What other settings should get the FR treatment?

[Hussar]

Ginnel - that's pretty much exactly what I was thinking with my little fanfic above.

The thing is, you can do "philosophers with clubs" pretty well in any system. You absolutely do not need the Wheel to do that.

Although one could argue FR doesn't have much of an essence, what set the FR apart, mostly, was that Greyhawk assumed (for argument's sake, at least) a lower magic level, FR was high magic all the way. Eberron has sort of taken high magic to a new level, leaving FR as sort of... generic fantasy with Elminster.

See, I don't quite agree with this. What separated FR from Greyhawk wasn't the level of magic, but, rather, that Greyhawk saws its inspirations in Sword and Sorcery Fantasy and FR in High Fantasy. Both S&S and High Fantasy can have very different levels of magic. LotR is High Fantasy for example, yet doesn't feature a whole lot of magic. Certainly not "everyday" magic.

The difference between the two is that High Fantasy deals with plots that affect the entire setting. Grand sweeping dramas that touch every part of the setting. LotR is a textbook example. S&S fantasy, OTOH, tends to be very local. The setting never really changes that much. The protagonists deal with personal problems rather than having these large scale plots.

That's why I really think the FR changes are very much in keeping with FR. From a thematic view, FR has always been about these grand, huge plots that touch all over the place - the Chosen of Mystra, Myth Dranor, Evermeet and the exile of the elves, Time of Troubles (heh), on and on. Things in FR play out on very large stages. So, when changing the setting, doing so with a very large brush is in keeping with the theme.

Eberron is far more pulpish in its approach. Really, it's closer thematically to Greyhawk in inspiration. The reduction in NPC levels plays to this. Pretty much every sourcebook points to S&S and pulp fiction for inspiration. There's a reason a large chunk of the adventures for Eberron in Dungeon feature murder mysteries and crime stories. They fit with the "feel" of the setting.

So, to me, the specific elements of a setting - Elminister, this god, that demon lord, don't really matter. It's the thematic feel of the setting that sets each setting apart. At least for me.

 

[El Mahdi]

I'm not a Greyhawk scholar, but I think there is a long historical period between the Twin Cataclysms and the formation of the current kingdoms that would not have any "major events", as you put it. I think a Star Wars style tie-in could work in this instance. Greyhawk fans would recognize the races and world geography, but the rest could be a blank palette to incorporate 4e.

Cool. Blank areas of history would give you some room to move and expand. However, you would still have to make sure you don't make any major macro changes that would affect future history. But focusing on an empty period of history could definately work.

 

[dm4hire]

Exactly my point when I talked about going back in time. FR for example has several points in its history that list Epochs of 10,000+ years each that you could place a new related setting within. You have the time of the Dragons or even the different eras of the Elven kingdoms before or after the fall of the Drow. If you place the setting toward the beginning of a given time period with so much time still left anything could have happened and history could still turn out the same because we're talking about tens of thousands of years in the past. Who's to say that during the time of the Dragons that there weren't human or humanoid kingdoms that were beneath their notice or existed because of their allegiance. Anything could happen and you really can't dispute it because all records were lost over time. If memory serves correctly I believe there has been mention of ruins within FR that no one is certain who built them; where did they come from?

FR aside, there are the same type of epochs in other settings with enough time from beginning to end that they could be used. Dragonlance could be rolled back to before the first cataclysm. Greyhawk has periods of time. Dark Sun has already been covered. Even Eberron could be rolled back to during the war or even well before the great war. A lot of possiblities which won't ruin the settings that have already been released.

 

[Spatula]

I disagree that Dark Sun has to be (or ever was) a PoL setting. The city states were HUGE, and there were a lot of solid trade routes between them. Shipping lanes on the sea of silt? Yeah. Now the wilderness was VERY wild, but the cities were VERY urban.

"Points of light" doesn't mean there's no cities. It doesn't mean much of anything, really, it's just a codification of what DMs have been doing for the entire history of the game - the PCs starting off as small fries in a dangerous remote area filled with ruins and monsters, and moving onto bigger settings as they grow in power. IOW, it is absolutely nothing new; pretty much any D&D setting is already a PoL setting (aside from those that depart heavily from the normal tropes, which DS does not).

