Voss said:
Yeah, I agree with you. Further this is one of those annoying things that keeps putting me off the development team, much more so than the mechanics. Even if he thinks this (and I for one don't know why he would make that assumption) he shouldn't be saying it, because it has no productive use other than to put people's hackles up.
He would think this because it's true. Every game I've been in has defined homebrewing as "the drow live on the south continent in my game, the major spelljamming port is to the east, the people to the north worship the Norse gods while the people to the south worship the Greek gods."
Of course elves lived in the forest and disliked dwarves, of course the dwarves lived in the mountains and worshiped Moradin. Of course the pieces of the Rod of Seven Parts could show up at any time, since they were jumping around the universe and your world was part of the D&D universe. There was a guy called Bigby who made up some spells. Even if he lived in Greyhawk and his spells only made their way to this world due to planar travelers.
I think this point here is exactly what causes a lot of the differences between D&D fans and their opinion of 4e(or at least the fluff of 4e). Everyone I knew(and I think the majority of players, like Rich says), treated D&D as its own game. If you ran D&D, it was expected that your game was 90% the same as Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Dragonlance. It was expected that your world was part of the Great Wheel and that everything in Spelljammer and Planescape were correct. The game of D&D said those things were in D&D, so they were. The same gods created all of the worlds so they ended up very, very similar.
Sure, certain DMs downplayed certain portions of D&D, but it was still assumed they existed in the same universe by default. In one DMs world no elves might have been created there and there had never been a mass migration from another plane. However, it was assumed that you might meet the odd elf in the game now and then who traveled here by planar magic, portals, spelljamming ships, etc. You just didn't see them every day.
One DM might say that no spelljamming ships have ever found a route to their world, so no one has ever seen one and it doesn't affect their world. Everyone knew, however, that if that DM wanted to start a Spelljammer adventure, they could easily have a ship land one day out of nowhere, because their world was still part of D&D.
Our opinion has changed slightly(but not entirely) in 3rd Ed, where they dumped the Grand Unifying Theory of D&D for a bunch of unrelated campaign worlds. That being the default, it is also the default for our games now. However, it is still assumed that a LOT of the D&D history is still in every world we play in unless specifically said otherwise.
Voss said:
The other stuff... well OK... I like the points of light concept, but by what he's saying, its not only blindly inserted fluff, but its not even *useful* fluff since there isn't anything coherent to do with it. The fluff will mean exactly the same thing as any random fantasy novel that a DM decides to steal ideas from. Or not.
It IS useful stuff. It puts D&D players on the same page. It makes starting a game easier.
If all the fluff in the PHB is correct in 90% of all D&D worlds then you can answer a note posted on the FLGS's bulletin board asking for players, show up and you can make up a character even before you get there an be fairly certain that your character fits in with the world. You can start playing within minutes of showing up for the game.
I mean if I create a character who is an elven ranger who comes from some elven city in the woods and worships Correllon I know that it would have a place in every game I've ever played in. The DM might have to tell me the name of the city, but I wouldn't have to change anything about my character.
If there was no common fluff at all between worlds there would be no default assumptions and you'd have to read probably a good 50-60 pages of background information in order to be on the same level as someone already familiar with a DM's campaign.
In this case, you show up for a game and the DM has to tell you that in his game Dwarves are happy go lucky people who like to dance out in the sun and make wood statues. They are best friends with the elves who live hand in hand with them. Elves are gutter rats and rogues almost exclusively and hate forests. They only live in cities. The world was created 10 years ago by the gods and everyone in it appeared as they are now, kids were kids adults were adults. No one has a history past 10 years ago. Humans have never met a Dwarf or Elf since they hide in the forest never coming out. Dwarves and Elves are not playable races.
Well, then most fantasy backgrounds and ideas that come from the D&D books are pretty much thrown out the window. You have to specifically design a character for this campaign world and all the assumptions that the books made are thrown out the window.
It makes it more difficult for players to have common experiences playing the game so they won't be able to bond as easily as a community, given they are almost playing different games.
