Quote from: RPGPundit;443753The thing that always sets me off about posts like the OP here is that all too often they seem to stink of a kind of "wish fulfillment fantasy" reflecting the fact that those interested really hate D&D as it turned out and wish they could have made it somehow either not exist, or have been "proper" by being more intellectual, artistic, no halflings, whatever the fuck it is they don't like about it.

RPGpundit

I remember even back in the day, many players and DMs I gamed with didn't really like any of the settings (ie. Greyhawk and later Forgotten Realms) or even the basic premises underlying 1E AD&D.

Whenever we had a DM who allowed relatively free rein by the players for character creation and the world setting, frequently the game ended up resembling the "Mos Eisley Cantina".  Basically like a forced moosh-mashing of the players' preferences as to how D&D should have been designed.

EDIT:  I remember in one game, a player tried making a minotaur barbarian player character using the 1E Unearthed Arcana and the minotaur stats + abilities from the first 1E Monster Manual.

The only commercial D&D setting we ever touched was GH. FR came out just as we were starting to play a lot of other games and/or develop our own settings. Like a lot of the TSR products from that era, I found the presentation of FR off putting. I'm not sure exactly why, maybe because I had some pretty set ideas about what D&D should be by that point and FR wasn't it.

Quote from: Aos;443764The only commercial D&D setting we ever touched was GH.

Same here.

Though I did play in the 1E Forgotten Realms for one campaign, shortly before I took a long 15+ year hiatus away from rpg gaming altogether.  (I completely skipped over 2E AD&D and 3E D&D).  At the time, I really liked the 1E Forgotten Realms.

Quote from: Aos;443764FR came out just as we were starting to play a lot of other games and/or develop our own settings. Like a lot of the TSR products from that era, I found the presentation of FR off putting. I'm not sure exactly why, maybe because I had some pretty set ideas about what D&D should be by that point and FR wasn't it.

By the time I came back to rpg games shortly after 3.5E D&D was released, I came to the realization that Forgotten Realms was a huge monstrosity taken over by FR "canon lawyers".  The only times I bothered using the 3E/3.5E Forgotten Realms setting, was whenever I was DMing a game with players who did not know much about Forgotten Realms canon.

The few times I DM'd a 3.5E game with some FR "canon lawyers" as players, I ended up using the "Castlemourn" setting instead.  The FR "canon lawyers" had nothing to say, other than "Castlemourn" was designed by their hero Ed Greenwood.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castlemourn

Quote from: danbuter;443755Pundit,
It was just a what-if. You're the one who's taking this way too seriously. I just wanted to have a fun thread. Don't you have any friends who just BS about things like this?

I wasn't necessarily implying that the OP was about what I wrote above; just that threads of this kind always seem to turn into that kind of exercise.

RPGPundit

In my case, on the other hand, I adored the FR box set, the original one, when it first came out.  I thought it was fantastic.  It was only after they started piling on later stuff (and from the time of troubles onward in particular) that I lost touch with FR for many years.

RPGPundit

Quote from: hanszurcher;443664Everything I know about quantum mechanics I learned from watching John Carpenter's The Prince of Darkness.

I learned mine from Einstein and Futurama.

Quote from: RPGPundit;443921I wasn't necessarily implying that the OP was about what I wrote above; just that threads of this kind always seem to turn into that kind of exercise.

Wait which "What Ifs" Jeff Rients "homework assignment" brings us in the next weeks/months...

Quote from: Jeff RientsStart with a core set of rules, the older and crappier the better.  You can use an RPG but some half-baked wargame works even better.  Produce a two or three page document with suggestions for improving the rules/adapting them for RPG play and an outline for a campaign.  Expand this to a 50-100 page book.