Over the past 2 years, over numerous conversations over on the best OSR Discord i've come to this startling realization (Jenx calls this rediscovering the wheel, which is accurate.
That is, a D&D setting truly comes alive when it begins to alter the D&D ruleset itself (Whatever edition/retroclone you choose. Up to maybe 3e onward).
I first began to fully put all these pieces together while reading FMC by Traverse Fantasy (very good, highly reccomend) and I came across this quote, "This book is not a system, but, perhaps a mirror."
Right before this sentence is a dissection of how various games can be eeked out of the OD&D books based on the way you approach it (Wargame/RPG/Simulation). I thought about this for a while after, and what D&D was to me personally regardless of the fragmented connotations of being OSR/Old School or the baggage of this amalgamation of the fading pulp influence and prominent power fantasy we love.
D&D to me, is the rules/mechanics/procedures/bullcrap players use to interface with a setting. OD&D is the rules for Appendix N land, AD&D is the rules for Greyhawk, B/X the rules for Mystara.
2e's changes reflect this idea, that the D&D system is the underlying engine that enables play within a setting. The setting itself comes with alterations, additions and subtractions to the base D&D system.
"The fluff is the crunch and the crunch is the fluff." - Hellah Tellah (Good friend of mine, running AD&D 1e in Greyhawk. One of my various mentors)
What does any of this have to do with Anathea, or even this blog?
Well. Upon taking all these revelations in, alchemizing the contents within the philosopher's stone of my soul (I slept on it) I decided that I am not running D&D anymore. I am running Anathea.
Anathea runs off of something like OD&D with some AD&D 1e/2e-isms and other things I like (professions, NWP's, mage specialization and the like). It has completely different races, a different perspective on class, NWP's that are not numbers to roll, spellbooks gain sentience reflecting the spells contained and best of all....
Alignment (Oh god) is no longer beholden to the dull bullshit Gygax farted out of his balding ass. I can make it whatever fits Anathea, language matters and common only refers to whatever is common in the region you begin play at.
That is, indeed, the way to go with this. Muster also goes into that topic, saying that to focus the system as central is to lose the forest for the trees. A campaign is its own game, it just happens to run on this or that engine. So yeah, go with it and lean into it.
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