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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EditorBFG" data-source="post: 3490792" data-attributes="member: 24719">The thing is, I think the original idea with a lot of this stuff, like the original Monster Manual and Deities and Demigods (with the Cthulhu gods in it) was to only use the things that fit the milleu of your game. I don't think the authors of the old Deities & Demigods intended to have clerics of Yog-Sothoth, Aphrodite, and Quetzlcouatl killing grimlocks together. And up through 2nd Edition, the lines were split up in a way that reflected this. And don't get me wrong, there is something cool about hobbits vs. mi-go vs. Drizzt in the same game, but I think all these disparate elements lose their flavor as as they're stewed together.The designers of 3E, quite rationally, realized everything needed to be more specifically compatible to avoid rules contradictions. So they put in things like each PC should have X gp worth of magic items at Y level, a necessary balancing element.But somehow, throwing everything together has become the norm rather than the exception. Leaving out third party products, which really aren't the problem, just with core WotC books it becomes clear that the average D&D character at, say, 10th level no longer resembles any of the source material from which fantasy rpgs emerged. A halfling monk/sorcerer/paladin/dragon disciple bristling with magic items-- many disposable or purchased casually from the local magic item vendor-- who actually goes into ancient unexplored ruins filled with magic treasure for a living because these dungeons are so common should be unique, but instead he is just another adventurer of what must be thousands, at least in places like Eberron or Faerun.As a result, the flavor of D&D is becoming no flavor at all. If you mix all 31 flavors at Baskin Robbins together, you just have a big vat of sugary goop that doesn't taste like anything at all (I know from experience). The polyglot of everything somebody can stat being in the mix has somehow become the mainstream D&D experience, thus destroying the unique excitement that comes from, say, Elric meeting Conan. Finding a magic sword is not a moment of revelation, it is merely a step towards an inevitable upgrade. I am not surprised the OP thinks the average D&D experience is not for him.So I don't think "de-cheesing" D&D means imposing realism so much as making the unrealistic elements actually matter. There is a line in a Ferlinghetti poem that says, "I am awaiting the rebirth of wonder." I think, for many people, the wonder of the fantastic that drew them into D&D has been replaced with an arms race, in which everything is common and nothing is of interest.A lot of the above has been said before, but I think imposing "realism" (if by realism you mean having 50 magic items in a dungeon instead of 100) is just a step towards making D&D's style of fantasy more recognizable to our own experience, grounding it in its many truly imaginative sources, and helping create a "rebirth of wonder" in an experience that once seemed to shimmer with limitless potential for many of us, but has now lost its vibrancy. Even as escapism, I think this paradigm-- where miracles are common and actually kind of gawdy-- is difficult to invest in, since it becomes so difficult to picture abstractly, yet alone immersively.</blockquote>

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