What's Mystara's Hook?

[Bumbles]

Two gigantic warring empires, one with the "thousand 36th level wizards," giant air-ships, and mummies, the other with mounted air brigade, gladiators, and massive legions. Weirdo Teutonic crusaders, vikings, aztec orcs living in a hidden city surrounded by molten lava, elvish and dwarvish civil wars, hobbit pirates, eccentric immortal French wizards, dog people, spider people, an invisible moon inhabited by cat samurai, the Hollow world, an immortal from Earth's future obsessively reconstructing a nuclear reactor...

You forgot the Scottish Liches! For Shame!

 

[Dire Bare]

You forgot the Scottish Liches! For Shame!

If it ain't Scottish, and undead, it's crap!!!

 

[Dire Bare]

It's not specific enough. Like Ravenloft is horror D&D, Eberron is 1920s/30s D&D, Birthright is about being a ruler, Planescape is extraplanar, Spelljammer is D&D in space, Al-Qadim is Arabian Nights D&D. What's Mystara?

Gonzo D&D doesn't cut it. Gonzo is the default setting. Making D&D not gonzo, as Dark Sun and Al-Qadim do, is worth remarking upon. Keeping it gonzo isn't.

I think that Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, and Mystara are all generic fantasy settings without clear, strong "hooks". However, each setting does have its own unique tone and feel to it, that some may prefer over the others.

They are like different variants on the flavor vanilla. Vanilla is good, but I prefer French Vanilla!

 

[Remathilis]

It's not specific enough. Like Ravenloft is horror D&D, Eberron is 1920s/30s D&D, Birthright is about being a ruler, Planescape is extraplanar, Spelljammer is D&D in space, Al-Qadim is Arabian Nights D&D. What's Mystara?

Gonzo D&D doesn't cut it. Gonzo is the default setting. Making D&D not gonzo, as Dark Sun and Al-Qadim do, is worth remarking upon. Keeping it gonzo isn't.

Officially; Mystara is a 15th century world with magic instead of gunpowder. Moreso than anything though Mystara is what happens when you don't have a "setting bible" to go on and you let people freelance your work. In essence, its the ULTIMATE melting pot setting. (It even has Blackmoor, or shares it with Oerth)

An interesting side note for those who neever played it: It has no "gods". It has immortals; who are NOT the source of divine power but still fill the role of "deities" in the world. They don't need worship (though some are revered in churches) and they ARE killable. Most, if not, all, were formerly high-level mortals (though some interloper deities or impostors are there; like Odin and Thor).

The other detail is that since it was targeted at younger kids, it doesn't have much planar menaces (ESPECIALLY demons and devils). Instead, Undead, dragons and giants fill the "high level menace" category along with some of the strangest monsters in D&D (LIVING SPHERES OF ANNIHILATION)! Its not the kind of setting that has temples to Orcus though...

 

[samursus]

Bump Mystara lovin'

 

[Greg K]

Tortles and airships.

Edit:... and rakastas

 

[I'm A Banana]

Gonzo D&D doesn't cut it. Gonzo is the default setting. Making D&D not gonzo, as Dark Sun and Al-Qadim do, is worth remarking upon. Keeping it gonzo isn't.

No, Points of Light is the default setting.

There's plenty of room for a setting that turns the wahoo up to 11, with the byword being "what we thought was awesome when we were 10."

God, I never knew Mystara was that. I'm sad I missed out on the thing now. That sounds....

fun.

I can still see its entire philosophy being a bit alien to 4e (which seems in a lot of ways to deliberately tone down a lot of the wahoo in the game), but man, I would like to see some good designers work on a new edition of the thing. Sounds like it'd be a blast.

 

[Klaus]

I think Mystara lends itself to "patchwork" campaign locales: instead of a "Mystara" book, you have one for the Red Steel region, one for Hollow World, etc, etc.

 

[Dragonhelm]

I think Mystara lends itself to "patchwork" campaign locales: instead of a "Mystara" book, you have one for the Red Steel region, one for Hollow World, etc, etc.

That's kind of the feeling I get too. Most of my Mystara materials are things like Red Steel, Hollow World, the Immortals boxed set, and so on.

Based on Chris Perkins' philosophy of incorporating some setting materials in the core, I have to wonder if "X setting may kill Y setting and take its stuff." For example, will we see Mystara races in other worlds? And so on and so forth.

 

[Doug McCrae]

No, Points of Light is the default setting

PoL and gonzo aren't mutually exclusive, if anything they are complementary. PoL means the safe places of the world are few and far between, the rest being dark and monster-infested. Monster-infested places tend to be more gonzo than non-monster infested places because they contain monsters, and monsters are weird.

Every edition of D&D has had gonzo as the default setting. 4e is gonzo PoL.