What other settings should get the FR treatment?

[jensun]

I wouldn't mind seeing Dark Sun, but not at the expense of running roughshod over the continuity and its themes to force fit it into full compliance with the PoL setting tropes

Darksun already is a PoL setting and has been since it wa first released.

Please leave Planescape alone. Please. It won't work if it's ripped away from its thematic moorings in a 9 alignment axis cosmology, the Blood War, the history and nature of many races that have been retconned and radically redesigned for 4e etc. You could have a planar game in the 4e material, but it would run the serious risk of ending up being a mockery of the actual Planescape setting. Anything but a 4e PS unless WotC allowed it to be Planescape, allowed it to use its cosmology, and didn't put it through the 4e setting homogenizer.

Your personal preferences aside, there is no reason why a Planescape version set in the current cosmology couldnt work. The fact that you like the current version doesnt mean a new version would be terrible or a mockery of the old.

 

[stonegod]

New World of Darkness. A lot of old WoD fans don't like it but enough people are buying it that it continues to generate profit and spawn new product lines. I think it only seems less popular because playing vampires and werewolves is no longer the novelty that it was in the early 1990s and, so, the nWoD doesn't get as much attention outside of its target demographic as the oWoD initially did.

This is a good example of a BSG-like reboot I was talking about: Similar names and trappings, but different style and direction. While I'm not a fan of the nWoD (just due to lack of interest, mostly), it shows that "reboots" can be done.

That being said: Change worries people, so any mention of "retooling" or "updating" a setting is going to make folks nervous.

 

[Aeolius]

Greyhawk.

No two GH fans want the same setting; some like the 1e GH, some like the 2e GH, some like 3e GH, some like the novels while others do not, and some want to include LG materials while others do not. Completely destroying the setting into something all GH devotees universally despise might be a great way to pull the fans together.

 

[Silverblade The Ench]

oh hell no, do NOT muck up Dark Sun, *agrees with Waylander*
Just strip it back to the 1st boxed set, ignore the trash that came after it (bar Dune Trader and 1 or 2 others that just expanded the settign rather than destroyed it), ther'e sno damned need, or was no need, to mess that setting up.

And as I've bitterly complianed elsewhere, what makes the 4thed FRCG utter garbage to me is: they lost the plot, they lost the flavour. I pick the book up and...what is the Forgotten Realms? Why should I play it? It's just a bland, generic setting.
So why play it at all?

What I'd do:
-Dark Sun, exactly as 1st boxed set. Stuff after that sucked!

-it's vital to keep a coherent art style, font etc specifically for each setting, do NOT overlook this, it's vital to the coherence of the product setting. So don't use the current 4th ed art, it must be unqique for each setting, see Brom and Baxa and how they really made Dark Sun what it is by their art.

-Templars are just clerics, get over it folks! The Sorceror-Kings are gods, as far as Athasians are concerned, I don't mean literal gods, but demi-gods, treated like-gods etc. their templars = clerics, their bureacratic powers are divorced form and nothing to do with thier combat (D&D) power. Again, deal with this. A character's level has little to do with how high up/favoured he maybe as a templar.
So a 15th level "battle" templar, may not have all the legal authority given to him, that a weasely 5ht level sneak may have.

-No tieflings, they were never in Dark SUn, shouldn't be in it now, except, some rare place etc where there's a link to the infernal planes.

-I would suggest, with the new cosmology, saying that the Abyss has links ot Athas, would make sense, as Athas is so linked to the elemental planes (Elemental Chaos now houses the Abyss in 4th ed).
The "Black" and the "grey" need worked on, I'd say that some event has severed Athas from the Astral Sea, forming "the Grey", preventing gods etc.

-Metal weapons must NOT be givien bonuses, sigh, keep heairng folk saying that on Athasian debates...rubbish. Steel weapons are the defaolt in D&D, do not make the mistake of thinking you need ot boost Athsian low quality weapon's up to the base standard of gear, or you skew the whole game mechanics.

inapproporiate/poor weapons/armour should just get -1 hit/damage/AC, end of story.

Having said that, agafari wood is as good as metal, and things like "psionically tempered" obsidian would be better than steel (obsidian is incredibly sharp and much harder than steel, if it could be psioniclaly tempered ot remove weaknesses, wow, very nasty weapons indeed).
Also, folk would create good armour from materials other worlds wouldn't have, like chitin breastplates, scalemail made drake scales etc. So, you can have materials at least as good as steel , but rare.

-Half-giants MUST be Large, I mean, half-giant...duh!! Balance them in soem good way, maybe reducing number of powers they can learn, or Int/Wis/Cha penalties, 4th ed does not always need to have "no penalties". their Str and Con should have major bonuses. Remember, Athasian half-giants are 10' tall and weigh 1000+lbs!

