My only remaining problem with 4E - the implied setting.

[Eurhetemec]

So, 4E has been out for what, seven months now? I've run it several times (a lot more than I ran 3.XE or any d20 games in the year preceding 4E's release, I note), and it's really a great game, it just plays so well for my group, they have fun, it's exciting, and tactical elements which I thought would be a chore, mostly work out. The classes are good, the races are okay, and the new classes being added are exciting and really feel different.

So rules, no problem, everything I thought would be a problem has been a minimal one at most.

What is still a problem, though, and even seeming to increasingly be one, and perhaps be more of one over 4E's lifespan, is the implied setting and the attitude towards elements within that setting, which basically seems to be "the more we add in magical elements, the better!". But you can always ignore than and run your game, you say? Yes, and I will, but I think it's a problem because it's meaning that I'm not picking up any of the DM-oriented materials (adventures, planes book, dragon book, undead book, etc.) that WotC is putting out (very much unlike 2E and 3E), because whilst they "fit together", they simply don't fit in a non-standard cosmology campaign, and/or are kind of tackily over-the-top (not cool-ly over-the-top). I've looked through them at the shops, and they all seem to consist, when not being mechanics/tactics, of backgrounds that are often very silly (again, not in a cool way), would require significant re-working for a non-standard campaign, and which waste time dealing with the really sub-par gods and other background elements integral to the "implied setting". This is losing WotC are fairly significant amount of my potential $$$ (or £££), because I'd like to be buying these books, but I'm totally turned off by them.

I'm sure not everyone feels this way, but I find 4E's "implied setting" actually more constricting than that of 3E (or earlier editions), whilst simultaneously being no more empowering, and I'm really hoping that they'll drop it eventually, or at least publish a setting or two which doesn't use it at all. Or maybe just come up with a decent license so that we actually see 4E-oriented material of high quality which has better tone and less reliance on this "Oh but it'd be cooler of they were magical dwarves made of metal!" vibe.

I guess the TLDR of it is: The implied setting is really dull and non-classy, and they keep going on about it.

[jimthegray]

So, 4E has been out for what, seven months now? I've run it several times (a lot more than I ran 3.XE or any d20 games in the year preceding 4E's release, I note), and it's really a great game, it just plays so well for my group, they have fun, it's exciting, and tactical elements which I thought would be a chore, mostly work out. The classes are good, the races are okay, and the new classes being added are exciting and really feel different.

So rules, no problem, everything I thought would be a problem has been a minimal one at most.

What is still a problem, though, and even seeming to increasingly be one, and perhaps be more of one over 4E's lifespan, is the implied setting and the attitude towards elements within that setting, which basically seems to be "the more we add in magical elements, the better!". But you can always ignore than and run your game, you say? Yes, and I will, but I think it's a problem because it's meaning that I'm not picking up any of the DM-oriented materials (adventures, planes book, dragon book, undead book, etc.) that WotC is putting out (very much unlike 2E and 3E), because whilst they "fit together", they simply don't fit in a non-standard cosmology campaign, and/or are kind of tackily over-the-top (not cool-ly over-the-top). I've looked through them at the shops, and they all seem to consist, when not being mechanics/tactics, of backgrounds that are often very silly (again, not in a cool way), would require significant re-working for a non-standard campaign, and which waste time dealing with the really sub-par gods and other background elements integral to the "implied setting". This is losing WotC are fairly significant amount of my potential $$$ (or £££), because I'd like to be buying these books, but I'm totally turned off by them.

I'm sure not everyone feels this way, but I find 4E's "implied setting" actually more constricting than that of 3E (or earlier editions), whilst simultaneously being no more empowering, and I'm really hoping that they'll drop it eventually, or at least publish a setting or two which doesn't use it at all. Or maybe just come up with a decent license so that we actually see 4E-oriented material of high quality which has better tone and less reliance on this "Oh but it'd be cooler of they were magical dwarves made of metal!" vibe.

I guess the TLDR of it is: The implied setting is really dull and non-classy, and they keep going on about it.

Other then the realms campaign guide or the manual of the planes I just not seeing the issue.
the dragon and undead book are just that books about dragons and undead.
you could fit them in any setting.
heck i am using them for my thundarr the barbarian / the cage homebrew world at the moment.

[Seroster]

Can you give some examples?

The one thing that struck me as dissonant - and I haven't read all the implied setting material - is teleportation portals. If two or even more so several cities have permanent teleportation circles, then they can exchange information and aid at a rate far beyond what you'd expect in a "points of light" setting, such that I think they'd start pushing back the darkness pretty quickly. I get that they're there to give players a fast way to travel, but...

[TRM]

Can you give some examples?

The one thing that struck me as dissonant - and I haven't read all the implied setting material - is teleportation portals. If two or even more so several cities have permanent teleportation circles, then they can exchange information and aid at a rate far beyond what you'd expect in a "points of light" setting, such that I think they'd start pushing back the darkness pretty quickly. I get that they're there to give players a fast way to travel, but...

You still have to be able to cast the ritual, and I don't get the sense that "high-level" characters are supposed to be all that common.

[Neil Phillips]

It's true that the so-called "implied" setting is more than just implied. It's rather spelled out. Also there's a bit of a problem with it coming in dribs and drabs. We're assumed to be filling in the blanks, but if I decide, for example, that the ruins of Bael Turath are to the West, but then the implied setting later decides they are South, it gets confusing. A map in the first place would save that confusion - or else never give relational directions! I'm sure they have a map they refer to internally...

[Ben Rasmussen]

You still have to be able to cast the ritual, and I don't get the sense that "high-level" characters are supposed to be all that common.

Well, linked portal is level 8, so still in heroic tier. Any place that has one probably has a wizard kicking around who can work it. It's also relatively cheap at 680 gold, though that's 9 horses or enough to outfit 10 soldiers with swords, shields, and chainmail.

But anyone with the address can dial in (they're D&D Stargates). Given that fact, any properly paranoid group is going to be -real- picky about who they give the number too as well as guard the hell out of it. No one wants an assassin coming through after all. They also don't stay open very long, 3 rounds on average. Long enough to send a messenger through but not really long enough to ship goods or move that army of yours. But you could send a small competent raiding party, aka adventurers or evil party of orcs.

[joenr76]

I guess the TLDR of it is: The implied setting is really dull and non-classy, and they keep going on about it.

I must agree. The PoL setting was not a good idea, IMO.

IMO, they should have slaughtered another sacred cow and went with a 4 book core: PG, DMG, MM (all without any setting fluff) and one of a number of separate setting books.

This way there is no 'default setting' and there is more room to make the setting actually interesting.

[dr. strangemonkey]

I really like the implied setting.

Most of it seems really fungible for any setting and not at all sub-par to me.

Could the OP provide some concrete examples?

[jgants]

I really like the implied setting.

Most of it seems really fungible for any setting and not at all sub-par to me.

Could the OP provide some concrete examples?

Yeah, I see the implied setting in the exact same way I saw the implied setting that showed up for the basic/expert books (before it became Mystara). It's just supposed to be a sample.

Like, "here's how your world could work" or "start with this small area and expand it yourself". It's not supposed to be a full-fledged setting with detailed maps, history, etc. That would defeat the point (a mistake made by the basic D&D rules when they started over-defining Mystara, IMO).

EDIT: Also, keep in mind the D&D 4 philosophy downplays world-building in general. The idea is that the only important information about the world is the part that's relevent to your current adventures.

[MalteseChangeling]

I really like the implied setting.

Most of it seems really fungible for any setting and not at all sub-par to me.

I concur. I'm using it as a basis for a homebrew: I keep the structures of the PoL implied setting and change the names/specifics.

In other words, in my setting, Arkhosia didn't fight a war with Bael Turath. Instead, the dragonborn island of Ormvangr was invaded by the tiefling legions of Lemuria. In the aftermath of that conflict, the island was invaded by humans who pushed the weakened dragonborn back into the mountains of the west. Now Ormvangr is just a small collection of principalities, while the rest of the island has been renamed Mairidun by its human overlords. And so on.

I think the gods are the only bits of the setting I've borrowed without rechroming.

[smathis]

I concur. I'm using it as a basis for a homebrew: I keep the structures of the PoL implied setting and change the names/specifics.

That's pretty much what I've been working on too. I'm trying to reconcile the implied setting with the Wilderlands of High Fantasy in a way that allows me to also twist the setting a little darker.

In my setting, Bael Turath's empire lasted a lot longer and had a much greater influence on the world than in the implied setting. Think an Aztec empire on the scale of ancient Rome with some Babylonian flavor. Bael Turath not only survived a war with Arkhosia (whose culture is a bit like ancient China meets Atlantis), they also had a brief war against the Eladrin.

In the setting, Bael Turath lasted until the Nerath migrants from the Far East were successfully able to unite the barbarian clans of the south against them. It was that war that brought down Bael Turath, and that was mostly due to Bael Turath's own misguided efforts.

The Nerath Empire was much more limited in scope, although magically and technologically advanced. The campaign starts at the fall of Nerath. Nerath is still around but crumbling slowly.

The end result is a bit like the setting in Vampire Hunter D. But D&D-ified.

Reconciling the default pantheon was the hardest part. I prefer One Bad Egg's pantheon and used that were I could, turning all the default D&D gods into mythological heroes (on par with Catholic Saints or Bodhisattvas). It took me a while to figure out that approach.

[Shawn Conard]

If your problem with the setting is that it's too over the top, consider limiting people to heroic tier, similar to how E6 worked in 3rd edition. Paragon and epic tiers are just plain over the top, but the game did a good job at controlling the pace at which setting altering game elements are introduced. So pick a point before the first one shows up and say "most people don't get past this level". Then pick another point before it starts to get too bad and say "no one gets past this level".

