Campaign Setting - Pet Peeves

[jdrakeh]

That's very true if a particular GM takes the stance that elves, dwarves, and other long lived races in his/her campaign will "choose" to make those advancements in technology.

I think what some people are getting hung up on is that they think change equals technological progress. It doesn't. While it will most likely mean that under certain conditions (such as the proliferation fo safe and reliable magic that makes certain mechanical technologies inferior), change ultimately just means change.

Civilizations can't realistically live in total, unchanging, stasis for millenia at a time — they're going to change somehow. They may not evolve, they may devolve, but change of some kind will occur. The idea of cultures frozen in place with absolutely no change for millenia on end isn't at all realistic, in any context.

 

[Lanefan]

For me, both. I cannot abide settings that do not have any form of technological progress or societal change whatsoever when the impetus for such change (magic, in most fantasy RPG settings) is nigh-ominipresent.

How about technological back-sliding? A setting where, for example, technology was king 50,000 years ago but then blew itself out, allowing magic to slowly try to take over.

And societal change is easy...the simple fact of empires rising and falling is going to give rise to different societies over time no matter what the setting. That said, most published settings I've seen don't go into much detail on what made said historical societies different; guess that's left up to the DM.

My peeves with the generic settings are relatively few, as I'm quite happy with nothing's-perfect Euro-Tolkein as a base and several stated peeves in posts above are things I see as useful features. My peeves:

1. Unfamiliarity with its cultural base. Unless I already know it, I'm too lazy to want to learn everything about a setting's assumed culture just so I can run a game in it. So, no Al-Qadim for me. And no Planescape. And no (shudder!) Eberron.

2. Too much information. When it first came out in 1e, FR was an excellent setting. Then came all the gype piled on to it...the novels, the articles, the 2e and 3e and now 4e revisions...the poor horse has been flogged long past the point of death. The corollary problem here, of course, is those people who think that because a DM is using a given setting its established canon will at all times be faithfully adhered to....

3. Unwilling to mix historical eras. I *want* classical Greeks and Romans and dark-ages Norse and Celts and early-Renaissance Spaniards and English to all share the same world, along with Aztecs, Sumerians, aboriginal cultures, etc., never mind Dwarves and Elves (several kinds) and Gnomes and Hobbits. And monsters. Settings mostly seem either to want to stick to their own historical niche or to use no real-world-based cultures at all.

4. Thinking of FR in particular here, too many settled lands, not enough unexplored country. While this is easy enough for a DM to fix, having large tracts of land (like, say, about half a continent) be completely unknown to the "civilized" cultures gives a DM lots more to work with than if everything is known.

Lanefan

 

[jdrakeh]

How about technological back-sliding? A setting where, for example, technology was king 50,000 years ago but then blew itself out, allowing magic to slowly try to take over.

I mention devolution above (and, yes, I'm aware that biological devolution is a fallacy). This is fine. It's still change.

 

[JVisgaitis]

This is a great thread. My big gripes are:

1. Half races. I dislike half races in general. I greatly dislike when a setting has half ogres, half demons, half elves, and everything in between.

2. A new spin on races that isn't really a new spin. These guys are elves, but they have blue skin. They're dwarves, but they don't have beards. Have the guts to either change the races entirely or don't bother at all.

3. Kitchen sink settings. WotC is the biggest offender of this. I understand why, but I just don't like it. I look forward to Dark Sun 4e, but part of me worries that they are going to try and kitchen sink that setting too. Ari Marmell had a good thread on how to get Eladrin, Dragonborn, and Tieflings into the setting, but to me its liking putting a square peg into a round hole.

4. Gods are everywhere and grant their followers spells. This is pretty much in almost every setting, but I'm just not a fan. I don't like the integral role of priests as healers in every adventuring party, and I like the idea of Gods directly granting them spells even less.

5. Black vs. White. Don't get me wrong, I like that there can be definable good and bad guys, but I hate settings that so easily spell it out. Give some adult stories where there is a lot of moral ambiguity. Any RPG by Bioware is a great example of what I mean.

 

[WayneLigon]

1. No adventures or narratives that show me how the world works and is put together. This is good for any setting, but essencial the more 'different' the setting is from the default Northern Europe that most people are going to be able to make sense of right out of the box. Tekumel, Jorune, several other fringe settings remain that because I don't think they do an adequate job of explaining how a person lives in that world. Probably the most 'out there' world that works is Glorantha. Each of the cult writeups tell you what is expected from the initiate and how he fits into the world; the cultures have similar things.

