Sell Me a Campaign Setting

[Mand]

So, I'm currently involved in a group that's doing a Points of Light style campaign - we're based in a town and are doing minor tasks around it. None of us has much experience with campaign settings, but I'm really curious about using one. What are the advantages and disadvantages of using a campaign setting, and which one would you recommend? I'll note that reading the excerpts about Dark Sun have gotten me really curious about that one in particular, but I'm also interested in the others.

P.S. Please don't take this as an opportunity to flame others for their choice of campaign setting - I really am honestly looking for suggestions.

 

[jimmifett]

If you like indiana jones, maltese falcon, film noir, and political intrigue, you might want to consider Eberron

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Well, a good campaign setting is obviously going to give you a bunch of background material and story hooks, some specific locales to use (cities, towns, countries), some ongoing plot perhaps (the world is threatened by X). Usually there will be at least a couple adventures specifically set in it, which may be easier to run than more generic ones as they SHOULD tie into the setting better.

A good setting should also present a unified tone and style that you can leverage. So for instance FR has a very high fantasy high magic kind of tone, Eberron is 'noire'. Dark Sun will obviously be post apocalyptic survival grit. Different story arcs will probably work better in one than another. For instance a mystery story of intrigue might be harder to pull off credibly in FR where magic is in abundance and someone will solve it without detective work, or at least it might not have the best atmosphere for that kind of story. It would work better in Eberron where there are secret groups warring with each other covertly left and right. A story that involves surviving grueling treks through the wilderness is probably best for Dark Sun vs Eberron or FR.

Obviously any setting should be broad enough to let you run any type of adventure, but a lot of groups will enjoy certain styles and tone more than others or want to focus more on a specific type of play and thus one setting may appeal more to them and work better for their group.

That all being said you always have the generic option of PoL. It is technically "not a setting" but that's getting harder and harder to justify at this point. DMG has a nice town, there's a smaller one in KotS, at least 3 modules are set in Nentir Vale, you have Hammerfast (dwarven outpost), and Vor Rukoth (ruined city) for more extensive locations. It sounds like a lot more stuff is coming, including a Gazetteer or two, etc.

Don't discount the option of creating your own setting either. It really doesn't need to be too tough to do. A generic starting setting is probably indistinguishable from PoL in most cases, but if you have a particular sort of theme or location in mind you'd like to use I'd pitch it to the group and see what they think.

 

[Scribble]

With a pre-made campaign setting, a lot of the "groundwork" has already been done for you.

Like, they have described the world, the backstory, organizations within it, how the gods work, any special rules modifiers, etc...

You can generally just pick them up, and use them as a starting point for adventures ongoing.


One of the drawbacks I almost always notice though is that I never seem to know the world as well as I know my own campaign worlds. It's easy for me to forget some aspect, like an NPC or a location or something.

It's not a HUGE drawback though, so I generally find it easier to use pre-made campaigns.




As for Dark Sun... Dark Sun seems like one of those worlds you either love or you hate. I think it works really well with the concept of PoL...

If you're looking for "Tolkienesque" fantasy though- this ain't it.

When I was younger, I was all Tolkien all the time so I really disliked DS... Now I find it matches my tastes a whole lot more then most of the other settings.


Hope that helps!

 

[Stumblewyk]

What are the advantages and disadvantages of using a campaign setting, and which one would you recommend?

Off the top of my head...

Advantages:

• the detail-work (world building) is done for you
• NPCs are fleshed out, usually with histories and story hooks (you don't need to make up a name for the king of the realm, you've got all the info on him AND his country already)

Disadvantages:

• it could be easy for a new/inexperienced DM to fall into the trap of being afraid to deviate from the stated "facts" about a setting
• experienced players in a setting could conceivably know as much, if not more than the DM about the setting. This could potentially lead to "that's not what happened!"-type situations at the table regarding world events

As for a recommendation, it really comes down to preferred game style.

