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Thinker
2011-04-18, 09:13 AM
I like good campaign settings. Having worlds that are filled with interesting people, places, and adversaries are fun. Having unique hooks for the setting whether it is aesthetics (like magicpunk, cyberpunk, etc), game focus (such as angst, dramatic tension, looting tombs), or action (fighting, socializing, etc) can increase the fun found in a game. Still, how much is too much for a campaign setting and what is needed to reach this goal?

If I make a campaign setting with three distinct cultures, how much do I need to describe these cultures to make them feel real enough? Do I need to write about how their art is different from each other so that when I'm describing a statue I can start off with "In the style of..."? Is it enough to simply say "this society is based on the Greeks" and then just list the differences?

The gist of what I am wondering is, what do you look for in a campaign setting? How much information do you need in order to enjoy it?

valadil
2011-04-18, 09:24 AM
How much information do you need in order to enjoy it?

I need inspiration rather than information. When I read about the capital city, my first thought should be "I want to go to there." When I open the chapter on whatever locale the PCs are approaching, I should get a ton of ideas for things I can do to the players in this city and only in this city.

Quietus
2011-04-18, 09:34 AM
Believability and a solid vision. If a DM can put forward a good solid schtick for his world, and make me believe that it does, in fact, work - even if it's strained - then I can enjoy it, more often than not. If I have to stop and go "But wait, why is this area considered super poor when they've got access to X Y and Z, which everyone else needs?" on a regular basis, then it starts to fall apart, to me.

Yora
2011-04-18, 09:36 AM
What makes a good setting, I have no idea.
But I recognize a good setting that by hearing about it, I start thinking "I so want to play a character being in that place".

So I'd say it's 90% atmosphere, the rest is mostly irrelevant.

Thinker
2011-04-18, 09:39 AM
I need inspiration rather than information. When I read about the capital city, my first thought should be "I want to go to there." When I open the chapter on whatever locale the PCs are approaching, I should get a ton of ideas for things I can do to the players in this city and only in this city.
I like the Liz Lemon quote. So you're looking more for hooks to attract PC's? Should a campaign setting or fantasy world even worry about anything beyond a set of locations that might be interesting to the PCs?


Believability and a solid vision. If a DM can put forward a good solid schtick for his world, and make me believe that it does, in fact, work - even if it's strained - then I can enjoy it, more often than not. If I have to stop and go "But wait, why is this area considered super poor when they've got access to X Y and Z, which everyone else needs?" on a regular basis, then it starts to fall apart, to me.
If a place is downtrodden, you want there to be reasons for it to be downtrodden. That's understandable and gives the PCs something they can do while they're there (help/enslave/ignore downtrodden people). How far does your believability need to extend? Is it enough to know that the people with access to X, Y, and Z are poor because the evil marquis takes the resources for himself or do you need to know how the marquis accomplishes this?


What makes a good setting, I have no idea.
But I recognize a good setting that by hearing about it, I start thinking "I so want to play a character being in that place".

So I'd say it's 90% atmosphere, the rest is mostly irrelevant.
Atmosphere is a little bit ambiguous. Could you elaborate?

Tyndmyr
2011-04-18, 09:48 AM
First, it needs to grab the reader's attention. It needs to be intriguing, and contain reasons for him to want to check it out, as a player. Everything else is secondary to this. Without interest, you have nothing.

Second, it needs to be well thought out. You don't want to have players start finding inconsistencies one after another and come to the conclusion that it's stupid, and they'd rather be playing something else.

Third, the players need to be important to the setting. It doesn't matter how awesome your giant mechwarrior-dueling world is, if the players can never drive mechs or fight them, they're reduced to bystanders. And that role is one that is ultimately unsatisfying over any length of time. Players want to be participants.

Fourth, depth. Add stuff that tends to only be discovered through play. Further layers of information to add long term interest. You don't want too much depth in the initial info, since length tends to turn some people off, but a further layer of detail can be quite helpful to a GM.

Yora
2011-04-18, 09:48 AM
Elaborate? Well...

"If a setting looks cool!" :smallbiggrin:

Thinker
2011-04-18, 09:57 AM
First, it needs to grab the reader's attention. It needs to be intriguing, and contain reasons for him to want to check it out, as a player. Everything else is secondary to this. Without interest, you have nothing.

Second, it needs to be well thought out. You don't want to have players start finding inconsistencies one after another and come to the conclusion that it's stupid, and they'd rather be playing something else.

Third, the players need to be important to the setting. It doesn't matter how awesome your giant mechwarrior-dueling world is, if the players can never drive mechs or fight them, they're reduced to bystanders. And that role is one that is ultimately unsatisfying over any length of time. Players want to be participants.

Fourth, depth. Add stuff that tends to only be discovered through play. Further layers of information to add long term interest. You don't want too much depth in the initial info, since length tends to turn some people off, but a further layer of detail can be quite helpful to a GM.

For player relevance, look at some settings like Seventh Sea or Shadowrun. The players will rarely make a global impact on those settings, but they are still fun and people play them.

For depth, I agree that players don't want to read a giant wall of text. The question is, what amount of depth is important and how do you present it?


Elaborate? Well...
"If a setting looks cool!" :smallbiggrin:

Haha alright. How about this then? What do your favorite campaign settings have in common with each other?

Cyrion
2011-04-18, 09:57 AM
Fourth, depth. Add stuff that tends to only be discovered through play. Further layers of information to add long term interest. You don't want too much depth in the initial info, since length tends to turn some people off, but a further layer of detail can be quite helpful to a GM.

This is really important. There has to be something for the players to discover and explore. They'll accept lots of adventure hooks if there's something interesting to discover along the way. Of course, you have to learn what your players consider interesting and give them enough sandbox to be active participants within the larger plot stories.

Introduce your finer details like art, etc. as you go rather than up front.

Tyndmyr
2011-04-18, 10:05 AM
For player relevance, look at some settings like Seventh Sea or Shadowrun. The players will rarely make a global impact on those settings, but they are still fun and people play them.

Oddly enough, the published adventure paths for 7th Sea all result in the players making some pretty big impacts. Things that could reasonably be heard of by just about anyone. Stopping wars, playing kingmaker, that sort of thing.

They do tend to be short of "saves the world", though. I suspect that the saves the world plot device is actually a bit overused, myself.

Tengu_temp
2011-04-18, 10:22 AM
A good campaign setting starts with a strong, specific concept. It must be something that lies within the interests of your players - if they like steampunk, go with steampunk. Don't go with something generic or already well-explored by other settings, give your setting a unique twist.

If you're making a setting that will just be used by you and your group, not something that's intended to be used by others, then don't get bogged down in the details. Unveil additional setting info when it becomes relevant, and don't be afraid to change not yet established aspects on the fly to suit the game.

