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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aaron L" data-source="post: 6407552" data-attributes="member: 926">I have always believed that the reason why the Forgotten Realms is "the favorite setting of D&D" always had far more to do with TSR and WotC's aggressive marketing and pushing of the Realms, rather than any inherent value of the two settings.Another thing Greyhawk always did for me was give off a tangible vibe of weirdness, like it really was medieval Earth, just... off.  Twisted.  Which totally fit with its place as an actual alternate version of Earth (and Urth, Yrth, Arth, etc... )All those old OD&D and 1st Edition AD&D drawings and illustrations looked just like medieval woodcuts to me, with a real weirdness to them, and I'm talking WEIRD as in the oldschool Lovecraftian meaning of the word, not the modern way the word is used to just mean "odd."  Weird as in an affront to reality, something that just shouldn't be.  The old Greyhawk illustrations and descriptions really made me feel like it was describing an alternate Earth with a layer of barely contained madness just underneath the surface of its reality, which was where all these twisted monsters sprang from, and we were getting to see the woodcuts from this twisted alternate Dark Age Earth with knights and real wizards fighting monsters and abominations of nature.I even "got" Alignment Languages and they totally made sense to me, fitting the feeling of general weirdness of Greyhawk.  Alignment wasn't just a game tool, it was a set of philosophical/political/magical secret societies that PCs belonged to (like this twisted magical world's own versions of the Bavarian Illuminati or Freemasons,) tied to the Gods, Demons, Devils, and other supernatural Powers, and even the Classes (which were themselves another axis of philosophical/professional/magical secret societies, tied in various ways to the Alignment societies,) and when you joined they taught you their secret sings and special cant.  Where did you go for training for your next level?  Another higher level member of your Alignment/Class secret society.  And if you ever left your Alignment, you offended the supernatural Powers who had been giving you their favor (and they withdrew some of that favor in the form of Hit Points, advancing Saving Throws, and spells and magical Class abilities... in other words, lost levels) and the Powers stripped the knowledge of the Alignment society's secret cant from your mind, and then you had to work extra hard to prove yourself in your chosen new Alignment society and re-establish yourself with the Powers of that new Alignment (and that was why it took extra experience to regain your levels.)   That was why it was specifically called out that asking a person what their Alignment was was considered the height of rudeness; you couldn't ask someone their Alignment if it was just a game tool the characters had no concept of.</blockquote>

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