Setting the stage. In a way you prefer.

[Typhon]

So there is that ongoing thread about hating the base setting for 5e. This isn't about that at all,in any way, shape, form or fashion. So please lets not have any of that drift over here. That setting is well discussed in that thread and doesn't need to be brought over here. Unless it is to say you like it, state your reasons and leave it at that. NO ATTACKING THE OPINIONS OF OTHERS, because we know there is a good portion of people that like that setting and a good portion that like or crave other settings. That is WELL established.

This is about what those other settings might be. Be it a custom homebrew, something from a previous edition, some other publishers work, whatever. You like it and it is the setting you prefer/like/love. I know there are a multitude of opinions out there concerning settings and I want honest, FRIENDLY, open minded opinions. This isn't he/she said argument fodder. I am only looking for settings that people like, why they like them, and why they think others might like to check them out.

I love, or like like if you prefer, Planescape. Mostly for the completely limitless nature and how from that one metropolitan setting you can literally go anywhere or possibly do anything. The factions and their political plots were awesome and so were a great many of their specialized NPCs. Heck, just joining a faction could start people on their way to real and political power that wasn't related to their race or class. Plus how many settings have an unreadable, unquestionable, unapproachable powerhouse such as the Lady of Blades that can kill a god in one on one combat, without being a god, and has the power to forbid other godlike entities from encroaching on her turf. To me, that will always be the greatest setting ever. But that is also my opinion.

I know that WotC has kept Sigil as part of the Planar landscape over the course of editions, but they haven't really done much with it since 2nd that I know of. They mention it and maybe put out a Manual of the Planes that talks about it, but not much else. If I am wrong, then please let me know.

I never played a Spelljammers, Birthright, or Red Steel campaign, and my groups didn't do much with Dragonlance or Greyhawk. Ravenloft, while deeply involving and intriguing with many great and disturbing play hooks that I loved, it just got left to the wayside more often than not for one reason or another by the DM.

3.X brought Eberron which is another setting that felt massive and fresh in many new and interesting ways. Sword and Sorcery was a nice grim and gritty setting by a different publisher that just resonated with me and I wish I had gotten more play time with it.

4e with its Nentir Vale, I will be honest, I just didn't have much time to play or do anything with. I looked into it here and there, but I never really delved into it.

Which brings us to now and 5e. I have done some looking around for settings, but maybe having more voices and hearing their reasons will point me to some undiscovered gems that will open new avenues of adventure for me, if not for others as well.

[Knaight]

A lot of what I dislike about the D&D setting is practically mechanically hardcoded (not least that I'm sick of elves, dwarves, and a lot of the "standard fantasy" stuff that crops up in D&D mechanics and thus in almost every setting), so if I end up GMing it and have players who aren't attached to things I'd want to cut I generally pare it down dramatically and build a setting from there. I also tend to favor relatively small and contained settings in general*, which often means either settings focused on a particular city and its hinterlands or an archipelago. I also tend to base settings on history, particularly on areas where cultures bled into each other heavily - Moorish Spain, the borders between northern and southern China, port cities in general, and of course archipelagos with distinct cultural groups on different islands all interacting. Magic is likely to be extremely de-emphasized, although if it isn't it's probably pretty central. It's also often a sign that I'm not really into the mood for fantasy, which means that space opera preferences start creeping in and the setting gets weird and magitech heavy. I also only rarely use monsters as a group, favoring human opposition.

The plural "settings" might have been noticed. It seems pretty standard among the D&D community for DMs to almost exclusively DM D&D, and to play their one game where they make their one setting in great depth. That's not how I roll, preferring to jump between games and use a wide variety of settings for these different games. There are some similarities (cities/archipelagos, history as an influence, a focus on cultures, my unending love for water, wetlands, seas, and boats), but more differences. I'm a bit pressed for time at the moment, but I'll come back and edit this post to cover some of the specific settings that gets across more than the trends really can, restricting it not to settings used in D&D but to settings that could be used in D&D without too much work**.



