What details do you NEED?

[Nathal]

A question for Dungeon Masters:

What information in a campaign setting is essential to your games? How important are imports, exports, population numbers (including demi-human percentages), and other demographic information?

Do any of you feel that the typical campaign setting presents information that goes unused most of the time?

I'm creating a small regional setting and trying to decide how to seperate the wheat from the chaff. What are the first things you look for when picking up a region of a setting to run adventures in?

 

[Ravellion]

City Sizes I like. Religion, politics: also cool. Distinguishing features: "Alexandria houses a great library, which tries to acquire a copy of every text in the known world." Very cool. History of the city: A must.

Percentages and exact size? Nah. "Metropolis" will do. Imports exports... okay I guess.

It's easier for me to ignore something I don't like than come up with cool stuff for every city in the campaign, and really, I can find the tables for race percentages in the DMG just fine, thank you very much - I still prefer a simple descriptive phrase such as "has a large dwarf quarter, originally moved in from the fallen dwarven hall Durkatan".

Rav

 

[Ed Cha]

What information in a campaign setting is essential to your games? How important are imports, exports, population numbers (including demi-human percentages), and other demographic information?

Do any of you feel that the typical campaign setting presents information that goes unused most of the time?

What are the first things you look for when picking up a region of a setting to run adventures in?

I look for details. Also, it has to be something well-written. I hate to go through endless text full of dribble. I want interesting characters and plots. That doesn't mean it has to be a weird setting, just fun.

Personally, I prefer primarily human settings where demi-humans are rare, even, in some cases, only rumored to exist. Magic is referred to as "witchcraft" and such, but those that do control magic are extremely powerful. Monsters exist only in isolated areas, not in the city's sewer system.

I don't use most of the stuff I get in a book. I'll read it for inspiration and ideas though.

Some of the first things I look for are the ease of fitting it into my campaign world and how it would play. I tend to prefer simple plots rather than grand overarching ones when bringing something into my game. I don't ever take the region as a whole in. I usually just use the material as inspiration for my own ideas.

 

[Nathal]

Is it important to anybody for a setting locale to have all the buildings detailed, and all NPCs listed? I think of the old Volo's guide to Waterdeep.

 

[Sandain]

I never really gave much thought to this until my PC's were doing a Dungeon adventure and came upon a city of 14,000 people in the middle of a frozen tundra. One of them asked how they survived? who do they get food off etc? how do they pay for it? myanswer of trading furs and lumber was not really that great for either of us.

The up-side is that because of this I decided the whole town was in league with the white dragon the PC"s were tracking and there were secret diamond mines that the city traded to the dragon for money and protection and vassalage.

The dragon has loads of Ice Golems who dropped 10d10 100gp diamonds upon death. So how did he get all these diamonds was another difficult question.

 

[reason]

....

Definitely the details - the flavor you'd never think of yourself, what's on that wall over there and why, what sort of curse greets bad pipeweed. Things that really convey the feel of day to day living in a setting.

Unless you're RPing a crowd of rowdy demographers and their followers, demographics in detail just isn't up there near the top of the list.

Reason
Principia Infecta

 

[IronWolf]

What information in a campaign setting is essential to your games? How important are imports, exports, population numbers (including demi-human percentages), and other demographic information?

Essential? Probably not, but I do like this information. It just needs to be brief in my opinion, I can work out the details. A decent idea of what the imports and exports are tell me quickly how this place exists, what's important to them, etc. Rough population numbers (including the demi-human percentages) also help me get a rough idea of what the city is about. Again this stuff shouldn't take up pages and pages of information, but a fair sized stat block is worth it.

Is it important to anybody for a setting locale to have all the buildings detailed, and all NPCs listed? I think of the old Volo's guide to Waterdeep

Not all the buildings by any means. I want room to drop in my stuff without feeling like I am abandoning the setting. I *do* like some of this in my campaign world. I am a big fan of the Volo's Guides for the detail and "feeling" they help convey about the partidular city. But even the Volo's guides are far from detailing every building and caveat about a city. There is still room for me to tweak should I desire.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Required: Anything the players will need to interact with. This includes local authorities (especially law enforcement), religion, a place for characters to train, a place for characters to sell loot, a place for characters to buy gear. Not all characters will use the same resources, so you can't just design a blacksmithy -- you'll likely also need the local hedge wizard and whatever passes for the thieves guild. Means of transportation, as PCs will need it eventually, one way or the other.

Optional: Everything else. The more detail you've got, the more context you'll create for the rest of it.

At the simplest level, this creates settings that look like the village in Diablo I, but really, every D&D setting needs to address these issues, even if only to say "X is not available," which in turn creates challenges for the players. But be mindful that you should try for some sort of rough parity for players of all classes. It's fine if there's not an organized wizard's college around, but the wizards should have some method of learning new spells and receiving other training -- a non-adventuring wizard willing to train them for cash, if nothing else, is always good.

 

[Ourph]

A question for Dungeon Masters:

What information in a campaign setting is essential to your games? How important are imports, exports, population numbers (including demi-human percentages), and other demographic information?

I don't really need to know any of that. If the description for a city says it's a "big city" that's enough for me. What I want are adventure hooks, interesting places to go, interesting adventures to get involved in. Within those things, I don't even really want that much detail. Give me bullet points, I'll flesh out the ideas that I like.

Do any of you feel that the typical campaign setting presents information that goes unused most of the time?

Almost always. The Greyhawk City boxed set is an excellent example of this. Too much info about stuff that's never useful at the table. Too much emphasis on how and why and not enough information about what kind of challenges are around for the PCs to face. The one page adventure cards in that set, on the other hand, are much better and are the only thing I've ever really used out of the whole set.

I'm creating a small regional setting and trying to decide how to seperate the wheat from the chaff. What are the first things you look for when picking up a region of a setting to run adventures in?

Well, the first and absolutely most important thing I look for is a GREAT map. If the setting comes with a map that's packed with information, nice to look at and easy to use at the table I'll almost certainly be happy with the product. However, doing a "good" map seems to be difficult for a lot of the RPG industry. A "pretty" map isn't enough. I want something that tells me at a glance 1) where the dungeons* are; 2) what the area on the way to the dungeon is like (geography, flora, fauna, etc.); and 3) where the political/social boundaries are. If the map makes it easy for me to insert my own encounter areas without actually drawing on the map (for example, numbers and letters along the axis to designate specific hexes) then that's a definite plus. A map like that will almost certainly make me happy with the product, even if the actual text isn't that great.

The second thing I look for is the density of player options for adventure in an area. If the PCs can go to the Dungeon of Dread one day, explore the Forest of Doom the next and scout out Bandit Island over the weekend, then it's a good area. Players won't get bored and won't feel railroaded and I won't have to spend a lot of time coming up with additional locales to supplement the ones in the setting.

The third thing I look for is creativity and good design. Are the challenges/encounters interesting and unique? Are the descriptions brief and informative (I HATE long-winded explanations of an encounter area that can be summed up in one sentence)? Is the information organized so that it's easy to use at the table, during the game?

Old modules like B2 and X1 are great because they nail every one of those three prerequisites (IMHO).

* - note that by "dungeon" I mean any set piece encounter area.

 

[deltadave]

A brief bit of flavor, what makes the place unique. A bit of history as well. How a city started is always important in the feel of the city. Any events of historic importance that happened nearby. specific NPC's if the players are likely to interact with them. I almost never stat block any npc's, just write up a brief blurb about personality and goals.