Sell Me a Campaign Setting

[Klaus]

So, I'm currently involved in a group that's doing a Points of Light style campaign - we're based in a town and are doing minor tasks around it. None of us has much experience with campaign settings, but I'm really curious about using one. What are the advantages and disadvantages of using a campaign setting, and which one would you recommend? I'll note that reading the excerpts about Dark Sun have gotten me really curious about that one in particular, but I'm also interested in the others.

P.S. Please don't take this as an opportunity to flame others for their choice of campaign setting - I really am honestly looking for suggestions.

From what's available for 4e:

1 - Forgotten Realms: this is actually two settings in one. The continent of Faerun has the usual D&D tropes, no different than the implied Points of Light setting. The continent of Returned Abeir is more of a lawless land, where gods are virtually unknown and Primordials are revered. Dragons rule vasts swaths of land and are opposed by most of their former dragonborn slaves.

2 - Eberron: this is D&D mixed with Indiana Jones, King Kong, World War I's aftermath and widespread "magitech" (warforged, magical airships, long-distance "telegraph", etc). Very broad in scope, an adventure could easily begin in a small town, then jump to a tropical jungle, a demon-infested arctic temple and end in a metropolis with mile-high towers.

3 - Dark Sun: D&D in a post-apocalyptic, sun-scorched desert wasteland where slavery is the norm, metal is rare and water is the most precious commodity. Even the "points of light" aren't that bright, with the big city-states being ruled by immortal Sorcerer Kings.

 

[Dias Ex Machina]

Those are the only published WotC settings. I don't follow every publisher, but I do follow Goodman because I'm using Aereth (the setting from their DCCs.. it's 3E but I'm just using the fluff anyway), and they just released Amethyst to quite good overall reviews. Magic collides with Tech in a future Earth. It's intriguing enough to make me want, some days, to kill my players off and start something new

May I recommend that you kill your player characters and not your players because I don't want to be complicit in that.

 

[dragnsteph]

May I recommend that you kill your player characters and not your players because I don't want to be complicit in that.

I dunno, you haven't met my players

Really enjoying reading the setting, thanks for such a good product!

 

[Lhorgrim]

Published settings can be a time saver because the players can read about the world they are playing in and learn on their own time.

This allows more table time to be spent on the action, yet keeps everybody mostly on the same page about the details of the setting. The players know where the oceans and deserts are, and they will have an idea about the flavor of the big cities and usually where the different races have major enclaves.

As others have said, this can be a major time saver, but can also cause problems if the players resist the DM making changes. What if I want Evereska (a major Elf community in the Forgotten Realms) to be a Hobgoblin stronghold? Most Forgotten Realms elf players I've ever gamed with would have a stroke.

I usually suggest a homebrew because you can tailor it to your game and your players. Points of Light actually works well for this because you can start very small and then expand as your players adventure further from "home". In other words, build what you need as you need it. Most PCs wouldn't have more than a passing knowledge of the geography of a world in a PoL setting. "The sea is to the east, the frozen lands are to the north, there is a mountain range to the west, and another town far to the south."

One warning about homebrews, don't get so detailed over time that a new player can't easily jump into your world. I once sat in with a group in a homebrew that had several different human races/ethnic groups, each with their own language, in addition to the standard non-human races and a large detailed map with many defined nations. I couldn't learn the setting fast enough to get "into" the game and I drifted away. I'm not saying not to have those details in your game, but it is helpful to be able to condense them to a player info sheet that a new player can easily reference until they get up to speed.

 

[eamon]

I like using a setting because it helps maintain consistency and can give players the feeling that the world they're exploring is really "there" and not just suddenly popping into existence as needed.

In 3.5, we found Eberron to be absolutely brilliant; currently, I think the settings differ less than they used to and we use it more out of momentum than anything else. If you want a setting, which one depends on the story you want to tell...

I don't actually think it's really important to pick a setting with any crunch; so it's perfectly OK to take any old setting from any other game or edition - you don't really need the rules framework much.

It's definitely easier to run a setting when the DM knows more about it than the players. One trick I've used when playing in someone else's Eberron game was to declare my out-of-character Eberron knowledge to be the myths the character believed in in-game - permitting honest use of that lore to an extent but not actually requiring the DM's version to be consistent with it. But it's definitely easier if you don't need those kind of tricks...