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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lizard" data-source="post: 4166398" data-attributes="member: 1054">Since there was as much -- or more -- "Greyhawk" in 2e than in 1e, if that's your example of the "change"...well...I don't know. We are so talking past each other that communication is pointless.Fact: I started playing D&D in 1978.Fact: I never used Greyhawk, was barely aware of it other than the name of an OD&D supplement.Fact: No one I knew back then used Greyhawk.Fact: No one perceived the material in the 1e DMG/PHB/MM to be part of a "world" or "setting"; it was "the rules for D&D". Saying "EGG made it up" does not make it "setting material" -- he made almost ALL of it up, from Beholders to Xorns, and that doesn't mean their inclusion meant "you were playing in Greyhawk". (Elves and Dwarves hating each other was Tolkein, not Greyhawk, IAE)As for Demogorgon:<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demogorgon" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demogorgon</a>. Fraz might have been made up by EGG, but again -- how does that make it Greyhawk?Why is White Raven Onslaught different? Because it isn't the name of a monster or a demon; it's the name of a technique people learn, and the name (being non-descriptive), is intended to represent some organization, entity, or factor in the world. A demon called "The White Raven" is generic. It's no different from a fighter called Joe."White Raven School Of War" is not. It's something which the book forces into your world, and you either have to work to make it fit or work to excise it; it cannot be simply ignored, because it is integrated into the rules in the way the name of a demon lord is not. A demon lord may never come into play if you don't want him to (and changing his name is easy enough), but if your players learn powers from a specific fighting school, that school must *exist*, and the symbolism of the 'white raven' must be explained, and the history of it and how it interacts with the rest of the setting must be specified, and so on. The distinction is pretty clear to me. I am free, as a DM, to ignore anything in the Monster Manual I don't like; I am much less free (if I respect my players) to deny them access to rules because the rules are burdened with setting I don't need or want.Finally, if the 1e "Greyhawk information" is a "setting" for you, then, well, you don't need ten hours. You don't need one hour. Your "setting" is the City Of Townsville, located by the Big River and two miles from the Dungeon Of Certain Doom. "Elves hate dwarves", "At some point, there was some dude name 'Vecna'", and "Here's how the planes you won't see for 10 or more levels are laid out" isn't something you need ten hours to come up with, by a long shot, so if that's all you need from a setting before you get to work on writing an adventure, I don't see your issue. (On the module issue...I rarely, if ever, used them, but I always recall the setting information as being there primarily as boilerplate text; it was trivial to dump the early modules into any game world, since they were basically plotless slaughterfests.)</blockquote>

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