I'm not a big fan of Dragonlance. I've never understood the attraction for GMs, to use someone else's world. To me, it feels a bit like cheating.
Can someone explain to me what the attraction is?
Posts: 14554 | Registered: Dec 1999
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Blayne Bradley
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Same reason why people use Spelljammer, or Forgotten Realms or GreyHawk or Ebberon, WotC create an entire fantasy setting so we the DM's don't have to, creating a fully fleshed out town can take a whole year for some people.
By buying the 300$ worth of books it gives the implied entitleship to use those worlds for campaigns as long as the stories arent published using that world without WoTC permission.
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I was unaware GMs played D&D in general. I thought most played chess...
Sorry, had to make that joke. *chessman away!*
Posts: 2705 | Registered: Sep 2006
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Blayne Bradley
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GM/DM are somewhat interchangeable to my mind, although for different mediums, a DM of say a strategy game is more likely called a GM aka "Game Master", while a DM in the traditional D&D sense is a DM aka Dungeon Master.
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quote:Originally posted by Blayne Bradley: Same reason why people use Spelljammer, or Forgotten Realms or GreyHawk or Ebberon, WotC create an entire fantasy setting so we the DM's don't have to, creating a fully fleshed out town can take a whole year for some people.
By buying the 300$ worth of books it gives the implied entitleship to use those worlds for campaigns as long as the stories arent published using that world without WoTC permission.
Okay, the time thing I get...but not your specific example. It's been a while since I cracked the books, but I don't remember them having fully formed towns in them.
I don't fully understand spending $300 on sourcebooks, when the OpenSRD is available for free. I guess...I don't think that the specifics available in WotC specific properties are worth that much money.
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posted
Some people aren't into worldbuildling.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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Blayne Bradley
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Having the books implied that by being into D&D you most likely are into reading the other fantasy novels endorsed by WoTC, like Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance or Eberron (Not as good as Faerun) which over the span of dozens if not over a hundred novels details a wide range of towns, dungeons, cities, regions, peoples that makes choosing a city and pointing out notable landmarks relatively easy proportional to your zealousness to WoTC./Tor books.
A DM familiar with Forgotten realms will generally say have a party of Dwarves originating in Mithral Halls, or a mixed party from Waterdeep city of Splenders, or a all Drow party from Menzoberanzan in the Underdark.
Also having the actual books on hand is hugely better and more convenient then wading through say a PDF which lags on alot of computers when they approch double digits in megs.
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Most of the D&D games I've run were in my own campaign worlds, but I've also ran games in "premade" worlds that seemed interesting: Dark Sun, Ravenloft, and Scarred Lands stand out. (Does the last one still count if I wrote some of the stuff that made it into their world? )
I never saw the appeal of Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, or Greyhawk because they were all pretty generic fantasy worlds. Not much particularly set them apart. I would get their world-specific monster manuals though, to have more beasties to choose from.
posted
MPH, I think part of Enigmatic's point was not specifically that generic fantasy world's are bad, but rather, he does not understand why someone would [purchase such a generic fantasy world.
Generic fantasy worlds are pretty easy to create, in my opinion.
Then again, if I look at both your comments together (some people aren't into worldbuilding + sometimes generic fantasy is fun), I guess I see what you mean.
Though, honestly, while some GMs may not be into world-building, it seems to me that every good GM should at least enjoy certain elements of what I would consider world-building... I mean, no matter how detailed the prefab world is going to be, you'll still need to flesh out at least minor details, right?
Eh I don't really know where I'm going with this. Just procrastinating writing up a work schedule. I guess I'll do that now.
Posts: 3580 | Registered: Aug 2005
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I bought the Middle Earth Roleplaying Game just so that I *could* set campaigns within Middle Earth and play with characters such as Hobbits, Dwarves and Dunedain.
Horses for courses I suppose.
Posts: 892 | Registered: Oct 2006
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I haven't bought campaign settings or modules in quite some time. (Of course, at this point, I haven't been in a role-playing game for nearly two years, so I suppose the distinction is increasingly vague. *sigh*)
There are some interesting ideas in some of the material out there, and I've certainly read some great sourcebooks, but generally I find store-bought settings and modules to be nearly as much work to do well as learning a new system, and not as much fun. I generally feel I owe it to players to read through rule books cover-to-cover at least once and probably skim the more frequently used sections additionally in order to feel "fluent" in the game as a GM and able to react quickly to what's going on. Sourcebooks mean there's one more tome on the table, one more book I may have to look through to find the relevant section to the current situation, and they're never as well organized for my purposes as my own notes (nor, inevitably, am I as comfortable "riffing off of them", with the inevitable possibility that by doing so I might make errors in the continuity posed by the pre-existing setting.) Store bought settings cost me time, speed, and flexibility, in other words. I'm much more comfortable borrowing the occasional idea and incorporating it in my own worlds.
I've rarely had much use for the overarching time-travel-places-of-power mythos of Feng Shui: Shadowfist, for example. But the rules are great for fast-and-loose one-shot adventures with about as much depth as a typical action movie, and I've gained a certain amused affection for the fictional, eternally disaster-prone city of San Raul where I often set them.
