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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ahnehnois" data-source="post: 5646572" data-attributes="member: 17106">Well, D&D is pretty campy in general. That said, you lost me on "Feywild".The Great Wheel seems to have some metaphysical logic behind it. The Material Plane is composed of elements, those elements have planes oriented opposite each other. Same for alignments. The transitive planes are distinct and have a very classic feel. Conversely, the 4e cosmology was a revision based pretty explicitly on the idea that every plane should exist as an adventuring location. Who ever adventured on the inner planes, they asked. (I did.) So they condensed them and made them a viable terrain for humans. Who ever visitied the mystical Faerie Plane, they asked? So they made it less mystical and gave it a joke of a name (see above). Who needs five different planes each for good and evil, they asked. They condensed those down to save the reader's feeble minds. I prefer the notions that the universe is built on some logical structure, and that it is hostile and inhuman.Incidentally, my problems with the PF setting and the 4e setting are similar. Golarion's designers also pretty explicitly say "whatever style you want to run, there's a country to run it in." To me, this is roughly equivalent to marketing a movie by saying it's "fun for the whole family" and "has something for everyone". It makes me feel pandered to, as if the material was created to appeal to the lowest common denominator. I don't believe setting design is about creating adventures; setting design is about creating verisimilitude, making the adventures feel like they matter. You don't have to be Tolkien and create new languages for everyone, but you do have to make an effort at realism. The adventure comes naturally thereafter.Forgotten Realms prehaps has the kitchen sink issue; perhaps it's simply so entrenched in the collective mind it's now accepted. Kalamar is pretty explicitly built on realistic geography and it shows.</blockquote>

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