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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Weregrognard" data-source="post: 4435133" data-attributes="member: 26396">I think comparing 4E FR to previous settings out there is a bit unfair.  I would argue that 4E FR and previous campaign settings have had very different design goals.It seems to me 4E FR is a move towards a not so new paradigm where macrocosmal campaign settings take second place to the microcosmal settings of adventures, which are (arguably) the meat and drink of D&D and RPGs in general.  Another not so new design goal seems to be of the campaign setting book presented as a general sourcebook.How is this not so new?  Witness the Greyhawk and Blackmoor supplements for original D&D.  They were not so much new settings as source material that happened to be from a specific setting.  The classic adventures of 1E were "modules", meant to fit in your campaign even if they already had a place in Greyhawk.  Same with Basic D&D's Known World/Mystara.  Even Dragonlance was a set of adventures first and a setting second.Later Greyhawk and FR supplements (to a greater degree) started a "settings first" trend of detailed, compelling (and eventually bloated and metaplotted) sandboxes for campaigns.  Out of this grew innovative settings such as Dark Sun, Ravenloft (also originally an adventure), and others.  Later settings were made to join these settings together (Spelljammer, Planescape).  Successful tie-in novels excacerbated the negative aspects of setting detail.  The rich detail that was once beneficial to adventure design could become an obstacle to DMs who wanted to "stay true" to the source material.The settings of 3E were, in my opinion, the children of the detailed settings and thus (with a few exceptions) followed the same trend.I think it is ironic that FR, which was once the king of detailed settings, is now on the vanguard of what may be a "lite" settings trend.  I wonder if it will last.</blockquote>

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