Difference between FR, Eberron, Middle Earth, Greyhawk etc.

[billd91]

Any hints for how to introduce more elements of the setting into the game and make the players more interested in the setting?

Would it help to change to something completely different like spelljammer, ravenloft etc.?

It would help to change things only if the changes were what the players wanted. Spelljammer is certainly different, but not at all to my tastes. When a campaign I was playing in drifted into a plotline involving spelljamming, my interest declined sharply. In the end, the campaign ended more because of lack of time to play but my heart really wasn't into that segment of the game.

How can you make a setting more interesting to the players? Give them a folder of materials to read. Include a map and a calendar with some holidays and phases of the moon(s) marked on it. Give them other handouts describing what the politics and culture of their homelands are like. Give them a handout describing, briefly, the major religions and what portfolios the gods control. Include some minor plot hooks into these documents as well as information that only that PC would know.

And then do some of the things Tolkien did in Lord of the Rings, drop elements of history into the references people make, the things they say, the songs they sing in the taverns. Don't worry about writing the songs, just say that the people in the common room are singing a drinking song based on the foolishness of a previous lord whose deranged antics eventually led to his selling the castle to a small band of kobolds who then turned it into a massive cheese factory. It'll give them a little insight into the history of the area as well as help set the atmosphere.

 

[buzz]

How can you make a setting more interesting to the players? Give them a folder of materials to read.

I'd think this would be a sure way to get many players uninterested real quick. A folder full of cool tchochkes (maps, prop documents, etc) could be pretty appealing, though.

Show, don't tell. Sum up the setting's hook in three sentences. Then, showcase a scenario or encoutner that highlights the unique elements of the setting. E.g., to demo Eberron, you put the PCs on the lightning rail.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Just to pick a nit... Temple of the Frog was set in Blackmoor.

Well, wasn't Blackmoor eventually set in Greyhawk? I was under the impression that all that Egg of Coot and Land of Black Ice business was originally from the Blackmoor campaign.

 

[pawsplay]

That's a pretty fundamental difference, though.

But so is the difference between clerics in Forgotten Realms versus clerics in Mystara (Basic D&D setting). The clerics in FR must have a patron deity, whereas the clerics in Mystara do not, and indeed, deities as such are not a strong part of the setting (there are immortals, and there are clerics, and there might be named deities, but there is nothing that says, "These are the Gods and they rule the universe, each having a specific portfolio that concerns them." Words like god and deity appear only a handful of times in the Cyclopedia.)

Thus, fighting a cult dedicated to raising an evil deity from his prison has a very different context. In FR, the cult is raising up a master who directly grants them powers and could smite any mortals that pissed him off. In Mystara, the cult would be raising him basically because they liked him and thought he was an excellent embodiment of their goals and beliefs. In a few Basic D&D modules, cults dedicated to obscure, inhuman deities tend to be headed by wizards who pass their spells off as miracles, and those deities are more or less monsters that wish to rule over humans and demihumans and perhaps benefit from some kind of sacrifice.

There is no orderly Wheel in Mystara, nor a Hell or Abyss. Demons, then, live somewhere in the multiverse, and are a part of the natural order. IIRC, you just have the Material Plane, Ethereal Plane, elemental Plane, and the great void. And that's it. So if you include demons, they live somewhere, and it's not an infinitely layered plane full of demons. Demons are just magical monsters, much like genies, but meaner and weirder.

Furthermore, since there are no great Gods, elves, dwarves, halflings, and so forth aren't the creations of specific racial deities.

Small differences can become huge differences. I've read about campaigns where orcs weren't humanoids at all, but aberrations that look humanoid, or even construct-like creatures. That makes a huge difference in how orcs are portrayed, or what they are capable of. If orcs are actually a form of evil planetouched, that makes a difference in how humans regard them.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

I'd think this would be a sure way to get many players uninterested real quick. A folder full of cool tchochkes (maps, prop documents, etc) could be pretty appealing, though.

Show, don't tell. Sum up the setting's hook in three sentences. Then, showcase a scenario or encoutner that highlights the unique elements of the setting. E.g., to demo Eberron, you put the PCs on the lightning rail.

I'm with Buzz. Long-winded background materials are fine, but as I have discovered from experience, you have to give the players a reason to read them. The system I developed for establishing background was to develop a series of background cards. Every important person, place, or event gets one, and I write them as I think I'll need them. The cards have the name of the thing in question, information like dates, nearby things, and notable quotes. They have a short (250 words or less) description of the background item, written from the perspective of "what everyone ought to know about it." They also have one to three legends/rumours which may or may not be true.

It's an easily-digestible briefing that can be read in under three minutes. Then it goes into the file for quick reference by the players: "Who was Captain Boohag again? Let's dig out his card." If a player wants more info, I usually have an expanded version of the card that contains Knowledge check info for DC 15, 20, 25, and 30, as well as my own notes regarding that character, place, or event. I've also got a complete write-up for myself, which I can provide to players who want more in-depth information.

This approach can be applied to a setting as well. Instead of a book of information about history, culture, etc., a campaign setting document should be designed along the lines of the setting summaries provided to WotC during the campaign search. A short, perhaps 3 page document that lays down the theme of the setting with heavy emphasis on the style of adventures one can expect, along with the major mysteries, critical events, and sensory words that convey the look and feel of things. If you can get the players hooked on that, they'll be more likely to want to find out more about the world.

I think that what got me interested in learning more about Greyhawk was not the fact that there's a lot written about it, but rather that I knew something about it already. I knew about Bigby, Tenser, and Mordenkainen, but what about the rest of the Circle of Eight? I knew that Dragotha exists from the White Plume Mountain maps, but where is he and what's his story? I got pulled in by the stuff that looks cool right off the bat, and found out that the more depth I got, the more fun it became.