Tyndmyr
2011-04-18, 10:23 AM
Yeah, generic pretty much equals bad. I dunno how many blog posts I've read by people describing their generic settings. Around the time they start describing how the elves live in forests and the dwarves live in mountains and drink a lot, I mentally switch off and go look for something new.

Just because you drew a new map doesn't mean you have a setting.

valadil
2011-04-18, 10:34 AM
I like the Liz Lemon quote. So you're looking more for hooks to attract PC's? Should a campaign setting or fantasy world even worry about anything beyond a set of locations that might be interesting to the PCs?


Sort of? I think what I'm looking for is more like the idea that precedes a hook. I would like to create the hook myself, but have something in the world to build the hook out of.

For instance, in the 4e FRCS, one of the cities whose name escapes me is composed of earthmotes chained together. That's cool in and of itself. But it also has message runners who basically do parkour to get from place to place. I think they included something about some genasi tumbling down the whole place, using some power to mitigate their falling damage with each landing.

That description doesn't directly give me any free plot hooks. But it puts an image in my head from which I can easily make my own hooks. The scenery is great. I really wanna run a chase scene in there. I could also see intrigue being neat in that environment. The way that messages are carried down from the top implies that information goes down quicker than up. Does all information get carried by messenger genasi or are things ever dropped overboard to someone down below? Now I'm getting images of a crimelord who pays all the homeless children under the earthmotes to retrieve rocks wrapped in paper messages.

I wouldn't expect other GMs to go in the same direction as me. That's a good thing. If the campaign setting was a list of hooks, you'd get players who had already played through Waterdeep and need the FRCS 2 (or the web enhancement FRCS) in order to not play through the same material. I guess what I want out of a setting is a premise. From there I can gather ideas and inspiration, and go forward with my own plot and hooks.

The Big Dice
2011-04-18, 05:55 PM
They do tend to be short of "saves the world", though. I suspect that the saves the world plot device is actually a bit overused, myself.
Saving the world is overdone. These days I'm into the idea of saving the world, then wondering what is actually left after the dust settles. Like, the saving the world part was just the setup for the rebuilding it that comes afterwards.

As for what makes a good setting, that's a hard one to pin down. It needs to feel right. Though to be fair, there are lots of good settings out there. But very few great ones. Settings like Rokugan, Glorantha and Night City. Places that evoke a mood and a style just by mentioning their names.

It's like D&D has some good settings, but very few that I'd place on the truly great list. Planescape could be a contender to be a great one, but not the Forgotten Realms or Krynn.

SillySymphonies
2011-04-19, 07:32 AM
WotC uses a template for campaign settings which provides some insight:
1. Core ethos sentence: [A sentence that describes the core ethos of the world]
2. Who are the heroes? [Brief description of heroes central to the setting. This need not be a comprehensive list.]
3. What do they do? [What are the main objectives of the heroes, and what steps do they take to achieve those objectives?]
4. Threats, conflicts, villains: [What is the main danger to the world, and from whom does it come?]
5. Nature of magic: [What is the source of magic? How abundant/scarce is it?]
6. What's new? What's different? [What makes this setting unique?]

1 Premise

I need inspiration rather than information.

I guess what I want out of a setting is a premise. From there I can gather ideas and inspiration, and go forward with my own plot and hooks.
A good premise is appealing even when summarized into one sentence; a bad premise will never be appealing, no matter how much you elaborate on it: top-down design over bottom-up design.
The entire campaign setting should be able to be summarized on one page: players shouldn't be forced to read the entire campaign setting just to grasp the premise.
Examples of core ethos sentences:
"Forgotten Realms is a world of sword-and-sorcery adventure, where heroes battle monsters with magic." [WotC, 2002]
Eberron: "Lord of the Rings meets Indiana Jones and The Maltese Falcon." [source (http://www.coveworld.net/eberron/development.html#tone)] (Traditional medieval fantasy meets swashbuckling pulp fiction and film noir.)

2 Protagonists

(...) the players need to be important to the setting. It doesn't matter how awesome your giant mechwarrior-dueling world is, if the players can never drive mechs or fight them, they're reduced to bystanders. And that role is one that is ultimately unsatisfying over any length of time. Players want to be participants.
The game is about the players, not the campaign world. (http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19905354/Lessons_from_DMing_with_my_GF?pg=1) That doesn't mean the PCs need to be the most powerful entities around, or even powerful at all (consider Call of Cthulhu or Dark Heresy), rather there should be no-one to bail out the PCs if they screw up: you can have your Elminster, as long as he isn't a deus ex machina or an NPC to showcase that the DM can always do better than the PCs.

3 Objectives; 4 Obstacles
These speak for themselves: the PCs need objectives to achieve and antagonists and other obstacles along the way that want to thwart said objectives.

5 Magic
Since we're still talking fantasy here, the nature of magic is an important aspect to consider: abundant (Eberron) or scarce (Lord of the Rings); mundane (Eberron) or mystical and mythical (Lord of the Rings); a tool (D&D) or inherently dangerous (Call of Cthulhu; Dark Heresy) etcetera.

6 Orginality

I dunno how many blog posts I've read by people describing their generic settings. Around the time they start describing how the elves live in forests and the dwarves live in mountains and drink a lot, I mentally switch off and go look for something new.
What Tolkien did in the first half of the 20th century was (and still is) original, fresh and interesting. Since then a lot of mediocre writers have taken the aesthetics and superficialities of Tolkien's work (whilst ignoring the underlying issues, subtleties and complexities) and thus gave birth to the generic forest-elves-and-mountain-dwaves fantasy.

Original does not mean whacky or way-out-there! A minor but interesting twist on an old concept or turning to a concept's mythological/folkloristic roots can work wonders: instead of generic, evil, trap-setting miners, kobolds could become mountain spirits that steal metal (ore) and replace it with worthless kobold-ore (cobalt (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobold#Mine_spirits)); instead of generic brutes, bugbears could become psychotic serial killers who live for the smell of fear and are unnervingly good at hiding in places nothing that huge should be able to fit - like behind your door, or under your bed (Pathfinder); instead of Scottish clansmen living in the mountains and hoarding treasure, dwarves could become $crooge McDucks controlling corporate business: still Scottish, still hoarding treasure, but with an original twist (Eberron).

Addendum
Show me something fantastic and evocative: fantasy is about the fantastic, not about dwarves and elves!

Examples of the fantastic:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_sy3UEYGx4HI/TAa3tr_-idI/AAAAAAAAAvc/ngWGoi7_mNA/s1600/howls.jpg
http://images.wikia.com/sfery/images/b/b4/Modron.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v40/Theris264/mooncastle.jpg?t=1303223462
- and of course Disney's Fantasia (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3HHfe-1F6s).

