How much detail for published campaign settings?

[Yora]

On another forum, we had a discussion about what makes certain campaign settings, and specific versions of the setting so highly well regarded and attributed with such a high quality. The Forgotten Realms Grey Box comes to mind, or Planescape.

An interesting notion that came up, and was shared by a number of people, was that one thing that actually made those settings better, was the relatively low amount of detail. If you look at the Grey Box, it remains very brief on almost all subjects, yet there seems to be a considerable amount of people who think it's the best version of the Forgotten Realms that had ever been done.

Now, I think most peoples first guess would be that the best settings are those that have the most information for players and GMs. But I kind of see where that idea is comming from. The main reason I lost interest in FR was because it felt to me that it just wasn't worth anymore to climb the next hill or turn over stones. You always already knew what you would find there. There was no longer a sense of exploration or discovery. If you wanted to find something unexpected, you pretty much had to ignore the official material and come up with your own organizations, characters, and locations.
However, I don't think that it is so much the amount of information that is presented, but more the kind of information. Planescape had all these boxes with this huge amount of text. Yet all the time, it always only askes new questions while never answering anything. The last setting that really got me excited was the world of Thedas from the Dragon Age games, which really doesn't include anything that hasn't been done before a thousand times, but again it doesn't provide clear answers. Which side in a conflict is right and which one is wrong? Which of the many sects teaches the truth and which ones are the heretics? Which evil is the lesser one? There are arguments for and against each possibility, but the setting does not give you a clear answer. You can come to your own conclusion what you think is the most likely case, but again, nobody tells you if you have it right or wrong.

I think this is a very interesting idea. How much do you really need to make a memorable setting and at what point do get things get bogged down in minor and trivial details?

 

[gamerprinter]

For me, it is the detail, but not necessarily detailed sites, which as you say, the discovery while playing the setting is more exciting when you don't know what's over every hill. The fact that you might already know what is at any specific location due to the map, and provided gazetteer, in some ways mitigates the possibility of discovery, thus lessening the quality of the setting. For me it's cultural detail that makes a setting, so you better understand the races, nations and politics of a given region. Not so much what is at a location, but who and why.

I've created (and continue to create) a very detailed setting, detailed in the way I describe above. Kaidan: a Japanese Ghost Story setting is a feudal Japan/Asian horror setting in many ways like Ravenloft, but with it's own twists not like any other setting out there. Kaidan has it's own cosmology (Kaidan is almost a demi universe that is directly connected to the prime material plane, but not to standard cosmology.) Death and rebirth in Kaidan is unique to Kaidan and does not work as it does anywhere else.

While there is a detailed map of the island archipelago empire, not every interesting place over every hill is described. Rather major towns and cities, provincial borders, provincial capitals and the imperial capital. Certain non-human communities are described. Mountain ranges, forests, are named, each containing their own legends, but not "X" marks the spot where to find any specific thing.

Culturally, Kaidan is authentic to Japanese culture, folklore, ghost stories and legend - much more so than Kara-Tur, Rokugan or many other distinctly oriental settings.

All the reviewers of the setting and adventures say Kaidan is very rich in detail, and while I agree, it's also not the kind of detail that mitigates exploration and discovery, so I think it meets your definition of a great campaign setting.

I'm not trying to sell you on Kaidan, so much, as explain how this setting is distinct, and since I've spent 3 years developing it, after many years of contemplating of it, and now it's published - I can only reflect what I've put in it, to know why it's meets your standards that you seek.

 

[Niccodaemus]

I think the trick is to create setting material that the players can read to give them a sense of the game world, without revealing too much what is "behind the curtain". It is also important that the information not be presented in such a way that players can wield it and tell a DM that he is "doing it wrong".

So... all information is presented as hearsay, legend, etc... with plenty of wiggle room for it simply being wrong.

 

[Lwaxy]

I love to have as much details as possible. Love FR for that.

Bit of a chore to keep track of all the things our group changed though, from getting Waterdeep renamed to blowing up certain highly regarded taverns.

