NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gothmog" data-source="post: 3738237" data-attributes="member: 317">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.</blockquote>

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