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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wolfspider" data-source="post: 4004534" data-attributes="member: 300">I daresay that most players new to gaming who might pick up D&D4e would be more familiar with Lord of the Rings by way of the films than the Greek creation myths and European faerie myths.  Also, the idea of evil fighting itself is prevalent in many popular movies.  As far as backstory goes, players didn't need the entire backstory of the Blood War or the Great Wheel in order to be involved in adventures dealing with them (unless you were playing a Planescape campaign, and even then you could always throw characters from the prime into Sigil and let them hash it out on their own).  The way that 4e is set up, however, seems to indicate that a lot more backstory will have to be digested.  In order to understand eladrin and elves, players will have to comprehend the Feywild.  In order to understand tieflings, players will have to be familiar with the new devils.  In order to understand warlocks, players will have to be familiar with the new devils, the Feywild, and the Space Between the Stars where Things with Tentacles and Big Nasty Teeth Live.  In order to understand basic core elements of D&D4e, players will have to be familiar with the backstory of the game before picking up dice or even creating a character.I read your very thoughtful reply to me below.  Thank you for taking the time to address my questions so thoroughly.I never got the sense from how the Blood War and the Great Wheel cosmology were set up that I was being told how I should resolve it in my games, either in terms of plot or theme.  There were still plenty of possibilities in my campaigns for players to discover and explore evil and good and neutrality and law and have exciting adventures.  Even if alignment is clunky at times, it was interesting for them to be able to interact with creatures who represented abstract concepts.  There is a rich tradition in literature for heroes to meet and interact with such entities:  A Christmas Carol, The Faerie Queene, The Chronicles of Narnia, the Eternal Champion series, the Lovecraft mythos, and others.D&D4e is replacing the Great Wheel and the Blood War with something that will be more traditional according to Christian mythology (interestingly enough), and I'm sure the setup will be fun to play in.  I'm not arguing that the new developers are trying to make the new game less fun. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" />  But I do so hate to hear people say that the old way of doing things somehow had less potential for fun.  There were and are plenty of opportunities there.</blockquote>

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