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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wik" data-source="post: 6686696" data-attributes="member: 40177">TL;DR - Does a GM have an obligation to provide a "generic" campaign setting to first-time players?My girlfriend and I live in a small town about an hour's drive from Victoria BC, which is where we game on our regular monday nights.  I've been gaming with this group for years now, and this campaign isn't going to end anytime soon.However, small town life being what it is, we're beginning to find that we want some sort of weekly social activity to keep us involved and less hermit-like.  Someone else is running a board game night, so we floated the idea of a weekly D&D game, and there are nearly 20 "Applicants" (ie, people that are interested in at least seeing what the game is like). I've spent a few hours putting together ideas for a campaign.  I want it attached to my current world, but in a different region, and so decided to develop the "Caliphate of the Seven Sands", a sort of arabic/carthage combination with a touch of Persia thrown in for good measure.  And I made a really cool draft of the setting - genies, elemental-touched genasi nobles, elemental cults, dark and brooding versions of the normally nice campaign gods, rampaging gnoll tribes, and scheming rakshasa.It sounded really cool, until I got to thinking.  Of the twenty-ish players that are interested, only about a quarter have ever actually played.  When we get a table running, at least half of the players will be complete newbies, or really close.  The setting I have dreamed up is pretty high-concept and original, and doesn't really deal with a lot of the "core" conceits of a standard D&D setting.  Undead and Goblins are basically non-existant.  Dragons are found in only small doses.  It's an arabian/african vibe instead of european.  And so on.  Should I maybe drop this idea and present something more "standard" D&D to these players?  Something more Forgotten Realms or Lord of the Rings?  After all, if this is their only exposure and they walk away after only a few sessions (something I'm sure will happen with a few), they could have the impression that what D&D is "about" is african/arabic themes, sword-and-sandal type stuff, as opposed to the dungeon crawls we all know and love.How "original" should you be when presenting the game to primarily new players?  Will the game suffer if you go "too" original for first timers?</blockquote>

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