D&D 5E Purely Generic Setting?

[halfling rogue]

I get the appeal of placing written adventures/modules in an existing campaign world like FR or Greyhawk. And I understand that they can always be hacked to be plugged in to another setting. But is there (and perhaps we can ponder, will there be) adventures/modules created with a purely generic setting in mind? I mean, adventures created with no ties to any existing world but for the purpose of giving the DM the freedom to plug it into any world (or no world) at all. I could envision an adventure written in such a way as to leave things like the names of villages, towns, geographic locations, etc. Give it a tag (ie. Villiage A, etc) or leave a blank line in the actual adventure to be filled in by the DM. Something that can be easily tailored to each table.

If something like this exists already I admit my ignorance. It would just seem like a win/win situation for the most part. Purely generic modules can work for both a homebrewed world and for existing worlds.

 

[Umbran]

I don't recall every seeing an adventure written some completely generically that they only name things in terms of "Village A".

I've seen them written with names that aren't part of the canon of any major published setting, and you'd have to replace the names yourself.

And you cannot leave blanks, as that loses information. Imagine a paragraph describing the political arrangements between two towns, but having *all* the town names replaced by blanks, so you can't tell which is being referred to!

 

[jrowland]

I get the appeal of placing written adventures/modules in an existing campaign world like FR or Greyhawk. And I understand that they can always be hacked to be plugged in to another setting. But is there (and perhaps we can ponder, will there be) adventures/modules created with a purely generic setting in mind? I mean, adventures created with no ties to any existing world but for the purpose of giving the DM the freedom to plug it into any world (or no world) at all. I could envision an adventure written in such a way as to leave things like the names of villages, towns, geographic locations, etc. Give it a tag (ie. Villiage A, etc) or leave a blank line in the actual adventure to be filled in by the DM. Something that can be easily tailored to each table.

If something like this exists already I admit my ignorance. It would just seem like a win/win situation for the most part. Purely generic modules can work for both a homebrewed world and for existing worlds.

At first I thought the Topic was "Purely Geriatric Setting"...but I digress.

I think a purely generic setting would be a hard sell. Its hard to feel inspired to finish reading, let alone running, generic boilerplate.

READ ALOUD:
"You have arrived at THE VILLAGE in pursuit of THE BIG BAD EVIL GUY. There are few buildings of note: a BLACKSMITH, a TAVERN, and an INN, as well as cottages for the villagers. The most Noteworthy structure, however, is the large TEMPLE TO GOD OF AGRICULTURE that dominates the village like an overlord."

DM NOTES:
THE VILLAGE lies at the crossroads of A MAJOR TRADE ROAD TO A CITY and a SMALLER ROAD TO ELVEN FOREST...blah blah.

 

[Jer]

I think a purely generic setting would be a hard sell. Its hard to feel inspired to finish reading, let alone running, generic boilerplate.

READ ALOUD:
"You have arrived at THE VILLAGE in pursuit of THE BIG BAD EVIL GUY. There are few buildings of note: a BLACKSMITH, a TAVERN, and an INN, as well as cottages for the villagers. The most Noteworthy structure, however, is the large TEMPLE TO GOD OF AGRICULTURE that dominates the village like an overlord."

DM NOTES:
THE VILLAGE lies at the crossroads of A MAJOR TRADE ROAD TO A CITY and a SMALLER ROAD TO ELVEN FOREST...blah blah.

Okay, I may not approve of stacks of adventures written this way, but I'd buy one. Because that is hilarious. I almost feel like writing "The GENERIC Adventure" in exactly that tone now. The only trouble would be getting my players to go along with the gag for more than about 10 minutes...

That said - generic settings exist. Pretty much most of the 3rd party d20 vendors set their adventures in a generic setting. They gave names to things, but they generally make the setting generic enough that you can scrape the names off and plop the adventure down in your own campaign.

Many of the adventures that TSR/Wizards have produced that were explicitly set in a campaign world are actually pretty generic setting-wise as well. You don't have to run the Slavelord series on the Wild Coast and the Pomarj. You don't have to run "Isle of Dread" in the Thanegioth Archipelago. And you don't have to run "Keep on the Shadowfell" in the Nentir Vale. Sure there's a setting there, but it's pretty easy to file off the serial numbers and set it anywhere.

