D&D General Does you campaign setting match where you live?

aco175 · Apr 26, 2022

I was thinking about this the other day coming home from vacation in Florida to Massachusetts. We left a place where it is 80 degrees with warm, moist winds and palm trees to arrive at a bleak landscape of 48 degrees and trees that still look like dead twigs. It had me thinking that most of my campaigns look like New England with a mix of trees and ample rivers and water sources. A place where food and livestock can be enough to sustain, if not provide extra for sale. There may be added things like some gold deposits or something, but generally most of my campaigns match where I live and not sure how different other people are living in enough different places than I, that are on the boards here. Cheers.

R_J_K75 · Apr 26, 2022

I'd imagine unless youre playing in a setting like Darksun, Spelljammer, etc, the climate and ecology of your world will subconsciously default to where you live or the one you're most familiar with. Where I live in western New York we have, (or at least used to) have all four seasons so if I'm playing a game in the Forgotten Realms its not hard for me to envision blizzard conditions or a sweltering 95+ degree day and parlay that to my players. OTOH Id have very little idea other than from what Ive read, seen in pictures or on TV how to explain the desert or badlands of the south western USA. Regardless I'm always just making it up as I go.

Lyxen · Apr 26, 2022

I confess that when I was living in Australia and Singapore and my players were mostly in France, some of the setting resembled real life location that I had visited, but it's actually the exception rather than the norm.

eyeheartawk · Apr 26, 2022

I live in the midwest. All my campaign worlds feature flat featureless landscapes with strip malls and Applebees festooning the countryside like cancerous tumors.

So no, nothing like where I live.

Tales and Chronicles · Apr 26, 2022

I live in Québec, so yeah, large spaces is the theme of our campaigns. Endless, choking forests, the size and importance of rivers, the notion that there's no other villages near, snowfalls of 50 cm in a few hours, water freezing from October to April, almost no light in the dead of winter etc, are all part of how I describe my settings. So when I roll for weather and I get a ''heavy snow fall'' there's no objection when I say to that the characters are ''blinded'' or that after said heavy snow, all checks made to hear are at a disadvantage

Of course that does not apply to warmer climate, but I've had the chance to travel a lot in the Era Before Covid, so I have a little references when describing Sahara-like deserts or the island dampness of Japan or south-asian countries.

Oofta · Apr 26, 2022

I try to vary things, but it can get a bit odd. I grew up in Minnesota but growing up we took road trips around the country and as an adult I've moved around quite a bit. I was running a campaign in California and was trying to describe a blizzard but only got blank looks. People had no concept of how blinding and disorienting heavy snow with wind can be. This was outside of Sacramento and Tahoe (ski resort in the mountains) was an hour away but people had never experienced snow.

So as much as I try to vary things, I forget how some people never experience things outside of their little bubble. But to answer the question, no. I have a big world and when we start a campaign we work out basic themes and where we're going to set it. Then I try to think about climate, geography and so on then build around that. So settlements in the southern semi-arid regions will have tile roofs and stucco, wooded areas lots of timber and shingles and so on. It's part of the fun for me to try to give a feel for a region.

Lyxen · Apr 26, 2022

Oofta said:
I try to vary things, but it can get a bit odd. I grew up in Minnesota but growing up we took road trips around the country and as an adult I've moved around quite a bit. I was running a campaign in California and was trying to describe a blizzard but only got blank looks. People had no concept of how blinding and disorienting heavy snow with wind can be. This was outside of Sacramento and Tahoe (ski resort in the mountains) was an hour away but people had never experienced snow.

Yes, snow is funny that way. I've been skiing all my life, but in the mountains, and I've always lived and travelled more in warm countries, or during the European summer. It's only recently that I went to Canada during the winter and saw what it meant to have huge snow drifts in a plain, for me snow was more or less linked to mountains.

And the other way around for some of my less-travelled friends living in temperate countries, imagining a desert through the lens of a movie or in real life is completely different.

Oofta · Apr 26, 2022

Lyxen said:
Yes, snow is funny that way. I've been skiing all my life, but in the mountains, and I've always lived and travelled more in warm countries, or during the European summer. It's only recently that I went to Canada during the winter and saw what it meant to have huge snow drifts in a plain, for me snow was more or less linked to mountains.

And the other way around for some of my less-travelled friends living in temperate countries, imagining a desert through the lens of a movie or in real life is completely different.

Trying to explain snow storms to someone who has never seen snow is bad. It's almost as hard to explain to someone that grew up in the Midwest that 90 degrees F isn't really that hot in a dry climate, just drink plenty of water and don't over-exert yourself. Flipping it around, people in semi-arid parts of the country have no idea what swarms of biting flies can be like.

I've always been kind of fascinated how climate, culture and local resources interact in how people dress, what their buildings look like and so on. A lot of people don't even think about it or have much of a concept.

R_J_K75 · Apr 26, 2022

Oofta said:
Trying to explain snow storms to someone who has never seen snow is bad.

Especially in a fantasy world where the majority of people dont have access to magic. I live in Buffalo and in my life time Ive seen 7 major snow storms/blizzards where we got 10+ feet. In an average season its common to get a few good storms in Dec-Mar where theres at least 2 feet. Most of the time these are over the course of a day or two, sometimes even hours. Its remarkable how much this effects a modern city, so even a foot or two would cripple most villages and towns in a D&D setting, isolating them from the rest of the world for a good period of time, major blizzards would be way worse with people freezing and starving to death. I remember the North boxed set stressing the fact that travel in winter was next to impossible due to weather.

ersatzphil · Apr 26, 2022

As a long-time Massachusetts resident who (usually) GM's either Ravenloft or Call of Cthulhu:

D&D General Does you campaign setting match where you live?

aco175

Legend

R_J_K75

Legend

Lyxen

Great Old One

eyeheartawk

#1 Enworld Jerk™

Tales and Chronicles

Jewel of the North, formerly know as vincegetorix

Oofta

Legend

Lyxen

Great Old One

Oofta

Legend

R_J_K75

Legend

ersatzphil

Hero

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