On Using Published Campaign Settings

Shades of Eternity · Jan 23, 2020

On Using Published Campaign Settings - Merric's Musings

On using Critical Role's "Explorer's Guide to Wildemount" and other published settings in your existing game or as the basis for new adventures.

merricb.com

I mainly have written for the forgotten realms in the past because it was an option thanks to the dmsguild, but I've never been big into canon.

I'm asking if you agree with the above blog entry when it comes to using publish campaign settings?

JeffB · Jan 23, 2020

Canon be damned.

@MerricB (a member here) is on point. Choose and use what you want. Change, mix and match, Ignore as you the DM see fit. That is the original spirit and intent of the game.

Shades of Eternity · Jan 23, 2020

I think it's also whose allowed to play in the toybox.

I present two different examples

George Lucas

Christopher Tolkeen

For all his faults, George Lucas let us play in his universe and gamers even defined things that became canon.

Christopher Tolkeen kicked us out (mind you MERP took a lot of liberties with his world).

JeffB · Jan 23, 2020

Shades of Eternity said:
I think it's also whose allowed to play in the toybox.

I present two different examples

George Lucas

Christopher Tolkeen

For all his faults, George Lucas let us play in his universe and gamers even defined things that became canon.

Christopher Tolkeen kicked us out (mind you MERP took a lot of liberties with his world).

Publishing, and playing a game at home are entirely different things.

jasper · Jan 23, 2020

...That’s my World of Greyhawk campaign, a Frankenstein’s Monster of lovingly assembled parts from material that inspired me........
Grayhawk was always suppose to be a Frankenstein Goleum. You bought one or two lore items and then went off your merry way.
Lore is bore. Or only bores demand you bow to canon.

Longspeak · Jan 23, 2020

I am a big fan of canon that informs current play, and/or that forms a reliable baseline players can share in the knowledge of. I want players to know or have the ability to look up historical events. But you have to build on top of that starting point. It's not static, the world isn't static. Add, alter as needed. And once play begins, nothing should remain sacred.

In my game in Tal'Dorei, the "Chroma Conclave" was a BIG FRICKIN' DEAL from the recent history of the setting. It informs a lot of how NPCs deal with the world today. For example, the PCs kinda sorta unleashed a genocical purge in the setting's largest city... and everyone is having trauma because of how it reminds them of that time their city was almost destroyed and enslaved for months, and the city guards are massively overcorrecting in the name of securirty. And the PCs - by name - are not well-loved at the moment.

schneeland · Jan 23, 2020

I think I agree with most of your central thoughts, i.e.:

customizing a setting with your own ideas and other influences is a good idea
a set of adventures can help to kick-start a setting (by conveying the intended mood/atmosphere)

Like you, I also prefer starting from an existing setting (mostly the Forgotten Realms or Newhon/Lankhmar for me) instead of completely building something from scratch (or base my fictional world on the real-world).

Where we maybe don't agree is (not sure, maybe we even do):

I don't think the availability of a plethora of material for a setting is universally good - I have grown up with the Realms, so that's not a problem for me, but if I had to dive into them now, they would feel quite intimidating, mainly because, as a newcomer, it's hard to judge what material is really useful (also, because time has become such a precious resource)
I think some basic canon does serve a purpose - again for the Realms, I can assume that most of my players are familiar with the Sword Coast, Icewind Dale, maybe with Calimport and to a certain extent with Cormyr; so that's something I can build upon when running campaigns in the Realms. If there's no such consensus on the basics, establishing a shared imagination becomes a lot harder IMO

So IMO the ideal size of a campaign setting is 3 to 4 books (1: player-facing material/setting-specific rules; 2-3: material for the DM, either including a monster menagerie or with a separate book for that; 4: a set of sample adventures or a small campaign) of moderate size (100-300 pages). That way, similar to the core 3 books for D&D5, you have a manageable amount of information to get somebody onboard for a new setting.

MerricB · Jan 24, 2020

schneeland said:
I don't think the availability of a plethora of material for a setting is universally good - I have grown up with the Realms, so that's not a problem for me, but if I had to dive into them now, they would feel quite intimidating, mainly because, as a newcomer, it's hard to judge what material is really useful (also, because time has become such a precious resource

The huge amount of information available for the Forgotten Realms was the main reason behind the 4E time-jump... and we saw how well that went!

(Don't blow up popular settings!)

It occurs to me that the amount of material available for the Forgotten Realms is dwarfed by the amount of material available for the Marvel line of comics. But there are people happily jumping into writing Marvel comics and running Marvel RPGs.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe can be considered a campaign inspired by all that came before. It's recognisably Marvel, but not exactly the comic book universe.

I think that while there is some truth in a lot of material makes it hard for people to approach a setting, there's more truth in that you can get into any setting if it has a good entry point - and the campaign adventures that Wizards have been releasing are good entry points.

If you rely on your audience knowing the setting inside-out, you've got a problem. And you've still got to tell compelling stories.

I do think the blowing up of the realms more was due to a problem with designers writing for the realms (where contradicting canon was jumped upon by critics), rather than how it played at home.

Cheers!

MerricB · Jan 24, 2020

An expanded answer made it into a new blog post: Once upon a time, Wizards blew up the Forgotten Realms! - Merric's Musings

schneeland · Jan 24, 2020

MerricB said:
The huge amount of information available for the Forgotten Realms was the main reason behind the 4E time-jump... and we saw how well that went! (Don't blow up popular settings!)

My position is that the problem is not that they tried a reboot, but that it was done quite badly

. I'll try to write a few more lines about that tonight (unfortunately I have a day work before me now).