Right, I should stop dramatizing, everyone has opinions.
Mine just aren't worth much....
Unlike me?
Right. I'm not willing to admit that my opinion on a DnD setting has little value, because I haven't read specific works. How dare I
And, you completely side-stepped my entire point.
Source material is great to know, and sometimes mechanics are important for thematic elements. But, even without ever having seen Buffy I know it is about a high school chosen one saving the world from monsters. And I know a lot of stories that do that. And if there is a single mechanic I don't understand for thematic reasons, I would be sure someone would tell me about the thematic connection if it was obvious enough.
But I can't even get to that point. I can't even get to the point of talking about specific mechanics, because I should not even open the thread to read the first post, because (as I have been told) my ignorance means that I can only give opinions that are "not worth much"
If Howard and Moorcock are anywhere near as influential as people claim, then the fact that I have read a wide swath of fiction written since the 2000's means the odds of me reading something inspired by them are high.
There are only so many tropes and set-ups in fiction, and a lot of them overlap.
.... Yes, and?
Remember this entire discussion started because I asked to understand, I was told that without the proper context I could never understand. In fact, you yourself in this same post stated "everyone has opinions, and ignorant opinions aren't worth much."
And at the same time as telling me my opinion isn't worth much at all... you also want to stated that I might read the setting differently and that isn't a problem.
Well, if it isn't a problem, then why slam the door in my face before I can even begin discussing the setting? I never once thought I would have a perfect understanding of the setting, but I couldn't even get people to give me the basics for a full day and a half, because "you just wouldn't understand, so I won't even start trying to explain it better."
I guess I'm sorry for being haughty, but I still stand by the fact that I'm not going to drop everything in my life to stop and read material to understand a setting that people want to be sold.
I asked "What is the hook for Greyhawk, what makes it so people should buy it from their game store" and when I revealed I had no knowledge of sword and sorcerery, well, the answer basically has boiled down to "If you aren't familiar, you need to learn, because no one is trying to sell it to you."
Sure, sometimes you need to familiarize yourself with the material, but sometimes you can't do that immediately, and I pushed back on this idea that there is nothing about Greyhawk I can understand or appreciate without having first read S&S.
And, if people want the setting to be sold to new players of DnD... that is kind of important, because as I mentioned a while back, someone who wanders into their FLGS, sees Greyhawk, and asks about it, or heck reads a blurb meant to hook them in, isn't going to be hooked by "The Setting that you have to have read the Sword and Sorcerery Genre to understand.". They are going see that, think that, no, they haven't read any of that, and ignore the product.