Yora
Legend
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?
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?