What D&D cliches are you sick of?

[Celebrim]

You'd need to get rid of Planescape, Ravenloft, and Spelljammer too. I think that covers the kitchen sinks.

Well, Ravenloft didn't start out as a kitchen sink. If you confine yourself to the original gothic scope and ignore some of the material that doesn't make as much sense in the setting, you should be fine. There is a core idea that is high quality. I don't even give the Forgotten Realms that much. What the Forgotten Realms self-evidently is, is some high school kid's completely average unremarkable homebrew filled with every generic idea you'd expect such homebrews to have. It's the sort of setting you'd expect every early beer and pretzels game to have if it was organically created through the process of play. Heck, Grayhawk shows some of the same problems around the edges - TSR published 2 modules early on based on Alice in Wonderland after all.

But the problem with the FR is unlike average evolved beer and pretzels games it got itself published and locked into its fundamentally flawed structure and fleshed out. The a not great but above average writer novelized a part of the setting and popularized it. After that, it was too late. It frankly should have never been published in the first place. I don't know how that happened. If you held a competition to get a setting published these days, it wouldn't even have made the first cut. I feel great for Ed getting his setting published, but if I was Ed I'd probably be a little embarrassed by what it has become and be inclined to deny I had any involvement in it.

Planescape and Spelljammer, oddballs that they are, would be fine if you just focused on the unique alien setting and ignored the idea that each setting is a sort of meta-kitchen sink that contains all the other kitchen sinks. Each could be done well, though in Spelljammer's case, that would take a lot of work.

Ultimately, there is nothing wrong with a 'kitchen sink' setting provided you are careful in crafting it. As a default setting, 'kitchen sinks' work better than trope worlds - the kind you normally see in sci-fi for example, Dune the Desert Plant, Hoth the Ice World, etc. There isn't anything wrong with trope worlds like Krynn or Athas, but they really exist only to support a single campaign.

 

[Zhaleskra]

Especially when one meta-kitchen sink contains the other meta-kitchen sink. Be sure to be specific when you're ordering squid in the side comments of a Planescape book.

As a GM, I went with inclusive with Planescape. Ultimately, I found it worked better if they were all planar characters or all material characters from the same material world.

Desert and Ice planets . . . the only single biome planets that make an ounce of sense. Then you get into the weird stuff when you combine them. Wasn't the first one of a PS elemental monster originally from Athas?

 

[Mark CMG]

I've only known one person who made a career out of the National Guard, and he didn't stay in it but about 1 or two terms before calling it quits.

FWIW, Luke Gygax has made his career in the California Army National Guard, promoted to Major last year.

Remember this?

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?277672-Luke-Gygax-Deployed-(and-Gaming-)-in-Iraq

 

[Zhaleskra]

From what I understand, Ravenloft started as an adventure that wasn't a demiplane before it became a setting. Once the Dark Powers' rules for drawing someone to the Domains of Dread were drawn out, it was guaranteed to become a kitchen sink.

 

[Celebrim]

From what I understand, Ravenloft started as an adventure that wasn't a demiplane before it became a setting. Once the Dark Powers' rules for drawing someone to the Domains of Dread were drawn out, it was guaranteed to become a kitchen sink.

Not really. Once the writers began lazily drawing in iconic characters from other previously published settings, at that point it became a guaranteed kitchen sink. But the vast majority of Strahd's new counterparts initially were original material drawn from no specific D&D world and much of it was on the whole rather well done and carefully crafted to fit the mood and expand on the atmosphere created by the original module. It was only when Lord Soth and such like started showing up in a setting where they really just didn't fit, that Ravenloft's theoretical ability to contain everything became an actual problem.

The temptation to be too overtly derivative is always the real danger in a kitchen sink style setting. Even if you initially avoid being lame, the need to create more and more content eventually exhausts the creativity. At which point you start releasing lame sequels and derivatives of your earlier work. It happens to the best of us - see for example Pixar.

 

[Jhaelen]

Eberron is also a kitchen sink setting. But in contrast to Forgotten Realms, it's well done and manages to maintain its specific flair. It contains everything, but with a special Eberronic twist. It's also a great example of mechanics being influenced by or emerging from the setting.

 

[jhingelshod]

This thread has now been going for 11 years(!) and must therefore have achieved cliché status in and of itself.

