Campaign World Problems/ Questions/ Considerations

[exile]

1. I think having a campaign specific calendar is an excellent idea. That said, any fictional caledars that I invent tend to look a lot like the standard Gregorian calanedar.

2. I am all for internal naming consistency. I use a copy of "Baby Names from around the World" when creating my own campaign settings. The book features a list of names by ethnic/national/linguistic origins. I tend to populate areas in my campaign worlds with people bearing names from one or two real-world regions. Foreigners are easily picked out because they are likely named from a different real world region. Of course, I often sprinkle in a healthy dose of D&D names (taken from the Hero Builder's Guidebook) to the campaign as well. When playing in a oublished campaign setting, I try to choose names that don't screw with the internal consistency of the world.

3. I'm all for "realistic seeming" geography and climate. "Realistic seeming" being the closest to realistic that my fund of knowledge allows for.

Chad

 

[taliesin15]

1. Do unique calendars add to the game? Would you prefer a conventional calendar that reflects our own or something more fantastic?

2. Do naming conventions matter to you? Should different areas of the campaign world have consistent language naming conventions?

3. Is realistic geography important to you? Mountain, desert, river, etc. placement?

1. They can add to the game, but assuming it all makes sense, it depends on the whether the players enjoy this kind of detail. I've tried it, even adopted the Lord of the Rings Hobbit calendar, but sometimes players just don't care.

2. I think this is much more important, not just for consistency's sake. Sometimes in higher levels, you might as a DM be parceling out clues, and the fact that the name of a Rogue who might have lifted your purse happens to sound more Viking-ish means the party has something to go on.

3. Realistic geography, yes, at least you should design topographic features that follow universal laws in planets similar to Earth, i.e. that water flows downhill, and ultimately start in higher elevations like mountains, hills, etc.

All that said, there's still a place and time for a more randomly ordered milieu. It just tends to make a lot of work for the DM, unless you don't particularly care.

 

[Lancelot]

1. Do unique calendars add to the game? Would you prefer a conventional calendar that reflects our own or something more fantastic?

I'll give this a 3/10 in order of importance to me. Been DM'ing my own homebrew for over 20 years. My world has 8 months, each with 4 ten-day weeks, 14 special holidays observed, etc. From my players' point of view, however, all they want to know is whether its summer or winter at the moment. They don't care about the names of the months, or even whether its a new year yet or not.

Same is true from my experiences with Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk and Eberron calenders.

2. Do naming conventions matter to you? Should different areas of the campaign world have consistent language naming conventions?

Yep, and I'd give this one a 9/10. It bothers me quite a bit when someone wants to play Sven Ivanson from a country that I've established as having Arabic naming conventions. Fortunately, none of my players do this. The old-timers know what names apply to which nations, and the newcomers generally ask. "Hey, what's an appropriate name for a fighter from the Iron Dynasty of Agaari?" ...or vice versa: "Hey, I'd like to play a Greek-style cleric called Podarces. What nation/culture would be most appropriate?"

Having different naming conventions really helps establish national identities. A PC called Ap-Geb-Shu from Mulhorand... or Mogadai Shin from the Ethengar Khanates... or Grigori Toronescu from Kaarnath... or Ahmed al-Hassah from Ket... You don't have to know anything about the nation to get a feel for what they're about.

3. Is realistic geography important to you? Mountain, desert, river, etc. placement?

I used to be pretty easy on this one, but it has grown in importance to me. Call it an 8/10. I find that it mainly only concerns the old-timers in my group, but it's enough that I try to be scrupulous about it these days. Heck, I've even done some major geographic revisionism of my own campaign world (thanks to demonic invasions, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, etc...) simply to "correct" some of the errors of my youth.

"15-year-old me" accidentally placed a major forest in an area with no irrigation and no hill cover? No problem. A demon army will go marching through that area and turn it into something more... appropriate.

 

[fusangite]

1. Do unique calendars add to the game?

Yes.

Would you prefer a conventional calendar that reflects our own or something more fantastic?

What I would want out of a calendar is one that reflects the worldview of people in the game and the physics of the game world. Whether this results in a slightly different calendar or a radically different one is more a matter of the game world and its peoples; the calendar just flows from those things.

2. Do naming conventions matter to you? Should different areas of the campaign world have consistent language naming conventions?

Yes! To both.

3. Is realistic geography important to you? Mountain, desert, river, etc. placement?

People have two different definitions of "realistic" in D&D. One is: consistent with our world's physics and ecology. The other is: consistent with the game world's physics and ecology. Pencil me in for the latter.

 

[Gilladian]

As far as Calendars go, I like a special calendar, but it isn't terribly important to me. I'd take the time to learn it if the rest of the world was interesting enough to draw me in, but I'd never feel that "February 4" was a game-killer.

Realistic naming conventions are a much more important thing. I want the names of places and people to reflect the culture they derive from, whether earth-analogue or fantasy.

Geography is where I'm probably the most picky. I want realistic. I gave up making fantasy world maps and put my own campaign on earth for that reason. I've never regretted it. I hate it when in fantasy worlds resources are in illogical places and forests exist where they should be deserts, and cities exist without surrounding food-producing terrain, etc...

