Rich Baker on the Spellplague and other stuff.

[GVDammerung]

It would make an even better story arc to have him come up missing and not seen for almost a century, then have *gasp* PCs find clues to his recovery.

Now, THIS is an idea worthy of note! Put some pizzaz back in the old, flatulently written bag of gas that is Elminster.

 

[IconoclastX]

Sorry to disappoint you, but I think the Greyhawk fans are at least twice as rabid as the FR ones.

Now, me ? I am a fan of both, so ...

Heheh... well, I've never been a fan of Greyhawk - not that I dislike it, we just never played in it much (at least not much as a campaign world in that sense). I have always felt for the Greyhawk folks who have been hard-done-by as the world gets sometimes ignored entirely, then used like a garbage dump for a while, back and forth. Now I guess I get to feel that, too, as the changes to the FR are made.

As I've said before, perhaps 4e choosing to premiere FR instead of Greyhawk will be the best thing for Greyhawk...

 

[IconoclastX]

[sarcasm]Yes, it is so the fault of the FR dev team that the 4E dev team picked a name that happened to overlap with a previous FR name.[/sarcasm]

Seriously, blaming the 4E FR team for stuff that they had no control over is just plain silly.

Perhaps, but don't you think one of them could have tossed a balled up piece of paper into the adjoining cubicle that said "Hey, we already invented Dragonborn. Think up another name."

Of course, with their penchant for just reusing names and changing the details so that people mistakenly think they know what it is seems to run through 4e... so maybe it was entirely intentional.

Based on early art, I think they were supposed to be called Dragonblood(ed?) or something similar.

 

[IconoclastX]

I get the feeling that the deities in Forgotten Realms are being treated like they are a bunch of High-Level NPCs.

Such is the fate of all deities in 4e - they want 30th level characters to be able to go take out a god. Seriously.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Heh. Thats supposed to convince someone they aren't inept? Repeatedly saying 'I don't know how this works' isn't exactly inspiring. Nor is saying that blowing up the world wouldn't be useful, so if we're contradicting old fluff, screw it.

Translation: We didn't worry about the little details that people will see as flaws and will eventually blow up in our faces. Its all fine, just buy the book.

I'm kinda reminded of the Marvel Comic defense of One More Day. "It's magic."

 

[Hussar]

Such is the fate of all deities in 4e - they want 30th level characters to be able to go take out a god. Seriously.

You do realize that that's one comment from one blog right? Not a hard and fast decision by the design team. Plus, what's wrong with it anyway? Kill a God has a long and storied tradition both in gaming and in fiction. The idea of gods as unkillable is a 2e construct, not something that MUST BE SAVED.

I would also point out that the blog said that killing a god might be one possible thing that a party could do at those levels, if the DM wanted to design adventures around it.

Kinda like how we've been killing Paizo gods in 3e.

 

[mudbunny]

Perhaps, but don't you think one of them could have tossed a balled up piece of paper into the adjoining cubicle that said "Hey, we already invented Dragonborn. Think up another name."

They probably did try, but were told "too bad. Deal."

Of course, with their penchant for just reusing names and changing the details so that people mistakenly think they know what it is seems to run through 4e... so maybe it was entirely intentional.

Huh??

 

[Vradna]

The idea of gods as unkillable is a 2e construct, not something that MUST BE SAVED.

I would also point out that the blog said that killing a god might be one possible thing that a party could do at those levels, if the DM wanted to design adventures around it.

Kinda like how we've been killing Paizo gods in 3e.

I would have to disagree with you. I don't believe IconoclastX ever said anything about killing gods at all.

I also believe that the concept 'unkillable gods' is a 2e construct is quite incorrect; Gods have been statted since 1st Edition D&D, implying that they can be defeated using game mechanics. 1st Ed Deities and Demigods book stated that a deity may only be killed if slain by an equal or superior god (and such godly confrontations are rare), meaning if the PCs weren't gods themselves they couldn't kill deities by way of mechanics, only take them on and perhaps defeat them. I don't even think that it was possible to kill a Type VI demon without the appropriate caveats.

So really, I don't see what you are referring to which we needed 'saved' from 2E. Perhaps I misread your post and you were not implying that it was a sacred cow of sorts and the baggage that goes with it. So my apologies upfront :\

In essence, the new FR follows what I have outlined above: Gods killing gods. I can now see that it does draw analogues with any conventional myth or legend, I just cannot help but think that FR is like an episode of 'Bold and the Beautiful' and the metacreator in me cannot get past the astronomically big stainless-steel shoehorn wedged between FR's heel and 4E's shoe.

 

[Khairn]

Such is the fate of all deities in 4e - they want 30th level characters to be able to go take out a god. Seriously.

This to me, speaks volumes of the type of play style that the designers are creating for D&D.

 

[FourthBear]

This to me, speaks volumes of the type of play style that the designers are creating for D&D.

As noted before, this is the way the gods have been portrayed for the Realms in 2e and 3e. This is in no way new to 4e. As you may recall, the 3e deity detailing supplements used the Deities and Demigods rules for detailing the Realms deities, which definitely resulted in them being "high level NPCs", rather than vague, cosmic entities. As as we all know, in 1e AD&D, real world deities were all detailed in monster formats that were certainly assailable by high level PCs (with significant difficulty in many cases). Personally, I prefer more mythic entities (and I don't use the Deities and Demigods rules), but this is the way D&D has often presented gods. And it is consistent with the way the gods have been portrayed in many Realms novels throughout all editions (with some exceptions).