The default campaign world - new article

[2WS-Steve]

I'll be interested to see if/how they change the Forgotten Realms to fit into this model, since I suspect that must be where the points of light are going to be implemented. I can't imagine it making any significant difference in the core books. Otherwise they ought to have a new campaign setting in the works.


As far as city adventures go I figure this model actually makes them even easier, or at least no more difficult. Judge's Guild's City State of the Invincible Overlord and the whole Wilderlands setting were really this way and they make great city adventures. Thieves' World is like this too, as is Lanhkmar.

By having isolated city-states instead of kingdoms you reinforce the idea that the city is all you got, and going galavanting around the countryside staying in cozy inns is a recipe for an inglorious death via dysentery. This keeps things centered on your main city and allows for brief foray style adventures outside the walls into the savage wilds. I always had a problem with city adventures in the old Realms or even Eberron since it seemed that the land around Waterdeep and Sharn was pretty much tame peasant villages for hundreds of miles (until you reached the evil kingdom).

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I'm glad the Lanhkmar product was mentioned, considering the world that huge, corrupt, intrigue-laden city was set in is practically the poster child for a world of vast, dangerous wilderness separating a few such massive cities, with the supporting hinterlands, and the occasional small, fortified town elsewhere.

It didn't stack up so well on the "points of light", part though. "Points of dingy gray", maybe.

 

[Victim]

Greetings!


Having said that, it also creates a kind of false reality, if you will. Human nature, let alone other powerful races like elves and dwarves--do not just collectively sit there generation after generation, in squalor, and laying there as helpless prey to whoever comes by or decides to set up camp in the nearby forest. If it took one generation, or three, or ten--the human inhabitants would gather together and march against such enemies and ruthlessly exterminate them, at least in so far as to create enough of a "safe zone" for the aforementioned sophisticated human society to develop and grow in strength.

To ignore these basic elements of human nature is to in turn embrace a cultural, economic, and psychological malaise, that paralyzes the larger human community in a static bed of jello, generation after generation. Apparently, they are all, in their vast entirety, waiting for a handful of scruffy looking adventurers to "save them"? From whence, of course, no one was ever capable of doing this in any generation previously?

Obviously, though such an environment on first glance has much to be attracted to, on a closer inspection, fully embracing such campaign assumptions would cause a whole lot of internal campaign inconsistencies and larger campaign problems that would not, at the end of the day, be enjoyable, or fully capable of being ready and useful for a Dungeon Master to run a broad campaign of great depth.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

I don't see anything in their blurb that implies static poverty and squalor. In fact, it seems rather dynamic to me - a setting in the middle of your war to secure the world for humanity. Civilization has neither been extinguished nor secured itself. But monsters aren't stupid animals waiting for people to build up - they're often smarter, more powerful (than most people), and organized somewhat themselves. As the numerous ruins and failed settlements attest to, things can go either way.

 

[MerricB]

By having isolated city-states instead of kingdoms you reinforce the idea that the city is all you got, and going galavanting around the countryside staying in cozy inns is a recipe for an inglorious death via dysentery. This keeps things centered on your main city and allows for brief foray style adventures outside the walls into the savage wilds. I always had a problem with city adventures in the old Realms or even Eberron since it seemed that the land around Waterdeep and Sharn was pretty much tame peasant villages for hundreds of miles (until you reached the evil kingdom).

It shows how perception makes a mound of difference... or how people write later campaign material, at least!

For me, north of Waterdeep ("The North") was city states surrounded by wilderness, very much like this campaign style. To the south of Waterdeep... vast tracts of howling wilderness without even the cities to help them out.

I don't know how much that impression survived into 2e, though!

Cheers!

