The best way for published campaigns to come out.

[gambler1650]

Couldn't quite decide on a title for this topic, but the musings I'll go over here came up during a debate about Engel which also brought up the Scarred Lands campaign setting. The upshot is, Engel seems to be taking some heat for only giving the campaign setting, the 'races' and some broad brushstrokes for the verious opposition groups and monsters (along with the rather shoddy way the D20 rules set is incorporated - a perception I wholeheartedly agree with).

While completely different in theme, the two are also completely different in how they present the world to the players:

Scarred Lands: Present the creatures first. (Creature Collection 1 and 2) Then present the gods and Titans and the divine aspects of the world (The Divine and the Defeated). Then present the crunchy bits for spellcasters of all kinds (Relics and Rituals). Then start fleshing out the actual political and geographical elements with a Gazetteer, followed by the Campaign Setting for Ghelspad and a slew of region/city supplements. Oh, and then put the races and their differences from standard AD&D in the DM Screen. Finally produce an adventure or two on the setting. In other words, you get a bottom up approach where the first supplements are really more useful to the mix and match DM who wants some new ideas for a standard AD&D world.

Engel: Present the world first, along with the races, special rules, etc. In effect what you get is kind of a gazetteer of the entire setting. Most of it is designed to give the feel of the campaign world, with enough crunchy bits to get started. Then present the Monster Book (Creatures of the Dreamseed) and other supplements (ordering unknown, but a 'class' book seems forthcoming next).

Most campaigns follow Engel's method, and yet most people's complaints about Engel seem to be based around the fact that supplements will be needed to understand the world. I actually disagree, I think just enough is given to create a campaign in the specific area of the world that is described. Sure, there're only two creatures listed, but the world is really more about the interactions of the Engel (Angels) and the rest of European society. Oddly, at least to me, some of the same people stated that the Scarred Lands Campaign Setting (Ghelspad) was all they needed to play a Scarred Lands game. No monster stats. No Scarred Lands specific spell or artifact descriptions. No real description of the churches of the deities. Now, you could buy adventures... (which only recently started appearing unless you bought one of the city/area sourcebooks - which usually have at least one pretty well detailed adventure within them, a very nice touch but then you're not relying just on the Campaign Setting). But even the actual adventure modules reference creatures and spells and items that are found only in Scarred Lands specific books. The creatures you can get away with since stats are included.. of course you won't know what they look like or how they act... But the spells and items are merely marked with an asterisk that says you can find the info in Relics and Rituals.

Ok... I don't mean to rehash the argument over whether Engel is good or bad. My basic question is.. which of the two campaign setting production styles... Top down (Engel, Oriental Adventures, Forgotten Realms, Kalamar) or bottom up (Scarred Lands, Sun and Scale) is preferred? I guess Scarred Lands didn't bother me much simply because I started later in it, so much of it had already been produced, but personally I prefer the top down method. Not least because if the DM makes up stuff to fill in the blanks that is then proven different by future supplements the DM will have to choose to ignore the new stuff, or start over.

Robert Gamble

ps: I really do like Scarred Lands, in fact it's the campaign I'd start with if I ever get to DM, even if it wasn't produced in the order I'd wish.

 

[Reprisal]

Personally, I prefer a distinct top-down approach because the makeup of my campaigns are situated around NPCs and the interrelationships between themselves and the PCs that drive the engine of the story. If I don't have any relevant information pertaining to the nature of those NPCs' surroundings, then it makes my job doubly difficult. No, I prefer to get the political, cultural and economic information pertaining to a campaign world before any beastiaries hit the shelves. Monsters I can supply on my own, but if I have an NPC from (this area) in (this campaign setting) then I better know what's up with both of those variables, or the campaign will be weakened.

- Rep.

 

[rounser]

Definitely bottom-up.

More low level detail that makes the setting usable straight off the bat, ala City State of the Invincible Overlord and Keep on the Borderlands, less sprawling miles of nothing with some city names on a map.

 

[dren]

The best way for published campaigns to come out...actually I prefer for them to stay in the closet. Some land masses, bodies of water and secret socities just don't deserve the light of day.

 

[haiiro]

Top-down suits me better, at least if I plan to play the setting; if I'm just picking the books up for reading material/inspiration, I don't care which approach is used. The FRCS is a perfect top-down product: a ton of background and world info accompanied by enough crunch to add to that flavor material, good maps, adventure hooks, etc. With a book like this I can pick it up, read through it, and start a campaign. Any details I make up on my own that are later covered differently in worldbooks, etc., just stay as they are.

The bottom-up approach seems like a better way to slowly build up interest in the setting, but I find it sort of frustrating. Scarred Lands is the perfect example of this: reading the world material in the Creature Collection certainly piqued my interest, but I felt like trying to start a new campaign based on that material alone would be little different from firing up a homebrewed world. Rather than having later conflicts with small details being different in my verison and the published version, I'd run into large conflicts -- which are a bit harder to reconcile, IMO.

After a few months have gone by and more books have come out for a setting, which approach is used becomes sort of a moot point. But for an initial release strategy, I think top-down is much more practical.