If it's actual background flavor text bits that bother you, just treat them as examples of possible setting details, rather than stuff that has to be included in your world.

If it's specific rituals that bug you, well... It's easy enough to decide that such and such a ritual doesn't exist.

[hong]

I'm not really seeing how 4E's implied setting is more constricting than 3E's. Well, I guess it's constricting if you don't like things like the ancient empires cluttering up the world, but as far as setting elements go, these seem fairly innocuous. I mean, even Greyhawk has layers of ancient empires, from the Suloise onwards.

[Starfall]

Yeah, I'm pretty fond of PoLand myself. We started our campaign with KotS, and I've been expanding on that, throwing in and fleshing out the history of Bael Turath/Arkhosia/Nerath as it comes up. (Probably quite a bit more now that they're done with module and I'm creating adventures from scratch.) It feels pretty open-ended to me and I liked having the Nentir Vale in the DMG to give us a quick jumping off point so we could get playing right away. I also really prefer the new cosmology of the planes.

I haven't looked real close at many of the adventures but KotS at least could easily be stripped of PoLand flavor and dropped into most other campaing worlds.

[DDogwood]

I'm running KotS in my homebrew world, and so far I haven't read any setting info in any of the books that I can't easily ignore.

[hyphz]

The one that amuses me most is the Practical Guide to Faeries.

It's blatantly a book for young girls about cute little pixie-faeries who fly around and eat frosting for supper.

Yet it's set in the Feywild. Yep, the same one.

The last time my players went to the Feywild, they got ambushed by murderous quicklings while narrowly avoiding being eaten by a den of giant crocodiles. Heck, Warlocks are called evil for making pacts with powerful beings that come from there, because they're scary and alien. It's kind of hard to cross that over with fields of playful faeries playing freezetag with squirrels.

[AusJeb]

They also don't stay open very long, 3 rounds on average. Long enough to send a messenger through but not really long enough to ship goods or move that army of yours. But you could send a small competent raiding party, aka adventurers or evil party of orcs.

It seems like you could send one wagon or a small train of pack animals through while it is open. Or, where the trade is fairly regular, they may even develop magical sleds designed to ship the largest amount of cargo through in the time available. Still, it would only be suitable for low-volume, high value cargo that wasn't locally available. Also, the gate controller could collect letters and small parcels and send them through when someone has a reason to travel through the gate. Which could be a nice adventure hook (Since you're going through the gate, can you please deliver this to . . .).

I can't remember, is there a limitation on when a gate may be used again? Can you do repetitive rituals? Or, is there a set or random cooldown before another ritual can be cast? Adding such a cooldown in your campaign, could limit the reliability and usefulness of the gate. You could even make the time since the gate was last used a modifier to the ritual skill check.

[Eurhetemec]

Well, to be more clear, I think the problems are as follows:

1) The Gods are very odd, and VERY uninspiring, just complete "compromise candidates" the lot of them, yet frequently referenced as if we will be using them - what's difficult is that a lot of them don't syncretize well with the gods in other settings, nor with the lack of gods in some settings. Just renaming them isn't good enough, not when the god of the sea and the god of nature are the same person, and there's not even a real fertility goddess, for god's sake.

2) The whole Titan/Elemental Chaos thing is absolutely mind-breakingly dull and everything I read about 4E seems to want to bring it in whenever anything remotely elemental-related comes up.

3) Asmodeus is a yawnfest, never made any sense (rationally or stylistically) being attached to the undead, yet one can barely get a mention of the undead without him coming up.

4) The universe is completely non-mysterious. There is a clear, complete backstory for the whole thing, which, whilst the average peasant might be cloudy on it (just like the average citizen of the UK is extremely misty on our history), anyone remotely informed knows the whole thing backwards. There aren't viewpoints and alternatives just "This is what happened". You can ignore that, but it means that books become less useful to you. Stuff that might be cool if it was somewhat mysterious is rendered dull by full illumination.

5) Implied setting is increasingly less implied, increasingly more detailed. I had a lot of cool ideas for Bael Turath and Arkhosia, but it seems like we're always getting more details on them, they're always getting more "locked down" in the official view of them. This defeats the entire purpose of the implied setting. Particularly frustrating is where we get details that seem to contradict other details in an unhelpful way, like when we get hard details of when Bael Turath was around and for how long - this isn't the kind of helpful "some say" stuff, it's unhelpful because it means you have NEITHER a consistent setting, nor a truly vague one. The worst of both worlds, imho.

6) Restrictiveness - in 3E, there was a tiny implied Greyhawk setting which virtually everyone ignored and/or replaced outright. Even the designers seemed to tire of it pretty quickly. With 4E, I admit, they've not had time to get bored of it, yet reference detailed setting elements much more often (it seems to me) than previously, and seem to make much stronger assumptions about it.

Hong - Sure, but the designers didn't reference that stuff in virtually every book, they didn't assume your campaign had Suloise or w/e in it, whereas they do assume it has Bael Turath and Arkhosia.

I think people are misunderstanding though.

It's not that I can't ignore the information. What am I, a badly-programmed robot? Of course I can ignore it. The problem is that the implied setting is reducing the value of 4E books to me. Thus from my perspective we have a situation where I, as a GM, am getting less support than I'm used to, and WotC, as a company, are getting less of my money than they were used to (at one point).

Also note that, were this a case of just one or two of my points being an issue, I wouldn't have bothered to post. The problem is that all six together are (and probably others if I thought about it more.

[Yakk]

So you don't like the Primodial/God war set against the backdrop of the God's creation, the Astral sea, and the Elemental chaos?

You don't like being given accurate information, yet you hold that any information given must be presumed accurate? Then make the stories in the 4e books be "just one view of what happened" -- you can write up riffs that are alternatives pretty easy, and what actually happened could be quite different.

I mean "Particularly frustrating is where we get details that seem to contradict other details in an unhelpful way, like when we get hard details of when Bael Turath was around and for how long - this isn't the kind of helpful "some say" stuff, it's unhelpful because it means you have NEITHER a consistent setting, nor a truly vague one." -- how is that not evidence that the setting is a "some say" description?

Isn't Orcus the undead guy, not Asmodeus?

Bael Turath is a placeholder for "ancient tiefling empire that fell". You can use any material on Bael Turath for any old empire, or city that dealt with devils, or an ancient enemy of a Dragonborn empire, or... Slotting of each idea by the 4e writers into the existing framework doesn't make the isolated idea not work, does it?

[Ben Rasmussen]

I can't remember, is there a limitation on when a gate may be used again? Can you do repetitive rituals? Or, is there a set or random cooldown before another ritual can be cast? Adding such a cooldown in your campaign, could limit the reliability and usefulness of the gate. You could even make the time since the gate was last used a modifier to the ritual skill check.

1st, I had the price wrong. It's dirt cheep at 135gp per use unless you use your own permanent circle and then we're down to 50gp. 10 minutes, no cool down aside from Mr. Wizard getting cranky about doing the ritual over and over. The 10ft diameter of the circle limits you to smaller carts, but you could push a couple through in the 3 or so rounds you have.

I couldn't find how expensive or difficult it is to set up a permanent one. I'd think this would be the spot to attack if you wanted to limit usage. If they're very difficult to create and not everyone knows how, you prevent them from just littering the city and you can use paranoia to limit places from just handing out their portal addresses.

Aside from the level 20 Forbiddance ritual, there isn't really a way to stop someone from teleporting in. That's a -huge- security risk. So if you give your address to another city that you trust you have to trust them to keep it safe as well. You could put your circle in an out of the way spot as opposed to inside the city, but then you have to guard it like crazy as it becomes a good spot to attack for those looking for a great score (high value easy to transport goods, remember?) or as a choke/control point for those looking to attack and wanting to limit assistance if they know you use it. I put them in the logistical nightmare camp.

[Subumloc]

I couldn't find how expensive or difficult it is to set up a permanent one. I'd think this would be the spot to attack if you wanted to limit usage. If they're very difficult to create and not everyone knows how, you prevent them from just littering the city and you can use paranoia to limit places from just handing out their portal addresses.

IIRC the ritual is on the manual of the planes (it's high level and lasts one day, sustain 1 healing surge/day, after 1 year it becomes permanent). I'm going from memory though, so I may be wrong.

[Nahat Anoj]

I think the implied setting and "points of light" assumption is 81 flavors of awesome, but I really don't see how it has any actual bearing on a DM's game. Just don't use it.

[mindstalk]

There's lots you can do to a circle. Leave the room locked. Have it in a pit, where you need lots of help to get out of it. If there's any fact communication (seems unlikely, but I don't know) leave it underwater, or with a big stone on it, until someone signals that they're sending something.

[Ben Rasmussen]

There's lots you can do to a circle. Leave the room locked. Have it in a pit, where you need lots of help to get out of it. If there's any fact communication (seems unlikely, but I don't know) leave it underwater, or with a big stone on it, until someone signals that they're sending something.

Pretty much any security method ever used on SG-1 works for teleportation circles. But the more secure it is, the more of a hassle it is to use frequently. Which, I think, is the whole point. They need to be usable but you just need an excuse as to why they're not the fantasy version of FedEx.

BTW, looking over the rituals again, Magic Circle seems the cheapest and easiest security measure.

[Eurhetemec]

So you don't like the Primodial/God war set against the backdrop of the God's creation, the Astral sea, and the Elemental chaos?

