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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Faolyn" data-source="post: 9357024" data-attributes="member: 6915329">I think you're just misunderstanding here. Perhaps you've forgotten the actual purpose of this sub-thread.Let's pretend that this hypothetical chapter in the DMG on how to build your own campaign setting uses Greyhawk as an example (remember: we're not talking about a Greyhawk sourcebook here). What it should do is take each of the PC races and show how they are integrated into the campaign--even if this only requires no more than a simple "elves typically live in the forest, so they'll go here and goliaths typically live in the mountains so they'll go there." (I have no idea how 5.5 is doing elf subraces, if they're doing them at all. But Greyhawk had grey, grugrach, valley, snow, and aquatic elves in addition to the standard high, wood, and drow elves, which can be a problem for some if this isn't addressed.)What this hypothetical chapter should also do is talk about how these elves and goliaths live. What sort of society do they have? What sort of government? Do they get along with outsiders? Remember, this isn't a setting book; this is a chapter designed to teach DMs to how to make their own worlds, and therefore, these things are important. Even if these things can be reduced to a sentence or two, they're important: if you say "goliath communities nearly always have a ruler with absolute authority, tend to be wary of outsiders, are prone to xenophobia, and grow their food" it paints a much different picture than if you say "goliath communities nearly always are ruled by a council of the wise, tend to be wary of outsiders but welcoming of outsiders who earn their trust, and who hunt and gather their food." Again: this is important for worldbuilding, the purpose of this chapter. There's a lot of overlap between DMing, worldbuilding, and writing, and learning what words to pick is important. And the sentences I wrote to describe an entire society? Short and to the point. Easily written by people who learn how to do it. Minimal chance that the writer is going to go delve too deeply into too much worldbuilding, like some people here have feared. Useful for players to build their character's backgrounds and personalities around.So this chapter could, and should, have several examples of this. If it also acted as a primer for Greyhawk--which again, I say is a bad idea--then this would be a good instance to use all of the "new" (not in 1e) species in the examples, in addition to one or two of the standard ones. This way people who know Greyhawk from the past get the info they need as to where the new species go and people who are new to worldbuilding learn what to do. This is useful both for people who are creating their own setting and people who want to add additional species to Greyhawk.Again, you misunderstand. I'm didn't say that what goes into Greyhawk needs to meet my standards of coolness. I said that different people read sourcebooks for different reasons and have different needs.Which is why I and some others have been saying it's a bad idea to use Greyhawk as the sample setting for this worldbuilding chapter. You are the one who keeps insisting it should be.You are again misunderstanding. Or rather, you're confusing worldbuilding with actual play. As it stands (I can't believe I have to repeat this), D&D spends most of its time talking about how evil orcs are. Their descriptions in the MM and VGM is evil. Changing their alignment to "usually chaotic evil" doesn't change any of this. It just means that the one lawful good orc you meet is "one of the good ones."So if you (meaning WotC and worldbuilders) want orcs to be not always evil, that needs to be built into the world itself. If you say that the Orcish Empire of the Pomarj isn't chaotic evil, then you need to write it so that it's not chaotic evil, and that needs to be more than just noted in the alignment section; the Pomarj would have to actually reflect that. If you want the Pomarj to be evil but the tribes that live in this other part of Greyhawk aren't, then you need to write that as well.Well, then, this is a good example of you misunderstanding what I wrote."Can" and "should" are two different things.Why use Greyhawk as the sample setting to teach people how to worldbuild when you know that it's going to anger and confuse people? Why not just make a new setting from scratch?</blockquote>

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