What is meant by saying that in 4e "Everything is core"?

[malraux]

the DM will want his DMG and MM, but you can also easily print out the monsters you want without having to reference any aspect of the entries later).

Actually, the only reason I'm currently referencing my DMG in play right now is that I'm using fallcrest. The dmg pg 42 stuff is more accessible in the DM screen. The only other info you might need is traps.

 

[M.L. Martin]

It eventually becomes a question of what goals you are designing this particular game for.

If you want to make something compatible with all the rest of 4e, you are going to effectively kill some of the more divergent settings and take their stuff, creating something that is closer to standard fantasy stereotypes so as to make it more useful. While this is effective for "field trips," and even occasional extended stays, IMO, it robs those settings of what was interesting about them (their fundamental difference from the standard). 4e is the game, everything serves that purpose, and nothing can be too divergent.

Agreed, and this is part of the reason I've gone from enthusiastic to ambivalent about 4E. The underlying math and many of the concepts are brilliant, but the game is set up for a singular purpose--to deliver a certain interpretation of the 'core D&D experience'. I think that is where the resemblance to 1E largely comes in, as opposed to 2E (which downplayed the Gygaxisms and tried to be more universal) or 3E (which mixes a broader, more rationalized system with some hidden D&Disms that, combined with the 'Settings=Anathema' view of Dancey and some others, focused the WotC game on core D&D). Of course, the evolution and differences of interpretation of the 'core D&D experience' explain a lot of where the game feels different from 1E.

As someone who isn't that interested in the core D&D experience, and has a preference for outliers (my tastes lean more towards Ravenloft, Tolkienesque Epic Fantasy, or a brighter, cleaner, more wondrous game than 'core D&D' typically offers), I respect 4E as a design in many respects, but I'm suspecting that it's not for me.

If you want to deliver a different kind of game, however, you don't worry about cleaving to standard fantasy stereotypes and instead you create the setting to stand on its own, without intervention from the rest of the game. If a DM wants to work lightning rails into FR, or full plate into DS, they're more than welcome to, but you don't assume that they're going to do that. You deliver an experience (survival in DS, or horror in RL, for instance), and maybe some advice on integrating it, but you don't force the square peg in the round hole. IMO, this is more rewarding, because it lets me play the game in a brand new way, rather than doing the same thing with a palette swap dungeon.

Getting back on topic, I suspect that the emphasis on 'core' means that settings will kept closer to home. This may be why the rumors are that Greyhawk or Dragonlance will be next on the docket, as opposed to Dark Sun or Ravenloft, which would clash with 4E's underlying assumptions.

Not everything needs dragonborn to be cool.

Heh. I could handwave nearly everything else in 4E into Ravenloft in some fashion, although it would shift the setting somewhat in key ways, but I Just Can't Make Dragonborn Fit.