Goober4473
2011-04-19, 11:04 AM
the players need to be important to the setting. It doesn't matter how awesome your giant mechwarrior-dueling world is, if the players can never drive mechs or fight them, they're reduced to bystanders. And that role is one that is ultimately unsatisfying over any length of time. Players want to be participants.

This is pretty big for me. I use campaign settings as a part of the story, not just a backdrop. The player characters' actions need to be able to affect the world. I rarely use the same setting twice unless the first game in the setting doesn't come to a real conclusion, because usually once the player characters' story is over, so is the setting's. If I do use the setting again, it's usually a very different place, with a new story to be told.

For instance, I'm running an Eberron campaign right now, and by the end, most of the mysteries of the world will be answered (the Mournlands, the reason for dragonmarks, etc.), and will be tied directly to the player characters' story.

I think people have covered most of the other stuff that I look for in a setting: cool themes, interesting antagonists, etc. I love a good mystery that the DM gets to decide the truth of too.

Vortling
2011-04-19, 11:24 AM
Biggest question I ask when reading a campaign setting for the first time is "What makes this one different from the others in the genre?" If the answer is "not much" I take the few things that are different and ignore the rest of the setting. Conversely if the unique things in the setting are the majority, I run a game in the setting.
The other question I like to ask is "How does the setting support the playstyle?" If the setting is supposed to be for big damn heroes, how does the information in the setting inspire the GM and players to be big damn heroes.

A few settings I found to be good campaign settings: Eberron, Necessary Evil, Swashbucklers of the Seven Skies

Ichneumon
2011-04-19, 01:05 PM
Question: What makes a good campaign setting?
Answer: A good DM

randomhero00
2011-04-19, 01:07 PM
Showmanship. If the DM can't make it seem cool, then it aint gonna be fun.

Lappy9000
2011-04-19, 01:15 PM
For depth, I agree that players don't want to read a giant wall of text. The question is, what amount of depth is important and how do you present it?I'd use the LEGO approach for this. Whenever the company comes out with a new set of themed models, they are sold in different prices. $5, $10, $20, $30, $50, $80 or generally a similar progression, each giving you more for how much you choose to put into it.

I like to write settings the same way. Have a brief description of themes for the setting for those who just wanna get on with it and play and gradually increase in depth so those who wish to delve into the lore have the option to do so. The trick is to pace it out by having the brief stuff at the front and the heavy-ended stuff further in so players can choose to quit reading whenever they wish.

As to enjoying a setting? Believe it or not, format. Seems awfully mechanical, but the same 2,000 words spread out with pictures, different paragraphs for different topics, and tables is read far easier than a 2,000 word block of text.


Question: What makes a good campaign setting?
Answer: A good DMExtremely important. A good DM can make a horrible setting seem awesome.

Thinker
2011-04-20, 07:30 AM
Question: What makes a good campaign setting?
Answer: A good DM


Showmanship. If the DM can't make it seem cool, then it aint gonna be fun.

Thanks for your replies, but this is not exactly what I'm looking for. The answer to any question about "What makes a good X?" could be "a good DM". A good DM is important to running a game, but being a good DM does not necessarily include making a good campaign setting. I am specifically looking for what people enjoy in the setting itself, regardless of the DM.


I'd use the LEGO approach for this. Whenever the company comes out with a new set of themed models, they are sold in different prices. $5, $10, $20, $30, $50, $80 or generally a similar progression, each giving you more for how much you choose to put into it.


I like this idea.

potatocubed
2011-04-20, 10:44 AM
What I look for in a setting is room to improvise; I need space to plan and execute my own plots, not a setting which is covered in exhaustive detail down to the square inch (Forgotten Realms, I'm looking at you.)

Evocative concepts work well for me, and I love complex politics: I like the Pathfinder setting of Golarion, for example (although Eberron doesn't do it for me - don't know why).

I like a setting where no one is coming to bail the PCs out if they screw up, and where the big bads are big enough that the PCs really are the only hope: Dark Sun, for example.

I love Planescape, for all the above. :smallcool:

Yora
2011-04-20, 10:56 AM
I agree with that. Playing an RPG in a novel or movie setting can be interesting an fun.
But if you make a setting with a primary use in an RPG in mind, the requirements are quite different. When creating a setting, I think right after you've decided on a theme, you have to find an answer to the question, what the PCs will do in the world.
A setting about political intrigue between kings can't show it's best aspects when the role of the players is picking up random quests in a town inn. However in Birthright, the role of the players is that of high ranking nobles. But at the same time, such a campaign doesn't care for a random ruin with some dire rats and three goblins that stole a chest of tax money.

And that's the problem with for example the Forgotten Realms: On one side it focuses strongly on the actions of super powerful archmages. But at the same time a lot of campaigns are doing odd jobs in some villages. It's certainly not a bad setting and I had great fun playing random adventurer in a nice little town with its shrines and temples of interesting religions and NPC from diverse backgrounds, but in retroperspective, the whole marketing concept could have been handled much better.

alchemyprime
2011-04-20, 11:02 AM
My players have seemed pretty happy with my campaign settings so far (though most are all different locations of the same world) and I think this is why:

Each place of the world is different enough from Forgotten Realms/Eberron/Dragonlance/Middle-Earth that when we go and play games in those, they still feel fresh too.

A few examples of what I got:

Van Kyr - A Wild West, rootin, tootin setting where it's the Civilized Races vs the Savage Races (though they do team up for the occasional Old West Eldritch Horror). The Civilized Races are ruled over by Dons, and their capital is a fantasy equivalent of Las Vegas. All it takes to be a new Don is get enough money to build your own Casino and don't get killed by another Don.

Van Kreev - A matriarchial parliamentary magocracy. A parliament made entirely of female mages. Not to say men and martial characters don't have their place. A fusion of a rather nice place, and a rather bad place.

Liam Island - Two warring city states here: The Immolation, a LG group of clerics, paladins, shugenja and cantors following a LG god of fire who are convinced Clockwork and Steamtech are the way to Ragnarok, and the Workers, a NG group of engineers, artificers and cloistered clerics who live in a clockwork city powered by a gravity engine (think with Portals). The end game will (eventually) involve the PCs taking sides (or their own side) and the Immolation using a giant suit of armor powered by the fire of their god, piloted by their high priest, and the Workers turning their city into a Steampunk/Clockwork God Mech, similar to Metroplex from Transformers.

That's right. It ends with a smaller version of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann fighting a Clockwork Transformer. And if the PCs want to oppose both? They get to find an ancient Gianttech mech that turns into a DRAGON!


... Okay, best way to make a cool campaign setting? Play where you want to play, and think to yourself "What would be awesome right here, and how do I make it more awesome?"

The Big Dice
2011-04-20, 11:03 AM
The trick with a setting like the Forgotten Realms is simply to ignore any and all spinoff material. Forget about it completely, apart fromt he bits you like. Don't be bound by what other people have written, let your campaign go where it wants to go and take ownership of the setting.

