What's so good about the D&D 4E setting?
I never cared about it because of the hateboner against 4e but I've seen some people saying good things about it on Veeky Forums.
Is that any good if I think that Forgotten Realms is a bad setting?
I know very little about the setting but to be honest I'm already quite turned-off by how artificial the transition between 3.5 and 4 is.
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>but to be honest I'm already quite turned-off by how artificial the transition between 3.5 and 4 is.
Dungeons & Dragons doesn't have a actual setting. Dungeons and Dragons is a game systerm. There is in build assumptions of the how the world but there isn't a singular dndverse
Enjoy a thread where the same five people that have been trying to start a 4e renaissance for months now mention the same lore that they mention in every other thread in which they say 4e's Points of Light is D&D's best "setting."
It's just a small band of weird contrarians trying to insist that the edition that nearly killed D&D is in fact, the best edition of D&D, in absolutely every way.
But it was though
The strong points of the "Points of Light/Nentir Vale" setting are, in my opinion:
1: The entire setting is built from the ground up to accommodate your players being the heroes.
2: The lore of the setting is surprisingly deep if you know where to look for it, but it's never pushed in your face; the world is built with the expectation you will put your own particular stamp on it.
3: The default theme is Epic Heroic Fantasy. The Underdark was carved out by a maimed god who still resides down there and has been known to reach up and drag whole nations down to suffer with him. You can reach the Lands of the Fey and the Dead from first level, because crossings between the two are everywhere. You can eventually do battle with a Mual-tar, a being so powerful that an alliance of Moradin, Pelor and Bahamut couldn't defeat it, or slay a sapient undead planet, or defeat the kaiju-sized incarnation of the Abyss's urge to destroy and consume.
4: The setting is built to feel organic, like how people would really think and feel in a world where magic and monsters are a natural part of things - there's no clumsy "neo-medieval Europe with magic roughly stitched on" feel like you had in Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms.
5: The cosmology makes sense; it's a fluid, organic design that feels like something a person would have come up with, as opposed to something designed by bureaucracy.
6: Alignment isn't set in stone. Metallic Dragons aren't inflexibly good, giving you much more freedom in how you use them. Monstrous races like gnolls and hobgoblins aren't always evil, so you can shift the racial status quo around much more freely.
These are just the things that spring immediately to my mind, others will have better things to say.
The basic setting was the perfect balance between lore and usability, with enough material to get a game going but not too much as to get bogged in details, something that could easily be digested even by players who are not famous for reading setting stuff.
In the later books, many small pieces and details were added, and the setting-oriented supplements had these short bullet-point suggestions for campaign arcs.
It's a shame we never got a collected atlas.
Kys. The thing that almost killed D&D are people like you.
In fact, they actually HAD one - the Nentir Vale Gazetteer, which was supposed tlo be a big gathering of lore they'd put out. It might have just been a collection of the Nentir Vale articles from Dragon, but that still would have given us stuff like the Iron Wolves, a northern barbarian region who were once allied through marriage to the Empire of Nerath.
Mike Mearls canned it when it was just about ready to hit the printer. Either for Essentials or for 5e, don't know which.
Examples of places to look?
From the way you speak it sounds as though it's hidden under a rock somewhere
Dragon Magazine and Dungeon Magazine during their 4e run were full of flavor articles for the Nentir Vale setting, as well as 4e versions of Dark Sun, Eberron and Forgotten Realms.
That said, much more of the lore is scattered piecemeal in the sourcebooks that aren't the Player's Handbook. It's the Planar Sourcebooks (Manual of the Planes, ElLemental Chaos, Astral Sea, Demonomicon, Shadowfell: Gloomwrought & Beyond, Heroes of the Feywild/Shadowfell/Elemental Chaos) that house the vast bulk of lore relating to the various planes, for example.
There used to be a wiki on the wizards site, that had an updated map with all the small settlements that had been introduced in the adventures and stuff like that. It's gone but it should be on the way back machine.
Also, the Essentials line had some consolidated info, in particular Monster Vault 2 was explicitly all on the Nentir Vale.
Gotcha covered, user. This gives general info as well as where they pulled the info from.
This might not make sense to you, but basically it's less Grey Box Forgotten Realms or World of Greyhawk and more pre-gazetteer The Known World. It's more piecemeal, less collected into ons great tome of True Canon and metaplot.
In a way it's somewhat like 3E's Oerth, except less frustrating all around.
3E Oerth is too vague for new players to consolidate, too different for old ones to reconcile with AD&D Oerth - not to mention how it's all scattershot and gives the impression of taking place in random places across the entirety of Flaeness. If that's even where it takes place.
