D&D General Settings with Story

[Hussar]

I don't like my campaigns to be about secret princesses and Chosen Ones and stuff, so there's no temptation to try to replay the story of Star Wars or anything like that. I like to keep my campaigns as sand-boxy as possible, so that the players have a lot of control over where it winds up going, and I have plenty of plot threads out there that have never been unraveled. Right now, I am using Exandria as a setting but I stay well away from any of the major plot points in Critical Role.

I get the OP's point re. Star Wars vs. Star Trek. Star Trek was written to be episodic, which naturally lends itself to a more expansive setting, and that would naturally give more freedom to someone else playing in it. Star Wars has always been focused on long-form stories, and one central family story (though as a fan of the comic while growing up, the universe feels a lot broader than what you see in the films and TV shows). It's no secret that Star Wars has been a bit constrained by the Skywalker saga. Yet I think Andor pretty definitively proved that there are other rich stories that can be set in that universe.

See I love Andor. Fantastic show and I’m so looking forward to the next season. Heck I like Mandalorian and I didn’t hate Book of Boba Fett.

But I have zero interest in a game campaign based on any of them. Ultimately, Andor doesn’t really matter to the setting. We know how it will end.

Heck we know exactly how Andor’s story ends. And Mon Mothma. And Kenobi’s. And so on.

These are fun to watch, but not to game. For me anyway. There’s no real point in playing a game when you know exactly how it’s going to end before you even start.

It’s why I lost all interest in the new Dragonlance module. Who cares? All the interesting stuff that actually resolves the issues in the setting happens somewhere else. Nothing you do in the module makes the slightest difference.

No thanks.

 

[Umbran]

I've written up plenty of characters in this system. I don't find it hard or unsatisfying. I do find it intriguing.

Hooray for you, then. Have a good time with it.

 

[pemerton]

Hooray for you, then. Have a good time with it.

No need to be rude. You asserted that the character building system was egregiously unsatisfying. I don't agree that it's an unsatisfying system. It's a very good system, I think, for writing up characters painted in broad and bright brushstrokes, with the inherent thematic trajectory of their milestones.

The absence of a points-based or "one from list A, one from list B" sub-system is in my view a virtue of the system. There's no need to try and fit the character concept into a pre-given mould.

For me, the main issue with the system - which I think betrays its supers origins - is that the PCs it delivers up tend to be able to sport bigger dice pools in physical conflicts than emotional or social ones.