D&D General Kitchen sink setting or narrow genre focus for long-running campaigns (2,5,10+ years)

[earthsea_wizard]

Do you personally feel that one or the other lends itself to the health of a long-running campaign?

Kitchen sink settings of course allow you to shift genres when desired and can handle many more player options. There is a risk of the flavor becoming dilluted over time.

A more narrow genre focus can help provide consistent flavor and, well, focus, to the game. There is a risk of feeling constrained and repetitive.

Looking at the more popular settings, examples of kitchen sink would be:

Forgotten Realms
Golarion
Greyhawk

Settings with a more narrow genre focus would be:

Ravenloft
Dark Sun
Midnight

There are some that could potentially fall somewhere in the middle depending on how you run the game, such as:

Eberron
Planescape

What do you think? What are your experiences and preferencs?

 

[Clint_L]

I use Exandria as my base setting and modify it as needed, so definitely kitchen sink.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Not only kitchen sink, but lots of plane hopping and genre hopping for me. My campaigns typically last about 3 years.

 

[sevenbastard]

I do a focused setting. A regional sandbox that is well developed. Fill it with romours and adventure sites and let the party lose. Good for 2 to 3 years of play.

 

[earthsea_wizard]

Not only kitchen sink, but lots of plane hopping and genre hopping for me. My campaigns typically last about 3 years.

Which setting?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Which setting?

Whichever. I’ve used FR, Exandria, Eberron, Ravenloft (Dread Metrol Domain) and now we are plane hopping all over the Multiverse.

Genres: Epic Fantasy, SF, horror, comedy.

I did have a very brief hop into Star Trek.

 

[haakon1]

I’ve run my Greyhawk setting since 1998 (over email).

I don’t consider it “kitchen sink”, but a focus on AD&D (1e) style gaming, with classic adventures from that period and similar feel adventures from the decades since.

The only “weird” stuff we’ve seen is the Elemental Nodes from TOEE, but they aren’t that weird and fit the “play the classics” theme.

I also think Forgotten Realms - especially if you were to concentrate on the Sword Coast to Icewind Dale - is not kitchen sink but a specific thing.

 

[Remathilis]

I have used both, and there are certain advantages and disadvantages to both. In general, I tend to alternate between a more kitchen sink setting (typically Eberron, which itself is kitchen sink with a twist) and Ravenloft (which is narrower, but not so narrow as to hem me in too tightly). In general, though, I find the broader you can do, the better things run because you can always introduce new ideas as they come.

 

[Lakesidefantasy]

I use my own world of Everbee. Right now we are in the Isian area which is mostly underground--so, my version of the Underdark.

I have areas (Lamothe) where things are very gothic and areas (Naphtali) where things are very Indian. Chrysi where it's Roman, Maighdine and Lyonaighe where it's Victorian, etc. etc.

This is a kitchen sink, but each area is a focused genera. This is how Golarion is set up; overall, it's a kitchen sink but each country is a genera.

 

[payn]

I've come to prefer narrow focus and about 2 years to complete. Playing every other week. I have never been in a single campaign either way that lasted more than 2 years (though I had the same group for 10 years running numerous 2 year campaigns).

I will denote that you can have kitchen sink settings that have narrow long running campaigns. Thats been my experience with Golarion and the APs. You could west march the setting, but you dont have to.