 

[Grog]

From another angle, I have to say as a "campaign world"--it sounds pretty weak, and on so many levels. If there are only small towns and villages, where does all the wealth come from? High-technology and skill-specialization require advanced economic conditions in order to develop and flourish--and those conditions are only possible in an urban environment. That is precisely *how* profession and skill-specialization work, is from enough security provided--by a stable, strong government; and from the accumulation of enough total wealth by the larger community to allow some members of that specific community to *not* engage in ativities of mere base survival, but to devote time, energy and resources into other kinds of specialized work. Next, it is critical to have security, stability, wealth, and specialization so that *time* is allowed to other specialists to *think* and *dream* This is where philosophers, thinkers, wizards and so on can develop from. Without such considerations, these professions would never really develop and get off the ground.

All of that, of course, demands a sophisticated, coin-based economy, and a specialized society to support it. This in turn, creates a "market" for such specialized goods, and makes it possible for profit to be gained enough to entice people to become weaponsmiths, merchants, wizards and scribes, instead of staying farmers, hunters, herdsmen, fishermen, or simple blacksmiths.

Well, one explanation I can think of is that this campaign world exists in the ruins of such a society. Perhaps there was once a great empire in the world (or several great empires), but it was overrun by monsters ten or twenty or fifty years ago and mostly destroyed. A great deal of the empire's technology/philosophy/advances might live on in some areas, even if the previous civilization is gone.

 

[EyeontheMountain]

Greetings!

Having said that, it also creates a kind of false reality, if you will. Human nature, let alone other powerful races like elves and dwarves--do not just collectively sit there generation after generation, in squalor, and laying there as helpless prey to whoever comes by or decides to set up camp in the nearby forest. If it took one generation, or three, or ten--the human inhabitants would gather together and march against such enemies and ruthlessly exterminate them, at least in so far as to create enough of a "safe zone" for the aforementioned sophisticated human society to develop and grow in strength.

SHARK

But here you are making an assumption that the populace is capable of gathering together (most likely) and capable of defeating these myriad monsters(in the world described, they have apparently failed).

Which leads directly into a discussions of leveled individuals, and how common they are. In FR they are freaking everywhere, not just 7th or 10th, but 15th and up. There are gods walking the land. In Ebberon, there are lots and lots and lots of lower-leveled types running around. Very few above 10th, but tons from 3rd to 7th or so.

I will be curious to see what the default is for 4E, as far as non PC leveled beings go. The lower the average, the harder it would be to create safe zones, and the higher the reliance on those few leveled individuals, ie Adventurers.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Okay...

First off, I think people worried that this is going to impact FR or Eberron need to cut back on caffeine. The article says "default setting" in so many words. Multiple times.

FR is not the default setting. Eberron is not the default setting.

The default setting is the land that includes the deities in the Player's Handbook. The default setting is the world in which non-campaign-specific modules are set.

Just like, you know, it was in 3E.

Honestly, I think the default setting they've described sounds really interesting as an option. And since an option is all the default setting ever was, that's just fine.

I also see absolutely no reason why the "points of light" setting cannot include large cities with urban adventure and political intrigue. In fact, powerful, despotic city-states are often the norm for fiction written in that sort of fantasy setting. And the article says "centers of civilization are few and far between." Not absent.

The notion that anything in the article makes urban/political gaming impossible or unlikely is ludicrous.

 

[Gothmog]

Everything I've heard so far about 4E is really encouraging to me- including this implied campaign setting. I see nothing about implied poverty and squalor, although you could certainly run the setting in that way. I think they are trying to say the implied setting is in somewhat of a dark ages- perhaps after the fall of a large kingdom or empire, with lots of ruins, wilderness, and fewer bastions of civilization, but the ones that do exist are important. I've always preferred campaigns that had these sorts of themes- after all it doesn't make any sense for there to be huge, powerful, and highly civilized kingdoms that have monsters lurking around every corner. That is MUCH more implausible than a dark ages setting.

