This whole, changing the backstory thing...

[Vigilance]

Certainly. But if you went to second edition and weren't playing a half-orc assassin, would it's disapperance effect you? The effect on the planes is a simliar thing though in some ways. If you don't use the planes, then their changes won't necessarily effect your campaign. But the implications might be much larger as we've seen hints of other changes like the new classes (always fun to introduce), assumption of race situations (another fun one to insert into an ongoing campaign), and probably the changing of how magic works including things like what level spells are.

In some ways it's like comparing D&D to AD&D. The two had a lot of similiarites and I know many GMs (myself included), used material from both systems in one weird hybrd (along with Role Aids).

My point is, ALL of it will be accepted with elan by the vast majority of players and game masters.

What I'm saying is, there has been an assertion forwarded by certain posters that 4e will be a WHOLE NOTHER LEVEL of editioning, because not only are the mechanics changing, but the intrinsic backstory that moved across editions.

This notion that the Great Wheel going away or the Succubus changing sides will somehow make this edition more jarring of an experience than past editions is exactly what I was refuting in my OP.

 

[hong]

Core rules material will be used with far more freuqence than optional books. Count the number of official products with warblades, swordsages, incarnum users, or even psionic users versus sorcerers and wizards.

These assumptions change the assumptions about how the campaign world works. 3e FR solved some of the magic items issues with Red Wizards opening magic item shops.

4e will go a far different rotue.

A demon is a demon is a demon, whether it comes from the Great Wheel Abyss, the newfangled Abyss, the fount of all human hatred, or whatever other source you want to think of.

 

[Sundragon2012]

Let's look at the Eladrin.

I am working on a setting right now and have an extensive backstory for the elves of my setting, a backstory that is rather complex and doesn't lend itself to changing high elves into eladrin. It simply will not work for my setting, period.

So I have two choices:

1.) I can change pages of written material allowing for a new and divergent species to be shoehorned into a setting I have been using off and on for 15 years and am now preparing for publication. This is a huge hassle.

2.) I can take the creatures named eladrin in the 4e PHB when it is released and simply use this race as the high magical, high cultured elves of my setting and just call them elves. The easiest solution.

Well it goes without saying that I will be renaming eladrin into elves while very possibly using the mechanics of eladrin. This will provide me with the opportunity to really have a divergent type of elf which is what I wanted anyway and will require no more work from me other than changing an arbitrary name created by the creative folks at WoTC. I like the name eladrin, but it doesn't work in my setting so I will change it without hesitation.

Another example is the Tiefling, a name I find more repellent than nearly any racial name I have ever encountered (illuminians being a close second). I already have a plane touched race whose blood is tainted by fiends but this race is named according to the needs and assumptions of my setting. I may use the tiefling mechanics if I find them useful, but I may change them. I won't know until the SRD is made public.

My setting has an entire self-consistant planar cosmology built in so, though I like what I am reading about ditching the Great Wheel, it doesn't concern me if WoTC keeps or discards keeps or discards any number of planes or the gods therein. I already envisioned the planar realms of the gods as realms existing throughout the Astral Plane (or Sea). My demons are tied to a realm other than the Abyss and my devils have always been fallen celestial beings.

So much of what I have been working with is based on sources other than D&D canon that WoTC's choices just don't matter that much. I don't understand an emotional connection to some of these things unless one is either a Greyhawk or Planescape DM or player in which case I can fully understand the concern. However, because I would imagine very few DMs and players are either Greyhawk or Planescape afficianados preferring instead either homebrew or other settings I don't get the whole "they are ruining 30yrs of D&D mythology" complaint.

D&D isn't an ambiguous core setting, it is the countless individual homebrew settings and the many TSR, WoTC and 3rd party settings and the campaigns therein. This is D&D, not the lore in sourcebooks that are constantly contridicting themselves and rewriting things. These sourcebooks are written by folks just like us who are hopefully DMs and players themselves. The only difference is that these DMs are payed to put their pet ideas into print.



Sundragon

 

[JoeGKushner]

A demon is a demon is a demon, whether it comes from the Great Wheel Abyss, the newfangled Abyss, the fount of all human hatred, or whatever other source you want to think of.

That might be correct but as we've learned demons and devils, among others, will be changing so no, a demon is not a demon is not a devil.

 

[JoeGKushner]

My point is, ALL of it will be accepted with elan by the vast majority of players and game masters.

What I'm saying is, there has been an assertion forwarded by certain posters that 4e will be a WHOLE NOTHER LEVEL of editioning, because not only are the mechanics changing, but the intrinsic backstory that moved across editions.

This notion that the Great Wheel going away or the Succubus changing sides will somehow make this edition more jarring of an experience than past editions is exactly what I was refuting in my OP.

If we're talking jarring, I assume you mean old players with the new edition. The whole foundation has changed. Then in my opinion you're wrong.

If you're talking brand new players, then hey, it doesn't really matter because it's all gravy to 'em and it's all new.

 

[ivocaliban]

A dedicated gamer can play a ninja in any ruleset.

I think you mean a dedicated ninja can play a gamer in any ruleset.

 

[hong]

That might be correct but as we've learned demons and devils, among others, will be changing so no, a demon is not a demon is not a devil.

See, there is a plain-English use of "demon", and then there is the D&D use of "demon". The trick is to let go of the D&D use of "demon".

 

[see]

On the bard thing? I don't know what kind of Johnny-come-latelys you people are , but 2e bards looked a lot more like real D&D bards (from the February 1976 Strategic Review) than the 1e ones did.

Fortunately, it was easy enough to use original bards in AD&D 1e, much as it was easy enough to use 1e assassins, bards, and monks in AD&D 2e. It wasn't until 3e that it became difficult to use previous-edition classes, and that was mitigated by the fact that all the OD&D classes (defined here as published before Gods, Demi-Gods, and Heroes, the last OD&D supplement) were included in the D&D 3e core.

 

[The Little Raven]

That might be correct but as we've learned demons and devils, among others, will be changing so no, a demon is not a demon is not a devil.

Orderly legions of evil dedicated to the corruption of the mortal soul? Sounds like devils.
Chaotic hordes of evil dedicated to the destruction of all they can? Sounds like demons.

Oh, but you say they're not demons and devils because they're not fighting some stupid, pointless against eachother while the good guys sit around twiddle their thumbs.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Orderly legions of evil dedicated to the corruption of the mortal soul? Sounds like devils.
Chaotic hordes of evil dedicated to the destruction of all they can? Sounds like demons.

Oh, but you say they're not demons and devils because they're not fighting some stupid, pointless against eachother while the good guys sit around twiddle their thumbs.

Uh, no.

I'm saying that some of the devils will become demons and some of the creatures from both sides will be eliminated from the backstory because they are too similiar to one another.