Rate the Neverwinter Campaign Guide

[fletch137]

Can any of you give me a good gauge of how usefull this is for someone who doesn't play in Forgotten Realms? It sounds pretty awesome, but I may still balk at it if it's too specific to the Realms.

More specifically, would it be worth the cost if I only wanted to use the post-Essentials classes?

Is the bladesinger an Essentials-style class?

Can the knew Warpriest domains be reinterpreted as core Nerath domains? I mean, Corellon sounds like an easy fix, would the Selune domain play as Sehanine? What other domains are in there and which core gods would they best translate into?

How much of the Neverwinter locations could I use if I lined out "Neverwinter" and wrote in "Fallcrest?"

Same question for the factions. Would they play well in a non-FR setting?

Basically what I'm getting at is that this is quickly moving from my "don't pay any attention to" list to my "a great gaming aid and must buy" list, but that journey will be decided by how usable it is outside of the game world it was intended for.

Thanks, all.

 

[Dead Scribe]

Um, I guess it depends. Neverwinter is pretty different than Fallcrest--it's a port city, it's half-ruined, and it's much bigger. It also has features that clearly use Forgotten Realms lore--floating islands and towers, for example. And the Spelllplague is pretty key to why the city was destroyed in the first place, and is also linked to one of the major factions.

But I guess if you wanted to pretend Neverwinter was some fallen city from Nerath just outside the Nentir Vale, and reskin the Spellplague disasters as some other magical cataclysm, that would work. Most of the factions are fairly easy to reskin, because they're all built around an easily recognizable thematic--Necromancers, Diabolists, Shadowfell invaders, or Aberrations.

The crunch stuff is trivial to rework, the Domains would all work fine for gods in other settings.

 

[S'mon]

For those who want the maps and encounters, go buy a module. Stop bashing a different line and type of product for not being something different.

The 4e FRCS does have a bunch of maps & encounters in the Loudwater section. Other WoTC sourcebooks like Open Grave and Underdark do the same. It just never occurred to me that a sourcebook limited to a single city would omit them.

 

[S'mon]

Um, I guess it depends. Neverwinter is pretty different than Fallcrest--it's a port city, it's half-ruined, and it's much bigger. It also has features that clearly use Forgotten Realms lore--floating islands and towers, for example. And the Spelllplague is pretty key to why the city was destroyed in the first place, and is also linked to one of the major factions.

But I guess if you wanted to pretend Neverwinter was some fallen city from Nerath just outside the Nentir Vale, and reskin the Spellplague disasters as some other magical cataclysm, that would work. Most of the factions are fairly easy to reskin, because they're all built around an easily recognizable thematic--Necromancers, Diabolists, Shadowfell invaders, or Aberrations.

The crunch stuff is trivial to rework, the Domains would all work fine for gods in other settings.

I think Neverwinter would work ok as a half-ruined Nerathi city. The indigenous factions should work fine as-is. Lord Neverember should be from a more 'intact' area; not necessarily a big city like Waterdeep - he could be eg the brother of Lord Markelhay of Fallcrest. The Thayans & Shadovar are a bit harder to integrate (though frankly the Thayans make little sense in the NWCS as-is); the Shadovar could be from a Bael Turath city recently returned from the Shadowfell, while the Thayans could be from a generic undead/necromantic realm, maybe a Nerathi city taken over by undead during the fall of the empire.

 

[S'mon]

What I like about the 4e FRCS and the NWCS is that, as a creative DM, I can randomly open a page, randomly drop my finger anywhere on the page and the likelihood of me hitting a paragraph of text that can inspire an adventure is close to 100%. It's not telling me what to do, it's giving me ideas for what could be done. I've never felt able to do that with any of the 3e material and even a lot of the later 2e material. But that's exactly what I used to do with all the 1e/2e stuff like I listed above.

Yeah, I agree with that. I never feel constrained by 4e stuff; it's inspirational, like the good 1e stuff - in some ways actually better - I love the 4e landscape art, for instance, which was rare in 1e. Later 2e and most 3e stuff never worked that way for me; although there is good 3e content the presentation was far from inspirational IME. This means I've spent vastly more on 4e than I ever did on WotC-3e. Mind you much of my 4e gaming still uses 3e Necromancer Games product (Wilderlands, Vault of Larin Karr) just as my 3e gaming did (Lost City of Barakus).