Some musing on the Shadowfell

[Jester of the FoS]

As for what would work in the Shadowfell, probably anything. 3e presented the Near Ethereal to cover the issues with it sitting in the Ethereal Plane. Dropping it in the Shadowfell or some other 4e plane would likely cause the Dark Powers to provide some other dimensional conduits to let certain powers and spells work.

It would be no problem to explain away the problems. I just don't want to wait until 2011 for them to bother to put out the Shadowfell book for it to happen. It would take a single, short Dragon article to make it work. I just find it both annoying and insulting that they've put out 3 new domains with explaining how things work.

Aren't you doing a 4E conversion, Jester? Why not submit your own work as an article for Dragon, if you'd like to see an ''official game content'' version of 4E-loft?

I might if I thought I'd have any chance. In the 28 or so 4e issues they've done, they've had maybe 3 articles by non-professionals and only one amateur. Dozens of submissions each month, hundreds each year, and only 1% from non-established freelancers.

From a business standpoint, such an article makes sense as a tie-in to the eventual Shadowfell book. So if it was accepted, it'd be put on ice for a couple of years.

[ewancummins]

I might if I thought I'd have any chance. In the 28 or so 4e issues they've done, they've had maybe 3 articles by non-professionals and only one amateur. Dozens of submissions each month, hundreds each year, and only 1% from non-established freelancers.

From a business standpoint, such an article makes sense as a tie-in to the eventual Shadowfell book. So if it was accepted, it'd be put on ice for a couple of years.

Wow, yet another reason to add to me growing list of reasons why I won't buy WotC stuff.

[Jester of the FoS]

They defend the magazines as being heavily done by freelancers, which is true. However, many of these freelancers are published every month (sometimes two or three times), have worked on published books for 3e and/or 4e, and many have been invited to do articles or adventures for the official adventure path.
And "freelancer" is also what they'd call ex-Wizbro employees who were laid off in one of the two layoffs since 4e started.

It's hard to get new, fresh articles in there when so many are product tie-ins or essentially Web Enhancements.

[HuManBing]

Well, product tie-ins have been a staple of WotC's business model, established way back in 3.5 or even 3.0. Every official adventure book introduced major NPCs or monsters that heavily promoted the latest supplement (Red Hand of Doom brought in the various Razorfiend dragon variants, which are detailed in one of the later MMs).

It's not a 4E problem so much as a general WotC practice, erratic though they are.

[Jester of the FoS]

Well, product tie-ins have been a staple of WotC's business model, established way back in 3.5 or even 3.0. Every official adventure book introduced major NPCs or monsters that heavily promoted the latest supplement (Red Hand of Doom brought in the various Razorfiend dragon variants, which are detailed in one of the later MMs).

It's not a 4E problem so much as a general WotC practice, erratic though they are.

I don't have a huge problem with tie-ins, and when used effectively it's a good tactic. Like how this month they're dealing with clerical domains (as seen in the newly released Divine Power) in Forgotten Realms and Eberron. And past articles have had similar updates. And an article expanding on familiars from Arcane Power was also a nice idea (and familiars in Eberron).

However, those articles should be rare as they necessitate the book making the purchase of the magazine itself incomplete.
Especially since, three years ago, that kind of content would be a free Web Enhancement.

It's the lack of new writer and non-established freelancers that irks me. They seem to be strictly playing it safe with people they know.
It's especially disappointing since there's no page limits for the online magazines and how Dungeon hovers a good 15-30 pages more than Dragon almost every month. They could easily fill that gap with rookie articles.

We'll see what happens when the restructuring they promised ages ago actually happens (DM content in Dungeon, Player content in Dragon). The fact it's been 2-3 months since then suggests they have the issues planned out quite a bit in advance.
Once we get the separation they might suddenly realize they need to really pad-up the Player content (as Dungeon with only 2/3rds of the adventures initially promised easily tops 100 pages, so adding content will make it a giant). The only way to equalize without tripling Dragon content would be to cut-back on Dungeon adventures to just the Adventure Path, meaning NO fan adventures making the cut. And I just don't see them letting much fan-made player content through the gate.

[DocBeard]

Well, you'll never know until you start submitting. I admit to being dissapointed that the articles I've submitted haven't even gotten the courtesy of a, "No, we're not interested.", but hey.

