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<blockquote data-quote="slobster" data-source="post: 5917166" data-attributes="member: 6693711">The more I think about it, the more I think D&amp;D has a core setting, whether it wants it or not.The moment of realization for me came when I was playing a game of Dresden files (modern urban fantasy) and we came across some goblins. &quot;Oh, weak little enemies we can thrash by the dozens?&quot; one player asked. &quot;Nah, that's D&amp;D.&quot;Not &quot;that's Greyhawk&quot; or &quot;that's Lord of the Rings.&quot; D&amp;D was the first to arrive in the tapletop rpg world, so it got to set a lot of conventions that we now take for granted. It would be a monumental task (that others are better at doing) to trace all the sources that inspired this shared setting, but I think it's very real.Real, but nebulous. There isn't, nor has there ever been, canon for this setting. Different people have subtly (or blatantly) different views on what it includes. It includes orcs and elves and dragons, to be sure. It includes magic missiles and intelligent swords. It includes rust monsters, and iron golems, and endless dungeons, and thousands of other things that I could list, but still wouldn't really encompass the entirety of it because it's a feeling and a tone as much as it is a fictional place. It's deeply personal for a lot of us players because D&amp;D is such a creative, shared experience.We can argue back and forth about what mechanics we'd like to see in the system, and that is very important. But at the end of the day, a beautifully designed system that turns it's back on all that tradition will be a failure, both by my (admittedly entirely subjective) personal standards and those that the designers have related thus far in their columns and interviews.TL;DR - D&amp;D already has a default setting of a nebulous sort, and it's a comfortable place to play even if we don't all use the D&amp;D game rules to play there all the time. I hope they keep it around.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="slobster, post: 5917166, member: 6693711"] The more I think about it, the more I think D&D [I]has [/I]a core setting, whether it wants it or not. The moment of realization for me came when I was playing a game of Dresden files (modern urban fantasy) and we came across some goblins. "Oh, weak little enemies we can thrash by the dozens?" one player asked. "Nah, that's D&D." Not "that's Greyhawk" or "that's Lord of the Rings." D&D was the first to arrive in the tapletop rpg world, so it got to set a lot of conventions that we now take for granted. It would be a monumental task (that others are better at doing) to trace all the sources that inspired this shared setting, but I think it's very real. Real, but nebulous. There isn't, nor has there ever been, canon for this setting. Different people have subtly (or blatantly) different views on what it includes. It includes orcs and elves and dragons, to be sure. It includes magic missiles and intelligent swords. It includes rust monsters, and iron golems, and endless dungeons, and thousands of other things that I could list, but still wouldn't really encompass the entirety of it because it's a feeling and a tone as much as it is a fictional place. It's deeply personal for a lot of us players because D&D is such a creative, shared experience. We can argue back and forth about what mechanics we'd like to see in the system, and that is very important. But at the end of the day, a beautifully designed system that turns it's back on all that tradition will be a failure, both by my (admittedly entirely subjective) personal standards and those that the designers have related thus far in their columns and interviews. TL;DR - D&D already has a default setting of a nebulous sort, and it's a comfortable place to play even if we don't all use the D&D game rules to play there all the time. I hope they keep it around. [/QUOTE]

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