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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mercurius" data-source="post: 7715374" data-attributes="member: 59082">[MENTION=6779504]rooneg[/MENTION]'s response was really good, but to add a bit. I like your plan and wish WotC would do that, but don't see it as at all realistic. What you describe implies a much larger staff than what they have.Further, I don't see setting adventures in the Realms as being "throwing all eggs in one basket" as much as giving context to their stories. They've decided that the Realms is the best option, and I can't say that they are wrong, from an economic stand-point.I hear you and agree, but only from an aesthetic perspective. Kitchen sink settings work for D&D, both from the perspective of playing but, more importantly, publishing. Kitchen sink settings allow for diversity and cohesion. While a Dark Sun might be be more interesting from a design perspective, you're going to get more miles if you set your desert story arc in, say, Raurin or Anauroch. A lot of folks like the idea of a shared world and related storylines. Maybe some want to do one campaign in Krynn and then the next in Athas, but most folks--I would guess--like the idea of building a campaign, a series of connected stories. For that a kitchen sink works really well. I don't mind yuan-ti in the Mere of Dead Men, in fact it is rather charming. Just as I don't mind imagining a dungeon in which you have orcs in one room and lizard folk just down the hall (well, maybe not just down the hall), and just a few hundred feet below all of that is an entombed lich, and not far away lives a black dragon in an underground lake. It is all gloriously silly and D&D is built on such silliness. In fact, imagining a world in which every creature in the Monster Manual exists is just ludicrous.But there is a long tradition of "more realistic" RPGs. Look at Harn, for instance. Or there are settings that are more cohesive, like Dark Sun. But if we're talking about the default setting for D&D, well, there's a reason it has been Greyhawk and the Forgotten Realms, or for Pathfinder, Golarion.Actually, and ironically enough considering you are from France, the word "grognard" is French in origin. It refers back to the "Old Guard" of Napoleon's imperial guard. It became a term for "old school" D&D players because of D&D's roots in wargaming, of which Napoleonic wars was a popular genre. Meaning, "grognards" are RPG players who have been around since the wargaming days of the 60s and early 70s - the original generation of Gygax, his friends, and others who started playing in the halcyon days of the 70s, before the Boom of the early 80s. More generally it has become a term for folks who tend to be older, prefer "old school" style D&D...but even this becomes a sliding scale, as some think of AD&D players as grognards, but some grognards think of only OD&D purists are true grognards.</blockquote>

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