Looking to buy my 1st campaign setting - advice?

[buddhafrog]

Sort of changed the topic - sorry.

I've been researching campaign settings and learning a little, but another even more basic question has arisen:

How do most people use the published campaign books?

I'm thinking that I usually wouldn't use the published adventures, but that would be straight forward enough. But for the basic setting book - I was able to find some sample pages on the internet and it looked like it had actual encounters in it - Is that right?

I assumed it would give you many maps of the land, cities, etc. For some of the locations it would flesh out the NPC's in those areas. It would give you history, religions, festivals.... I'm not sure what else. The Playes Handbook would give you tweaks to build your player based upon your campaign setting - locations, languages, trades, etc, right?

I assumed the setting would be a developed world which I could use in a sandbox approach. Is this how most people use campaign settings?

Thanks greatly folks!

 

[Derulbaskul]

By way of background, I use the 4th edition version of the Forgotten Realms. I have DMed in the Forgotten Realms since the first grey boxed set. (I also like most of the other campaign settings so please don't read this as me being pro-FR; I'm just trying to answer your question while also declaring my biases.)

I design my own NPCs, adventures and campaigns but I use the background/history of the various FR nations and deities to help flesh things out. Having a fully mapped out world is also of great assistance.

Also, having a lot of that stuff in memory means it is much easier for me to ad-lib if my players choose to go somewhere else: a quick look at the campaign guide is typically all I need to spark an idea and then I can generate some appropriate encounters that will allow me to finish the game session on a high... and thus buy me time to prepare properly for the next session.

Also, I know FR well enough that, no matter what my players suggest as the type of game they want me to run, I can find a logical setting for it.

My current game involves pirates and dinosaurs so it's set in the region of the Sea of Fallen Stars where the Pirate Isle is now (thanks to the Spellplague) a tropical island (at least in my version of FR!). I don't have any ninja yet, but I did have a kenku avenger running around that would double as a ninja in a pinch. So, yes, FR will do a campaign involving ninja, pirates and dinosaurs.

If you want to run The Mummy movies, FR used to have a pseudo-Egyptian land called Mulhorand which is now basically buried under the remnants of another world (Spellplague again). But it's perfect: now adventures based on The Mummy movies make more sense!

I could go on and on with similar examples... as I could if I was using Eberron as my campaign world. I know it can be incredibly rewarding, creatively, to create your own world but I find I would rather put my time and energy into creating adventures and campaigns (plus monsters and NPCs) and simply used a published campaign world for all the background material.

For me, a large part of running a game is immersion and verisimilitude. A lot of the work to provide the framework that underpins those things is done when you use a published campaign setting whether that's FR, Eberron (another wonderful setting that I plan to use one day) or the "points of light" (which, when the campaign guide comes out next year, may even become my next preferred setting).

Fair warning: the 4E version of Forgotten Realms is a lot more "bare bones" than earlier editions. While there is the positive in that there is much more room for your own stuff, it means that a lot of the information you list as examples of things you can find in a campaign setting are either missing or simply glossed over.

Second fair warning: mentioning the 4E version of Forgotten Realms often attracts a lot of negative responses. I've only mentioned it because it's what I'm using but if this thread attracts the usual threadcrapping because I've mentioned it please PM me and I will delete everything I have written.

 

[fba827]

How do most people use the published campaign books?

How do I use them? Well, small preface:

I suck at memorizing details, so I tend to stick with homebrew stuff because a) it's easier to remember locations and people if it's something I make on my own rather than worrying about remembering the wrong thing. Also, b) it lets me make up stuff on the fly without worrying about some random fact that I forgot that might contradict what I made up. And c) it also lets me do things with freedom and not worry about a player who knows more than I do about the setting and how 'it supposed to be'

Having said all that: *IF* i buy a published campaign (which I do on rare occasion), it is basically to pick out little details and use them in my own setting. For instance, I might like a place or an organization or something and then use that with a new name.

 

[S'mon]

4e Forgotten Realms ought to work, although much of the support in it seems to be for Epic level gaming with the old villains all 29th level Solos and such. I got a copy pretty cheap, around £12.

