Dungeons and Dragons 4 and the Murder of Faerun

Cafe Society
61

My beef with Ebberon is that they pussed out of making it a real steampunk setting. They’ve got trains, but oh they run on magic! They’ve got zepplins, but they run on magic! They’ve got automatons, but they’re really just nerfed golems. Still, I like the setting. All it needs is more robots.

Holy shit, yes. I mean, I have my complaints, but have you looked at the 2nd edition PHB lately? I’m astonished that I could once recall all the modifiers from each stat. It was a kludge carried over three generations of the game. None of the stats were on the same scale, multiclassing was an awkward proposition however you did it, Wizards had to hang on by their fingernails with at most 4 hit points and one spell a day even while the thief went screaming up in levels. Bards were merely crappy rogues/fighters/wizards, unlike the new bards who are crappy rogues/fighters/wizards/clerics. Casting Fireball was a major exercise in extemporaneous topology. This all seemed so normal once.

I find it hillarious that the DCs for Open Lock start at 20. The crappy lock on your sister’s diary is DC 20. This is especially funny given that there is hardly ever a reason to bother putting ranks in the skill. If you’re already sure a chest isn’t trapped, there’s no reason to dick around with lockpicks when a smart blow with a hammer on a chisel will break most locks. Even if you’re worried about excess noise attracting wandering monsters you can do what thieves do in real life – us a copper-headed hammer, which for some reason makes less noise when striking steel. You might need actual lockpicking if you’re engaged in cat burglary while the owners of the house are sleeping, but this will hardly ever come up because the rest of the party will have to sit there bored out of their minds while you and the GM pass notes. Besides, I learned early the thieves’ lot in D&D from Black Dougal. He failed his 15% check and he fucking died, man. 85% chance of fucking death, and if he’d lived the rest of the party would expect a share of the chest money. Put points into Open Lock my ass.

62

As a note on thieving - our groups got by just fine without a Rogue of any sort. Thing is, once you know where the traps are you can deal with them just fine. The traps on almost any normal location have to be ones that people can live right next to. Remember, they’ve got to walk up and down the hallways, get to the treasure room and back, etc. So most likely the dungeon will have possibly-lethal traps suited to the inhabitants and traps which are nonlethal.

They will also be in discreet areas, next to easily recognized objects. We commonly tie ropes to doors and open them from two rooms away, and send in small animals to trigger any floor traps first. If they get blown up or sealed inside the room for all eternity… well, the small bits of treasure probably weren’t worth it.

63

:rolleyes: Warforged aren’t robots. They’re sentient golems.

Can everybody say “THAC0”? I knew you could! I didn’t start playing until 3.5, but the former 2nd ed players in my group told me that 3.x was a huge improvement. They told me that 2e was chock full of things like THAC0 that were confusing and made no sense.

Some people on the D&D boards explained that 2e was TSR’s attempt to change the game enough that they could say it was a completely different system from 1st edition so that they could screw Gary Gygax out of his royalties after they’d run him out of the company.

[QUOTE=Ludovic]
Then it was my early 80s idea that kobolds were powerful sorcerors. They better not take my other ideas or I will be mad mad mad!
[/QUOTE]

One of the few high-level NPCs in Eberron is a kobold sorcerer :smiley: (however, he’s only appeared in a novel, not in a sourcebook, so he’s not “canon”).

64

Actually, it is a bit of a running gag that too often designers don’t take this practical consideration into account. Although… I’ve recently read this kind of design referred to as “Gygaxian.”

What I heard was that they just wanted to get his name off of everything. As I understand it, he got primary billing for the work of a lot of other people.

65

[QUOTE=Bosstone]
I don’t think I said anything about combat.

A half-fey in my current campaign was able to negotiate passage through hostile kobold territory, though, despite the fact that we’d killed about 30 kobolds on our way to see the chief. A character doesn’t have to be useful in combat, necessarily.
[/QUOTE]

I posted about my Bard in another thread. At 5th level, I’m at +15 Diplomacy (maxed), +10 Bluff and +10 Gather Information (neither of those maxed). I tend to breeze through the social interaction part of the game.

