Settings - "empty" vs richly detailed locations

[TheClone]

I personally like the more "empty" settings like 4e Dark Sun very much. It gives a whole lot of inspiration for adventures and enough room to put them into the world. Therefore I didn't like the 3e FR that much. Too crowded and complicated. It was difficult to put your own ideas in. But it was a really rich and colorful world and many people liked it that way. I guess there'll always be fractions that favor either approach. Taking that into consideration they shouldn't have made such a break for FR. Each variant should have its settings.

 

[Zhaleskra]

I prefer a medium approach, give me a detailed picture of the broad idea of the setting. Example town? Give me a general idea of this place and let me fill in the blanks.

 

[Afrodyte]

I prefer a medium approach, give me a detailed picture of the broad idea of the setting. Example town? Give me a general idea of this place and let me fill in the blanks.

LOL! I prefer just the opposite. Zoom in on a smaller locale but keep the macro view skeletal.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

For me, the first Eberron setting books hits the right tone. There is a very detailed history that can be mined for stories, motivations, and plots. There is a decent skeleton of the macro setting {the "here there be dragons" style mapping}, but the details of the setting were scarce and it was up to the DM to bring the world elements together into the story-line. They had a couple key places written up, like Sharn and Stormkeep.. but the rest of the world was a murky unknown.

Having the dieties be remote and aloof was a stroke of genius, and allowed for more grey-area gaming.. which is definately to my taste.

This allowed the setting to adapt 'Of Sound Mind', 'War of the Burning Sky', and 'The Coils of Set' easily into the world without causing problems. Trying to do the same into some of the older, more settled settings would result in having to cram the storyline into the setting.


I avoided Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance specifically because I would have players who knew more of the game world than I would {and would argue 'canon' with me}. Ravenloft was excellent.. until they mapped it out.

To sum it up.. the history makes the world. History explains why a ruins would be there, and provide a couple of factions interested in finding it.

Renshai as to the outdated maps.. I would use them as handouts...and let the PCs scribble thier updates as they find out how wrong the maps have become!

 

[Ashrum the Black]

Personally, I prefer a richly detailed setting, with lots of space for me to add onto. This has always been one of my hangups with 4e is its lack of information, and continueing support for the settings. I love Eberron, but I don't love digital support after the big release for support. I want a new book release covering more of the world, or at least some new conspiracies, and I want to see the gory details of the place.

As a DM, even if I never play in the world, or use it in it entirety, I love reading and mining the settings. I have never truely like the Realms much, always been more of a Greyhawk fan, but I have liberally stolen bits and pieces that I did like.

A detailed setting that covers all of the magor players, and gives lots of juicy low hanging adventure fruit to pick from in the setting material, and at the same time leaving some areas of the map open for me to drop in my material. Not every corner has to be mapped out. But the areas that are mapped out and detailed need to be detailed well so we have a nice overview of the area, some adventure hooks of slaying the bad guy, politics, even economics, would all be great.

Some time later, move on and do another area, maybe focusing on another aspect than geography. Perhaps military orders, knightly virtues in one book. Magical orders and some information on magocracy's. ETC. This is what I'm looking for. Detail the setting out, but do it in such a way that it's easy to change and re-order if there are parts I, or my players, don't like, or even like better so want to port from place to place.

-Ashrum

 

[Vanifae]

Not sure which camp I am in but this is what I look for in a campaign setting:

- I need to know what makes this setting different from all the other fantasy D&D settings out there. What makes this one shine?

- Cover key regions that express this ideal/theme/features to me clearly and concisely.

- Plot hooks, plot hooks, and plot hooks.

- Details on those key areas, how do the pieces fit? How does the big ideas interact with the setting?

- Usable map with plenty of room for me to place my own stories.

- I don't need Elminster/Fave NPC/Whatever to save the day, but do give me interesting personalities to interact with.

- Historical data, this can be loose and done in broad strokes I can fill in the gaps.

- More plot hooks.

- I don't want too much data it just becomes information I probably won't ever use or the players won't care about. This is a big one. I used to do this all the time create these intricate worlds with all these moving pieces and reams of backstory. The only person who ever cared about it was me.

- Finally provide me a snapshot of what th setting is like right now, give hints on where things could go, and then get the hell out of my way.

 

[karlindel]

I think richly detailed is the way to go for me, but it has to be the right details.

