Rich Baker on the Points of Light Setting.

[Majoru Oakheart]

In the 1E DMG (also, to a lesser extent in the 2E & 3E DMGs). It's an excellent sourcebook if you want to create and run your own settings. I highly recommend it.
It's a very fun read.

I've read them. I've never really seen them as a toolkit for creating your own settings. They more often say "this is how you could create a world in which all the assumptions in these books are correct but the finer details are different".

 

[Imban]

In my most recent successful D&D game, pretty much none of the assumptions listed there really held true:

Correlon Larethian may have put out Gruumsh's eye, and you could probably have found a lot of people in the setting who would have told you that, but since no one there was able to communicate with gods or other planes in any way, it didn't really matter.
The Drow may have fought the other elves and been driven underground, but that also didn't really matter - since they arrived in the world, they lived underground, sure, in an impossibly huge cavern-country, but they were by all signs a regimented, militaristic army in heavy gearwork armor that lived underground because they liked it better there.
Acererak's Tomb of Horrors probably didn't exist. He may have built it, but chances are it was somewhere else beyond the scope of the setting.
Same with the Rod of Seven Parts - while it'd be funny and appropriate if a single piece turned up, there wouldn't actually be a way to quest for the Rod in the setting, so I rather assumed it wouldn't.

And this was a setting that actually had people from Greyhawk wandering around in it - so sure, a lot of the D&D tropes held true, but there were a heck of a lot that didn't, and that's not many changes compared to some of the more out-there homebrews I've seen running or played in.

 

[Piratecat]

In the 1E DMG (also, to a lesser extent in the 2E & 3E DMGs). It's an excellent sourcebook if you want to create and run your own settings. I highly recommend it.
It's a very fun read.

Exactly. That's the DMG where I got all of my implied world commonalities... the existence of magic items and artifacts, the existence of a wizard named Mordenkainen, and the like.

I'm a huge fan of 4e defining some names and background but not giving a map. It's very reminiscent of 1e to me.

 

[Mercule]

Darn.

I really want setting information in the core books---if only because that's what I've come to expect from my RPG purchases.

edit: and I don't have any desire to homebrew. I just want to crack open the books and start playing.

Yes and no. Like you, I don't have much interest in doing more homebrewing.

I don't really consider dropping some names on a map to be homebrewing, though. It's a fine balance to provide some story seeds without dictating the specifics of those stories. That's one reason why I won't be picking up FRCS -- I like the flexibility to rearrange the world as the campaign takes shape.

I honestly think I preferred the name dropping and "implied setting" in 1E DMG before I picked up the Greyhawk box. As far as published worlds, Greyhawk is still probably my favorite, but there was something about nailing down some of the "where" and "who" that detracted from the game for me.

I really think it was picking up the Greyhawk campaign setting and being dissatisfied with some of the details that pushed me down the path to pure homebrewing and ditching all the "implied setting" elements, including the named NPCs, gods, artifacts, etc.

 

[FreeXenon]

I like this. It hearkens back to the 1E days where the books were dashed with flavorful names and places to inspire the DM and nothing very specific tethered to them.

 

[Doug McCrae]

In the 1E DMG (also, to a lesser extent in the 2E & 3E DMGs). It's an excellent sourcebook if you want to run Greyhawk with the names changed. I highly recommend it.
It's a very fun read.

FIFY

 

[Klaus]

Exactly. That's the DMG where I got all of my implied world commonalities... the existence of magic items and artifacts, the existence of a wizard named Mordenkainen, and the like.

I'm a huge fan of 4e defining some names and background but not giving a map. It's very reminiscent of 1e to me.

Here's what I replied to Rich's post:

Rich,

Why not have the best of both worlds?

You, Mearls and Andy (for instance) could each come up with a short (say, 10-page) guide to your versions of the Points of Light setting, and they could be made available through DI, Dragon or Dungeon. That way you can give DMs three (still sketchy) settings to build on, and you wouldn't be crystallizing the core setting (since you have 3 versions of it). Kinda like "designers' homebrews".

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I beg to differ. None of the campaigns that I've been in have any of these assumptions.

And all mine did.

I see your anecdotal evidence, sir, and raise you with anecdotal evidence of my own.

 

[Kesh]

FIFY

I think we need a filter on ENW2 that automatically changes "FIFY" and "FTFY" to some silly phrase, the way FARK turns "First post" into "boobies."

 

[FreeXenon]

From a HTML standpoint - adding the appropriate abbr tag would be great or a span tag with a titled expansion of the abbreviation would be good.