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JAL_1138
2015-05-08, 08:19 PM
This is an odd one.

(Forgive me for any typos, poor grammar, lack of clarity, rambling nonsensically, and suchlike; it's Friday night, I'm typing this on a cell phone, and tbh I'm not precisely sober.)

So, as a joke over in the "Things I can No Longer Do While Playing" thread, I came up with a meta sort of campaign setting based on "Edition War" being a rather literal phrase.


*I cannot build the campaign world as the post-apocalyptic result of 2e wizards discovering how to vastly increase their arcane might, the gods granting clerics and druids additional power to match them, with it all culminating in a massive, nuclear-level war of epic proportions, which ultimately depleted magic and weakened the gods.

**The opening area is not a few miles out from the devastated region where the last of the "Locate City Bombs" fell.

***The conflict was not called the Edition War.

****I must give a reason for not including 4e in the Edition War beyond the implication that it doesn't count, so that I don't start an edition war at the table (or on this forum).

The general idea, as indicated by the Locate City bomb joke, is that all the RAW craziness and caster supremacy of 3.5, with the probable exception of The Great God Pun-Pun, actually happened, resulting in the current game world (where, for the setting's purposes, those sorts of things no longer happen; even if the edition being used for it has crazy RAW shenanigans, the assumption is the setting is in the current game with its variants and houserules, whatever they may be, not the current edition as printed).

Then I started thinking about it. And the trouble I run into is 4e.

This seems like it could set up either A), a 4e campaign, or B), a 5e campaign that ignores the existence of 4e and moves straight from 3.5 to 5e, but not C), a 5e campaign if 4e did take place.

I can't for the life of me figure out a satisfactory way of fitting 4e into this thing if it's currently in 5e. Character abilities, mechanics, and overall power levels in 4th are so different from everything else it does not seem like 5e could reasonably follow it. FR's solution for going from 4e to 5e is basically "Ao did it. No, really, guys, it's totally not a retcon," which doesn't hold much appeal to me (particularly since I've never liked FR in the first place, not even back in AD&D), and is tied to that particular setting.

It's only an edition joke that got away from me and mutated, and I'm not likely to ever run it, but the puzzle of 4e-5e has me flummoxed. Even for something as silly as this, it bugs me to not have an answer for that.

So, Playground, any thoughts? How could 4e fit into this thing if it's set in 5e?

Gritmonger
2015-05-08, 10:34 PM
This is an odd one.

(Forgive me for any typos, poor grammar, lack of clarity, rambling nonsensically, and suchlike; it's Friday night, I'm typing this on a cell phone, and tbh I'm not precisely sober.)

So, as a joke over in the "Things I can No Longer Do While Playing" thread, I came up with a meta sort of campaign setting based on "Edition War" being a rather literal phrase.



The general idea, as indicated by the Locate City bomb joke, is that all the RAW craziness and caster supremacy of 3.5, with the probable exception of The Great God Pun-Pun, actually happened, resulting in the current game world (where, for the setting's purposes, those sorts of things no longer happen; even if the edition being used for it has crazy RAW shenanigans, the assumption is the setting is in the current game with its variants and houserules, whatever they may be, not the current edition as printed).

Then I started thinking about it. And the trouble I run into is 4e.

This seems like it could set up either A), a 4e campaign, or B), a 5e campaign that ignores the existence of 4e and moves straight from 3.5 to 5e, but not C), a 5e campaign if 4e did take place.

I can't for the life of me figure out a satisfactory way of fitting 4e into this thing if it's currently in 5e. Character abilities, mechanics, and overall power levels in 4th are so different from everything else it does not seem like 5e could reasonably follow it. FR's solution for going from 4e to 5e is basically "Ao did it. No, really, guys, it's totally not a retcon," which doesn't hold much appeal to me (particularly since I've never liked FR in the first place, not even back in AD&D), and is tied to that particular setting.

It's only an edition joke that got away from me and mutated, and I'm not likely to ever run it, but the puzzle of 4e-5e has me flummoxed. Even for something as silly as this, it bugs me to not have an answer for that.

So, Playground, any thoughts? How could 4e fit into this thing if it's set in 5e?

The chaos of the previous domination of magic was a thing to be prevented, and to that end the weavers were constrained and regulated, and every soul cleaved closely to its thread, and the threads mechanically woven in the heart of Mechanus itself until the warp and weft left little for the living to do but go about their lives in a regimented fashion, heavily constrained by the will of the gods so that no one might have that kind of power over another again. Motes of magic were doled out to a petitioner, used, and then snuffed like so many embers. Equality was finally attained - but at the cost of individuality. Every person could replace any other, with equal effect - and so the heroes and great persons of old faded into memory as it was now prohibited to everyone, and so nobody could stand out as a hero, or a leader, or a great architect of change.

The gods of Chaos finally had their way and broke the loom - the threads could be woven, but no longer would they be tightly controlled by the artificers of Mechanus.