You don't like being given accurate information, yet you hold that any information given must be presumed accurate? Then make the stories in the 4e books be "just one view of what happened" -- you can write up riffs that are alternatives pretty easy, and what actually happened could be quite different.

I mean "Particularly frustrating is where we get details that seem to contradict other details in an unhelpful way, like when we get hard details of when Bael Turath was around and for how long - this isn't the kind of helpful "some say" stuff, it's unhelpful because it means you have NEITHER a consistent setting, nor a truly vague one." -- how is that not evidence that the setting is a "some say" description?

You're not quite getting it. I buy books/subscribe to Dungeon/Dragon as shortcuts, not so that I can do 90% as much work as generating my own setting. Because of the implied setting, we're getting a hard material (i.e. stuff presented as hard fact) which contradicts other material, or is otherwise limiting. So you have a choice - either use it, and be limited (in both terms of what you can do, and what future material you can easily use), or don't, in which case you might as well have not bought it. As for "evidence of some say". No, it's not. It's evidence that because of consistent guidelines, official writers are making vague stuff solid, but in a contradictary way, that reduces of the value of both elements.

As for the god/primordial war, I'd like it if it made any damn sense or had any kind of real epic-ness, creepiness, or atmosphere in general, but it doesn't. So yeah, I don't like it. It's like Norse or Greek mythology without the style or edge, and with a whole lot more gibberish.

I don't mind being given accurate info at all. I just want it to be consistent, if it's accurate, or clearly and intentionally presented as misty and contradictory, not unintentionally contradictory, like a bad episode (as if there were any other kind) of Star Trek: Voyager

Isn't Orcus the undead guy, not Asmodeus?

Yes, I can't keep my archdevils straight, especially not when they're inexplicably being made into gods.

Bael Turath is a placeholder for "ancient tiefling empire that fell". You can use any material on Bael Turath for any old empire, or city that dealt with devils, or an ancient enemy of a Dragonborn empire, or... Slotting of each idea by the 4e writers into the existing framework doesn't make the isolated idea not work, does it?

The point is that the specificity reduces it's value, because it's not something that can be slotted in without work, it requires work to slot it in. If you look at really old D&D adventures, they're full of ancient fallen empires and so on - but you genuinely can slot them in, because they're forgotten, not like Bael Turath. Virtually all the stuff I've seen to do with Bael Turath has been extremely over-the-top in the style-less "MOAR MAGIC!" way that 4E seems to love, too. It's like beating the wonder out of the setting through wild overuse.

The other problem with Bael Turath is that some writers seem to think that it actually fell pretty recently, like within a few hundred years, which means it's not an "ancient empire" at all.

I just feel that D&D's implied setting traps it in a bad place between Sword and Sorcery-type fantasy, where anything could be around the corner, and world-building high-fantasy, where the whole world is clearly laid out in great detail beforehand. It's just not really working for me. I'm glad it's working for other people, but that's not going to magically change things for me, and I wish they'd avoided the implied setting entirely, and either gone with a fixed and clear setting, or a choice of settings.

Well that and I just don't think that 4E's designers have managed to make the implied setting compelling or awe-inspiring, and indeed are pushing it towards the wildly mudane by making magic so commonplace and over-the-top that it's barely interesting when you see a flying castle or fantastical beast or non-human settlement any more. Knowing the details and specificities of the god vs. primordial war doesn't help. It also doesn't help that most of the supposedly "scary" weapon-beings of said war are deeply non-threatening in all but a "God that's got a lot of hit points" kind of way.

[DDogwood]

The one that amuses me most is the Practical Guide to Faeries.

It's blatantly a book for young girls about cute little pixie-faeries who fly around and eat frosting for supper.

Yet it's set in the Feywild. Yep, the same one.

The last time my players went to the Feywild, they got ambushed by murderous quicklings while narrowly avoiding being eaten by a den of giant crocodiles. Heck, Warlocks are called evil for making pacts with powerful beings that come from there, because they're scary and alien. It's kind of hard to cross that over with fields of playful faeries playing freezetag with squirrels.

Well, to be fair, we live in a world where the forest can be a place where children play hide-and-seek, but also a place where people get mauled by angry bears. Location means everything.

[Dormammu]

What is still a problem, though, and even seeming to increasingly be one, and perhaps be more of one over 4E's lifespan, is the implied setting and the attitude towards elements within that setting, which basically seems to be "the more we add in magical elements, the better!". But you can always ignore than and run your game, you say? Yes, and I will, but I think it's a problem because it's meaning that I'm not picking up any of the DM-oriented materials (adventures, planes book, dragon book, undead book, etc.) that WotC is putting out (very much unlike 2E and 3E), because whilst they "fit together", they simply don't fit in a non-standard cosmology campaign, and/or are kind of tackily over-the-top (not cool-ly over-the-top).
You said two pretty different things in this part of your post. The part about "the more magical elements, the better" is very true and not easily changed for published material. But the fluffy stuff is. There is really nothing in most adventures or "dm books" that is specific to any real campaign setting. The only thing that is pretty hard-wired in that material are the expectations of how much magic there is.

So if you're saying you want to run a world where magic is rare and mysterious, published scenarios will not fit. But if your world is just not "points of light" but is otherwise common D&D magic-levels, you'll be fine with print material.

The one thing that struck me as dissonant - and I haven't read all the implied setting material - is teleportation portals. If two or even more so several cities have permanent teleportation circles, then they can exchange information and aid at a rate far beyond what you'd expect in a "points of light" setting, such that I think they'd start pushing back the darkness pretty quickly. I get that they're there to give players a fast way to travel, but...
Even with that level of communication and aid, it's not hard to imagine the darkness remaining when it's full of Mind Flayers and Sahuagin. Really, it's surprising humanity isn't wiped out already.

[smathis]

1) The Gods are very odd, and VERY uninspiring, just complete "compromise candidates" the lot of them, yet frequently referenced as if we will be using them - what's difficult is that a lot of them don't syncretize well with the gods in other settings, nor with the lack of gods in some settings. Just renaming them isn't good enough, not when the god of the sea and the god of nature are the same person, and there's not even a real fertility goddess, for god's sake.


I totally agree. There is very little tension or conflict among the gods (or really their followers). They just all get along in a palley sort of way, except of course for the Very Bad Gods who are only worshipped by monsters and really, really evil people.

This was one of the hardest things for me to reconcile. I eventually settled on downgrading all the default gods to mythical heroes. Frex, Kord == Hercules. Pelor == Gandalf. Erathis == Diana. Moradin == Daedalus.

In that way, they aren't really a pantheon, per se, and it allowed me to pepper the world with more regional gods (like those from One Bad Egg's Gods of the Shroud (http://www.onebadegg.com/egg/2008/11/gods-of-the-shroud-free-preview/) which are more evocative, IMO, and more able to be mixed and matched by region and such. Primarily because they seem more primitive.

Sure some people may still appeal to Kord for strength before battle. But it's different because there aren't any churches to Kord, no established faith of Kord or anything like that. It's sort of like appealing to Babe Ruth to hit a home run.


It's not that I can't ignore the information. What am I, a badly-programmed robot? Of course I can ignore it. The problem is that the implied setting is reducing the value of 4E books to me.


I'm of two minds about this. One mind says "This sucks" because there are bits that I find very cool. But I can't justify dropping $25 for a book that I'm only going to read, like, 10 pages of.

The other part is grateful. Because WotC is saving me a lot of money by producing fluff setting stuff that I would never use. Like the Draconomicon.


I buy books/subscribe to Dungeon/Dragon as shortcuts, not so that I can do 90% as much work as generating my own setting.


Me too. And it's frustrated me as well that I basically had to retool the "implied" setting to both make it fit into the Wilderlands (partly the Wilderlands' fault, partly 4e's) and also to retool it so that it would still be familiar to the players but would have innate conflicts that the core books tend to gloss over.

If that's one criticism I have of the implied setting, it's that it tends to ditch conflict among the deities and races for a sort of "get along to go along" mentality.


As for the god/primordial war, I'd like it if it made any damn sense or had any kind of real epic-ness, creepiness, or atmosphere in general, but it doesn't. So yeah, I don't like it.


Yup. Yoinked it. I cribbed the term "Forge of Creation" and the demons/devils are from there. What that says about creation is interesting. But that's about it. I tried to keep the history of my setting relatively young so I could ignore stuff in the distant past.

For all I know, the City State of the Invincible Overlord could be Philadelphia.


The point is that the specificity reduces it's value, because it's not something that can be slotted in without work, it requires work to slot it in.


Oh brother. You got that right. Months of work over here. Then again, now that I've narrowed it down. I can also take a pass on a lot of the new releases.

Sure, I could've just ran with it out of the box. And just glossed over the parts I didn't like. But I've done that in the past and I've found that a lot of the time I get cornered into adopting "implied" setting bits that I later wind up regretting.

I think one of the reasons for this is because the players are all reading the books. And they're bringing that to the table. And unless you can be explicit about the differences between the campaign and the implied setting, then you paint yourself into a corner where the players accept what's not there as canon.

But if you can state upfront that the campaign setting has some significant, yet open-ended, changes from the default setting and illustrate what areas of the setting diverge, then I think everyone can be on the same page. The problem is that 4e has so much random fluff thrown into so many different books that it's a herculean task to first keep up with it all and then decide which bits and pieces make sense in the campaign.

That's why I went the other route. I set it up so that some bits and pieces would fit in a logical fashion that most players would catch right off the bat. And other setting fluff (like anything to do with the Astral Sea or the Elemental Chaos) would be pretty obviously non-applicable.

It just took a good long while to work all that out.

