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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ComradeGnull" data-source="post: 6010188" data-attributes="member: 6685694">This also describes WotC's unenviable position regarding the D&D Next rules as well. Pathfinder/legacy3e/OSR/OGL is the 'avoid change' option, 4e was the 'embrace change' option, and now they are facing anger from people who liked 4e at undoing those changes and people who like previous editions wondering what 5e can offer that previous products haven't already covered.Dragonlance is a prime example of repeated retcons/WSE's changing a setting to the point that it's no longer recognizable to the people who actually liked it. I bought some 3e Dragonlance books, but only to support running games set before the 'present' date of the setting, which I ignore in both my games and my personal life (seriously, my wife recently got into reading the novels, and when she asks if there was anything written set after the Legends series, I'm just telling her 'no')Can't XP you Shadow, but you summarized a lot of my feelings on this topic. However, I'll go a step beyond what you said and say that I think that attempting to shoehorn new content into old settings is pretty much always a mistake, particularly when you push that new content into the foreground of the setting and have to make major changes to the lore to accommodate it. If a single player in my FR campaign wants to play a Dragonborn character, that's fine- he's a mysterious traveler from a land beyond who is making his way in a strange world. I don't want Dragonbornopolis suddenly springing into existence as the capital of Dragonbornistan, along with major institutions devoted to training classes and power sources that never existed before. The coherency of the setting starts to fall apart. In some cases it seems like a new edition is churned out just to say 'hey, you can play this cool new class/race in the setting you love.' No one really needs a complete rev of the setting lore to receive that permission. I always prefer when settings are designed from the ground up with certain races, classes, etc., in mind. Dark Sun is a good example of doing this well, as was Dragonlance before the 3e-era books made a mess of it. There were no half-orcs, no gnomes, goblins, etc. in Dark Sun. Period. The lore established that these races had either never existed, or had been destroyed early in its history. There were no orcs on Krynn, and clerics only existed pre-Cataclysm or after Goldmoon and the Companions returned knowledge of the gods to the world. So to the OP's point- I want to see sandboxy settings that say 'here is the world in its 'classic' form (2e for Forgotten Realms, 3e for Eberron, 1/2 for Dragonlance, 1e for Greyhawk), this is the default date, things develop however you want them. I would be OK with there being multiple eras of play- a book for pre-Cata or post-Cata Dragonlance, for instance, like Sovereign Press did. What I don't want is to adopt the White Wolf model where the world meta-plot moves forward with or without me, and favorite settings or NPCs pop in or out of existence according to the plan of some developer somewhere, and all the new supplements are set in the 'present' as the setting marches forward in time. Most settings never get a lot of breadth of coverage- a few key nations or portions of the world get fleshed out, and the rest is ignored. 2e went a little broader since it was around for so long and built pretty seamlessly on 1e without the need for WSEs, but there were still a lot of basically blank spots on a lot of maps. I would rather see those filled in with interesting story ideas and adventure sources than have the world timeline be advanced in published adventures I may or may not ever play.</blockquote>

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