The Most Creative TTRPG Settings and Milieus

When I bought this back in 90 something as as high school kids I was inspired. I mean if this game could get published I could definitely be a game designer.
I used to collect "Example" books. Most were "Because you can, doesn't mean you should..." for this exact reason. Dream Park and Riechstar are the ones that come to mind most.

Other Suns was fairly novel. An update would be fascinating. Jorune. Tales of Gargethir. Battle Born was a nifty twist. Swordbearer - though my memory is a little ragged on why I thought so. Providence.
 

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IMHO, Symbaroum's biggest sin for me is that it hides some pretty major game lore in adventure paths that feel a bit like novels that the creator may have wanted to write. The primary AP is basically the metaplot of the setting. Regardless of how creative the setting may be, I don't necessarily like APs like that or when setting designers do this sort of thing. But I also generally prefer settings that are created with intentional space for gaming groups to come up with their own answers to setting mysteries and questions.

Oh yeah, they wrote a setting to write their epic novel Adventure in and then published it.

I think there's enough interesting stuff in the core book + GMs guide that I could spend some time making a really good region/topic divided setting guide a la Stonetop Book 2. But I think I'd need to do that for it to be gamable for me.
 

I had to Google that one. That is definitely something.
Gaseous spiritual beings working for death is wild.

I'm also particularly a fan of them including the Olivia Hill rule in the beginning:

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What problem? that people get offended and don't buy the game/product? I think that's the designer's intent.
People today often do much worse than "not buy a product."

Look, they can do whatever they want, but I would rather see positive statements of inclusion and joy than picking fights that are inevitably going to feed the trolls and encourage them to brigade and review bomb.
 

What problem? that people get offended and don't buy the game/product? I think that's the designer's intent.

If someone did the same thing, but replaced "fascist" with any variant of "inclusive", would you think it was interesting, intelligent, or (most on topic to the thread) creative? I wouldn't. YMMV.

The one thing that I will give it credit for is including the Creative Commons bit. Thst means there's a chance it will get picked up as a meme and repeated. And standing out as a game developer is really hard. But that's creativity in the field of personal marketing - zero correlation to creativity in fantasy, gaming, or design.
 

Providence.
There's a blast from the past. I had totally forgotten about this game. I played it once at a con, bought the rules, then never touched it again. It was definitely novel, though.

Less novel but still innovative in its way at the time was Earthdawn. That game basically mad all the D&Dism make sense within the context of the setting, and it worked great. It was paired with one of the all time 90s-est 90s systems, of course, but back then we all loved esoteric dice pools and probabilistic nonsense.
 

Let me put forth X-crawl. System is basically 3.5 D&D.

Setting is:

It's Earth where Roman culture never fell, and Christianity remains an underground cult. America is run by Ronald Reagan, who takes advice from a magical, intelligent short sword.

The main event for the 'bread and circuses' is X-Crawl, or televised dungeon crawling that mixes in adventuring with WWE style theatrics. You can be a babyface or a heel - and that affects play. Another cool idea: all flaming weapons are made only by one company, thundering another, etc - so getting a sponsorship to get enchants is a thing.

You can develop special actions, like being able to shape your Wall of Fire to read 'We Love You Detroit!'.

Sadly, I'd moved before my friends started a campaign of it, so I only know it second-hand, but I definitely remember the tales of the Stunning Scotsman and his being able to successfully grapple a hydra. Briefly.
 

IMHO, Symbaroum's biggest sin for me is that it hides some pretty major game lore in adventure paths that feel a bit like novels that the creator may have wanted to write. The primary AP is basically the metaplot of the setting. Regardless of how creative the setting may be, I don't necessarily like APs like that or when setting designers do this sort of thing. But I also generally prefer settings that are created with intentional space for gaming groups to come up with their own answers to setting mysteries and questions.
Back in the early 00s, the same people who are making Symbaroum made a Swedish game that's sort of a cousin to Mutant Year Zero called Mutant: Undergångens Arvtagare (Mutant: Heirs of the Apocalypse) that used a similar model, with a series of geographical sourcebooks combined with an adventure path that would eventually reveal some major things about the setting and make some pretty big changes. While I'm generally against metaplot, I don't really have a problem with this kind of thing, but one should be aware that it means that the game/setting is essentially built around this one campaign. In this sense, it is sort of like a Bioware-style CRPG, like Dragon Age or Mass Effect. Once it's done, it's time to look around for something else to play.

This is unlike "traditional" adventure paths like Paizo does, or big campaign adventures like Wizards does, who generally are either about eliminating a threat to the status quo or at best making changes to a highly limited region. This is a necessity, because the companies in question intend to keep making stuff for those games/settings forever.

I think it's cool that the market has room for both types of campaign adventures, and they have different strengths and weaknesses. Big change campaigns let players actually have an impact on the world, but then leave it behind. Status quo defense/restoration let you come back to the world with new PCs who get to do something different, but whatever the first group did has probably been forgotten.

I also take some exception to the use of the term "metaplot" here. My understanding of metaplot is that it's something that happens outside the game. Something like "Tethyr used to be torn by civil war between a number of factions following the murder of the royal family about 20 years ago, but now the rightful heir has returned and united the country in a novel trilogy." If it's a thing the PCs do in their adventures, that's just plot.
 

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