What should the default setting be for 4th edition?

[an_idol_mind]

I think Eberron is a fine setting for those who like that sort of thing. But I don't think it would serve well as a base setting. Putting Eberron in as the standard setting would instantly turn off everyone who doesn't like Eberron or who prefers a more traditional fantasy setting. People who don't like Greyhawk can easily ignore the setting information for Oerth in the core books. It would be nearly impossible to ignore Eberron if setting information like the warforged or the lightning rails were included in the core rules.

As to the argument that Eberron was created with the D&D rules in mind, that's pretty much true of every D&D setting. Only the Forgotten Realms and arguably Blackmoor existed as fleshed out settings before D&D. Mystara, Greyhawk, and even stuff like Spelljammer and Planescape were created around some version of the D&D system.

 

[BlueBlackRed]

No vote for "anything but Eberron"?

 

[Lord Zardoz]

Predictions rather then a vote

If I was inclined to vote, I would probably suggest Greyhawk.

I would say that for a 4th Edition, the default setting will either be Eberron or Greyhawk.

At WotC, there is really only one key strategic question to answer to make this choice. Do we update the game to attract new gamers to a new product, or do we keep the game the same to retain our current customer base?

With Greyhawk, you will keep your current crop of gamers on board, but there is no guarantee that they will update to a new rules set to play a game they can already play.

With Eberron, you might be able to get new gamers into the game, and expand your market. But if not enough people buy into the new setting, than you find yourself with no market at all, with no new gamers and having alienated your core customer base.

I would say that the ideal thing for Wizards to do with a 4th edition is to keep Greyhawk as the base setting and to try to push Eberron into the position that Forgotten Realms is in now. Forgotten realms will probably not go away any time soon, but there is not a whole lot more they can do with the setting.

You will only get the Greyhawk crowd to buy into the new system if it offers new game features that will work in their setting. Going to 3rd from 1st or 2nd was not a big stretch. You got Feats, Half Orc as characters, Barbarians and Monks as playable core classes, and prestige classes. All of it is worthwhile to work into any Greyhawk game.

Eberron has the virtue of being something new, and you can get away with adding wildly new things that wont work in existing campaigns. Psionics, Warforged, Artificers, and the presence of airships, lightning rails, and other pseudo modern things. Definitely not Tolkein, but also not unheard of from a fantasy gaming perspective either. The biggest asset of Eberron is also the primary drawback. It is not Greyhawk. For people who would like to play in a world more like Final Fantasy 6 than Lord of the Rings, Eberron is a better choice than Greyhawk.

END COMMUNICATION

 

[pawsplay]

I voted FR, but now I want to change my vote.

FR is a much larger brand than Greyhawk and that's a damn good reason, whatever else you think of the two settings, to attach it as the base setting for D&D.

I'm that guy who is still annoyed at this newfangled "Forgotten Realms" stuff.

 

[Angel Tarragon]

No vote for "anything but Eberron"?

In lieu of the lack thereof, I had to go with Greyhawk!

 

[Kae'Yoss]

I'd say Greyhawk or undefined, with FR being impossible unless we use 4e to retcon their cosmology retcon. FR has lots of books yes, I like it yes, it's popular yes, but if we use it we might have to use its screwy cosmology which tries to be setting exclusive, and that's hardly beneficial to anyone using the material and branching out on their own.

The same goes for Eberron, of course.

At WotC, there is really only one key strategic question to answer to make this choice. Do we update the game to attract new gamers to a new product, or do we keep the game the same to retain our current customer base?

To rephrase it: Do we kick loyal fans in the nuts or not? That's what using Eberron would amount to, unless they leave out the optional races, optional classes, optional stuff like magic trains, different faith and cosmology and all that. At that point, you can as well stick with GH.

With Greyhawk, you will keep your current crop of gamers on board, but there is no guarantee that they will update to a new rules set to play a game they can already play.

With Eberron, you might be able to get new gamers into the game, and expand your market. But if not enough people buy into the new setting, than you find yourself with no market at all, with no new gamers and having alienated your core customer base.

Exactly. I think it's likely they'd alienate more customers than get new ones. Especially since they could have their cake and eat it, too: Use GH (or nothing) as baseline and make an Eberron Campaign setting. Fans of normal D&D will be happy not to have Eberron shoved down their throats, and those who actually want it would have to get the Campaign Setting, anyway (as all that setting info won't fit into the core books)

I would say that the ideal thing for Wizards to do with a 4th edition is to keep Greyhawk as the base setting and to try to push Eberron into the position that Forgotten Realms is in now. Forgotten realms will probably not go away any time soon, but there is not a whole lot more they can do with the setting.