My personal favourite is the nominally 3e Wilderlands of High Fantasy, which you can get on rpgnow. There's very little 3e-specific material, mostly just gives NPC levels, which can be used just as easily with 4e (Viridistan has a few NPCs listed at over 30th level who can be statted as 30th level, or whatever you feel is appropriate). It's a huge sandbox world detailed down to the hex level. The Player's Guide and the City State of the Invincible Overlord (1e or 3e) also very good.

Comparing the two, 4e Forgotten Realms is lightly sketched, though it stats some epic foes and sample lower level ones, eg a page of Zhentarim mercenary stats. It includes an introductory mini-campaign, which is nice. Beyond that it leaves most work to the DM. Hardcopies are cheap to acquire.

3e Wilderlands gives much more detail, which is great for riffing off to create adventures and plots - and there are many plots already 'nested' in the hex info. It has the disadvantage that the 3e WoHF pdf is quite expensive, and hardcopies *very* expensive. There are a few 3e monster stats, which would need converting to use, but they're a tiny proportion of the total.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Personally, I don't think you could go wrong with any of the published settings.

But let me ask you this: are your prospective players more in tune with LotR and other Western style fantasy stories, or do their tastes run towards more locally produced fantasy (Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, Indian, etc.)...or even more pointedly, are they into more anime type things?

The reason I ask is because if you know the answer to that question, you can probably figure out what published setting they'd be most receptive to. For instance, students who are very into anime tropes may find Ebberon quite enjoyable- Warforged playing nicely into Fullmetal Alchemist type ideas, etc.- while a predominance of LotRphiles in your group would make 4Ed's default or Greyhawk more familiar.

Or you could even try to use a variety of books to make a rough homebrew that really comes close to local history and legend...though you may be forced to stat out a Hwacha (and if you do, please post it).

 

[S'mon]

Sort of changed the topic - sorry.

I've been researching campaign settings and learning a little, but another even more basic question has arisen:

How do most people use the published campaign books?

I'm thinking that I usually wouldn't use the published adventures, but that would be straight forward enough. But for the basic setting book - I was able to find some sample pages on the internet and it looked like it had actual encounters in it - Is that right?

I assumed it would give you many maps of the land, cities, etc. For some of the locations it would flesh out the NPC's in those areas. It would give you history, religions, festivals.... I'm not sure what else. The Playes Handbook would give you tweaks to build your player based upon your campaign setting - locations, languages, trades, etc, right?

I assumed the setting would be a developed world which I could use in a sandbox approach. Is this how most people use campaign settings?

Thanks greatly folks!

1e Grey Box Forgotten Realms does all that. It actually might be the closest to what you're looking for, but you'd need to find an old copy.

3e Wilderlands does that (some in Wilderlands of High Fantasy, some in the Players Guide) although you'd have to buy City State of the Invincible Overlord for a city map, or download the free cities like Modron or Zothay.

4e Forgotten Realms does not have that level of detail.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Hmmm...it might be easier to find some of the old Judge's Guild stuff...especially since some of it was reprinted for 3.X.

 

[S'mon]

Hmmm...it might be easier to find some of the old Judge's Guild stuff...especially since some of it was reprinted for 3.X.

That's what I'm talking about.
The original 1e City State of the Invincible Overlord is brilliant, and cheap on eg rpgnow. If you want a full world though I'd recommend paying out for the 3e versions of Wilderlands of High Fantasy and 3e Players' Guide to the Wilderlands.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Ya gotta love the old JG maps, though- huge, sepia on tan masterpieces, they were! Just like you'd see in a movie for props...except all the edges were still sharp & untorn.

 

[buddhafrog]

I suck at memorizing details, so I tend to stick with homebrew stuff because a) it's easier to remember locations and people if it's something I make on my own rather than worrying about remembering the wrong thing. Also, b) it lets me make up stuff on the fly without worrying about some random fact that I forgot that might contradict what I made up. And c) it also lets me do things with freedom and not worry about a player who knows more than I do about the setting and how 'it supposed to be'

Thanks for the reply. I'm *exactly* the same. B/c I'm DM'ing 6 or 7 games a week, however, my own stories get crossed and I start confusing which story is which. I could create my own world, but I'd like to spend my time creating stories/adventures. Thus, I'm starting to think that if I can learn one world, I'll just throw the various campaigns into that world at usually different locations. When I get there, however, I may find my problems are not solves.