As this thread has shown there are several ways to go about playing rpgs.
Some people purchase a setting EXPLICTLY to upset the apple cart. They want to destroy the Red Wizard overlords, Kill off Iuz and Mordenkiend and Slay takhisis outright and end draonglances eternal struggle.
On the other hand if you do that you make it a lot harder to use future sourcebooks. If YOUR dragonlance/Forgotten Realms/Grey Hawk/Exalted/WOD/Shadowrun doesn't have one of the major powers or has a landscape that is massively different from the published setting then it gets to be a lot harder to reconcile each further product.
Which is probably part of the reason you "selected" to play in a forgotten realms/dragonlance/premade world anyway.
You wanted to be able to go your FLGS and pick up a book about the world have it be meaningful. If your players have rearranged the contentianal landmasses then a book about your campaign world is probably pretty useless.
I think this is part of the reason why the prepublished adventurers are often written in such a way that the change they create is "just the first steps" to making real change in the setting. It also means that when occasionally they publish an adventure that really effects the setting they often novelize it at the same time with a "cannon" way the adventure unfolded.
Why no beating the setting?
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This is actually a problem I have with a lot of games that I end up playing in, and one of the reasons I really, really dislike FR. Building a setting can take a bit of work, sure. I can understand why someone would not like to do that, if they could just buy a setting instead. Some settings, like Eberron or Dark Sun, I wouldn't have thought up on my own, and so there's an advantage in buying them in that I can introduce concepts into my games that otherwise wouldn't have existed.
But why, why, WHY, would you rate the setting fluff and setting staying as it is as a sacred cow more than the story the players are making, and more than common sense? If something breaks suspension of disbelief, it shouldn't be in a setting unless there is a compelling narrativistic reason for it to be there. I.e, FUCKING ELMINSTER.
Yeah, you knew i'd go there. But seriously, I don't get how people can fail to /modify/ a setting. Are you telling me they only have orcs ambush people when the FR Almanac to the Northeastern Mountains of the Boring Continent tells them 'Orcs ambush people in these passes'? Any time you run a game in that setting you are by default modifying it. Modifying things on a large scale is just an extension of that. Not being able to do that.. well, it means the PCs will never be able to affect the realms. The realms will be the realms forever and nothing the PCs will do will ever matter beyond the scope of the plot (which won't change the realms at all). In that situation i'd almost be tempted to let the goddamn BBEG blow up the world. If it's not going to change...
But why, why, WHY, would you rate the setting fluff and setting staying as it is as a sacred cow more than the story the players are making, and more than common sense? If something breaks suspension of disbelief, it shouldn't be in a setting unless there is a compelling narrativistic reason for it to be there. I.e, FUCKING ELMINSTER.
Yeah, you knew i'd go there. But seriously, I don't get how people can fail to /modify/ a setting. Are you telling me they only have orcs ambush people when the FR Almanac to the Northeastern Mountains of the Boring Continent tells them 'Orcs ambush people in these passes'? Any time you run a game in that setting you are by default modifying it. Modifying things on a large scale is just an extension of that. Not being able to do that.. well, it means the PCs will never be able to affect the realms. The realms will be the realms forever and nothing the PCs will do will ever matter beyond the scope of the plot (which won't change the realms at all). In that situation i'd almost be tempted to let the goddamn BBEG blow up the world. If it's not going to change...