Nentir Vale book

[Goonalan]

Another option is that the Gazeteer collects all of the Nentir Vale info published to date, and instead of filling in the blanks, it adds possibilities in the form of adventure hooks and campaign arcs.

That's my favoured option- looking forward to it.

 

[Jhaelen]

By making a Gazeteer, it's no longer that; it's spelling out where All The Stuff Is. And the Gazeteer is probably going to be "Here is where all our future products fit in". It's gone from a Points of Light skeleton to a fully fleshed out, mapped region with all its blanks penciled in.

It doesn't have to be like this, though.

If they're clever (and I'm going to assume they are), they'll leave plenty of blanks. Have you looked at Hammerfall? I'd hope that's the kind of treatment the Nentir Vale will get: A toolbox/place to create your own adventures in.

 

[Jhaelen]

Dungeon Tiles: Caves of Icewind Dale

Assuming those are going to be icy terrain tiles, I wonder, what took them so long?!

They release it just in time for me to no longer need it! *grmbl*

Then again it says 'Caves'. Hmm, so maybe it isn't another set of wilderness tiles? That would be a pity, since we already have lots of cavern tiles (Underdark & Caves of Carnage).

If it is wilderness tiles, only swampy terrain and beaches/harbours would have to be covered...

 

[darjr]

Red did the illustration of the keep on the chaos scar.

 

[Rechan]

Red did the illustration of the keep on the chaos scar.

Thanks.

 

[Fifth Element]

By making a Gazeteer, it's no longer that; it's spelling out where All The Stuff Is. And the Gazeteer is probably going to be "Here is where all our future products fit in". It's gone from a Points of Light skeleton to a fully fleshed out, mapped region with all its blanks penciled in.

You're assuming that's what it will be. Since we know absolutely nothing about the product except its (possibly working) title, that's a big assumption.

 

[TerraDave]

It seems like a major release, basically confirmation that 4E has its own campaign setting. I wonder how tied the essentials products will be to it?

ALSO: After Psionic Power in August, there are no hardbacks of the kind we have become accumstomed to scheduled for Sept, Oct, Nov, Dec, Jan, or Feb (or at all).

ALSO ALSO: You can still see all the releases for 4E in the link in my sig, and yes it is more current then the WotC catalog.

 

[darjr]

http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/273708-keep-chaos-scar.html

Here's a thread with some links in it.

 

[Holy Bovine]

I think it violates the spirit of what the Nentir Vale was created to be: a generally undefined place to just "drop stuff" so that while it has a name and a loose geography, it's got a lot of empty space for DMs to work with. And also a place for the designers to just say "It's set in the Nentir Vale".

By making a Gazeteer, it's no longer that; it's spelling out where All The Stuff Is. And the Gazeteer is probably going to be "Here is where all our future products fit in". It's gone from a Points of Light skeleton to a fully fleshed out, mapped region with all its blanks penciled in.

You can get all that from an Amazon listing? I think it will be more along the lines of other 'gazetteers' I have seen in that it will give a general overview of the Vale and some of the areas that have already been detailed (Fallcrest, Keep on the Shadowfell etc.). Considering it is part of the Essentials line this seems likely to me. Just a guess though.

 

[DEFCON 1]

The Nentir Vale is already pretty well sketched out via the DMG, the other books, the modules, plus all the Dragon Magazine articles that have taken place in them. Throw in now Hammerfast and the tiefling ruins location supplement... there is a lot of info about the Vale out there for those people who go collect it. Heck, there was a wiki here at ENWorld that tried to bring all the info together in one place. So the fact that WotC is making this product for all those DMs who'd like to see this stuff combined, is cool. And as is always the case... those people who feel as though it goes against what the Nentir Vale was originally supposed to be about... just don't have to use it. Pretend like it never existed.

I'd personally love it if the gazeteer not only gave us some of the details of the various locations... but also gave us footnotes as to the specific books or articles where this information was originally presented... especially if the gazeteer just does overviews and not copy the complete texts from the other sources word-for-word. That way we can see that "Oh hey... here's a bit of information about the barony of Harkenwold... and this all came from Dragon Magazine Issue XX, where there's even more info about it".