Settings - "empty" vs richly detailed locations

[pemerton]

Some interesting stuff about settings was posted on the "Was TSR right to publish so much?" thread:

People like to make stupid statements that game designers are frustrated fiction writers

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WotC seems to lack the institutional talent to bring original, tightly integrated game settings out.

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I have the feeling that they don't take settings that seriously

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Certainly, 4e represents system innovations that could never be achieved in TSR's culture. It's awesome stuff. Same with 3e. But 3e also featured the dawn of an empty aesthetic over the idea that D&D was something to be embedded in a definable world -- and ironically, it did this by providing enough of a sketch (a few gods, vague history) to let DMs fake it, instead of guiding them to create worlds as a core part of the game.

WOTC isn't really directing D&D towards that kind of gamer though. The kind of gamer that obsessively reads and rereads every piece of material about a given setting, spends hours and hours discussing the setting and whatnot. WOTC doesn't seem to be directed towards that level of gamer. They've more focused on the casual gamer, who really isn't all that interested in reams and reams of setting material. All the casual gamer wants is enought to "fake it" to borrow your phrase.

I don't think I agree with this "casual gamer"/"faking it" idea.

I think that some elements of the 4e core setting are actually part of the system innovations - the core mythology, and some of the historical material built up around it, in books like The Plane Above, Demonomicon and Underdark, suggests situations that a GM can take into his/her game and get almost guaranteed player buy in without the need to railroad, but equally without the need to build a sandbox campaign setting. I haven't seen D&D world material really try to support this sort of play before (but there is a fair bit of stuff from 2nd ed AD&D and 3E that I don't know).

Some examples of what I have in mind: Erathis's game of making, and the need to incorporate even evil forms of creation, which makes it very easy to set up situations that will engage a player who is interested in themes of law, civilisation or restoring heaven's authority. Or the conflict between The Raven Queen, Orcus and Vecna, which makes every undead encounter have richer tie-ins to the theme's of the game, plus sets up the possiblity of Vecna-worshippers using the secret of the Raven Queen's name as some sort of bargaining chip - again, a situation that is likely to draw in a wide range of players, from those playing traditional paladins to those playing wizards questing after arcane lore.

I see this not so much as "faking it", but as setting used as a background to drive play, rather than a location for play to occur in. (I have lots of locations readily available from years of hoarding RPG material.)

Other bits of the 4e world books are what I associate with more traditional D&D settings - eg all the locations in The Plane Below, and the Outer Isles in The Plane Above. I personally don't like this stuff as much, because it tends not to offer the same easy buy in as the mythological/historical stuff, and seems to depend more on the players taking the GM's lead as to what they should care about. Do those who are looking for a setting as a location to play in agree that this stuff is "empty" or "faking it" compared to past D&D worlds?

 

[S'mon]

I think the 4e 'setting' is much more evocative than previous work. It's very much feelings/sentiment over facts/detail. I think it's a good approach; however far too little of the wonderful stuff which appeared in "Worlds & Monsters" actually made it into the original core D&D books; the Monster Manual in particular is terribly lacking, as is the DMG setting-info stuff.

3e core was hideously weak on setting & theme; really very very bad. I didn't think much of 2e either, you could buy a setting to fit your desired theme but some like Swords & Sorcery were poorly covered, partly due to the draconian Ethics Code.

I think core 1e, OD&D, B/X and BECMI all presented strong, though all very varying, themes in their core rules books.

 

[Doug McCrae]

The Raven Queen seems far and away the coolest god from the PHB selection. A new player in my 4e game, a somewhat goth-y girl, picked the RQ for her paladin and was interested in the Orcus aspect. Afaics it doesn't actually spell out in the PHB entry that the RQ hates undead, only that she has a conflict with Orcus, but it seems reasonable that a god of fate, opposed to any attempt to cheat death, would be anti-undead.

And that completely worked as a hook to draw the player in, something I'd not anticipated at all when setting up the game. I had undead-laden crypts beneath the town but I thought I had no strong push to get the players to go there until much later. However in play the players sought out the crypts as soon as they heard about them, partly because of the RQ bit.

 

[ExploderWizard]

When the rules of the game become so ever-changing it's easy to see why a company wouldn't want to sink too many resources into rules integrated settings.

Forgotten Realms suffered heavily from trying to "keep up" with rules changes by matching fluff. I still really like my grey box but it jumped the shark with all the avatar stuff and the move to 2E and beyond.

