Nentir Vale Coming to Dungeons and Dragons

[Charlaquin]

Never did get past the PHB, no. Wasn't very inspired to at the time.

This is kind of like reading the 3.5 PHB and deciding Greyhawk is a flat setting.

It also seems it never got consolidated into a concise form, any sort of Gazeeter or such. Too bad.

This is, for many PoLand fans, a feature, not a bug. Once you’ve got a gazetteer, it feels like the map is filled in. Takes away the mystery that those blank corners hold.

Although, for those who want such a thing, there is an unofficial fan-made gazetteer. It has to do a little speculation, but for the most part it’s all compiled canon information. I’ll see if I can find a link.

EDIT: Here it is.

 

[Parmandur]

This is kind of like reading the 3.5 PHB and deciding Greyhawk is a flat setting.

But that is precisely my point: The 3.x PHB (i'm not even sure if 3.0 or 3.5, or if that makes a difference on Greyhawk flavor) was my introduction to Greyhawk as a teenager, and I thought the setting was awesome based just on that. Nothing more needed. The Dawn War mythos...not as gripping as the 3.x GH treatment for me.

This is, for many PoLand fans, a feature, not a bug. Once you’ve got a gazetteer, it feels like the map is filled in. Takes away the mystery that those blank corners hold.

Although, for those who want such a thing, there is an unofficial fan-made gazetteer. It has to do a little speculation, but for the most part it’s all compiled canon information. I’ll see if I can find a link.

For a product like an RPG, a mix of blank and filled in is needed. A bunch of blank is less inviting as much as uninspiring. Which is frustrating in this case, since they came up with a great outline, justr needed some flesh on the bones to give it some heft.

 

[Charlaquin]

For a product like an RPG, a mix of blank and filled in is needed. A bunch of blank is less inviting as much as uninspiring. Which is frustrating in this case, since they came up with a great outline, justr needed some flesh on the bones to give it some heft.

There really isn’t that much blank, though. It’s just that it was presented differently than a lot of folks were used to. 3.x took the BioWare approach to lore, while 4e took the From Software approach. Check out that Gazetteer I linked for a more traditional approach to presenting the same information.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

The thing I loved the most about the NV is how to create a feel of PoL, not even the setting itself. The remoteness of civilization, the dangers of travel, magic and entities saturating the land, I loved it. It showed me that you dont need a huge world or and extensive cosmology to have a heroic adventure. Those thing helped me ''cure'' most problems I had with FR. In some ways I now run Fearun as a more PoL/disorganized way than what's shown in the lore and I personally think that makes the FR much more interesting.

 

[Parmandur]

The thing I loved the most about the NV is how to create a feel of PoL, not even the setting itself. The remoteness of civilization, the dangers of travel, magic and entities saturating the land, I loved it. It showed me that you dont need a huge world or and extensive cosmology to have a heroic adventure. Those thing helped me ''cure'' most problems I had with FR. In some ways I now run Fearun as a more PoL/disorganized way than what's shown in the lore and I personally think that makes the FR much more interesting.

I always dug it, it's basically how we played Greyhawk in 3.x anyways.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

I always dug it, it's basically how we played Greyhawk in 3.x anyways.

Exactly. Most cities have a small population and are waaaayyyy smaller. 132 000 inhabitants in Waterdeep? More like 25 000 and that would be one of the largest on the Sword Coast. I also mix the lore: the Time of Trouble is not far behind and the spellplague was the result of it. Neverwinter and its lost royal bloodline is still in the lore because I love the story of a ruined city with a potential lost heir. Magic is more or less treated the mages in Dragon Age, exotic races are rare and mistrusted, faction and cults are the real movers etc.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Spurred by this conversation, I revisited the Tal'Dorei Campaign Book. There is scarcely a Dawn War. The divine/primordial conflict a furtive murmur in the book. It's hardly as mythic as I was led to believe. But fleshing out a mythos in an adventure is far different than its marginal presence in a published setting book. Who are the dead gods of Exandria? These dead gods (e.g., Gorelik, Io, Lakal, etc.) get mentioned quite often. Nentir Vale has RuneQuest-like cults attempting to reassemble their fallen deities. Nentir Vale's Dawn War became a clusterfrak war between various factions: gods, primordials, primal spirits, demons, devils, etc. Exandria? It seems to follow neat stages. And the villain deities just get lumped together as the "Betrayer Gods" rather than the complexity of evil deities fighting for the side of the Astral Sea against the Primordials and Demons.

Yep. As someone who likes the setting, and the show, I have to agree with all of that. I do love his Raven Queen, though. His characterization of her is just wonderful.

Most definitely. There was never any doubt how monsters or players could fit into the setting. It oozed with plothooks and insights for the world.

Absolutely! The article that introduced playable gnolls, or the one that intoduced playable minotaurs, didn't just give us enough info to make a character, it also told us about the history of the world, and of two terrifying demon lords, and about the nature of free will in this world.

See this is what's confusing for me... when you speak to things like Paragon Paths, Epic Destinies and the PHB... Aren't these the same ones for Forgotten Realms? And for Dark Sun? And for Eberron? So is that specifically Nentir Vale lore or generic lore for all campaign settings that used the PHB?

Aldarc hit this nail on the head in his reply, so I'll just add that each one had it's own story, and most of the time you could plant that story in any world, because they didn't involve anyone that wasn't necessary. If the story involves the demon prince that most minotaurs serve, it doesn't randomly throw in the Raven Queen, so as long as that demon prince is in your game, you can use that lore.

While doing that, they also fleshed out the implied world of 4e, ie Nentir Vale. The point of the implied setting was that you could easily just plug it into any home game that mostly used the lore of the PHB, or could just fill in blanks in your setting with bits of PoLand, but the world itself stood on it's own if you wanted it to, and I think fans surprised and maybe confused the designers by how much we liked it.

 

[cbwjm]

Isn't the Nentir Vale the 4e version of early greyhawk? That is, not much to it but just enough for players to use it and fill in the blanks the way they want. I think there are threads on this forum somewhere talking about early greyhawk and how players adapted it to their games and what they brought in from other worlds and placed out in the unexplored areas of their greyhawk.

 

[Charlaquin]

Isn't the Nentir Vale the 4e version of early greyhawk? That is, not much to it but just enough for players to use it and fill in the blanks the way they want.

Early Nentir Vale is like early Greyhawk in that way, sure. Late Nentir Vale is a lot more like... Well, late Greyhawk.

 

[Jester David]

Isn't the Nentir Vale the 4e version of early greyhawk? That is, not much to it but just enough for players to use it and fill in the blanks the way they want. I think there are threads on this forum somewhere talking about early greyhawk and how players adapted it to their games and what they brought in from other worlds and placed out in the unexplored areas of their greyhawk.

More like Mystara, where it was largely assembled from the lore of multiple adventures and a few accessories that gradually grew into a full setting of sorts.