Rejakor wrote:My heresy: Fuck the forgotten realms. Fuck them. They were forgotten for a reason, and they should STAY forgotten.
Quite aside from the fact that elminster is a douche and their world makes NO FUCKING SENSE, politically, economically, racially, or geographically, it's just boring! It is a boring, boring, BORING setting. It bores the living shit out of me even with a good DM.
Agreed. The only interesting setting that has been produced in a LONG time is Ebberon. Yes, D&D needs its own stock high fantasy setting. However, there is no reason it has to suck. Infact, it should probably make an attempt at being whatever is in in the FANTASY LITERATURE right now.
That would mean that if you made the setting today, as in RIGHT NOW it would need to be dark and gritty. Joe Abercrombie/George RR Martin style where truely "good guys" are special (but can be found) and even "good" kingdoms often have unpleasant sides.
For 5th edition or 6th edition if these trends are not prevailing, if we are back to world building messaih stories like wheel of time then you change your high fantasy setting to that. Make it clear that the party is supposed to be the fricking light warriors from the original final fantasy if you have to. It doesn't matter as long as you keep up with whats cool NOW. The "hot" style in fantasy literature should be the campaign setting you produce.
Another heresy: Monsters should have environments and lifecycles. I'm sick of 'randumb cthulhuesque monster with SPESHAL ATTACK'. Woo, fuck you. Make it interesting. Have it only fight to defend it's nest. Throw in some natural behaviours which could cause conflict with the PCs. Tell me what it eats, how it lives. Have it be a human with an insectile invader living in it's brain.
Monster books have always been interesting due mainly to mythology /b/acking it up, but lately every monster they've 'made up' has been mindnumbingly repetitive and boring. Something has to be interesting in and of itself before the mechanics also make it interesting! You can't use a cone of flame that nauseates every 1d4 rounds to make up for how boring your goddamn monster is!
No, the heresy is that all that crap is remotely important. I don't give a crap if the cthulhuesque monster normally lives in the artic wastes of wasteunderland. If I want the Ice Cthulu in the bottom of the volcano then the ice Cthulu is going in the fucking bottom of the volcano. Whats more, the fact that there is an ice cthulu in the volcano makes it memorable. For example, the polar bear on Lost. Its cool because its unusual. The audiance for the most part, doesn't know a god damn thing about polar bears other than:
A) Its a bear
B) It lives in Cold Places
C) Its not cold on a tropical island!
The really smart portion of the audiance probably knows "polar bears live at the north pole and thats why they don't eat pinguins because pinguens live at the south pole." The 1% that knows ANYTHING more than that you would never have been able to make happy anyway.
Similarly, the players probably have not read through the monster manual and collected a ton of facts about the monsters. They are relying on keywords to tell them things about the monsters nature (ice, frost, fire, desert, Hill, etc.)
If there is something about a monsters ecology that is noteworthy, or something that is important to know for defeating the monster put this in the creatures description. The description needs to include anything about the mythology of the creature you want to tell. It needs to include all the relevant facts, and then the rest of the monster entry should be explaining how that monster goes about delivering a memorable beat down to players.
Don't waste my time with crap that I will just ignore for the sake of making stuff cool. So, I really don't care that Giant Egales normally feed on massive mansized salmon, and I especially DONT want "massive man sized salmon" to be one of the monsters included in the monster manual just so your
campaing setting fake nature preserve appears to be self sustaining.
