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<blockquote data-quote="toucanbuzz" data-source="post: 8175556" data-attributes="member: 19270"><p>Setting is (now) the unique terrain "hook" for your adventure (<em>e.g. Underdark demon lords, adventures on the high seas, jungle, icy wilderness, vampire stalker in alternate dimension</em>), all set in a generic fantasy world with every option available. </p><p></p><p>Personally, I'm an old-school gamer, but over the last 20+ years of DMing, I think only 1 gamer has avidly read books connected to my setting and had a passion to play that world. The rest: they just want a good storyline and it doesn't matter where we go.</p><p></p><p><strong>My Historical Take: </strong>I get the feeling Wizards, and competitors like Paizo, have taken lessons from the '80s and '90s heyday of TSR when players were discovering D&D for the first time. After a decade or so, when players got bored with the "same old stuff," TSR introduced a slew of highly-detailed, awesome gaming worlds in boxed sets complete with maps, new rules, spells, NPCs, and hundreds of pages of background: Planescape, Spelljammer, Dark Sun, to name a few. Great for players, some amazing stuff. But, TSR went bankrupt (for a variety of reasons, but pushing extreme volume of product was one). And, they split the gaming market. If you were playing Dark Sun, you likely weren't buying the latest Spelljammer product. </p><p></p><p>So, the lesson they felt was to have a generic, endless world, that could accommodate all your cool terrain hooks. Like Paizo, every adventure takes place on their generic world (e.g. desert mummies, a nation that makes pacts with devils from the hells, an icy Baba Yaga setting, and so on.) WOTC seems content with a few pages to get you through Ravenloft and the Underdark. I'm not a fan of this, but I think they're banking on the slew of new players having no idea what that is, thus not needing those boxed sets, and old-school gamers either already having the material or getting it off DM Guild. If you want to tweak it (e.g. have a Celtic pantheon or restrict available races/options), that's an easy fix. No boxed sets needed.</p><p></p><p><strong>Summary: </strong>the game world may not matter anymore to players who don't have a clue what the difference is between Greyhawk and Mystara. Rather, setting is about going to a cool, new place, that we haven't seen before in prior adventures, and this can be done on a generic gaming world.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="toucanbuzz, post: 8175556, member: 19270"] Setting is (now) the unique terrain "hook" for your adventure ([I]e.g. Underdark demon lords, adventures on the high seas, jungle, icy wilderness, vampire stalker in alternate dimension[/I]), all set in a generic fantasy world with every option available. Personally, I'm an old-school gamer, but over the last 20+ years of DMing, I think only 1 gamer has avidly read books connected to my setting and had a passion to play that world. The rest: they just want a good storyline and it doesn't matter where we go. [B]My Historical Take: [/B]I get the feeling Wizards, and competitors like Paizo, have taken lessons from the '80s and '90s heyday of TSR when players were discovering D&D for the first time. After a decade or so, when players got bored with the "same old stuff," TSR introduced a slew of highly-detailed, awesome gaming worlds in boxed sets complete with maps, new rules, spells, NPCs, and hundreds of pages of background: Planescape, Spelljammer, Dark Sun, to name a few. Great for players, some amazing stuff. But, TSR went bankrupt (for a variety of reasons, but pushing extreme volume of product was one). And, they split the gaming market. If you were playing Dark Sun, you likely weren't buying the latest Spelljammer product. So, the lesson they felt was to have a generic, endless world, that could accommodate all your cool terrain hooks. Like Paizo, every adventure takes place on their generic world (e.g. desert mummies, a nation that makes pacts with devils from the hells, an icy Baba Yaga setting, and so on.) WOTC seems content with a few pages to get you through Ravenloft and the Underdark. I'm not a fan of this, but I think they're banking on the slew of new players having no idea what that is, thus not needing those boxed sets, and old-school gamers either already having the material or getting it off DM Guild. If you want to tweak it (e.g. have a Celtic pantheon or restrict available races/options), that's an easy fix. No boxed sets needed. [B]Summary: [/B]the game world may not matter anymore to players who don't have a clue what the difference is between Greyhawk and Mystara. Rather, setting is about going to a cool, new place, that we haven't seen before in prior adventures, and this can be done on a generic gaming world. [/QUOTE]
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