White Raven Onslaught Revision

[Hussar]

I can sympathize. If only sometime, during the past 20 years, WOTC had thought to produce pre-made worlds for those who want them. Perhaps one could have been of some magical realms, now forgotten. They might have taken one of the original gaming worlds -- even the one Gary Gygax created! -- and published that! Another could have involved, I don't know, dragons, perhaps with some sort of ancient weapon which could be used to battle them...a spear, maybe, or a lance. Another could have been some world built just for D&D, a world where all the weirdness of D&D makes a kind of sense, and people use magic as if it were technology, even making magical 'robots'. But I guess they never thought of this, FORCING people to build their own worlds, instead. You'd think with the OGL, some company, somewhere, would have found the niche of 'people who just want a campaign world' and exploited it, but I guess it never happened. Who knows? I might even have written for such settings![1] Wouldn't that have been something?

Ah, sweet dreams of might have been.

So I guess you'll settle for half-a-world in 4e. Perhaps by 5e, my strange idea of publishing "campaign setting books" as distinct from "core rule books" will be a reality, and we can BOTH be happy. Wouldn't that be something?

I think we've reached the end of this topic. I think the name is a bad name in and of itself, that baggage-laden names are bad in general, and that mixing core rules and setting fluff in a generic fantasy system is poor game design and wasteful of my time and money. You disagree on all counts. That is that.

[1]Which is sort of a good point. When I was working on Excalibur for S&S, I came up with all sorts of flowery feat names..."Deny The Lethal Strike", which made it harder for an enemy to confirm a critical hit, or 'Tis Only A Flesh Wound, which let you turn part of a critical hit into non-lethal damage. Why was this sort of fluff acceptable to me then and not now? Because it's one thing to have fluff which reinforces the flavor of a *specific setting*, and another to have it in core rules which must, by their nature, fit a tremendous range of settings.

D&D is losing genericness. Genericity? I consider that a Very Bad Thing. YMMV.

A further thought occurs.

I would like to thank Lizard for so eloquently illustrating my point. In his mind, it's perfectly acceptable for the non-world builders like me to be forced to either, A) build a world from scratch or B) spend money on additional supplements so I can make the core rules work out of the box.

But, it is, in no way, acceptable for the rules to work out of the box since that requires that world builders might have to do more work to create their hothouse flowers.

B/E D&D had a world right in the rules. Star Frontiers had a setting right in the rules. World of Darkness has a setting hardwired into the rules. 1e had a world hard wired into the rules. The list goes on and on.

It wasn't until 2e and all the world building geeks took over the helm that we became forced to do work that frankly, some of us would rather not do.

I find it ironic that Lizard would point to Greyhawk, a setting which was absolutely the default for D&D right in the core books, as an example of why I should be forced to go out and buy setting guides.

 

[Primal]

Indeed. Particularly since White Raven started in Bo9S, and they give a pretty interesting and detailed description of the Temple of the Nine Swords, the history of the Blade of the Last Citadel (which is the White Raven legacy sword), the teachings and philosophy of the White Raven school, etc..

In my group we decided to skip B09S, because it didn't feel thematically "right" for us. And, it had a lot of flavour integrated into the rules. I can understand Lizard's point very well, and I completely agree with him -- it would have taken me a *lot* of work to integrate that 'Temple of the Nine Winds', 'Blade of the Last Citadel' and all those schools into Forgotten Realms (I could have just decided that thy're "somewhere" in Kara-Tur, of course). But what if my own homebrew setting doesn't have "Oriental" lands or cultures at all? No matter how good the book was, I'd not buy it if I had to spend a week either redesigning my world or making a lot of changes to the fluff in that book (just for the record: I would *never* consider adding "previously unknown" cultures to my world just to make a single, optional book work in the setting).

 

[Primal]

I find it ironic that Lizard would point to Greyhawk, a setting which was absolutely the default for D&D right in the core books, as an example of why I should be forced to go out and buy setting guides.

How would you convert the Temple of Elemental Evil to run it in the Forgotten Realms? Or your own homebre setting? Or even Eberron?

 

[TwinBahamut]

A further thought occurs.

I would like to thank Lizard for so eloquently illustrating my point. In his mind, it's perfectly acceptable for the non-world builders like me to be forced to either, A) build a world from scratch or B) spend money on additional supplements so I can make the core rules work out of the box.

But, it is, in no way, acceptable for the rules to work out of the box since that requires that world builders might have to do more work to create their hothouse flowers.

B/E D&D had a world right in the rules. Star Frontiers had a setting right in the rules. World of Darkness has a setting hardwired into the rules. 1e had a world hard wired into the rules. The list goes on and on.

It wasn't until 2e and all the world building geeks took over the helm that we became forced to do work that frankly, some of us would rather not do.

I find it ironic that Lizard would point to Greyhawk, a setting which was absolutely the default for D&D right in the core books, as an example of why I should be forced to go out and buy setting guides.

I just made a post arguing against Lizard's point a short time ago, but now it seems like I might have something of a difference of opinion with you as well... Go figure.

I don't think a ruleset needs to have a setting. D&D doesn't need Greyhawk or Forgotten realms or any other setting. A DM doesn't need those things to run a game. A DM doesn't even need to build a world when deprived of full settings. What is more, having a full setting right in the rules can sometimes become an annoyance.

Take as an example my experience with Iron Heroes. Supposedly its "implied setting" (a term I absolutely despise) is a world in which magic is rare and dangerous and the gods are distant or non-existant. I used it to run a campaign set in a homebrew setting featuring a nation run by a bureaucracy of wizards in a myth-inspired world where divine intervention was commonplace. The only change I needed for the rules was telling my players to ignore the fluff chapter that described the "implied setting".

