"Cool setting, bro. But what's the hook for the PCs?"

[Aldarc]

I sometimes suspect that TTRPG world-builders underestimate the importance of plot hooks and campaign premises when it comes to their settings. There are a fair number of interesting and well-constructed TTRPG settings (from the perspective of pure world-building) that I have encountered, whether published or home-brewed, that seem to suffer from a relative absence of thought about what PCs actually are meant to do in their cool setting. I have been involved in conversations several times that involve iterations of "It's great that you (hypothetical GM/writer) constructed this neat world in great detail, but I'm unclear what PCs are meant to do here. What's the hook? Why adventure at all here? What drives the setting and how do PCs fit in that?" only to get absent looks from creators who had not considered why/how PCs adventure or offended replies back from people who thought the only appropriate response to their creation was meant to be "It's perfect."

IME, this is less of a problem of TTRPGs built with a clear premise in mind. Sitting down to run/play Blades in the Dark, for example, I know immediately that the PCs are a gang in Duskvol trying to expand their territory. So the premise and hook are readily apparent. This is not as clear, for example, when sitting down for a game of D&D as the hooks/premises are often more GM dependent. Some regard this as a feature and not a bug, as it affords a tremendous degree of open-ended flexibility to the GM for making the premises of their game/campaign, though one presumes some degree of killing monsters, delving dungeons, and acquiring treasure. But IME, this sometimes means that the quality of the game can fluctuate between GMs as their "cool settings" may not have much meat for the PCs to sink their own hooks into.

But what makes for a good setting premise as it relates to the PCs? And how/why do setting creators seemingly forget that the setting exists as a place for player roleplay/PC adventure?

 

[Morrus]

And how/why do setting creators seemingly forget that the setting exists as a place for player roleplay/PC adventure?

Do you have any examples? I have to say that the premise isn't one I've noticed.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

1. Blades in the Dark is a terrible example to use for a D&D campaign. If you attempted to sell that idea to most D&D players, you would immediately be met with howls. “But I don’t wanna stay in Duskvol.” “I don’t want more territory.” “Why do I have to do a heist - I have a better idea.” And then, of course, the inevitable cries of railroading and player agency. A game designed for a purpose will always be better at that purpose than D&D, but it also will be best for that purpose, and not for D&D.

2. The reason most campaign worlds don’t work today, IMO, is because they follow the modern FR example. By that, I mean that they are scripted and lore-heavy. They are written, because the person who writes them finds the world interesting. The best campaign worlds IME are the early ones - gray box FR, 83 greyhawk, early Known World, City State ..... that provided an outline with a world full of mysteries and hooks, not lore. They were not meant to be read, they were meant to be played.

 

[Aldarc]

1. Blades in the Dark is a terrible example to use for a D&D campaign. If you attempted to sell that idea to most D&D players, you would immediately be met with howls. “But I don’t wanna stay in Duskvol.” “I don’t want more territory.” “Why do I have to do a heist - I have a better idea.” And then, of course, the inevitable cries of railroading and player agency. A game designed for a purpose will always be better at that purpose than D&D, but it also will be best for that purpose, and not for D&D.

To be clear, I am not saying that D&D settings should be constructed like Duskvol is for Blades in the Dark, but, rather, that Blades in the Dark has a clear premise and hook for its game. So the question of "what do PCs do here?" is never left vague or undefined. D&D is intentionally designed to be more open-ended for its campaigns but this does come with trade-offs.

2. The reason most campaign worlds don’t work today, IMO, is because they follow the modern FR example. By that, I mean that they are scripted and lore-heavy. They are written, because the person who writes them finds the world interesting. The best campaign worlds IME are the early ones - gray box FR, 83 greyhawk, early Known World, City State ..... that provided an outline with a world full of mysteries and hooks, not lore. They were not meant to be read, they were meant to be played.

I tend to agree with this, though there may be some "in the olden days" bias at play as there are undoubtedly great campaign settings like this that come far later than "the early ones." Some of my favorite D&D settings are those with plenty of hooks, mysteries, and intentionally empty spaces: e.g., Nentir Vale, Eberron, etc.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I tend to agree with this, though there may be some "in the olden days" bias at play as there are undoubtedly great campaign settings like this that come far later than "the early ones." Some of my favorite D&D settings are those with plenty of hooks, mysteries, and intentionally empty spaces: e.g., Nentir Vale, Eberron, etc.

The bias is not due to nostalgia.

Greyhawk eventually became filled out and lore-heavy (not as much as FR which has added burden of numerous books and supplements, but still). Same, to a lesser extent, with the Known World (Mystara).

There are two primary reasons behind why modern campaign setting are “worse” in this way-

1. Times have changed. Blame the MCU. Blame the mass-spread of word processors and the internet. Blame the whole concept of “world-building” - which was not something people in the 80s were worried about. Settings are designed differently now. Compare 83 GH or grey box FR to a modern setting.

2. Accretion. The longer a setting is used, the more “lore” is published - the worse it becomes in many ways. I agree with you about Nentir Vale, but had more been done with it, then it would have sucked just as hard as any other modern setting. It benefitted from getting killed off.

