What makes a Campaign setting Interesting to You?

Greetings -

I am currently developing my own campaign setting and after reading various threads I wanted to put a call for ideas as to what different people like in their campaign settings - both published and home-grown. I purposefully want to avoid phrasing like "what's a good" setting because this, I think, is a matter of taste and personal opinion. My setting, titled "Ilshara - Lands of Exile" is going to be purposefully generic in terms of systems, fairly traditionally (i.e. medieval) oriented, hopefully in the spirit of the original Greyhawk or early Karameikos-style settings. That is not to say that I'm not interested in what people who like other types of settings like, as I am looking to tweak and add some differences to my "old school" approach to the setting.

As a side to this discussion I am also curious if other people find some of the "famous" settings out there too cumbersome to play in now because of too much history, too much material - when I tried to run a Dragonlance campaign I found it was impossible to escape player expectations based on most of them knowing the books by heart (they had to start at the Inn of the Last Home in Solace, they were bored with my adventures and kept wanting to meet and interact with the "famous" people like Dalamar). I think this is also true with FR (which I also think is overpowered) and, sadly now, Greyhawk.

Anyway, my thanks to opinions and thoughts any of you may wish to give as I continue writing - I have two beautiful poster-boards with color cartography finished and have been writing non-stop for several weeks!

John Maddog Wright

"In the immortal words of Socrates.... I drank what!?"

If there's a hook, it depends on the personal preference of folks towards the hook.

If there's not a hook -- and I'd say Karameikos has a lack of hooks as its hook (don't get me wrong: I love it and ran a campaign there with a parallel campaign going in the Five Shires) -- I'd say it comes down to how well it's written, how well it's organized, how much detail it provides in the areas that a DM needs detail, how much semi-blank space is left sketchy for DMs to fill in (obviously, those last two also come down to personal preferences), how much/little crunch is added, and so on.

For me, I like the Known World gazeteers, Freeport and Ptolus precisely because they give me lots of detail but also leave a lot sketchy for me to fill in later. In Karameikos, I was able to drop a whole village into an empty hex, but had a good framework of culture, politics, a good idea of threats in the area, and so on. In Freeport or Ptolus, I have much the same, but in the case of the urban environments, I can insert my own buildings or individuals in without batting an eye.

And no matter how detailed a setting is, I always want to be able to drop in area-appropriate modules, since I sometimes have to do so at the drop of a hat, when the players do something unexpected (i.e. most of the time). So in Karameikos, I want things left fuzzy enough that I could fit in, say, a Goodman Games module (at least, one of the temperate climate ones) without totally altering it. Since Karameikos was designed as just such an environment, it works great. Likewise, I can (and am) doing the same thing in Praemal, the world of Ptolus, and I can set appropriate DCCs (Bloody Jack's Gold and the Return of the Emerald Cobra) near Freeport with no difficulty.

In contrast, there are settings that are so detailed and with such a specific flavor that outside content is absolutely unwelcome. While that's fun for the D&D reader sorts, I find it to be a pain in the tuchus for the D&D DMs, like me.

A wilderness stocked with lairs and encounters and dungeons to explore, and urban areas likewise jam-packed with adventuring opportunities. In other words, a focus on the micro which the PCs can actually interact with....what macro there is should merely support that, IMO.

This talk of hooks makes me scratch my head a bit - an adventure or a campaign arc requires a hook, not a setting. It's like saying that a stage and props should have a "hook". If you mean gimmickry like "look how I've replaced magic with psionics" or "look at my robo-aardvark-man PC race", then I doubt we're on the same page, but that's the majority view of what a campaign setting should be about, seemingly.

rounser said:

This talk of hooks makes me scratch my head a bit - an adventure or a campaign arc requires a hook, not a setting.

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Tell that to the designers of Freeport, Midnight, Dawnforge, Morningstar and a host of others.

I didn't say hooks were required, I just said if they exist, it becomes a seperate preference point.

Tell that to the designers of Freeport, Midnight, Dawnforge, Morningstar and a host of others.

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Right. But then, I think that the focus on setting as an end in itself over adventure and campaign arc is to the detriment of the game, and has afflicted D&D for a long time now. I think that it's exactly back-to-front, to the point that you have settings ascribed traits that require a specific campaign to fulfil.

Sure, a setting can support a style of campaign arc, but the key word here is "support", not "setting should be defined first, make campaign support that". As you point out, my view is very much in the minority (in fact I don't know of anyone else who agrees). The focus on worlds is so far as I can see because worldbuilding and dreaming about setting is fun, whereas planning campaigns and adventures begins to resemble work.

I actually think we're on the same page about what we want out of a world. I never said I wanted a hook -- I ran two parallel campaigns in the least-hooky nations of Mystara, for instance, and I use the non-Ptolus areas of Ptolus at the moment, in as close to a Karameikos-like setting as exists there.

I like Praemal for its empire on the verge of civil war, its technology about to vanish into a new dark age and its moments-before-Martin Luther-shows-up state religion. None of that is a hook, so much as being a well-designed semi-generic world ripe for all sorts of adventures.

Whizbang Dustyboots said:

... and I'd say Karameikos has a lack of hooks as its hook ...

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It does have the growing threat of the Black Eagle Barony (with Baron Von Hendricks and his advisor, the infamous Bargle), the Iron Ring criminal organisation (especially important if you have the amazing module B10), the political tensions between the conquering Thyatians and the indiginous Traladrian populations, the various gang rivalries in Specularum, etc.

There are plenty of 'hooks' in Karameikos! But it is wide open enough to allow DMs to make it their own (especially if you ignore all the post-1000 AC rubbish).

Akrasia said:

It does have the growing threat of the Black Eagle Barony (with Baron Von Hendricks and his advisor, the infamous Bargle), the Iron Ring criminal organisation (especially important if you have the amazing module B10), the political tensions between the conquering Thyatians and the indiginous Traladrian populations, the various gang rivalries in Specularum, etc.

There are plenty of 'hooks' in Karameikos! But it is wide open enough to allow DMs to make it their own (especially if you ignore all the post-1000 AC rubbish).

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Those are adventure hooks, not hooks in the Hollywood sense. Karameikos isn't "Imagine World of Greyhawk, but EXTREME!" It's a standard baseline setting, like Greyhawk or Kalamar.

Again, I ran a Karameikos campaign. I know it has adventure hooks coming out its collective Traladaran/Thyatian ass.

Karameikos isn't "Imagine World of Greyhawk, but EXTREME!"

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But it could be. We just invade it with a society of psionic robo-aardvark-men swinging dire flails from elemental-powered jetfighters with a "tone and attitude" inspired by the Godfather movies.

Oh, and everyone has rocketskates. EXTREEEEEEEEME!

rounser - by Micro do you like to see details (including stats) of encounters? I ask because in creating a generic setting that can be used in a variety of settings that drifts into system-specific crunch.

or do you just mean basic information on locations and context of dungeons, towers, tribes, temples that can be filled in and utilized above the "macro" of peoples, nations and history (which is what I assume you mean by that)?

Thanks,

John Maddog Wright

"It takes a village to kill some Orcs."