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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3927385" data-attributes="member: 4937">How's that for bait?I hate to disappoint, but this is not a flame.  If you are looking for a flame, don't bother reading.  This is a musing I've had that I wish to put down because I want to think about it.Let's head off misunderstanding by stating right off the bat that I really like the 'Points of Light' setting from what little I know about it.  Alot of it reminds me of things I've always tried to achieve with my own home brew inspired by faerie tales, greek myths, Tolkien, Dunsany, Dickens, Lovecraft, and various other influences.  It's certiainly not 'crap' or even childish.  It's good stuff. Yet I still find it offputting.For those that don't recognize the title, there is a character called 'Nitro' in KotDT.  (For those not familiar with KotDT, go google it and familiarize yourself now, not because it is necessary to understand what I'm writing, but because you are really missiing out.)  Nitro is a rather dysfunctional DM with an even more dysfunctional group, and he's supposedly based off a real person and a real life gaming horror story.  Nitro is remarkable in several ways, but one of them is that his home brew setting is really off the wall.  Most notably, it features 'Andy Warhol' and other 20th century media/historical figures as dieties.The thing that always struck me about this is that as excrutiating as this sounds it is also a  really good idea.  Nitro himself may have been a terrible DM, but his fundamental idea is about as sound as it gets.  Not only is such a setting highly original, but its not so completely original that a player can't possibly get the sense of it.  Not a one of us here could encounter 'Marilyn Monroe', 'Elvis Presley', or even 'Kurt Cobain' as a deity and not know something about the character and what they represented.  The basic idea of the spirit of say 'Lucille Ball' standing in for the pagan gods of old is something that has been explored in interesting ways in works like 'American Gods'.  I see a lot of possibility in such an idea.  The fundamental idea of such a setting is IMO sound, however bad the execution appears to have been.  I potentially could get behind even a setting book for 'Kraag World' - if someone better at expressing themselves than Nitro was behind it.Yet, I would also find it rather off putting to find out 4e had adopted Nitro's Kraag World as it is fundamental setting, as I suspect would most everyone.  In fact, it might well turn out that I'm one of the few people who find the idea of such a setting intriguing in its own right, and could overlook the oddity of an obviously real world inspired 'Elvis Presley' being the god of dance, male virility, and savoire faire in a land called Virnagin which is inhabited by say centaurs, elves and this not being played for laughs (usually).I suspect 'Scattered Lights' is going to be a lot easier to digest than that, but fundamentally it is of the same character to me.  However intriguing I may find it, it nonetheless remains that I feel that it is being foisted on me in a way that Dragonlance, Dark Sun, Birthright, Planescape, Eberron, and even Greyhawk weren't.  All of these settings in one way or the other were interesting, but I wasn't forced to partake of them.  They were not core to the game.  Most of them in fact grew out of what was core to the game like hybridized flowers in a common flower bed.  Everything that gave each of them a particular color was off in supplemental material, and usually supplemental setting material.  For the first time, D&D seems to be departing from that standard tried and true formula and insisting that what is needed to make D&D great is a core setting to accompany its game rules.This is just my personal opinion.  And I hope I've made it clear that it is not a negative and dissmissive opinion.  I even have a good measure of a respect for Nitro Fergueson's body of work, and a good bit more for the designers.  But I feel nonetheless as if 'Nitro Fergueson' has been given creative control of the D&D brand.  'Nitro' is the sort of guy so caught up in how interesting his idea is, that he can't seem to understand it might not be for everyone.  He's made originality a vice.  (He also seems to have made one other DM virtue - instilling a sense of wonder and mystery - into a vice, and the two in combination are frightening even in settings far less original.)  So interesting and original things are afoot, and I might well even enjoy playing in the designer's homebrew (as I've enjoyed other DMs original ideas) - but that doesn't mean I necessarily want to buy it. Ok, gripe over.  I hope I provoked more thought than emotion.  Mostly I've always wanted to make my observations about 'Nitro' and musing about 'Golden Wyvern Adepts' lead me to notice the similarities to 'Andy Warhol'.</blockquote>

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