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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hong" data-source="post: 136731" data-attributes="member: 537">Oh, I agree that ideally, there should be a distinction between rules content and setting information. I think it just comes down to quibbling over how fine-grained we want to be in distinguishing between the two.Personally, I think the way the FR information is organised at the moment is about right. You have the core rules in three rulebooks -- the DMG, PHB and MM (yes, I consider these to be the "rules" side of gaming in the Realms -- what other ruleset are you going to use, GURPS? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> ). Then you have setting-specific info in the FRCS, and some supplementary stuff in Magic of Faerun and Monsters of Faerun. There's crunchy bits in FRCS, but that's basically just regional feats and prestige classes -- things that have a stronger connection to the setting than what's in the DMG and PHB. If you wanted to be 100% correct and formal, then perhaps you might want these things in a separate book, but I think the extra cost involved (to the publisher and the customer) outweighs any real benefit to be gained.An advantage about having all the information in one book is that it provides a context for things like PrCs, which by their nature need to have their existence justified. This isn't so much a problem for the core classes, which are broad enough to have application anywhere, but PrCs really need a backstory to explain why they should exist, and fit them into the world. One thing that bugged me about the class splatbooks is that often, the crunchy bits there were presented without any broader context or background. It was hard to get any sense of flavour or feel to them, and this wasn't made easier by the way the books often revolved around dungeoneering to the exclusion of everything else (eg a divine oracle who gets uncanny dodge -- huh?).This is one reason I liked OA, and AEG's Rokugan book, so much. It's much easier to see how a class like an iaijutsu master could fit into a campaign, when it's presented in the context of a campaign world where it has a natural role. Splitting up the crunchy bits and setting info into separate books would not help in this regard, although it might be more "correct".</blockquote>

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