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View Full Version : whats the best campaign book in 4th D&D?



Arrowstorm122
2010-08-07, 06:53 PM
im mostly new to D&D, and wanna make some adventures with my friends, and im going to be DM/GM. but im not sure exatly how to build an adventure up, and would like a tip to which campaign book thingy is best of what you think in the 4th D&D. could be good inspiration and maybe even get me to use the adventure or pieces of it :smallbiggrin:

Sir_Elderberry
2010-08-07, 07:06 PM
I like Eberron. Reading it gave me tons of ideas as far as plot hooks go. And it's a setting filled with cool stuff.

oxybe
2010-08-07, 07:45 PM
FR is more along the lines of what one expects from traditional fantasy. wizards secluded in towers, orc armies, dwarfy dwarves and whatnot. gods walk hidden among man & woman moving the world like chess pieces.

Eberron takes many traditional elements and turns them on their heads. orcs are hippies protecting the world from cthulu, dwarves are the greedy bankers, gnomes are the bureaucrats, goblins used to own the continent and the existance of gods is still up for debate. the 12 magic dragonmark (well 13, but...) and their houses form large continent-wide guilds and the prophecy behind those marks is still unknown to all, even the wisest of dragons.

Dark Sun is D&D in a Mad Max-esque crapsack desert world where everything under the sun is out to kill you. cities are run by the tyrannical sorceror kings and outside it's a lawless place the gods (if there were any) have forsaken. cannabalistic halflings, tall nomadic elves, muls are the half-dwarven slave race and many races like orcs, goblins, ect... were killed in the sorceror kings' genocidal bid for immortality.

Sir_Elderberry
2010-08-07, 07:51 PM
Dark Sun also isn't out yet, I thought?

oxybe
2010-08-07, 08:10 PM
Dark Sun also isn't out yet, I thought?

:smallbiggrin:

Arrowstorm122
2010-08-08, 03:48 AM
ok, but i wonder, is the books like Underdark, Manual of the Planes, Open Grave etc. worth getting? can the things which is within them be helpful for makeing adventures?
also, oooh its hard to decide, FR or Eberron? hippie orcs or not? :smalltongue:
whos the badass(es)/main villian(s) in both of them? if there is one?

ghost_warlock
2010-08-08, 04:36 AM
Forgotten Realms is lame and even the fan-base can't decide if the 4e changes to the setting are good or bad, but the player book does have the Swordmage class which is pretty neat.

Eberron is good, and the player book has the artificer class and a few new/expanded races. Not much has changed between the 3.5 and 4th edition versions, setting-wise, though, so if you have the 3.5 book there's not much incentive to get the 4e campaign book.

DarkSun is the shiznit. Mul and thri-kreen racial stats, rules for character 'themes' that are described as being like paragon paths but for heroic tier, defiling vs. preserving arcane magic, a bunch of new weapons, and details for one of the most iconic and interesting settings for D&D. Only problem is you'll have to wait a couple weeks before you'll be able to get the book(s) legally.

oxybe
2010-08-08, 12:44 PM
ok, but i wonder, is the books like Underdark, Manual of the Planes, Open Grave etc. worth getting? can the things which is within them be helpful for makeing adventures?
also, oooh its hard to decide, FR or Eberron? hippie orcs or not? :smalltongue:
whos the badass(es)/main villian(s) in both of them? if there is one?

while i don't have underdark or manual of the planes (mainly because as personal preference, when i GM i don't care much for plane-hopping or the underdark) i do have Open Grave which contain a nice treatise on undead, their psychology, their habitats, diet, ect... really nice GM book if you're planning on using undead.

FR villains? i honestly couldn't tell you since FR is a big "meh" for me. i'm not a fan of "traditional" fantasy since i've been playing it almost exclusively for 12 years :smallannoyed: . i'll play in FR, but i honestly don't care enough to research the setting that much. the red wizards of thay, the followers of Bane and the drow are the only groups i can immediately think of off hand without resorting to google. that and most FR GMs i played with took us away from cannon and used his own villains.

Eberron has several groups: Blood of Vol is a cult trying to ascend their lich leader (Vol) into godhood, lords of dusk are a group of imprisoned rakshakas trying to gain their freedom, the lord of blades is a fascist warforged leader who's dissatisfied with their treatment over the last war (they were used as disposable footsoldiers before they were recognized as a sentient species with rights) and is gathering an army to conquer khorvaire and kill all fleshy meatsacks, the delkyr are mad planar outsiders trying to invade the prime material with their lovecraftian monstrosities (which are stopped by the hippy orcs), various countries have their own machinations and interactions and the various dragonmarked houses have their own politics (internal and external). depending on your stance, some religions can be good or evil (the silver flame is generally good guys, but they did carry out a lycantrope genocide...). the list goes on.

your call, but i'd ask someone else then me for info on FR.

