D&D 4E What do you think should be the primary source of inspiration for 4ed flavor?

[jasin]

" 'Rivendell'? Oh, I get it, it has a river that flows through a valley.

It's actually a riven valley, not a river valley. Which doesn't devalue your point, I'm just nitpicking.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Because God knows writers never, ever do that.

" 'Rivendell'? Oh, I get it, it has a river that flows through a valley. How much time in the thesaurus did you spend to come up with that one, professor? Jeez, just call it 'Riverdale' and put Betty and Veronica in the background. What a lazy bastard."

Hehehe, your point is taken but they don't usually do it over and over again unless they're kind of awful writers.

 

[Imaro]

I voted for original content, but wold have voted for traditional D&D as well if that had been an option. I even think modern fantasy media would be a better basis for D&D, but it's hard for me to get behind traditional mythology for D&D at all. I posted this in another thread but it explains my reasons for not liking the mythology basis.


Flavor is important, and the flavor I see now is not what D&D(not your homebrew or a d20 variant) has really been in the past. I see alot of people comparing the new fluff in D&D with mythology but I see a big problem with this flavor change. The assumptions that D&D gameplay are based on don't blend very well with mythology. Let me explain a little.

At it's core, IMHO, D&D has way more in common with Swords and Sorcery, or even games such as Final Fantasy than it ever had in common with mythology. Killing things and taking their stuff has never been something I associate with myths, it is a S&S genre trope and I really think it's jarring( as well as a little silly) to mix the two. The funny thing about heroes in myths is that it's not just a power thing, they don't just have more hp's, magic, resilience than the protagonists of S&S fiction...they're mindset is different.

A hero in a myth does things because it's his destiny...or because it's the right thing to do...or even because he is the only one in the world who can. Heroes in myths usually have enormous (pre-ordained)power but also great (ordained)flaws that temper or balance this power. Killing things to acquire more and more wealth is...well is almost beneath most mythological heroes. They have a destiny and their actions are a course towards that. I can't see D&D representing this very well unless it's basic assumptions change.

Heroes in S&S on the other hand go adventuring because they want loot or because they crave adventure and are not content with their lot in life. They are self made heroes, not the son of gods or those ordained by fate to fulfill a particular deed. They live in the here and now and are driven by mortal passions and desires, not destiny or fate. This IMHO is what D&D does best.

This is all of course just my oppinion.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I would have voted for all the options. I like the new fluff but other than as a source of ideas the offical cosmology has never bothered me. In 25 years of gaming I have almost never bothered with the offical fluff or played in a game that was run in a pure official setting. The exceptions have been recently where I have run some Shackeled City advertures and parttaken in a coulpe of sessions of Living Greyhawk.

 

[Grog]

Then we'll have to agree to disagree, because it reads to me like gluing a bunch of stories I've already read together.

Seriously, what was the Great Wheel if not Norse myth and Greek myth and Dante's Inferno and a bunch of other stories we've already read all glued together?

 

[Just Another User]

I like D&D because it is D&D. I like it even, or expecially with all its little and not so little idiosincrasies and weirdness, the elemental, quasi elemental and paraelemental planes, positive and negative energies, the great well, vancian magic, the 9 alignements, beholders and illithids, I like all these things and other even if they don't make sense, sometimes because they don't make sense it makes them all more real (I don't like this "everything has a reason, everything has a function" approach in the end it make everything sound like an element of a game rather than part of a a bigger world). I like all those thing, I was saying because those thing are D&D, you can play D&D even wthout them, it is true but they are still part of D&D, if I want to play with them I use D&D, if I want to play without them I have a lot of other choices, GURPS, HERO, exalted, FATE, JAGS and more, and more, and now this new game that they call fourth edition but that to me seems have nothing in common with D&D beside the name.

 

[billd91]

My vote would have been "Wherever the inspiration strikes".