What Are The Essential Parts of a D&D Setting?

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Forum member Cyberzombie asked a good question earlier this year.

What are the essential elements of the most generic of D&D settings? You can, of course, dump just about anything and everything to create your own setting. But what I'm looking for here are the elements that scream D&D -- things you must have in a setting to have the D&D feel to it. Simultaneously, I'm interested in what things could be dumped without hurting the feel of D&D. What could you rip out and still have something that feels like D&D?

Since my introduction re-introduction to Dungeons & Dragons and Role-Playing Games in general was so very unorthodox, with Lonny's group from Bradley immediately being thrown into a Dark Sun campaign, I'm not sure I could best answer this question. I mean to explain that I feel there are no essential elements that cannot be removed and there is nothing that could not be added. There are going to be traditionalists that state that you couldn't possibly remove dragons as a story element, and yet on Athas, for all intents and purposes, dragons as they are commonly known do not exist. And that is just the first difference from a traditional setting.

To introduce players to the game, perhaps the more traditional and expected elements should be in place.

What D&D Character Are You? (Part II)

This one was a little bit less serious. I still was thinking of Xenia as in the previous post, but a lot of the questions didn't have enough flexibility or choices to cover her sort of responses.

Monk! - Victory! You scored 6!

It is time for you to leave Grasshopper.

You travel. Work. Sleep when you can. You're a monk. You are contemplative, simple and quiet. However, the second anyone gives you shit you fly into a furious whirlwind of martial arts mayhem. Your friends give you the space you need and you only speak when neccessary. However, you're a mystery to most. You're most likely to end up wandering the frontier, barefoot with the sun beating down on your ragged hat and on the run from someone. It's all good though. With any luck, you can get into one of Quentin Tarantino's films.

What D&D Character Are You?

I did the survey thinking of my old Mul Thief from Athas, Xenia. The results were not entirely too far off although she really wasn't an evil person. She was more of a fighter and warrior than a rogue, simply because her racial strength brought her a lot of confidence --perhaps too much.

You Are A: Chaotic Evil Human Fighter

Alignment: Chaotic Evil characters are the most 'evil' people out there. They are willing to do anything to get ahead, and will kill anyone who stands in their way. A chaotic evil person sees no value in order and governments, and believes to the utmost in the tenant that 'Might Makes Right'.

Race: Humans are the 'average' race. They have the shortest life spans, and because of this, they tend to avoid the racial prejudices that other races are known for. They are also very curious and tend to live 'for the moment'.

Class: Fighters are the warriors. They use weapons to accomplish their goals. This isn't to say that they aren't intelligent, but that they do, in fact, believe that violence is frequently the answer.

Detailed Results:
Alignment:
Law and Chaos:
Law ----- XX (2)
Neutral - XXXX (4)
Chaos --- XXXXXXXXX (9)

Good and Evil:
Good ---- (-1)
Neutral - XX (2)
Evil ---- XXX (3)

Race:
Human ---- XXXXXXXXXXXX (12)
Half-Elf - XXX (3)
Elf ------ (-1)
Gnome ---- XXXXX (5)
Halfling - XXXXXXXXX (9)
Dwarf ---- XXXXXXXXXXXX (12)
Half-Orc - XXXX (4)

Class:
Fighter -- XXXXXXX (7)
Barbarian - XXXXX (5)
Ranger --- XXX (3)
Monk ----- (0)
Paladin -- XX (2)
Cleric --- (-4)
Mage ----- X (1)
Druid ---- XXXX (4)
Thief ---- XXXXXX (6)
Bard ----- XXXXXX (6)

Baldur's Gate Original Saga with Tales of the Sword Coast Expansion Pack

In Baldur's Gate (Role Playing Game of the Year, 1998), with expansion pack Tales of the Sword Coast, deeds are rewarded with vast treasures of legend, glory beyond compare and a world rescued from the brink of disaster!

Unleash your imagination in a fantasy world where heroes use magic, steel and their wits to battle fearsome monsters and unscrupulous villians. Guide your party of adventurers from the bustling medieval city of Baldur's Gate through hundreds of quests and challenges that will take you on a journey that you will soon not forget!