They can give both an equal treatment, but they won't put the Realms on slow burn.

Face it: as much as funky new stuff and extreme far out extremeness is wanted, there will always be a demand for vanilla D&D. And for vanilla D&D, there's the Realms as fully supported setting.

I guess Wizards know that if they push Eberron too hard, the fans will push back.

And I don't agree that the Realms are at a dead end. Recent books like Lost Empires, Power of Faerûn, Dragons of Faerûn show that they can do a lot.

Plus, there's always regional supplements, both for unexplored areas and for those who were covered in very old FR books.

For people who would like to play in a world more like Final Fantasy 6 than Lord of the Rings, Eberron is a better choice than Greyhawk.

It still doesn't make it a good choice for the standard setting.

One of D&Ds strengths, in my opinion, is that you're not bound to a certain world that is hard-wired into the setting. Sure, it does make some assumptions about magic level and the like, but you're not told the capital of the world is Metropolis the Big City (or anything).

Greyhawk as presented is pretty bland: you have your normal races somewhere, you have your wizards and fighters and stuff. There's nothing you wouldn't think out of place in, say, Middle Earth (arguably the best-known fantasy world).

So if it is to be any standard setting, it has to be something like they're doing now: No actual standard world, only borrowing stuff from GH.

If you install Eberron as standard, the game won't be D&D any more - it will be The Eberron RPG.

 

[Avissar]

new setting or dragonlance.
or council of the wyrms perhaps...after all the game is called dungeons and DRAGONS.
but deffinately something where dragons are everywhere. they could save themselves the time and use my world lol

 

[airwalkrr]

I voted Greyhawk because D&D is and always will be about Greyhawk. However, I rather like the position the "core setting" is in now. What I would truly prefer however are suggestions like that found in Heroes of Horror for running a horror campaign in published campaign worlds. Have 3 or so campaign worlds supported by the core rules and give occassional suggestions like this one for working the ideas into the world. For the core rulebooks, I would prefer these suggestions only focus on Greyhawk so that a Greyhawk rules book isn't needed and that the setting specific campaign settings (like FRCS and ECS) can have adaptions much like it is now. So a bit more attention to Greyhawk in the core rules, and notes on adaptation to the main campaign worlds everywhere else. Plus, WotC should license out any campaign worlds they aren't going to develop so that at least SOMETHING can be done with them. Having no 3e spelljammer material besides that one polyhedron magazine is annoying. What if I WANT to play spelljammer and would rather pay someone to convert it for me than do it myself? That's what this country (USA) is all about anyway!

 

[delericho]

I like the current arrangement, which I consider more Greyhawk Lite than any 'true' version of the setting. I therefore voted Greyhawk, although I would hate to see it become more pervasive in the core rulebooks. (If, however, they were to do a good setting book for it, in the style of the FRCS, that would be nice.)

I expect FR to be the only WotC campaign setting.

I would be very surprised if that were the case. I don't know how many more times WotC can sell us the 'core' Realms again, and the non-core parts of the setting have markedly less popularity than the core. I wouldn't be surprised if FR doesn't disappear as a supported RPG setting with the next edition. It'll continue being supported in novels and computer games, of course, but there may well not be a market for a new FRCS and supplements.

Whether Eberron is promoted to become the 'deluxe' setting is an open question. I don't know how successful it has been for WotC. However, if it has not been successful enough then they really need to start developing a new setting, either to take its place, or to take the place of FR in the new edition.

Because I think D&D does need some sort of setting support, and I think FR is about done. If Eberron isn't strong enough to go forward with then they need to start thinking about where they go from here.

(And, in fact, I think they need to be developing a new setting in any case. The game probably needs a near-generic fantasy setting in the vein of FR. Eberron is too offbeat to serve as 'the' setting IMO.)

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Dump Eberron. FR can stay separate. Keep Greyhawk as the implied setting.

Let's face it ... core D&D, the D&D everyone knows (not just the super-informed and involved gamers who hang out at EN World) is built around Greyhawk or something that looks so much like it you can't tell the difference if you stand back and squint a bit (Mystara, FR, Wilderlands, etc, etc). I think if you deviate too much from the current implies setting you lose the feel of what is D&D to the majority of vanilla D&Ders.