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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wombat" data-source="post: 1680775" data-attributes="member: 8447">It would be interesting to totally embrace D&D. I think the best way to do so would be to start with the SRD.  Remove all the fluff, all the pre-concieved notions of lands, specific deities, groupings, and suchlike.  Then rebuild what the world looks like from there.D&DWorld is terribly dangerous.  There are large numbers of top predators (including many creatures that are able to kill just by looking at you or having you come into a generalized proximity) just roaming about, many of whom could eat whole villages for breakfast.  There are people running around with the power (magic, both arcane and divine) to change the course of nature, much less individually kill people.  Thus there is great potential for random death nearly every day.On the other hand, there is a crude economy (based only around one metal, with very little in the way of banking) coupled with a nearly 100% literate (barring Barbarians) populace.  Consumerism is quite rampant as is a straight cash economy.  Magic shops exist in most towns, ergo magic would be seen more as an "Alternate Technology" rather than as an entirely opposing structure.  People who die may come back -- either because they have been Raised or because they have been turned into Undead.  In fact, Undeath is pretty darn prevelant, which could lead to some interesting philosophical notions on the part of the populace.It may not be clear that the gods themselves truly exist, but there is certainly some power other than worldly knowledge that fuels the powers of clerics and druids.  It would be easy to posit that the clerics are merely tapping into philosophical propositions rather than specific entities.  On the other hand, it is known that there are multiple planes of reality that are home to creatures so vastly powerful that most humanoids entering their domains would be destroyed nearly instantly.  There is no lack of certainty on this point -- Alignments exist and they have special habitats.That being said, communities seem excruciatingly tolerant.  It is possible to have a city with many people openly following gods and/or philosophies of wildly divergent Alignment tendencies without bringing the whole system grinding to a halt.  But as Chaotic Evil cults often demand blood sacrifices (by way of a single extreme example) whereas Lawful Good cults would decry this, this speaks to a mentality amongst humanoids that your alignment is less important on a daily basis, as we can all live openly together -- alignment wars are to be fought on other Planes.  D&DWorld is neutral (but not Neutral) ground.  Along with Alignments, multiple species regularly live and work together -- this reinforces a notion of minimal prejudice and extreme tolerance on the part of the populace.  On the other hand, it can be seen that there is not that much difference between the races.  Orcs, elves, and humans can interbreed with each other; probably gnomes and halflings could do the same with their equivalently sized kin.  Dwarves, on the other hand, are either notably standoffish or so genetically different that crossbreeding is impossible.The world has much less fear of disease, poison, and even random accidents than our own, due to the rapid availability of curatives, curatives with no harmful side effects, no chance of going wrong, no chance of addiction.  I wouldn't even hazard a guess as to the political set up...Just some food for thought on the notion of totally embracing the rules.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

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