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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Balesir" data-source="post: 6133594" data-attributes="member: 27160">To be honest, these seem to me to be the ones that make the most sense. Who would a god have as a servitor if not a creature created to serve gods? But, then, I really don't think of gods thinking of themselves as "evil" - they think of themselves as "right". It's hard-coded into them, I think. The idea that they were any less a god, or any less right, for having a particular "alignment" I just don't see as forming any part of their psychological make-up. Ergo, when it comes to servitors, they will hire/sign-up/suborn/create angels, just like any other god.I haven't even read the article, but I get this point. It drove me crazy with the debates about "everything is core" for 4E. The idea that there is some sort of "core" that everyone is forced to use is just loopy. I think the venn diagram you gave can illustrate it nicely - where is the "core" in that diagram? If it's another oval, like the one for Dragonlance but entirely inside the D&D circle, what is it that makes it not "just another setting"?The idea of "mandatory elements" is, in itself, barmy. The only such element is the base system - the mechanisms and keywords. Game "elements" - classes, spells, feats, monsters, planes of existence and so on - cannot possibly be mandatory. To see this, simply consider that no character can be of every class, with every spell and power and feat and magic item all at once. No adventure can possibly involve every monster, every trap, every disease and every conceivable terrain type all at once. Ergo all such "game elements" must be optional. Adopting wording or conventions to say that this is more or less so for any specific element is both unneccessary and potentially obnoxious. The only thing "core" can usefully mean is "designed and tested to work with the other elements also provided for the game" - and that is precisely what I took 4E's "everything is core" to mean.If you don't want particular elements in games you run, fine - don't use them! Ban them, excoriate them, put them on hate lists for all I care but saying they "shouldn't be core" is just a pointless expression of bigotry. It's pointless because others will include or not include these elements in their own games as they see fit, and it's bigotry because that's what a blind refusal to accept others' points of view is.If you have differences of opinion among your own gaming group about what game elements should and should not be included in any particular campaign, thet is a (social) problem for you to sort out by whatever method the group will accept (DM dictat, consensus decision, die roll or whatever) - it's not something the game designers can or should try to enforce. If your only or primary recourse when arguing that certain game elements should or should not be included in your game is to say "the designers said so", frankly you have problems no designer anywhere will solve.</blockquote>

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