Port Alhabri: Port Alhabri is a port city based loosely on Cordoba during the late Taifa Emirate, with a side of Venice, moved over to the coast. As a city based setting there's a focus on city intrigue, which in this case involves a nobility fractured between old and new money, rural and urban conflicts between emerging guilds and powerful agrarian interests, religious conflicts between two major religions which are both ramping up extremism (especially outside the city, where day to day interactions between members of the other faith aren't guaranteed), a minor religion threatened by both major religions, criminal organizations, class conflict, etc. The one nod to it being a fantasy setting was the inclusion of the Alchemists Guild (which the PCs were tied to when I ran this game), which in this context means producers of a few minor alchemical items, e.g. alchemists fire.

D&D Adaptation: Throw in a mages guild, give the faiths clerics with actual magic, throw in the D&D races with the city being very multicultural in that regard where the hinterlands really aren't, done.

Alchemquest: There's a small archipelago of three main islands, on which there are five proper countries, plus a few areas that are nominally within these five countries but effectively represent distinct cultural groups or distinct states that aren't recognized but do have de-facto sovereignty. This basic political situation puts all of the countries in a fairly similar pickle, and that pickle is the magical industrialization which every country must do to keep pace with its international rivals, but which has a side effect of creating new groups that threaten the domestic regime. Said industrialization is based on the magitech of alchemy, a highly limited field capable only of changing one material into another and of separating out different materials - which is still an incredible capability that matters a great deal to a nation. Nation states engage in international conflicts, an emerging educated class threatens traditional monarchies, an aristocracy based on making fortunes on industry is emerging as a power and clashing with nobles, and all these groups are also having their own internal conflicts which have a tendency to spiral outward. There's a lot that this setting can cover, and I've used it for a number of campaigns, but much of it isn't D&D friendly.

D&D Adaptations: Some of the same stuff can be done with wizard academies instead of alchemists, and I could keep at least the broad strokes of the nations. Still, this setting would change dramatically. On the other hand, there's a few setting elements which work beautifully in D&D - I'd happily GM a game where the PCs are members of the Aluminum Knights, relics of the past trying to adapt to a changing world.


Nomad's Gift: My comment on the centrality of magic if it gets emphasized is really brought home in this setting, and it's also the one that needs the most adaptation to work in D&D (both in terms of setting alterations and system alterations). There's a broadly bronze age world, set on a large continent with a huge island nearby (think Australia and New Zealand), where the danger of the wilds is played up, with terrifying mountain ranges, a chasm that dwarfs the grand canyon and essentially cuts the big continent in half, a forest continually covered in fog, and other hostile terrain. The hostility of the land has led to a sparse population, split between a bunch of city states and a few nomadic groups. Then there's magic, a force initially unknown to humans at all, because as far as the population is concerned it's just another part of the natural world - like storms, or plague. Sometimes torrential rains lead to flooding which can knock out a significant fraction of a city state, sometimes an illness comes through that kills people with fever and rashes, and sometimes an invisible killing force that turns people to stone or glass cuts a swath across the continent. Then there's the sites of power, strange and alien entities spread across the most inhospitable places in the world, capable of giving people magic they can actually use.

D&D Adaptation: Nomad's Gift was originally run using a noun verb magic system that doesn't exist in D&D, and the way magic is obtained fundamentally doesn't fit D&D classes. However, it can be adapted relatively easily - the caster classes represent people with more magic potential but less martial talent, the magic sites instead grant access to specific spells dependent on the potential of the mages, and the major hurdle is cleared. Then there's the magic, which occasionally imparts great strength to those it changes instead of horrific death, and which thus works really well as an explanation for where these D&D monsters are coming from, and why some people are so utterly terrifying compared to the human norm. The occasional vastly boosted human was already a significant setting element, as were dramatically changed animals which ranged from being just bigger and more dangerous to those transformed into the likes of phoenixes and thunderbirds - it's not exactly hard to bring in D&D creatures instead.


Shallow Graves: When I have a group of players that just wants to kill stuff, I break out this setting, as the least dumb setting palatable to me that is really amicable to just killing stuff all the time. Essentially, there was a pretty typical early medieval setting with a touch of magic, with a pretty typical history behind it (based more on real history than mythic fantasy-stasis history). This world was then undone by a peculiar apocalypse, a sudden change in the rules of the world: The souls of the dead started sticking around. People started coming back from the dead, the recent dead often just faintly off, the longer dead more prone to coming back as ghosts. Corpses arose naturally as zombies, necromancers suddenly found their magic so much easier, and these factors led to times of turmoil. By the time of the setting proper, the early medieval setting is a remnant of its former self. Massive depopulation has wracked it, dangerous necromancers and their dangerous cults abound, several risen dead kings have started wars with their own descendants to revive their kingdom, powerful undead creatures made by necromancers in way over their head and drunk on their newfound power have slipped their bounds and ravage the countryside, and life is generally a mess. The smarter parts of the setting have to do with cultures struggling in the face of rapid change, of cultures developing within a dark age, and of how people interact with an apocalypse. These can largely work in the background, while the dumber parts of the setting - the PCs fighting a wide range of undead in what is usually a gonzo fashion - takes the foreground.

