Dawnforge vs. Morningstar

[Turjan]

You say that likes it's a bad thing....

Dawnforge, IMO, does a very good job of portraying a "classic" or "iconic" dawn of time campaign setting, and that's alot of its appeal. It's immediately familiar to readers and players -- the giants are mostly evil, the elves are mostly good, the dragons are hungry, etc, etc. It's similar to GH and FR and DL because it draws on the same western european fantasy iconography, but in most cases remains even closer to the fundamental ideals (IMO) than any of those settings.

It's a bit more than drawing "on the same western european fantasy iconography", or only then, if you specifically mean D&D iconography. If you know Greyhawk, the FR and Dragonlance, you will feel immediately at home, because a few exchanged letters don't make the stuff unrecognizable. The book is more like taking 30 years of D&D, shaking the most popular traditional fantasy settings and modules and picking out everything that shows up on the top. The given examples with moon elves (sorry, dawn elves), drow (sorry, night elves), Cormanthyr (sorry, Sildanyr) and Lolth (sorry, Lathail) was just one case. It's all done with a twist, sure . Lathail is not preaching evil, etc., but nevertheless, you know where you are.

You don't have to convince me to buy the book. I own it, I have actually read it, and that's why I said what I said. I also said that I think that the setting is a good background for adventuring. There's nothing wrong with picking the best recipes from successful settings and mixing them together as a new whole; that's what probably everone here does with his homebrews, anyway . I just fail to see what's so exceedingly original about this setting. My problem is more with this claim, not with the product itself.

This said, I'm far from wanting to spoil the fun for those people who now bought the book. You will probably have fun with the setting. Just ignore the blurb .