 

[Zhaleskra]

Eberron is also a kitchen sink setting.

Kitchen? Yes. Meta-sink? No.

 

[Hussar]

I don't think that's a cliché of D&D generally.

Certainly it's the opposite of the way Gygax promotes handling NPC spellcasters. If you look at what Gygax suggests circa 1e that NPC's will attempt to extort from PC's before they are willing to cast a spell, it's pretty much ridiculous in the other direction. Gygax basically requires the PC's to promise their first born child or bring back the toenail of a red dragon, before NPC's will even agree to allow the PC's to pay the equivalent of a year's salary for casting a low level spell.

He may have experienced players arguing that NPCs would freely cast spells for the PCs, but his guidelines suggest squashing that to almost an unbelievable degree. If it is has departed from that assumption, I don't know when it did. Even in my own game, I'm still probably overcharging the PC's for low level spells on an economic cost basis alone. The opportunity cost of a spellcaster casting a single spell is fairly low, yet I have them charging rates amounting to multiples of the daily wage of a master craftsman.

Been a while since I read the 1e DMG, but, as I recall, they had a price list right there for how much it should cost to cast spells. Considering that 1e characters were generally swimming in gold, it wasn't that difficult.

 

[Celebrim]

Been a while since I read the 1e DMG, but, as I recall, they had a price list right there for how much it should cost to cast spells. Considering that 1e characters were generally swimming in gold, it wasn't that difficult.

Well, I guess that depends on your definition of 'swimming in gold'.

Some examples:

Augury: 300 g.p.
Continual Light: 500 g.p.
Commune: 1000 g.p. + 500 g.p per question
Cure Light Wounds: 100 g.p.
Cure Disease: 1000 g.p.
Detect Magic: 100 g.p.
Divination: 1000 g.p.
Earthquake: 10,000 g.p.
Exorcise: 1000 g.p/level of caster
Heal: 200 g.p./hit point healed
Regenerate: 15,000 g.p.
Remove Curse: 500 g.p./level of caster

And so forth. Additionally note, "Price can be adjusted for faithful, lower level characters. Likewise, they can be upped a bit for those who are not regular attendees of services. If the caster is expected to travel any distance, but not at risk, factors will be as much as doubled. If at any risk, the cleric is likely to refuse or charge 5 or more times the rates shown." And there is a bunch more like that, which goes on to note at length that it doesn't matter how much the cause of good (or evil) is furthered by the spell, the prices won't come down and in general will only go up because the above assumes the party has similar goals, beliefs, religions, and so forth as the caster - this is already as it were at a discount. Also, if the party finds the rates reasonable, so that they become return customers, then the cleric will raise the rates in order to deter future interruptions.

Now note, by way of comparison, unskilled labor requires a fee of 1 s.p. per working day in 1e D&D, and so the above fees are vastly more than a year's wages for a normal laborer even for something like cure light wounds that costs the cleric only a fraction of a days labor and with low opportunity cost. A cleric with just one customer a year is doing pretty well for himself at those rates.

Suppose the caster wishes to simply learn the spell from an NPC. Well...

"Non-player character hirelings and henchmen will ABSOLUTELY REFUSE to co-operate freely with player characters, even their own masters or mistresses...As a general rule, they will require value plus a bonus when dealing with their liege. If they will deal with other PCs (or NPCs) at all, they will require double value plus a considerable bonus. For example, Thigru Thorkisen, Magician for hire of Olaf Blue Cheeks, a 10th level Lord, knows the spell suggestion, and Olaf's associate, Halfdan the Necromancer, requests that he be allowed to copy this spell into his book of 3rd level spells. If Olaf is willing, Halfdan can approach Thigru. If Halfdan has been at least civil to the magician, Thigru will ask nothing more than a third level spell in return, plus some other spell, plus some minor magic item such as a set of three potions, a scroll of three spells, or perhaps a ring of invisibility. If Halfdan had formerly insulted the magician, then the price would be more dear; but supposing the necromancer had actually saved Thigru's life at one time, the cost would be reduced to but a spell exchange and a single potion or scroll of one spell." - all caps are in the original

In the very best possible case, if you want to get an NPC whose is the sworn servant and employee of your close friend and whose life you have saved to teach you a new spell to put into your spellbook, why he'll only demand equal payment plus an additional fee of a magic item.