D&D Adaptation: Using the D&D undead (plus the occasional custom creature) and altering the level of a few spells pretty much covers this.


Golem Cult: This is more of a one shot micro-setting than anything else, but it has room to expand. In its native state as an introductory module it's pretty simple and straight forward: the PCs are agents of a powerful empire, sent to investigate strange disappearances in a border town by the sea. There they come into the middle of a simmering conflict, with the town convinced a nearby hill tribe is kidnapping their people, the hill tribe hostile to the town for unknown reasons, and a bandit group led by a disaffected former military officer stirring up trouble. More investigation reveals that the hill tribe is convinced that the town is kidnapping their people, and assuming the PCs are even half competent they'll generally figure out that there's another group in the mix, and that there's a few suspicious figures among both the tribe and the town that have information on it. It turns out that there's a nearby island off the coast that has a strange cult capturing people to use as ritual sacrifices to power their golems (at least one of which shows up earlier as a "random encounter"), and depending on how quick the PCs are the game generally ends either with them all dead, them alive but the cult having completed their ritual unleashing terrifying golems, or the cult smashed and the kidnapped rescued. Two of these lead to usable settings, one about the PCs rise as imperial agents in a setting loosely based on Han China, with conflicts involving both the supernatural and conflicts within the empire and between it and its neighbors (including internal independent tribes). The other involves the PCs being embroiled in a war on the edge of an empire, fighting a terrifying cult and their nightmarish golems. Both work as D&D settings.

D&D Adaptation: I've run Golem Cult as an introductory adventure in more than one system, and while it does introduce subtle changes they tend not to be major. D&D 5e is just one more setting, and while there are editions of D&D where the blood ritual inaccessible to PCs is likely to be frowned on by players 5e is unlikely to be one of them. There's a certain level of home brew needed for the range of golems, and it might be worth sneaking in a few other monsters elsewhere.


Toxic Seas: This setting actually originated on the forum, and while I basically just took the broad strokes of it, broke several central rules of the setting, and ran with that in a non D&D system the setting clearly works for D&D, what with being basically made for it and all. Just check the thread for this one, which includes my post on actually using the setting and the changes I made there.




*When running fantasy.
**I'm familiar with heavy homebrews to jump out of fantasy entirely, and I really don't think D&D works well for that.

[Mjolnirbear]

Standard D&D is SO. FRAGGING. BORING.

Like really? Elves? Why is it always elves? You know what doesn't have Elves? Arcana Evolved, which literally had giants. And tiny flying sprites. And lion-headed people. And daily rituals, and racial levels, and an amazing magic system, and brand new classes.

But if you're gonna have elves, try something *new*. You know what tried something new? Eberron, which had death elves, and dinosaur-riding halflings. Or Dark Sun, which had Sand Elves and cannibalistic feral halflings. I've never played Planescape, but I imagine they had Space Elves or something.

Rehashing Faerun again, and again, and again, and again, and AGAIN, is simply beating a dead horse. I'm sure it's great for many people, but I want variety. So I need to look at genasi, or goliaths, or kobolds. And that requires a DM willing to let me play something unusual. I've never played a dwarf, because I play casters, and until 3.5 you couldn't really be a dwarven wizard, and even then, you were penalized heavily for breaking the dwarven mold.

[Unoriginal]

Have you tried playing a dwarf wizard in 5e?

[CaptainSarathai]

I tend to run Homebrew. I've played or run Eberron, Ravenloft, Forgotten Realms, Darksun, even Rokugan.
Most commonly though, the setting is more "like this but not"
So dieselpunk Eberron, or a more civilized Darksun.

