Café de Nuit

I've had a chance to download the article and look it over, and I like it.

That said, I see it as a return tot eh roots of where Ravenloft started. It is my hope that they build on it, but I fear that if they hold to one setting a year, and they go for Greyhawk and/or Dragonlance to get money out of the fanboys, that might push Ravenloft back to 2012. Then there's the specter of the deal with White Wolf that may put the brakes on the full campaign setting permanently if the legal questions can't be answered in full.

I hope that they continue with these articles, because that may be all weget from WotC for a long time...

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/4ex/20081117a

Demiplanes

The last regular type of plane is a demiplane—a unique place where anything might be encountered. Like astral dominions or elemental realms, demiplanes are things created by some power or agency after the formation of the world. They are not part of either the Astral Sea or the Elemental Chaos, but instead exist as bubbles of existence beyond the normal bounds of the cosmos.

Most demiplanes are small and secret. They’re created to be refuges, vaults, or more rarely tombs or prisons. It takes extremely powerful magic to create something out of nothing. It’s much easier to build a sanctuary in the Elemental Chaos than to create a secret plane of your own outside the bounds of the universe.

The most well known demiplane is Sigil, City of Doors. No one knows who created it or how, but Sigil holds portals uncounted that lead to every other plane of existence. Veteran planar explorers soon learn that Sigil is the first place to look when a door to somewhere else is needed.

I've had a chance to download the article and look it over, and I like it.

Gnarfflinger wrote:That said, I see it as a return tot eh roots of where Ravenloft started. It is my hope that they build on it, but I fear that if they hold to one setting a year, and they go for Greyhawk and/or Dragonlance to get money out of the fanboys, that might push Ravenloft back to 2012. Then there's the specter of the deal with White Wolf that may put the brakes on the full campaign setting permanently if the legal questions can't be answered in full.

Well... from some unconfirmed spoilers, it's gonna be Greyhawk after Eberron in 2010, with a complete setting reboot (as in Greyhawk Wars-on never happened). After that, well... everything is up in the air, but they would have done two classical fantasy setting and one 'punk/grit' setting. The only settings that would offer them something different would be Ravenloft and Dark Sun (unless they want to try out Spelljammer again, and I honestly doubt it). Assuming that the problem with White Wolf is easy enough to deal with, then Ravenloft, being a more popular setting than Dark Sun was, along with the added bonus that new Ravenloft novels are continuing to be produced, has a reasonably good chance at coming out 2011.

However, they could stick with the tried-and-true, and bring out Dragonlance, as it does have the name recognition. But until we get any hints from WotC at their current direction... this is all just theorycrafting

DasSoviet wrote:Well... from some unconfirmed spoilers, it's gonna be Greyhawk after Eberron in 2010, with a complete setting reboot (as in Greyhawk Wars-on never happened).

Yeah... I can't see that. It would pretty much drive away everyone involved in Living Greyhawk. Sounds like some wishful thinking from Gygax fans.

Jester of the FoS wrote:Yeah... I can't see that. It would pretty much drive away everyone involved in Living Greyhawk. Sounds like some wishful thinking from Gygax fans.

Well... considering how much I know about Greyhawk (About as much as I know about Birthright, all said...), I don't really know how much that changes. But I stumbled upon the rumour on the WotC forums, which linked to the Greyhawk fansite where they have a rather large discussion going on about it.

Link to rumour

Take it as you will... it could very well be another theroy about how to go about reducing the 'lore baggage' of a setting.

WotC did a very poor job of converting from 2nd to 3rd. Living Death had to convert even though WotC had no intention of writing MotRD for D20 system, requiring the campaign co-ordinator to write the book herself or lose the campaign. I was supposed to judge Living Death at Winter Fantasy in 2001, but was excused after confessing that I spend so much of my time trying to get a feel for the new rules that I didn't get a chance to read the module.

And converting Living City was a debacle! They ignored the conversion guide they published in 2000, going instead to some table instead. Then you could only keep so many magic items. And the conversion process was scheduled for a year. They decided instead to convert in January instead of August. I heard that they were writing the second part of the two part module to explain conversion while the first part was being played...

I don't think they can do much worse to the Living Greyhawk players...