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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7394186" data-attributes="member: 42582">I'm explaining my post to which you responded. A different poster asserted that if a game without setting is good, then a game with setting will be better, because it has all the previous good things plust the good things that setting brings.I am disputing that claim: adding a setting is likely to impose constraints on permissible or effective action declarations, and that is not self-evidently a thing that makes the game better. If fidelity to setting is regarded as a good thing, then it might improve the game, but fidelity to setting is not self-evidently good or fun. It depends on what one is looking for in a RPG.I make no such claim. But the fact that there are some people who feel that way (I know I'm not the only one, not even the only one in this thread), it follows that it is not self-evident that adding strong setting can only improve a game. Which is what I was disputing.My current group fused two groups, after some friends moved overseas, to start the 4e game in 2009. Most of us have know most of us since the early 90s at least. If I was talking to strangers maybe I'd have to say something different; in the abstract I have no idea. But I'm also not sure why it mattes. I mean, suppose that one player assume the world includes orcs because that's what they take the default to be, and another thinks there must be no orcs because in 30 levels of fairly wide-ranging play the PCs have never met any, why does it matter? What is at stake in knowing whether or not, up in Plato's heaven, the gameworld includes orcs?"Default" means something like "in the absence of further specification." And in the context of RPGing, it's most importantly about permissions. 4e's "everyting is core" is mostly about permissions, not about what is deemed to exist in the shared fantasy.So in saying it's a default 4e game, I'm saying "If you use stuff in the PHB, it won't be out of place and I'm ready to incorporate it. And if you're wondering what I'm going to be dong on the GM side, well it will draw from the MM and the core cosmology." But I'm not promising that one day there'll be an encounter with a devourer, or a swordwing.The phrase "until it shows up" isn't mine; it's yours. Obviously if a player takes ranks in "orc lore" (not a real thing in 4e, but I hope you'll let me use it for illustrative purposes), then it is established that there are orcs in the world. What I'm saying is that, as best I can recall, orcs have never come up - and I'm even more confident about devourers - and that therefore leaves it an open question whether or not there are orcs in the gameworld.Likewise, if a player in my 4e game wanted to play a shardmind then of course s/he could, but I can tell you that, when I think about what exists in that campaign world, shardminds aren't on my mental list!Whereas, even though no one during play has ever met a metallic dragon, I think it's not doubtful that they exist in some form, because Bahamut is definitely established as an existing god of the setting, and the PCs have met dragonborn.I dunno - the issue of "limits" hasn't really come up, but I don't have players who want to play space rangers in a fantasy campaign.Another example I thought of involves orcs. The 4e PHB says that dwarves war with orcs. Whereas from the very start of our game, for reasons to do with the initial set up, it was clear that the dwarves war with goblins and hobgoblins.</blockquote>

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