I can put together a skeleton of a world myself, so I don't really need that. I would prefer to have a setting with a lot of plot hooks that are specific to the setting. I don't want details that are solely related to the broad strokes of the setting (i.e. I don't need lots of details on a variety of creation myths or battles that took place in a war centuries or millenia ago, unless those tie in directly to things that are going on now). I want details on the current political situation, current plans of the rulers, nobility, clergy, and merchants (preferably with names and even brief personality information included).

I want NPCs at varying levels of power and influence and with varied interests that I can use to create interesting plots. I want names for towns, knightly orders, rulers, and the like that are flavorful, cohesive, and integrated with the setting so that I don't have to make those things up myself.

 

[steeldragons]

I think I'm more of a detail person. That said, I heartily agree with many in the "leave me space" camp. But I like the idea that my character, who lives in this world (whatever it happens to be) has SOME kind of knowledge about the people and regions of his own world. Might not know exACTly or have entirely accurate information or know about EVERYwhere. But has a basic concept of what his/her world has in it...not just I know from this village to those hills.

With that, I invite everyone to take a gander at my campaign setting WIP, Orea.
http://www.enworld.org/forum/plots-places/284160-orea-world-its-people.html

I have had it there for some time and it is, decidedly lacking in feedback. I would greatly appreciate any insights...Does it sound too detailed? Not detailed enough? Do the various realms have a flavor that you get...or not?

and a continental map can be found here: http://www.enworld.org/forum/art-ga...ures-painting/283445-steel-dragons-art-3.html

Thanks.
--Steel Dragons

 

[The Shaman]

I see this not so much as "faking it", but as setting used as a background to drive play, rather than a location for play to occur in.

With respect to implied setting, isn't this true for most roleplaying games?

• Success in 1e AD&D comes primarily from acquiring treasure, and the game tells us who the treasure-seekers are, and about what role they play in the world if they are successful - win the foozle enough times, and you have the opportunity to build a stronghold and gain followers who are drawn to you by your reputation and prowess. The immediate rewards are treasure, the long-term rewards are power and glory - this tells me a lot about the world in which the game is intended to take place.
• Agents in Top Secret are paid by the mission, which reveals them to be contract agents; the relationship between the agent and the case officer in spy stories is often marked by tension and deception, so the implied setting is loaded with intrigue from the giddyup by the connection between the agents and their employers.
• There are four basic backgrounds for characters in Flashing Blades: Rogue, Soldier, Gentleman, and Nobleman. These backgrounds are well-represented in swashbuckling genre fiction. Contrast this with Maelstrom, in which characters can be merchants, tradesmean, and so forth. Both are historical roleplaying games, but FB actively reinforces genre fiction tropes while Maelstrom leans more toward presenting a slice of life in Elizabethan England.

The lifepaths of Traveller, Sanity in CoC, pretty much everything about Paranoia - the list goes on and on.

Now, as to "empty" versus "richly detailed" as they pertain to locations, here are snippets from two of the maps I use for Flashing Blades.

Because I am playing in a historical milieu, I have access to a vast amount of detail, more than any fictional setting ever created. Yet looking at these maps, I don't know who lives in the village of Courgain, or what dangers lurk in the Bois Mulot, or the names of all the goldsmiths and moneylenders on the Pont au Change. Despite their very clear and distinct placement on the map, and literally years now of reading about the time and the place, there is a vast amount of information I must be able to create on the fly - I do that by learning as much about the setting as I can and filtering it through the mechanics of the game and the genre of the stories which inspire it.

This is not in any way a feature of historical roleplaying games alone; consider the 11,000 worlds of the Third Imperium and the rest of Charted Space in Traveller, a highly detailed setting which is nonetheless as near to empty as a referee could imagine. You could spend years detailing a single planet in a single system if you were so inclined - much like the authors of Blue Planet chose to do for their game - and still make only an infinitismal dent in the enormity of that setting's emptiness.

The settings I like best contain both considerable detail and vast swaths of emptiness at the same time. There is "empty" hidden in plain sight everywhere I look on those maps of France, or of Charted Space.

 

[green slime]

The Forgotten Realms grey box got it just right. A wealth of informtion and inspiring locales, without being more detailed than necessary.

This trend continued for the first supporting softbound modules, FR1 - FR6. But it all started to come apart soon after the publication of the Forgotten Realms Adventures hardbound book (IMO, still a good resource). Time of Troubles was just so completely... wrong.