 

[Cadfan]

Ravenloft. Advance 100 years. Most of the dark lords are missing, presumed dead. New powers are arising- some are lesser versions of monsters we've seen before, others are entirely new. New domains are being carved out, and new alliances formed. New, dark powers are arising that may be even greater than those we've seen- or maybe they ARE the old powers, returning from the dead once again.

You get the idea. Its got too much royalty. Kick over the anthill, and see what arises from the wreckage.

As for the general advisability of setting resets, I'm all for it. Fans who want things to stay EXACTLY THE SAME can ajust keep using their old sourcebooks. By definition they're not in the market for new material the way others are.

 

[Soel]

Id prefer a focus on new settings than going back to the well.

That said, if they were going to do a revamp, I'd like to see what could be done with Ghostwalk. The setting was meh, but some of the ideas behind it were really cool. I've even got Manifest in my current 4e setting.

Dark Sun would be something I would be interested in playing, but not dming, but I know very little of it, so its already sort of a new setting to me.

Planescape, well, it used to be my favorite "setting," but a huge part of that was the fact that it connected every setting, and I don't think that would quite work as well now. Also, I really think PS was great because of the way it was written and presented, so it'd be almost impossible to recreate the same feel, (nothing against the new designers, btw, who I actually love for turning the planes into a cool toolbox for the dm again.)

 

[Spatula]

As far as resetting a campaign back to zero, I think this would be absolute suicide for a game company. If you do this you have only two options:

1. Take the campaign back to the beginning - keep everything that happened in the previous timeline as canon - essentially reprint all of the old material, but updated for your new system - and then have everybody play back through events that are already written in stone.

2. Take the campaign back to the beginning, and then start anew - creating new history and events (a complete retcon and re-envisioning).

The problem with #1 is very few people enjoy running campaigns and adventures where they have no control over major events (as has been said by a lot of people on these forums - example: FR Avatar Crisis adventures). I just don't see how a game company could make adequate revenue off this approach.

The concept of canon is rather pointless when it comes to RPG settings. As soon as you start playing, you depart from the published canon and create your own. That is, we aren't a passive audience to the published "storyline", which is just a foundation for our own stories. So the idea of certain events being "official" or set in stone doesn't hold water, as it would in other media where the audience has no voice. If you're in charge of a TV, film, book, comic, etc. franchise you get to decide what the story is. RPG stories are written by the players and DMs.

If WotC published the original Dark Sun box set (as an example), only converted to 4e, I'd be very happy with that. I don't give a damn about all the stuff that was published after, although it helps that, in DS's case, the vast majority of it was awful. (not that WotC would ever do that; the authors would feel the need to put their own spin on things) FR had painted itself into a corner by investing its audience so much in the big events and the novels, but no other setting has that same weight on its back (maybe Dragonlance). So there wouldn't be the same issues in simply "rebooting" them.

 

[vagabundo]

If WotC published the original Dark Sun box set (as an example), only converted to 4e, I'd be very happy with that. I don't give a damn about all the stuff that was published after, although it helps that, in DS's case, the vast majority of it was awful. (not that WotC would ever do that; the authors would feel the need to put their own spin on things) FR had painted itself into a corner by investing its audience so much in the big events and the novels, but no other setting has that same weight on its back (maybe Dragonlance). So there wouldn't be the same issues in simply "rebooting" them.

They really should do this and keep a similar layout and art style. I'd also like to see a couple of DS adventures that explored the setting as written, rather than move the metaplot along.

DS was one of the few setting that I've really enjoyed reading cover to cover.

 

[Staffan]

They really should do this and keep a similar layout and art style. I'd also like to see a couple of DS adventures that explored the setting as written, rather than move the metaplot along.

Most of the adventures didn't have anything to do with the metaplot of the novels - that was only Freedom! and Road to Urik. They had their own metaplot, with the avangion and the githyanki invasion, but I don't see any problem with adventures dealing with Big Stuff.

Also, as I have mentioned a few times before, Dragon's Crown is the best adventure I've seen when it comes to showing a setting off. You have a psionic-themed plot, man-eating halflings, the Sea of Silt, giants, Cleansing Wars ruins, Sorcerer-kings, thri-kreen, and travelling from one end of the map to the other.