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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Spell" data-source="post: 4001771" data-attributes="member: 19718">i appreciate this point of view, but, in my experience the theoretical negative effect of this lack of guidance had a very good practical effect.namely, the published adventures (even those in dungeon) didn't assume that your group was made of X, Y, and Z. they told you what the assumptions were, in phrases like: "this adventure is designed from a party of 23 total level. a wizard with access to fire spells and magical weapons +1 or higher are needed for the successful completion of the adventure".if my group was more or less like that, cool, i would have run the adventure. if not, i just had to look around to find another published source that had assumptions that more or less matched those made in my current campaign.also, if the designer put 21 magical items in the treasure of the dragon, and my campaign had little or no magic, i could have just erased the magical items from the hoard, and run the next adventure with no actual problems.the clear statement that players of level X should have Y gp worth of magical item means that if your game does not conform to that model (either because you want a magically rich world, or because you want a nitty gritty "no magic" sword and sorcery campaign) you are pretty much out of luck with published scenarios. it also means that you can't publish yours. and, finally, when you seek help on boards like these, you always find the random smartass that asks you why in the world you have to change the game assumptions, acting as if you were personally insulting the game designers. threads do tend to go downhill from there, at times, and it's just sad.so, yes, in theory it's great to know that the average game has this average amount of magic or what not. in practice, if the published products only cater for the "average" market (because it's the most representative), it means that you are left on your own if you want a different gaming experience.please notice how this attitude is also present in game worlds design. Rich Baker saying: "If we said that the Blood War had never happened in FR (and I'm not saying we would), what canon would be violated? There are a couple of plane descriptions in the FRCS and FR Player's Guide that would be inaccurate, but is there something major besides those?", to me, means that this is not *my* game anymore. i am supposed to follow what's on the book. if i had decided to play a number of campaigns revolving on the Blood War in 3e forgotten realms, i would be well angry at the comment. (well, i suppose that since they are changing so much anyway, it wouldn't make that big a difference...)i ran a poll some weeks ago asking what TSR/ wizards setting people loved, and invariably, the original editions of the settings received more votes of the "revised, because we decided to advance the metaplot to cash in some money" versions.this, to me, says that people don't want to play in wizards' game worlds. they want to play their own modified versions, without being afraid that someone tomorrow will come and say: "oh, well, we decided to erase this continent. there was little reference in the published material, so it doesn't make any difference, right?"why should that be different, when it come to rule systems?!?</blockquote>

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