Previews: November and Beyond

[The Little Raven]

I haven't read my Dark Sun books in a long time but I think the biggest "problems" with it using the 4e cosmology would be the Feywild and Shadowfell - it generally was just 100% about the world, so people who regularly wander through a different plane to travel 20 feet would be kinda out of theme.

If you're talking about eladrin, nothing in the game books says anything about fey step moving them through another plane. That was just a little fluff thing in the Races & Classes book which never made it into the actual game.

Also, the Feywild is kind of out of theme as coterminous with Athas, though it could be played up as a vision of Athas as it was before Bad Stuff Happened...

What's the point of the emphasis on wild? Are you suggesting that Athas doesn't have wilds? Or are you suggesting that a wild has to be some kind of overgrown forest? As a reflection of the world of Athas, the Feywild would be a mysteriously beautiful, but ultimately deadly desert.

 

[Bagpuss]

I'm looking forward to Martial Power, but the feats don't particularly excite me.

That's a tiny selection of the feats in MP.

Can't they think of anything other than enhancing Dragon Breath for dragonborn racial feats?

Yes they can there are about eight Dragonborn feats in the MP book not all of them are to do with Dragon Breath.

 

[Cam Banks]

It's pretty generic D&D, so far as I recall. The one cool thing I remember is that the gods were visually represented as constellations. We can surely keep that. (Though it makes Star Pact Warlocks kinda funny.)

Star Pact warlocks are Lovecraftian, anyway, so they'd work better with Krynn's own notion of the Beyond, which is anything outside of its own universe.

Krynn's universe consists of the Dome of Creation, the Hidden Vale, and the Abyss, as outer planes. They correspond to the Good, Neutral, and Evil gods, respectively. Everything else is the Gray, a sort of combination of the shadow, astral, and ethereal planes, and how you see/experience the Gray depends on the means by which you enter it. Hundreds of small pocket worlds, demiplanes, planar locations, etc exist within the Gray, so you're pretty much looking at Krynn's 4E cosmology as being:

Feywild/Shadowfell: Aspects of the Gray closer to the Mortal Realm
Astral Sea: The upper/deeper reaches of the Gray, ending in the Dome of Creation, and also the location of the Hidden Vale
Elemental Chaos: That aberrant location deep within the Abyss from where the mad god Chaos came forth and from which all things were once created
Abyss: Krynn's evil gods all exist here, as opposed to the Astral Sea, although evil creatures no doubt dwell in demiplanes or border realms that connect the Abyss with the Gray.

Seems fairly straightforward. It wouldn't need more than a coat of paint, really, and the understanding that you don't get all of the core D&D gods and planes tossed in there like a kitchen sink salad.

Cheers,
Cam

 

[Imban]

If you're talking about eladrin, nothing in the game books says anything about fey step moving them through another plane. That was just a little fluff thing in the Races & Classes book which never made it into the actual game.

Huh. I must have chalked that up to the fluff-light presentation of the 4e books more than it being officially removed, since I never even noticed that it wasn't mentioned in the actual Player's Handbook.

 

[Shemeska]

Nitpick: It's the other way around. The new cosmology was designed as the new FR cosmology, and they liked it so much they elected to adapt it to the core game.

Source please? Or is that just speculation?

I find the whole thing wacky, since they'd already retconned FR's cosmology in 3e from the Great Wheel to the "Great Tree" and with 4e they junked that in favor of the core PoL cosmology. Love that continuity.

 

[The Little Raven]

Source please?

It was stated in one of the Ask the Designers threads over on the Wizard's Forgotten Realms forums. It was originally called the Primordial Chaos, but they changed it to Elemental Chaos when they decided to make it the core cosmology. This was because they began doing the 4e story bible for FR before they began working on the 4e assumed setting. If I can find the time to dig through that many posts, I'll find a link.

I find the whole thing wacky, since they'd already retconned FR's cosmology in 3e from the Great Wheel to the "Great Tree" and with 4e they junked that in favor of the core PoL cosmology. Love that continuity.

The continuity with the new cosmology is just fine, since it's not a retcon, unlike the Tree/River/Mountain cosmology change.

 

[Rechan]

FR has already adopted 4E cosmology, much to its benefit IMO. Eberron's core philosophy is that if its in D&D, its in Eberron, so Eberron will follow suit. Athas was very focused away from other planes, so I'm curious to see where that goes. Krynn's cosmology was half-assed and lame, and won't be missed, at least not by me. Oerth, I've never been familiar with.

Keith Baker has said they are not going to be changing the planes too much.

For example, Lamania and Thelandis are basically two halves of the feywild, with Lamania getting the plant and vivid nature stuff, Thelandis getting all the fey (I.e. rumor has it that the Eladrin are going to be coming from Thelandis itself). The Keep on the Shadowfell Eberron conversion had the Shadowfell existing in a demi-plane where Mabar and (I think) Dolurrh overlap, accessable only once every 60 years.

 

[avin]

So, Sigil is a demiplane now...

 

[Kobold Avenger]

So, Sigil is a demiplane now...

No, Sigil was a place that wasn't quite "there" as its exact location was a mystery, but it looks like it was in the Outlands as an object shaped like a ring-like city is seen as floating on top of an infinitely tall mountain.

 

[Kishin]

FR has already adopted 4E cosmology, much to its benefit IMO. Eberron's core philosophy is that if its in D&D, its in Eberron, so Eberron will follow suit. Athas was very focused away from other planes, so I'm curious to see where that goes. Krynn's cosmology was half-assed and lame, and won't be missed, at least not by me. Oerth, I've never been familiar with.

If its in D&D, it has a potential place in Eberron. Everyone misinterprets that one.

Anyway, Eberron already has an exact duplicate of the Feywild (Thelanis). Heck, it actually has two flavors of Feywild (Lammania and Thelanis, even). Mabar is essentially the Shadowfell. They really won't have to change much.

Though, if they decide to mush together Risia, Fernia, Kythri and Syrania into one big elemental plane, I'll be rather miffed.

I don't understand this 'One cosmology to rule them all' stuff. FR, whatever, its cosmology was a mess anyway, but Eberron's is reasonably coherent and intrinsic to the setting.