payn
He'll flip ya...Flip ya for real...
Oh yeah I do this tire kicking once in awhile. In my experience, the setting is usually an afterthought when the real test is if the system feels right and plays well.
Setting Design: As Written, GM Homebrew, or Group Collaboration?
GrimCo
Adventurer
Depends on the game. I run short sessions and one shots exclusively these days.
For WoD and All flesh must be eaten, it's just set in my home town in present day and I just add supernatural stuff. This makes it easy and convenient.
For 7th sea campaigns i used real world places and events. Also, set in my home country. So places, people, events, customs etc are more or less known to all my players, even ones who slept over history classes in school.
D&D, it depends. It's either in my friends home brew setting (for classic fantasy), or it's my modified version of Ravenloft. My friends home brew is kind of collaborative thing. He did majority of basic world building, but left part's of the world blank, so my other friend and i fleshed out those trough our campaigns over these last 10 years. It's loosley based on Earth, with heavy inspiration from various real cultures and civilizations.
For WoD and All flesh must be eaten, it's just set in my home town in present day and I just add supernatural stuff. This makes it easy and convenient.
For 7th sea campaigns i used real world places and events. Also, set in my home country. So places, people, events, customs etc are more or less known to all my players, even ones who slept over history classes in school.
D&D, it depends. It's either in my friends home brew setting (for classic fantasy), or it's my modified version of Ravenloft. My friends home brew is kind of collaborative thing. He did majority of basic world building, but left part's of the world blank, so my other friend and i fleshed out those trough our campaigns over these last 10 years. It's loosley based on Earth, with heavy inspiration from various real cultures and civilizations.
I've done all three. It depends a bit on the game and a bit on the mood.
The most recent game that I started was Torchbearer 2e. I pulled out my Greyhawk maps, because these are my default for D&D-ish fantasy. Given that Torchbearer defaults to a fairly harsh northern Europe, I suggested the area around the Bandit Kingdoms, Tenh and the Theocracy of the Pale as our starting region. Then, as the players built their PCs - which, in TB2e, includes identifying a starting settlement - we started putting some places on the map. Eg the player of the PC from the Forgotten Temple Complex was very clear that it was located in the Theocracy; and also had firm views about the nature of the forgotten cults.
greymist
Lurker Extraordinaire
I only run 5E D&D games at the moment. For my current campaign I used the Forgotten Realms as the backdrop and added my non-FR modules and homebrew. I treat FR as a very large map, and I will pull bits and pieces of the official lore if I need it, but for the most part the canonical lore and history is ignored.
This allows me to choose the geographical locations to fit the module without having to worry about what Realms-shaking events go along with that particular area; i.e. I just want the desert; not the war that created it.
For one-shots, I would just run the adventure as written, or if it is homebrew, there would only be the barebones of what is needed to make it work. If the party starts in a village, I will create it (or use one from another module). If the adventure starts at the door to the dungeon, then the world stops 10 feet from that door!
I tried a collaborative world once, many years ago. Not enough assistance from the players to make it work. I haven’t bothered since. Somewhere in my boxes there may be notes and maps of the world I started developing back in 1982 but I would never consider completing it now, to easy to cobble together what I need from the many resources available from other, more diligent creators.
This allows me to choose the geographical locations to fit the module without having to worry about what Realms-shaking events go along with that particular area; i.e. I just want the desert; not the war that created it.
For one-shots, I would just run the adventure as written, or if it is homebrew, there would only be the barebones of what is needed to make it work. If the party starts in a village, I will create it (or use one from another module). If the adventure starts at the door to the dungeon, then the world stops 10 feet from that door!
I tried a collaborative world once, many years ago. Not enough assistance from the players to make it work. I haven’t bothered since. Somewhere in my boxes there may be notes and maps of the world I started developing back in 1982 but I would never consider completing it now, to easy to cobble together what I need from the many resources available from other, more diligent creators.
