Setting Design: As Written, GM Homebrew, or Group Collaboration?

[MintRabbit]

I'm curious about people's experiences or preferences regarding the setting they choose to play in when they sit down to start a game.

Do you usually use the book's setting and tweak it to your liking?
Do you create your own setting whole-cloth, on your own, and present it to your players?
Does your table create a setting / lore together and make it a collaborative exercise?

Do you do this for campaigns? One-shots? Short sessions?
Why do you do what you do? And when you might consider world-building vs using what's already there?

 

[aco175]

I mostly just play D&D and there are several published worlds already that I can buy or find everything I need for them online. While I used to make campaigns 20+ years ago, I find it easier to just use Forgotten Realms (FR) and modify it for my little piece of that world that I am using. I like that there is a lot of history and things like plot and maps and such that I can use. I do not let it fully dictate what I want to use though. For example, I remade the town of Phandalin as a larger town for the campaign after the Lost Mines box set campaign. I have the town growing and new businesses and walls are being constructed. This allowed me to make new adventures in and around town that are not part of the published setting.

I find that mostly using a published world saves time and effort that I can use to make smaller things like NPCs and dungeons. If I need a church conflict or bad guy organization I can find one that works. I even have no problem taking old information from an earlier edition of D&D and using it today. The players do not care or know what I am doing and are not as invested in the game as I am. It is like creating a world primer and handing it to players to read and expecting them to be as excited as you are. You will just be disappointed. There may also be some hubris in me thinking that I can make a world as good as the published worlds who have teams making them.

I do not want to disparage you from making a world which is fun and rewarding to develop as a personal enjoyment. Just understand that your players will not care as much at the work you put in making all these new gods or changes to the way magic works.

 

[Reynard]

Maybe it is because I grew up on Star Wars and He-Man, but I generally do pretty shallow worldbuilding -- just enough to establish the main themes of the world -- and then let players define more of the world as they create characters, and then let the world build during play. While there are the rare settings I really like and will read lore about (Eberron, Earthdawn) I generally do not care for "deep lore" and don't find incorporating it into games I run to be enjoyable.

 

[Laurefindel]

I like homebrewing campaign settings, but most of them never see play. They are mostly thought exercises really, or could be considered a hobby of its own.

Otherwise I usually play in a tweaked Forgotten Realms. My current campaigns are in a slightly reflavoured Eberron and a canon-ish Star Wars Mando-verse era. I play I campaigns from a DM who play settings pretty much as is as far as I can tell (Rokugan and Aliens) and there are a few settings out there I’d like to try as well.

I never played in or participated in a collaborative setting myself.

 

[Voadam]

I used to use full published settings fairly straight, originally Greyhawk then Ravenloft straight out of the boxed sets. For the last 20 or so years I have been doing a mashup homebrew setting for my various campaigns that uses pieces I like from a number of settings but started as a collaboratively built setting when Ptolus was just the 3.0 Banewarrens module.

 

[MintRabbit]

I think I understand what you say when you are talking about creating a world primer that the characters don't read anyways. I'm not a D&D person but what I appreciate about World of Darkness is that it uses real-life cities, so if you're setting it in a place that all the players have lived in or been to (or are just familiar with due to popular media) it really cuts down on explanations.

My experiences in collaborative settings have usually been through a city-building or world-building game that we play beforehand, such as i'm sorry did you say street magic, although some of the games we've played have included a world-building phase. I like these options because it allows the players to highlight what's going to be interesting for them, so I know what to include in a plothook that's going to guarantee interest.

 

[Scott Christian]

For games I have never run, I like to use their setting. I assume that the rules the game designers chose, reflect the lore and world they want GMs to create. Even for D&D, in which I have created adventures and sandboxes, I still adhere to most of the already published lore. (I may tweak a creature or take liberty with a geographic location, but for the most part it stays as it was written.)

 

[Crimson Longinus]

As a GM, I prefer to build my own settings. It is a big part of the fun for me, and my campaign ideas often arise from my setting ideas.

Though for some strange reason, this tends to apply only to fantasy, for scifi I am more likely to use an established setting, and specially either Star Trek, Warhammer 40K or perhaps Star Wars. Though these days I like all of these three less than I used to. I guess we have grown apart...

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

Depends on the game and the genre. The only set-in-stone thing for me is with superhero games, those are always a lightly sketched homebrew setting where more details emerge during play, usually driven by player interests and actions. I'll sometimes crib elements from game settings like individual M&M or Champions characters, but they usually get modified heavily to suit. Can't stand the idea of playing in a published comic setting like Marvel or DC, or even a faux-comic setting like Sentinels (which, thankfully, is not really tied to the game mechanics there). Past experiences with arguments about canon have left me permanently uninterested in that sort of thing.

 

[Endie]

I've got a campaign world that I've been running, off and on, since 1986. I'll occasionally steal adventures or locations from published stuff, however, and insert it under some greater or lesser degree of disguise.