutes a "good foundation". It is easy to drift from springboards to crutches. And I'm not meaning to be at all critical of people who want crutches as a means to support their greatly limited gaming time. But just make them useful AND detachable.

And I'm also in complete agreement regarding who will become DMs. But, without getting into a whole seperate debate, that is why I think this approach will fail to have a big impact on growing the DM pool. Time will tell.

 

[BryonD]

If worldbuilding is your cup of tea, more power to you. Build away. That is the moment when you are probably at your most creative. My best friend is like that (was like that?) and will spend months detailing a campaign area only for us to go through it in two weeks and not see any of it ... and move on to the next area. But it's what he likes to do, so that's what he does. He's never forced us to visit every shrine to whomever, because we won't do it, but he wants to know it exists out there somewhere. I think it's great.

I'm at the other end, though, as a DM. My time is limited, usually, and I hate prepping too far in advance because I would hate it myself if the players don't see everything that I've worked hard on. So I only design what I know will directly impact the players in the next session or two, and no more. My entire campaign world is two pages long and mostly vague descriptions that I know will mean something to me and give me room to work. I like when small maps and lairs are included in the books I buy because I can honestly use them. I won't use it as is---I may put an witch in that owlbear lair---but it still saved me time.

But why must your help be bolted on for everyone else?
Why can't we both have what we want?

Anything that teaches a new DM to focus on creating solid encounters is a good move in my opinion. A new DM learns how to do that, and how to adjucate his players' actions, and he can decide for himself what aspect of DMing he enjoys most later on and do more of it. Some will enjoy focusing on the encounters, some on their story arcs, and some on their world building.

Agreed.

Having the core books still treat everyone like a new DM is a bad thing though. And having that new DM still be treated that way years later is also a bad thing.

 

[AZRogue]

I'm not asking for anything to be bolted on, just saying that any little maps or lairs added I will use. If they don't put any in I won't mind. I have reams of random maps put away. I was just trying to show that little pieces of info like that could be helpful and don't harm. You don't actually have to use an owlbear's lair out of a MM. I don't see how it hurts, other than wasted space I guess.


I don't see how focusing on building solid and exciting encounters for your players is treating a DM like he's "new" and I don't see how it could be a "bad thing". New DMs need to learn it, and old DMs need the tools to craft the encounters they want for their campaigns.

 

[Emil]

Reduce time for prep==just pull a module off the shelf. At least that's who I'm seeing it, and I'd like to be wrong, but the focus on providing more of an "assumed world" and on ramping up module production

From the postings, previews and discussions I've seen so far regarding Points of Light, it seems to me that the focus is shifting further away from an "assumed world."

Points of Light is providing a baseline for people that want it. The flavor text of the races and monsters seem to exist to give a fair guideline for the people that are clamoring for ways to minimize their worldbuilding.

However, the main conceit of Points of Light appears to be that all of these things are less interdependent. The "assumed world" in this case is a collection of isolated settings that could be easily "pulled out and plugged in" to one's own homebrew or purchased setting.

I'm a heavy homebrewer. I've always provided my players with origins for the races that countermanded the accepted ideas, and I don't expect to stop now.

Also it seems to me that the stress on reducing prep time has very little to do with worldbuilding. The way I read the articles suggests to me that the WotC developers have identified areas for improvement more specifically in NPC generation, monster tailoring, and encounter scaling. It seems to me that making any one of these processes easier and more transparent will save time and energy.

I really don't see any way anyone could effectively reduce the amount of time it takes for a hard-core homebrewer to build his/her world. I have many books on ecology, economics, geography, history, etc that I use as reference in my work, but none of them actually shorten the time I spend making a world for my players to adventure in. However, flavor text does provide inspiration. At least in my case it often germinates ideas on how things could be different from the published design.

 

[Derren]

From the postings, previews and discussions I've seen so far regarding Points of Light, it seems to me that the focus is shifting further away from an "assumed world."

Sadly this seems to be correct.

Imo PoL is more like a concept than a true setting.

Compare it to a old style movie series, best one about cowboys (I don't know if such a series really existed. The Anime Trigun is a bit like it).
In this series the heroes enter a small wild west town, hear from the population about the local problems (be it a tyrannical mayor/sheriff, some bandits or trouble with native americans, etc.). The heroes solve the problem and ride into the falling sun only to come into the next small wild west town in the next episode to solve another problem.

This is to me what PoL is meant to be for D&D. lots of small villages which can't defend themselves against whatever bothers them and need the PCs for it. And after the PCs did their job everyone is happy and continue to live their live not bothered by any monster and never to be seen again (unless another adventure is needed).

PoL can be used to run this style of episode adventures, or it can be used a framework for a homebrew world.

 

[Rechan]

Man, I was hoping Mouse or Jon would have posted by the time I got back up.

 

[mmadsen]

Compare it to a old style movie series, best one about cowboys (I don't know if such a series really existed. The Anime Trigun is a bit like it). In this series the heroes enter a small wild west town, hear from the population about the local problems (be it a tyrannical mayor/sheriff, some bandits or trouble with native americans, etc.). The heroes solve the problem and ride into the falling sun only to come into the next small wild west town in the next episode to solve another problem.

Star Trek was originally pitched as "Wagon Train in space"...

 

[Aeolius]

Star Trek was originally pitched as "Wagon Train in space"...

"Wagon Train's a really cool show, but did you notice they never get anywhere? They just keep wagon training. " - Stand By Me

 

[Lizard]

Sadly this seems to be correct.

Imo PoL is more like a concept than a true setting.

.

If this were so, we wouldn't have mountains of backstory about Tieflings, elves, dwarves, giants, several lost empires, etc, etc, etc. We wouldn't have a much more integrated "assumed pantheon". We wouldn't have a detailed planar cosmology. We wouldn't have so many connections between the histories of various races.

Two or three paragraphs saying "The best places for adventures are along the frontier or borderland areas, where villages struggle to survive on the edge of monster-infested wildlands. Not only do these places provide fodder for all kind of adventures, but they're a good way for DMs to learn the basics of building a small part of a world before working up to larger nations, alliances, and politics" could replace all the fluff and accomplish the same job.

 

[Cadfan]

Lizard- "Points of Light" is not the implied setting. Points of Light is a style of campaign design.

The implied setting is just the unnamed implied setting. It isn't intrinsically linked to points of light style campaign design. You can do a different setting with a points of light conceit, and you can do the implied setting without a points of light conceit.