D&D General How thorough do you like your settings?

[Micah Sweet]

Let's engage in a hypothetical...

A new product has been announced. It is a guide to a Kingdom setting. It has a beautiful region map, with dozens of points of interest, and the selling point is they are ALL detailed. Every town has a map and is brimming with premade locals. The various mountains, forests and other biomes come with proper random encounter tables and special encounters. Local monsters, tribes and other people are described. There are several fully stocked dungeons ready to use. There is detailed lore on the local history, nobility and religions. Each area comes with potential adventure hooks. Almost no area of this region is undescribed. You could run an entire campaign with what's in it and never have to create a single thing. The book is huge and reasonably priced, from a company you trust

Would you buy it? Why or why not?

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The reason I ask is to gauge how much value "blank space" is worth. Areas where the DM can go in and paint their own stamp without contradicting established lore. At what point, if any, does detail get in the way of creation. I get there is no one size fits all answer, but I'm looking for at what point does being through become a liability? Or does it not and there is an untapped market for a product that does all the world-building for the DM. After all, APs and setting guides do sell...

I would buy the heck out of that. Do you have a link?

 

[Micah Sweet]

My tastes vary.

I like short big picture overview player guide type setting supplements a lot, but I also like a lot of lore and development from fleshed out setting supplements. I have read a number of 200+ page setting books cover to cover (Golarion, Rokugan, Dragonlance 3e, Pirate's Guide to Freeport, etc.) and enjoyed them. I use a lot of big setting books as references.

I don't really care for city supplements that completely do out every shop and building as if it were one giant megadungeon though. It is not the way I run my city adventures. I prefer my settings to be background and flavor and my adventures in contrast to be decently tuned specific stat blocks to provide challenges to the party's current level. I expect to run different adventures in the same setting. Too much small detail for something like a city can be too much to keep in my head as I run the PCs through running around the city.

Settings as background and flavor are woefully inadequate for me.

 

[Micah Sweet]

If a book came out from someone I trusted and contained everything I wanted in a campaign and was priced ok, then of course I would buy it.

Imagine never to call a random NPC Bob, the Fighter again. If I knew the village on the other side of the lake the PCs likely will never go has a baker's assistant with the 3rd daughter named Cass and she has a penchant for puppies, fishing off the bridge and keeping used chewing gum on her bedpost to use again the next day, My players would be amazed. Extra points for where she hides her 3 copper pieces.

I could focus on stealing pictures of people online to insert as NPCs and maps PC handouts since I would have dungeons made and each town would have a theme and secrets already. I would know where the PCs go and have things there all done as well. It would be epic.

Seems to echo the 3 rules of business though where it could be cheap (compared to other books of this type), fast (how long it would take to create), or good (how detailed)- pick 2.

Cheap and good. Every time.

 

[payn]

I would buy the heck out of that. Do you have a link?

Here is mine. Not really mechanical and easily ported to your system of choice.

 

[Digdude]

Little secret, they dont have to fully fleshed out or huge in page count. Some of the old Birthright Kingdom things you could take and run entire campaigns with it.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Have you used these big setting books? Have you gotten your money's worth? It is up to everyone to decide if they got their money's worth I guess. Some may read them and never use them in a campaign and still think they got it, while others may think if they did not get three campaigns it was not worth it. Just wondering, thanks

A great lorebook is its own reward IMO, but I usually find something worth using in a actual game.

 

[Aldarc]

Let's engage in a hypothetical...

A new product has been announced. It is a guide to a Kingdom setting. It has a beautiful region map, with dozens of points of interest, and the selling point is they are ALL detailed. Every town has a map and is brimming with premade locals. The various mountains, forests and other biomes come with proper random encounter tables and special encounters. Local monsters, tribes and other people are described. There are several fully stocked dungeons ready to use. There is detailed lore on the local history, nobility and religions. Each area comes with potential adventure hooks. Almost no area of this region is undescribed. You could run an entire campaign with what's in it and never have to create a single thing. The book is huge and reasonably priced, from a company you trust

Would you buy it? Why or why not?

---

The reason I ask is to gauge how much value "blank space" is worth. Areas where the DM can go in and paint their own stamp without contradicting established lore. At what point, if any, does detail get in the way of creation. I get there is no one size fits all answer, but I'm looking for at what point does being through become a liability? Or does it not and there is an untapped market for a product that does all the world-building for the DM. After all, APs and setting guides do sell...

My preference is Nentir Vale levels of detail. It's a Points of Light setting with a fair amount of blank space, both spacially in its geography and in its lore, but it has strong themes (e.g., points of light, chaos vs. order, Dawn War, etc.) to hang your hooks on.

 

[Lanefan]

Let's engage in a hypothetical...

A new product has been announced. It is a guide to a Kingdom setting. It has a beautiful region map, with dozens of points of interest, and the selling point is they are ALL detailed. Every town has a map and is brimming with premade locals. The various mountains, forests and other biomes come with proper random encounter tables and special encounters. Local monsters, tribes and other people are described. There are several fully stocked dungeons ready to use. There is detailed lore on the local history, nobility and religions. Each area comes with potential adventure hooks. Almost no area of this region is undescribed. You could run an entire campaign with what's in it and never have to create a single thing. The book is huge and reasonably priced, from a company you trust

Would you buy it? Why or why not?

I'd certainly give it a long hard look if I was in the market for a new setting - it'd sure save me a ton of work!

The reason I ask is to gauge how much value "blank space" is worth. Areas where the DM can go in and paint their own stamp without contradicting established lore.

Those blank spaces would still be present in your proposed setting, beyond the borders of the Kingdom. Best of both worlds (pun intended!).

 

[Bedrockgames]

Let's engage in a hypothetical...

A new product has been announced. It is a guide to a Kingdom setting. It has a beautiful region map, with dozens of points of interest, and the selling point is they are ALL detailed. Every town has a map and is brimming with premade locals. The various mountains, forests and other biomes come with proper random encounter tables and special encounters. Local monsters, tribes and other people are described. There are several fully stocked dungeons ready to use. There is detailed lore on the local history, nobility and religions. Each area comes with potential adventure hooks. Almost no area of this region is undescribed. You could run an entire campaign with what's in it and never have to create a single thing. The book is huge and reasonably priced, from a company you trust

Would you buy it? Why or why not?

---

The reason I ask is to gauge how much value "blank space" is worth. Areas where the DM can go in and paint their own stamp without contradicting established lore. At what point, if any, does detail get in the way of creation. I get there is no one size fits all answer, but I'm looking for at what point does being through become a liability? Or does it not and there is an untapped market for a product that does all the world-building for the DM. After all, APs and setting guides do sell...

I don't really have a hard and fast rule here. I think it is going to have to come down to the book in question and what direction feels right. I liked the more bare bones approach of the old Realm of Terror boxed set, which had ample blank space for me to fill in as a GM, but give me a strong enough sense of direction that that never felt hard. I also love HARN and that is quite detailed (though it doesn't swamp you with paragraphs of text). I think I am fine either way, but ideally if there is a lot of detail, it isn't a challenge to navigate. Sometimes too much wording in the wrong places can make a detailed setting too much of a chore, but it is a fine balance.

 

[Umbran]

Would you buy it? Why or why not?

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The reason I ask is to gauge how much value "blank space" is worth.

I probably wouldn't buy it, but not because I want "blank space" to put my own things in, but because I'm never going to use that much setting information. Most of that purchase will be wasted.