 

[Yora]

I think the trick is to create setting material that the players can read to give them a sense of the game world, without revealing too much what is "behind the curtain". It is also important that the information not be presented in such a way that players can wield it and tell a DM that he is "doing it wrong".

On that subject someone mentioned that you need some detail to showcase how the world works and what the reasons are for the current state of things. Giving the example that you can't describe life in an oppressive magocracy without explaining the mage lords who rule the county with an iron fist.

That got me thinking that a good way to handle such things is by giving examples. For example, such a realm could be ruled by a high council of 12 elder archmages, in which case you would make stat blocks and detailed backstories for maybe two or three of them. If a GM wants to use these offcial NPCs, he can chose to do so. However, if he has different ideas for how the high council affects the PCs, there are still lots of vacant seats that are not filled by the official material. Every GM can make up his own elder archmages with their own stats and backstories and have the ones from the official material not showing up in their game. Also even if you play in the games of differend GMs, their visions do not come into conflict with each other since the elder archmages one GM created could also sit on the high council of another GMs game. They just never appear or a called by name.

So the idea is basically "trace the outlines but only fill out half the space". The other half is left for GMs to fill. If they want to. They can also decide to use just the things you already provided and go with a relatively static world.
Great thing for the designer: Only half as much work, while still getting a greater payback!

 

[Niccodaemus]

On that subject someone mentioned that you need some detail to showcase how the world works and what the reasons are for the current state of things. Giving the example that you can't describe life in an oppressive magocracy without explaining the mage lords who rule the county with an iron fist.

That got me thinking that a good way to handle such things is by giving examples. For example, such a realm could be ruled by a high council of 12 elder archmages, in which case you would make stat blocks and detailed backstories for maybe two or three of them. If a GM wants to use these offcial NPCs, he can chose to do so. However, if he has different ideas for how the high council affects the PCs, there are still lots of vacant seats that are not filled by the official material. Every GM can make up his own elder archmages with their own stats and backstories and have the ones from the official material not showing up in their game. Also even if you play in the games of differend GMs, their visions do not come into conflict with each other since the elder archmages one GM created could also sit on the high council of another GMs game. They just never appear or a called by name.

So the idea is basically "trace the outlines but only fill out half the space". The other half is left for GMs to fill. If they want to. They can also decide to use just the things you already provided and go with a relatively static world.
Great thing for the designer: Only half as much work, while still getting a greater payback!

Another option if the GM wants to give players full access to detailed published information is to set the campaign a decade or five after that material. This way, all published material can be considered "history", without having to use ANY of the NPCs provided.

Basically, the published information is information that is available in the local libraries or what have you, and talk about the previous generation.

 

[[OMENRPG]Ben]

What makes a setting interesting? I think places are cool, but they are usually just rocks and water and trees and stuff. So, in essence the setting geography is an integral but minor part in my opinion. The true guts of the setting are the cultures, the history, and the people. I think therefore detailed cultures and history mixed with broad descriptions of the cities, nations, and geography make for a great setting. Small pieces of detail mixed in serve as an example for future GMs to add their own details.

For example, in OMEN there are seven inhabited planets, thirty stellar systems, over a thousand inhabited space stations. Not every inch is detailed, which leaves plenty of room to fill in for different groups.

 

[malcolypse]

If the setting is in the core rule book, I'm fine with it being slightly vague.

If, however, I'm giving them money for just the setting it had better tell me what color socks the NPCs prefer otherwise I could knock something just as good together over a weekend.

 

[Tallifer]

I do need too much detail about the world (I especially hate boring and silly chronologies), but I do like to have some detailled sample encounters with NPCs. Some good prewritten dialogue for NPCs helps me since I am neither an actor nor a improvisational comedian.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

A good setting book should be like a good coloring book: you can see where the lines are drawn to give you the overall picture, but you use your imagination to make it a thing of beauty.

If you ever get the chance, look at the original Judges Guild Wilderlands products. They had fantastic sepia tone maps, and each general area had an encounter or 2 started out, but by and large, the world was empty.. You could use those products with virtually any FRPG then...or now.