Campaign Setting - Pet Peeves

[Byronic]

1) Mixing sci-fi and fantasy together, poorly.

I hate it when people do this, the themes are simply too different. I admit it's *possible* that it can be done well. But this is rarely the case

2) Asian, Arab, African etc settings based solely on European views of the places and bearing no historical accuracy at all.

Doing a campaign in the above places is an ideal opportunity for some culture shock and perhaps for different ideas. Perhaps some mild investigation in another cultures mores. Not for boring stereotypes.

3) Political views

I'm here for a game, not to hear your political views on things.

4) Elves are just pointy eared humans that love nature. Dwarves are simply stout little beer drinking warriors.

I rarely see anything that shows that the other races ARE other races instead of just humans with a different hat.

All the above are mainly for homebrewed settings though, except the fourth one.

 

[roguerouge]

1. Settings without attached adventures. Adventures help bring settings alive and demonstrate the flavor of the setting. Without them, settings are like reading the encyclopedia. Example: if I'm going to run Nyambe's setting, I need help. I don't know African mythology, spirituality, and culture. I need you to help me bring it alive by using adventures to showcase how these pieces fit together. I need there to be a section on various African name styles. I need a starter village/hunter-gatherer group to help me get a sense of how this new construction of family works to shape identity. The one first level module that I've found doesn't cut it. There needs to be several for me to make use of a setting.

2. There needs to be a hook. If your setting hasn't sold me by the end of the setting teaser, it's not going to be something that I'm going to spend several years DMing, because likely it has no cohesion and it will be impossible to entice players. Think about the first words that you'd use to describe the best known settings out there: Environmental Apocalypse (Dark Sun); The Gods and Dragons Are Returning (Dragonlance); a Nightmare World (Ravenloft); Steampunk Meets Pulp (Ebberon); High Fantasy (Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms); Extraplanar Wackiness (Planescape).

3. It helps if there is a signature monster or antagonist. Nothing sold me on Paizo's world more than their re-imagined goblins. Those nasty, funny, and vicious little gremlins were another insight into what the creators are trying to do with their realm and what drama you can concoct. Think of the drow, of Strahd, in this light.

4. And leave parts of the map "unwritten." For the vast majority of the world's history we didn't know every culture on it; there are still parts of the ocean's deeps we haven't explored. Give DMs a place to have PCs go on exploration adventures of an undiscovered country. Or, if you must "fill in" the map, at least make it such that some cultures are unaware of other cultures. You have to know about a place to think to scry a place.

 

[Silvercat Moonpaw]

Mine are:

1) Grim grim dark depressing settings with no hope. And heroes that aren't heroic. No real difference between good and evil.
I detest too many shades of gray - I get enough of that in the real world - I want a campaign setting where the heroes are heroes, and the villains are villains and there is no trouble telling them apart. There can be "little e" evil that tends towards shades of gray, but there are really big Good Guy and Bad Guy stuff; think Star Wars (original trilogy) - Jedi Good Sith Bad. Rebellion Good, Empire Bad. Han was a gray character.

2) Lots of muddled politics. The characters don't know where they stand in relation to other major power groups, the government ect because everyone is playing some sort of cloak and dagger political game.

3) Low Magic, Swords an Sorcery. Magic doesn't have to be a replacement for tech (a la Eberron), or on every streetcorner (a la Forgotten realms), but it is important, and a very big deal in the world.

……………………………………

I have others but they are mostly outgrowths of those three... but the biggest is
4) No sense of wonder - the world in mundane and so are the cahracters - there is no lost world to find, no hidden land to explore, no way to get to the skies.

Personally I doubt the OP and I should play in a game together.

First off you can quote me almost verbatim on these.

Now for mine own spin, in no particular order:
Here there be threats. Okay, I understand that writers of published settings need to fill them with threats in order to give GMs a hand. But it confuses the hell out of me: I look at these settings and go "How the *beep* do the normal inhabitants cope?" Do they just not see the danger? Do they see it but not think it's that big a deal? If I don't get presented with the world in the format that its normal people see it then I can't see the setting as anything other than a festering ball of danger that needs to be dealt with by everyone.
What I'd really like is to be given a setting with no presented threats. Then I can do all the imperiling and still have a complete understanding of why everyone isn't an adventurer.

