I left plenty of room in my Dawnlands 4e setting for anything you might want, mainly by not over-writing it. The Dawnlands themselves are only about 1000km by 1250km, and in that, I've only described a small fraction of the stuff they contain, despite writing several tens of thousands of words about it (more than enough to play several complete campaigns with the material as is). What I consciously did was leave room for expansion in the setting, so that DMs can either use premade material or insert their own.

For example, both the Forest Dreamers and the mountain tribes are underdescribed right now because I thought they'd be ideal places to integrate the new Primal material. The Orthocracy of Kaddish and its practice of soulforging allows PCs to play all sorts of weird races without forcing me to integrate entire societies of bladelings or whatever into some corner.


Really, there are two distinct problems under discussion in this thread disguised as a single problem.

The first problem is constant mechanical expansion, the second is constant fluff expansion. The latter is the real problem most people have, disguised as the former. So just ignore the fluff and reskin. Problem solved.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;298128The first problem is constant mechanical expansion, the second is constant fluff expansion. The latter is the real problem most people have, disguised as the former. So just ignore the fluff and reskin. Problem solved.

Perhaps I'm in the minority here, then, because I have no problem with fluff expansion. I don't run strict canon games (at least not ones for pre-made settings) so I don't have a problem with anyone saying that something is "core".

My issue is the inevitability of power creep. In the long run, balancing every splatbook is going to be impossible; yet the "everything is core" philosophy demands that this be accomplished.

Quote from: oktoberguard;298029i guess i better not tell wizards that when i play eberron, i don't use psionics-based monsters, races, or classes. they might come over and take away my dm license.

Watch out! They're banging on your door right now! :eek:

Quote from: The Worid;298132Perhaps I'm in the minority here, then, because I have no problem with fluff expansion. I don't run strict canon games (at least not ones for pre-made settings) so I don't have a problem with anyone saying that something is "core".

My issue is the inevitability of power creep. In the long run, balancing every splatbook is going to be impossible; yet the "everything is core" philosophy demands that this be accomplished.

4e doesn't remove the need for individual judgment and evaluation. Are you planning to play in the RPGA? If not, then just fiddle with it as you please (my solution). If you are, encourage WotC to publish errata, updates, clarifications, etc. and then combine that with whatever limited judgment you're allowed to exercise within their framework.

The problem is that this "everything exists everywhere" assumption will inevitably lead to the "contamination" of pre-extant game settings (ie. whatever the latest PC Race from the latest PHB will have to suddenly have a retroactive history in the Forgotten Realms, further and further diluting any uniqueness that setting has), and new game settings will be created with that "absolutely everything must exist here" design philosophy.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;298177and new game settings will be created with that "absolutely everything must exist here" design philosophy.

Even 2e settings were very open - you could have anything show up in Planescape or Ravenloft.  Spelljammer, FR & Eberron are so high fantasy that anything could have its place.   The problem is settings like Dark Sun, Kara-Tur and Al-Qadim which demand certain boundaries in choices to fully make sense.

My assumption is that WotC won't make those "limited" settings.   That will be left to the 3rd party GSL dudes who could make their setting as "limited" as they like.

Quote from: Spinachcat;297882I once ran "Shadowrun Bangkok" and I didn't have anything outside the core book.   This was fine for 5 of the 6 players.   The 6th guy was deeply nervous and confused for the entire game because we left the officially approved confines of Seattle.

Shadowrun Bangkok could make a hard man humble.

Quote from: Abyssal Maw;297925By contrast, allowing everything means allowing all possibilities.

From the referee side of the screen, I have no problem with that.

Quote from: Abyssal Maw;297925It also means when a player goes out and buys the complete book of minotaurs or whatever, he can play the minotaur in the campaign without getting a special dispensation from the pope.

This is what I believe the Pundit is referring to: if a player can choose to play anything in any game, then every setting is potentially a bland mishmash indistiguishable from every other setting.

Part of what makes a setting distinctive is what it includes and what it excludes.

Quote from: Abyssal MawI think you guys live in the realm of simulation so deeply sometimes you forget that people actually play these games for fun.

:rolleyes:

Quote from: Abyssal MawYou will likewise be denied the right to say "but shadar-kai (or whatever else) don't exist in Faerun, it's not canon!"

I'm sure that's fine for organized play, but I think it's a grave mistake to make that assumption on behalf of every referee running every D&D game.

Spinachcat : In my homebrew I've dealt with the limited list of races by compiling the crunch under a smaller number of fluff races.  

Briarmen are demonically tainted elves with antlers, but systemically each individual is either a tiefling or an eladrin.  Same for halflings and gnomes.  

And though the number of humans on the continent is extremely limited by the setting, we have two human players, one of whose character is actually is a human, and the other of whom is an in game half elf with human statistics.

Going forward, I plan to use these methods to incorporate new material without disrupting my game world.  Goliaths get dropped into the dwarf camp because they're all about toughness, shifters in with elves because of the shared feral thing, Daeva in with Briarmen because of the extraplanar angle.

The new Party Line: "There have always been Warforged in Faerun".

RPGPundit

Less "There have always been Warforged in Faerun" and more "Why should I care that there are now Warforged in Faerun."  The forced inclusion of "core" material is a problem that only affects RPGA members.  GMs and their groups can continue to pick and choose material as they wish, though I myself have never found a piece of material that can't be easily fitted in to a setting with very little work.

Well, if entire regions of Faerun, or the back-history of the setting, are changed from product to product to account for those Warforged (or whatever the PC-race-of-the-week is), that affects your ability to use the setting.

RPGPundit

Pundit : Not really.  I ran a 4 year campaign worth of OWOD Vampire with a change in the cast of surviving clans, and that took me roughly zero extra effort.  I'm running a 4e campaign in which I gladly welcome all of the emerging content, and that hasn't really been any work either.  Changing the race of a group from one I dislike to one I like is a non-effort that removes any requirement to change the history of the setting.

I strongly feel that the impact of those changes in the products is overestimated. Ignoring or changing the stuff you don't like is usually easier than you think.

Heck, Ed Greenwood himself said that his own campaign was really behind the official timeline, and something like Time of Trouble haven't happened yet.

Quote from: Imperator;298429I strongly feel that the impact of those changes in the products is overestimated. Ignoring or changing the stuff you don't like is usually easier than you think.

Certainly. Informed customers are in the habit of buying (and then using) product that suits them as-is rather than product they need to heavily customize, though. Case in point:

Quote from: Imperator;298429Heck, Ed Greenwood himself said that his own campaign was really behind the official timeline, and something like Time of Trouble haven't happened yet.

And that should tell you something about Greenwood's stance towards the "official" post-1993 development of his homebrew, none of which has seen any use at the man's game table.