[Yakk]

You're not quite getting it. I buy books/subscribe to Dungeon/Dragon as shortcuts, not so that I can do 90% as much work as generating my own setting.So you don't want to make your own setting, and you don't like the (pretty lightly built) setting they are doing?

Because of the implied setting, we're getting a hard material (i.e. stuff presented as hard fact) which contradicts other material, or is otherwise limiting.
It is presented as hard fact within the implied setting, which either you want to follow (in which case, the hard fact is useful), or you don't want to follow (in which case, the hard fact can be used as a "he said, she said" claim).

So you have a choice - either use it, and be limited (in both terms of what you can do, and what future material you can easily use), or don't, in which case you might as well have not bought it.
Because descriptions of a set of ruins that where an outpost of Bael Turoth (as a random example) is useless if the chronology they present for the fall of Bael Turoth is useless?

Or that it takes 90% as much work to use those ruins, because you have to riff on the backstory a bit?

So no, I don't get what you are saying. Can you give some concrete examples?

As for the god/primordial war, I'd like it if it made any damn sense or had any kind of real epic-ness, creepiness, or atmosphere in general, but it doesn't. So yeah, I don't like it. It's like Norse or Greek mythology without the style or edge, and with a whole lot more gibberish.
Inject whatever atmosphere you want? Pick and choose story elements that they provide, which are designed with using the full implied setting, but (I find) are trivially easy to slot into a setting that even contains any kind of God/Primodeal war?

I don't mind being given accurate info at all.
Yet you complained that the setting wasn't mysterious. And that is why I don't understand what you are trying to say.

Yes, I can't keep my archdevils straight, especially not when they're inexplicably being made into gods.
Orcus is a Demon, not a Devil. 4e split Demons and Devils.

Devils are a host of angels who slew a God and took the Divine power, elevating Asmodeus to the power of a God. They then where locked into Hell, and they are trying to get out.

Orcus is a Primordial (one of the beings who created the reality in which the Gods came to be in) corrupted by the seed of evil that produced the Abyss in the Elemental Chaos. Orcus happens to be the lord of undead.

That is, once again, the implied setting. Both provide an interesting set of adventure hooks that are quite distinct.

The point is that the specificity reduces it's value, because it's not something that can be slotted in without work, it requires work to slot it in.
Replace a mention of Bael Turoth with a different one for the given fiction? Look: adding "this is a ruined outpost of Bael Turoth" is extra information they added -- it being a generic "ruin of an ancient empire" that isn't specified ... doesn't give you more freedom.

Just replace Bael Turoth with "ancient empire", and you are pretty much _done_ in most cases.

The other problem with Bael Turath is that some writers seem to think that it actually fell pretty recently, like within a few hundred years, which means it's not an "ancient empire" at all.
Sure? So some of the fiction places it as a relatively recently fallen empire, and others as an ancient one. If you want it to be ancient, use the ancient option. If you want it to be recent, use the recent fiction. If you want it to be a stand-in for a different ancient empire, then use it as a stand-in.

You can quite easily ignore the implied setting and use the names as "hooks" to map it to the setting you want if you don't like it. If you don't like parts of it, you can pretty much cut those parts out. If you like the idea of an ancient war between Gods and Titians, you can simply slot that in instead of Primodials.

The implied setting is there to provide a completely optional context. I cannot, for the life of me, see how saying "Bael Turoth" in the fluff makes the ancient ruins any less useful than saying "ancient ruins" when you want to use them as ancient ruins of a forgotten civilisation.

I really really don't get it.

I mean:
I just feel that D&D's implied setting traps it in a bad place between Sword and Sorcery-type fantasy, where anything could be around the corner, and world-building high-fantasy, where the whole world is clearly laid out in great detail beforehand. It's just not really working for me. I'm glad it's working for other people, but that's not going to magically change things for me, and I wish they'd avoided the implied setting entirely, and either gone with a fixed and clear setting, or a choice of settings.
You find having no setting acceptable. How is this different than ignoring the setting?

It also doesn't help that most of the supposedly "scary" weapon-beings of said war are deeply non-threatening in all but a "God that's got a lot of hit points" kind of way.
A L 30 character is supposed to be on the same power level as a God or Primordial. That is part of the implied setting.

If you don't want this kind of power level, stop 4e D&D at level 10-15 instead of level 30. Now imagine facing down Orcus. Now remember that the 4e combat engine isn't supposed to be used for creatures more than ~5 levels away from you, because it does a poor approximation of the power curve at that point (so yes, an army could aid-another cheese to kill Orcus... but that is because you have broken the combat engine more than anything.)

But sure, I sort of get this complaint -- you view having numbers expressing a being as being limited, instead of being an extra and useful option that makes it easier to express that fiction as the DM if the DM wants it.

Come to think of it, that might be your entire point -- you view expression of fact as limiting, instead of viewing it as additional tools in your tool box?

[Eurhetemec]

Yakk - Sorry, you fundamentally don't get it, yet Smathis clearly does without effort, so I'm not sure I'm capable of explaining it to you, but apparently some people understand. I'll give it one last go though:

I like to buy pre-generated settings and material for them. Maybe it's because I'm lazy, maybe it's because I'm busy, it doesn't really matter.

This makes money for WotC, saves me time.

I find 4E's implied setting to be uninspiring, insipid, and un-atmospheric. It manages the amazing balancing act of both having ridiculous amounts of magic everywhere, once you hit the Paragon tier, and yet making this ultra-magical world seem dull and predictable.

The problem is then that the implied setting is tied heavily into everything. Into the monsters, many of which are directly linked to it - they can be separated, but the insipid-ness of the implied setting has already rendered many of them utterly insipid (mostly the new or deeply revised monsters). Into the setting books (so far, only one I admit). Into the adventures in Dungeon. Into the articles in Dragon (many of which are so painfully un-atmospheric and bland that it hurts me to reads them). Into the add-on books, and so on.

Do you see the problem now? All this material is deeply tainted by the implied setting and it's design ethos - perhaps that's what I was unclear on - the ethos behind the setting, which is "Make it work!" and "Make it magic!", rather than "Make it inspiring" or "Make it exciting". So I have this game with awesome rules, and some really good ideas, but a setting that's on par with Exalted in terms of "UGH!", and they keep going on about the bloody setting.

As for Orcus, yes, thanks, I don't really care, I loathe him, and I loathe the idea that a demon is "in charge" of Undeath in any sense.

And I really don't know how you can not dislike what they did with the gods in 4E...

[Neil Phillips]

I agree that the "implied" setting is a bad compromise.

I think the idea is supposed to be "We'll give you some vague details and you make up the rest"

Instead, it's "We'll give you some vague details and you guess at the rest, but find out you're wrong as we provide more and more concrete details later"

I'd rather they either kept things vague forever, or provided a detailed setting book from the get go. One or the other, not this mishmash.

[Aesthete]

I'm with the OP and smathis.

I really really want to drop a bunch of money on D&D books, but the implied setting just doesn't do much for me. I've been trying to put a finger on what it is that makes it "meh" and I think they've got a good go at it. Too much of the implied setting intrudes on the mechanics, but the implied setting is too bland (to my tastes). I bought Manual of the Planes, but will likely never really use it. I was excited about Draconomicon, but after leafing through it I put it down. I'll probably flip through the undead book and put it down as well.

So yeah, a bit of a disappointment on my part.

Cool if it works for a bunch of other people and Wizards make their money, but I'd like something a little more flexible and flavourful.

[Dormammu]

Weird. I don't see much of the implied setting in the stuff they're publishing at all. It's about the same as any edition of D&D except for very minor elements like which races are in the PHB(1) and giving Giants elemental keywords (which you can easily ignore).

I am underwhelmed by the Draconomicon and Open Grave too, but it has nothing to do with world fluff. They are just light on ideas for the $$ value and I don't like hardbacks with throw-away encounters in them.

The only thing I can think of that's a radical departure from prior editions is the style of magic implied by giving spellcasters At-Wills and shifting more lasting effects to Rituals. But even then I don't see how that makes a module involving a cave full of orcs any less usable based on the idiosyncratic world setting you choose to run.

[Mapache]

Can you give some examples?

The one thing that struck me as dissonant - and I haven't read all the implied setting material - is teleportation portals. If two or even more so several cities have permanent teleportation circles, then they can exchange information and aid at a rate far beyond what you'd expect in a "points of light" setting, such that I think they'd start pushing back the darkness pretty quickly. I get that they're there to give players a fast way to travel, but...

I see ready access to teleportation as working rather well with PoL. Why clear out the monsters between City A and City B if you have a functioning teleportation network? It lets the points communicate and trade without having to settle the world and eradicate every last bit of wilderness (like humans have done to places like most of Europe over the course of a few thousand years).

[Tequila Sunrise]

I'm a lazy DM too, but I haven't yet had a problem with the implied setting. Then again, I don't treat it as canon either. All I do is provide the tone of the campaign world I want to run, think up an example of what each class and race might be like in my world, and then let my players fill in the blanks. As a result, dwarves in my Dying Earth campaign are Arab-esque desert dwellers with a high female birth rate--to account for all the sheikhs' and sultan's harems. The dwarven sultan is very concerned that Moradin, the Great Sultan in the Sky is dying but nobody is yet quite sure what he plans to do about it.

There really aren't any campaign details except for those I've invented as I need to run my players through my adventures. For example, the players are currently searching for the cure to the Red Plague, which was discovered by Lady Juliet who ended up dying from it. Her husband, Lord Romeo, died of a broken heart. After the two died, their peoples finally stopped hating each other--but not in time to save them from the recently released Soul of Chaos.