The Known World was centred on one place -The Known World, primarily the southern bits. 4E is mostly just in the Nentir Vale, to the point that that's often used as the setting name (when it isn't Points of Light, PoLand, or Nerath.)
3e Oerth is just God names and a gazzetteer nobody knows about. 4e PoLand is a full setting right out of the DM's guide.
But I'm the happiest about D&D I've been in the past ten years and D&D is also at the most successful it has ever been.
Feel free to say 'no u' but it's telling when the latest edition with only a handful of books and another game based off of the previous edition are far more profitable than the 'best edition.' Matter of fact is, people tend to enjoy 5e and 3.PF far more than they enjoy 4e.
Sez u
As a more narrative-y person, this puzzles me. Like many other aspects of 4th edition, the value of the setting apparently lies not with its first-order properties— the setting itself— but with its ability to support the... “gameplay,” I guess. I wouldn’t call this a bad thing, certainly; at any rate, it’s better than Veeky Forums‘s favorite criterion, which seems to be “Does it faithfully model reality?” But it’s very counterintuitive. If you asked me what I liked about Planescape, for example, I’d probably say that I thought modrons were neat, or something. My answer probably wouldn’t have much to do with the details of running a Planescape campaign.
Maybe this is just a long-winded way of saying that I’d like to see some specific examples of the “organic” or “fluid” nature of the setting.
Also, I don’t quite see why three is an asset, unless you like Epic Heroic Fantasy. It’s a fair point, I guess, but not a general one; you can regard it as good or bad depending on what you want out of a roleplaying campaign.
I only played one session of 4th edition and hated it deeply, but that’s because I’d basically rather be playing FATE. I can understand why some people really like it, I think, and I have nothing against them, but I’m glad that 5th edition did not continue in that direction.
I suspect that 4th edition just wasn’t what people wanted out of D&D, that’s all. But if I were to make a contrary argument, I’d lean on Raymond Loewy’s notion of “Most Advanced, Yet Acceptable.” People want new stuff, but not TOO new— too new is weird and unconfortable. 4th edition might have been too advanced, a better design that nobody was ready for.
But I doubt it.
Let's start with the cosmology; elemental chaos below, astral sea above, world suspended in between. The forces of chaos, the Primordials, create the building blocks of the world, the land of the fae and the land of the dead, but it takes the intervention of the forces of order, the Gods, to stabilize it. They even share it, for a time, until different desires push them to warring over it.
Everything else in the setting stems from that ancient conflict.
The Worlds of Mortals, Fae and Dead are linked because of how they were created.
The Astral Sea is imperfect because of the Dawn War, and subsequent battles between the gods once they no longer had the primordials to unite them.
Adventuring parties are literally emulating the ancient gods in how they united to bring down the primordials.
Sorry, but I really don't know how to explain it better than that.
Also? Alignment being dead in a ditch means I have greater freedom to use my creatures. Angels and Metallic Dragons have justifiable reasons to get into conflicts with the PCs. So-called "monstrous" races are not monolithically evil.
Seriously, can't tell you how much mileage I get out of 4e's take on gnolls and hobgoblins.
>be me
>buy all 4e books at release
>read them
>play one session
>give them away
>abandon D&D forever
>become GURPS evangelist
4e was so bad is killed D&D for me
Also the gods, Bane is so well handled in his dragon write up.
I'd say the setting is easily better than some of the D&D mainstays.
No opinion about the setting itself, but rule-wise, the 4e is my favorite edition.
Almost killing D&D doesn't means it is bad. Is like saying that a movie that doesn't do well on the theaters is a bad movie. Unless you are evaluating the game on a financial/success rate.
If you enjoy GURPS, then 4e is too far from the style you enjoy. That's not wrong or bad.
4e lore is deep, mysterious and the most important - non-intrusive. Places are too wrecked for players to wonder why the militia doesn't solve the goblin problem or why the archmage doesn't solve the demon army problem.
World Axis isn't particularly good, but it's a departure form the awful Great Wheel
What, you don't like having sixteen versions of heaven/hell and four elemental planes plus the intermediate elemental planes and the positive and negative planes and the ethereal and astral planes and probably like twenty other planes I forgot about?
You forgot the quasielemental planes, which are the intermediaries between positive/negative and elemental. So Fire + Negative is the Quasielemental plane of Ash. So that's another 8 planes.
B-b-but otherwise we'd let brain eating squid and unicorns share a common enemy!
Much prefer World Axis to Great Wheel, with some minor adjustments.
There's also the idea of different planes to be actual planes on a 3D shape, you can reach another plane by travelling to the edge of your world and move to the edge of another, or moving through the center of the shape and out onto another side.
Best part is that you can completely disregard the World Axis and just play a game in the world/Shadowfell/Feywild all you want with no loss of good depth.
