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Friday, December 4, 2009, 4:36 PM
           So surfin' around the web in search of any information regarding a possible 4E release, I found this:
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4e Greyhawk (coming earliest 2010, latest 2012) will restart the setting in circa 576CY.
There will be no timeline advance. Rather, there will be a timeline retrograde.
In the restart, the Flanaess will be reimagined. Everything that has “happened” in published products will “never have happened” unless it is specifically reincorporated in the restarted setting.
The Greyhawk Wars will never have occurred. There will never have been demon armies rampaging all over. However, Iuz will be on the march and the “bad guy of the North.”
The Scarlet Brotherhood will never have been “outed” by going for an empire. It will be a “general” bad guy found everywhere - sneaky, silent, unseen.
The Great Kingdom will be caught in a quasi-civil war with lots of politics, magic and religion. No undead animus rulers. No United Kingdom of Ahlissa. No Great Kingdom of the North. Medegia is not a wasteland. The Iron League and Nyrond stand opposed. Its “old school” 83Greyhawk in this area with the volume turned up to 11.
The Sheldomar Valley (Keoland and smaller states) will be “monster central” as monsters (giants, dragons, drow etc.) attack civilization relentlessly. Think Points of Light dialed all the way up.
The City of Greyhawk will be the “center of it all” where things start or come together. Everything in D&D will fit somewhere in the central region of the Flanaess around Greyhawk to include the Wild Coast (Turrosh-Mak and the Empire of the Pomarj will never have happened). The Circle of Eight will function as a premade “mission control.”
Celene will be moved into the Feywild with the addition of Eladrins. Celene will be sort of like a “fortress” from which fey forces sally forth to fight evil.
The Bandit Kingdoms and the Rift Canyon will be “dungeon-land” where all things dungeony can be readily found. Lots of dragons too. Speaking of which.
Dragonborn will be incorporated. They will be from “off the map” to the south in the Amedio/Hepmonaland.
The Tieflings will be incorporated. They will not be monolithic, as in a nation. Rather, they will have origins in the Horned Society, the Sea of Dust, the Lands of Iuz, the Land of Black Ice etc. Essentially, where there are evil planar influences, there will be Tieflings. More on this below.
The idea is to compartmentalize Greyhawk into the ultimate “classic play” menu of a setting with “zones”:
What to kill monsters? Play in the Sheldomar.
Want heroics and politics with evil wizards and evil high priests oppressing people who must be stopped? Play in the Great Kingdom, Nyrond or the Iron League.
Want to oppose the One Big Evil Guy? Play in the north against Iuz.
Want to go exploring ancient ruins and dugeons, see the BK and the Rift Canyon.
Want everything in one spot? One organizing principle? Play in the City of Greyhawk/Central Flanaess - adventure-in-can-land.
This split will essentially “define” Greyhawk as the Flanaess. Other areas will be marginalized (the Baklunish West as “genie-land” the exception). There will also be some geographical changes to Oerth (but I have no sense of the extent or details at this moment).
The cosmology of Greyhawk will not be the Great Wheel. Given the premise of the restart, Greyhawk’s cosmology will be 4e standard and will have “always been that way.”
The new cosmology will also be the restarted Greyhawk’s “McGuffin” or new animating force. The restart described above is intended to “keep Greyhawk as Greyhawk.” On top of that will be “the hook” that can neatly summarize the setting - why do you play here?
Tharizdun will be name to conjure with - The Fight Against the Dark God! But in the process, Tharizdun will function almost as a convenient means to introduce numerous other planar elements, in the sense that PCs must traverse the planes and deal with planar incursions into Greyhawk as a necessary part of - The Fight Against the Dark God! Its almost Greyhawk meets Planescape. Sort of. Maybe better to say Planescape (but not 2e Planescape in any pure sense, rather The PLANES) within a Greyhawk context or frame. The idea is that the planar aspect will not be so pronounced (more subtle) as to overpower the Greyhawk elements; the Greyhawk elements are to remain the focus but with a very strong planar theme. However, individual designs are unpredictable, naturally.
So saying, the above is only what I have been able to suss out post-Con Season (and I’m not infallable by any means) and is waaaaay in advance of the range of release dates. Stuff could change. However, I feel comfortable posting the foregoing and saying at this time “Remember, you heard it here first.”
