D&D General Assumed Lore/Sacred Cows you've changed +

[TheDelphian]

I have a campaign that the dragons instead of getting more powerful as they age they grew in power for how much area they controlled and number of creatures they mastered.

It came from the player's commenting when they heard about a possible dragon being around in the swamp that if it were true they would wait while they leveled up and come back and kick its ass. Which made me think of the paradigm and thought it would be more interesting if they grew in size/age as they grew in power and this would explain dragons contesting in territory and some other ideas.

worked out well when they went back after the dragon and it had time to subjugate some lizard folk and grow more powerful and hence bigger. was a nice surprise.

It wasn't to screw the players. Them ignoring it was fine with me as I tend to throw out many hooks and let them bite on which ever one they like just their comments set me to thinking.

 

[TwoSix]

I compress the life spans of most of the longer lived races quite a bit. Elves generally live to be about 325-350, dwarves in low 200s, and gnomes to be about 150. Halflings generally make it to 100, but not much past that. Also, every race reaches maturity no earlier than 15 and no later that their early 20s, so you don't have the weird question of "Why is a 100 year old elf a 1st level character."

I also have half-dwarves in all of my settings, because I've loved the idea since 2e Dark Sun.

 

[Laurefindel]

My dragons aren't colour-coded. They're black or rust-coloured, and their breath weapon is whatever I want it to be (except lightning, because that just sit right with me).

Soon I'm going to be running the War of the Lance trilogy (so I suppose I'll have to go with colour-coded dragons then at least), and in my version a large portion of the population believe that the Cataclysm was the gods' attempt to rid Krynn of kender. It might even be true...

This reminds me...

dragons are 4-limbed creatures with above-average animal intelligence. Intelligent, talking dragons exist as specific individuals (or powerful beings who took shape as a dragon)

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Man there is a lot.

General:

• Alignment is literally just a meta concept on the PC level, and even that is just because it's part of the collective gaming consciousness, not because I wanted to keep alignment.
• things like Good and Evil exist, and people argument about the importance of order vs freedom, and demons are Evil in an elemental sense.
• No Blood War, no Devil/Demon split, no neutral evil third fiend type. Fiend, Demon, and Devil, are completely interchangeable terms.
• All social animals are born slightly leaning toward "Good", in that their instinct is to cooperate with their kin and they experience some degree of empathy. Culture can and does push peoples toward other instincts, but you don't kjnow who the bad guys are by their race.,
• Technology isn't static. Often that means that I add later tech advancements to a setting's canon, or that I describe a lot of the stuff in the books as newly developed tech.
• Society is more egalitarian than historical human societies were. The game is not medieval.

Setting Specific

• FR: The basis of my FR is the 4e books. There are still earthmotes, Netheril has two floating cities, the Kingdom of Many Arrows is still around, Tymanther is still there, etc.
• The gods are returning, having been trapped on Abeir.
• Bahamut and Tiamat are the scions of Io, and Shar is the scion of the primordial that killed Io.
• There are over a dozen dragon gods, but most have been trapped or diminished by Tiamat and Shar
• Dragons behave the way they do because Bahamut and Tiamat are too powerful, with no other of the dragons gods having enough power to counter their influence. On Abeir, they display much more free will.
• Elminster, Drizzt, and most other novel PCs are dead. Elminster may have been reincarnated in the body of a teen girl who is discovering her power. (spoiler, she is actually the metaphysical child of Elminster and Mystra)
• Drizzt died during the spellplague, helping to fight an invasion from the underdark.

 

[Gradine]

I've been running Eberron nearly exclusively for like... a decade-and-a-half. Right now I'm setting up a campaign around Candlekeep Mysteries, and I'm planning on having it set in an alternate universe version of the Sword Coast that functions, lore-wise, more closely to Eberron than Forgotten Realms. Some changes I've got so far:

*Alignment is Eberron-style; race is not destiny. To be fair, I think Candlekeep is already rolling with these changes, what with the good-aligned jacklewares and yuan-ti and what-not.
*Religion is tone-downed FR-style; there are tons of deities that are provably real, but they are way less active in the world than is typical for the setting. This was always my least favorite aspect of the setting, honestly.
*I've made the world quite a bit smaller, because if WotC can't be arsed to develop the setting outside of the Sword Coast why the hell should I? My deep knowledge of FR is centered around Baldur's Gate I and I guess playing Lords of a Waterdeep a bunch? And that makes me the expert at the table. Basically, if it's not squarely between the Icewind Dale and Calimsham it's Undiscovered Country. I may have to move some things around to make that work, but <shrug>

 

[Ancalagon]

There are no Elves in Yoon-Suin (the setting).

... but the creator of the setting never explained why. But it is an area with re-incarnation. So I figured that the elves left because they didn't want to risk having their precious souls be reborn in an non-elven body...

"But what if someone really wants to play an elf?" Well they can, the yoon-suin setting is a large geographical area, not the entire "world" - in fact, "outsiders visiting" is a valid mode of play. So a PC can play an elf if they want...

... but elven blood is a rare and valuable magical component so...

 

[delericho]

Gnomes are goblins, and vice versa.

I dropped alignment once 4e removed any vestigial mechanical effects from it - at that point I decided it was more pain than benefit. YMMV, of course.

I've divorced the domains from deities - a Cleric should choose any domain that they can justify for their character regardless of deity. And I'm quite happy to see them really stretch to justify it.

 

[Dioltach]

... but elven blood is a rare and valuable magical component so...

Ooooh, the PCs as treasure, I like it!

 

[jmartkdr2]

I always put a general origin for beastfolk in my setting. This is mostly to cover new races I never heard of - most of them tend to ultimately be some sort of animal-people, so now I know where to slot them in and don't need to move anything around.

One version is that beastfolk are easier/cheaper to make than full races, so many powers that aren't greater gods will go this route instead. Once they reach the prime plane, though, the creator's ability to control them diminishes dramatically, so they count as fully free-willed beings.

I also make dwarves the smallest of the giants. I haven't had a chance to use it yet but I'd really like to borrow Shadow of Yesterday's take on elves: you aren't born an elf, you become one through mastery of a certain type of magic. Said mastery includes agelessness.

Alignment is now a personality descriptor. I don't treat "chaotic good" on the character sheet any differently than "whimsical." Although that does mean a spell called protection from whimsy is possible in my settings.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Ooooh, the PCs as treasure, I like it!

"Hi! I'm Legolas. And I am literally an XP fountain."*

*If you're playing AD&D, where you got XP for treasure.