Worlds with cultures and distinctive flavor largely independent of the rules are the way to go. That way a change in game system or even edition doesn't have to mean the end of the world as you know it (literally).

 

[Renshai]

One of my biggest issues with 4E has been lack of detailed information for game settings. When I buy a setting, I'd much rather a very focused attention to detail on areas over a broad overview that doesn't give me any depth. I simply don't have the time time to worldbuild and create NPCs, map towns and do things like this anymore. When I purchase a setting , I expect those kinds of things. Sadly WotC failed me in this regard. Dark Sun seems better in that the setting is more focused by design.

By biggest issue was with the Forgotten Realms setting though. I could understand (even if I didn't like) the changes the made, but suddenly here I am, my 20 year collection of maps and sourcebooks are outdated because now 100 years has passed in campaign time. What I can't understand is not giving me at least some focused area where the setting gets more detail..

Just my two cents.

 

[DragonLancer]

I much prefer to have a fully fleshed out and detailed setting. That's the stuff that is going to make me pick up a campaign setting and decide if it's what I want. I like to have a setting spelled out for me, and the secrets explained. I can always change that myself to what I want, but for time and interest the more detailed the better.

 

[Lanefan]

I much prefer to have a fully fleshed out and detailed setting. That's the stuff that is going to make me pick up a campaign setting and decide if it's what I want. I like to have a setting spelled out for me, and the secrets explained. I can always change that myself to what I want, but for time and interest the more detailed the better.

Where I look for almost the opposite: a vague idea of what makes the setting tick, some history that I can mine for stories, and lots of blank areas on the map that I can put my own gype in.

1e Forgotten Realms was good for this. By the time the 3e version came out they'd filled in far too many of the blank areas for my taste. I haven't seen the 4e version yet.

Lanefan

 

[Stormonu]

I do love richly detailed game worlds; L5R's Rokugan is one of my favorite.

However, when it comes to D&D, I prefer to have at best a skeleton, and then dress it up with whatever strikes my fancy. D&D's "kitchen sink" approach to fantasy gaming is a toolbox approach that has always favored groups making it their own. If the base D&D game got as detailed as other games - such as 7th sea - I think it would suffer. I often pick D&D for the fact it isn't too strongly tied to one world and it is fairly easy to come up with your own homebrewed world.

I like that the base rules for 3E & 4E sets down a very slim introduction to a fantasy world that you can take and run with. It gives you some pre-constructed insights you can use to base or expand with your own stuff, but at the same time doesn't force you use it or tie it to the mechanics very strongly.

Worlds like FR, Eberron and Dark Sun can then be used to add to or build on the base that already exists, giving much more detail if you want it. The game worlds are additive, almost exception based.

The other direction, with games like L5R or 7th sea, would be much more difficult to use without using the world built into the rule system. It would be very difficult to repurpose the mechanics from these two games and use in say, Dark Sun.

 

[IronWolf]

I tend to favor detailed settings. A lot of my games in the past have taken place in the Forgotten Realms and even with all of the details in that setting I can still easily find places to drop my campaigns in and still have lots of background details as I need them.

As others have said, if I feel the need to change a detail I can do so.

 

[pemerton]

Afaics it doesn't actually spell out in the PHB entry that the RQ hates undead, only that she has a conflict with Orcus, but it seems reasonable that a god of fate, opposed to any attempt to cheat death, would be anti-undead.

And that completely worked as a hook to draw the player in, something I'd not anticipated at all when setting up the game.

That's just the sort of thing I was thinking of - stuff that (given the sorts of interests players of a fantasy RPG tend to have) will motivate the players without needing to railroad them.

One of my biggest issues with 4E has been lack of detailed information for game settings. When I buy a setting, I'd much rather a very focused attention to detail on areas over a broad overview that doesn't give me any depth.

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Just my two cents.

I'm treating this as a vote for "empty" and "faking it". It fits with my impression of the 4e FR stuff - from the point of view of someone who's looking for player-hooking thematic stuff like the core mythology it seems a bit lacklustre, and from the point of view for someone who's looking for a detailed location to set their game in, it seems pretty sparse. I can't comment on the 4e Eberron stuff. I've just picked up my copies of 4e Darksun, and it looks like it might be a bit richer in detail and in theme than 4e FR.