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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Keldryn" data-source="post: 4869331" data-attributes="member: 11999">My vote goes to re-imagining, every time.  It doesn't have to be a dramatic reboot and re-imagination, but I firmly hold to the school of thought that the timelines of campaign settings should be driven by the players and DM of individual campaigns, not by novels and official products.The 3e Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting book is a good example of a non-dramatic re-imagining.  Halflings always wore shoes; there was no made-up event where a magical catastrophe caused the foot hairs of all halflings on Faerun to fall out and the soles of their feet to become very tender.  Some "mages" and "magic-users" in 1e and 2e are Wizards while others are Sorcerers.  Clerics of specific deities had different spells available, brand-new domain powers, and different weapons restrictions than in 1e or 2e, but it was always this way according to the 3e Realms.  They did advance the timeline a bit, but that was likely to account for events of the novels than to justify why some elements of the game had changed.  There were a couple of references to events like the Thunder Blessing (I think that's what it was called) that explained why dwarf wizards and sorcerers have become more common, which I thought was unnecessary, but nothing terribly obtrusive.  Compare that to clerics' abilities being more representative of their gods' areas of influence because three gods stole some divine tablets, got caught, got all of the gods demoted to mortal beings by the even more powerful god who was invented for this sole purpose, then through the actions of mortals who became gods themselves the gods were re-instated but as a reminder their power is more directly influenced by the devotion of their followers.When a campaign setting is supported by a long-running line of novels, then I can see why a re-imagining might not make sense from a business perspective.  On the other hand, comic book series seem to do re-boots somewhat regularly, and old movies and TV shows are successfully re-imagined a decade or so later.  I am very glad that WotC decided from the start that Eberron's timeline (in the game setting) would not be affected by events in the novels.I do think that the game settings need to be differentiated from each other in part by what they add to or subtract from the core rules.  In the case of the Forgotten Realms, as essentially the flagship D&D setting I think that it does need to accommodate virtually all of the player choices that exist in the core rules.  Given how the setting has grown over the past 20 years and what it already incorporates, something has to be a lot more "out there" than Dragonborn to not fit into the world.The tone of Dragonlance was probably defined more by the D&D conventions that it excluded than by what it added.  However, like the Forgotten Realms, Mystara, and Greyhawk, I do think that much of what defined the setting and really made it stand out has been lost or muddied by years of a large number of authors writing a large number of products.I very much like the idea of starting each setting with a clean slate for each new edition of the game.  Go back to the original concept (the baseline, so to speak, the Grey Box FR, the original Dark Sun set, the Dragonlance Chronicles, etc) and identify the major themes of the setting and what makes it unique.  Look at how new game elements can be added without undermining these core elements.  A good example would be how the eladrin were added to Eberron; it fits in well with the world's themes and adds some very cool flavour and plot hooks.  If races such as the dragonborn and tieflings don't fit into a world, then don't try to force them in.  However, most D&D settings have enough fantastic elements that dragon-men and devil-touched humanoids are hardly a stretch.  Dark Sun is one of the few D&D worlds where I think they would be very much out of place.  After examining how new elements of the core rules fit into the setting, look at supplemental materials produced for the last edition, pick out the best parts that really worked, and discard the redundant ones or the ideas that in hindsight didn't work all that well or changed the tone too much.  Incorporate these ideas as part of the setting's history or as hooks for potential future adventures (as appropriate).I would guess that when a new edition is released, more groups start a new campaign than try to convert an existing campaign literally.  I have absolutely no data to back that up, it's just the sense that I get, and it reflects my personal experience.  When I'm starting a new campaign, I really don't need to know why something that worked a certain way in game rules published 10 years ago works differently now; there is no reason not to assume that it was always this way.</blockquote>

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