Right now, I'm running an Arthurian homebrew, and just through laziness it has become "my baby." I sort of inherited/stole a group of new players who needed to experience D&D in a reasonably straightforward setting, and already had a group that had expressed interest in doing a sort of Romantic Chivalry setting. So I just recycled and the next thing you know I've run 3 campaigns in the world.

[Laurefindel]

So if I understand correctly you want our opinion on favourite setting other than FR?

Well, FR remains my favourite setting to DM in, but I learned to like Eberron for different reasons. My DM managed to make all that magi-tech not feel weird and out of place for a game I can associated with D&D, and it is a lot of fun. Not sure if I'd DM it. I look at his Eberron library and there is soooooooo many books! I'm sure that just like FR, Eberron can be played adequately with the basic campaign book but still, the amount that was written about the setting is daunting.

Although I never played a single game in it, I always was fascinated with Birthright. I own many books and booklets; read them, loved them, but never could put the setting to the test. I think it would work well with 5e.

My late 90s belonged to Planescape. Boy did I love that setting! For some reason, it doesn't interest me as much nowadays. I kept all my books and boxes for the art and nostalgia, but I don't think I'd DM that setting again.

Otherwise, I LOVE to create homebrew settings for D&D, but I would be lying if I said they they ever get to be played (I did get to play one and finish my story arc two years ago, but that's an exception more than the rule). I know some people here are pretty vocal about doing things different than Tolkien but truth is, I rarely get a group that is willing to play my "different" ideas. People take a D&D book and they see a dwarf with an axe, an elf with a bow, a dude with a sword and a girl chucking fireballs. So when I say that my D&D campaign doesn't really focus on that, they feel like somebody pulled a bait and switch on them. Eberron did that for me for the longest time with their gun-slinging robots and halflings that aren't halflings, so I can understand.

'findel

[ZorroGames]

From White Box OD&D through AD&D/1st we only played settings we created or designed. Ancient Egypt clone was my thing. Classic "Medieval Western Europe" was my usual DM's setting.

So with a gap between AD&D/2nd until 5e that is what I knew.

I like Faerun as a setting but I am collecting Al Qadim sources and reading them as food for thought. Very exciting is my initial response.

Also liked the Mighty Fortress campaign setting but as for playing it... unlikely.

Oriental Adventures book was inspring back when I was DM'ing/playing initially but it seems different when I read the Kara-Tur PDF. Maybe it is just me. Maybe I have changed.

If I was to be crazy enough to Sub-Create a world, it would be based off India and Southeast Asia but I do not have the time to do it properly.

So for now it is AL Faerun...

[Tetrasodium]

I use these (http://www.thepiazza.org.uk/bb/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=18233) origin options to direct the inner munchkin of players into fitting their character to the theme of various regions in eberron by letting them pick an origin on top of their race/class/background. All in all it seems to work pretty well & resulted in players diving into eberron more deeply than when I ran it in the past (3.5).

[Cyan Wisp]

I play/DM 5E. It's my favourite. My default setting is Eberron, because I own the (one) 3.5e sourcebook. I do not go "Full Eberron", though, and my games (lazily) downplay many of the more interesting aspects of the game, so I end up with more of a generic fantasy area, especially at low levels. That being said, the Eberron aspects I tend to wallow in are:


Post war/cold war tensions. Something about WWII, trains, airships, espionage, and power vacuums just appeals.
Daelkyr incursions/plots. Aberrations are interesting and nasty antagonists.
Dhakaani or Valenar insurgence
Dinosaurs and lost civilisations/ancient ruins in the jungle (in this case, Q'Barra, not Xen'drik)
Pirates with a Cthulhu feel
Delicate military operations during this tenuous period of peace


I generally set them up in Breland, around Sterngate or Starilaskur and adventures stem from the military machine of the Brelish Army. The Hobgoblin threat features highly and I have had parties venture into Darguun on reconnaissance, or to put down rogue Dhakaani uprisings and such. I have a large collection of old modules and shoehorn them in (such as B10: Night's Dark Terror set in northern Breland and involving Ghaal'dar and Brelish army alliances against Dhakaani insurgents.)

Lately, I have developed areas in the Lhazaar Principalities and Q'Barra as interesting adventuring zones - seafaring and jungle running respectively. I'm also interested in the Blade Desert and Talenta Plains as potential zones of conflict.

Love me some original Planescape, too! It was my choice of settings in the 90's and I bought lots of stuff for it.

