Mishihari Lord
First Post
There were plenty of things in Basic and AD&D that I would consider default setting elements. Holmes Basic had an adventure in the back of the book, which IIRC had some details on the town. I think the AD&D DMG had something similar. The equipment list says a lot about the current state of technology. The artifact list in the AD&D DMG had a lot of setting. All of the names spells and magic items. The skill list says a lot about how the world works. The racial descriptions and class descriptions are a very important part of the setting, as are the monster descriptions. Sure, A DM can choose to include or exclude anything he wants, but the default assumption is that if it's in the book it's in the setting.
I have seen bare-bones systems without these elements, but I don't think that taking these things out would leave a satisfactory form of D&D.
Once I accepted that setting in the core could not easily be avoided, the question was "how much is appropriate?" My personal answer would be more than any previous D&D system, but less than Shadowrun.
I have seen bare-bones systems without these elements, but I don't think that taking these things out would leave a satisfactory form of D&D.
Once I accepted that setting in the core could not easily be avoided, the question was "how much is appropriate?" My personal answer would be more than any previous D&D system, but less than Shadowrun.