jmucchiello
Hero
Same with setting. If you want to run ... Eberron but dragon marks and Houses don't interest you, of a happy shiny Barvarian for a better tomorrow, you aren't running those settings, just borrowing names from them.
Don't mean to beat up on you, Blue. But at what point does setting become name borrowing? What if I just remove one house? Or change the name of a house? What if everything in the book is exactly the same but I dismantle the railroad-- it no longer works -- am I no long playing in Eberron? Where is the line between being able to change stuff and still saying "This is Eberron" (James Earl Jones voice, of course) instead of "This is kind like Eberron"?
I will even go so far as to call this a grognard attitude. The preface to the 1e AD&D DMG said (more or less) the more one strayed from the rules as written the more likely you were no longer playing AD&D. For some, that attitude has since become rule zeroed out, I think. And that is the real line between treating fluff as rules, IMHO.
But, to answer my own questions above: my guess is the line is when the first player says "hey, this isn't Eberron." What's yours?