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Message: <blockquote data-quote="buzz" data-source="post: 3077935" data-attributes="member: 6777">If the above implies that each one is a different rolelpaying game, with different base assumptions w/r/t what the game is about, then you're not talking about the same thing I'm talking about. I'm talking specifically about D&D campaign settings used with D&D's ruleset.If you were to set a D&D game in each of those locales that changed nothing about the mechanics being used nor the "core story" of the game, then, yes, I'd say the differences were pretty meaningless. The associated color could be pretty fun, however.But you're not saying the same thing I was. You're now talking about when orcs are not just the brutish humanoids you kill in order to get the pie.You're not really having the same conversation I am. I never said anything about using undefined vocabulary and deliberately misleading players, whcih is what I'm reading in your example. I think this is a strawman.Right, and bringing these sorts of mechanical differences into play is a method I suggested to the OP for giving campaign settings a bigger impact.However, FR, GH, Dragonlance, and Mystara are probably more similar than they are different. Eberron, too, to a certain extent. Given that the overall purpose of all of these settings is to facilitate playing D&D, they're obviously not going to fall too far from each other (though Eberron certainly pushes it). Ergo, if a DM isn't really hitting home the differences in some way, they're going to feel pretty identical.Midnight, otoh, was an example I gave of a setting that really shoves its differences in your face. This doens't make it better or worse than the others mentioned; it's just an example of a setting with pronounced impact, IMO.I've been repeatedly using Eberron as an example of a setting with a goodly amount of mechanical and in-setting differences you can draw on to help players notice it.Paws, look at it from the opposite perspective. Let's start with the adventure rather than the campaign setting. As I mentioned before, CotSQ would work almost identically in GH, FR, and probably Kalamar or Mystara; arscott noted the issues with Eberron, but it's not totally out of reach. How about a DCC or Necromancer module? Would the actual play of them really be any different if you dropped them into any of the settings we've mentioned? Or, more precisely, would any of the settings mandate it be significantly different?Personally, I don't think so. This is partly a strength of D&D. The implied setting is so strong, and generally kept so uniform across published settings, that you really have to go out of your way to avoid it; you can't help but play in a way recognizably "D&D."</blockquote>

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