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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Raven Crowking" data-source="post: 2592887" data-attributes="member: 18280">I wouldn't say that is a fair assumption, overall, although it might be in your neck of the woods.  My working assumption is that each DM's preferences, combined with the preferences of the people that DM games with and the flexibility of everyone involved, gives the DM some idea of what sort of campaign world the players would best like.  Again, this is within the framework of the DM being interested in it enough to actually do the work and run the games.The plethora of options available (WotC, homebrewed, and third party) means that nearly any sort of campaign setup can be devised.  Often, much of the setup is rules selection instead of rules creation.  I think that, in many cases (mine included) we are beginning to see "campaign workbooks" put together that spell out options.  Some of these are as carefully thought out and as detailed as published campaign worlds.Personally, I think the "throw all the spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks" philosophy of world design results in a world that is inherently less interesting and meaningful than a world that follows through on a limited set of initial premises.  Back in the days of 2E, I produced a mere 155 page campaign book, detailing gods in the same format as the excellent Forgotten Realms deity suppliment, explaining which of the Players' and DMs' Options were in use, and determining which kits were allowed to characters of various backgrounds.  This stuff allowed the world to seem a lot more real.IMHO, prestige classes and feats with a regional/cultural prerequisite do the same thing, only better.  I admit freely that the d20 System provided a better framework for the creation of campaign worlds than did 2E.  However, I do not always agree with the generic setting that they hung over that framework in the core ruleset.  I think that the problem is not that you are playing the game in a certain way, or that even the preponderance of games (especially pick-up games) are played in a certain way.  I think that the problem is simply that WotC is marketting control of the setting to the players.  Then, rather than having players who ask to play a certain PrC, you have players who forget that there is a social contract in place, and demanding that the DM do specific types of work as some form of obligation.Is this the majority of players?  No.  In a thread devoted to the topic, there is only one individual who claimed that this was the correct philosophy for a D&D game.  So, not really a huge problem just yet.RCP.S.:  Re:  Splatbooks and game balance.  I recently ran World's Largest Dungeon as a break, and opened the floodgates wide as to what kind of characters the players could make.  Are there unbalancing combinations out there?  Oh, yes!  But, I think that is likely to be true in any game system, and what is unbalancing in one game may fit perfectly into another.</blockquote>

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