Campaign Setting outline

[blargney the second]

I think BiggusGeekus nailed it in one. Cohesive is good.

-blarg

 

[Desdichado]

Well, I think folks may have gotten slightly the wrong idea. It wasn't really my intention to write a "campaign setting" in a format that mirrors actual campaign setting books so much as it was to write a "campaign setting bible" of the type that the top three contestants would have written in the search that ended up with giving us Eberron. Anyway, I've got a bit of an outline here for how to organize it:

Overview

• Calendar and Timekeeping
• Overview history
• Magic
• Geography, terrain, flora and fauna
• Seasons and climate
• Physical anthropology (races and how they got to where they are now)
• Languages
• Political boundaries

Then, I'd break the rest of the document up into regional subset, and each region would have the following outline:

• Detailed geography
• Government and politics
• Trade and economics
• Local history
• Religion and traditions
• Dress and personality
• Local personalities
• Points of interest, mysteries, etc.

 

[Hand of Evil]

You may want to check out:

http://www.io.com/~eighner/world_builder/world_builder_index.html

 

[Desdichado]

I do indeed; thanks.

 

[SWBaxter]

For the Mk. II version of my Dark•Heritage setting, I'm thinking about writing it up as a "systemless" setting, and give some vague hints on how to adapt it to various systems, including d20. In other words, the setting will be completely fluff, not mechanics.

The very best systemless campaign settings I have are Harnworld and Shorkyne, which actually both describe regions in the same world but stand alone well enough that they can be used separately. The reasons I like them are:

- they do a lot of non-system related grunt work that makes my job easier, like building relatively authentic feudal and pre-feudal societies (so I don't have to)

- they have ridiculously high quality maps

- all the background information presents current situations but only hints at the underlying issues, which allows me to develop things in my own preferred direction

- there is no advancing metaplot to invalidate what's happened in my campaign(s)

 

[Desdichado]

Those aren't features of systemless settings, though, except by coincidence.

 

[DragonLancer]

Theres some good ideas in this thread (*Scribbes down a few notes*), but I must say that sometimes you can go overboard on detail. Politics and (to a degree) sociology especially. I have seen system-generic settings before become bogged down because of an over-abundence of information that wasn't really nessecary.

 

[SWBaxter]

Those aren't features of systemless settings, though, except by coincidence.

Eh, if you think so, then fair enough. Sorry to waste your time.

 

[Desdichado]

Eh, if you think so, then fair enough. Sorry to waste your time.

Well, you don't need to apologize. Some of that's good feedback, but it would apply to any setting, including a system or not. As I'm not trying to come up with a setting to sell, it's also a bit of a tangent. I'm asking about what topics you'd need to develop for a setting.

I must not have been very clear in my question, because there've been very few attempts at addressing my actual question for whatever reason. Which is odd, 'coz this same thread on rpg.net seemed to click right away, although I didn't get as many replies...

 

[barsoomcore]

Well, let me take a stab at it.

I like a bit of history, some context as to what got us to where we are today. That's always a good place to start, I think. Not with "In the beginning..." but with, "Previously, on Dark Heritage..." Hit the ground running, if you know what I mean.

Then I like some simple reference materials. A world-level map, a timeline, perhaps a couple of bullet lists of things like currency and technologies.

I like geographic breakdowns that stay consistent, whether they're national or tribal or whatever divisions. I find geographic organization easier to wrap my brain around than, say, racial or linguistic or historical. That is, I'd rather your broad divisions be "The North", "The Islands of the East" and "The Mountains of Llamaland" (just to stick with the current metaphor) rather than, say, "Speakers of Alpaca" or "50 - 250 Years Ago".

Obviously some things need to be broken out independent of geography but even in, say a timeline, I like to see "50 - 250 Years Ago: In the North," 50 - 250 Years Ago: In The Islands of the East"

On a slight tangent, I don't find that the sorts of organizational systems used in books necessarily translate well to the web. I prefer a richer browsing experience that makes it easy for me to follow my interests around, that rewards me for investigative browsing. My Barsoom site was consciously designed without a very rigourous organizational system so that users would find themselves having to poke around, following links without having a clear guideline as to where they were in relation to the rest of the site.

I know, I know, you're not supposed to do it that way but for some reason, for a campaign setting, it feels right.

I like it, anyway...