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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hong" data-source="post: 168058" data-attributes="member: 537">Yeah, I've seen this happen. The knowledge that it's a D&D game creates expectations of a certain style of play, for good or ill. The good side is that it means everyone is working from a common set of assumptions (spell and combat mechanics, demihuman races, clerics being healers, undead are evil, and so on), so there's less chance of conflict. But it does mean extra work if/when you want to change things.That's a good point. It's all well and good to have a strong vision in your mind about what you want your game world to be, but unless you can persuade your players to come along for the ride, it's wasted. Some groups have been together for long enough, or some DMs have enough charisma, that the players will sign up no matter what. For other people, though, I can see how it's an issue. Assuming the vision isn't completely whacked out, this is a communication problem, and using a published setting (even if it doesn't have any official D&D rules) is a way of solving the problem.Robin Laws alludes to this in his _Robin's Laws of Good Gaming_. He advocates getting players to read everything they can about the setting, even stuff that's nominally for DMs only. This is because while it's easy for the DM to _describe_ situations, it's hard to evoke a desired _instinctive_ reaction unless everyone is thoroughly backgrounded in the material. It's like the difference between saying that you're fighting a powerful lich who commands armies of undead and other fanatical servants, and saying that you're fighting Szass Tam. The one is just a sterile description, while the other brings with it a context of its own -- one carries all sorts of implications for the setting and for the PCs. It's a lot of work to create that context, if you're starting from scratch.Thanks! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />One reason I settled on Britannia, other than that I think it's a great setting, is precisely because it's a published world with a history and background of its own. I think that, ironically enough, there's more scope to tweak things if you use published material than otherwise. This is for the reasons noted above -- tweaking is easy enough, but instilling the necessary feel is hard unless you have a base to work from.[pimp]While we're on Britannia, I've written up a couple of material types for the setting -- blackrock/blacksteel, and Britannian steel. I'm looking for some feedback for how to cost items made from these materials. The thread in the House Rules forum is here:<a href="http://www.enworld.org/messageboards/showthread.php?s=&threadid=11383" target="_blank">http://www.enworld.org/messageboards/showthread.php?s=&threadid=11383</a>Any feedback and comments would be appreciated.[/pimp]</blockquote>

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