rounser said:
The Eberron/Ptolus approach, where the ruleset defines what is simulated is like pointing the camera at the cracks in the hollywood set and saying, "See here...yeah, this bit where we missed some paint...it looks like a set, right? But we can justify that by changing the plot"...as opposed to not zooming in, and just panning past it to the important stuff. It might be fun for some as a thought experiment, but doesn't deserve the attention of publication IMO.
I disagree. I know that some of my biggest arguments in 2nd Edition D&D with my players were over the idiosyncrasies of the system and why the setting seemed to disagree with them.
For instance. Magic items were just NOT bought and sold in 2nd Edition. According to the DMG, every item was considered a priceless heirloom that no one would ever sell and if they were to sell it, no one could ever afford it. However, in every published adventure and every published setting these items were found in the possession of "standard guards of the city" and the like.
The system didn't include prices for magic items, so if you wanted the PCs to sell them then you needed to make them up, and the flavor of the DMG insinuated you could buy castles or kingdoms with them. Yet, the PCs were coming back from adventures with 20 +1 longswords, enough to buy Waterdeep...if it wasn't for the fact that all of Waterdeep's guards carried them around already.
It just didn't make any sense and my players used to call me on it all the time. The rules didn't agree with the world. Almost every time I tried to push back the players would USE the discrepancy to their benefit.
I found 3rd Ed's system to work better with how the game was actually played. They had amounts for magic items that made sense. However, worlds like Greyhawk still assumed that magic items were special and that no magic item shops existed. But the rules said you could acquire items worth a certain amount or less in any town. So you needed to change one or the other.
Eberron's system WORKED. There was a reason for everything to work the way it did. And it didn't feel nearly as clunky as "You know those evil wizards that want to conquer everyone? Yeah, well....they now have item shops in almost every city in the world. People forgave them and they moved in last week. You didn't notice? Sorry."
Besides, they aren't staring at the paint and making up a story around that. They are instead saying "What's the most interesting ideas we can come up with to make D&D easier to play in and more fun to play in? Alright, now that we know the answer to that, what changes do we need to make to FR to make sure that all of these things are true in that world?" And they are trying to do it without pulling a Highlander 2: "Of course the immortals were ALWAYS aliens."
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