...but the premise of this thread was to add it to an existing setting, which I believe goes against the original intent of the Icebound setting: a world of ice.
1. It's easier to write a large and detailed setting than a whole planet. I'm a big fan of details - I'd like every settlement detailed, every cave mapped (but leave some stuff for the DM of course). A planet is simply too much. And I speak from personal experience of quite alot of years as a DM. I know we have some professional game designers around here - what do you think?
2. A pole/continent is easy to incorporate into a setting yet large enough for a complete campaign setting. Personally I'm not too keen on planar traveling - especially at low levels. If we make a polar setting the DM could either let the whole campaign set place in this world of ice. We can make it large enough for the DM that
only uses Icebound but also we make it easy (and fun) if the players want to discover the new setting. I know I'd buy/use a polar setting but not a whole world of ice.
So that's my opinion. Lots of ranting - sorry for that
Now back to work....
Now we're just down to "I insist". These points have already been repeatedly addressed and shown to serve as much for a world as for the poles. But at least you attempted evidence while repeating yourself. Allow me to produce a more complete list of your complaints:
A pole/continent is:
1. Easier to write detials for a continent than for a world.
2. Easier to incorporate into any setting.
3. People in a world setting never hear of something different
4. Being one type of setting, you eventually get bored with it.
Here's my points, point-per-point, of why those points don't work as effective arguments:
1. You don't write the whole setting all at once. You detail one area at a time. It's called self-regulating.
2. Not so. It's just as easy to incorporate into any setting. It's the GM's responsibility to say "this is the north pole". That doesn't seem too hard to me. To use your own words: "
If the DM wants he can easily add it to his own world and the PCs can travel to or from Icebound. If he wants the rest of the world can remain frozen - nothing but frozen sea and ice and polar bears and ice monsters. "
3. People in any world setting never hear of something different than what's on that world.
4. And??? Most people just change settings when they get bored with it. Simple as that. That's why you're familiar with more than one setting. You eventually got bored with one and went to another. To again use your own words: "If you eventually get bored of wizards and dragons and orcs the DM just throws in Maztica or asian setting or any other cool setting (or maybe his own continent of yellow bearded harpies that rule the land or whatever)." So, you're saying, if you eventually get tired of the ice setting, you (the GM) throw in a setting set in a warmer climate. Just as you said: "If Icebound ends up being a polar setting the setting itself would be easily incorporated into any campaign world even if they have thier own pantheon, magic etc."
This is what I mean by saying your arguments apply equally well to using a whole world as the setting. There is nothing in your arguments that has any significant weight. And by weight, I mean that there's nothing that says "if we don't do it, we're going to suffer for it." or "If we do this idea over here, we will have all this opened up to us."
So allow me to give you an argument you can actually use: "If we do Icebound as a whole frozen world, we will never be able to
write about anything else in the setting but what regards a frozen world." That is the
only argument that holds any weight. By making it a frozen world, the
Phoenix Lore writers are obligated to only add to the Icebound setting."
Now here's the counter argument. The Phoenix Lore writers are not bound to the Icebound setting. They can write their
own settings and submit them.
Besides the reasons I gave in an earlier post, here's two more:
7. People can endlessly add to the Icebound setting without being constricted by the size of a continent (pole).
8. In a world of ice poles and hot equators, people are going to gravitate to the hot equator. Why do you think there are so few people living on the poles of our own world? In an ice world, they have no place else to go except avoid the region that is 200 degrees or more below zero.
The Icebound setting was created to explore ice settings because so few people have done it in the past and there is no major setting that exists today that covers an ice world setting.
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