Like the Star Wars game I ran, originally set in the Force Unleashed era. Then for some random reason I thouht it would be cool to have Darth Revan in suspended animation rather than killed, so I could give his sheet to one player and Vader's to another. See who wins and all that. Then it seemed like a good idea to introduce the Reborn and the Star Forge. Before long, the campaign had absolutely nothing to do with the movies, EU or anything else. And all involved had a great time.

So that's my advice on every setting: forget canon and just go with what your game needs.

Mastikator
2011-04-20, 01:24 PM
For player relevance, look at some settings like Seventh Sea or Shadowrun. The players will rarely make a global impact on those settings, but they are still fun and people play them.

Doesn't need to be a global impact, as long as it's impact on the scale that matters to the players.

Thinker
2011-04-20, 01:49 PM
Doesn't need to be a global impact, as long as it's impact on the scale that matters to the players.

The message I was replying to implied meaningful impact and that is something that has been repeated in this thread. Those people do want their characters to affect the setting as a whole.

akma
2011-04-20, 02:23 PM
As a player, I would like to see intresting places, have intresting opportuinities, and have choices. I wouldn`t want to see things being banned arbitarly.

As a DM (if I would use other people campaign settings) I would want something that I could make adventures in with minimum work. That`s my goal with my own settings - to work on them enough, so when I`ll want to run an adventure in a certain area in them, it wouldn`t require much work. Also, I need to feel that I could start an adventure there without explaining about the setting in more then 5 minutes. It also have to qualify to the standerts in the paragraph below.

As a reader, I would like to see orginiality and coolness, and of course, a focus on it. It should also be as short as possible, or at least seem short in the begining - to let me get immersad in it. It needs to be written in just the right amount of detail to contain the big details, but not too much specification on little things.

Spoilers are good ways to avoid walls of texts to those who don`t want to delve deep yet.

Sebastrd
2011-04-21, 09:10 AM
The trick with a setting like the Forgotten Realms is simply to ignore any and all spinoff material. Forget about it completely, apart fromt he bits you like. Don't be bound by what other people have written, let your campaign go where it wants to go and take ownership of the setting.

Like the Star Wars game I ran, originally set in the Force Unleashed era. Then for some random reason I thouht it would be cool to have Darth Revan in suspended animation rather than killed, so I could give his sheet to one player and Vader's to another. See who wins and all that. Then it seemed like a good idea to introduce the Reborn and the Star Forge. Before long, the campaign had absolutely nothing to do with the movies, EU or anything else. And all involved had a great time.

So that's my advice on every setting: forget canon and just go with what your game needs.

I would say, do not write any canon that removes choices. Every bit of canon should open doors, not close them.

Yora
2011-04-21, 10:09 AM
I don't think that statement actually works in practice.

Canon means making a final descision how a certain thing is. By that very definition, it always removes options from a former state of uncertainty.
And I think that's a good thing. It only becomes problematic when you decide to fix something that had been left open for a very long time and had people come up with their own solutions to a certain aspects.

1nfinite zer0
2011-04-21, 11:19 AM
The gist of what I am wondering is, what do you look for in a campaign setting? How much information do you need in order to enjoy it?

The question of how much is enough information has been rattling around my head a lot these days. Evan Dahm ( http://makingplaces.tumblr.com/ ) has been posting some great things lately.

I'm a fan of minimalism, but it's hard to do well. So yeah, if you have groups that are similar to Earth history or existing fantasy analogs, then I'd reference them and use it as a springboard.

Otherwise, I'd keep the info limited to what is needed to run an adventure right away, and then introduce the themes and other stuff as the world is adopted (by your players or a community)
----
As for what makes a "good" setting, this thread has some excellent points and discussion, but I think it's missing one thing:

How well can players relate to the setting?
1) A trade-off of familiarity vs uniqueness. All creativity is derivative in some sense: subvert existing themes through an inversion of theme or mash-up with another, or do it bigger and better
2) Colour. Fluff or illustrations that make the world immersive. I love the RPGs which include graphic novel pages. Rifts was a broken system, but the amount of sheer awesome in the images sucked so many of us in. Those based upon books already have our imaginations spinning
3) Theme. Does the material provided for the setting encourage playing the theme/goal effectively.

I guess these points can also help you gauge how much information is needed as well. If there's not enough that players can find a place to want to experience and have the tools to jump in easily, consider what's needed to make that happen.

Conners
2011-04-21, 01:24 PM
What makes a good setting... That depends on a lot of varying factors. Your players' preferences, what much work you're willing to do, how much of the world will be explorable, etc.. Of course, it's possible to get players who like weird bad settings, so don't worry too much about that :smalltongue:.


To make it more laid out and simple:


Fluff: This one is possibly the most important. Having an interesting setting is what captures player interest, normally. Generally, you want things to feel real, like a Narnia you can escape to. Doesn't have to be a nice world, of course--but unless you and your players are interested in dark campaigns, it makes sense to have a realistic mix of good things and bad things in the world (then you could still have a dark campaign about exploring the cursed crypt).
My suggestion, have cultures that are interesting. Uniqueness is a good aim, but don't underestimate nostalgia and love for the familiar ("Wait, so vampires don't get hurt by sunlight, and instead SPARKLE?!? ....Why even call it a vampire then?"). Also, making anything annoyingly difficult to grasp is a bad idea (having the "iglfhidids" of the city of "mmamayurudyaha" is never a good idea), which is why it's good to stick to things people can relate too. Entice with the familiar, flavoured with unique features, and leave the extraordinary for them to discover.
Hooks: This goes hand in hand with fluff, really. If you have a world where everything is at peace with no monsters, you have no hooks to entice players with--unless the campaign is about them being the evil which comes to destroy the peaceful world. Political intrigue, no-man's-lands, mighty villains, conflicts, and other things--make sure to have them in good measure.
This is where you might want to go to extra effort with unique elements. Just make sure that the objective is fun and comprehensible: Then the more unique it is, the better it is (people are fairly sick of orc invasions and hunting bandits, unless you can put a twist on them). Notably, it's good if your narrative can lay some enticing hooks.
Content: If you could guarantee players a consistent world they could wander about, with thousands of NPCs, towns, quests, monsters and other things written up, they'd all come from miles around. That will be possible, however, for very few people... So, you have to work out how much content you want to have for your setting. Will the players be limited to a quest, a city, a country, or a continent? The more you want for the players in this area, the greater the work and risk you're undertaking.
If you want to do a lot, you may want to consider leaving smaller details for the spare of the moment, with more important details of countries/places/people in a notepad on hand. Even so, you'll probably have a lot of work on your hands, if you give oyur players too much to explore. I strongly advise against having places too similar, since having a big world where everywhere is the same would be boring.



That's my take on the matter. Hope it is helpful to someone reading this thread.