DOOM! I don't mean doom as in big threats, I mean a doom-type thing which acts as the central point for the setting to the exclusion of all others. Sometimes this is like Lord Mhoram's "Grim grim dark depressing settings with no hope", but also covers any settings where there is a focus on decay (of a society, of the world, of peoples' sanity, doesn't matter) or instability (ex. lots of wars). This goes back to what I said in Here there be threats: the one single element basically consumes my attention and makes me confused as to why the rest of the setting bothers to exist.

Lack of Fantastic. The closer something is to reality the less I care about it as fiction: I can read the paper if I want reality.

Versimilitude or whatever you want to call it. If the guys who want versimilitude are the counter-culture to the original settings then I'm the counter-counter-culture to their settings. A fictional world isn't real, they are stories based upon the internal desires of people. So they should just as often be based off the illogic of what people want as the logic some of them want.
Also I think part of what happens is that people make these settings get to figure out how everything works and then show their work on what they figured out…………………and then leave the rest of us with nothing to do. I like trying to figure out why weird stuff exists. Don't spoil it for me, please. It gives me something to do.

 

[S'mon]

I think my biggest pet peeve is shoehorning in the Tolkien races into settings where they don't fit and are just funny-looking humans (Al Qadim) or else using them but casting them against type just to be different - Sovereign Stone's Mongol dwarves, city-dwelling over-populated Japanese elves, and nice blue sea-faring orcs. I'm OK with a race that looks vaguely elfin but behaves differently (Melniboneans, Vadhagh) or with an interesting take on how different history and environment pressure could affect the races (Dark Sun, Midnight). My general view on the Tolkien races is: keep them to the Tolkienesque settings. If in doubt, leave it out.

 

[S'mon]

Versimilitude or whatever you want to call it. If the guys who want versimilitude are the counter-culture to the original settings then I'm the counter-counter-culture to their settings. A fictional world isn't real, they are stories based upon the internal desires of people. So they should just as often be based off the illogic of what people want as the logic some of them want.

I agree strongly with this. I like settings with mythical and poetic resonance. I dislike attempts at real-world cultural anthropology. Compare:

1. The Golden Khan of Ethengar - 'Mongol' gazetteer for BECMI D&D. It feels like a myth-dream of the Mongol Empire. Very inspirational. OK, Ethengar on the map is way too small, but it inspired the vast Mongali Empire IMC.

2. The Horde boxed set - Forgotten Realm's 'Mongols'. Lots of pictures of 'Tuigan' dress styles, pottery and such. The kind of stuff I can get down the library or via Yahoo. Felt very realstic. Dry, dry, dry. No gaming inspiration. I got rid of it.

Likewise, IMC I have a bunch of barbarians inspired by RE Howard's 'Picts' - dark, mysterious and savage 'Red Indians'. Not very happy when a player with a strong interest in cultural anthropology tried to delimit them as real-world Native Americans for her 'Dances With Wolves' gone-native PC. I couldn't even pronounce the names she came up with.

 

[Silvercat Moonpaw]

I agree strongly with this. I like settings with mythical and poetic resonance. I dislike attempts at real-world cultural anthropology.

Just to make sure I'm clear I also mean settings which follow the "rule of cool" where someone has decided that they're going to include an element just because it feels neat. In my mind that's basically the same thing as myth: the world works how you think it should work, not how science and sociology say it should work.

 

[Psion]

I could probably summon up more, but a few of the most prominent gripes are:

1) Lack of Meaningful Conflict in the setting - To me, a setting needs a founding conflict or persistent threat for the GM to plug games into, otherwise it's just window dressing. I tend to think that this was why Spelljammer seemed to peter out quickly.

2) Medieval Europe/Greyhawk with a fresh coat of paint - Yes, I realize these two are going to inform nearly any D&D/Fantasy RPG setting, but there has to be something more.

3) PC are, or are destined to be, great heroes. We all know the major culprit here, so I won't carry on.

4) "Shut up already!" or "All Detail, no Form" - Okay, I know some folks love this sort of thing, but for me, it's a major barrier to liking and understanding a setting. Some settings go on and on and on about minor details that only an enthusiast can keep up on. The worst form of this, the setting is inundated with details, but as a whole it has no perceptible themes.