I think I kind of understand. A unified theme like that can be appealing. Interestingly, that's actually the opposite of what I'd consider organic; I would think of an "organic" setting as possessing odd lacunae, circumstances that wrap onto themselves, events connected by tangents or coincidences, and historical threads running in parallel— more bushy and interrelated than unified as such.
Ditching alignment is definitely a good idea (says narrative guy), but it's easy enough to do that with any edition.
To me, the World Axis seems generic and uninspired relative to the Great Wheel, although obviously that is a matter of taste. The archetypal complaint about the Great Wheel runs along the lines of, "What do I do with the Quasielemental Plane of Ash?", but I've never understood why you feel compelled to do anything with the Quasielemental Plane of Ash, nor why you'd need to jettison it if you didn't do anything with it. (Again, however, I must note that the "Can I use it?" criterion is at least a reasonable one which I can understand valuing, whereas the more common Veeky Forums criterion, "Is it realistic?", is pretty dumb.)
>Ditching alignment is definitely a good idea (says narrative guy)
1-axis alignment does it's job well, provided you know not to drive screws with hammers.
The one bit of the World Axis I don't care for is all the realms in the Astral Sea. I think I'd rather have it be smaller, Celestia for the good gods, Baator for the evil ones. Maybe one for the neutrals.
It's pretty good. I find it similar to the medieval triad of Heaven, Earth, and Hell, by way of greek or norse Chaos.
It is tho...
Poor Deidamia.
Isn't Gayhawk the implied setting or was that an old thing?
I never really paid my attention to the setting, but 4E was my favorite DnD mechanically.
3e implied setting was Greyhawk
4e implied setting was Points of Light (Warhammer Fantasy, sans any cities and chaos wasteland)
5e explicit setting is Forgotten Realms, iirc
>Points of Light (Warhammer Fantasy, sans any cities and chaos wasteland)
Not the worst comparison, really
DnD has a setting? For the longest time, I thought it was just a template of rules to put players in any world they wanted, then connected them all with some 'infinite realities' rigamarole like Rick and Morty without the Pickles and Baby's first Nihilist Philosophy Course. At least that's what I was told by the game store owner when I asked about the backstory.
That's interesting. Personally, I find FATE, GURPS and 4E equally good, just for different kinds of games (and in fact have a FATE game running and in the planning phase for a GURPS one). It's 3.X and 5E that leave me stumped in their purpose
The way it's laid out makes Astral Sea a place rife with conflict and chaos (due to the Astral Lattice breaking). Which, arguably, makes it better suited for adventuring. That's why Gruumsh crashed his domain into Bane's or why Pelor, Moradin and Kord share a domain despite not liking each other all that much
It has multiple, in fact. And it's not a terribly great ruleset for generic fantasy anyway due to how some of its abstractions work
3.X is for people who like to fine-tune their character and prefer even more specific and flavorful mechanics for the high-fantasy genre than GURPS can offer. The psionic-swordsage crowd, basically. Another aspect is that being prepared and getting the alpha strike trumps strong combat ability, which is a matter of taste and something not that many RPGs actually do.
5E is for people who had someone spontaneously cancel the session so you roll up a quick oneshot, or for casual after-work groups of two hour fantasy-flavored fucking around.
Why do you like 4E?
>Why do you like 4E?
I find that it suits well for heroic fantasy games, it encourages tactical play and teamwork. Combat crunch-wise, it has more meat on its bones than FATE or MHR, while not interfering with playing out out-of-combat sections. It also is less buried in minutiae like GURPS is (though I must admit, I haven't played 4th edition of GURPS yet) and doesn't get madly complicated on higher power levels.
In a way, I see it as an engine for an "episodic fantasy TV show: the RPG"
It's designed for adventures from the ground up, everything from the cosmology to the various supernatural and natural realms is there so a group of 4-6 characters can go somewhere and be thrust into a rip-roaring tactically adventure.
Also no metaplot.
>3.X is for people who like to fine-tune their character and prefer even more specific and flavorful mechanics for the high-fantasy genre than GURPS can offer.
There is no such thing, GURPS can offer all you mentioned
I liked 4E simply for its combat system, which was the only one out of every D&D system whose meta wasn't completely defined by the capabilities of casters, and Wizards in particular.
GURPS doesn't even have enough core abilities to define all typical fantasy cliches. GURPS really only shines in very non-intruding settings like modern or sci-fi.
There's multiple supplements for medieval and dungeon fantasy games.
The 4e setting isn't so much a setting as a framework to build upon.
How does that refute my statement? GURPS is not a fantasy game, it's a generic game that you can mod to do fantasy and if you want to go indepth in charbuilding that shows.
