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Are the Races of D&D races of Human or seperate Species according to lore?
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<blockquote data-quote="Mercule" data-source="post: 7793891" data-attributes="member: 5100"><p>Kinda. The system will always, always color the way the setting manifests. That's to be expected and no one should really lose sleep over it.</p><p></p><p>But, and I suspect this is more your point, one thing that WotC brought to the table was the idea that the game should have a flagship setting. Not just in the sense of a setting that had a few more books, but one that is incorporated into the rules. </p><p></p><p>I think this was one of the larger missteps by WotC. We'll never know whether I'm right because WotC also made some pretty radical changes to the rules and did a few other things that changed the landscape. There's no way to analyze what would have happened if they'd only changed the focus on setting. The flailing between settings with each edition is a symptom of this.</p><p></p><p>The settings are best viewed as examples and starting points for the group. There's absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to play in the Realms (or Greyhawk or Eberron), but the game should not become "The Greyhawk RPG" in one edition, "The Points of Light RPG" in the next, and "The Forgotten Realms RPG" in the latest. That's not a marketing/branding strategy. That's an identity crisis.</p><p></p><p></p><p>This is a difference between theory and practice. 3E was Greyhawk, in theory. In practice, it split the difference between being multi-setting and being FR-first.</p><p></p><p>Even had theory matched practice, it would have been a mistake. D&D is at it's best when it's not about a setting. I don't care whether that's Greyhawk or the Realms, it's a mistake to put one setting at the center. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Unsurprisingly, I think this was a bad idea. It's fine to make the Realms the "generic" setting. It's fine to publish SCAG as the first setting book. It's bad to put story hooks for the FR factions in every adventure. It's bad to <u>only</u> publish information for the Realms. It's right and correct to tweak mechanical representations in Realms material to conform to 5E rules. It's bad to have lists of ethnic human names from the Realms in the PHB. It's bad to have a sidebar talking about the Weave as if it applied to any setting besides the Realms.</p><p></p><p>Yes, Gygax threw a bunch of random Greyhawk fluff into the 1E core books -- especially the DMG -- but he had a unique style of prose that was very conversational. His examples read as just that, examples. They were also largely in a book that was telling a DM how to control a game. This includes a lot of advice on how to build a setting or to take parts of an existing setting and make it your own. The context was totally different than the current books.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Mercule, post: 7793891, member: 5100"] Kinda. The system will always, always color the way the setting manifests. That's to be expected and no one should really lose sleep over it. But, and I suspect this is more your point, one thing that WotC brought to the table was the idea that the game should have a flagship setting. Not just in the sense of a setting that had a few more books, but one that is incorporated into the rules. I think this was one of the larger missteps by WotC. We'll never know whether I'm right because WotC also made some pretty radical changes to the rules and did a few other things that changed the landscape. There's no way to analyze what would have happened if they'd only changed the focus on setting. The flailing between settings with each edition is a symptom of this. The settings are best viewed as examples and starting points for the group. There's absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to play in the Realms (or Greyhawk or Eberron), but the game should not become "The Greyhawk RPG" in one edition, "The Points of Light RPG" in the next, and "The Forgotten Realms RPG" in the latest. That's not a marketing/branding strategy. That's an identity crisis. This is a difference between theory and practice. 3E was Greyhawk, in theory. In practice, it split the difference between being multi-setting and being FR-first. Even had theory matched practice, it would have been a mistake. D&D is at it's best when it's not about a setting. I don't care whether that's Greyhawk or the Realms, it's a mistake to put one setting at the center. Unsurprisingly, I think this was a bad idea. It's fine to make the Realms the "generic" setting. It's fine to publish SCAG as the first setting book. It's bad to put story hooks for the FR factions in every adventure. It's bad to [U]only[/U] publish information for the Realms. It's right and correct to tweak mechanical representations in Realms material to conform to 5E rules. It's bad to have lists of ethnic human names from the Realms in the PHB. It's bad to have a sidebar talking about the Weave as if it applied to any setting besides the Realms. Yes, Gygax threw a bunch of random Greyhawk fluff into the 1E core books -- especially the DMG -- but he had a unique style of prose that was very conversational. His examples read as just that, examples. They were also largely in a book that was telling a DM how to control a game. This includes a lot of advice on how to build a setting or to take parts of an existing setting and make it your own. The context was totally different than the current books. [/QUOTE]
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