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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Primal" data-source="post: 4917793" data-attributes="member: 30678">No, that's not what I'm saying; I'm saying that most of the "old guard" *I* know (online and in RL) *loved* the depth of lore, and for them this was the "lure" of the setting. Yeah, anecdotal and all that, but that's all we have, right?  The way I see it, these changes they made were just about cold, hard business; they didn't think about their existing fans (if they also liked the setting, it would be a bonus, nothing more). It's not the same as 4E FR being a ruthless "money grab", though. Why did the FR sales decline towards the end of the 3E era? Maybe they should have published more books the fans actually *wanted*, such as supplements for Western Heartlands, Cormyr, Sembia, Dalelands... *these* are the areas most DMs I know place their campaigns in -- not in Halruaa or Thay (or even Waterdeep). For example, Serpent Kingdoms, Silver Marches and City of Splendors are great books, but these are kind of limited in usability. Then there were some (failed) experiments (Mysteries of Moonsea) and not-so-stellar adventures (Sons of Gruumsh). And for these reasons, I think, is why many DMs stopped buying stuff. We *begged* Rich Baker (on the WoTC boards) for Cities of the Realms, Dungeons of the Realms and Cormyr/Dalelands/Sembia accessory, but no such luck. So, many DMs just gave up and didn't buy Dragons of Faerun or Unapproachable East or the last adventure trilogy, because they felt that WoTC didn't exactly cater to their wishes.   Why would you run a 4E campaign without the FRCG? As I've said above, you can run a campaign without any books or knowledge of the setting, if the players in your group are okay with it. Maybe I (as a player) wouldn't enjoy it as much as the campaigns in my group, but I would probably try discussing my issues with you.   Note that your tone with "If I need to read more than hundreds of pages, FR needs to be pruned back" type of phrase is just as condescending as you claim mine was; it implies that your way is superior to  Let me repeat: Regardless of whether you want to run an Eberron/FR/Dragonlance/Greyhawk/Etcetera campaign and think that the campaign setting book is more than enough, you're more than "qualified" if everyone is okay with it. If someone has an issue, it's in my eyes no more different than, say, trying to force "combat fans" to play in an intrigue and roleplaying heavy campaign with very few combat encounters. Or forcing someone to play a space opera game even though he hates the genre. I don't personally like the steampunk-ish elements of Eberron, so I'd want to drop out of the group if that became suddenly our setting of choice and the DM would be adamant about it. It's about preferences, and DMs should be flexible, too; I've cut down the number (and length) of descriptions whenever I've run games for players new to DM or if they seemed like they didn't like being bombarded with details. I *could* have kicked such players out the minute they said they feel "burdened" by information, but why would I want to do that? Likewise, I would expect the DM to be patient with me if I, as a player, kept asking about "minutae". Of course, if I was the only person in the group interested in minor details, I wouldn't likely play with them for long.</blockquote>

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