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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 4580998" data-attributes="member: 2067">I believe "Everything is Core" means every published element for the game can be referenced by another element of the game.I would find such an approach objectionable.Not in every instance, of course. But in quite a few. FR and Greyhawk and Dragonlance and 4e's Points of Light are all bog standard fantasy stereotype settings. The tropes that work in one generally work in the rest without too much shoehorning. But not every setting is or should be stereotypical fantasy. Some settings are divergent for what they include that others do not: Eberron is unique because of its high magitech level, for instance. Lightning rails wouldn't be greatly appropriate in FR, which is more steeped in Tolkeinesqueries. Dragonborn alongside draconians would be a tough pill for DL to swallow, I imagine. Drow priestesses of Lolth don't work very well with Eberron's tribal scorpion drow. Some settings are divergent for excluding what others include: Dark Sun's dismissal of science-y magic in favor of life-force magic means that bookish wizards are grossly out of character (not to take into account how rare paper should be in a world like DS). Forcing standard wizards into the setting would hurt the setting. Likewise, the technological proficiency of the artificer. A setting like Ravenloft should be rightly terrified of anything as fundamentally inhuman as an eladrin or dragonborn, to speak nothing of tieflings and warlocks. 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.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. Not everything needs dragonborn to be cool.</blockquote>

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