D&D 4E Your plans for 4e

[Radiating Gnome]

Dood, Karate Kid is TOTALLY a coming of age film, even without Molly Ringwald, and is not really a martial arts movie at all.

I hear what you're saying. I still think that *most* things will be possible with the new system, but especially as characters enter the heroic and paragon tiers, trying to tell a "karate kid" story will be hard, what with all the running up bamboo trees and jumping over small buildings in a single bound. It's certainly a system where a desire to run "grittier" games might make people happier with older versions. And, I haven't seen the final, full rules yet either, so it's mostly guesswork anyway.

-j

 

[WizarDru]

I hear what you're saying. I still think that *most* things will be possible with the new system, but especially as characters enter the heroic and paragon tiers, trying to tell a "karate kid" story will be hard, what with all the running up bamboo trees and jumping over small buildings in a single bound. It's certainly a system where a desire to run "grittier" games might make people happier with older versions. And, I haven't seen the final, full rules yet either, so it's mostly guesswork anyway.

I can see that, but it sounds more to me like it's just become more obvious how those sweet spots for people's personal preferences have changed in the new edition. In 3.x, the minute certain spells enter the lexicon, all bets are off on certain kinds of games. It doesn't sound like 4e is so much a departure from that fact as stratifying more clearly when that fact is evident and consciously changing assumptions within the rules, as opposed to older editions, where it might not have happened or might have been external to the rules, but well known by it's players.

 

[Radiating Gnome]

My guess is that you're right, that the three tiers are going to help describe the sort of game you're playing -- and the game will change as the players move through the tiers.

Still dying to see the rules, though.

-rg

 

[Pbartender]

I talked it over with the group last night... Our current plans are for me to run a fairly standard D&D game of the old Gygax style, starting at 1st level. We will be using just the first three Core books coming out this summer, and no house rules... Straight up and by the book.

In the meantime, I'm starting to put ideas together for the campaign setting. Initial thoughts...

- Loosely based on 16th Century Earth. The Age of Exploration allows for the mixing and matching of everything D&D usually offers... That is to say, plate mail and greatswords won't look entirely out of pace alongside leather and rapiers, and it wouldn't be unfeasible to have someone from the Far East traveling with Pseudo-Europeans, should someone want to play something exotic.

- Teiflings will be the ruling families of the equivalent of the Turkish Ottoman Empire. They originated from the equivalent of the Ancient Egyptian ruling families... descended from the "gods" and all that.

- Dragonborn will likewise be the ruling families of the Far East Asian-styled Empires.

- Eladrin will be the last remaining survivors of a long-lost world-spanning Empire not unlike Atlantis, which was destroyed centuries ago in a war with the Teifling Empire of the time. Their name is derived from Ala Hadarim (Roughly, "they come in excellence"). Currently, they are scattered and without a homeland.

- Elves are colonial Eladrin who went native after the fall of their Empire. They'll be on par with native North American, South American and African tribes mostly living in the forests and jungles. Dark Elves, Drow, will be blood-sacrificing Aztecs.

- In know it's cliche, but Dwarves are necessarily Norse Vikings.

- I haven't decided what to do with Halflings yet.

 

[Plane Sailing]

That sounds really cool! I like it!

(would it be too much to type to make the halflings the English? )

 

[phoamslinger]

halflings would obviously be peaceful (?) villagers from the Scottish lowlands. didn't you watch Willow?

Madmartigan: "Peck, peck, pect, pict, pict, Pict..."

Pict
Pronunciation: \pikt\
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English Pictes, plural, Picts, from Old English Pihtas, from Late Latin Picti
Date: before 12th century
: a member of a people of the north of Scotland who are first noted in historical records in the late third century and who became amalgamated with the Scots in the mid-eighth century
— Pict·ish \ˈpik-tish\ adjective or noun

 

[Pbartender]

That sounds really cool! I like it!

(would it be too much to type to make the halflings the English? )

halflings would obviously be peaceful (?) villagers from the Scottish lowlands. didn't you watch Willow?

I was half thinking that Halflings could be to Humans, what the Saxons or the Britons were to the Normans. Make them default back-country peasants (roly-poly farm-loving barefoot Tolkien halflings) and urban gypsies (pseudo-kender 3E/4E halflings).

Halflings were the original inhabitants of the Western Kingdoms, before the humans took over.

 

[Radiating Gnome]

Well, Crap.

I just saw the Paizo announcement of Pathfinder (basically 3.75).

I've returned from DDXP full of warmth and good cheer about WOTC and the new edition of the game. But I have to carry that around with a pretty strong bad taste in my mouth for the way they've handled the GSL and put Paizo in a position where they really had no choice but to go their own way.

This is going to divide the community. I think there will be enough faithful to keep Paizo going, give them the customer base they need to keep the doors open and keep producing the best APs that have been produced.

This doesn't change my plans, though. I'm still going 4e. It has been our intention all along to break out of the AP rut and create our next campaign ourselves, so I wouldn't have been using a Paizo AP out of the box again, anyway.

In a perfect world I'd buy both game systems and keep up on both, but I don't know if that's going to be possible. If they had continued along parallel paths I probably would have continued to subscribe to Pathfinder . . . maybe I still will for a while, and see . . .But I can forsee a time when I have moved enough into the 4e world that I'm not even using a few dribs and drabs out of the pathfinder stuff.

And . . . yet . . . I make my living in my day job thanks to open source software, and that makes it even harder to turn away from the game that has that OS philosophy behind it.

Meh. I need a drink.

-john

 

[(contact)]

Yeh, I'd buy you that drink, John.

WotC fuxxored every part of this 4e rollout in my opinion, not the least of which is shafting a better company (Paizo) and forcing them away from the community.

The rules and game better be outstanding, because nearly every other aspect of this launch has put me off the game.

 

[Pbartender]

FYI: Paizo's got an Alpha Release of the Pathfinder rules on pdf available for free.

Though we'll still be picking the 4E rulebooks, I'm going to give Pathfinder a good once over. I'm curious to see what it looks like.