At the same time, with Inspirational Boost (Spell Compendium) and Song of the Heart (Eberron Feat), I’m regularly boosting our group by +3/+3 in combat, which is far from useless. (The Fighter loves to PA by the amount I boost him.)

I’ve also been extremely lucky, combat wise. In the first three sessions, I was the leader in kills and damage because of lucky bow shots. I’ve only charged into direct combat twice, but both times I have managed to roll exceptionally well and kill my opponent in one blow. The last time the fighters had both been engulfed by a Swarm of Fire Rats when I waded in and blasted them dead with a solid crit.

RP wise, that makes my Bard “The Man”.

66

Faerun wise…

I’ve never read any of the books, but I’ve heard enough about Elminster to be annoyed.

Have played only one short-lived game set in FR.

Noticed the HUGE populations immediately. The Silver Marches is about 1/3 of the size of Minnesota, yet boasts a population of over 1 million. Given the tech, where is the actual wilderness there? It’d require all that land just to feed the people! Sembia is roughly 2.5 million. The first time my GM made a comment about my character traveling alone across “the wilderness of Sembia” I broke out laughing and asked where that was.

It also made me wonder why they didn’t just move wholesale into the southern Dales and annex them. They certainly had enough people to do it easily enough.

The whole thing also made me think of a 2e game of mine nearly 20 years ago, where a player bitched mightily about the “unrealistic” populations of my world, because the (somewhat distant) capital of the Duchy had the monstrous population of 8,000(!!) and the national capital was the largest city in the entire region with a population of 16,000!

“There shouldn’t be so many people in your world.”

67

I’ve always considered the Forgotten Realms to be a fantasy-equivalent of a post-Singularity culture. If only for the sheer quantity of magic items floating around the campaign world.

But I’d just shrug and handwave those goofy population numbers as “supported by magic”. Maybe wands of create food & water or something. Mind you, that would immediately lead into a fierce* argument about the D&D magic item economy.

And that would make me kill them and take their stuff, because no one should have to endure those kinds of “arguments” from D&Dheads.

Anyway, Eberron (one “b”, two "r"s, folks) is at least a bit more explicit about how magic supports its societies than the Forgotten Realms is/was. But the D&D economy is still broken in Eberron, so even that didn’t stop the “arguments.”

Hell, I’d nuke the place, too. From orbit. Just to be sure I wouldn’t have to hear another crapy argument about it. I shudder to think what WotC employees must’ve had to endure at conventions over the years – makes people telling me about their characters seem interesting by comparison, it does.

  • fierce, not in the semi-cool Project: Runway “Asian women are fierce” way, either.
68

[QUOTE=Maeglin]
I think the problem is not that there is too little character, but way too much character. With all of the Elminsters, Khelben Blackstaffs, and Lord Manshoons running around, what is the right place to pitch the PCs? Is there any problem you can’t scramble to an absurd NPC to resolve? How many dei ex machina will it take for everything to get sorted out? I kind of like the fact that D&D is finally conceding defeat: it built an unsupportable edifice that it is only now knocking down. The sooner the developers start again, the better.
[/QUOTE]

I’ve only read a handful of Realms novels (and mainly quite a few years ago), but I seem to recall that despite all the high-powered heroes (don’t forget those seven sexy sisters), the world seemed pretty much balanced due to the insane amount of super-high-powered villains. Isn’t Thay essentially a whole nation of evil wizards, one more powerful than the next? Thus, the Elminsters of the world can only fight the other big fish, they have no time for little fish.

69

I really like Eberron. It’s D&D Noir, the period just after WWI. Mixed, of course, with a little post-Napoleonic era, and a soupcon of Charlemagne’s death.

70

I admit that I agree with the OP about laying waste to Faerun. I’ve never played anything there but the occasional video game, but knowing that all the heroic or otherwise deeds my character commtted make no difference because everything is going to be destroyed anyway takes some of the shine off of those games. If they want a post apocalypse setting make one that doesn’t destroy a pre-existing one.