Omeganaut
2011-04-21, 09:10 PM
I'm going to tackle this from a players/less experienced D&D player's perspective. I want to have as many Crowning Moments of Awesome as I can. I wanna be a god who can do whatever I want to do better than anyone else except other gods.

As part of a group, each player has to be balanced so that no-one is left out, even if they insist on playing core-monk.

Now, for the DM, this means having diverse opportunities for every kind of player and class to be successful but not overpowered. Also it means giving as many chances as possible for your players to have Crowning Moments of Awesome without breaking the world in some way.

Also, make memorable NPC's, and act them out. The most memorable character from a campaign was a trog we captured and interrogated that spoke in a russian accent. Then we turned him into a fish, but that was more because of the Rod of Wonders the DM foolishly gave to the least stable party member. But I'm off topic.

Just give the PC's awesome things to remember, which is more the DM's responsibility to interpret the campaign setting. Or in other words, pick a setting you enjoy and can relate to, which will transfer to the players. I hope that made sense.

Thinker
2011-04-22, 12:17 PM
I'm going to tackle this from a players/less experienced D&D player's perspective. I want to have as many Crowning Moments of Awesome as I can. I wanna be a god who can do whatever I want to do better than anyone else except other gods.
Doesn't this trivialize almost anything that you do? Exalted is fun, but that's because even the gods have varied challenges besides simply more gods.


As part of a group, each player has to be balanced so that no-one is left out, even if they insist on playing core-monk.
This is a mechanical effect and is beyond the purview of the current discussion. A setting can say that monks are powerful, but it is up to the mechanics to back that up.


Now, for the DM, this means having diverse opportunities for every kind of player and class to be successful but not overpowered. Also it means giving as many chances as possible for your players to have Crowning Moments of Awesome without breaking the world in some way.
This is interesting for a discussion of what makes a good GM, but not for what makes a good setting.


Just give the PC's awesome things to remember, which is more the DM's responsibility to interpret the campaign setting. Or in other words, pick a setting you enjoy and can relate to, which will transfer to the players. I hope that made sense.

I'm not asking for advice on what setting I should choose to run a game. I'm also not looking for advice on how to run a game. I was simply asking what people like in a campaign setting.

Yora
2011-04-22, 12:21 PM
We had lots of fun with a bunch of low-level random people living in huts at the edge of the forest and visiting the nearby town for supplies.

randomhero00
2011-04-22, 12:25 PM
I like the story of the setting. Like how did it get that way? Was there some great and epic war? Some god that got angry? What do their huge walls keep out?

Thinker
2011-04-22, 01:14 PM
I like the story of the setting. Like how did it get that way? Was there some great and epic war? Some god that got angry? What do their huge walls keep out?

A good history can increase the fun of a setting, but the problem with history is that it is largely immutable. You can see how things got to the way they are, but if it is too involved it could make the players feel like they cannot initiate change.

SillySymphonies
2011-04-27, 07:49 AM
I came across an interesting article that provides a tangent to the discussion at hand: Five Elements of Commercially-Viable RPG Design (http://www.io.com/~sjohn/five-elements.htm).

Some interesting points the article makes:

- "If the Game Master tells you the new campaign is to be set in the "Duchy of Crows" and concerns an evil priest gathering the Hill Ogres to his cause, that may sound a bit threadbare, but it also provides a reliable common ground. Everyone can jump right in and focus on what the game is really about: the PCs and their adventures. (...) The most popular games rely on stock images as a language for skipping to the good parts (and for sharing in a celebration of things gamers enjoy celebrating)."
As a personal observation I'd like to state that the above is probably the reason why generic settings ("mountain dwarves and wood elves") like FR can be so successful: their premise is easily digestible.

- "(...) it's well and good to say you can play a Librarian, but the game-world must also provide opportunities and challenges appropriate to the Librarian's skills (...)."

- "Games that impose chains of command, or require PCs to check with "headquarters" before they do anything questionable, limit their audience in the process."

- "(...) tactical infinity. In Chess, the White Queen can't sweet-talk a Black Knight into leaving her be; in Squad Leader, a group of soldiers can't sneak through an occupied village dressed as nuns. In an RPG, you really can try anything you can think of (...)."

J.Gellert
2011-04-27, 08:35 AM
I'll echo the view that it's about the DM.

Here are two of my Forgotten-Realms experiences:

Baldur's Gate series: From intrigue and conspiracies to epic struggles - that still remain personal and not generic "save the world" nonsense.
Pen & paper game: Your low-level PC as a bystander in the conflict between the epic good and bad guys. Whoopie, everybody loves shining Elminster's shoes.

Other than that, not much matters. I can enjoy generic bread-and-butter settings as much as I can enjoy weird fiction like Bas-Lag. It's all about the story being told.

But it helps if your own setting has a specific point. When in doubt, try to summarize your setting in a single sentence. If you can't, then you need to discover its focus. If it goes "It's like setting X, only..." then throw it away and start over.

NMBLNG
2011-04-27, 12:20 PM
The players need something worth doing and places worth going. Let your setting be accomidating to many different kinds of character concepts, and let your players have some kind of influence on the world even during character creation. Let the players fill in the gaps in the setting.

Now there must be enough in the setting for there to be gaps, and not vast expanses of nothing.

Dimers
2011-04-29, 11:45 PM
I've been writing a campaign setting for a long time. I don't have other people's input on it, but I can tell you what *I* think makes it a good one:

First, every piece of content has a reasonable explanation, from the creation myth right up to the latest technology. Why are there gods, and what are they like? What about monsters? Can I play a monster character? a monk? a wizard? Why don't wizards dominate the whole world? What are the governments like, and what made them that way? I've tried to fully answer every question I can, and I give the reason why in every case. No, you can't play a monster, but here's why, and here are some alternatives. Yes, you can play a monk, and here's a list of skills you need to spend points on if you choose the Gold School and another list if you prefer the Cogwheel School. Roscart is an ancient kingdom with a centralized power structure, and it's evolved that way due to information over here; Cyprian is newer and is a non-democratic republic, and by the way, here's information on the forces that keep Cyprian and Roscart from taking each other over.

TL;DR: Friggin' everything has a reason. The setting makes sense.

Second but just as important is the fact that it's not forced on the reader. You can see what exists without needing the how and why. E.g. if you want to play a cleric you only need to pick a god and some spells. But if you want to know about the differences between clerical, sorcerous, psionic, shamanic and Natural Order magic, you can read page after page. It'll all be hyperlinked so that it's easy to follow if your curiosity demands and easy to get back to your starting point when you're done. (I hope to evoke a TVTropes-like cascade of browser tabs for someone who has a few hours to kill. You should actually be able to follow the chain of questions about gods, monsters, playing a monster/monk/wizard, sorcerous power in national politics, and what kinds of nations exist.) The link is there, but whether to click is up to you. I think this second part is just as important because no matter how simple it is, any campaign setting is going to be too much to take in all at once. A setting that would be very fun to play in would be wasted if, to play a cleric, you had to read about historical fluctuations in the supply of iron giving rise to the eminence of Mya's priesthood in Cyprian, Malwyn and Ulwelf. I mean, seriously. C'mon.

