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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jdrakeh" data-source="post: 4523094" data-attributes="member: 13892">1. The tendency for designers to dismiss any need for internal consistency or basic logic due to the presence of magic in a given setting. There are so many things that make absolutely no sense in many fantasy RPG settings, obvious internal contradictions, things almost always dismissed with a wave of the hand and an "Oh, it's magic!" — not because it makes sense to do so, but because it's easier than writing an actual explanation or being accountable for one's own goofs. 2. The idea that an over-proliferation of magic is a necessary ingredient for fantasy adventure, coupled with the tendency of those who hold that belief to consciously eradicate any hint of verisimilitude from their work. I think that many of the old TSR module settings* actually suffered more from this than any whole campaign setting has, though the ideaology does leave its mark on larger works from time to time. This peeve does often appear in conjunction with #1 above, but is not definitively linked to it. 3. Elves, Dwarves, Half-Elves, and other non-human races overrunning a given setting that claims to be centered on humanity. Lots of fantasy RPG settings claim to be about humans or humanity, but very few of them actually deliver. Most D&D settings make this promise and then utterly fail to deliver on it, IMHO (with the possible exception of the earliest Greyhawk folio). If you say that your setting is "human-centric" (or something similar), then the rules and sourcebooks had better back that up. 4. Ridiculous names created by stringing letters from the English alphabet together randomly and substituting "y" for other vowels. No matter how otherwise engaging, detailed, and believable a setting is, if it's populated with absolutely ridiculous place names and people, I'll probably hurl it away in disgust. I freely admit that this is very petty. *Castle Amber, for example, reads more like an acid trip diary than any contemporary fantasy literature.</blockquote>

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