I guess I just don't feel the need to depend on WotC for setting stuff, but I can understand frustration with the books if you do depend on them.

TS

[hong]

As a result, dwarves in my Dying Earth campaign are Arab-esque desert dwellers with a high female birth rate--to account for all the sheikhs' and sultan's harems.

PLEASE say that your dwarf women still have beards, as god and Tolkein intended it to be!

[Gilbetron]

I chime in with the lovers - both in the implied setting itself (Points of Light/Sword & Sorcery) and the concept of an implied setting in general. By using an implied setting, they can give flavor to the races, but without steeping it directly in a specific setting. Great for a core rulebook! Additionally, the PoL itself is neat and flavorful, and very evocative. I love what they did with the "metaverse" and the history, again done with a light touch and in a sketchy manner.

But, I can see people not liking it. Shrug. Sorry, hopefully it'll help when all the various settings come out for it over the next few years.

[Neil Phillips]

In my campaign the Eladrin wear fake beards (or "face warmers" as they call them).

[Will]

If I may restate the original objection (which I don't share, but I like to help):

I like having an implied setting that's compatible with my ideas and interesting. Saves me a lot of time and energy that I can use on other stuff.
I really dislike the setting provided for a host of reasons.
This means I not only have to generate a full setting of my own, but then I have to go over the system carefully to make sure the system and setting work together at a fundamental level.
This also means that many supplements involve me paying for a lot of material I have no interest in, and entails further work to make sure is compatible with my setting.

I would have prefered a more interesting setting I could have leaned on, or no setting at all.

With no setting (more accurately, 'much less setting') I still have to make a setting and make it compatible with the system. But I don't have to dig out actual setting material. I'm also assured that if I buy a supplement, all of it is potentially useful, rather than some fraction.

[hong]

Honestly, if I could build this (http://www.zipworld.com.au/~hong/dnd/britannia) on a 3E base, I see no reason you couldn't do something similar on a 4E base.

[Gilbetron]

Honestly, if I could build this (http://www.zipworld.com.au/~hong/dnd/britannia) on a 3E base, I see no reason you couldn't do something similar on a 4E base.

Wait, did you just prove that 3E is better at world building than 4e?

Shhh .... don't tell the other thread!!!

[hong]

Heh. One thing I'd like in 4E is a bit more material on top-down campaign design as opposed to bottom-up.

By this I don't mean stats for towns and cities, but things like how to select an underlying premise, getting the players involved, and then fleshing out that premise into specific personalities, adventures and encounters. Basically, how to design an overarching main quest, like you might see in an adventure path, but better tied into the world at large and without as much railroading. My main problems with APs are that 1) they're by design very generic, so that you can plunk them into Greyhawk or FR or wherever; and 2) they're linear as hell.

[Will]

My view:
3e and 4e both have strongly implied settings of high magic, religion that works a certain way, etc. 4e looks marginally better at being clubbed into other settings (no healers, stripping out magic items and houseruling over the difference, etc.)

3e has the advantage that more of the supplements don't go on and on about background. But only just. Some of the Complete series had chunks of material that was probably useless if you weren't going for some variation of the core setting.

3e's worldbuilding helped define what kind of world was expected, which was a great help in pulling the disparate elements of the implied setting together. It was indirectly helpful in doing something different, because at least you had a better picture of what needed to be changed or removed.

For me, it's a push from the setting standpoint. But that's me.

[Neil Phillips]

For what it's worth, my wife tried to convert the Elder Scrolls setting to 3E, and then switched to 4E and is finding converting to 4E easier (probably just because anything preperation related in 4E is easier).

That was after our disastrous attempt to play using the rules of the computer game (reverse engineered for tabletop)...

[MalteseChangeling]

"Insipid" is in the eye of the beholder.

[weasel fierce]

I always had a hard time converting fantasy settings to D&D. It tends to work better if you write something that specifically works like D&D does.

[Tequila Sunrise]

PLEASE say that your dwarf women still have beards, as god and Tolkein intended it to be!
No non-dwarf really knows what a female dwarf looks like, as they wear garments which conceal their entire bodies while in public--the dwarves say these "burqas" are to prevent sunburn from tainting the females' incredibly beauty, but Dying Earth women's rights activists insist that the burqas are in fact living hair, overgrown to obscene proportions. ;)

TS

[dr. strangemonkey]

Hey, thanks for the specifics!

Well, to be more clear, I think the problems are as follows:

1) The Gods are very odd, and VERY uninspiring, just complete "compromise candidates" the lot of them, yet frequently referenced as if we will be using them - what's difficult is that a lot of them don't syncretize well with the gods in other settings, nor with the lack of gods in some settings. Just renaming them isn't good enough, not when the god of the sea and the god of nature are the same person, and there's not even a real fertility goddess, for god's sake.

Hmmm, I really like the Pantheon as its set up. The apportionment of portfolios makes a lot of sense to me. My only real complaint is that I wish more of them had titular names like the Raven Queen's.

Still, they are pretty easy to drop in or out on an individual basis or entirely. You can pick and choose between the divine channelling feats pretty easily and their portfolios are common enough that you can drop in Your Own god of the sea or fertility goddess whenever you find an appropriate temple.

It's particularly easy since most temples are set up as dedicated to groups of three gods.

2) The whole Titan/Elemental Chaos thing is absolutely mind-breakingly dull and everything I read about 4E seems to want to bring it in whenever anything remotely elemental-related comes up.

Well, the elemental chaos is a critcal part of the cosmology. But as long as you have some placeholder that enables you to summon elemental effects you're ok, and it is an excellent placeholder in its own right.

The Titans you can dispose of fairly easilly, though I do find it very interesting that someone who thinks a fertility goddess should be an assumed part of a pantheon also thinks a Titanomachy is too cliched to bear thinking about.

Personally, I like the Elemental Chaos because it nearly always works better than the original Elemental planes and I like the Titans exactly because Titanomachies are so freaking common in so many settings.

3) Asmodeus is a yawnfest, never made any sense (rationally or stylistically) being attached to the undead, yet one can barely get a mention of the undead without him coming up.

I think you mean Orcus, but, yeah, DnD fans probably have too much affection for that guy and WotC is just pandering to the crowd.

Asmodeus himself is interesting for the same reason I like the titans. Satanic figures are nearly as common as Titanomachies, but Asmodeus is nice because he's a minor figure rather than one part of a terrible light and dark duality. You can use him for the character with or without bringing in the profound metaphysical construct.

4) The universe is completely non-mysterious. There is a clear, complete backstory for the whole thing, which, whilst the average peasant might be cloudy on it (just like the average citizen of the UK is extremely misty on our history), anyone remotely informed knows the whole thing backwards. There aren't viewpoints and alternatives just "This is what happened". You can ignore that, but it means that books become less useful to you. Stuff that might be cool if it was somewhat mysterious is rendered dull by full illumination.

I don't know that it leaves the universe any more mysterious than Genesis does.

I can see your point. Though in my case I find mysteries easier to manufacture from certainties than from mysteries.

And most of the certainties tend to imply as much mystery as they solve.

It's fairly unclear, for instance, why the Elves went all Terrestrial or how old the Halfling meta-culture is.

5) Implied setting is increasingly less implied, increasingly more detailed. I had a lot of cool ideas for Bael Turath and Arkhosia, but it seems like we're always getting more details on them, they're always getting more "locked down" in the official view of them. This defeats the entire purpose of the implied setting. Particularly frustrating is where we get details that seem to contradict other details in an unhelpful way, like when we get hard details of when Bael Turath was around and for how long - this isn't the kind of helpful "some say" stuff, it's unhelpful because it means you have NEITHER a consistent setting, nor a truly vague one. The worst of both worlds, imho.

This is a problem DnD has always had. Thing is I'm not certain if more mystery would help the setting become more implied or cement it further.

The World of Darkness had a lot of mystery in its implied setting and that just tended to harden the tropes rather than open them up for change.

It will be interesting to see what they eventually do with the implied setting, as I agree that they could set up in the some form of 'truly vague' way or by making it more concrete.

On the gripping hand, however, it would be perfectly possible for them to simply set up the Implied setting as an open puzzle. A sort of bucket of lego bits where each bit is fairly hard but you can combine them in whatever shape you like.

6) Restrictiveness - in 3E, there was a tiny implied Greyhawk setting which virtually everyone ignored and/or replaced outright. Even the designers seemed to tire of it pretty quickly. With 4E, I admit, they've not had time to get bored of it, yet reference detailed setting elements much more often (it seems to me) than previously, and seem to make much stronger assumptions about it.

Hong - Sure, but the designers didn't reference that stuff in virtually every book, they didn't assume your campaign had Suloise or w/e in it, whereas they do assume it has Bael Turath and Arkhosia.

I think people are misunderstanding though.

It's not that I can't ignore the information. What am I, a badly-programmed robot? Of course I can ignore it. The problem is that the implied setting is reducing the value of 4E books to me. Thus from my perspective we have a situation where I, as a GM, am getting less support than I'm used to, and WotC, as a company, are getting less of my money than they were used to (at one point).

Also note that, were this a case of just one or two of my points being an issue, I wouldn't have bothered to post. The problem is that all six together are (and probably others if I thought about it more.[/QUOTE]

[Eric Tolle]

That was after our disastrous attempt to play using the rules of the computer game (reverse engineered for tabletop)...

Oh my gosh! You poor poor people, was it especially painful? I had enough trouble dealing with that system on a computer.

Not that everyone doesn't go through that phase every now and then. Like, the other day I was looking at the sphere system for FFX, and started thinking "Hey, that might make an interesting experience system", and if it hadn't been for my wife and a tazer, who knows what horrors might have resulted?

