NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Keldryn" data-source="post: 3795648" data-attributes="member: 11999">"Hardcore" gamers are whiny, selfish dorks who can and will complain about anything and everything that isn't to their exact specifications.   <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /> The thing that a lot of people are overlooking is that what is "historical" or "conventional" D&D "fluff" to them is not necessarily so to other gamers.  It all depends on when you started playing and what settings and rules you used.I started playing with B/X/C/M D&D, and the first time I saw the "Great Wheel" was either Best of Dragon Vol. 1 or the 1e DMG, a good couple of years after I started playing.The "Great Wheel" was thus not the standard cosmology for The Known World (Mystara), even in its AD&D 2e incarnation.  It wasn't the cosmology for Dragonlance; at least not in its original incarnation.  "The Abyss" was about the only plane referenced, at it was the home of Takhisis (Tiamat), a Lawful Evil goddess.  The Great Wheel might have been tacked-on to the setting later though.I don't think it was the standard cosmology for Dark Sun.  Perhaps not for Ravenloft or Birthright either.And in 3rd Edition, the Forgotten Realms and Eberron have already ditched it.Fluff changes don't require playtesting and R&D time.  They probably have guidelines for creating NPCs, but not a "robust" system for generating them very quickly.I couldn't disagree more.  I don't want the D&D equivalent of the GURPS Basic Set.  D&D as simply a toolset is dry and boring.  Even if I don't use the fluff of the core rules, they at least provide some inspiration and context.  I think the 4e core books should contain a playable "default" setting with enough flavour to be able to pick it up and play it.  It doesn't need to be a massive tome like the FRCS; a short chapter in the PHB giving the players the important background info and a slightly longer chapter in the DMG to complement it would be sufficient.  Give the new players something they can work with right out of the core books instead of requiring them to buy yet another book just to get a world to play in.It's easy to replace the fluff of the core books with a homebrewed setting, or the Realms, or whatever else I choose.  If an aspect of the game is boring or uninteresting and goes unused by the majority of players, then I would consider that a problem.  Make them interesting and more appealing so that they are used by more players.  Don't keep stuff around solely as a "historical point of reference" for an incredibly small percentage of players to wax nostalgic about.  There is very little in any edition of the game that couldn't be improved upon in some way.</blockquote>

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