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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kichwas" data-source="post: 1346894" data-attributes="member: 891">It's interesting how different tastes can be.My list of things that ruin it for me on a setting:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Geography that makes no sense, causing me to be jarred out of character or story everytime I look around. Even if magic alters something, unless the magic is kept constant and at beyond Epic levels simple wind, moisture, erosion, and tectonics (earthquakes for example) will correct it. With all but the last of those, the correction will only take days to a single season...</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Politics that makes no sense - groups that war or make peace when they shouldn't given their resources, religion, culture, location, and other factors.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Multiple pantheons. If the gods are real, how did different ones all create the same world? You can have multiple views on the same pantheon (Zeus vs. Jupiter or Allah vs. Jehovah), but in a real gods world only one pantheon can actually exist.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Pantheons that make no sense. Either gods are shaped by mortals, or mortals are shaped by gods. So the gods need to make sense and represent actual archetypes in the human, demihuman, and humanoid subconscious - just like all religions (even monotheism) do in the 'real world'.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Magic used as a crutch too often to explain mass-scale failuires in logic. Magic in Dnd has known limits and a known way of working. Using it to explain a failure in geography, politics, religion, economics, or any other factor is a cheap shot and at worst an insult to the intelligence of the consumer.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Race relations that make no sense. Having no reason other than alignment for why this or that group is in conflict or peace with this or that group - these things should be driven by logical reason, as per my comment on politics above.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Meta-plots. I want a setting, not a novel. If I pay money for a setting I want to own the story. I want me and my gaming group to shape what happens, not somebody else. A setting is a place to -put- my game, not drive it. I'm the one in the driver's seat here. When I want to buy a story, I'll buy a novel or a module.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Author-PCs / Super-NPCs. I don't need ultra powerful iconics literring my setting and getting in the way of my plots. NPCs belong in modules as suitale encounters. The people in a setting should make sense, have sensible abilities, and not crowd out the stage. I want to able to decide how prominant my PCs will be without having the script out or otherwise change the setting.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Carbon-copy cultures: Copying things from famous novels or the real world, and only barely filing off the serial numbers. In some cases even using the same names as historical figures with a few letters changed in the spelling. This can come across as racial stereotyping at worst, and a lack of creativity and true authoring talent at best.</li> </ul></blockquote>

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