It destroys my ability to believe in the world.

 

[Thurbane]

Greetings,

My D&D campaign is moving along nicely, but recent developments are causing me to pause and ask some questions. Do me a favor and try to answer the following questions as a player

1. Do unique calendars add to the game? Would you prefer a conventional calendar that reflects our own or something more fantastic?

2. Do naming conventions matter to you? Should different areas of the campaign world have consistent language naming conventions?

3. Is realistic geography important to you? Mountain, desert, river, etc. placement?

1. Yes, they do, but they can be a pain to manage, and remember. The players memory always seems to defualt to the real world calendar.

2. Definitely - things like this really add a lot of depth to a campaign world.

3. Yes - if I was to stumble from a desert straight into a lush rainforest, it would ruin my suspension of disbelief (unless a major magical effect was at play).

 

[Mark CMG]

1. Do unique calendars add to the game? Would you prefer a conventional calendar that reflects our own or something more fantastic?

Either, as long as it is understandable and consistent. Nothing that gets in the way of the game or creates undue bookkeeping problems.

2. Do naming conventions matter to you? Should different areas of the campaign world have consistent language naming conventions?

I'd like to think so, though having the main area of the game take place in a sort of melting pot can be a good way get to utilize all of your efforts and give the players more sense of choice and direction.

3. Is realistic geography important to you? Mountain, desert, river, etc. placement?

Yes but not so much so that the game becomes more about the geography and geology than the characters. Ultimately, a lot of stuff can get hand waved if it takes too much focus from the characters and their questing.

Good luck, pogre!

 

[Victim]

Greetings,

My D&D campaign is moving along nicely, but recent developments are causing me to pause and ask some questions. Do me a favor and try to answer the following questions as a player -

1. Do unique calendars add to the game? Would you prefer a conventional calendar that reflects our own or something more fantastic?

No. I can't really be bothered to learn new names for pre-existing things. If months and days have different names, then I'm not going to bother to learn them.

2. Do naming conventions matter to you? Should different areas of the campaign world have consistent language naming conventions?

If you want to put the work in. Those kinds of things are handy for people who are stuck on names. I'd just be happy if a few of my players would stop using certain name sources for everythings.

3. Is realistic geography important to you? Mountain, desert, river, etc. placement?

I'm in favor of paying more attention to city placement, but unrealistic geography isn't going to hurt my enjoyment of the game. If you're going to have in setting explanations (like some guy magically altered the environment, producing X unrealistic feature), that's fine. Or if you just don't care, that's fine too. Please don't mix them though

 

[Teflon Billy]

1. Do unique calendars add to the game? Would you prefer a conventional calendar that reflects our own or something more fantastic?

I prefer to stick with Four weeks/month and 12 months/year...not exactly Earthlike, but enough that that rest of the timing conventions make sense.

2. Do naming conventions matter to you? Should different areas of the campaign world have consistent language naming conventions?

Very important to me. Nothing wrecks my mood faster than Players ignoring Naming Conventions while making their charcters.

3. Is realistic geography important to you? Mountain, desert, river, etc. placement?

Call it "semi important"...if it's not realistic, there had better be a magical or divine reason.

 

[Dr Simon]

1. Do unique calendars add to the game? Would you prefer a conventional calendar that reflects our own or something more fantastic?

As a player, somewhat. Sometimes the Gregorian calendar can take you out of the world, but if it's not a particularly deep-immersion game it doesn't matter, and if it's good enough for JRRT...

As a DM and world-builder, it depends on the setting. Generally something close to the real world calendar is good because it produces less confusion, but (having run a long-standing Lakhmar campaign) I like terms like The Month of the Hedghog and so forth. Usually I will have two or more calendars running simultaneously - a prosaic one and a flowery one. I've found that it doesn't matter much to game play as most adventures tend to last around a week at most, then skip to the next one, so timings like a full moon (s) can simply be given as "three days away".

2. Do naming conventions matter to you? Should different areas of the campaign world have consistent language naming conventions?

Pretty much, yes. Again, real world names (typically the extremely common Hebraic ones (like mine!)) tend to spoil the verisimilitude for me, unless the setting pays lip service to being some sort of alternative Earth (although Davids and Pauls seem a bit bland, though, Zachariahs, Jeremiahs, Elis etc. seem to work okay!).

Again, as a player, I can live without it if it's missing (we had a character called Martin in our last campaign :\ ) but it's better if there is one, unless it's so complicated and restrictive as to be annoying.

3. Is realistic geography important to you? Mountain, desert, river, etc. placement?

No.

Well, sort of. Depends again on the nature of the setting, but personally I favour those that have fantastic origins. They were created by the gods, not by vulcanism and weathering. That five mile high mountain rising up from the middle of the desert is from where Olog the Mighty threw it at Golden Thog the Grievious, for example.

That said, I think that there should be a realistic 'overlay' to these fantastic locations. Olog's Mountain is going to attract a lot of precipitation and be quite fertile. Because Golden Thog is mashed beneath it, dwarves came to mine for his golden bones, and so forth.

Internally consistent, I suppose, is what I'm hoping for.