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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wyrmshadows" data-source="post: 3949055" data-attributes="member: 56166">Every DM I know either homebrews or buys a well-fleshed out setting from this or that publisher. I don't know any DM, unless they are new to DMing, who will take the fluff presented and use it as is just tossed together with no rhyme or reason. 3.5's "Greyhwak" was a good example of this. That wasn't Greyhawk, it was an unfocused, wildly chaotic, undeveloped setting with the Greyhawk name uncomfortably tacked onto it to give it some legitimacy. No history, no peoples, no cultures, no versimilitude.....no setting or at best a crappy, very thinly imagined and disjointed setting.That is the World of Dungeons and Dragons in 3.5 and I know of no DMs who bought Races of Stone, Races of Destiny, etc and felt compelled to use the racial histories provided therein just as many thought that races like Illuminans didn't belong in their setting just because it appeared in a new splatbook. No DM I am aware of felt a sense of obligation to toss every bit of splatbook backstory into their campaign for the sake of the game's implied setting.A good setting makes one feel that they want to be true to it and its personality. I wouldn't put Elminster, Mystra and the Seven Sisters on Krynn because they wouldn't fit. I wouldn't replace Bane and Cyric with the gods Bilbo and Samwise because that would violate the integrity of the setting. Strong settings have their own integrity and internal logic.The World of Dungeons and Dragons has nothing of the sort. The Greyhwk of 3/3.5e and I suspect the Core Setting of 4e will just be a jumbled mess of elements of various quality because WoTC must keep it that way. It wouldn't do if the core setting didn't allow for every single thing presented in every single book WoTC publishes for te game. That would be a very bad financial decision. Calling the 4e implied setting an actual setting, except under the strictest definition of the term is IMO a stretch.New DMs maybe, old hands not likely. Old hand DMs can see when something is good and pilfer it and beat it into shape for their own setting but for the most part will be uneffected if old Bahamut is the new God of Justice because they already have one. The gods in the core books, just like all the fluff in the core books, exists to provide a simple stage for beginning DMs and players to easily dive into the game or for more experienced "beer and pretzels" gamers who want a quick no muss, no fuss game. This implied setting will have nothing but a sketchy reality as presented over the years in various core books and splatbooks. In order to make the setting somewhat believable you will need to do a ton of work. To give the implied setting any real meat on those bones you will essentially have to homebrew it. Nice to meet you by the way.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />  My implication is that a setting without nice solid fluff whether homebrew or published is nothing more than life support for dungeon crawls. The core fluff presented so far seems quite good to me, however, the implied setting for 4e (as it was in 3/3.5e despite the Greyhawk name) is nothing more than a scaffold upon which can potentially build a rich homebrew setting. However I would argue that the implied setting will require so much work to flesh out to any degree one might as well create something new whole cloth.Wyrmshadows</blockquote>

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