Shardstone
Hero
I like the essays and want more of them.
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D&D (2024) Greyhawk Confirmed. Tell Me Why.
- Thread starter Reynard
- Start date
Remathilis
Legend
Yeah, I'm all for letting your freak flag fly, but I'm not sure I'd be down for Catherine the Greating with a Centaur...
Wrong opinion! Wrong opinion!
Shardstone
Hero
I'm an academic man, I live to read.Wrong opinion! Wrong opinion!
Faolyn
(she/her)
There's a huge difference between a painting and a campaign setting. A painting is a single, still image. The artist quite probably had important reasons for painting in a particular style, but those reasons are not actually all that useful for painters. For instance, abstract painting came about because the invention of the camera made lifelike paintings pointless. Why spend hours or days or longer on a painting when a camera could do the same thing in no time at all. Instead, painters decided to try to capture movement and emotion and the play of light and color at different times of day, which cameras at the time couldn't do. Knowing this bit of Art History 101 does not make me into a better painter. Actually getting paint on the brush and canvas does.
A setting is going to have decade's worth of information built into it from potentially dozens of writers (as well as hundreds or thousands of GMs), meaning it's going to be simply too complex to show how it was made--assuming they even know why certain aspects were included in the first place. I doubt that everyone who contributed to Greyhawk (or the Realms, or any other setting) wrote down those reasons. And let's face it, a lot of those reasons would be "because it's cool" or "because my players did it this way" (IIRC, this was the reasoning behind the creation of kender), or "because I have issues that really should have been worked out in therapy." (cough, cough, whoever decided the drow were evil dominatrices, cough). None of these are really helpful for worldbuilders.
Micah Sweet
Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
In what way does any of what you're saying make not wanting that in your game a problem?
Mecheon
Sacabambaspis
Its not not wanting it in the game (That's a simple "Yeah you're being too much a gooner"), its it being 'quirky' I take issue with.
Centaurs are basic fantasy, and horny goddess follower is so absolutely vanilla in the "being way too horny" posting that I don't even blink at it. It isn't quirky in the slightest. Its basically a Skyrim horny follower you stuck a centaur body to, and even among that community they'd be bored if that's all there was to it
Hussar
Legend
Well, here's the thing though. The DMG, more than any other book, isn't really just a reference book. It's meant to teach people how to play the game. 3e and 5e DMG's were mostly a reference book. Yes, there were some bits here and there for teaching the game, but, mostly it was just there as a reference for things that were left out of the PHB.
I much prefer either the Moldvay Basic/Expert approach - where you spend a fair chunk of the book teaching the reader the basics of how to build an adventure, then build a campaign (given that the two books were pretty slim, they actually do a really bang up job of it - particularly when combined with the old Keep on the Borderland and Isle of Dread modules in the boxed sets which built heavily on what was in the rule guides), or the 4e DMG where it actually tries to teach people "a" way of running a game.
Now, the problem with the 4e DMG was the voice was too strong. It came out too preachy, like it was telling you how you should run a game, rather than a way you could run the game.
Hopefully the new DMG follows these examples.
Chaosmancer
Legend
Eh, that just sounds like someone who was looking for a different type of group. I wouldn't even register that as quirky, just trying to include erotic elements into a game and group that didn't want them. Which is generally just a person with poor understandings of boundaries.
But, see, if you hadn't said "intimacy" and instead said "love" or "marriage", I likely wouldn't even have a clue why this was a problem. Centaur Clerics are pretty basic after all. The devil is always in the details.
We've currently got a player in a game who is playing a myconid druid, not an issue. They love fire. Also, not an issue. They are playing them as a 5 year old with no sense of danger or understanding of combat, while we are trying to play a political game of intrigue, family drama, and rebellion. THAT has been the problem, because they have caused disruptions with their actions.
A young myconid druid who is a pyromaniac is a quirky character I am just fine with. A character who runs to get a hug from the BBEG because they don't understand the concept of fighting, causing the other characters to rush after them, restrain them, THEN continuing fleeing because they are good people who can't leave a literal child to be turned into mulch... that was the problem.
But, this gets back to my original point. It is never these grounded characters like "this player was looking for a game with more erotic elements" or "this player took playing a literal child too far" that people use as examples. It is "Half-Kobold Half-Purple Unicorn" as though that is how these things actually go.
Chaosmancer
Legend
Exactly.
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