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Message: <blockquote data-quote="teitan" data-source="post: 6131505" data-attributes="member: 3457">One of the fundamental flaws of second edition was the attempt to make d&d a toolbox and it wasn't very good at doing that. Some settings felt hammered into the rules like square pegs into round holes. As much as I loved Planescape, the rules of second edition kind of hampered it because even with the setting adjustment to the rules it didn't quite fit even if you could run some great stories with the system and setting. It would have been better served with its own rules that were a heavily modified d&d. Heavily modified. The same goes for Birthright & Dark SUn.The implementation of d&d towards the tool box approach was also half-baked because largely it was in the hands of the priest classes. The presentation of the toolbox for priests was poorly implemented without real examples beyond the druid of how to build a priest of a specific mythos because the druid was built primarily to function as its own class. The implementation of kits in the PHBR series went just short of increasing the toolbox capabilities of second edition in customizing classes for a unique fantasy world.Third edition went to great lengths to emphasize d&d as genre and the d20 system on its own proved that point as moving the system into other genres and types of fantasy resulted in sometimes different games ala Mongoose's Conan game. The default magic assumptions broke other types of fantasy settings like an egg into a skillet. If you approached d&d as a setting in itself with certain assumptions baked in it worked wonderfully but required heavy tinkering but the lore of the MM wasn't required. It was the default assumptions of the system with the classes and access to magic as well as the math. As much as some grognards railed against third as "not d&d" this shows how much it was d&d as any earlier edition. But this doesn't make it a setting any more than it made d&d a toolbox. It was a toolbox for d&d style fantasy and it did d&d style settings hellagreat. The Forgotten Realms was probably the best and most accessible it'd been out of the box since first edition because the domain system and prestige classes handled specialist priests better and simpler than second edition handled the same matters. Taking Mystra as your patron at first level made you feel different than being a priest of Tyr or Bane and hen the individual prestige classes for each deity ensured you didn't over power the other players early on and this system also didn't keep you from becoming a burden to the party because of you made the wrong choice in second ed for your patron you might have gotten very weak spell choices and proficiencies and restrictions. I digress.What I am getting at is that once they got rid of the idea of d&d as a toolbox and accepted it as genre, the game improved in its presentation and implementation of settings. The realms were built as a d&d setting with the default assumptions of d&d as the standard. Eberron amped those setting expectations to 11 and showed what a setting for d&d with the default assumptions in play could logically lead to and it was an amazing thing. Now Fourth edition is a different critter. It is a whole new game but also it is d&d but the expectations of d&d as a genre are further baked into the rules right down to party roles and genre emulation. Modification to do other fantasy genres requires heavy modification of the system as seen in Gamma World and that WOTC was going to do Ravenloft as an rpg in a box as opposed to a series of setting books ala Everton, FR and Dark Sun including rules and its own class system. Ravenloft is the prime example actually of how d&d as a toolbox doesn't work and how the default assumptions are difficult to port to other genres. Ravenloft the setting does work with the idea of it being its own game, especially Masque of the Red Death, but the default assumption of medieval fantasy in the core hurt the overall experience. I think this is why WOTC were developing it as its own game as opposed to a setting. As an adventure it work wonderfully for a one off or couple nights, but as a world to explore it failed from the default assumption of the rules. Great setting, bad rules implementation. I think d&d is able to do partial emulation of some genres when you use the default assumptions. Like the pulp elements of Eberron but pulp on its own... not so much. Superheroes? Fuggetaboutit.So it is not a setting or a toolbox, it is a setting and a toolbox... for a very specific style of fantasy.</blockquote>

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