Are you put off by "Creative" Campaign Settings?

[jdrakeh]

Personally, no. The problem is what people term 'creative' to mean, though - especially where home brew settings are concerned. I've seen some very cool home brew settings, but not a single one that was billed by its creator as being anything special. Usually, for me, that's a big, fat, red flag - as soon as the GM starts talking about the k3wl of his new setting, I start looking for a new group.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

I like "different" settings. I've been a bit bored with the "standard" setup for decades now.

That said, it's tough to do creative campaigns because it requires a lot of work by the players. To understand how to roleplay in a different culture, you have to understand the culture, and gaining that understanding is a lot of work. Sure you could roleplay pseudo-middle ages European characters in a land with Mayan architecture and a few different monsters, but what's the point? It still mostly the same old same-old. I think what you need are players who are interested in this type of experience and willing to put in the effort to make it work properly.

I did have one real success along these lines. I wanted a change of pace, so I decided to set a series of adventure in a previously unexplored part of my world with a culture primarily based on that of the Philippines. I felt I could carry this off because I spent a couple of years in the Philippines as a missionary and understood the people and culture quite well.

To start things off, the party was ambushed by slavers while they were on their way back from a dungeon, hit points and spells depleted. The adventure really started when they excaped from the slavers without their gear in the middle of a hostile jungle. In retrospect, I can see that I was lucky; this could have gone quite badly. I should have discussed the change in direction with the players first. Fortunately all the players had a blast and things worked out. Anyway about 20 sessions of play occured in this land, many of them very RP heavy. Eventually, the party worked its way to the coast, recovered most of their gear, avenged themselves on their enemies, and went home. All good fun.

About a year later we started "the Southern campaign" with characters native to this area. It worked because everyone understood the culture, history, and myths of the area.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

The challenge with campaign settings is making them exotic enough to be fresh and exciting, yet not making it so alien that the players can't relate to it.

Are you ready to walk that line?

Very, very true.

I think the other key point is to give the setting enough depth (details) to make it feel "real." This is a lot of work.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

It's not the creativity that is the problem.

The problem is that most people only have a limited amount of time "getting into" a setting. This is why settings like the Forgotten Realms (or D&D, for that matter) are so popular - most people know the basic tropes, since they have effectively become the "standard" for fantasy. Something with Mesoamerican influences would be much more alien, and thus require more work for the players to "get it" - it has an alien society and culture, economy, and so on.

That being said, I encourage you to take a look at Tekumel, one of the oldest fantasy RPG settings there is. It's based on both Mesoamerican and Indian cultures, and was created by a history professor, and is currently available from Guardians of Order.

 

[Lord Pendragon]

My enthusiasm for a creative campaign is inversely proportional to the amount of homework the DM expects me to do in order to prepare for the game.

I know nothing about Mesoamerican culture. Let's say my DM is an expert, and wants to try a game in that setting. If he's skilled enough to ease me into the campaign world cold, and slowly build my knowledge of the setting during gameplay, he'll have an enthused player.

If he plops down a thirty-page handout and tells me to read up so I know what's going on, I begin to reconsider my gaming options.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

While I like reading about different settings and playing the occasional one-shot in different settings, I must admit that what has kept me in D&D all these years is traditional medieval fantasy with its D&D standard assumptions. That's all I'm really interested in for campaign play.

For me, there's far too much going on in Greyhawk and its clones (FR, Kalamar, Wilderlands, et al) to want to go anywhere else for long -- and the beauty of those settings is that you can drop in something that provides a temporary change. You can have an adventure on another plane or another continent to get your fix of "different", then return to standard assumptions without difficulty.

 

[Kanegrundar]

I'll play just about anything. That said, the standard fantasy tropes bore my to tears these days. I tend to gravitate to settings like Iron Kingdoms, Diamond Throne, Etherscope (which looks great so far), and Darwin's World. My homebrew reflects those tastes as well with mixing fantasy and sci-fi to make something that my players may not have ever seen before.

 

[Aust Diamondew]

I'd play but only if there is tons of human sacrifice .
Don't develop it too much and get your group to just try out your partially completed setting for a couple sessions and if they like it finish developing it.

 

[DragonLancer]

I like the traditional D&D setting, and I'm not keen on the more strange or unusual settings. I can't stand oriental ones, and I don't understand the roleplaying fixation of them.

 

[DMH]

No only am I not put off by them, I wish there was some that go much farther. I bought, and enjoy, Mechanical Dream but am disspointed with the almost humans in it (and Talislantia is much more less inventive). I want a setting where there are no humanoids at all.