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Message: <blockquote data-quote="S'mon" data-source="post: 2528692" data-attributes="member: 463">"Very large and unrealistic assumptions"?  - you mean the assumption that magic is not as common in the world at large as it is in the environment experienced by the PCs?  I have no problem with that - low level scenarios are set in unusual borderland areas where civilisation meets savagery and you have to be tough to survive.  High level scenarios are set amongst the world's movers & shakers, involving quests that will become the stuff of future legends.I think a fundamental disconnect here is that I am the sort of GM who first decides the kind of campaign world I want, with little or no reference to the specific ruleset.  In my case my campaign world derives from Leiber, Howard, a lot of Moorcock and some Tolkien, and very little from modern D&D.  I don't see the rules as a world-building tool.  As a wise sage said, "rules are for players" - the rules are there to help the players interact with the milieu, not to define that milieu.  Hence I take the opposite approach from that advocated by Monte Cook in the 3.0 DMG.  If I need to change the rules and the baseline D&D assumptions to get the milieu I want, I change those, not the setting.  I've used different rules for the same setting depending on the ruleset I'm using (edit: for the kind of game I want to run - swords & sorcery PBEM, dungeon crawl, skirmish wargame etc), and an NPC in my setting will stay the same person whatever ruleset.  If the D&D ruleset can't properly define a Heavenly Mountains Guardian (a sort of martial sorceress-monk) I'll do an approximation within the D&D ruleset, but only to the extent needed for that NPC to interact with D&D-statted PCs.  Stuff doesn't need to be defined in the ruleset to exist in the campaign world, it only needs to be defined to the extent necessary to interact with the PCs.Once this is accepted, logic problems re the particular ruleset largely disappear.</blockquote>

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