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Tuesday, October 6, 2009, 6:17 PM
 1. Most of the pages in your PHB are stuck together with coke, moldy pepperonis, and chocolate smudges. 2. Your books are a bacteriologists dream. 3. When you try to pick up your DMG it disintegrates into a pile of dust. 4. When running games, you have to invent rules from your DMG because it’s no longer legible. 5. Household pets keep trying to eat your Monster Manual. 6. When you turn the page, sometimes it flies across the room. 7. Your DMG has a large brown wear-mark where "lucky" dice rolls have been done over the years. 8. You can’t tell one book from another - you have to go by thickness. 9. You like to sit on your DMG because its bio-thermal heat keeps you nice and warm. 10. When you spill coke on them, it doesn’t show because the paper is so brown with age.
Monday, October 5, 2009, 11:08 AM
1.You’ve been playing for 3 weeks, and have 76 dead characters. 2.You’re playing in Dark Sun, but still only use Method I to roll characters. 3.Your fighter gets a bit tipsy, and pinches the barmaid’s bottom. The barmaid pulls out her bow and her arrow of fighter slaying. 4.Your 15th level thief just had the snot kicked out of him by an eight year old girl. 5.There are lethal traps on every latrine door. 6.Most peasants have 20 hit dice, and many know the power word, kill spell. 7.Somehow you’ve done it. Your party has slain Emberburn, the most fearsome and powerful Red Dragon the DM has ever created. The DM stares at you in shock, still staring down at the "1" he rolled on the dragon’s last attack. After poking him in the arm for five minutes, chanting "horde....horde.....horde...." over and over, he looks up at you. The look of surprise fades, and an evil grin replaces it. "As it happens, " the DM says with glee, "the dragon had cast project image just before the party entered the cavern...". 8.Your mage has an argument with a local spice merchant. Finally, annoyed to the breaking point, he casts charm on the merchant. Sadly, the merchant is a retired 22nd level elven mage. Shaking your head, you reach for the statistic rolling dice once again... 9.Trees can, and often do, explode in huge, 20d6 hit die fireballs. No explanation is ever offered. 10.Regular rabbits are gone. They have been replaced by the killer-rabbit from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail".
Sunday, October 4, 2009, 10:08 AM
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1.The red dragon suddenly develops a chest cold, and cannot use it’s breath weapon. 2.Your party sneaks into the lich’s secret dungeons. Luckily for them, the lich has been born-again and sent all his undead minions off to do charity work for the poor. 3.The phrase "Oh geez, what do I need with another +5 vorpal longsword" is used often during game play. 4.Your cleric is on a first name basis with his god because of all the times the god has had to pop in to save the cleric’s butt. 5.Any major city has at least one "Ressurect-a-matic" on every street corner. 6.All the city’s guards are first level - and are easily spooked by the flamefinger cantrip. 7.Bubba the Mighty, the most powerful and evil mage in the world, has a soft spot for fast-talking Halflings. Instead of casting meteor swarm and annihilating the party, he decides to teleport away. 8.The party is dividing treasure. The fighter says "Ok, who wants the staff of the magi? Anybody? Anyone at all? Ok, we leave it leaning against a tree stump." 9.The DM uses a four sider to roll monster attacks. 10.The gods in your campaign worship the player characters.
Saturday, October 3, 2009, 12:14 PM
1.Someone says "Why do you have all those numbers tattooed on your hand?", and you reply "Those aren’t tattoos, they’re die imprints." 2.Your elven fighter has had sex within the last six years - and you haven’t. 3.You decide to play a zombie, just so you and your character can have the same skin color. 4.You’ve been surviving so long on Cheetos, Mountain Dew, and pizza that your body now contains more plastic than your dice. 5.You can recite, verbatim, every single rule from the DMG….but you can’t remember how many kids you have. 6.You sign personal correspondences with your character’s name. 7.After months of work, you have made up the entire dwarven language - words, rules of vocabulary, the whole lot. You are bilingual, and can now speak fluid dwarven. Your friends stare at you strangely, and no one will sit on the same side of the table as you. 8.Drug addict and alcoholic friends of yours often stop you to say "Dude, get a grip". 9.Your "If I won the lottery" plans involve creating: (a) a really cool gaming room, and (b) hiring actors to play monsters so that you and your friends can RP for real. 10.You’d rather roll up characters than win the lottery.