Another thing I like is that the world is described as "points of light in darkness". This seems to indicate that there is much more outside the dungeon- perhaps with more focus on the environment, trade, and isolated pockets of civilization. People tend to huddle together in communities protected by a lord or fortress, and keeping the roads open between settlements becomes VERY important, since an individual settlement will be overrun and die off without support (or become a backward hamlet, possibly that has made deals with nearby creatures for survival). This fosters a greater sense of the unknown and local legendry and history. In this respect, the new D&D world sounds a lot like the Old World of Warhammer- which is a HUGE positive change IMO. While 3E used "back to the dungeon" as its central theme, the game tended to fall flat outside of a dungeon and the assumption of 4 encounters per day at certain CRs. If we have character abilities keyed to per encounter and per day, then it suddenly becomes for viable for investigation type adventures that don't rely on the wizard or cleric stocking up on all combat spells. What this meant is that the rules of 3E and its assumptions of magic, resource utilization rate, wealth, and the whole CR thing make it VERY hard to run the kinds of adventures me and my group prefer (mostly investigation, mysteries, exploration, and horror themes). If this is what 4E is saying, sign me up! I hope we get a campaign book of this new world.

Finally, for those of you that have ever played WHFRP, having pockets of civilizaiton in wilderness still makes city and town based adventures very viable. There is more politicing, backstabbing, intrigue, and mystery in your typical Warhammer adventure than any published D&D adventure I've ever seen. The Enemy Within campaign is a perfect example, as is the recent Paths of the Damned. You can really bring to the fore heretical cults, dark magical societies, political scheming, and people desiring power in society making pacts with dark powers or creatures in this type of setting much more easily.

So another plus for 4E! This is the first time in probably 4 years I've been excited about playing D&D again. I'm really looking forward to this.

 

[The Myopic Sniper]

Not that D&D is in anyway reflective of history, but it sounds like they have simply shifted the default political, technological, economic and social assumptions from a pseudo Western Europe of the Late Middle Ages (1300-1500 AD) to the Early Middle Ages (500-1000 AD). I don't think they will kill any tropes such as Full Plate armor. But I think the idea of being able to walk into a small village and ordering it from the Armorer off the shelf is probably going to be reflected in its cost and its availability on treasure tables. No black powder weapons even being an option would be a good guess.

However, each PHB/DMG cycle could allow for different defaults. PHB 2/DMG 2 could assume Late Middle Ages or even Renaissance setting. Hello gunpowder rules, rapiers, Gnome tinkers, great sailing vessels, guidelines for creating Empires, tables of royal titles, rules for building organized armies and constructing huge castles. Release a setting book shortly afterwards that supports such a background and you start giving DMs and players a couple of different sets of coherent visions for play.

 

[Melan]

This is probably the first thing I like about 4th edition, so you can guess what I think about the idea. In fact, it is a perfectly good old school philosophy, very much in keeping with early campaign worlds like Judges Guilds Wilderlands of High Fantasy and, yes, TSR's Greyhawk. After all, what is Greyhawk? Greyhawk is not just a thin folio. Greyhawk is the random encounter tables in the back of your DMG, the tables where you will meet giants and trolls in the wilderness and ankhegs on cultivated land, where cities at night are teeming with shady types - assassins, prostitutes, but also shadows and vampires. Just like City State of the Invincible Overlord, Greyhawk City strikes me as a Lankhmar-successor, even if the eventual 2e boxed set was white-washed of the grime that populated it. And it was pretty much a city-state without too much hinterland.

Are empires impossible without such a model? Not really. Even in our world, empires didn't control most of their land until recently, probably the 17th or 18th century. Around the roads linking towns and villages, there was indeed wilderness - vast forests, where outlaws and wild animals dwelt. It is not hard to imagine fairies, or monsters, also being there. Added to this is that monarchs didn't really care about these areas so much - for their purposes, they were mostly useless, as they were uninhabited, offered no scarce resources, and would have been too expensive to care about. Well, of course, there were expeditions against bandits - but they were hard to root out completely. I think an adventurer would feel right at home in such a setting.

City adventures impossible in such a millieu? Nonsense! In fact, there is more city adventuring... because if cities are more dangerous, there is more reason for adventurers to spend time there! In my campaign, which is built on the "howling wilderness surrounding points of faint light" model, there are a lot of opportunities for adventuring in the city.

Now there may be one element in danger: idyllic "Ye Olde Englande" style countryside. That's possibly not well supported here... although given The Village of Hommlet, I am not even sure of this.