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

[Jd Smith1]

I agree. Many game designers cranking out d20 products these days are simply copying the style WOTC, and they tend to go with the worst features of settings like FR. They pad out their product with detailed discussions of the rulers and VIPs of nations, deities, and the like. Plus the inevitable bad short stories.

But here's the thing: 1st-level PCs will not be in a position to meet these people. An adventuring band of up to moderate level won't.

What is needed is to drop all that nonsense about King Inbred VI and his advisors. Sure, name him, but use the saved space to actually detail (a scary word for current game designers) the law enforcement of the kingdom at the user level, where garrisons are & their general strength, name, strength and operating area of goblinoids (or setting equivalent), bandits, etc. Major trade routes.

In other words, things that the PCs will actually interact with on a regular basis, and which will serve as the foundation for adventures. Game designers have forgotten that the sole purpose of a setting is to provide the GM with the local color and basic facts that will allow them to build a campaign.

The trouble is, most current game designers just cling to WOTC's skirts, cranking out endless splatbooks about 'new classes, new spells, new monsters, new optional rules!' You don't see much innovation, imagination, or detail anymore. Just reheated offerings of the same old, same old.

There are still good settings and material out there, but they are few and far between.

 

[Umbran]

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.

So, this gets dragged out a lot. I think it is an esthetic issue for some players who have decided to put a stake in the ground, and matters not a whit for anyone else.

I have, for sake of convenience, run and played a bunch of stuff in FR in the past couple of years, and the burden of lore has not been an issue at all. The long history takes a solid back seat to the PCs issues of the moment, if that history is evident at all.

The adventures put out by WotC may be "scripted", but that's a design feature, intended for folks who are not really in the mood or position for building an entire campaign on their own. They are, instead, the campaign in a book for you - a continuation of the Adventure Path model that served Paizo well. Saying that "doesn't work" rather falters in the face of the success of the format.

 

[MGibster]

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.

I'm going to be a contrarian here and I know what you're thinking, "MGibster, this has got to be the first time in the history of the internet that someone has voiced disagreement in a forum." But D&D and it's myriad of settings are ones in which I feel players know exactly what their characters will be doing: adventuring.

But I do agree with you in regards to settings and Blue Planet is my gold standard for great settings without a hook. Well, actually, Blue Planet has plenty of hooks but the game doesn't really focus on any of them. Wikipedia describes it as an environmentalist science fiction role playing game and the truth is there's a lot of things player characters could be doing in it. But there's no real direction given to players or GMs. In fact, there's actually dearth of information about coming up with adventures and running games. It's a fantastic setting but what the hell do you do with it?

 

[Jd Smith1]

But I do agree with you in regards to settings and Blue Planet is my gold standard for great settings without a hook. Well, actually, Blue Planet has plenty of hooks but the game doesn't really focus on any of them. Wikipedia describes it as an environmentalist science fiction role playing game and the truth is there's a lot of things player characters could be doing in it. But there's no real direction given to players or GMs. In fact, there's actually dearth of information about coming up with adventures and running games. It's a fantastic setting but what the hell do you do with it?

Such a great example. High-quality maps, beautiful detail, but no real effort by the writers to make the PCs fit in anywhere. Even the law enforcement supp failed to really create an opening.

I've gone back to it time and again in the years since I bought the books, each time to strike out on a campaign plot that didn't require a massive change to the material.

 

[Aldarc]

I'm going to be a contrarian here and I know what you're thinking, "MGibster, this has got to be the first time in the history of the internet that someone has voiced disagreement in a forum." But D&D and it's myriad of settings are ones in which I feel players know exactly what their characters will be doing: adventuring.

I don't entirely agree with this, because (1) I have experienced D&D homebrew setting that lacked clear hooks for PCs, and (2) because "adventuring" is kinda vague as telling me a game is about adventuring does not tell me what it looks like in the context of the setting. Adventuring in the Forgotten Realms is different from adventuring in Planescape, Dark Sun, Birthright, or Spelljammer. If all we needed to know about a setting was that it involved "adventuring" then it would be a non-problem, but that's clearly not the case.

 

[Tonguez]

I come at it from a different angle: I suspect some creators think that the PC/campaign hooks for their setting are self-evident. So they don't bother spelling out how PCs would interact with the setting.

Yeah I think a large part of it comes down to how the old campaign settings/gazeteers were read as opposed to how they are played/experienced. Which generally it comes down to players knowing ‘the whole lore of the multiverse’ v characters learning as they experienced new things.
The Pathfinder Adventure Paths were exemplars of the old approach whereby the modules came out first so PCs got to adventure in their small peice of the world and then have the setting backstory build up and expand organically as the players explored and followed the next hook.

In Gazeteers and whole setting books however, players reads over ’setting’ first with the hooks, connections and backstories already detailed.
Having these full details I think makes it harder to see where the PCs can be dropped in and actually make a difference to the world - thats where having worlds created as plot hooks and factions is better than establishing histories...

 

[MGibster]

I have, for sake of convenience, run and played a bunch of stuff in FR in the past couple of years, and the burden of lore has not been an issue at all. The long history takes a solid back seat to the PCs issues of the moment, if that history is evident at all.

I've never been particularly burdened by the amount of lore in Forgotten Realms either. Like you, it has always been my experience that the lore takes a back seat to what's going on in the adventure. Though as a DM, it's great to look at the Forgotten Realms wiki and find stuff you can use. That rich background can be very helpful.

 

[Lanefan]

But what makes for a good setting premise as it relates to the PCs?

The answer for that is probably going to be different at almost every table.

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

They don't. They just realize that if they fine-tune the setting too much for one type of play they'll lose the interest of anyone looking for other types of play; and so they leave the setting itself as open-ended as they can in order to make it more flexible in what it can handle.

To follow up on your BitD example: the game gives you its own setting, tailored to that particular game - which is fine if all you ever want from either the game or the setting is to interface with each other. But for me, if I buy (or create*) a setting I want it to be able to underlie any game I want to play on it; and if I buy (or create*) a game I want to be able to play it using any setting that catches my fancy. Put another way, I see game and setting as separate things, in part so as not to have one constrain the other.

* - if my intent in creating said setting or game is to sell it to anyone other than myself, it's obviously in my interests to make it as flexible as possible so as to appeal to the greatest potential market...right?

 

[Lanefan]

I come at it from a different angle: I suspect some creators think that the PC/campaign hooks for their setting are self-evident. So they don't bother spelling out how PCs would interact with the setting.

Or they simply don't bother with PC/campaign hooks at all, knowing full-well that DMs (and in some cases players) will figure that stuff out on their own.

 

[darkbard]

* - if my intent in creating said setting or game is to sell it to anyone other than myself, it's obviously in my interests to make it as flexible as possible so as to appeal to the greatest potential market...right?

Sure, just like Ferrari designs cars with the broadest appeal for all to increase its sales, right?