How "different" does a new setting have to be?

[Afrodyte]

Right now the probelm IMO is that D&D does not support traditional fantasy at all and has moved into the realm of only supporting the way it envisions fantasy or "D&Disms". Even d20 games like Midnight, Wheel of Time, and probably Conan have huge obsitcales to overcome because their form of "differnet" is a toned down form, instead of toned up form of D&D.

Could you give an example of what you mean by "toned up" D&D?

 

[Eosin the Red]

Could you give an example of what you mean by "toned up" D&D?

Hard to do since I don't buy much d20 stuff.

I consider several of the settings toned up like Scared Lands, Oathbound, Eberron, and things like Jurgen's Uburis. It is kinda like combic book escalation of villiany, each must take the cool power bits from previous incarnations and add even further onto that.

To be fair, I will re-iterate that I have only read a little Scared Lands, no Oathbound and little Uburis. Toned down is much easier to explain, games that do not have 75% of PCs and NPCs with magical ability are toned down. Games where resurrection is not just another way out of the dungeon is toned down. Games where plagues are a problem are toned down. This does not imply that one need strip magic from the game nor reduce things to the level of "Ok, you are a peasant working 16 hour days." The opposite of this is toned up something like "You are all children of long dominant star travelling races. You find yourselves in the depths of the Maurader Trench in the deepest part of an ocean, lost somewhere in the plane of shadow."

Anything that comes closer to emulating a video game and further from emulating fiction is toned up.

 

[Turjan]

Now the only question is what game to add these cultures to. I don't own FR, so I can't say anything about that. Maybe they could be used as a way to make standard D&D less generic.

Hmm... FR ! Let's see, we have Aquatic Elves, Avariel, Drow, Moon Elves, Sun Elves, Wild Elves, Wood Elves, Star Elves and a few other elf-like races. Hmm... FR definitely needs more elves . Okay, j/k. Of course you can replace them in order to get a different feeling. I wouldn't mind. I don't see the FR as sacrosanct, and if your players don't either, that would be a great thing to give the FR a new direction.

Heck, it'd be neat to see supplements that do something like that. Just have a bunch of cultures, each chapter perhaps focusing on a different race or terrain or even a particular settlement. No stat modifiers, but perhaps suggested traits based on what's there (I'm leaning more towards favored class, additional skills or bonuses to certain skills, and minor special abilities if it fits).

I'm always looking for things like that. I think, that's why I'm buying new settings; not because of the "crunch", but because of new possibilities in this direction. I'm always disappointed if I don't find anything like that in one of my new buys. Unfortunately, I think that the two of us are nearly alone in this regard. Today's d20 supplements are solely rated on their "crunch" content, whereas the "fluff" is mostly mentioned on the side of a book's flaws.

Some crazy things that would be neat to see. I wouldn't take them all together, but it'd be cool to explore one or more options:
Dwarves and gnomes are the same race but different ethnicities. Dwarves favoring the preservation of traditional ways and gnomes preferring ingenuity and invention...

Yes, that's the first step. As I wrote before, I went even further and made dwarves, gnomes and elves one race in my homebrew. I went with the traditional (and, btw., Tolkiens former) notion that elves dwell under the earth (think Irish folk tales or Tolkien's King under the Mountain). Opposite to the PHB flavour text, not elves but gnomes are the magical race in D&D 3.x, thus the next step is clear. And elves are great smiths anyway (elven chain anyone?), so there's nothing left for dwarves. Bringing these races together gives lots of options for cultural diversification, and my homebrew makes good use of that .

Humans and elves as the same race, but differentiated by divine or alien intervention. For their part in some great historical event, maybe a small group of humans (and I mean small- perhaps a single extended family or at most a tribe) were given inherent magic and virtual immortality as a reward for the part they played. Of course, those gifts come with their own burdens.

That's an absolutely great idea ! This would not fit my homebrew, but it's a very well thought out model.

No halflings. They are really humans with size adjustments and ability scores arranged to fit them.

Right. There's no room for halflings IMC. If I need pygmies, I'll get pygmies .

More variety in hybrids. I don't mean every combination under the sun, but half-dwarves could be an interesting addition, as would half-gnomes

Well, I went a somewhat different path. In my e-mail, I told you that half-breeds are extremely rare in my homebrew, because humans, elves and orcs are different species. But I told you about the concept of the "Dreamers" and there are also similar models for the other two half-breed options. Then there are the "prestige races", like fey for elves.

How about a "real" medieval Europe where things like elves, dwarves, gnomes, etc. are not treated as mundane as a pack of M&Ms? Whether non-humans would inspire fear, hatred, envy, or love would vary, of course, but I think the rather blase cosmopolitan attitudes many d20 settings have regarding non-human races is pretty old now. The interracial strife that is built into the known history of the world is pretty passe now too.