Does you group like "high fantasy", if so, check out Forgotten Realms. Lots of magic, a diverse pantheon of gods with direct and powerful impact on their worshippers (and others) lives, many nations and cultures.

If you think your group might appreciate something with a more "modern" feel, Eberron might be up your alley - it's got a "magic as technology" feel to it, with a very obvious influence of high adventure.

Dark Sun is a "survival in the face of the worst odds" kind of setting. Athas is a "low magic" setting, diverging very much from the standard tropes of fantasy. True heroes on Athas are few and far between. Instead, most people exhibit varying shades of gray morality, simply trying to survive under the yolk of oppressive dictators and environments.

 

[malcolm_n]

I couldn't resist taking this opportunity to offer Pnumadesi as a potential campaign setting. It's traditional fantasy with a few twists. The world is developed enough to run in, but is new to just about everybody and has enough design space left to fit in whatever overall story you want to run within its confines. If you happen to be interested, lemme know, I'll hook you up with the free copy of the player's companion.

/end shameless plug.

Really though, the posters above me have really done a good job of spelling out pros and cons.

 

[josha]

As a fan of classic fantasy I'm going to sell you the
FORGOTTEN REALMS​

It has great classic-fantasy, clear-a-dungeon, Conan/Lord of the Rings style, high-magic, site-based adventure, good-vs-evil awesomeness!
It's very flexible too, you can run almost any kind of game in it (retro dungeon crawl, horror, planescape, intrigue, anything).

 

[TarionzCousin]

I like the Forgotten Realms. There are many resources available for whatever you want to do.

 

[knightofround]

Advantages to campaign settings:
1. They save the DM prep time, because the creative ideas are already in-place. Because "fluff", aka flavor/tone/groups/npcs/organizations/nations, are supplied by the campaign setting, all the DM really needs to prepare is crunchy stuff like stat blocks and plot hooks.
2. Players know what kind of game to expect they'll be playing. If someone asks me to play Eberron, I picture swashbuckling on top of a lightning rail car. Forgotten Realms, and I picture scouting dark elven invasion forces on behalf of powerful archmages. Dark Sun, I expect a brutal game of survival where nothing and no one is to be trusted. Ravenloft, I expect to be a beacon of hope in a dark land that corrupts everything it touches...including me.
3. Because these campaign settings have a lot of support built into them, it makes it easier for the DM to tie up a cohesive story from heroic to epic. It can still be done with a homebrewed setting, but it takes a lot more skill and practice, both on behalf of the DM as well as the players. Running an established campaign setting essentially makes things "easier" for both DMs and players.

Disadvantages to Campaign Settings:
1. If you have players who know more about the campaign setting than the DM, metagaming could be a big issue...or worse, try to contradict the DM when for flavor reasons they tweak something from the campaign setting.
2. One of the greatest strengths of D&D is that is that the mind is limitless in imagination, and thus infinite in variety. But if you tie yourself down to a campaign setting, you lose some of the "uniqueness" of exploring a brand new world. It can also stifle creativity.
3. The only published 4E campaign settings right now are: the generic POL setting (bleh), Forgotten Realms (bleh), Eberron(good), and Dark Sun(okay). If none of those campaign worlds appeal to you (and there are many other possibilities out there), then obviously you'd be better off making your own campaign.

 

[dragnsteph]

Advantages to campaign settings:
3. The only published 4E campaign settings right now are: the generic POL setting (bleh), Forgotten Realms (bleh), Eberron(good), and Dark Sun(okay). If none of those campaign worlds appeal to you (and there are many other possibilities out there), then obviously you'd be better off making your own campaign.

Those are the only published WotC settings. I don't follow every publisher, but I do follow Goodman because I'm using Aereth (the setting from their DCCs.. it's 3E but I'm just using the fluff anyway), and they just released Amethyst to quite good overall reviews. Magic collides with Tech in a future Earth. It's intriguing enough to make me want, some days, to kill my players off and start something new