Posts: 3826 | Registered: May 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Blayne Bradley: Having the books implied that by being into D&D you most likely are into reading the other fantasy novels endorsed by WoTC, like Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance or Eberron (Not as good as Faerun) which over the span of dozens if not over a hundred novels details a wide range of towns, dungeons, cities, regions, peoples that makes choosing a city and pointing out notable landmarks relatively easy proportional to your zealousness to WoTC./Tor books.
And...you find it easier to make cities from descriptions in novels than to make them up out of your head?
quote:Also having the actual books on hand is hugely better and more convenient then wading through say a PDF which lags on alot of computers when they approch double digits in megs.
All of my OpenSRDs are in .doc format, with the exception of the character sheets.
Posts: 14554 | Registered: Dec 1999
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quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: MPH, I think part of Enigmatic's point was not specifically that generic fantasy world's are bad, but rather, he does not understand why someone would [purchase such a generic fantasy world.
Generic fantasy worlds are pretty easy to create, in my opinion.
posted
I have DM'd for 25 years and have a dozen or more books and have never read any of the novels that go with D&D. That is not to say I have nor borrowed stuff from books/novels I have liked, but trying to learn the workings of a whole world takes too much time. I would rather create it on the fly. One of the great things about being a DM is that I get to say what happens/happend.
posted
Scott, while most of the time my crew just makes up their own worlds, the pre-existing worlds have a certain appeal as well. Now I'm coming from an angle where i wouldn't really rely on the sourcebooks etc, but it can be handy to just be able to say: Ok we're doing a campaign in Aber-Toril, or an Aber-Toril-like world which quickly sets up things such as: magic is prevalent, technology is very limited, this is a more or less typical fantasy setting, etc...
Additionally, it can be useful for character generation to just give some pre-fab background info (i.e. I'm rolling a primitive druid, but I also want to throw in a little bit of magic/technology... so hey, I'm a druid that happens to live in the ruins of a ruined Nethrese city...)
Finally, even if you're setting your campaign in a world like this it's easy to just slightly tweak it. Case in point: upcoming campaign is "set in Aber-Toril" but will be confined primarily to a small island kingdom north-west of Waterdeep... so we can all use ideas from FR for character development, but likely won't actually interact with the rest...
basically it just speeds things up and gives you handy constraints when setting things up.
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And it's worth mentioning (again, since Enigmatic said it up there) that there are some campaign worlds that are extremely cool and original, which I wish I thought of. But, since I didn't, I'll use them.
Dark Sun comes to mind.
Posts: 3580 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Blayne Bradley: Having the books implied that by being into D&D you most likely are into reading the other fantasy novels endorsed by WoTC, like Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance or Eberron (Not as good as Faerun) which over the span of dozens if not over a hundred novels details a wide range of towns, dungeons, cities, regions, peoples that makes choosing a city and pointing out notable landmarks relatively easy proportional to your zealousness to WoTC./Tor books.
And...you find it easier to make cities from descriptions in novels than to make them up out of your head?
quote:Also having the actual books on hand is hugely better and more convenient then wading through say a PDF which lags on alot of computers when they approch double digits in megs.
All of my OpenSRDs are in .doc format, with the exception of the character sheets.
Sorry to double post, but I just wanted to mention...
Blayne isn't talking about the SRD. He's referring the illegal PDF versions of all the major WOTC products that are floating around the interwebs and passing through p2p networks. He's saying, he'd rather buy the sourcebooks than use their illegal PDF versions.
You were saying, why buy sourcebooks when you can get the SRD for free and make up your own sources?
I think you were kinda talking past eachother.
Posts: 3580 | Registered: Aug 2005
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Hmm...I guess Blayne will have to elaborate, but my impression is that in his post that you quoted, he's not talking about source books or modules at all.
He's talking about the novelizations written for Wizards of the Coast.
Posts: 14554 | Registered: Dec 1999
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Blayne Bradley
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I'm talking about the 300$ box set of D%D 3.5 Edition Source books, Im implying that by going through the expense to get them generally one has also gotten at some point or at least read at some point the other novels.
Especially if people went for every single other book like the Complete Warrior.
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I've got multiple copies of most of the 1st and 2nd edition books, and the bare bones 3.5 books, as well as a ton of source material books detailing armor, siege weaponry, and the like from different periods. I've never read a D&D novel.
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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quote:I'm talking about the 300$ box set of D%D 3.5 Edition Source books, Im implying that by going through the expense to get them generally one has also gotten at some point or at least read at some point the other novels.
Were I still actively gaming I would own all the books probably; I will most likely NEVER read a D&D novel.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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quote:I'm talking about the 300$ box set of D%D 3.5 Edition Source books, Im implying that by going through the expense to get them generally one has also gotten at some point or at least read at some point the other novels.
I think the reverse is true. If anyone has read more than one D&D novel, they almost certainly own the sourcebooks.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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Blayne Bradley
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My interest in D&D came about from that yes, reading Dragonlance/Forgotten Realms got me into D&D, and this generally seems to be the going trend at my CEGEP.
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I read a large compiled paperback of what was (I think) Hickman & Weiss (?) Dragonlance stories. It was a read done through the night, in the midst of a blizzard, rocking gently in the berth of a train coming into Chicago on tracks lined with blue fire. I don't remember the stories, but I do remember the train.
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