TL;DR: Too Long? Don't have to Read. Here are the stats. Go play. :smalltongue:

SillySymphonies
2011-05-27, 05:57 AM
I just came across the following piece of advice (in a thread that may contain some of the best DM advice on the internet (http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19905354/Lessons_from_DMing_with_my_GF?pg=1)):

Whenever I do an entirely new game world, I try to avoid two things:

(1) Things that I have to explain before the game came start. Noone wants to listen (and have to try to remember) five pages worth of world description. Also, there is no excitment if something has to be explained entirely. New things might new some introduction, but should always be able to primarely be discovered. If something won't work without total explination, then don't do it.

(2) Trying to fit everything in. Game worlds that try to have every concievable monster, every concievable culture, and every concievable terrain type are prone to being unwieldly (and ultimately, generic). Ever notice how almost seemlessly Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms mesh? That is because both worlds were created to hold everything. Any world created to hold everything is going to be nearly indistinguishable from the next. Think about the world maps you likely drew (at least I did) early in DMing. Most likely looked exactly like the maps of Tolkien, Terry Brooks, Robert Jordan, or David Eddings. There is a Swamp, a Cold Place, a Bad Place, a Safe (good) Place, a Great Kindgom (usually with internal corruption), an Ancient Magical Place, etc. Truely distinct worlds (no offense meant to those great authors) are those which limit more to emphasize more (the archapelego world of Ursala's Earth-Sea is the clearest that comes to mind).

The same holds true for enemies. Count of the races in any of the authors I listed. You won't reach 20 in any of them (for example Jordan has Humans, Ogiers, Mydraal, Trollocs, Draakar, and Golem with a handful of more beastlike monsters and the like). Variations within races is a far more powerful tool than yet another Monster Manual X page vomitted into your gameworld.

That said, once I have my core concept down for the world, I usually try to work systematically through the rest of the process. This is NOT the exhaustive process of "bottom up" or "top down" worldbuild most people argue for. Rather, I argue for a "player-centric" process of worldbuilding. I take the PHB, and go through it chapter by chapter and ask myself "What does my world have to say to the material in this chapter?"

After all, that is the way that your players are going to experience it. Using the PHB as a guide makes sure that I miss nothing critical and also preps me to take that 5 page world description (carefully pruned down to one page max!) and spread it out over each chaper of character creation.[source (http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19905354/Lessons_from_DMing_with_my_GF&post_num=229#339175002)]
I think "player-centric world building" and using the PHB as a reference for what to adress in a campaign setting, is solid advice.

oxybe
2011-05-27, 01:15 PM
it must be interesting and have elements that the players will want to interact with.

personally, i greatly dislike the Faurope settings: Grayhawk, FR, Dragonlance, etc... they keep retreading ground i've been stomping on for the past 12 years and very little new things seem to want to grow at this point.

settings like Eberron or Dark Sun, that take familiar elements and adds a twist to them, are what interests me. heck i would love to see a setting based off ancient Rome, the indian/hindu mythologies, the asian mythology, the one i'm working on is based off the wild west/1890's americas, etc...

Eberron, for example, has several political groups butting heads and many areas that are pretty much "unknown" due to their isolated or dangerous nature. lost cities, magical cataclysms, ancient forests, etc..

i'm not saying these don't exist in other settings. i know FR has those in spades, but it's far more pronounced in Eberron IMO. Eberron has simply made these things WAY more accessible to the player.

you want politics and intrigue? get yourself a dragonmark. that's almost an instant "in" in the associated house and all the politics and backstabbings involved. the lightning rail alone makes travel to the VERY distinct (not just culturally, but also geographically) areas easy.

on the flipside while i do dislike the Faurope, one of my buddies started a 4th ed game while our Exalted GM was burning out that has a twist that we really don't do often: the evil campaign. it's your standard Faurope but with a twist: the good guys have won.

there is no evil to overthrow. no evil to rout. the world as we know it is at peace under a self-proclaimed deity (most likely a new godling or something. it has no history, but can command a host of angels & bestow divine power).

the orcs have been run off, the goblin burrows cleared, the evil dragon killed... the good guys are victorious. the PCs are an outside element. rather then reacting to a stimuli (which is the normal state for heroes, reacting to a villain's machinations), we're the ones instigating changes in the setting and trying to corrupt the nature of it.

in the timeline, the current generation has never had to deal with orcish raids. they never knew what it's like to have goblins sneak into the fields at night and steal livestock. what it's like to live under the oppressive rule of an ancient and foul dragon.

the guy managed to take something i generally dislike and turn it on it's heels to make it interesting and make me want to interact with it. we aren't the heroes trying to save the world: we're the BBEG trying to conquer it.

we're going to be the ones to have to chase off the rag-tag band of adventurers, create our hellish themed death-trap filled dungeons.

------------

the current world i'm working on is a "what if" romanticization to our own Wild West/1890's with a few different races acting as a sort of expy for our own, alongside some slight magi-tech.

it's coming along at a pretty slow pace, however, mostly because i'm pretty bad at organizing my ideas into something coherent and i'm still not entirely sure which system i want to use

i know i'll have to add here and there a few houserules since i want to iron out some of the details.

i've been debating which system i was going to go with: a modified D&D 4th ed (which is already at the pulp-action level i'm going for but would require a bit of reflavoring for the existing classes)

-a modified version of the 4th ed D&D Gamma World (i love how easy it is to pickup and play it thanks to it's rules-light approach, though i would need to create a few "races" and "classes" that fit with the themes, rather then a bunch of mutations)

-GURPS (which is a lot of work since i'll need to parse out which skills/abilities/etc... i want, but it's one BIG toolbox that uses the wonderful task resolution bell curve of 3d6)

either way, this is something i've been toiling about for a while with.

Yora
2011-05-28, 07:38 AM
it must be interesting and have elements that the players will want to interact with.
Yes. "I want to make a setting in which the planet is a cube" is not a good starting point to create a setting. The role of the PCs in the world has to be the very first thing to be decided. Everything else should be a result of that.

JonestheSpy
2011-05-28, 01:51 PM
The role of the PCs in the world has to be the very first thing to be decided. Everything else should be a result of that.

I have to disagree with this. To me a setting should inspire the players to create characters that fit into that setting, not the reverse. That means the setting should be detailed enough that people can say "Yeah, I want to play an escaped slave from country X, or a youngest son of a noble house from city Y", instead of just "I want to play Class A, race Y, and the rest is meaningless fluff".