As for the Shadowfell, Manual of the Planes goes to lengths to show that there is life there, and it's not just 'trapped people being tortured'. It even goes into detail on a major city or two. As for me, I usually play it as being like the feywild, but with ghosts stories instead of fairy tales in mind; a spirit world for minor spirits to hang out in and for adventurers to jump around in without going to heaven or hell just yet. I might throw a domain or two in the mysterious geography of the Shadowfell, but if I was running a Ravenloft campaign I'd have Ravenloft be a separate plane that had its own Feywild and Shadowfell,

[Hell_Born]

My opinion is, if they do make Ravenloft a campaign setting in 4e, they'll simply make it an "ordinary" materium world, but one where the borders to the Shadowfell are thinner then normal, allowing them to apply the Domains of Dread concept (the only thing they actually looted for Core) to the materium as well as the Shadowfell. Or Classic Darklords will actually be trapped in the Shadowfell echo of their lands, but will also be able to manifest in the materium version, and deploy a few planar tricks that go towards mimicking the old Domain Barriers.

[Gnarfflinger]

I like the idea of a Materium world cobbled together from other worlds, but only accessible from the Shadowfell. The mists could easily be tendrils of shadow instead of ether. Now all we need is for WotC to get off their duff and make it!

[ewancummins]

I like the idea of a Materium world cobbled together from other worlds, but only accessible from the Shadowfell. The mists could easily be tendrils of shadow instead of ether. Now all we need is for WotC to get off their duff and make it!

Ah, but you don't need THEM to make it. YOU can make it, my friend.

[Jack the Reaper]

Hey! Now I discovered that the adventure Death's Reach also takes place in the Shadowfell! Was there really nobody here who knew it, when I asked in the beginning of this thread in what products is the Shadowfell mentioned? Nu nu nu...

[Isabella]

Given only one person actually bothered to answer your question...

[HuManBing]

Given only one person actually bothered to answer your question...

...which they did in the very first post after topic start. And the rest of the posts have been discussing "musings on the Shadowfell".

[Jack the Reaper]

Well, that's why I assumed everybody else agrees with the first reply, and has nothing to add to it.

Okay, so now I ask again: does anybody know of other products that describe the Shadowfell?

[Kaitou Kage]

The biggest ones really are Manual of the Planes and the specific domain-related Dragon articles. The shadar-kai article wasn't bad. It didn't talk about the Shadowfell as much as about the race, but you might be able to infer some things from it.

[nothri]

"First I would like to say, that I embrace fulheartedly the concept of RL in the Shadowfell. I know that this topic was thoroughly discussed already, so I won't open it again; but isn't it awesome to discover suddenly that the lands of Ravenloft, which we all love and know so good, are only a part of a full-scale world of darkness and horror?"

My feelings on the matter, to paraphrase a random internet quote, can be described as a really loud and angry "meh". Given all the bizarre reworking the cosmology has been subjected to, I think the Shadowfell is the best "fit" for Ravenloft we have available. But there's also a lot of troublesome problems that go along with that.

One thing I do reject entirely is the notion that NOW ravenloft is a "part of a full-scale world". Cause I don't know about you boys and girls, but it was that way from day one with me.

Here's what I liked about old school RL- the scale was ambigious because the mists hid the true edges of the world. No one knew how far the world extended, how many lost souls were trapped there. I liked the notion of RL as a thing unto itself, unseen but constantly roving, reaching out and ripping free places and people that interest it. I think the Mists are a powerful and desciptive narrative device that isn't easily replaced with some other phenomena inherent to the Shadowfell without losing something in the translation. I think tying RL too closely to the "other dimension of evil" runs into the same problems that using Planescape and Ravenloft does- the otherworldly inhabitants risk being so strange and bizarre that it kills the sense of normalacy in the setting. And yes, normalcy is IMPORTANT, because fear is hard to create if you don't have a sense of familiarity to your surroundings- normalcy breads a sense of security, and the ability to yank that sense of security right out from under your PCs is an excellent means of delivering the terror. I have problems with dumping the setting into the shadowfell for the same reasons I might have problems setting my X-Files game in an alien city aboard a mothership. If the world is too alien, too foreign....well, you get the picture.