Mishihari Lord
First Post
5E really needs a default setting to make the game easy to get into for new players. If you're an experienced player and you want your own setting is trivial to make the needed changes.
I've got to wonder... How is a default setting supposed to appeal to new DMs and players? As a whole, people new to the hobby are not going to be idiots or suffer from an deficient imagination. For the most part, tabletop gaming is going to appeal to those who enjoy exercising their imagination, since those who don't wish to do so have much better choices elsewhere. Creating new worlds and game settings is part of the appeal of the game, especially for new DMs.1. For new DMs and players.
This is both never going to happen and a goal that makes no sense to me. There are no shared experiences in this hobby. That's part of why we argue all the time. I know I have no almost common ground whatsoever with many posters here. What's more, a default setting certainly isn't going to create such a thing, since it is so easily ignored and tends to be so weakly detailed that it really doesn't work as a foundation for common ground even if it were not ignored.2. For the shared experiences across the hobby.
Again, this is what adventures and setting books are for. A default setting in the style of 4E won't really help with this, and it just causes problems for people who prefer to make their own settings.3. For experienced DMs and players that don't have time to make it all up.
There is a big difference between having story in the game and having things like a default setting. The stories I'm interested in are not going to be told by WotC (or any other publisher, most likely), so I'd prefer it if they stop trying to tell me one and instead help me create my own.For all the talk of the importance of story, I keep reading threads that ask for no story in the game. And I don't get that.
Again, this is what adventures and setting books are for. A default setting in the style of 4E won't really help with this, and it just causes problems for people who prefer to make their own settings.
There is a big difference between having story in the game and having things like a default setting. The stories I'm interested in are not going to be told by WotC (or any other publisher, most likely), so I'd prefer it if they stop trying to tell me one and instead help me create my own.
Guys, you need to stop projecting your own preferences onto those of other people. I have no need for a default setting, but there clearly are people who it will be very helpful for.
If they present a default setting, you can ignore it. If they do NOT include a default setting, the folks who want it won't have it.
D&D is for everyone. The new edition should be *inclusive*, not exclusive.
am181d said:If they present a default setting, you can ignore it.
I wonder if people are using "default setting" in the same manner.
I'm picturing a "default setting" in which the core mechanics of the game are based in the setting, such a racial, physical, and class limitations.
If by "default setting" we're just talking about a "base" setting that showcases the mechanics, well that's something else entirely.
Sure, but they can't.
That ties their hands when they release future rules and supplements. If halflings are assumed to be one thing, then nothing can come out that severely contradicts what the core rules assume they are, and nothing can come out that tries to exclude them, because "people will expect them." Suddenly, the Nordic or Aurthurian or Gothic Horror setting needs to somehow find a role for Bilbo Baggins or whatever, even if that contradicts the tone of the setting.
Are you sure you read the 4e Dark Sun book? Cuz there were a lot of races that were just skipped over or left out in the cold deliberately.
From what we can tell about the 4e DS creative process, the designers didn't include eladrin and dragonborn because they had to but rather because, as game designers, they thought it was a good idea for including the 4th edition version of Dark Sun.
Sure, but they can't.
That ties their hands when they release future rules and supplements. If halflings are assumed to be one thing, then nothing can come out that severely contradicts what the core rules assume they are, and nothing can come out that tries to exclude them, because "people will expect them." Suddenly, the Nordic or Aurthurian or Gothic Horror setting needs to somehow find a role for Bilbo Baggins or whatever, even if that contradicts the tone of the setting.
That's a bad predicament.
Those who want a default setting can buy a setting book. Or an adventure with a town in it. Or whatever. There's no need for a core setting. There's a million different ways to help out newbie or time-sensitive DMs. Jamming an expected world into a supposedly modular core rules base isn't a great way to solve the problem, since it hard-codes the setting assumptions into the base rules, making them difficult to remove.
If you didn't want eladrin or dragonborn or tieflings or tricksy halflings as a core race in 4e, you were SOL, because there they were, in places where maybe they didn't need to be (FR or Dark Sun, forex). To avoid that problem in the future, the game needs to be setting agnostic at its base level.
Want to have a setting done for you? Buy a setting book. That's what they're there for.
boredgremlin said:What part of telling players "I dont care if dragonborn are in the core book. I think they are stupid and they dont exist in this world, pick something else..... was difficult exactly?
boredgremlin said:What if i dont want to have to shell out another 40$ for an entire setting book just to have a little framework?
What it IS hard to do is to is to liberate the game from embedded assumptions about what lives where and hates who for what reasons.
Exactly. 100 times exactly THIS.
The problem isn't simply NOT using a specific setting's material. It's extricating the "base" material from the setting. Often because things were balanced around these setting-specific rules. There's absolutely NO reason that core system mechanics and information need to be integrated into a setting. Extra fluff and setting-specific information can be easily added to the base information, it's so, so, soooooooo much hard to remove.
It goes beyond that. Saying that Tieflings come from Bael Turath, and had an empire that spanned the world millenia ago intrudes far more into my campaign setting than the examples you mention.Maybe I don't understand the question, or definition, then. Because the non-setting specific rules are filled with "where things live" and "who hates who" in every edition.
I don't know where some of you are playing, but to say there are no shared experiences or stories in this hobby is foreign to me. I talk to people across the county I've never met before, on these very boards, about adventures and worlds and stories we share.
As for "WotC can't ignore it in the future", sure they can, and they have. So I don't get that one either.
It is super easy to ignore a default setting. I do it all the time. It is super hard for someone that has never played before to just jump in and play, without a story behind what they are doing. Why is this different than 40 years ago you ask? I don't know, maybe it is 20 years of video games and board games that have stories in them. That's my theory anyway.