The DM can still have an overall plotline, but how the characters react and relate to it should be determined by who they are in the world.

Shadowknight12
2011-05-28, 04:57 PM
A couple of months ago, I created a setting from scratch for a solo game I'm running for a player. The player in question is (I think) rather happy with the result, so I'm going to share a few highlights of what I think were the important parts of the creation process:

1) You have to sell the setting to the players. In order to do so, you have to start simple. Think big, think concepts. Then, make those concepts interesting, give them a hook that lures the players in. My concept was "standard fantasy setting with some RL-pagan-and-druidic influences gets hit by an apocalypse." That is simple, to the point, and immediately grabs the attention of the listener.

2) Work on the things you like first. I like pantheons, cosmologies, planes and magic theory. So I worked on that first, to get it out of my system while it was still fresh.

3) Once your creative impulse is sated, start thinking about the basics. Races, nations, religions, politics, factions, conflicts. Geography is... of varying importance. It is crucial to the area the PCs will actually be exploring, of course, but it is utterly unnecessary to create anything beyond that. You may disagree and it's quite all right. Go ahead and create the entire map if you are so inclined (like I said in the previous step, if this is one of the things you enjoy doing, go ahead and draw away). The important thing about this step is to also restrain yourself to concepts. You want to sell the setting. Think of your players as potential buyers. You don't want to overwhelm them with information, so keep things clear and simple.

As an addendum, this allows players to create characters (and NPCs for you) without worrying whether they "fit" or not. See below for more potential benefits.

5) Remember what the major races and monsters of D&D are and give them a place in the world. Make sure it all makes sense. If you have a race that can crush and outsmart every other one (*cough*dragons*cough*), do try to explain why they don't rule the world (or maybe they do!). You have to think macroscopically. Don't delve into details (yet). Try to keep a panoramic, systemic view of the setting so that you can convey that to the players. If you get lost in the details, you'll end up confusing or alienating them.

5) Anticipate your players and prepare answers for FAQs they might have. My player is a huge fan of fey (as am I) so I anticipated that he would want to know where they lived, what their status after the apocalypse was, who was their leader, etc. He threw some curveballs at me as well, and I had to come up with information on the spot, but that's to be expected. Again, keep the answers to these questions simple and to the point. If someone were to ask me "What are the status of dragons in this setting?" I wouldn't give them three pages of all the stuff I have floating in my mind about dragons. I would sum it up with "Seen as responsible for the apocalypse, they were systematically hunted down and are currently believed to be extinct. Whereabouts of survivors unknown."

6) Come up with the Big Events That Shaped The World. In my case, it was obvious. I had the big apocalypse. But I also had the rising and fall of an empire that did its very best to colonise the entire world (Ancient Roman Empire style), the rise of a god who led a race in a mad bid for tyranny over all existence; and the general ramifications of each. Here, you will want to go deep, to really flesh out these events, because they touch and shape the setting in ways you cannot really foresee until you get down to do it. My question of "how do I handle dragons?" was solved when I fleshed out the apocalypse, for example, and many other matters will solve themselves and flow naturally from these big events.

7) Add depth on a need-to-know basis. Here's when you present the setting to the players. From then, you start to flesh it out based on what they show interest. I had no intentions of fleshing out pixie society until my player wanted to play one, for example. Now, this is a matter of personal opinion, but I believe that the players feel more invested in a setting when they have a saying in what happens there. You can make a player part of the creative process at any moment, but most DMs don't. If you don't like the idea of creating a setting from scratch with friends, you can let them have a say in a discrete aspect of it. Let them flesh out the culture in their cities. Do you have a god whose religion you haven't developed? If one of the players likes that god, let them do that themselves. I can assure you that they will be far, far more invested in the game if they feel like it's "theirs" too. Same applies to NPCs, cities, maybe even nations. This isn't easy, however, this requires maturity, trust and self-confidence in both sides. You must be willing to work together and reach compromise so that both of you end up satisfied with the end result. It's hard work, I'm not going to say otherwise, but I can tell you from experience that the results are (in my opinion) definitely worth it.

Personally, what makes a setting interesting for me is when the DM lets me feel like a part of it. I have a... distaste for things I cannot influence. And to be frank, I prefer to influence the setting at the start and then play a whole campaign without changing a thing, than to be given a premade setting and then being told that "what I do will change it forever." I've heard that one a million times and quite frankly, it's not satisfying. I don't get much enjoyment from destruction, I get more enjoyment from creation. I prefer to be asked "Hey, do you want to develop a subrace of elves?" or "So, in my setting, celestials and fiends are now part of the Material Plane for X reason. Wanna develop celestial culture?" or even "So, you like this god? Why don't you write up the rest?" and "I want a reason for this nation here to be wiped out. It can be a spell gone awry, a disease, a curse, a natural disaster, an invasion, whatever. Go nuts."

Yeah, I don't know, I think it's a matter of personal taste. Those are the things that I, personally, like.

Yora
2011-05-29, 06:20 AM
I have to disagree with this. To me a setting should inspire the players to create characters that fit into that setting, not the reverse. That means the setting should be detailed enough that people can say "Yeah, I want to play an escaped slave from country X, or a youngest son of a noble house from city Y", instead of just "I want to play Class A, race Y, and the rest is meaningless fluff".
I think that is a different way to say the same thing I meant:

When I said the setting should be first about the role of the PCs, I wasn't speaking about races and classes. But rather the role PCs play in the society and events of the setting.
It's not who they are, that is most important, but what they do.
Knowing "I'm a dwarven fighter" or "I'm an elven wizard" does not provide plot hooks that make the characters meaningful to the setting. Instead, using your examples, it would be better to start with "This is a setting about nobles securing and defending their power in times of social turmoil, and people from the lower classes struggling to improve their lives". That would be the role of the PCs: Being involved in the restructuring of the society, working for the interests of any involved party.
And I think the fault of many Faurope settings is precisely, that they only encourage players to make characters that are "a ranger from the elven kingdom" or "a human barbarian", but they lack any role for the characters to occupy except clearing ruins and carry out the treasure. And that activity is completely isolated from the rest of society, except for selling loot and resupplying.
Birthright is a great example of a different approach by saying "This setting is about nobles defending and expanding their domains" and PCs are supposed to be either nobles, or advisors and bodyguards of a noble party member. Or you have Ravenloft, which is also a prime example of a kitchen sink setting, but the focus is on "defending against the evil lords and monsters with low chances for success". This is what I mean by saying the role of the PCs in the world has to come first.

J.Gellert
2011-05-29, 08:00 AM
And I think the fault of many Faurope settings is precisely, that they only encourage players to make characters that are "a ranger from the elven kingdom" or "a human barbarian", but they lack any role for the characters to occupy except clearing ruins and carry out the treasure. And that activity is completely isolated from the rest of society, except for selling loot and resupplying.

