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Yes, one thing I like about Al-Qadim is that they didn't try to make it historically accurate, but drew upon Hollywood movies for inspiration. That's part of what made it fun as a game.

According to 30 Years of Adventure: A Celebration of Dungeons & Dragons, they had some more of the historical books planned. The reason they cancelled the line was because they never sold well. (So, apparently, TSR made some reasonable business decisions at the time. Who knew?) There was...

Yeah, even gnomes feel insulted at being called gnomes. They prefer to be mistaken for effeminate dwarves. Following Lord Metal-Demon, I'll give bonus XP to whoever gets that reference.

Is this what you're thinking of? YouTube - Monty Python - Prejudice.

As has been stated, Spelljammer and Planescape already do this. The issue is that if you do this, then you're playing a Spelljammer campaign or a Planescape campaign, rather than anything else. There's nothing wrong with such campaigns, but they have their own flavour that would make it harder...

I suppose I was vague in describing what I take as "the system". In part, that may be because I only have a vague idea myself. I only brought it up because it occurred to me that different notions of what the system is would impact what we're saying. FWIW, by the "basic d20 mechanic", I meant...

Definitely. That reminds me of one more: Titan (the setting used in the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks - I once used it for a 2e game) I agree with you, but I'd rather keep this thread focused on the question I asked. Thanks. :)

Except that in chess, you can decide on a move with no more information than the current state of the board. How can you roleplay when you're not there for the DM's description and the interactions of the other PCs?

Absolutely. However, the endpoints can be clearly different from each other, even if there is a continuum in between. By analogy, I certainly look older than I did 20 years ago, even though no significant changes occurred on a day-to-day basis. So while we may not be able to draw a line, the...

They normally go together, but not always. With the OGL, you can have two or more games with the same system that have different brands. Also, the Menzter Basic Set and the Essentials Red Box use the same brand (and even look almost identical), yet have very different systems. Then I...

Take a look at the monsters in the SRD (you can find them here); if it's in the Monster Manual, but not in this list, then it's probably because WotC owns the name.

In the "I think TSR was right to publish so much material" thread, there is a discussion about how all of the campaign settings produced during the 2e era served the fracture the gaming community. One claim that has been stated more than once is that people tend to pick one campaign setting, and...

What this shows is that Pathfinder is its own brand, not that Pathfinder has its own system. Despite your initial claim, the rest of what you say here seems to support the view that Pathfinder is not its own system. The issue, as I understand it, isn't whether Paizo came up with their own...

That's an example of something that I think would be a great idea from the point of view of a business. As a person who likes trying out different settings with different flavours, however, I'd be disappointed in this. The settings would have less to differentiate them.

While I've never felt the need to explain away another person's preference as being due to "nostalgia", I've never looked at it this way before. Thanks for posting the link.

This got me wondering. I've looked at some of those articles, but I've never taken a systematic look at them all to see what the overall setting would be like if you didn't use any other information beyond the articles themselves. Could you describe how it differs from the grey box?

In response to a number of posters, I just wanted to point out that the correct spelling is "Al-Qadim", and not "Al-Quadim". There is no "u". You can pronounce the "q" like a "k", but it's supposed to represent a phoneme in Arabic that has no equivalent in English. The "q" is commonly used in...

I think it's worth it to draw a distinction between what is good for the game/hobby, and what is good for a company. The sheer diversity of campaign settings produced during the '90s was one of the best things that could have happened for the game, while at the same time being almost the worst...

I think you're loading the question with your use of the word "restrict". When you allow too much, you restrict yourself from so many possibilities. Umbran's colour analogy shows why. More options doesn't always increase the possibilities. Sometimes having less options opens up possibilities...

The quote you gave was already linked to earlier in this thread. And it is immaterial to the claim you made. Once again, you said that Ed Greenwood "self identifies as a dirty old man" (your words, your emphasis). He did not identify as such in the quote you gave. Do you know what it means to...