Come to think of it - all of the early 3rd edition adventures produced by Wizards were pretty close to a "generic setting" in themselves. Ostensibly Greyhawk was the default setting, I guess, but I don't recall "Sunless Citadel" or "Forge of Fury" or "Heart of Nightfang Spire" being tied to particular locations in Greyhawk. You could set them anywhere. And we did (I ran all three in Mystara, and it was easy enough to do because none of them had any setting ties).

There are some adventures that are strongly tied to the politics/factions/whatever of a setting. It would be hard for me to think of how I'd run The Great Modron March anywhere but the Great Ring, for example. Dark Sun adventures are pretty much tied to Athas without a lot of work. But I'm thinking most of the adventures on my shelves are almost setting neutral, even the ones with a setting logo on them.

 

[Wrathamon]

The 4e setting was pretty much showing how you could use "Classic" D&D centerpieces to create a new campaign world. I don't feel any adventure is purely stuck in a campaign world. Some might be a bit harder to modify then others but not sure if they are really that hard. It's mostly changing names and descriptions.

I could see a GENERIC Line of products with a White cover that just says GENERIC on it produced by a 3rd party that might have a nice little run till the gag got old.

 

[Remathilis]

I get the appeal of placing written adventures/modules in an existing campaign world like FR or Greyhawk. And I understand that they can always be hacked to be plugged in to another setting. But is there (and perhaps we can ponder, will there be) adventures/modules created with a purely generic setting in mind? I mean, adventures created with no ties to any existing world but for the purpose of giving the DM the freedom to plug it into any world (or no world) at all. I could envision an adventure written in such a way as to leave things like the names of villages, towns, geographic locations, etc. Give it a tag (ie. Villiage A, etc) or leave a blank line in the actual adventure to be filled in by the DM. Something that can be easily tailored to each table.

If something like this exists already I admit my ignorance. It would just seem like a win/win situation for the most part. Purely generic modules can work for both a homebrewed world and for existing worlds.

First, that'd be incredibly limiting. It might work if the module was centered in a single location, but the moment you add travel, you start fleshing out the map. So if you had a single dungeon or a single town, it might work, but unless you aim for the vague "days travel" idea, you end up putting SOMETHING in there.

Second, how generic IS generic? Do we get named NPCs (Mayor Barlin, Aleena the Cleric), do we get named Villians? (Lareth, Bargle) what do we do about churches and cults? (The infamous Temple of Evil Chaos from the Keep, I'd wager). What about backstory? Why is there an ancient temple in the woods? Who is Lord Strahd and why did he invite me to his castle? A module isn't just a map and stat-blocks.

Third, What generic are we talking about? I guess we could say "Everything in the Holy Trilogy (PH/MM/DMG) is generic, except its not. A generic adventure where a red dragon and his orc minions attack a nearby village doesn't work in Dragonlance (no orcs), Ravenloft (no dragons), Planescape (unless its a village on Carceri), etc, etc. In fact, I wager that nearly any adventure you pitch wouldn't work on at least one published D&D setting, making "any setting" an impossible dream.

Now, I have said before that their might be a goodly market for ICONIC adventures (that is, adventures that hew very close to the cliche: a haunted castle, an orcish dungeon, a drow fortress, or a dragon's mountain lair) that doesn't fits the generic tropes of D&D, but still have some base assumptions about them. THAT I could see.

"Town A" adventures? that seems like a paint by numbers kit. I buy modules to have the heavy lifting done for me.

 

[Minigiant]

Going very generic would be a funny gag for a setting or adventure.

"Where in Human Kingdom could Lord Vampire be hiding since Castle Bad is destroyed?
Capital City?
Fishing Village?
Farming Town?
Haunted Forest?
The Mountain?
The Desert? No no. Pharaoh Mummy is there.
Better ask the Mayor."

 

[Sacrosanct]

I think you'll see a lot of generic settings with 3PP adventures. Barring that, I think we'll see things similar to AD&D where technically an adventure might have been part of Greyhawk, but was generic enough that you could dump them into any campaign world you want.

 

[Giltonio_Santos]

The Torchbearer RPG has a pretty generic setting in it. Not an adventure, but a generic setting and a lot of good advice about how to build interesting adventures for that generic setting. In fact, the game kind of expects you to "fill in the blanks", but it's generic enough to me. Not exactly what you're looking for, but worth taking a look, I believe.

 

[Hand of Evil]

with 3rd party source material, I think you will see something, this can be easily explained by using the planes, aka Ravenloft.