Friday, October 2, 2009, 5:09 PM
1.Elminster’s Death-to-the-Caster. 2.Power word, fart. 3.Gelatinous Shell (immediately surrounds the caster in a gelatinous cube). 4.Safe fall (like feather fall, but makes you weigh as much as a 12 ton bank vault). 5.Polymorph Udder (a highly specialized spell which only affects female cattle). 6.Stinking Klaus (summons a fat, smelly German business man, who chases your enemies while eating an Oktoberfest sausage and belching). 7.Magnetskin (a variation of stoneskin - makes the caster’s skin magnetic, giving all metallic weapons a +10 bonus to hit). 8.Meatier Swarm (large chunks of ground chuck rain to the ground). 9.Polymorph any Omelet. 10.Fireballs (sets the target’s testicles on fire).
Wednesday, September 30, 2009, 11:15 AM
1. Your characters often get sharp pains in their backs (followed by profuse bleeding). 2. After dinner, your PC often gets indigestion, followed by nausea (followed by death). 3. Thief always wants to take first watch, then can’t be found in the morning. 4. Valuable items keep disappearing from your fighter’s cloak (the one with the large side pockets). 5. After battles, the thief often regretfully explains there’s no treasure (but seems to have difficulty walking). 6. Your PC’s gold seems to be taking on a slight greenish color. 7. Healing potions do very little to heal your character (and taste kinda watery). 8. Thief always hangs back in battle, and complains he "just couldn’t get into the right position". 9. Strangely, everyone has a hangover the next morning except the thief. 10. The chance of a PC dying from "food poisoning" seems directly proportionate to his wealth.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009, 4:10 PM
1.The "interesting new stew" you’ve been served at the inn smells suspiciously like sewage. 2.One ripe apple at the market place costs more than your last spell book. 3.They’re building a gallows outside of your room at the inn and tell you that it’s "modern art". 4.One of them asks you for a donation for the "Hire Some Thugs to Kill the Adventurers" fund. 5.Someone glued a spike to your saddle. 6.At bed time, your goose-down pillow explodes. The innkeeper says that the pillow was made from the feathers of very angry geese. 7.People keep providing you with gifts of horses and maps out of town. 8.The mayor declares a special "Murder of Foreigners is No Longer Illegal" day, in your honour. 9.Arrows keep appearing in the dirt at your feet. Local villagers shake their head and claim that they are fast-growing weeds. 10.The villagers hire a band of trolls to rid their town of adventurers.
Monday, September 28, 2009, 1:59 PM
1.Your assassin henchman just wet his pants 2.The ancient red dragon you had just been fighting says "S**t, I’m out of here!" and flies away. 3.The bad guy just laughed evilly, and seven birds fell dead out of the sky. 4.The DM chuckles, and says "I spent seven hours rolling this guy up". 5.The bad guy burps, and a human toe flies out of his mouth. 6.The DM plays a tape of scary organ music, and starts talking like Boris Karloff. 7.The bad guy is dressed all in black, but has one of those little yellow smiley face buttons (DMs can be sooo sarcastic). 8.You point your wand of fire at him, and it melts. 9.The bad guy keeps Elminster in a cage, and occasionally pokes him with a fork. 10.After the battle, the only PC to survive is the one that stayed back in town with the flu.
Sunday, September 27, 2009, 8:04 PM
1.If this wasn’t such a nice inn, I’d kick your ass. 2.Do these boots go with this tunic? 3.Sometimes, I just want to be held. 4.Couldn’t we just talk this over? Violence never solved anything. 5.Swords and alcohol don’t mix. 6.Gee, I’d like to help you guys hunt down that rogue dragon, but Lance and I are going shopping for curtains this weekend. 7.Thank you (as well as "please", "excuse me", and "so sorry, I would appear to have stabbed you in the stomach with my broad sword"). 8.I think mages are the coolest. 9.Wait a minute guys. Maybe we should think this over first. 10.Ewwwww! Blood!
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