It also strikes me as a bad business decision, likely to alienate the people who are most likely to actually go and spend money on a whole new version of the game. And it narrows the appeal to fans of post-apocalypse settings, which is going to be narrower than fans of general fantasy settings.

71

Most fantasy settings are post-apocalypse, in one way or another. Faerun was, repeatedly. The Forgotten Realms to start with, the old empire and portals. Then post-Time of Troubles, then now.

Honestly, if things were decent, the world wouldn’t need heroes. No, you need the evil overlord somewhere. He’s won. The apocalypse happened at some point, and good lost.

Now… save the day.

72

[QUOTE=Chimera]
Faerun wise…

I’ve never read any of the books, but I’ve heard enough about Elminster to be annoyed.

Have played only one short-lived game set in FR.

Noticed the HUGE populations immediately. The Silver Marches is about 1/3 of the size of Minnesota, yet boasts a population of over 1 million. Given the tech, where is the actual wilderness there? It’d require all that land just to feed the people! Sembia is roughly 2.5 million. The first time my GM made a comment about my character traveling alone across “the wilderness of Sembia” I broke out laughing and asked where that was.

It also made me wonder why they didn’t just move wholesale into the southern Dales and annex them. They certainly had enough people to do it easily enough.

The whole thing also made me think of a 2e game of mine nearly 20 years ago, where a player bitched mightily about the “unrealistic” populations of my world, because the (somewhat distant) capital of the Duchy had the monstrous population of 8,000(!!) and the national capital was the largest city in the entire region with a population of 16,000!

“There shouldn’t be so many people in your world.”
[/QUOTE]

Don’t underestimate ancient and medieval populations. The Persian kings regularly fielded armies of over a quarter of a million troops. The city of Rome, at the height of the Empire, had over a million inhabitants. And so forth.

Accrding to this page, the population of England in 1300 (before the Plague hit) was between 5 and 7 million; England, at 50,000 square miles, is roughly half the size of Minnesota - not much larger than the Silver Marches. France of 1328, in turn, had a population of 18-20 million, 8 times that of Sembia. Is Sembia smaller than 1/8 of France?

The Realms have more than there share of logical problems when it comes to politics and national boundries, but population size isn’t one of them.

73

[QUOTE=Alessan]
Don’t underestimate ancient and medieval populations. The Persian kings regularly fielded armies of over a quarter of a million troops. The city of Rome, at the height of the Empire, had over a million inhabitants. And so forth.

Accrding to this page, the population of England in 1300 (before the Plague hit) was between 5 and 7 million; England, at 50,000 square miles, is roughly half the size of Minnesota - not much larger than the Silver Marches. France of 1328, in turn, had a population of 18-20 million, 8 times that of Sembia. Is Sembia smaller than 1/8 of France?

The Realms have more than there share of logical problems when it comes to politics and national boundries, but population size isn’t one of them.
[/QUOTE]

Also remember that a goodly portion of that population (in the Silver Marches, anyway) is dwarves, who don’t live on the surface.

74

[QUOTE=Amok]
I couldn’t disagree with you more, and I wish this thread was still in the Pit so that I could use profanity to insult you right now. :mad:
[/QUOTE]

So open a pit thread already. :rolleyes:

I don’t get the subset of folks saying “I’m glad they’re destroying the Realms, with all its uber-NPCs..”

You are? Why, you always wanted to play there, but were prevented by the uber-NPCs? That doesn’t make any sense to me. WotC has several campaign settings. I’m sure they have some more to your liking. Why are you happy that those of us who did like the Realms as it was will no longer have that?

I mean, it sounds like schadenfreude to me. “Ha-ha, the popular kid got knocked down!”

75

[QUOTE=CandidGamera]
I mean, it sounds like schadenfreude to me. “Ha-ha, the popular kid got knocked down!”
[/QUOTE]

Game snobbery.

76

I suspect the real reason they did this is so they can take yet another shot at making Greyhawk a viable campaign setting. Up 'til now, there’s really been nothing to seperate it from Forgotten Realms: they’re both generic high fantasy settings, and gamers have consistently gravitated towards FR at the expense of Greyhawk. My bet is, they’re thinking that all the FR fans will keep playing in their new fantasy apocalpytic FR setting out of habit, but also pick up the new Greyhawk supplements for when they want the traditional sword’n’sorcery experience.

