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This ties into something else that bothered me-if one player has a samurai character, for example, can he really go off with the other party members, or is he stuck doing step-and-fetch quests for his master all the time? Does acting with "honor" mean violating your alignment? Why would anyone...

You clearly did not read my first contribution to this thread, or else you would have realized that I absolutely LOVE the idea of rebooting Oerth. I have no problem at all with rebooting either comic book characters or campaign settings-sometimes, the bad canon and continuity just gets to be...

I myself am not familiar with the changes to either setting, but based on the complaints I've seen regarding 4E Realms, it sounds like an appropriate comparison.

To elaborate on what Klaus stated in his post, From the Ashes was a massive, top-down change that radically altered the setting for the worse, and trashed many traits that fans had come to associate with the setting. For one thing, Greyhawk had never really been "advanced" outside of the...

Speaking as a die-hard Greyhawk fan, and one of the most regular and frequent contributors to Canonfire, I can only say that this is the absolute best thing to happen to Greyhawk in the last twenty years. No more of the absurd roller-coaster changes produced by Living Greyhawk. No more...

As DrunkonDuty said, a little bit of both. In the real world, we have the big "melting pot" type cities, where people from a wide variety of different backgrounds all live side by side, while at the same time we have more isolated/homogenous communities, such as in small towns, rural areas, and...

Well, it all depends on the needs of your campaign. Are your players going to want some justification as to why the rules have changed, or will they cheerfully accept your handwaving it and simply saying that "this is the way things work now. That's all that matters." More limited magic...

And that's your right as a DM and as a worldbuilder. If I was a player in your game, those would be decisions I'd have to accommodate when designing a character-if you say no orcs or elves, period, then that's that. All I'm saying, however, is that for it to be a true D&D experience when...

This is a case of adapting the "culture" in question to fit the needs of the setting. I'm approaching this question as a worldbuilder, and any D&D setting I created or ran as a DM (if I gamed, that is, which I don't) would have the standard demihuman and humanoid races set out in the 1E Monster...

First off, before I begin, I will offer a caveat. I believe in modifying cultures to fit the needs of the game and the setting, not the other way around. To that end, what I would be doing with the Orient is nothing that countless writers have not already done with the Occident. As we all...

Along with avoiding statting out NPCs, would it help if the campaign setting is in general lower-powered, with fewer magic items? I think the prevalence of characters decked out like Christmas trees, with magic shops to boot, really leads to problems when players wonder why, if these characters...

I agree with all these things, but so far only S'mon has really answered my actual question-what role can prominent NPCs play to advance the plot, or otherwise help the players, that doesn't lead to them hogging the spotlight? I too prefer lower-level settings, where a prominent NPC's power can...

One of the most common critiques leveled at high-level NPCs in established settings is that they steal the spotlight from the players, and can serve as a deus ex machina, or otherwise take on the "real" threats while the PCs are involved with the lesser villains. What, then, is the proper...

Don't forget, too, that much of the astoundingly beautiful art of the Renaissance was in fact varying degrees of crass commercialism, political propaganda, or self-glorification. Artists such as Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael and Michaelangelo routinely sold their services to the highest bidders...

A lot of the really good points have already been touched on here: the drow were initially cool for their mystery, dangerous abilities, and the remarkable way in which they were first revealed by Gygax, but everything from overexposure to the rapidly developed cliche of angst-ridden good guys...

Fighting Fantasy was where it all began for me. I started first with Portal of Evil, and from there I fell in love with the world of Titan, especially as described in the milestone book Titan: The Fighting Fantasy World. It made the setting truly come alive for me, as a living, breathing...

One aspect that you might like to try is to develop the societies of the natives. There's no reason they need to all be evil and/or savage; seeing some highly sophisticated, good-aligned yuan-ti might make for a fascinating change of pace, for example. Your players and the colony they may...

On the other hand, this could make for an interesting role-playing challenge, couldn't it? Play a race most other players hate, and role-play it in a way that doesn't get under their skin. Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that you and I are playing in a DL War of the Lance campaign...

In looking at the recent threads on elfhate and gnomehate, I began wondering about steps that could be taken to reduce the hate and/or indifference players could have for such races, and make them more likable and/or playable. Some of it could be fluff, some of it could be crunch, but all such...

One possible difference is the nature of the "worlds" that have been created in the two types of fantasy, in the sense that one was created piecemeal by many different writers and authors, and the other is often the version of a single creator. Take the example of Homer and Virgil mentioned...