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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 9644480" data-attributes="member: 4937">I prefer the world to be both explainable and comprehensible.  While I love weird, and for example think that Nitro Ferguson's idea of basing the gods of his world on 20th century pop stars is very cool, what is not cool is Nitro's desire to play "gotcha" with his players and keep them in a state of confusion.  Real agency requires communicable knowledge and if your world is too numinous and weird such that knowledge isn't shareable and consequences predictable, if you are running a game that is cloud cuckoo land then you are just screwing with your players in order to stay fully in control of the game.It's also a lot harder world building to make something truly weird and also have it work.  You're likely to end up as shallow as you are weird.  Which isn't to say that I like real world pastiche either, but it's a lot easier to take inspiration from the world and make something complex than it is to invent things whole cloth.  For example, I like to blend two historical cultures and then spice it up with the fantastic to make something that feels unique, like pre-colonial India meets medieval Italy with heavy access to domesticated ice age megafauna.  That gives me a lot to draw on while being unique enough that it won't be immediately obvious what my sources are.  Age of Exploration France meets Luo culture of West Africa.  Mongolian horde meets Aztec Empire.  Ireland meets Japan while being ruled by semi-immortal alchemists.  Iran blended with Holland.  Republican Rome plus Edgar Allen Poe short stories as nation state.  It's still easier that coming up with everything on my own.  I like magic to be complex but not arbitrary.  There is a fine line to walk between magic as pure DM fiat and magic as technology.  I don't like the former, but I also don't want the world of Disqworld or Eberron where it's just real world stuff done with magic.</blockquote>

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