That's very important to me. Of course you can have a campaign setting that provides an excuse backdrop for dungeon crawls... But if you are getting into the trouble of having a complete campaign setting, then it feels like a waste.

Kislath
2011-05-29, 09:32 AM
Tamriel started as one DM's campaign world.
In my games, I have one setting that is a "Truman Show" kind of thing. Things are a bit...off... somehow, but the characters can't quite identify the problem even though they can sense there is one.

Tvtyrant
2011-05-29, 04:37 PM
I think the most important part of a Campaign Setting is that it captures the imagination; if the setting is about food then the setting should be like Toriko, if its about lost civilizations it should have some amazing civilizations in it. Giant corn is just as good as flying cities if presented in a way that grabs the players.

TARDIS
2011-05-29, 05:21 PM
I'd say for me, I'd say the definitive answer to what makes a good campaign setting is 'can I use it for multiple campaigns'? Can I run one set of characters through, go back, and do a similar thing again - with different characters and adventures and overarching plot, of course, but using the same setting.

So many settings I find are one-trick ponies. There's one plot, one theme, you run one campaign and you save the world. Done. Then what do you do with that setting?

If, however, I can think of a dozen or more origins and endpoints for campaigns, then I know I'm on to something good. That's what interested me about Forgotten Realms when I first read it... there were a huge number of paths I could take my players on in that world. Other settings, like Warcraft or Dragonlance, I felt were a bit more restrictive in terms of possible adventures and plots... I liked some of the rules, races and ideas those worlds had, but they were more for inspiration than actual use. And then you've got settings like Midnight or Dragonmech... yeah, again good ideas, but really I can think of one ultimate ending to both those campaign settings and then POOF! Onto the next!

There are a number of factors that can influence how many times a setting can be used, but I think the big feature is the number of overarching metaplots... how many big bads are there? How many evil organizations, cults of dark gods, elder evils, and whatnot are there lurking behind the scenes? How big is the world - are there a few dozen big cities, or fifty nations with conflicting politics and goals? How much is there to do?

After that, we can start talking about what makes this setting unique and different... the details and designs, the races and the classes, the cultures and religions from which characters are made. Still, I find that those come through if you can run multiple campaigns in a world... even something as plain as an elven ranger or human fighter starts to become interesting in a world with options.

Just for a personal example, my big setting is the Empires of Caelea, a Victorian-era steampunk/fantasy campaign that centres on an alternate version of Europe... yeah, rather plain at first glance. But what I keep trying to do with it is add these campaign options and story arcs that will allow myself, or potentially others, to run a number or arching stories, and customize them to fit their play style. You can run a story about the return of the elves and the invasion of Faerie, one regarding the rise of Zerai, the Empire of the Devils, one involving exploration of the new worlds, one dealing with corruption and civil war in the Caelean church, one trying to find the mist-lost kingdoms of Newumbria, or one dealing with the outbreak of the Great War... and these are just rough ideas! The more campaign arcs you have means the more ideas are present in the world to be used and built upon, means the stronger and more usable the setting is!

Just my two pence though, take them as you will!

Knaight
2011-05-29, 05:35 PM
I'd say for me, I'd say the definitive answer to what makes a good campaign setting is 'can I use it for multiple campaigns'? Can I run one set of characters through, go back, and do a similar thing again - with different characters and adventures and overarching plot, of course, but using the same setting.

I'd go so far as to say a setting should allow a great many different styles of play. If all a setting can really handle is an epic save the world from evil force X adventure, then it is a horrible failure of a setting. A setting that could handle a group of mages going abroad to study, while desperately keeping their origin and their countries magic secret; or the struggle for survival in a trade town suffering from the introduction of hostilities with their trading partner; or political intrigue among a bunch of upstart warlords attempting to sink a country; or a cultural conflict between a conquered territory and the conquering country; or any number of other things is much better.

TARDIS
2011-05-29, 06:09 PM
I'd go so far as to say a setting should allow a great many different styles of play. If all a setting can really handle is an epic save the world from evil force X adventure, then it is a horrible failure of a setting. A setting that could handle a group of mages going abroad to study, while desperately keeping their origin and their countries magic secret; or the struggle for survival in a trade town suffering from the introduction of hostilities with their trading partner; or political intrigue among a bunch of upstart warlords attempting to sink a country; or a cultural conflict between a conquered territory and the conquering country; or any number of other things is much better.

Oh aye, exactly. That's pretty much what I was trying to get at - though being able to run multiple campaigns of the same theme and style doesn't hurt as wel. If your players like it, why not keep doing it, right?

And this is not to say one-trick pony campaign settings are bad... I'd love to try a campaign in DragonMech... that setting is just plain awesome! But once you save the world once with your gaming group... well, shelve the book and onto someplace new. If that works for you, great! However, I want to be able to have my PCs be affected by the actions of their earlier versions.

I ran one campaign where the PCs helped a small frontier gold-rush community become and independent republic. The following campaign, the PCs were playing church agents who had to go in and obtain - through whatever means - a pagan relic that the republic had uncovered in a mine. Trip through nostalgia for those players who'd been through the first game!

But here's the thing... two different campaigns, with different focuses, different characters, different styles and goals, run in the same setting. This is what I think makes a good campaign setting - something more than a fleshed out adventure series. A campaign setting is something you can use again and again and again, for any number of groups and any number of styles.

Golarion right now is a brilliant example... so far, the folks at Paizo have churned out campaign arcs ranging from your standard 'save the world from an awakening evil mage/incoming asteroid/genie legion' to political intrigue, to 'players shipwrecked in the jungle' to forging your own kingdom in the wilderness (GENIUS!) to their current Gothic horror offering. If I may be so bold as to say this: Hells yes!

And Golarion isn't the only setting like that... Eberron, Forgotten Realms, Planescape, even Ravenloft (yes, some will argue this, I'm a huge Ravenloft fan and have run a few different campaigns there, so it can be done!) all have a range of options that one can build a campaign out of... it's then up to the DM to make it really work.

Geigan
2011-05-29, 06:10 PM
I just came across the following piece of advice (in a thread that may contain some of the best DM advice on the internet (http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19905354/Lessons_from_DMing_with_my_GF?pg=1)):
[source (http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19905354/Lessons_from_DMing_with_my_GF&post_num=229#339175002)]
I think "player-centric world building" and using the PHB as a reference for what to adress in a campaign setting, is solid advice.

Ah good old Oakspar. I am fortunate enough to have stumbled on to that thread when I was just starting D&D. Good to see it's still up, I thought it had been lost in the shuffle that was the new forum over there.

gracypetro
2011-06-13, 12:12 AM
Like the Star Wars game I ran, originally set in the Force Unleashed period. Then for some random reason I thought it would be chilled to have Darth Revan in suspended animation than killed, so I could give his sheet to player & Vader's to another.