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<blockquote data-quote="Von Ether" data-source="post: 7754816" data-attributes="member: 15582"><p>A good fictional world doesn't necessarily make a good RPG world, hence the "things the players can play," feel. Many times, the world is changed as the fiction protagonist succeeds in upsetting the balance, quelling the conflict, and make things "happily every after," with a new peaceful -- and boring -- status quo. (there are exceptions, this is just the usual outcome.)</p><p></p><p>You can probably get better world-building from an author, but it will come with just one implied sort of story and that narrows your audience. </p><p></p><p>Thus commercial settings usually offer a broad array of options for campaign flavors an styles of play. To snag as many customers as the can, some settings, like FR, have pseduo-historical cultures so you can flavor your fantasy RPGs anyway you want. But without the same historical context, these places (now speaking generically and not about FR) can seen as a random mish-mash of neighbors -- especially if one neighbor is necomancer</p><p></p><p>Others create fake cultures from scratch, but then their names or concepts sound hollow because they <em>are </em>fake and don't jive with our expectations that were informed from what we know about history. And some settings do a mix of both - with pseduo England close to pseduo Mongolia as both countries race to defend themselves from the Dracolich alliance of monsters.</p><p></p><p>I'm not saying one methodology is better than the other, but when you are trying to sell to as many customers as possible, the constraints on world building are vastly different than trying to create a world for just once sort of genre an story.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Von Ether, post: 7754816, member: 15582"] A good fictional world doesn't necessarily make a good RPG world, hence the "things the players can play," feel. Many times, the world is changed as the fiction protagonist succeeds in upsetting the balance, quelling the conflict, and make things "happily every after," with a new peaceful -- and boring -- status quo. (there are exceptions, this is just the usual outcome.) You can probably get better world-building from an author, but it will come with just one implied sort of story and that narrows your audience. Thus commercial settings usually offer a broad array of options for campaign flavors an styles of play. To snag as many customers as the can, some settings, like FR, have pseduo-historical cultures so you can flavor your fantasy RPGs anyway you want. But without the same historical context, these places (now speaking generically and not about FR) can seen as a random mish-mash of neighbors -- especially if one neighbor is necomancer Others create fake cultures from scratch, but then their names or concepts sound hollow because they [I]are [/I]fake and don't jive with our expectations that were informed from what we know about history. And some settings do a mix of both - with pseduo England close to pseduo Mongolia as both countries race to defend themselves from the Dracolich alliance of monsters. I'm not saying one methodology is better than the other, but when you are trying to sell to as many customers as possible, the constraints on world building are vastly different than trying to create a world for just once sort of genre an story. [/QUOTE]
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