Alternate theory: they’re going to New Coke it. They’ll run with the fucked up realms for a year or two, then come out with a classic Realms sourcebook that looks at what would have happened to Faerun if the apocalypse had been averted.

77

[QUOTE=Miller]
Alternate theory: they’re going to New Coke it. They’ll run with the fucked up realms for a year or two, then come out with a classic Realms sourcebook that looks at what would have happened to Faerun if the apocalypse had been averted.
[/QUOTE]

And here I figured it was as simple as;

How do we sell more FR books?

Just like the new game versions of the last several years. It’s more about keeping the product lines flowing out and the money flowing in.

78

[QUOTE=Miller]
I suspect the real reason they did this is so they can take yet another shot at making Greyhawk a viable campaign setting.
[/QUOTE]

Nah, it’s nothing as complicated as that. The simple explanation for the apocalypse is that all those FR adventurers ultimately failed. And now they get to live with the consequences of their inadequacy. :smiley:

What I really don’t get is why they’re converting FR to 4e before Eberron. Eberron is the “current” setting, and those players who prefer the newer setting seem more likely to be willing to switch to 4e. Indeed, the anti-4e vitriol seems mostly absent on the official Eberron forums. And simply because Eberron is still so new, it wouldn’t require an apocalyptic reboot to simplify conversion. There’s just not that much to convert, compared to FR.

79

[QUOTE=Johnny Angel]
Actually, it is a bit of a running gag that too often designers don’t take this practical consideration into account. Although… I’ve recently read this kind of design referred to as “Gygaxian.”
[/QUOTE]

Heh. Maybe so. But ym GM is the kind who once ran a dungeon with no monsters but an endless array of rididuclously lethal traps. Traps galore. A trao every five feet.

Eventually, they realized there was no way the dungeon owner could ever get through them himself, and had to leave… back out past the traps. They found the extremely well-concealed door ten feet into the dungeon. :slight_smile:

80

[QUOTE=Miller]
I suspect the real reason they did this is so they can take yet another shot at making Greyhawk a viable campaign setting. Up 'til now, there’s really been nothing to seperate it from Forgotten Realms: they’re both generic high fantasy settings, and gamers have consistently gravitated towards FR at the expense of Greyhawk. My bet is, they’re thinking that all the FR fans will keep playing in their new fantasy apocalpytic FR setting out of habit, but also pick up the new Greyhawk supplements for when they want the traditional sword’n’sorcery experience.

Alternate theory: they’re going to New Coke it. They’ll run with the fucked up realms for a year or two, then come out with a classic Realms sourcebook that looks at what would have happened to Faerun if the apocalypse had been averted.
[/QUOTE]

Man, what?

Greyhawk already had its “evil won” apocalyptic metaplot setting update. That’s why they came out with Greyhawk: From the Ashes. Doing the same thing to the Forgotten Realms that they did to Greyhawk years and years ago does absolutely nothing to separate the two. It makes them more similar and less distinguishable.

Furthermore, WotC hasn’t made any attempt at making Greyhawk a viable campaign setting – much less “yet another”.

And why should they “New Coke it” for the Forgotten Realms? There is a long history of the Forgotten Realms being updated in cataclysmic and apocalyptic ways to reflect a new rules edition, or core game sourcebook, or whatever – Time of Troubles doesn’t ring a bell for anyone? Or that invasion by the faux-Mongols? Or the goofiness with the Manshoon-clones? In Faerûn, if you don’t have at least one apocalypse by tea-time, you should start to worry.

The fact is, that older RPG settings occasionally need to be pruned back, because they become too overgrown by release after release of material. Forgotten Realms needs a fresh coat of paint. IMO, they’d be better served by a complete reboot like White Wolf did with their World of Darkness – unfortunately, I don’t think the Internet could handle the entitlement outrage of fanboys’ heads exploding.