A first-time D&D world-builder's dilemma

[Craft (Cheese)]

Now, I know there's a world-building forum, but I read the rules and my concerns here have to do with adapting an existing setting to D&D mechanics (or the other way 'round), and thus it (hopefully) belongs here. Please feel free to move it if I guessed horribly wrong.

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Now, several days ago I had the idea to try to convert an existing (original) setting of mine not intended for D&D to make it suitable for 3.5 usage. I've run into several problems with this including, but not limited to just how much of the basic rules and default fluff are not only incompatible with, but flat-out do not make sense when applied to the setting. Here's a quick list:


The entire concept of planes, and with it, all the stuff with celestials and demons and devils and plane shift and Summon Monster spells. Summon Monster can potentially be dealt with (by, say, refluffing it as making the new monster out of nowhere rather than summoning it from another world) but the other stuff lacks such an easy solution (especially celestials and devils. Demons can potentially be dealt with, but they'd still be radically different from what D&D usually calls a "demon.")
Either Clerics or Druids. My setting essentially casts the "spirits of nature" (still very very different from other settings) and the gods as being the same thing. You can just say they're two different types of servants of the same divine entities, but this solution feels unsatisfying. Furthermore, the setting has literally zero shapeshifting, at least from spellcasters who are servants of the gods. And don't even get me started on rangers, monks, or paladins.
Heck, the entire concept of spellcasting-from-studying doesn't really fit. All magical power is either inherent, or granted by something with inherent power. You can't "learn" how to get magic out of nowhere no matter how hard you try. Sorcerers make sense with a bit of refluffing, but Wizards and Archivists don't. Even if I could refluff wizards/archivists somehow to fit with this, there's still the mechanic of the spellbook to take care of.
The absolute absence of every PC race except humans.

As far as I see it, there are three methods to handle these sorts of problems:

1. Modify the setting to include, say, gnomes, with their default lore still mostly intact. Honestly if I wanted to do this I'd make a setting from scratch with D&D in mind from the beginning rather than convert what I already have, so I want to avoid this at all costs.

2. Refluff gnomes as something that already exists within the setting, maybe stretching the original lore a teeny bit to accommodate something gnome-like that still fits with the flavor of the setting. This is better, and great when there's an obvious solution, but not always possible. I don't even know where to begin squeezing in Dwarves this way, for instance.

3. Modify the game mechanics to match the fluff of the original setting. Just say flat-out No, you can't play a Gnome, but you can play a human or one of these other setting-appropriate PC races I've picked out/designed from scratch. While better than method 1 considering the circumstances, I don't want to do this unless there's no better way.



It's method 3 about which I have a dilemma for you all: How much is it considered acceptable to bend game mechanics to match your own fluff? How many things can I outright ban/significantly alter for my setting before it becomes unreasonable?

[Mulletmanalive]

The planes stuff isn't really integral, so don't worry about it and strip it. Make this VERY clear to the players and make a point of editing spell lists to remove references to avoid confusion.

The gods and mages thing, I suggest checking out either Wheel of Time d20 or Midnight. They both have very similar premises to what you're describing and the classes should be easier to modify.

Midnight also helps with the races thing because it replaced races, for the most part, with wha kind of person you were in the form of the heroic chains.

I think it's reasonably cheap in .pdf format.

Are you sure you really want to use 3.5 for a setting that requires this much refitting? GURPS might be easier, simply because that's a ground up rocess anyway.

[Yitzi]

1. Modify the setting to include, say, gnomes, with their default lore still mostly intact. Honestly if I wanted to do this I'd make a setting from scratch with D&D in mind from the beginning rather than convert what I already have, so I want to avoid this at all costs.

Good move. Refluffing settings to fit the rules is a bad idea.


2. Refluff gnomes as something that already exists within the setting, maybe stretching the original lore a teeny bit to accommodate something gnome-like that still fits with the flavor of the setting. This is better, and great when there's an obvious solution, but not always possible. I don't even know where to begin squeezing in Dwarves this way, for instance.

Still I wouldn't advise it.


3. Modify the game mechanics to match the fluff of the original setting. Just say flat-out No, you can't play a Gnome, but you can play a human or one of these other setting-appropriate PC races I've picked out/designed from scratch. While better than method 1 considering the circumstances, I don't want to do this unless there's no better way.

I'd say this is the way to go. Remove anything that really doesn't fit(e.g. wizards, other races, druids, planar magic), refluff and perhaps modify what does (e.g. clerics get the druid spell list added to their own, teleport and summon work without involving other planes, etc.), and (here's the tricky part, but the one that will really make your setting stand out) create new stuff for what exists in the setting but not in standard D&D. Fortunately, you've already found the right forum for help with doing that last bit.


It's method 3 about which I have a dilemma for you all: How much is it considered acceptable to bend game mechanics to match your own fluff?

As much as you feel the need to. You're the DM, you can do whatever you want before the game starts. The real question is how much you can bend it and still have it be D&D 3.5 rather than generic fantasy d20; I'd say that while stuff like Dragonlance (which AFAIK doesn't even have orcs) allows you to bend it quite a bit, and some of the variants in UA allow even more, once you have less than half the original core base classes (possibly modified, but with the same basic fluff concept), it's no longer D&D 3.5. I'd say it's still in the D&D "family" as long as it's fantasy and uses the d20 system and a DM; otherwise there really isn't any way to include everything from Basic to 4e.

Part of the advantage of D&D is that while it does have enough mechanics that you don't have to pretty much write the system, it's sufficiently modular and flexible that you can modify it to fit pretty much any setting and still have it work.