By making information easily digested at first, it allows players to assimilate it quickly, which gives them a basis on which to care about the more long-winded stuff.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

Well, wasn't Blackmoor eventually set in Greyhawk? I was under the impression that all that Egg of Coot and Land of Black Ice business was originally from the Blackmoor campaign.

Close, but not quite. Blackmoor (Arneson's setting) was distinct from Greyhawk (Gygax's setting). In the early days of D&D's development Arneson hosted a sidetrek for Mordenkainen (Gygax's PC) to adventure in his Blackmoor.

Gygax put in a "Blackmoor" into the Flanaess where he could say that is where Mordenkainen went. That "Blackmoor" was of Gygax's own creation and had little connection with Arneson's "Blackmoor". Until the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer there was no mention of the Greyhawk setting "Blackmoor" having the Egg of Coot. I forget if it was Erik Mona or maybe Gary Holian who said this is an old "Greychat" session, but one of the co-authors of the LGG said it was their idea to co-opt some of the Arneson "Blackmoor" material with a twist. Something about there was some dimensional warping event in Blackmoor's history caused multiple "Blackmoors" and "Eggs of Coot" to be installed across the multiverse. If anything it opened up the possibility of co-opting more of the Mystara classics, like the Isle of Dread now having a duplicate in Greyhawk as well (see Paizo's new Adventure Path).

And the official Blackmoor products have never had mention of there being a "Land of Black Ice" being in Arneson's Blackmoor.

Lastly, Arneson's Blackmoor was officially installed in the history of the Known World/Mystara setting.

 

[Mycanid]

Good post, Zsutherland, but one nit...

"Mithrandir" is actually Gandalf's name among the elves. I think the general term you want (for him and the other wizards) is "Istari".

One more caveat on this from someone who has read the Silmarillion and the Books of Lost Tales, etc., etc., etc. ...

The "Istari" were actually invisible beings known as Maiar - Sauron actually is one too. Istari is the name of the wizards given by the elves. ZSutherland's guess on this is a pretty good take IMO.

There were five of them and they were sent into Middle Earth primarily to counteract the influence of Sauron after Sauron's master Melkor (one of the seven chief Valar who fell away from his original purpose and brought several of the maiar along to his purposes) was imprisoned.

The Istari's actual names were Curinir (Saruman), Olonir (Gandalf), Aiwendil (Radagast), and Morinehtar and Romestano (these two were the blue wizards and apparently Tolkien did not indicate which bore which of the names men gave them).Among men the Istari's names were Saruman, Gandalf, Radagast, and the two "blue wizards" Alatar and Pallando who "went to the east" and were never heard from again. In one place Tolkien said that they greatly helped in the War through their influence in the East, although in another place he hinted that they also fell away from their original purpose and that the black arts of men had their origin in them....

Btw RC - good post on summarizing Tolkien.

And Buzz also hit on an important thing. Middle Earth was made by one man and not specifically as a game setting. The other three were specifically so made and had many people involved therein. Of course there will be a difference!

 

[Kheti sa-Menik]

I don't know if I would consider it a problem, but my experience matches this.

But, I don't think D&D, as a system, really cares about setting, beyond "character generation bits." I don't think that I ever actually used a setting (beyond pointing to the Greyhawk map and saying, "Uh, you're here") until 3.0. Even then, all that really changes are the names of the gods, and then not even all the time.

The setting is built into the system. All you need for D&D is adventures. Settings exist to sell you splatbooks and novels.

I think you are wrong about setting. It's what is important. But I also believe that how much the players get into the setting directly correlates to how much the DM "sells" or "pushes" the setting in the context of the campaign.

If the DM makes the campaign a series of nonlinked dungeon crawls or wilderness intrigues, even given plot and copious interesting NPCs, if the setting is not brought into view, then the players won't care.

In my current campaign, I am using Magnamund (the setting in which the 1980's Lone Wolf and Grey Star gamebooks by Joe Dever play out and) as my campaign setting.
I want to push the setting so in addition to race, I had the players choose an ethnicity and a country of origin and gave a regional feat or skill bonus or some such for being that ethnicity from that certain nation.
I put great emphasis on how the human groups interact. I tie the various human peoples to actual Earth ethnic groups: The Vassagonians are arabic, the Lastlanders are Scandanavian, Tianese are chinese and so on. I play up the differences in them and how they view each other.
When I did character creation, I also did a "Get to Know Your Campaign Setting" segment. I rolled out a big map of Magnamund and did a regional overview.
It's all abut what the DM puts into it, how much the players get into it.

 

[buzz]

But so is the difference between clerics in Forgotten Realms versus clerics in Mystara (Basic D&D setting).

IMO, the differences you describe (as well as in the orc example) are minimal, if not functionally non-existent. The mechanical function of these clerics and orcs in the game is unchanged; the only thing that is different is the color.

In the CoC example, you're taking the basic paradigm of "normal people research things man was not meant to know, realize the truth, go insane and die" and turning it on its head: "larger-than-life heroes research thigns man was not meant to know, realize the truth, kick Cthulhu's ass, and take his stuff." That's a fundamental change.

 

[buzz]

By making information easily digested at first, it allows players to assimilate it quickly, which gives them a basis on which to care about the more long-winded stuff.

Thor Olavsrud made an interesting comment along these lines

Basically, limit yourself to three descriptive sentences when talking about... pretty much anything.

Eberron: "A once-unified kingdom now split into factions as they recover from a century of civil war. Magic as a common technology that provides for rail transport, international communication, and a sentient race of constructs. Houses unified by bloodlines and dragonmarks, each one with a monopoly over certain trade goods and services."