Terraoblivion
2010-08-08, 01:33 PM
One thing to remember about Eberron is that apart from the Lords of Dust and the Daelkyr no group can be considered purely evil. While Vol and her closest subordinates are definitely horrible beings, most of her church consists of ordinary people concerned with self-improvement and having creepy looking church decor. It's not like the average Volite wants to overthrow civilization, murder their neighbor or anything of the sort and should the church leadership tell them to, they would either leave the church or revolt against the leadership.

There are also quite a few more ambiguous groups out there. The revered mummies of the elves have very far reaching plans that they are not revealing to anybody, but could be both good and bad for others, especially since they tend to take a very long-term view. The dragons also see themselves as the guardians of the world, but they don't really have a problem with using genocide to further their goals, though they prefer not to. Even the Church of the Silver Flame, the classic good guy religion, has a dark side to it as was made manifest during the war and during the lycanthropic inquisition. At times they grow a bit too fond of the whole purification by fire theme.

And even the Lords of Dust might well turn out to be allies against a more immediate threat. Sure they have their own machinations and goals that you really don't want to see succeed, but that doesn't change that they are definitely enemies of the Daelkyr, the Inspired and many other of the major antagonist groups.

In general the villainous groups can be divided into two tiers. The mundane and the world shattering. The mundane includes such groups as the Aurum, who are basically the conspiracy of international bankers, and the Lord of Blades and the intelligence agencies of various nations. The world shattering largely have either planar ties or ties to the forces of creation itself. These include such groups as the Lords of Dust trying to revive primordial evil and the Inspired trying to kill the subconscious of humanity and put their homeplane into an unchanging stasis, saving themselves in the process.

Arrowstorm122
2010-08-08, 02:48 PM
isnt it hard to make a world which is so complicated with different factions/clans/cults and a so bigass story to it?
tryed to imagine one, but seemed bad :smallfrown:
when you (if you ever do it) imagine or make a campaign/world like Eberron and Far Realm, how are you then doing step for step? if you DO something there can be said "step for step" :smalltongue:

hamishspence
2010-08-08, 02:56 PM
Worldbuilding can be hard. Eberron was the winner of a big contest.

Still, it may be one of those things that improves with practice.

oxybe
2010-08-08, 02:59 PM
isnt it hard to make a world which is so complicated with different factions/clans/cults and a so bigass story to it?
tryed to imagine one, but seemed bad :smallfrown:

only if you try to force all of them in at once.

Joe Peasant living on the borders could probably care less about the lords of dusk, delkyr, vol, or whatnot. he's more worried about the border skirmishes that threaten to destroy his fields.

John Fancypants, a well-off trader trying to open a business in Sharn might care more about paying proper omage to the dragonmarked houses then the various villains.

really how many groups exist IRL that are "evil/ambiguously evil/not evil but opposed to our culture"? now how many of them affect the daily life of Joe Average? heck, how many of them affect the lives of Joe Somebody? the life of Joe Thrillseeker?

very rarely do more then 1-2 groups butt heads in a way that the PCs are involved unless it's something EVERYONE would be after, like a cannith genesis forge thought to be lost after Crye exploded into the Mournland (effectively a large & powerful magic item pooping machine, the first warforged were made with these). most of these groups have their own ideas and unless the PCs dip there toes into a random assortment of plots, you'll probably only really meet up with one or two of them, if that.

remember: there are small cartels, groups of bandits, ect... still operating outside of these larger threats.

Arrowstorm122
2010-08-08, 04:09 PM
Joe is a very popular name in Eberron huh? :smallamused:

oxybe
2010-08-08, 04:40 PM
Joe is a very popular name in Eberron huh? :smallamused:

trust me, before chuck norris Boranel ir'Wynarn took over breland, it's last 8 kings were joe's. the 4 before were steve's.

great setting. horrible naming.

Arrowstorm122
2010-08-08, 05:20 PM
hehe, true :smallwink:

Myatar_Panwar
2010-08-08, 05:24 PM
DarkSun is the shiznit. Mul and thri-kreen racial stats, rules for character 'themes' that are described as being like paragon paths but for heroic tier, defiling vs. preserving arcane magic, a bunch of new weapons, and details for one of the most iconic and interesting settings for D&D. Only problem is you'll have to wait a couple weeks before you'll be able to get the book(s) legally.

Most local comic-shops and other independents have it already.

I just went to my local shop and they just had it on the shelf ready to buy. I went because I had heard of others having similar luck (not the same shop).

Also yes, Dark Sun is pretty awesome. Its nice to be able to explore a world completely free of my fantasy conceptions.