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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Darrin Drader" data-source="post: 3976049" data-attributes="member: 7394">Since my 2E books are long since put away in a box somewhere and I don't have PDF copies, I can't directly refute you, but I would wager a sum of money on the Forgotten Realms being mentioned as the default setting in the core rulebooks, and having references to it in various places throughout the rules.Oh I totally agree with you that 2E was the edition where they figured out that D&D was flexible enough to accommodate a number of completely different concepts, which led to the creation of every setting under the sun. I don't see how that would have diminished the Forgotten Realms any as it always served well as an almost generic sword and sorcery setting, minus the annoyingly funny names of Greyhawk.I think the notion that you have to have a lot of custom rules to make a setting fit with a specific edition of D&D is erroneous, and is part of the unfortunate design decisions of 3rd edition. Say you have a specialized warrior group in one world with a certain name, then you have another world with another specialized warrior group that is thematically similar, the 3E approach is to make a prestige class for each one because they exist on different worlds. In my opinion, it makes a  lot more sense to make all prestige classes completely generic and then say that in one world the Shining Knights of Zog are the Vorpal Dancing Rabit Slayer prestige class, as are the Mohawk Kilts of Viridiheim. Of course I also things that there are way, way, way too many prestige classes and feats scattered through all the accessory books in 3E. Now I can see specific exceptions, like the Artificer class in Eberron, which doesn't really fit well as a prestige class or modified Wizard.Aside from that, I can see some special rules to fit specific settings, Darksun and Spelljammer being good examples of settings that would not function without them, but I don't understand the notion that you need to have a specific setting for an edition just to accommodate the different rules. Eberron could have been made for 2E or 1E and worked just fine. Of course if you go monkeying around with your core races and classes, then you've just forced a change to a new implied setting, or forced a retcon - which I generally hate because they ignore years worth of material, including novels. I think it's Psion who has said for a very long time that the rules should serve the game rather than the game serving the rules. The direction of design has been moving against this philosophy for a while now, not towards it, and I don't think that's a good thing.</blockquote>

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