EDIT: I also like roguerogue's list, which has some points of intersection with mine (e.g., the "hook" thing sort of crosses with my "Europe/Greyhawk" thing, and his "antagonist" thing is a different scope of my "conflict" thing.

 

[Hussar]

1. Settings without attached adventures. Adventures help bring settings alive and demonstrate the flavor of the setting. Without them, settings are like reading the encyclopedia. Example: if I'm going to run Nyambe's setting, I need help. I don't know African mythology, spirituality, and culture. I need you to help me bring it alive by using adventures to showcase how these pieces fit together. I need there to be a section on various African name styles. I need a starter village/hunter-gatherer group to help me get a sense of how this new construction of family works to shape identity. The one first level module that I've found doesn't cut it. There needs to be several for me to make use of a setting.

This. 1000 times this.

I adore the Scarred Lands. Love them to pieces. Ran three separate campaigns in them. Had every one of them crash and burn because I couldn't keep up with my prep time. A handful of modules would have gone a VERY long way towards making that setting work better for me.

I want modules. I love how Paizo is presenting it's campaign setting primarily through the adventure paths. It's a bloody excellent way to do it. I wish every setting did it that way.

 

[Ycore Rixle]

My Campaign Setting Pet Peeves

1. A lack of consistency. For example, in Eberron, intelligent elementals are enslaved by good-aligned folks. Being a slaver doesn't fall into good alignment in my view. To make this pet peeve worse, James (and I think Keith) and others have said, in effect, "Don't worry about it." That irks me. Another example: in PoL default 4e, it is said that "fear... is utterly alien to a demon's mind" and that demons have no regard for anything save destruction, "not even for their own lives." And then later on the very same page, it is said that lesser demons obey balors out of fear for their lives. Sigh.

2. Silly/ridiculous/dumb names. I like 4e's conscious return to Germanic root words, but as with everything, this needs to be done in moderation.

3. Population errors. Wilderlands does this, and all kinds of other ones too (like KOTS with its Raise Dead available in a town of... 800? can't remember). Anyway, late medieval/early Renaissance Paris had hundreds of thousands of people packed into just a few square miles. RPGs that try to emulate Europe rarely get population densities right.

4. Scale errors. Eberron. Enough said.

5. Not being rated R enough. Come on, we're all adults here, except for the kids who play, and kids who need monitoring should get that from their parents (also, that's one thing the starter kit could do). There was an interesting thread over at rpg.net called "We need more sex in our RPGs."

6. The implications of magic not being thought through and applied consistently. If Raise Dead is available for a month or two's wages in a small town of 800 people, that will have some pretty profound effects on society. Not to mention the standard "why castles in a world with flying mounts?" argument.

7. Economies that make no sense.

 

[jdrakeh]

1. A lack of consistency. For example, in Eberron, intelligent elementals are enslaved by good-aligned folks. Being a slaver doesn't fall into good alignment in my view. To make this pet peeve worse, James (and I think Keith) and others have said, in effect, "Don't worry about it." That irks me. Another example: in PoL default 4e, it is said that "fear... is utterly alien to a demon's mind" and that demons have no regard for anything save destruction, "not even for their own lives." And then later on the very same page, it is said that lesser demons obey balors out of fear for their lives. Sigh.

6. The implications of magic not being thought through and applied consistently. If Raise Dead is available for a month or two's wages in a small town of 800 people, that will have some pretty profound effects on society. Not to mention the standard "why castles in a world with flying mounts?" argument.

These both fall under my numbers one and two above, though in terms of poor execution, your number six definitely bothers me more.

For example, something that has irked me in many D&D settings is the fact that commonplace, low level, magic makes several mundane technological conveniences completely worthless — yet magic somehow hasn't managed to replace them.

There is almost always some disclaimer about magic and mages being ultra-rare, but the cited population figures never seem to jibe with the way NPCs are depicted in supplements, just as they typically fail to support the claim that demi-humans are rare in that regard.

Eberron tried to address the issue of magic eclipsing technology, while 3x as a whole tried to address the faulty class demographics (by creating NPC classes), yet both of these inconsistencies are still the standard for fantasy RPG settings.

This kind of inconsistency drives me nuts (mostly because it could be avoided).