>Also no metaplot.
THIS
I don't think any of the default D&D settings are very good.
I've never used one of them. I don't think I've ever used any of the pantheons either, or the metaplots, or any NPCs related to them. But I think Eberron and the 4e setting are the only ones I've ever drawn anything from, primarily because 4e didn't really have a concrete setting - it just had a bunch of well-conceived elements for a DM to build the connective tissue of their setting around.
Here's the setting, with most of the lore complied.
>
>>be me
>>buy all 4e books at release
>>read them
>>play one session
>>give them away
>>abandon D&D forever
>>become GURPS evangelist
>
>4e was so bad is killed D&D for me
Who the fuck cares about your shit tastes you piece of shit.
You guys won. You killed the only worthwhile thing to get out of D&D. Now go back to your shit games and leave us alone.
3e setting is so implied you can't actually do anything in it. But who cares, it's just an excuse to build your Ubercharger or something
you seem upset
The Astral Sea is basically islands of adventure IN SPAAAACE.
>That's why Gruumsh crashed his domain into Bane's
Also, I swear to Bane, it was Bane that crashed his divine plane into Gruumsh's.
>In a way, I see it as an engine for an "episodic fantasy TV show: the RPG"
(FATE guy here.) I can see that. It just so happens that I don't really like the things that 4e does well I try to avoid combat as much as possible, I prefer science fiction to fantasy, and I like off-the-wall adventitious combat tactics more than well-defined "moves." 4e advocates usually say that it's a good thing that 4e has few rules for anything other than combat, but because combat is relatively rare in the games that I've played, we could practically set some 4e books on the table, run a freeform campaign, and call it 4th edition. Nobody liked the one session of 4e that we ran because the combat rules were a ton of overhead for a relatively rare occurrence, the explicit emphasis on tactics was immersion-breaking for a bunch of narrative-oriented people, and nobody in the group really cared that much about clever combat tactics to begin with. In essence, FATE was a much better match for the kind of game we wanted to play.
FATE, GURPS, and 4e all have clear design goals, whereas 3.X doesn't. (I can't say anything about 5e because I haven't tried it; I haven't tried GURPS either, but I know enough about it to be confident that I understand the general aim of the system.) But I think it's literally true that 4e "wasn't D&D," in the sense that it didn't offer what people really like about D&D although I'm not quite sure what that thing is. 4e would probably be far less controversial if it hadn't been the successor to 3.5.
See, I'd regard that as a point against the setting the World Axis doesn't feel original or distinctive. To me, it feels like "Generic Fantasy Cosmology #3589." Maybe it RUNS really well, and that's not a small thing, but I'm often more interested in the concepts than the... well, "mechanics" isn't the right word, but you know what I mean.
The thing about 4e is that it actually had design goals. D&D, up until then, had always been broad and unfocused. 4e took the most discussed aspects of 3.5, the combat and optimisation focused playstyle that was the source of no end of forum discussions, and built a whole game around that.
It was D&D, it was just a specific flavour of it rather than trying to be all things to all men.
The 4e setting was fine, but I disliked how much it focused on cosmic threats and conflicts. Mortal conflicts are just something to deal with on your way to Epic Tier.
Technically, you don't have to go cosmic; there were plenty of Martial destinies focused on becoming grand leaders of mortals - hell, tieflings had a racial Epic Destiny for becoming the emperor of a new tiefling empire. There were stats for epic-tier "mortal" monsters, too.
I will give you that the cosmic stuff had a brighter spotlight, though.
Personally, I found the World Axis to be so much easier to invest in than the Great Wheel. Recognizable fantasy archetypes - Heavens, Hells, the Primordial Chaos, the Land of Faerie, the Realm of the Dead - rather than byzantine settings that were dependent upon a ridiculous alignment mechanic and always felt overly complex and yet devoid of anything interesting.
I would rather the Elemental Chaos, where anything I can envision that fits the term "elemental" is appropriate, than I would the Elemental Planes, which were monolithic to the point that nobody remembers anything other than the parts where you did have pockets of other elemental matter - people remember the Elemental Plane of Earth for the hollows in what was otherwise a singular infinite expanse of dirt, and the Plane of Air for the floating islands and cloud castles interspersing miles upon bloody miles of empty nothingness.
The Nentir Vale also felt, to me, like what I'm told the original 1e Forgotten Realms felt like; just enough to get my imagination brewing, rather than being so heavily "stamped" by the writers of a dozen fantasy novels.
To me, the Nentir Vale feels more like the Realm of D&D from the 80s animated series than anything else; I cut my D&D teeth on that show. Anything that can pull that off straight out of the box is golden.
Awesome! Thank you!