 

[Fenris-77]

I try to build motivation and whatnot into my pitch and session zero materials. I prefer the game to have some momentum and teleos before anyone even writes a character.

 

[RobJN]

The beauty of the Known World/Mystara was that the Gazetteers were written with plot-hooks included, if the overall writing itself did not suggest where the PCs would fit/what they would be doing in any given country.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I sometimes suspect that TTRPG world-builders underestimate the importance of plot hooks and campaign premises when it comes to their settings. There are a fair number of interesting and well-constructed TTRPG settings (from the perspective of pure world-building) that I have encountered, whether published or home-brewed, that seem to suffer from a relative absence of thought about what PCs actually are meant to do in their cool setting. I have been involved in conversations several times that involve iterations of "It's great that you (hypothetical GM/writer) constructed this neat world in great detail, but I'm unclear what PCs are meant to do here. What's the hook? Why adventure at all here? What drives the setting and how do PCs fit in that?" only to get absent looks from creators who had not considered why/how PCs adventure or offended replies back from people who thought the only appropriate response to their creation was meant to be "It's perfect."

IME, this is less of a problem of TTRPGs built with a clear premise in mind. Sitting down to run/play Blades in the Dark, for example, I know immediately that the PCs are a gang in Duskvol trying to expand their territory. So the premise and hook are readily apparent. This is not as clear, for example, when sitting down for a game of D&D as the hooks/premises are often more GM dependent. Some regard this as a feature and not a bug, as it affords a tremendous degree of open-ended flexibility to the GM for making the premises of their game/campaign, though one presumes some degree of killing monsters, delving dungeons, and acquiring treasure. But IME, this sometimes means that the quality of the game can fluctuate between GMs as their "cool settings" may not have much meat for the PCs to sink their own hooks into.

But what makes for a good setting premise as it relates to the PCs? And how/why do setting creators seemingly forget that the setting exists as a place for player roleplay/PC adventure?

I am not really seeing what you are seeing here. I do think settings can have issues when they are clearly more about 'tourism' than adventuring. But a game like D&D doesn't really have that problem (don't play it much anymore but D&D is one of the most gameable systems, and its settings are usually filled with places to adventure). Any time I return to D&D I find it incredibly easy to prepare for because so much gameability is baked into the system and the setting expectations (if I make my own setting, it is very easy to make one where the players will immediately be exploring ancient temples, defeating big evil bad guys, investigating dark cities, etc).

What I think you are describing is the difference between a focused setting and a broad setting. Those don't really key to gameability in my opinion. A broad setting can be entirely gameable. And a narrow setting can be difficult to game (great in concept for example, but hard to run or prep for). I also think a game like D&D deals with focus at the campaign level (the GM decides to run a particular kind of campaign and gets buy in from the players). I do like narrow game and setting concepts, but the reason you don't have that with D&D is it has to appeal to a broad audience (blades in the dark doesn't have to retain the number of gamers that D&D does so it go into more focused territory and get its audience, which it clearly has). But D&D is trying to capture the attention of not just players like yourself but also the old school crowd, and the pathfinder crowd, etc.

 

[Aldarc]

There are two primary reasons behind why modern campaign setting are “worse” in this way-

Hmmm... I'm not sure. I agree that modern FR-style world-building can result in a greater preponderance lore than campaign hooks, but I'm reluctant to treat all modern campaign settings as being "worse" than early campaign settings for the reasons you cited. I think it's a doomed enterprise rife with counter-examples. For example, a lot of modern settings or home-brewed ones have not necessarily been around long enough for lore accretion to be a problem. Plus the setting box sets are mostly a thing of the past unless you have the money to produce them: e.g., WotC, Paizo, etc. so settings will naturally be written differently. Markets change.

I try to build motivation and whatnot into my pitch and session zero materials. I prefer the game to have some momentum and teleos before anyone even writes a character.

This is a good approach. The issue I sometimes see with some settings/world-building is that they are not functionally designed for players/PCs in mind. It's like that scene from Office Space: "So what would you say you do here?"

 

[BookTenTiger]

This reminds me of an article I read by Monte Cook years and years ago about the "default story" of a D&D setting. At that time in 3rd Edition, Cook argued (if I recall correctly) that the default story was:

• Explore a dungeon, fight baddies
• Get loot
• Go back to town and sell loot
• Buy better equipment
• Return to dungeon / go to new dungeon

Cook said that no matter what other bells and whistles a D&D campaign had, the players could expect the rules to allow them to play out that default story- even if that was not the story the campaign was telling.

The idea of a "default story" is something I try to build into my custom campaign worlds. If the adventurers have no direct hooks in front of them, what's the expectation?

Right now the default story is "fight the nearest vampire lord, help the oppressed, get more powerful to eventually defeat the BBEG."

For my dream campaign though, I would love to create that default story with the players. It would be so much fun to sit down at Session 0 and ask, "What is the life of an adventurer in this campaign?" And then build up a campaign world around that.