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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bluenose" data-source="post: 4917753" data-attributes="member: 49017">Natural selection refers to the way a significant number of FR fans were turned away from the setting by the increasing amount of material. Consider that there have been a number of threads where people have said they've returned to FR after liking the original grey box but have subsequently lost interest (whether because of RSEs, too much detail, emphasis on aspects they disliked). Many of them have said part of their reason for returning is their liking for that there's less information given and they feel freer to create their own campaigns knowing there's not going to be a sourcebook along to detail things in a different way to what they have done. Anecdotally I can point out an example of the biggest FR fan in my gaming group. He adored the original grey box, began grumbling some time in 2nd edition about excessive amounts of irrelevant information, and in 3rd edition began running games set in areas where there was only a limited amount of information available. He is very happy to have a setting which won't be expanded further, since he's sure that anything he develops for a region won't be invalidated by a later sourcebook. On the subject of RSEs, I don't think I agree that they're a product of 3rd edition. The Tuigan horde, the discovery of Maztica, the Eighth Seros War, the end of Tethyr's civil war, and the establishment of the Silver Marches are all significant events that could qualify as RSEs. Certainly the Elven Crusade and re-establishment of Myth Drannor isn't any more significant than most of these.  Pre-industrial might be a better term than medieval, but the point is still valid. There are solid geographical reasons why settlements exist in particular places which don't change much over time. Over 90% of settlements that appear in the Domesday Book still exist in present day England over 900 years later. Street plans of London don't suggest any major changes were caused by the Great Fire of London, with roads still following almost identical courses and buildings usually being replaced by similar sorts of buildings (although the actual building may have been destroyed, unless the owners were dead they still owned the land and built in the same place.  I assume people did. Yet the most valuable information would be diaries and such, rather than things people wrote up thirty years later with the benefit of hindsight. These are just the sort of material that people won't consider vital enough to carry with them when fleeing badly affected areas, and outside these areas the information they contain will be affected by hearsay evidence. Add to that the dislocation of the catastrophe which would lead to reduced literacy levels in it's aftermath, and there are plausible reasons why information would be limited and inaccurate. Which still doesn't mean that it's not a silly assumption that no-one has written a "History of the SpellPalgue" book with as much information as they have. Just that it's not necessarily something people need much.</blockquote>

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