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<blockquote data-quote="karolusb" data-source="post: 6104283" data-attributes="member: 83359">I completely agree, which comes back to why I disagree ;-).&nbsp; Trying to do a whole world justice is all but impossible, trying to make a whole planet one thing is preposterous.&nbsp; For a campaign setting (as opposed to a campaign world) I would prefer to simply be focused.&nbsp; you need outside influences for that focused setting to work, you can't pretend those things don't exist, but you can sideline them.&nbsp; 7th Sea is an excellent example of a setting that frustrated me, they wanted age of sail, so they had it.&nbsp; They didn't ask what was necessary for it to make sense (no Cape of Good Hope + Indian Spice trade = no 17th century sailing vessels), they just hand-waved it without a single explanation for why these people would sail at all.&nbsp; So for Moorish pirates you need logical stand in's for classical Phoenicia, classical Jerusalem, medieval Egypt, Post-Frankish Europe etc..&nbsp; Without all of those Moorish pirates make no sense.&nbsp; But we don't need the 'setting' to be about Post-Frankish Europe, we merely have to acknowledge that something that would serves the role of Frankish Europe existed, over there somewhere.&nbsp; Trying to give an in depth treatment to everything is too ambitious, and the setting suffers.&nbsp; Denying that past events influenced the current world makes the setting illogical ( a horrible pet peeve of mine).&nbsp; And over defining the world stifles creativity.&nbsp; I loved FR when it came out.&nbsp; A gorgeous map, and 2 paragraph descriptions of 100 places.&nbsp; It was a huge boon to my creativity (though I was also like 14 at the time, I would be more critical now), then they wrote books, then they killed gods,&nbsp; then they retconned nations without so much as a by your leave, then they filled every corner of the planet with named npcs.&nbsp; Now it is possible that that was always the goal, but for me, it made the setting far much less useful.&nbsp; Discrete pieces, perhaps made in such a way that they could be assembled seamlessly, after the Moorish Pirate setting you could have the Post-Frankish Europe setting, they could relate, but hopefully not mandate each other.&nbsp; That would interest me.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="karolusb, post: 6104283, member: 83359"] I completely agree, which comes back to why I disagree ;-). Trying to do a whole world justice is all but impossible, trying to make a whole planet one thing is preposterous. For a campaign setting (as opposed to a campaign world) I would prefer to simply be focused. you need outside influences for that focused setting to work, you can't pretend those things don't exist, but you can sideline them. 7th Sea is an excellent example of a setting that frustrated me, they wanted age of sail, so they had it. They didn't ask what was necessary for it to make sense (no Cape of Good Hope + Indian Spice trade = no 17th century sailing vessels), they just hand-waved it without a single explanation for why these people would sail at all. So for Moorish pirates you need logical stand in's for classical Phoenicia, classical Jerusalem, medieval Egypt, Post-Frankish Europe etc.. Without all of those Moorish pirates make no sense. But we don't need the 'setting' to be about Post-Frankish Europe, we merely have to acknowledge that something that would serves the role of Frankish Europe existed, over there somewhere. Trying to give an in depth treatment to everything is too ambitious, and the setting suffers. Denying that past events influenced the current world makes the setting illogical ( a horrible pet peeve of mine). And over defining the world stifles creativity. I loved FR when it came out. A gorgeous map, and 2 paragraph descriptions of 100 places. It was a huge boon to my creativity (though I was also like 14 at the time, I would be more critical now), then they wrote books, then they killed gods, then they retconned nations without so much as a by your leave, then they filled every corner of the planet with named npcs. Now it is possible that that was always the goal, but for me, it made the setting far much less useful. Discrete pieces, perhaps made in such a way that they could be assembled seamlessly, after the Moorish Pirate setting you could have the Post-Frankish Europe setting, they could relate, but hopefully not mandate each other. That would interest me. [/QUOTE]

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