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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Soulsong" data-source="post: 4098082" data-attributes="member: 15704">They are similar in flavor.  FR has had Cataclysms in the past, but nothing (until now and the now revealed original separation) that was on the same scale, abruptness, importance, and effectiveness that Krynn has witnessed multiple times (7 - Cataclysm, WoL, Raistlin's Ascension, Chaos War, Stealing of the World, Coming of Alien Dragons, WoS) in a very short period of time (~500 years) now.FR has never had nearly the problems/discrepancies with mechanics that DL has had.  In FR canon, there may be some weak ties of flavor to mechanics, but it is extraordinarily easy to ignore these, and no one on the official side will bust you for it.  Not so in DL.  The ending of the official license has removed at least some of this heavy handedness of late.  FR is actually going in the right direction in terms of separating Magic from the Divine with 4e (a reasonable and retroactive reexplanation of how Magic never really was dependant on a God) when DL went in the opposite direction with SAGA/3e (making Wizardly Magic completely dependant on the Gods, ie clerical or witch-like).Some liked it.  Some didn't.  The funny thing is those who liked it would just as easily have liked a new world with all of the new flavor of DL without the existing previous DL flavor.  Many thought that the existing setting was a bit stagnant, but the changes were way over the top and changed the flavor of DL much more than needed to occur to revitalize the setting.  Lets get rid of all of the gods. Oh, and magic too...  And lets introduce Alien Dragons and change the geography, politics, and societies significantly.  Oh and almost all of the old characters/nations are gone.  Might as well just call it a new world, IMO.  I might just have liked it as a new world, but it is no longer a DL I recognize.No.  It may be reaching a different audience, and I am sure some true believers will make the argument that it salvaged the existing audience, but it is extremely difficult to measure this versus other paths that were not taken (similar to measuring the cost of non-quality in manufacturing).  My confident belief is that other paths could have been taken that would have retained more old fans as well as bringing in more new fans.My general problem with both of these changes (DL and FR) is that they appear so artistically lazy.  Instead of looking for changes that would be good for the campaign on there own, a certain threshold for significant change (to invalidate previous material enough to drive future sales without making it completely obvious that they are really introducing a new world while leveraging an existing world's name) was identified and driven artificially by some committee.  These types of decisions limit the changes to a certain subset that then strain campaign integrity by there very nature. I understand that this is a business, but I expect a bit more creativeness and foresight.  Quality will sell.  With DL, it is a bit more complicated in that W&H actually tryed to end the world at one point, TSR turned it into a Frankenstein Experiment, and then W&H were given a chance to resurect it, only they chose to attempt a salvage of both original and frankenstein.  In this, the patchwork of Abeir and Toril is reminescent of a similar flesh golem.  I could like this idea more if it wouldn't have stomped so completely on so much that was previously the Realms (Shining South, Maztica).  Additions and Explanations, I expect.  Not Complete Replacements.</blockquote>

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