D&D doesn't need a full setting, but it should not be completely lifeless and generic either. It just needs countless seeds of ideas and a million fragments of plots and possibilities. Having a group of feats called "White Raven" or "Golden Wyvern" does not, and should not, directly link D&D to any one setting, nor does it limit the flexibility of any setting. What it does do is provide something for a DM to latch on to and transform into a unique creation, whether it is an organization, an ancient swordmaster, a loose style used by thousands of different mercenaries, or something else entirely. If D&D can be filled with countless broken fragments of ideas, then it becomes much easier for a DM to build their own unique mosaic of a setting, without being constrained by someone else's pattern.

Worldbuilding is one of the hardest things about DMing, but it is also one of the most fun. Game designers and rulebooks should definitely work hard to take away the difficulty, but they should not do so at the expense of taking away the fun parts.

 

[Lizard]

So, you think Basic D&D was a bad game? And 1e? Considering how tightly the game was tied to a specific world pre 2e, I find your arguement somewhat flat.

Uhm...

I began with AD&D 1e in 1978. There was no "specific world" in the rules; at most, you had names like Bigby and Otiluke (with no explanation as to who they were...if you knew they were from Gary's original game, you were a hardcore fanatic). No history, no backstory, no continents, no city names, nothing, nada, zip. As for Basic...if you mean the first 'Basic Set', the one which came with 'Module B1' and really cheap plastic dice, I can assure you it also had not the slightest trace of background world in it. As for the later 'Red Box' sets, I never played with them, so I can't judge.

AD&D 1e was the ultimate blank slate; even the 'sample dungeon' in the DMG only had three rooms actually detailed, just enough to show a new DM the format and let him fill in the rest. The back of the DMG was a wonderful pile of random charts for everything from items found in a temple to the texture of potions to what kind of prostitute you encountered...now, THAT'S how you inspire imaginations!

 

[D'karr]

Worldbuilding is one of the hardest things about DMing, but it is also one of the most fun. Game designers and rulebooks should definitely work hard to take away the difficulty, but they should not do so at the expense of taking away the fun parts.

I completely agree. One of the things that always attracted me about the game is the use of emotive names, without much further explanation. I remember reading the 1st Edition DMG and looking at the Hand & Eye of Vecna, the Codex of the Infinite Planes, or almost any of the artifacts and relics, and being fascinated not necessarily by what was written about these objects but what was left open for the DM to create.

If the naming convention was Hand & Eye of a Lich, or Manual of the Planes something wondrous is lost. Spell name until the SRD had always been emotive. I think that having the powers of each class follow a similar pattern is preferable.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

I find it interesting how often a thread becomes hijacked with the I hate 4e names meme.

That's one way of looking at it.

As a technical writer and a game designer, I'd be concerned with anything so annoying and intrusive that it interjects itself into any conversation about the game. If it's a consistent source of annoyance, I'd pay attention and do something about it.

 

[D'karr]

That's one way of looking at it.

As a technical writer and a game designer, I'd be concerned with anything so annoying and intrusive that it interjects itself into any conversation about the game. If it's a consistent source of annoyance, I'd pay attention and do something about it.

Just because 3 people have to bring it up in every conversation does not mean that it bothers a majority of players, or even a minority of players for that matter. It is the nature of the internet that the very vocal 3 make it seem that the outrage is tremendous, when in reality it is barely noticeable.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Just because 3 people have to bring it up in every conversation does not mean that it bothers a majority of players, or even a minority of players for that matter. It is the nature of the internet that the very vocal 3 make it seem that the outrage is tremendous, when in reality it is barely noticeable.

Care to name those three people, or are you just talking out of your ass?

If I can name a fourth or fifth person, what then?

 

[Lizard]

I completely agree. One of the things that always attracted me about the game is the use of emotive names, without much further explanation. I remember reading the 1st Edition DMG and looking at the Hand & Eye of Vecna, the Codex of the Infinite Planes, or almost any of the artifacts and relics, and being fascinated not necessarily by what was written about these objects but what was left open for the DM to create.

Well, in the interest of honesty, I can't fully disagree...while I never got that from the AD&D books, I remember loving the original Arduin trilogy because of the things it mentioned but never explained[1] -- things like the table of coins from different lands, or the lists of inns or guilds, all with barely a half-sentence of description, did get me thinking about these things for my own worlds, though I never used theirs.

"White Raven" and "Golden Wyvern" don't do a damn thing for me, though. Maybe the problem isn't that they are names...it's that they are *really* *lame* *names*. (No offense meant to any designer who thought they were Really Cool...no arguing in matters of taste, and all that. I do think they fail on two levels -- they don't describe and they don't inspire. The latter is opinion; the former, I feel, is something closer to fact. )

(And, come on -- are you saying that 'Hand Of The Dread Lich' wouldn't inspire you? I know it would me, perhaps more than 'Hand of Vecna'...hell, learning the *name* of the Dread Lich would be a quest in itself...)

[1]In some of the stuff I did for Pelgrane's Dying Earth, I, poorly imitating Jack Vance[2], mentioned a bunch of cool-sounding names and places as fluff text. Then they said "Cool, write more about these!" Greeeeaat. Like I had any idea what they were. I always felt describing things took something out of them, that they were a lot cooler as hooks for the imagination than concretized. Once you describe Lost Talambriin, it's not Lost anymore, and thus, much less cool. But I digress.

[2]As if even the best writer (which I am not) could do more than a sad, pathetic, shambling imitation of the master wordsmith.