[jimthegray]

The other part is grateful. Because WotC is saving me a lot of money by producing fluff setting stuff that I would never use. Like the Draconomicon.
.

??? the draconomicon has a large deal of crunch in it, hell I have used it several times and barely skimmed the fluff portions
same with open grave

[Dormammu]

3e has the advantage that more of the supplements don't go on and on about background. But only just. Some of the Complete series had chunks of material that was probably useless if you weren't going for some variation of the core setting.
The only time I had a problem with this in 3E was the PrCs. I really wanted all PrCs to be like the Assassin, Blackguard or Loremaster: slightly less generic than base classes, but only barely and as setting-neutral as possible. Most of them just seemed dumb and implied extremely specific things about any game world that might include them.

[Biohazard]

From reading some stuff about the implied setting, I would probably just switch it over to the setting of Diablo II, because it would seem like a good fit (I might be talking out of my ass here, as I haven't read the books ...). From the points of light to the innate magical abilities of the characters.

You would probably just need a point in the timeline of the game to start things up ...

[Kevin Mowery]

The only time I had a problem with this in 3E was the PrCs. I really wanted all PrCs to be like the Assassin, Blackguard or Loremaster: slightly less generic than base classes, but only barely and as setting-neutral as possible. Most of them just seemed dumb and implied extremely specific things about any game world that might include them.

My problem with 3e prestige classes was kind of the opposite. My favorite prestige class was in Midnight, where you could become part of their Riders of Rohan analogue. I liked the idea that prestige classes involved some prestige in the setting, and that they might be setting-specific.

Too many of the 3e PrCs were generic and, worse, the power creep was such that staying in a core class for 20 levels felt like volunteering to miss out on lots of cool powers.

[smathis]

??? the draconomicon has a large deal of crunch in it, hell I have used it several times and barely skimmed the fluff portions
same with open grave

Maybe I'm confused or ill-informed. But for the settings I run, dragons are either a non-entity or are so rare that a party might come across one, at most two, in ten levels.

I skimmed through the Draconomicon on a couple of occasions but didn't see anything that I could apply to anything I wanted to do. Maybe it isn't all fluff. And I certainly misspoke for expediency's sake. But, for my purposes, it might as well have been.

That's pretty much what I meant by that statement.

What irks me about the current supplements is that it's so rare that even half the book is useful to me. Martial Power is the lone exception.

And I'm already tired of buying supplements for one or two things. Like the Alchemy rules in Adventurer's Vault. How lame is it that I have to pay $25-30 for alchemy rules? I run low magic. I don't care about the Magic Items. I don't have airships. I do want Alchemy. So I'm paying $2 a page for it???

How much would a copy of Lord of the Rings cost at that rate?

I'm finding this to be the case more often than not. Buy the FRPG for Drow and Swordmages. I guess I'll have to buy Eberron PG for Artificers when the time comes.

But I don't have that kind of money. And it's frustrating to be locked out of rules I would use because I can't justify paying that kind of money for a book that's going to be 75%-90% useless to me.

[smathis]

I liked the idea that prestige classes involved some prestige in the setting, and that they might be setting-specific.

I had the same problem with 3e prestige classes and, to a degree, with Paragon Paths in 4e.

I liked E6 because it sort of solved that problem. It said, hey, no one is higher than sixth level so if you get there, you're pretty much awesome.

It set a benchmark.

I think 4e kind of has that. But due to how everything is constantly scaling, I still think it has some of the problems that faced 3e. Understandably, it's also a group/DM issue. But I liked how E6 gave you that benchmark and plan to do similarly with level 11.

[Uthred]

But I don't have that kind of money. And it's frustrating to be locked out of rules I would use because I can't justify paying that kind of money for a book that's going to be 75%-90% useless to me.

Maybe DDI and access to the Compendium would be a better investment than the books?

[Ithaeur]

From reading some stuff about the implied setting, I would probably just switch it over to the setting of Diablo II, because it would seem like a good fit (I might be talking out of my ass here, as I haven't read the books ...). From the points of light to the innate magical abilities of the characters.
Yup, Sanctuary as seen in Diablo II is definitely a PoL world - with teleportation circles, no less! :)

[Biohazard]

Yup, Sanctuary as seen in Diablo II is definitely a PoL world - with teleportation circles, no less! :)

Yep, it is all right there in the game. You might even be able to model some chars after it ...

Okay, Dragonborn and elves (Eladrin?) are missing, but otherwise ...

[Crazy Jerome]

Well, I find myself in the opposite camp, but having no trouble understanding the point, because the OPs view of 4E is exactly how I felt about 3E, with the exception that my disgruntlement was that it seemed like a lot of, "people trying too hard to be cool and edgy and never go over the top". So I fairly rapidly quit buying it and concentrated on the roughly half of Malhovic d20 products that fit my preferences. :)

[Will]

I'm repeating myself, but there were a number of 3.5e supplements that I essentially bought for one or two pages of interesting feats. (Complete Champion, particularly)

And I've long had an issue with the limitations on implied setting with 3.5e; low fantasy is a fucking BITCH to do, if it's even at all possible. (As close as I can figure, E6 plus a lot of ripping out magic, plus maybe Incantations.)

[Eurhetemec]

Hmmm, I really like the Pantheon as its set up. The apportionment of portfolios makes a lot of sense to me. My only real complaint is that I wish more of them had titular names like the Raven Queen's.

Still, they are pretty easy to drop in or out on an individual basis or entirely. You can pick and choose between the divine channelling feats pretty easily and their portfolios are common enough that you can drop in Your Own god of the sea or fertility goddess whenever you find an appropriate temple.

It's particularly easy since most temples are set up as dedicated to groups of three gods.

I just think it's really problematic and illustrative of committee-based god-choosing rather than either going for something that felt real, or that had real energy or verve or atmosphere to it. YMMV, of course, but The Raven Queen, for example, stands out as almost seeming to be from another setting entirely to the rest of the gods (a better one!).

Well, the elemental chaos is a critcal part of the cosmology. But as long as you have some placeholder that enables you to summon elemental effects you're ok, and it is an excellent placeholder in its own right.

The Titans you can dispose of fairly easilly, though I do find it very interesting that someone who thinks a fertility goddess should be an assumed part of a pantheon also thinks a Titanomachy is too cliched to bear thinking about.

Personally, I like the Elemental Chaos because it nearly always works better than the original Elemental planes and I like the Titans exactly because Titanomachies are so freaking common in so many settings.

It's not that it's cliched. I'm fine with cliched. I embrace cliche, after all, I love my mother-goddesses and skyfathers and so on. It's that it's a dull, non-scary version of a Titanomachy. Like the Ancient Greek and Norse stuff associated with that is psychosexual and disturbing and connects with the human psyche on a low level. The D&D stuff is just messy cartoon nonsense. It's like, why? They could have made it more disturbing and weird if they'd wanted (a la Scarred Lands). I agree that the Elemental Chaos is better than the Elemental Planes, though. I'm just really disappointed with the armies of the Titans being simple elemental-ish beings without much to go "Wow, that's odd" about.

I think you mean Orcus, but, yeah, DnD fans probably have too much affection for that guy and WotC is just pandering to the crowd.

Asmodeus himself is interesting for the same reason I like the titans. Satanic figures are nearly as common as Titanomachies, but Asmodeus is nice because he's a minor figure rather than one part of a terrible light and dark duality. You can use him for the character with or without bringing in the profound metaphysical construct.

I think the problem is that Asmodeus lacks the transgressive "edge" necessary to convince as a Satan-figure. Orcus is just lame and his association with the undead seems forced and a bit lazy.

I think overall my cosmology/monster objections tend to be that blandness and design-by-committee seem to have dominated over anything with a heart, or with real artistic integrity.

MalteseChangeling - I'm not so sure that it is. To a certain extend, sure, but I find it hard to believe that people are deeply excited or inspired by the new 4E monsters, for example, on anything that a "That would make a good tactical encounter" level. There's just nothing I've seen for 4E that makes me scared or disturbed or intrigued. There's a lot that seems like it's ripped from the pages of a flashy-but-unoriginal fantasy comic-book, or possibly from WoW (not intended as an insult, more a comparison).

Similarly, I think it's hard to point to setting elements which it isn't easy to see as insipid. Especially compared to long-ago D&D settings, even.

[Dormammu]

I had the same problem with 3e prestige classes and, to a degree, with Paragon Paths in 4e.

I liked E6 because it sort of solved that problem. It said, hey, no one is higher than sixth level so if you get there, you're pretty much awesome.

It set a benchmark.

I think 4e kind of has that. But due to how everything is constantly scaling, I still think it has some of the problems that faced 3e. Understandably, it's also a group/DM issue. But I liked how E6 gave you that benchmark and plan to do similarly with level 11.
E6 was a remarkably good idea. I still love that variant. I think 4E looks to be a little stronger as it goes epic because it was all done with intent. So it may not be a style that everyone wants (ie, paragon and epic play), but at least it will work well if you choose to do it.

[MalteseChangeling]

I'm not so sure that it is. To a certain extend, sure, but I find it hard to believe that people are deeply excited or inspired by the new 4E monsters, for example, on anything that a "That would make a good tactical encounter" level. There's just nothing I've seen for 4E that makes me scared or disturbed or intrigued. There's a lot that seems like it's ripped from the pages of a flashy-but-unoriginal fantasy comic-book, or possibly from WoW (not intended as an insult, more a comparison).

Similarly, I think it's hard to point to setting elements which it isn't easy to see as insipid. Especially compared to long-ago D&D settings, even.