As a player, we play in FR which has lately morphed into Planescape, but I'm not sure that FR would be inspiring enough for me to DM in. Eberron excites me, even though I haven't got the time or energy to implement all it has to offer.

[Beelzebubba]

Standard D&D is SO. FRAGGING. BORING.

I agree. The D&D world is watered-down Euro-Tolkein with more monsters.

It's that way now, but OD&D through to AD&D had some wild, wild stuff.


Prehistoric coasts teeming with dinosaurs, saber-toothed tigers, and prehistoric cavemen.
Red sand Martian desert, with bizarre alien creatures and literal Martians.
Spaceships crashed into the sides of mountains, where you could fight robots and cart away laser rifles.
They even had characters from Boot Hill (their Wild Wild West game) show up via gates.


The mechanic of every high level hero becoming a leader of forces in Chainmail had implications on their cities, too - high level Wizard towers, Fighter keeps, and Clerical strongholds had very different flavors.

Wizard towers would have weird and magical creatures and magical hazards, Fighter keeps would have large numbers of followers bolstered by mid-level Fighters on Gryphons and Rocs, and a Clerical stronghold would be defended by zealots, strongly-themed monsters, and gated-in celestials or fiends, and imagine what a high-level casting of Sticks to Snakes would do to besieging army in the woods.

Someone researched and compiled the OD&D setting into a PDF (http://www.martinralya.com/tabletop-rpgs/odds-implied-setting/). I highly recommend it.

--

Our table is totally ripping off that 'kitchen sink' idea - our extended party is starting off in a rather mundane, Faerun-like area, but it's an island of safety in a world of madness. As we level up, we'll travel further and further into the weirder areas. We'll have a Dinosaur Island, ruins of anachronistic modern cities, forests that blend into the Feywild, and the Elemental planes are accessible by traveling to the edge of the disc world.

I want to DM creepy stuff like, say, the Elric novels - the party encounters a foreboding plain that is largely empty, but the ground is covered by shadows that appear to be cast by scattered ruins of buildings that used to exist. No explanation, no history, it's just there. Their goal lies within the bizarrely-shaped tower that stands alone in the distance. And they have no idea what dangers this area may hold.

We're basically making a few maps - one smaller scale for stuff accessible by a week or so on horses, and when characters get faster travel, a larger one with wilder stuff.

So, yeah. Shake it up.

[JackPhoenix]

I run Eberron, mostly because that's what my group wanted, but I have multiple homebrewed settings in various stages of completion prepared for play, but as they are more sword & sorcery style (one iron age, one more gothic horror), my players didn't seen interested. May have something to do with the fact I'm creating settings I would love to play in (which would never happen, #EternalGM), and they have different taste.

[JackPhoenix]

Snip

Interestingly enough, I've noticed that in the DMG "types of fantasy" chapter, Greyhawk (which was, or at least was the direct evolution of the OD&D setting) is listed as sword & sorcery style. While I've never though about it, and if you've asked me, I'd have filled it under high/heroic fantasy like FR, on second thoughts, it fits perfectly. City states, mysteries and ruins everywhere, evil sorcerers, less emphasis on good vs. evil, the origin of murderhoboing....

Drop Conan in there, and he would feel like home, after some violent reduction in spellcasting population.

[ZorroGames]

I agree. The D&D world is watered-down Euro-Tolkein with more monsters.

It's that way now, but OD&D through to AD&D had some wild, wild stuff.


Prehistoric coasts teeming with dinosaurs, saber-toothed tigers, and prehistoric cavemen.
Red sand Martian desert, with bizarre alien creatures and literal Martians.
Spaceships crashed into the sides of mountains, where you could fight robots and cart away laser rifles.
They even had characters from Boot Hill (their Wild Wild West game) show up via gates.


The mechanic of every high level hero becoming a leader of forces in Chainmail had implications on their cities, too - high level Wizard towers, Fighter keeps, and Clerical strongholds had very different flavors.

Wizard towers would have weird and magical creatures and magical hazards, Fighter keeps would have large numbers of followers bolstered by mid-level Fighters on Gryphons and Rocs, and a Clerical stronghold would be defended by zealots, strongly-themed monsters, and gated-in celestials or fiends, and imagine what a high-level casting of Sticks to Snakes would do to besieging army in the woods.

