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<blockquote data-quote="rounser" data-source="post: 3025872" data-attributes="member: 1106">All IMO:You've described the view which has a lot of support, I think, and the very one which I think needs to be rethought in terms of priorities.For example, look at Age of Worms' conversion notes.&nbsp; The most irrelevant part of that campaign is the setting in which it is set - just a few names change, and the much-vaunted atmosphere and gimmickry lose the race to what the campaign's really about, which is defeating Kyuss.&nbsp; If that's the case, spend the lion's share of your time and effort and creativity and ego not on extraneous stuff such as such-and-such empire is politically X, and the last 10,000 years history is Y, and races are Z, but rather the stuff which actually matters, which is the adventures and the campaign arc.&nbsp; Instead of this priority order, we have this back-to-front idea of the setting being the most important thing about a campaign, rather than the mere window dressing it actually is.&nbsp; It's very strange...until you consider that D&amp;D publishing has always vaunted the setting to a pedestal it doesn't deserve, probably because (a) worldbuilding is fun and (b) a whole heck of a lot of D&amp;D designers and DMs want to emulate fantasy novelists, seeing it as a higher calling than gamer.&nbsp; (Quite a few ex-TSR designers ended up as exactly that.)</blockquote>

[QUOTE="rounser, post: 3025872, member: 1106"] All IMO: You've described the view which has a lot of support, I think, and the very one which I think needs to be rethought in terms of priorities. For example, look at Age of Worms' conversion notes. The most irrelevant part of that campaign is the setting in which it is set - just a few names change, and the much-vaunted atmosphere and gimmickry lose the race to what the campaign's really about, which is defeating Kyuss. If that's the case, spend the lion's share of your time and effort and creativity and ego not on extraneous stuff such as such-and-such empire is politically X, and the last 10,000 years history is Y, and races are Z, but rather the stuff which actually matters, which is the adventures and the campaign arc. Instead of this priority order, we have this back-to-front idea of the setting being [i]the[/i] most important thing about a campaign, rather than the mere window dressing it actually is. It's very strange...until you consider that D&D publishing has always vaunted the setting to a pedestal it doesn't deserve, probably because (a) worldbuilding is fun and (b) a whole heck of a lot of D&D designers and DMs want to emulate fantasy novelists, seeing it as a higher calling than gamer. (Quite a few ex-TSR designers ended up as exactly that.) [/QUOTE]

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