Yes, but I understand the reasoning behind this. Everything else makes mixed adventurer groups very difficult. In my homebrew, this is different. There are still human countries, where there's (literally) a bounty on elves' heads (a remnant from the Great War). Therefore, it's not safe for a mixed group to go everywhere . And a percentage table for the racial mix, as provided in the DMG, doesn't make the slightest sense there .

 

[Afrodyte]

Hmm... FR ! Let's see, we have Aquatic Elves, Avariel, Drow, Moon Elves, Sun Elves, Wild Elves, Wood Elves, Star Elves and a few other elf-like races. Hmm... FR definitely needs more elves . Okay, j/k. Of course you can replace them in order to get a different feeling. I wouldn't mind. I don't see the FR as sacrosanct, and if your players don't either, that would be a great thing to give the FR a new direction.I'm always looking for things like that.

Yeah, I was going in the direction of replacement instead of addition. I might revise the "relations" portion of what I have so far and instead use them for other races. However, I'm not sure how feasible that would be, given how variable that could be depending on setting.

I think, that's why I'm buying new settings; not because of the "crunch", but because of new possibilities in this direction. I'm always disappointed if I don't find anything like that in one of my new buys. Unfortunately, I think that the two of us are nearly alone in this regard.

I don't think we're alone, but I do think that we're in the minority, and probably a quiet one at that.

As I wrote before, I went even further and made dwarves, gnomes and elves one race in my homebrew. I went with the traditional (and, btw., Tolkiens former) notion that elves dwell under the earth (think Irish folk tales or Tolkien's King under the Mountain). Opposite to the PHB flavour text, not elves but gnomes are the magical race in D&D 3.x, thus the next step is clear. And elves are great smiths anyway (elven chain anyone?), so there's nothing left for dwarves. Bringing these races together gives lots of options for cultural diversification, and my homebrew makes good use of that

This is a cool idea.

Yes, but I understand the reasoning behind this. Everything else makes mixed adventurer groups very difficult. In my homebrew, this is different. There are still human countries, where there's (literally) a bounty on elves' heads (a remnant from the Great War). Therefore, it's not safe for a mixed group to go everywhere . And a percentage table for the racial mix, as provided in the DMG, doesn't make the slightest sense there .

Heh. But, I tend to think that the danger of traveling in mixed groups may add a bit more something to the idea of adventurers as people on the fringes of society.

 

[hong]

That is a fairly baseless statement. D&D is not even synonymous with FRPG. It dominates but is not "one and the same." Thankfully D&Disms are few and far between in fantasy lit...we seldom see popular literature worlds with 5,000 species of intelligent beings

There are 1e6 monsters in 1e3 monster books for D&D. This is a simple consequence of D&D being a game with 30 years of history, with 1e4 designers and DMs all wanting to leave their mark on it. It does not mean any one individual campaign is going to feature 1e6 monsters taken from 1e3 monster books. Would you prefer something like the dead hand of K*vin Si*mbi*da dictating now, and forever more, everything that gets published for D&D?

The corollary to the creeping HEROization of D&D is that people need to get rid of this silly, silly idea that there's such a thing as a "typical" D&D campaign or "official" D&D world. Feats, templates, prestige classes, the removal of limits on multiclassing, and a universal framework mean the volume of options and frills out there is just going to increase. The notion that there's such a thing as a canonical D&D game, utilising everything under the sun, is thus going to become ever more unsupportable.

Notice how nobody thinks there's such a thing as a canonical HERO or GURPS campaign. Or at least nobody I've heard of.

or resurrections offered on the roadside

I have never seen or heard of any game where resurrections are available on the roadside.

or teleporting Mcguiver like trouble shooters hopping from place to place with little rhyme or reason.

Troubleshooters hopping from place to place with little rhyme or reason can be found in:
- Malory's tales of Arthur and the knights of the round table
- Bullfinch's Tales of Chivalry
- Xena (and Hercules)
- Flash Gordon
- the 1,000 Conan stories written by Robert E. Heinlein and all his friends

The typical D&D campaign is episodic. This is because of the inherent nature of the RPG medium, and has nothing to do with D&D itself: you will get the same phenomenon cropping up in Vampire, GURPS, RIFTS, Savage Worlds, or any other game around. If it's a phenomenon associated with D&D more than any other game, it's because D&D is, almost alone among RPG rulesets, designed from the ground up with long-term campaigning (> 1 year) in mind. If you want campaigns where storyline features more strongly, play shorter campaigns.

I think Hong calls it Wuxia Fantasy

It's called wuxia because the (superficial) elements of _high-level_ play are similar to those found in wuxia: high mobility, flashy magic, larger-than-life heroes who don't have a place in society. All these elements can be found in western myth and folklore, if you care to look. At _low_ levels, D&D supports Conan-style swords & sorcery just fine.

Right now the probelm IMO is that D&D does not support traditional fantasy at all

Replace "traditional" with "my idea of" and you're bang on the money.