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<blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 5812916" data-attributes="member: 2067">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 &quot;people will expect them.&quot; 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.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="I'm A Banana, post: 5812916, member: 2067"] Sure, but [B]they[/B] 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 [I]buy a setting book[/I]. 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? [I]Buy a setting book[/I]. That's what they're there for. [/QUOTE]

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