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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Chaosmancer" data-source="post: 8077057" data-attributes="member: 6801228">Settings have history. History is literally stories. And people sell settings all the time. Additionally, your second point here that Greyhawk is "just the AD&D setting" seems to imply that there is nothing to sell people on.See, but you missed my point. My point wasn't that I could sell you on it. Not everything appeals to everyone. My point was I could try even without any references to anime tropes. It wasn't just "well, if you haven't seen enough anime I can't explain it to you."  Which is something that people were telling me about Greyhawk. They were saying "If you haven't read Conan or Lieber, I can't explain Greyhawk to you." That was the point I was contesting. Tangent: There is "fan-service" in the show, but the older of the two maid sisters had one of the most compelling characters arcs I've seen in a while. They were starving orphans, stealing to survive, and the Head Maid hated them, calling them bugs because they didn't have enough will to live under their own power. Then towards the end (while in disguise) the sister makes a big speech, calling on everything the Head Maid taught her, and basically screaming her defiance to the world. It was really powerful in context.Wut?How have I gone from "Are you really saying it is impossible to describe this setting to me without having read these books" to "I am rejecting the very concept of culture?" But you know, Tamarians like Starfire are a great example of what I am talking about. Wanna know why? Because people do end up explaining things to her. Lacking the culture context isn't some impossible to scale hurdle. I should know, I've had to explain things like D&D or Anime Shows to people who lack a lot of context for what the heck is going on. For example, if I wanted to explain to you why My Hero Academia is so revolutionary and cool, I need to explain The Big Three (Naruto, Bleach, One Piece) and how they relate to Dragonball and Dragonball Z and how that was a response to shows like Fist of the North Star. That is a lot of context, but I've done it, repeatedly, for people who have no anime experience at all. I'm not rejecting the idea of culture. I understand what cultural shorthand is.I guess I can understand that all the "famous" people are good (Though, I thought Minsc was crazy and I've never even heard the name Sir Isteval before)But... Seriously. I've been in about four or five different campaigns set in the Realms. I'm the only one who plays a good character. I don't know what expectation exists for other people, but no one I know would say that a Realms character is supposed to be "Good"But this makes sense. I fully agree with you that FR is a place where you are trying to protect the peace. That matches with my experience completely "Things are okay, bad guy comes in to make it worse, we need to stop them" that happens all the time.But, I guess there is no good status quo to protect in Greyhawk? Most places people are little more than slaves to their lords and ladies and there is nothing to look forward to except dreary survival into the next day?I can't say it sounds like fun, but I guess it sounds unique.See, this sounds epic. I'd be tempted to run something focused on fighting an evil that entrenched.I'm sorry my father only had Narnia, Xanth, Piers Anthony's Immortals I thing it was called (On a Pale Horse and such) and the very first book of the Sword of Truth. If I actually liked the man I might go and demand he had provided me with novels I had never heard of. Heck, I only read the Lord of the Rings because of my school library. And I only heard of Moorcock and Elric when I started posting on these forums.I'm sorry that you disagree, but I'm not going to drop everything in my life and hunt down yet another "you must read this" Fantasy series just so I can understand why Greyhawk is worth saving. I mean, quick and dirty Google, there are six Elric Novels? With my current schedule and life, if I didn't drop anything that is a month and a half, if I can find them all? How many Conan novels should I read? Wikipedia tells me there are about 20 of them? Your call of "You must educate yourself before you speak at this council" is bull, in my opinion. Because if this is what it takes to even discuss if Greyhawk should be published... Then it isn't. I'm glad that some people are actually trying to have a discussion and help me understand the setting, but getting bashed for being ignorant and being told I'm unwilling to learn enough classic fantasy to even comprehend the glory of the setting, comes across as self-entitled.Even if I found something that gave me a detailed account of Greyhawk, would that explain why people love it? Sure, I could find books and pore over them for hours to learn everything there is to know about Greyhawk... But no one has given me any reason to care enough to devote that much time and effort. Why do I care enough to research it? Because some people love it and want it to come back? Great for them, but when I go to them and ask what is so great about it I get handed a small library and told to go educate myself. Sorry, that sounds like a boring setting. I'd much rather explore the setting with people actually willing to talk about their setting and why they love it.I'm not trying to say tone doesn't matter. I'm trying to say that, as I understand it, other settings have multiple tones. The Eberron game I am in where we are fighting against a psychic police state that wants to enslave us in a very different tone than one set in the "Wild West Swamps" of Q'Barra prospecting for shards and seeking to turn our little encampment into a real town. Same setting, different tone.But with Greyhawk all I've been getting is "It is dreary and oppresssive, and no one is actually good, they are all in it for selfish reasons." Which... yeah, that's fine. I'm used to that game. But that is my experience with the Realms. It just is, sorry that the tables I've played at haven't played the Realms "properly" I guess.And, I guess for your "how dare they" point, you are referring to my reticence about every common man in the entirety of the setting, except for the one city, is an oppressed serf bound the the land with no hope of anything except table scraps from the powerful? In the entire setting? I'm not saying you can't do that, I just think that makes running the game kind of difficult. It sounds like the very idea of a merchant class is brand-new to the setting, so you either have the Lord and his men, or the oppressed masses. Which one do you want your character to be from, because most equipment lists would say you were wealthy enough, you had to be working for the nobility. Or, maybe I misunderstood. After all, I was asking a question. Trying to figure out if this idea had spread over the last few hundred years, giving a more balanced approach to the setting where it isn't unheard of for a merchant class to exist in an area, or if this is a radical new idea. Which is way harder to run, since it is an old idea to us, and trying to treat it as new and imagine a world where it isn't even a dream for most people would be challenging in the extreme.But, reading more of your posts, you just seem to want to feel persecuted... so, I guess I'm your bogeyman.</blockquote>

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