Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 harpergrey Jan 09, 2010 18:19:30	Entry. Comments are very welcome.
#2 dulsi Jan 10, 2010 8:48:51	The old eladrin and eladrin of 4E are not the same race.  The new eladrin are intended to be the old high elves (or sun/gold elves of FR).  They aren't the planar race from planescape.  The tieflings are also much more removed from their planar origin.  The mixing of devil blood is intended to have been long ago.  Most have never traveled to other planes or had dealings with devils/demons.  They also aren't usually evil anymore. It sounds like you're hung up on the "default" setting.  It isn't meant to be a restriction.  In fact WotC doesn't want to fully define it like FR or Greyhawk.  I think describing a history and personality for the races is more interesting than the limited descriptions in the old books.  Same with the gods.  I'd rather have a somewhat detailed god than simply have a divinity feat that goes to a god of protection.  The new "setting" feels more like a world and could help players get into the role-playing aspects of the game.  Otherwise I think you would have to replace the history material with more of a dry explaination of role-playing. I haven't limited myself to the characterization of the races in the PHB.  The dragonborn of my world are more similar to Native Americans.  I'm using a New World like setting (early American colinization).  The dragonborn are natives from the New World along with the tieflings.  They have an Aztec like culture to the south of the colonies.  The Old World is more of a traditional fantasy setting.  I treat the eladrin and elves as the same race for the most part.  The setting is meant to be a mash of religions so I have some new gods but would allow the default gods, FR gods and Eberron gods.
#3 divinepyre Jan 11, 2010 19:24:52	Your problems with the newest setting are intriguing to me. I partly agree with dulsi, above, in that you seem a bit hung up on the "default" setting, when in fact 4e doesn't have a default setting. It's a loose connection of places and events, sort of, that you are meant to huck together into a comprehensible world. This would seem to make it even more suitable to what appears to be your style of worldbuilding: this race has this background, and can thus be inserted anywhere, with events around them being shaped around or leading to those. I personally have been working on a campaign setting for around six years now, and when 4th came out I promptly looked it over, purged all the things I didn't like (most of it), and shamelessly appropriated the themes that intrigued me (Gnolls being baddies on the archetypal level of Orcs and Yeenoghu being more important, for example). Regarding Elves and Eladrin: what's been done here is essentially to bring back the concept of the Fair Folk (sometimes altering that concept to suit their vision, as in the case of dryads not being comely humanoids in their natural forms) and place it into the core game. The Eladrin are thus like these archaic "real-world" fey now: they might save you in the woods, or they might trap you in a feast until you turn to dust from age, never realizing it. Ironically they've been made into the absolute embodiment of Chaotic Neutral just after that definition was removed from the game. Using your examples then, the Eladrin would fit into a world in much the same way as our stories of the Fair Folk fit into ours: they're an ephemeral, sometimes-considered-superstition race that would have had minimal contact with the other races over their development. But hints of their influence would be pervasive: everybody would have legends and myths about Eladrin. "Normal" Elves are just Wood Elves. They are literally the Wood Elf definition lifted from the 3.5 Monster Manual, elaborated upon a bit, and made into the primary Material Plane elf species. As for their personalities, check the 3.5 books again: it's the same thing, just more pronounced. Elves are creatures given to powerful emotions, and swift changes between said emotions. So really, elves aren't that much different versus the previous edition. Tieflings and Dragonborn represent a tremendous departure from their origins, but no one with any shred of honesty in them is going to deny those races were altered and included as they were for anything other than "cool factor". But it's all kind of moot, given what appears to be your preferred style of play/world building. The best thing you can do if you want to be play in the new edition (and unless you harvest PDFs of the old books you're going to have to, as the 3.0 and 3.5 books are rapidly ceasing to exist much like their 2.0 predecessors) is read the books through, and pick out the things you like. And mercilessly ignore all the rest. It can make a tremendous amount of effort for you, especially if you are discarding certain elements that are taken for granted in the Player's Handbooks. But if the world that results is good enough, then the players really aren't going to care if a few details don't match up to what they're familiar with.