I'd rebut these assertions, but I'm not sure that there's any point in doing so. I suspect anything I report finding exciting or inspiring will simply be dismissed as "insipid."

[Bahama'at]

It's not that it's cliched. I'm fine with cliched. I embrace cliche, after all, I love my mother-goddesses and skyfathers and so on. It's that it's a dull, non-scary version of a Titanomachy. Like the Ancient Greek and Norse stuff associated with that is psychosexual and disturbing and connects with the human psyche on a low level. The D&D stuff is just messy cartoon nonsense. It's like, why? They could have made it more disturbing and weird if they'd wanted (a la Scarred Lands).Scarred Lands was produced by a company whose other line had inbred necrophiliacs practicing bestiality. Wizards' other line produces cute little anime critters for 5 year olds. One of these is a lot more exposed to ZOMG Think of the Children! moral panics than the other. And if one of those targetted White Wolf, they took it as a sign of pride, if one of those aimed itself at WotC they'd have Hasbro head office on line in seconds.

- Ma'at

[Dormammu]

Orcus is just lame and his association with the undead seems forced and a bit lazy.
It dates back to the original Monster Manual, so I doubt it's forced. Probably just random free-association like much of Gygax's creative output.

[Will]

Uh. It probably dates a little older than that, given Orcus was the Roman god of the underworld.

Just another case of fantasy grabbing myth and drawing over it in crayon.

[Eurhetemec]

I'd rebut these assertions, but I'm not sure that there's any point in doing so. I suspect anything I report finding exciting or inspiring will simply be dismissed as "insipid."

That's a pretty tepid response :p

[Panzeh]

I just think it's really problematic and illustrative of committee-based god-choosing rather than either going for something that felt real, or that had real energy or verve or atmosphere to it. YMMV, of course, but The Raven Queen, for example, stands out as almost seeming to be from another setting entirely to the rest of the gods (a better one!).



It's not that it's cliched. I'm fine with cliched. I embrace cliche, after all, I love my mother-goddesses and skyfathers and so on. It's that it's a dull, non-scary version of a Titanomachy. Like the Ancient Greek and Norse stuff associated with that is psychosexual and disturbing and connects with the human psyche on a low level. The D&D stuff is just messy cartoon nonsense. It's like, why? They could have made it more disturbing and weird if they'd wanted (a la Scarred Lands). I agree that the Elemental Chaos is better than the Elemental Planes, though. I'm just really disappointed with the armies of the Titans being simple elemental-ish beings without much to go "Wow, that's odd" about.



I think the problem is that Asmodeus lacks the transgressive "edge" necessary to convince as a Satan-figure. Orcus is just lame and his association with the undead seems forced and a bit lazy.

I think overall my cosmology/monster objections tend to be that blandness and design-by-committee seem to have dominated over anything with a heart, or with real artistic integrity.

MalteseChangeling - I'm not so sure that it is. To a certain extend, sure, but I find it hard to believe that people are deeply excited or inspired by the new 4E monsters, for example, on anything that a "That would make a good tactical encounter" level. There's just nothing I've seen for 4E that makes me scared or disturbed or intrigued. There's a lot that seems like it's ripped from the pages of a flashy-but-unoriginal fantasy comic-book, or possibly from WoW (not intended as an insult, more a comparison).

Similarly, I think it's hard to point to setting elements which it isn't easy to see as insipid. Especially compared to long-ago D&D settings, even.

I'm not sure DnD really is the game to be at the forefront of a 'who can be more shocking/disturbing' arms race..

[Will]

Lichloved.

[hong]

It's not that it's cliched. I'm fine with cliched. I embrace cliche, after all, I love my mother-goddesses and skyfathers and so on. It's that it's a dull, non-scary version of a Titanomachy. Like the Ancient Greek and Norse stuff associated with that is psychosexual and disturbing and connects with the human psyche on a low level.

Are you sure you really want to be playing D&D?

[Neil Phillips]

Oh my gosh! You poor poor people, was it especially painful? I had enough trouble dealing with that system on a computer.

Don't even ask, it'll bring back flashbacks..

There were alot of percentile rolls, and alot of ticking boxes every time we made a percentile roll. Then, thankfully, we got killed by a vampire.

[Mapache]

Don't even ask, it'll bring back flashbacks..

There were alot of percentile rolls, and alot of ticking boxes every time we made a percentile roll. Then, thankfully, we got killed by a vampire.

C'mon, the Elder Scrolls system is so intuitive! Say you want to play a cunning spellslinger—just pick an appropriate class, like Heavy Armor Fighter. Then, avoid leveling for as long as possible (by slinging spells instead of fighting and wearing heavy armor), because if you level unexpectedly, you'll actually become weaker relative to level-appropriate challenges. What could be simpler?

[Dormammu]

Uh. It probably dates a little older than that, given Orcus was the Roman god of the underworld.
Good point, although I think he's slightly different from that, Pluto being more the god of the underworld proper.

[Will]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orcus makes an interesting read!

I often wish the gods incorporated into fantasy settings were a bit more... intricately woven, like those of history.

Ah well.

[Dormammu]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orcus makes an interesting read!

I often wish the gods incorporated into fantasy settings were a bit more... intricately woven, like those of history.

Ah well.
Hey, if everyone who played D&D had equal rights of authorship with the publishers, we'd have a intricate and confusing shared mythology too. Come on, Wizards! Let us in! ;)

[Will]

What really grabs me is the 'punisher of broken oaths' bit. That gets the mind going, eh?

'Why is the demon prince bowing to Janice the paladin and giving us free passage in her care??'

[Eurhetemec]

Are you sure you really want to be playing D&D?

Rules-wise definitely yes, setting-wise perhaps not. There's a pretty big division between the two. Many other RPGs I feel the opposite way around, rules almost too ugly to even consider playing, great setting.

I mean, didja read my original post? This is exactly and entirely my point. I love everything about 4E except the implied setting and the effects it has on the game line.

My ideal "playing with friends for fun" RPG would probably be a 4E-variant with a rather different setting-tone, but looks like WotC isn't going to allow those to exist this time around.

[Seroster]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orcus makes an interesting read!

I often wish the gods incorporated into fantasy settings were a bit more... intricately woven, like those of history.


Or "nuanced"? The Roman Orcus isn't a demon prince. He's a deity to be dreaded, though...

I think that's what I like about the Raven Queen. She isn't unambiguously good or evil. Which is the case for most of the gods, for instance, of the Greek pantheon. Often those gods have widely varying roles which might contradict each other.

Like Artemis. Mistress of the hunt and the wild... and of (death in) childbirth. Hermes. God of travel, of commerce, of thieves, and by the same token of catching thieves (I think). Apollo is the god responsible for diseases and for healing. etc.

[Logos7]

I am just amazed at all the people who are like,

its just like the greek or norse pantheon but without a sense of style or epic.

We'll if you can't get a sense of awesome style and epic out of a greek or norse style creation story, that's really your problem.

Oh no wizards took perhaps the two most awesome and epic creation stories in all of mythology and stripped off the serial numbers and all of a sudden its not epic enough for you?

Someone is made of fail here, and i dont think wizzies.

Logos

[Eurhetemec]

I am just amazed at all the people who are like,

its just like the greek or norse pantheon but without a sense of style or epic.

We'll if you can't get a sense of awesome style and epic out of a greek or norse style creation story, that's really your problem.

Oh no wizards took perhaps the two most awesome and epic creation stories in all of mythology and stripped off the serial numbers and all of a sudden its not epic enough for you?

Someone is made of fail here, and i dont think wizzies.

Logos

You "fail"at basic comprehension.

I'll "fix" it for you like this is the WoW forums or /b/ or wherever it is you normally hang out:

Oh no wizards took perhaps the two most awesome and epic creation stories in all of mythology and carefully removed everything scary, psychological/archetypical, emotive, "true", un-politically-correct, disturbing, or
complex, replacing it with bland, safe, non-archetypal nonsense

If that's too complicated, let me try making it even more simple for you:

WotC's derivative cosmology is to Ancient Greek Myth as the 1960s Batman is to The Dark Knight-era Batman.

Don't like the fact the one chronology goes one way, one goes the other? Too bad, but I'll give you another one:

WotC's derivative cosmology is to Ancient Greek Myth as a swimming pool is to the ocean.

Sure it's safe, and fun, and maybe convenient, but it lacks the depth, the majesty, the complexity and the life of the latter.

If you don't get it, I feel sorry for you, as you apparently a forerunner for a certain movie by Mike Judge (and it ain't Office Space). I should probably feel sorry for you anyway, what with the lack of capitalization and punctuation, and use of the phrase "made of fail" in a non-ironic way.

Edit - I could go on like this:

WotC's derivative cosmology is to Ancient Greek Myth as a Big Mac and fries is to a four-course meal.

WotC's derivative cosmology is to Ancient Greek Myth as the Robocop TV series was to the original Robocop movie.

WotC's derivative cosmology is to Ancient Greek Myth as the Conan The Adventurer cartoon series is to Howard's Conan novels.

[Dormammu]

WotC's derivative cosmology is to Ancient Greek Myth as a swimming pool is to the ocean.
I like this analogy because it's closer to how I see it: they gave us only a little water and expect us to add the rest. Or change it out for something else. I don't think it's so inherently bland that somehow it makes everything bland. It's just extremely skeletal. It's also trivial to ignore.

For example, Giants as primordial spawn or whatever... you can ignore that and run them like traditional D&D giants. Nothing about them mechanically demands you go with this new "mini-setting."

[Will]

It's like a mysterious crystal pool...

that turns out to be tap water and lucite.

