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ShortQuests -- individual adventure modules! An all-new collection of digest-sized D&D adventures designed to plug in to your game.

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sundragon2012" data-source="post: 3795690" data-attributes="member: 7624">IMO, the flavor of a game via its lore matters more than mechanics in an actual role-playing game. I'm not denigrating roll-players out there but I would think that those who are primarily into "kill the beast, take the loot, level up" as their primary mode of play don't likely have a horse in the race of the 4e lore debate. The lore create the flavor of the game. This is true of both the core game and individual settings.I think that the lore of a game sets the tone of the game. Look at White Wolf games, they are filled with lore and atmosphere and really get it across what the game is about. I read quite a bit of WW materials and that material is often deep and thought provoking...way moreso than most of what I have seen in D&D. They have a specific flavor based on the lore provided.I understand the passion for prior lore. I don't share it, but I understand it. There is a nostalgia to it and a sense of tradition attached to it that no new lore can touch precisely because it is new lore. However, I don't see why the change to the core lore makes 4e so unappealing to so many. Do that many people use these things as written that it will destroy your personal campaign if it is altered? What is the vested interest in maintaining the cosmological status quo? Does it matter that much whether an erinyes and a succubus are demons or devils or whatnot? Does Grazz't really impact enough campaigns to cause dread that he may be lost to the ranks of demonkind? I have always seen D&D as a toolbox with some unique D&Disms that are sometimes useful like beholders, the Underdark, llithids, drow, etc. and sometimes IMO not-so-great such as the Great Wheel, alignment mechanics, vancian magic, the Blood War, etc. As a toolbox you keep the good and dump the rest.I want D&D to be largely a transparent rule set that lends no flavor except the flavor of a heroic fantasy role-playing game. I have never DM'd D&D with the goal of being a D&D DM. I love D&D but my campaigns take place in settings with their own lore and flavor. D&D is the rules I use to create the stories and the adventures. I don't  needs its assumptions crowding my settings with some D&D metaflavor.I know my argument can be used against me as well. "If its just a toolbox, why not just keep the old lore and use it or not as you prefer?" Fair enough. I think that the D&D reboot is a good thing. A lot of odd and self-contradictory material has been built up during the last 30yrs and it is IMO a good idea to revisit and surgically remove those things that are unnecessary and excessively complex for a non-setting specific game. D&D is going to be setting free in 4e. This requires a simplifiying of things IMO. The lore creates the flavor and if you want to change the flavor, you change the lore. For example, Planescape wouldn't be Planescape without Sigil, Factions and the Lady of Pain. These things are intrinsic to the flavor of a PS campaign. With a change of the Great Wheel cosmology comes of clearing of the board and a new flavor to the game. There is no mechanical reality to alignment in 4e so, the alignment based planes have got to go. If they didn't they would bring with them the flavor of the previous editions of the game. With the changing of devils and demons comes another new flavor to the game. All of these changes are IMO good because I think D&D will start to look like something other than a weird artifact of Gygax's imaginings and more in step with broader fantasy tropes. This is my rambling on flavor for now....its getting late and the later it gets, the more tired I become and then I become even more prone to directionless rambling.Flavor matters greatly.Sundragon</blockquote>

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