2. No pronunciation guide. I have little problem with most made-up names and such but I want them to be consistant and come with a pronunciation key.

3. Poor maps. Really, there simply is no excuse for the poor, almost childish, quality of most maps we're used to seeing in American RPG products.

 

[Set]

1) Settings that seem too 'hopeless.' I don't mind Scarred Lands, which can get pretty bleak (the LE gods worshippers own like 40% of the continent!), or Dark Sun or whatever, but Ravenloft bugged the hell out of me. "Okay, you're first level. There's this lake. This undead dragon thing pops it's head up and Cloudkill's everyone. Did anyone live? Yes? It breathes again..." Zombie apocalypse games are my number-one-with-a- bullet, least. favorite. setting. ever.

2) Settings that have fantasy elements, but don't actually seem to integrate them, turning them into 'medieval europe,' only inhabited by a bunch of fantasy races and classes that are incapable of changing society in the slightest. Oh, we have Continual Light, free and cheap to cast by the *thousands,* and have had that spell for 5,000 years, but everyone still uses torches, even in the kings castle. Oh, we have elves, dwarves, gnomes and halflings, but only the dwarves and elves have their own kingdoms, and they have only one apiece, and they're tiny, reclusive and unimportant compared to the 72 human-run countries on the map, all with alliances and important histories. Gnomes and Halflings don't even get countries. They get to live in ghettos in human cities.

3) Settings that are all about one particular storyline / set of characters, and the actions of the party end up being overshadowed by the great doings of the Heroes of the Lance or the Chosen of Mystra or Divis Mal and Caestus Pax.

[Some of my favorite settings, btw, succumb to these. The Realms was a favorite setting for over a decade, and I tirelessly (and timesomely) evangelized all of my Greyhawk-loving friends into playing it, but it wasn't perfect. Greyhawk quickly became a favorite setting as well, despite falling afoul of my second gripe. The Aberrant setting is a *huge* favorite despite there being entire so-called 'adventures' written for it that consist of sitting on the sidelines and watching battles between epic characters. "Ooh, what an 'adventure!' I got to wave pom-poms!"]

 

[The Thayan Menace]

Verisimilitude, Über Alles!

I don't care about versimilitude. I don't care about logic. I want a setting because it feels cool, feels like it's an old myth where the people had to make up the world, not because it would make a great college anthropology paper.

Some simulationists (a.k.a. setting-oriented gamers), myself included, care more about aesthetic vibe (fantastic immersionism) than fantasy physics (realism).

Who knows? You might be one of these people.

-Samir Asad (TM)

 

[Set]

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).

Total agreement here. It bugs me as well because, for all the meta-logic of 'well, mages are rare, and have better things to do,' that doesn't make any sense, since *anyone* with an average or better intelligence, wisdom or charisma can go on to become a Cleric, Druid, Bard, Wizard, Sorcerer or Adept, just by taking a level in that class. Spellcasters wouldn't be any more rare than Fighters or Rogues or Barbarians.

And 'have better things to do' than make oodles of filthy cash and becoming indispensible heads of magical trades-guilds by casting Continual Light / Flame and / or researching spells to create ever-warm ovens or ever-cool storage trunks or clothing for fancy noblewomen that can change into other clothing? Doesn't that sound a *hell* of a lot better for a low-level NPC spellcaster than hoisting a dagger and a backpack and trekking into the wilderness to fight owlbears, in the hopes of scraping some gold pieces out of his poop that are leftover from the *last* wannabe archwizard who went out 'adventuring' and got his fool self eaten?

The 4E notion of making non-combat spells into rituals with specific requirements, to prevent rampant use of teleportation or scrying or whatever from totally changing the dynamic of the setting, would be a good one, taken to a certain extent.

 

[The Thayan Menace]

Ravenloft (a.k.a. Nobody Likes You ... AND You Can't Leave)

... Ravenloft bugged the hell out of me.

Agreed. It's fun to read (and possibly GM), but very frustrating to play.

-Samir

 

[Hussar]

3. Poor maps. Really, there simply is no excuse for the poor, almost childish, quality of most maps we're used to seeing in American RPG products.

Oo, oo, ooo, yes, this one too. Scarred Lands, I'm looking at you. Fantastic setting, but whoever did your cartography should be bludgeoned to death. Those were some fantastically poor maps.

Considering even the amateur stuff you can find on the net these days at places like Cartographers Guild, there is absolutely no excuse for your books having poor maps.