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Message: <blockquote data-quote="doghead" data-source="post: 3781125" data-attributes="member: 8243">Humm, I seem to be talking to myself. Again. Oh well, hopefully writing this will get it out of my system so I can get some sleep tonight.My gaming experience started in HS with AD&D. At that time, I wasn't really bothered by the whole 'You are standing in front of a cave' type opening to adventures. I don't recall ever knowing anything about the world outside the module, nor caring much. By the time I came back to DnD, around the time that 3.5 was released, I wanted to know a little bit about the world I was about to dive into. By then, there were several settings around. But most of them represented fairly hefty investments of time and money. A lot of them were no longer supported. Nothing really fitted the bill for what I was looking for - something cheap and easy to pick up that I could use to give 3.5 a spin. I ended up brewing up something myself. It was very much a 'back of the envelope job', and the game suffered for that.Keep it simple in order to keep the barriers to entry low. So, a fairly generic fantasy setting. Vanilla if you like. Vanilla is what most people know, and what most newcomers to DnD would expect. It doesn't require a lot of reading or effort to get up to speed. Anyone who has a passing idea about the fantasy genre should be able to grasp the basic concepts and jump right in. Of course, these are not hard to brew up for yourselves. If you have the time. And if you have enough experience. New players usually lack the latter. Many of us lack the former. Vanilla is also easily adaptable. A tweak here, a switch there - it shouldn't be hard to adapt to something more to the tastes of those using it.It should also be fairly inexpensive. Which probably means .pdf products, perhaps with Print on Demand books for those who like to have something to hold on to. Some material may be available free on-line. The setting would cleave to the core rules. No additional material would be required, and no new material would be introduced for the setting. At least not officially. Gamers can add what they like.As far as the products themselves go, I would be tempted to break it down into an overview of the world with expansions providing greater detail about various areas. The overview would including a 'world' map and general descriptions of nations, principle cities and people. I would be tempted to make this a collaborative effort, using something like the forums here. The 'world' should include a place for the most common fantasy concepts and genres - a place for pirate, Arabian, Oriental, etc style adventures. A GM should be able to find somewhere to plonk pretty much any of those old modules he has lying around. Additional supplements could be provided to elaborate on the different regions. A couple of bucks for the overview, and a few more for an expansion or two and you should be pretty much ready to play.Rather than a world map set down on paper, I thought about using something like tiles. Each tile would represent a kingdom or region, and GM's could build a setting to suit themselves. The advantage is flexibility. For example, some people like the idea of having a goblin kingdom here, a dragon ruled kingdom there and so on. Others prefer a more historical feel with mostly human kingdoms. The disadvantage of using tiles is that it requires more work on the part of the GM, as well as the designers. Although, this could be eliminated somewhat by having a default arrangement of the tiles. GM's then have to option of re-arranging the tiles if they want to, but don't have to do so. It also increases the complexity of the setting somewhat. Descriptions of regions need to include a mechanism for adapting them for differing neighbours. Alternatively, each region could be completely self contained. But eliminating regional relationships would somewhat detract from the setting I think. Overall, I'm inclined to think the idea wouldn't fly.dogheadaka thotd</blockquote>

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