Someone researched and compiled the OD&D setting into a PDF (http://www.martinralya.com/tabletop-rpgs/odds-implied-setting/). I highly recommend it.

--

Our table is totally ripping off that 'kitchen sink' idea - our extended party is starting off in a rather mundane, Faerun-like area, but it's an island of safety in a world of madness. As we level up, we'll travel further and further into the weirder areas. We'll have a Dinosaur Island, ruins of anachronistic modern cities, forests that blend into the Feywild, and the Elemental planes are accessible by traveling to the edge of the disc world.

I want to DM creepy stuff like, say, the Elric novels - the party encounters a foreboding plain that is largely empty, but the ground is covered by shadows that appear to be cast by scattered ruins of buildings that used to exist. No explanation, no history, it's just there. Their goal lies within the bizarrely-shaped tower that stands alone in the distance. And they have no idea what dangers this area may hold.

We're basically making a few maps - one smaller scale for stuff accessible by a week or so on horses, and when characters get faster travel, a larger one with wilder stuff.

So, yeah. Shake it up.

One of the few board games I kept in multiple copies was Outdoor Survival. First wilderness adventures were played on that game board. Good memories.

[BW022]

Which brings us to now and 5e. I have done some looking around for settings, but maybe having more voices and hearing their reasons will point me to some undiscovered gems that will open new avenues of adventure for me, if not for others as well.

Greyhawk
Fits in extremely well with 5e. You can use your old Gazetteers with little or no changes. You can even reuse published adventures -- which there are a not, especially with Living Greyhawk -- without having to rewrite them. In 35 years, I've run adventures all over the Flannes and could always find unique starting areas or campaign ideas.

Arcanis
More unique and specialized, but had a good number of 3.0/3.5 players with the Living Arcanis system. They are releasing a 5e ruleset (http://paradigmconcepts.com/blog/category/arcanis/) which covers their unique races, classes, etc. Lots of 3.5 setting information is available and it has a lot of history.

[Grimslade5]

I plan on trying to run an upcoming game using Nentir Vale as a base with several add-ons like that MtG Planeshifts that WotC put out and Eberron's dino riding Halflings. When 4e was coming out and they talked so much about the points of light idea that really excited me and I wish they had expanded on that.

[Knaight]

I mentioned upthread that I would add some specific settings to my previous post. I have now done so, go ahead and take a look.

[mephnick]

You know what tried something new? Eberron, which had death elves, and dinosaur-riding halflings. Or Dark Sun, which had Sand Elves and cannibalistic feral halflings.

Which is the stuff that makes me just roll my eyes. It's just random change for change's sake, flipping things to opposites and pretending it's inventive. It's like every homebrew setting you see: "No man, my setting is interesting. Dude, my Dwarves are seafarers and my Elves are barbarians." Like, ok good job man..

I think there's a lot of stuff to explore in a setting like Greyhawk or Nentir Vale, but it gets dismissed because it's "standard fantasy" and lacks the apparent edge of Ebberon or Planescape. I never played 4e much but the 4e books actually had a lot of great stuff in them. Give them a read if you haven't.

[Knaight]

Which is the stuff that makes me just roll my eyes. It's just random change for change's sake, flipping things to opposites and pretending it's inventive. It's like every homebrew setting you see: "No man, my setting is interesting. Dude, my Dwarves are seafarers and my Elves are barbarians." Like, ok good job man.

It's really not though - both of those support the underlying themes of the settings pretty well. If anything it's shoehorning in the standard fantasy races because D&D - Eberron would still have dinosaur riders because they fit with the general idea of a kitchen sink fantasy setting (which includes dinosaurs) dominated by industrialized cultures that systematically use every natural resource they can get their hands on (hence the riding). Dark Sun would still have cannibals because it's a brutal desert setting where starvation is plentiful and tyrannical mage kings are draining the life from the world. It's the presence of halflings that's awkwardly rammed in there, which is less change for change's sake and more stasis for stasis's sake*. The same thing applies to elves, where standard elves don't fit Eberron well because they live in seclusion and don't exploit resources, and they don't fit Dark Sun because it's a desert world, but they need to be in there somewhere because it's D&D so they get awkwardly shoved in.

*Although I'd argue that it's more about preserving player options given system expectations, which is somewhat more charitable.