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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 4424586" data-attributes="member: 42582">Excellent question!I recently got the Dark Sun boxed set cheap at my local game store. As fantasy literature it's OK, I guess, but reading those books gives me no idea of what sort of game I'm meant to play in it, and what it is that players are expected to engage with. This contrasts markedly with a game like The Dying Earth, which is also setting-heavy, but has extensive discussions of how the GM is expected to use the setting and how the players are able to make use of it in the course of play.I know it verges on heresy, but I have the same sort of response to Planescape. A module like Dead Gods (I think that's the one) looks to me like it would simply take the players on a tour of Monte Cook's story. I don't see how it actually gives the players much room to play an RPG.I agree with this, and would if anything go a bit further - 2e's mechanics, its approach to modules and settings (the "tour of someone else's story" approach), and its desire to support a game of literary fantasy, are inconsistent considered as individual pairs, and doubly so when all three are considered together. I assume that, in practice, most 2E players went one way or the other - either (i) use the mechanics for 1st-ed style play and disregard the modules and settings, (ii) tour other stories and disregard the mechanics whenever necessary (a la Storyteller's "Golden Rule"), or (iii) play a game of literary fantasy by disregarding settings and modules, and using the ever-increasing character-build options as a substitute for explicity player-empowering mechanics.This would be option (ii) above. I wonder if you are right about how most groups played. I suspect a fair number must have continue to play 1st ed games but with a marginally more robust skill system.</blockquote>

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