-Embrace the differences, do NOT make it bland, people don't like "Bland".

-A Dark Sun setting would require a psionic book!

-Defilers *are* more powerful than normal arcane casters it's as simple as that, again, tough! Deal with it. The defilers *won*, that's why the sorceror-kings rule.
make Defiling a feat, it boosts arcane spells, sucks life out of area around based on caster level?
However, every "civilized" critter hates them, and kills on sight.

man, I'd have fun with 4th ed Dark Sun!

 

[JeffB]

I don't think advancing the GH timeline would be a good idea at all- The fanbase is pretty much split on the Gary era and the current after the GH Wars era. I think alot of GH fans would just be happy to see it in print again, however I doubt sales would be very good over the long run unless some well respected recent GH caretakers, namely Erik Mona, were to be doing the work (I just don't see that happening) and the advance basically brought things back to exactly as they were in 573, and then what's the point?

Not to mention, I don't think the majority of the GH fanbase would appreciate what would need to be done to bring GH to the 4E core rule-set. I'm a big GH fan *AND* a 4E fan, and frankly I don't think the two mix very well on a fundamental level- not noly things like Dragonborn and Tieflings, but the restructuring of Wizards, the Planes, etc. Many of the D&D-isms that are core to GH fundamentally are things 4E has dropped/changed significantly.

Of the other "TSR" settings, I don't have much opinion as I never played in many (other than the FR), though I did own some of the materials/box sets (RL, DL, PS, etc).

One I *can* think of that could do well with an advance/re-write as well as mesh very well with the new rule-set is The Known World aka Mystara. In fact I think out of anything TKW is the best fit for 4E..far better than FR or GH.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Actually, I think that Dragonborn might work well (with a little bit of tweaking) as a race created by the mysterious Dragon Kings, a kind of ubermensch for fantasy introduced as the remnants of a failed plan to reforge the whole world in the vision of the Dragon Kings. If this angle was handled well, I'd buy it (the key is handling it well, though, because this could also be mucked up very badly).

There's something like dragonborn in Dark Sun already; dray, products of Dregoth's magical research. However, they're also quite different (they all resist fire and have no breath weapon, for instance).

I would not like to see other races just shoe-horned in, however. Dark Sun is cut off from other planes, so there should be no tieflings.

 

[Fenes]

Even if I hated a setting I'd not wish it to suffer 4e FR's fate.

 

[El Mahdi]

Wheel of Time:
- You can't jump it 100 years, but you could update it to catch up with the storyline. Converting to 4E would also be really good for imagining all of the different fighting techniques with powers.


Spelljammer:
- Some on here have said they wouldn't want to see Spelljammers timeline jump, however, I personally would like to see it jumped. It would give a chance to completely revamp the setting. Make it a little grittier and real. I've always envisioned Spelljammer as something like the DS9 episode where Sisko and son make an ancient Bajorran space vessel driven by Solar Winds, and Crystal Spheres as a fantasy version of Dyson Spheres. Maybe the Phlogiston environs and Crystal Spheres were created by an ancient race or by an over-diety with Arcane as the caretakers.

Mystara/Red Steel and Hollow World:
- I've always enjoyed the campaign settings of Mystara. And I'd really like to see Rakasta updated.

Ari: I hope you are watching this thread for ideas. I'd love to see you get permission from WoTC and update a setting. I know I'd buy it.

 

[Amphimir Míriel]

I second the vote for a 4e version of Dark Sun, rebooted back to the first boxed set.

No tieflings, no dragonborn, only the races of the Dark Sun setting.

I agree that Defiling should be a feat (or maybe a feat chain) that grants bonuses to wizards and warlocks at the expense of destroying water and vegetation around them. The fact that all civilized races would attack any character caught doing this is deterrent enough.

Get Brom to do the art-direction and most of the art. Voilà, instant Dark Sun goodness.

-

Now, for Planescape, I think that the main flavor of the setting can be recreated for fourth edition in the way described by Professor Cirno a couple of days ago. No need to do the whole 9-alignment thing.

Just like in Dark Sun, a huge amount of the flavor and feeling of the setting can be recreated by getting Tony DiTerlizzi to do art-direction and lots of illustrations for it.

As a matter of fact, if they got DiTerlizzi to illustrate the new Manual of the Planes I wouldn´t even need a Planescape setting: I would just start playing in Sigil and calling people ´berks´

 

[jdrakeh]

There's something like dragonborn in Dark Sun already; dray, products of Dregoth's magical research. However, they're also quite different (they all resist fire and have no breath weapon, for instance).

I would not like to see other races just shoe-horned in, however. Dark Sun is cut off from other planes, so there should be no tieflings.

I'd forgotten about dray. I suppose you could retool them to more closely resemble Dragonborn, mechanically or vice-versa.