Get a great deal on this unforgettable expansion pack. Visit Amazon.com using this link for the best price.

Wizards of the Coast

The above was my attempt to get a Google Gadget Module to work using Wizards.com RSS feeds. Since the Blogger update, this is loading automatically in the sidebar, so it doesn't really matter anymore. You can subscribe to any RSS feed on your Google Personalized Home Page and this has some similar modules to the gadget page, but apparently is not the same.

Since this didn't work, I'm going to post the only Google Gadget that features a wizard.

Character Class: Dragon Shaman -- Elemental Warrior

This character class seemed interesting and adaptable to many different campaigns.

The Dungeons & Dragons game offers a unique take on the dragon -- equal parts intellect, power, majesty, and elemental fury (with a little greed and vanity thrown in for spice). Players thirsty for a taste of draconic might would do well to consider the dragon shaman class from Player's Handbook II. The class has a strong dragon theme and lots of great features. Some dragon shamans are merely dragon sycophants obsessed with dragons and more prone to share a dragon's faults than to become a successful adventurer. The best dragon shamans, however, bring a dragon's verve and indomitable will to their adventures. Such characters lift their groups to new heights.

Read more at Character Class: Dragon Shaman -- Elemental Warrior.

ImageShack - Hosting :: level1human2ob.jpg

RPG Motivational Posters

Everyone has seen the kind of sappy motivational posters hung in most classrooms or offices. There are also parodies such as those found at Parodyville and also the Demotivators available at Despair.com. I love parody as a comedic art form and I also love role-playing games so when a coworker sent me the following link I laughed myself silly. These are only going to be funny to those of us that have played role-playing games.

The history on this one is that on the RPGnet forums earlier this year (2006/05/19) a thread was started inspiring and inviting any and all members to create their own 'Photoshopped' images of fantasy art and photographs made into these posters. The Photoshop: RPG Motivational Posters thread has grown now to 392 pages. One of the members downloaded the best ones and archived many of the images on his own site and this was the link I got. Here are just a few of my favorites.

Visit RPG Motivational Posters or a mirror of the same.

Dungeons & Dragons Campaign - Proboards Forum

As I mentioned here, we briefly used one Proboards forum for some chat/discussion. However, I knew this was not the correct current one.

Here is your invitation to our forum for our Dungeons And Dragons Campaign.

Wired News: Out of the Dungeon, Onto the Net

I'm not one to play MMORPGs, as I'm against the idea of buying a product and then continuing to rent a service to use that product. However, this one looks pretty cool.

The lineage of nearly all fantasy computer role-playing games can be traced directly back to the dice-rolling classic, Dungeons & Dragons. True, from there it can be traced back to Tolkien, Vance, Moorcock and other fantasy authors, but it took the genius of Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson to take the infinite subtleties and mysteries of magical fantasy and distill them down into a set of rules you can argue about until two in the morning.

Where's my dice bag? Oh yeah, I left it right next to my mouse... Is it really two in the morning already?

Foggy Dew

...and from the plains of Royal Meath
Strong men came hurrying through,
While Britannia's sons with their long ranging guns
Sailed in from the foggy dew.

Which Polyhedral Are You?

Hey gamers! Take this online quiz at dicepool.com. Afterwards, you get a Klondike Bar!

You are a four-sided die, a d4. Otherwise known as a tetrahedron, a "Caltrop", or (to a lesser degree) "Ol' Pointy". This crap bores you, so I'll get to the point. Others tend to see you as petty, conniving, manipulative, argumentative, defensive, greedy, and needlessly antagonistic. You see yourself as focused, effective, efficient, influencing, shrewd, tactical, and direct. Both points of view are in fact correct. You always know the best way to get things done, a fact that never wins sympathy with others. Whenever you manage to gain control of a situation, your solutions are swift and brutal. Unfortunately everyone else is convinced that granting you such power is, "a bad thing" and often conspire to keep it out of your hands. Such short-sighted fools!

Take the quiz at dicepool.com