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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Pallidore" data-source="post: 6357198" data-attributes="member: 6777732">Remathilis:Even though we aren’t exactly agreeing, I have been enjoying these discussions!While I don’t know that I’m necessarily trying to “win,” I bring up authors in the same way the Federalist Papers are brought up for Constitutional questions—to highlight influences on the founders—but more importantly in this case to bring up influences present in the general populace (and its heroic fantasy enjoying sub-element) that set expectations.Dying Earth and its associated stories are great stuff.  And as grognards are aware, Arneson and Gygax (especially Gygax) were impressed and influenced by Vance’s work so much that the D&D “magic system” got based on it. Of course, Dying Earth, like Star Wars, is a mixture of magic and technology, not a mixture of magic and medievalism as D&D was and largely still is.  It is also a keenly fatalistic setting, with the pall of foregone-concluded doom hanging over it.  Of all the published D&D connected settings (whether from TSR/WotC or not), the farther one got from the “magic-tinged medievalism” flavor, the more outlier and specialized (and smaller popularity) things became, and any time the pall of doom hung over a setting, popularity decreased even further. It’s not clear to me that hybrid (mixed technology/magic) settings achieve the degree of relevant impact.  Because of the very present technology element, I do not know that I would say that magical dominance occurred in either the Dying Earth or Star Wars milieus (and Star Wars especially was so specialized and narrowly applied, its effects across the milieu could be termed “spotty” and not a factor in the day to day—more of a technology dominance, with magic an occasional actor).   Harry Potter is a modern day “magic secreted away and hidden from mundanes” setting (for some individuals, that was of course another story) that strives NOT to dominate or interact with the mundane world.  None of the three milieus are medieval/ancient flavored either, taking them far from the “base” setting, and might be hard pressed to be considered classic heroic fantasy, even disregarding any popularity differences.   Incidentally, while there are plot contrivances in LOTR, there are also plausible, within-milieu, reasons for most of those contrivances.  Like you, however, I don’t want to dwell overlong on literature and movie nuances. Newbies are my main concern, and the majority of newbies are almost certainly going to bring to the table standard heroic fantasy references—Tolkien pre-eminent among them, especially because the base game has those very Tolkien-esque elements in it.  The farther the game goes beyond those references, especially consistently, the harder it can become for newbies to identify with it and stick with it.</blockquote>

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