Well my gaming theory has been used and abused.

[Gundark]

Well I thought I had found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, the holy grail of gaming. We were playing Spycraft, and at the campaigns start we sat down and hammered out the details of the world. It was something that we all created and we all were satisfied with the result. It was such a good xp that I thought it would be a great idea to decide as a group what settings we play and any house rules of that setting. Well after playing Spycradt for awhile the D&D bug has bitten again and we decided to put the Spycraft game on hold and play D&D. So we all sat down and decided to talk about the setting we wanted to play in. I threw out the Iron Kingdoms, but it was shot down, another player put out Dawnforge but it was shot down as well, finally Midnight was suggested. The group is willing to play a few sessions to try it out. However the group is devided between those who are really fired up over the setting and those who are not. And while I think it's a good idea to give the setting a "test drive" (the setting is so critically acclamed), part of me says why waste the time as I know that the setting probably won't fly.

So I'm feeling frustrated and stuck. I want to play the game that we all want to play, it just seems that we can't seem to agree on a setting. I gave the members of the group a say and it has come back to bite me. Before as the groups DM I would say "lets play game/setting X" and the group would be like "kay cool let's go". It might not have been their first chocie but they just wanted to play. Since opening the choice of setting to discussion it seems that we'll never really get a setting.

Help/advice.

 

[Herobizkit]

My best advice would be to pick one system that you can apply more or less equally to any setting and extrapolate a homebrew world from there. Then, figure out what kind of story elements people are looking for in their settings of choice, and collectively come up with a mutual agreement of game reality.

For example, in one campaign I ran I used d20 rules exclusively. One guy wanted a futuristic sci-fi extravanga complete with mechs, lasers and computers; my second player wanted a grim-n-gritty detective kind of story; my third player wanted to stick to more "traditional" fantasy.

So, I took d20 core, d20 Modern, d20 Future and d20 Urban Arcana and I came up with a really great scenario. The game started in Modern; the PCs were recruited by a group of Shadow Hunters who were hunting D&D monsters cloaked as regular people and animals (this is the core Urban Arcana setting). Once they discovered the ties to the Shadow Realm, I had them flitting in and out of the traditional D&D world at random (this makes for awesome lazy DMing; just plug and play any d20 fantasy module and away you go). This happened back and forth until it was revealed that neither "reality" was real; both were inside a computer program Matrix-style and their REAL personas were aboard a starship in space whose computers had developed a homicidal AI. To stop it, they donned transforming power armor (Cyclones from the Robotech saga), BFG's, and drove through the mile-long ship shooting any kind of resistance (and having an awesome bike duel with vibro-lances) until they came across a ginat scorpion-shaped mecha, where they used their mini-missiles to obliterate it and save the day. Yay!

Everyone got a piece of the action they were looking for, everyone "chipped in" for campaign ideas based on their character concepts, and by the end, a great time was had by all. Give it a go, and see what kind of craziness your group can create.

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

I'd just pick something and say you're going to run a "mini-campaign," so there's plenty of room/time to play in other interesting settings as well.

Personally, I'm currently excited about starting a new campaign in Yggsburgh (the setting for the Castle Zagyg series).

 

[WayneLigon]

I sympathize. Every single time I've ever tried to use a truly democratic method to figure out what to play, it's resulted in me or someone else saying 'Here's what we're doing' because if I have five people, I get five different answers.

 

[Nebulous]

My best advice would be to pick one system that you can apply more or less equally to any setting and extrapolate a homebrew world from there. Then, figure out what kind of story elements people are looking for in their settings of choice, and collectively come up with a mutual agreement of game reality.

For example, in one campaign I ran I used d20 rules exclusively. One guy wanted a futuristic sci-fi extravanga complete with mechs, lasers and computers; my second player wanted a grim-n-gritty detective kind of story; my third player wanted to stick to more "traditional" fantasy.

So, I took d20 core, d20 Modern, d20 Future and d20 Urban Arcana and I came up with a really great scenario. The game started in Modern; the PCs were recruited by a group of Shadow Hunters who were hunting D&D monsters cloaked as regular people and animals (this is the core Urban Arcana setting). Once they discovered the ties to the Shadow Realm, I had them flitting in and out of the traditional D&D world at random (this makes for awesome lazy DMing; just plug and play any d20 fantasy module and away you go). This happened back and forth until it was revealed that neither "reality" was real; both were inside a computer program Matrix-style and their REAL personas were aboard a starship in space whose computers had developed a homicidal AI. To stop it, they donned transforming power armor (Cyclones from the Robotech saga), BFG's, and drove through the mile-long ship shooting any kind of resistance (and having an awesome bike duel with vibro-lances) until they came across a ginat scorpion-shaped mecha, where they used their mini-missiles to obliterate it and save the day. Yay!

Everyone got a piece of the action they were looking for, everyone "chipped in" for campaign ideas based on their character concepts, and by the end, a great time was had by all. Give it a go, and see what kind of craziness your group can create.

Hero, that sounded really, really cool, and i wouldn't have thought it would work either.

 

[JoeGKushner]

I sympathize. Every single time I've ever tried to use a truly democratic method to figure out what to play, it's resulted in me or someone else saying 'Here's what we're doing' because if I have five people, I get five different answers.

At the same time though, I've seen it backfire where someone said, "Here's what we're doing" and every single other person said, "Uh, no, have a nice day."

There has to be some buy in and in some cases, this may mean a new group.

 

[Gundark]

Well I've been playing with these guys for years. we added some new people lately, but finding a new group really isn't something I'm going to do. One the other hand saying "we're playing setting x" might cause a rebellion too. What I might suggest is taking Midnight a modify it to match more of what a consensus would be. I don't know...anyone else run into this? How did you deal with this?

 

[luke_twigger]

Gundark - do you DM all the time in your group?

The way our group (of 6 people) resolves different people having irresolvably different ideas for what they want is to take it in turns DMing, with 4 of us having DM'd at one time or another. In our group, not only does each DM have a different campaign world preference, we have different preferences for how things like multi-classing, PrCs, non-SRD sources, etc are handled so these all vary from campaign to campaign. Variety is the spice of life and all that.

So to use your examples, you could DM a campaign set in Iron Kingdoms - sure it's not to everyone's tastes but their turn will come. Then someone else can run Dawnforge and after that somebody else do Midnight.

This advice does assume the other players are happy to do some DMing, which not everybody is.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Already told you how I deal with it.

I'm not linked at the hip to any particular group of people.

Some people I enjoy playing science fiction game with. Others super hero games. Some people I won't GM and some people I won't play in their campaigns.

Role playing takes time and if I know the results of said playing aren't going to be fun, why do them? :\

 

[Glyfair]

I sympathize. Every single time I've ever tried to use a truly democratic method to figure out what to play, it's resulted in me or someone else saying 'Here's what we're doing' because if I have five people, I get five different answers.

How about this? Get some suggestions from each player about campaign world's they would be interested in playing. Then put together a questionairre listing all the settings you'd be willing to run and asking each player to rate their interest on a scale of 1-5. Look at the list and then use your judgement based on the ratings.