[hong]

Rules-wise definitely yes, setting-wise perhaps not. There's a pretty big division between the two. Many other RPGs I feel the opposite way around, rules almost too ugly to even consider playing, great setting.

I mean, didja read my original post? This is exactly and entirely my point. I love everything about 4E except the implied setting and the effects it has on the game line.

Like I said; if I could whip this (http://www.zipworld.com.au/~hong/dnd/britannia) up in 3E, it should be a snap to do the same in 4E.

My ideal "playing with friends for fun" RPG would probably be a 4E-variant with a rather different setting-tone, but looks like WotC isn't going to allow those to exist this time around.

What on earth do you mean by "allow"? The WotC police aren't going to knock on your door if you make up your own setting. Hell, there have been threads here already where people are doing just that.

[mhacdebhandia]

carefully removed everything scary, psychological/archetypical, emotive, "true", un-politically-correct, disturbing, or complex, replacing it with bland, safe, non-archetypal nonsense
This is a load of wank, frankly. They've made the cosmology generic - but I'm glad they did. Not every game needs a canon creation story talking about how the world was created from the semen of a giant and his dead body after his sons chopped him up, or whatever. It's not like it's hard to add that in, if you want to - and if you're going to complain that you have to do "all that work", I have two questions for you:

1) Why are you trying to run a game?

2) Exactly how often do you think "the world was made from semen and dead body parts" is going to come up in your campaign of heroic fantasy adventure, anyway?

[Will]

Um. You're surely joking, Mhamminahamina?

I had a friend whose entire game was founded on the premise that the continent was the remains of a giant dragon, which shaped the geography and enemies they faced in various key locations.

Of all things, I expect such things to be MUCH more important in heroic fantasy adventure than, say, gritty fantasy (where such things are relegated to myth and 'arbitrary reasons why these weird cultists want us dead').

[Shapeshifter]

Aside from the level 20 Forbiddance ritual, there isn't really a way to stop someone from teleporting in. That's a -huge- security risk. So if you give your address to another city that you trust you have to trust them to keep it safe as well. You could put your circle in an out of the way spot as opposed to inside the city, but then you have to guard it like crazy as it becomes a good spot to attack for those looking for a great score (high value easy to transport goods, remember?) or as a choke/control point for those looking to attack and wanting to limit assistance if they know you use it. I put them in the logistical nightmare camp.
A low-tech (err, low-magic) solution would be to just build it at the bottom of a pit. Build some aqueducts or something so you can flood the pit completely, on-demand. That would make it pretty awkward (though by no means impossible) to invade, and doubly so if the invaders aren't clear on what the defenses are. It gives you most of the benefits with few of the drawbacks, without breaking the bank.

It's not that I can't ignore the information. What am I, a badly-programmed robot? Of course I can ignore it. The problem is that the implied setting is reducing the value of 4E books to me. Thus from my perspective we have a situation where I, as a GM, am getting less support than I'm used to, and WotC, as a company, are getting less of my money than they were used to (at one point).
This is the fundamental problem, for me.

Everything they've done to include the "POL" setting actually harms the game from my perspective--my perspective is wanting to run Planescape and Eberron. The "POL" setting is not interesting. Why do i care about that when there's Planescape and Eberron?

Every "POL"-y thing they do is just one more thing i'm going to have to strip out before i can use the system. This is not just some harmless thing that i can ignore--go look at, for instance, how much of "POL" was written into the Cleric or Paladin class. Now imagine that in Planescape or Eberron.

Consider the alignment system... everyone says "it has no real implications, so just ignore it"... but mechanical implications are not the only implications. They said they changed it because it's "less confusing" to new players, which might be true. It's more confusing to new players, however, for them to learn that alignment only for me to have to explain to them that "no, in this game alignment doesn't work that way..."

Can i ignore it in Planescape or Eberron?

The answer is "no". It requires fixing, and that fixing is not pleasant.

I'm not saying this just to be confrontational. I tried porting Planescape over into 4e because i love Planescape.

I eventually decided i'd rather just stick with 3e or, and this is a phrase i had never uttered in my life prior to 4e, go back to 2e.

And that really says it all: in order for me to play the game i want to play it's easier for me to not play 4e purely because of setting details that everyone is saying i should just ignore.

Do people see why this might be annoying? Maybe "POL" does it for you, but it sure as hell doesn't for me. Are there features of "POL" that are interesting? Sure. As a whole is it something that interests me? No. To me, it's much less than the sum of its parts. It isn't a generic setting and it isn't a setting that is interesting in and of itself--it's the worst of both. So why even have it? What does it bring to the table? The best argument people seem to be making for it is "well, you can just ignore it if you don't like it".

I don't know, maybe it's just my problem and everyone else is fine with it... but i don't think that's really the case. Clearly lots of people are fine with it (at least to the point where they don't whine all the time like i do), but i think equally clearly there are people who are not really fans.

I don't mind being given accurate info at all. I just want it to be consistent, if it's accurate, or clearly and intentionally presented as misty and contradictory, not unintentionally contradictory, like a bad episode (as if there were any other kind) of Star Trek: Voyager
To extend the ST:V analogy: 4e is kind of like buying a "Star Trek RPG" book only to discover they assume you're playing "Star Trek Voyager". That setting might be fine on its own, but if you're a fan of one of the other settings that assumption is going to cause you lots of headaches. Worse, still, would be if they assumed you were going to be playing some largely different, and new, setting...

Oh no wizards took perhaps the two most awesome and epic creation stories in all of mythology and stripped off the serial numbers and all of a sudden its not epic enough for you?
The problem is they stripped all the "epic" (or maybe the "interesting") out when they filed the serial numbers off. I love the old Norse stories--i'm a bit of an amateur scholar of them, in fact.

There's nothing in 4e that makes me even... well... care. Admittedly, Wizards is at a distinct disadvantage seeing as how they haven't had hundreds of years to distill the whole plot down into psychotic awesomeness.

...Not every game needs a canon creation story talking about how the world was created from the semen of a giant and his dead body after his sons chopped him up, or whatever.
Ahem. (http://www.thepaincomics.com/weekly041229a.htm) (Probably NSFW... political content, as well.)

[Will]

Shapeshifter: That... was frikken awesome. Thank you.

[mhacdebhandia]

Perhaps I'm not explaining myself clearly.

I think that any game requires more thought moment-to-moment than it does in the big picture. It's fine to say that the premise of your setting is "the continent is the body of an enormous dragon" - but knowing that doesn't necessarily help you design the next town the PCs will stop in, or the next dungeon they'll enter, or the next encounter they'll have. It will obviously inform that design, where that's sensible, but it can only have a limited effect.

It's not particularly important that Wizards of the Coast provides GMs with an extremely specific, thematically and mythically rich background, because when they do they shut out everyone who doesn't like it - and it's trivial to add one on top of the basics they do give you.

[Uthred]

Considering 3E is explicitly set in Greyhawk I find it odd that it's been help up as a shining light of "Look no implied setting".

[phreddkroe]

I don't get it. Why do you have to play a different edition because of the campaign setting you want to use? To each their own, but 4E is the first time I've actually used the default setting for D&D. I love the flavor of everything. All the sidebars of lore are just so much more interesting to me than previous editions.

It sounds like you're limiting yourself as a DM. You don't have to use the implied setting. You don't have to play Forgotten Realms or Eberron either. You don't have to use the same gods. You don't have to have the Abyss in the Elemental Chaos. You don't even have to have an Elemental Chaos. If you like everything except the setting, then roll your own.

[mhacdebhandia]

Considering 3E is explicitly set in Greyhawk I find it odd that it's been help up as a shining light of "Look no implied setting".
To be perfectly fair, the closest that Third Edition ever came to being "set in Greyhawk" was the gods they used and the prestige class that mentioned the Great Kingdom. It's not quite the same as Fourth Edition, with its towns in the core rules that are also used for published adventures and historical empires mentioned in just about every published product.

[Yo! Master]

Personally i like the PoL implied setting & how it has been handled / put to use game-design-wise.

Not only for reasons of its use in actual play, but also because i find it a very pulp fantasy / Sword-&-Sorcery approach (Conan & Elric were ruined when maps for their settings got released ;)).

[hong]

Every "POL"-y thing they do is just one more thing i'm going to have to strip out before i can use the system. This is not just some harmless thing that i can ignore--go look at, for instance, how much of "POL" was written into the Cleric or Paladin class. Now imagine that in Planescape or Eberron.

What, you mean none?

Consider the alignment system... everyone says "it has no real implications, so just ignore it"... but mechanical implications are not the only implications. They said they changed it because it's "less confusing" to new players, which might be true. It's more confusing to new players, however, for them to learn that alignment only for me to have to explain to them that "no, in this game alignment doesn't work that way..."

I've been ignoring alignment for 8 years.

[Future Villain Band]

You "fail"at basic comprehension.

I'll "fix" it for you like this is the WoW forums or /b/ or wherever it is you normally hang out:
.

Oh, Jesus, people, you're arguing about a game about playing elves. Eurhetemec, tone down the invective or you're going to catch a suspension. Everybody else, tone down the thread or I will close it and hand out suspensions.

The D&D forum is getting to be in need of an attitudectomy at this point, and I'd rather you all curbed your impulses rather than lose the right to post here because the staff has to curb them for you.

Please. Thank you.

[Matthias Wasser]

For what it's worth, I cetainly don't see the implied setting as precluding the sort of Titanomachy desired above. We just don't know anything about it. There was a Titanomachy.

A Titanomachy with the proper elements remains a project for an enterprising fan or three. I look forward to it.