What do you want from a campaign setting?

[rounser]

Anyone else have opinions on campaign settings that are laid out like adventures?

I don't think it can be done on a large scale without an insane amount of work being involved. The Dragonlance "Chronicles" series of adventures are a globetrotting example of what you're describing; they're also one big railroad with regards to where the PCs must go next, and which NPCs cannot die because it would ruin the plot. I think that this is inevitable if the adventure spans a continent, and a campaign arc of epic scope. To allow unrailroaded player choices that the module was prepared for would probably run into the thousands of pages....some computer game FRPGs manage it, but for a P&P RPG this level of development isn't really on the cards for reasons of page count alone.

Even leaving the dungeon can present too much player choice for designers and DMs, which is why wildernesses are largely just treated as places to roll on wandering encounter tables rather than true adventuring environments. Cities are also difficult in this respect. Even though they have walls, they also have thousands of NPCs, making them perhaps even worse than wilderness in terms of representing them without extensive improvisation. D&D's game design technology doesn't even extend far enough to confront the problem of the PCs running into status quo or wandering stuff far out of their league in a wilderness or urban area - a problem solved in the dungeon by the concept of a "dungeon level". For reasons of verisimilitude, dragons shouldn't start popping up instead of kobolds in the same area of wilderness simply because the PCs have reached the appropriate level...computer games such as Everquest have dealt with this problem by making different areas palpably more dangerous, but the issue is largely skirted entirely in D&D.

The other approach is to create a limited-scope "DM's playground". Ruins of Adventure (aka Pool of Radiance) presents a ruined city and surrounding countryside. There is no particular order in which the PCs need to explore the wilderness or parts of the ruins, resulting in (gasp!) meaningful player choice. The other module which is a good model for this is The Secret of Bone Hill, which presents a town and surrounding countryside which is full of interesting stuff to discover, so PCs can go exploring and find something other than on-the-fly DM improvisation (how novel!). Both modules avoid the abovementioned "out-of-your-league" problem by being relatively low level modules, so even the greatest challenges can be recognised as such and avoided...which leads us to another blind spot for D&D - no provision for recognising the challenge of an encounter "in character". The metagame knowledge of the CR difference between a troll and a kobold is a murky area, because there's no "monsterology" skill (or other rule) to deal with the issue of a character knowing the difference in challenge "in game".

But then, few players can roleplay the genius of a 25 intelligence wizard, so such hiccups are assumed into the D&D experience. (I'm of the opinion that the three "mental" stats would be better done away with and replaced with something like Magical Affinity, Divine Affinity and Karma Affinity for Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma respectively, but removing these mental associations "breaks" the skill system).

 

[jaldaen]

Adventures, adventures, adventures! I don't have time to create quality adventures on my own. Also Regional Guides that give more intimate detail - the more detail, the more the world comes alive. Of course each regional guide adds more maps!

Sounds like adventures and regional supplements are what DMs are looking for in follow-up products... any others you would be interested in (NPC book, organization book, etc...)?

...just list a bunch of adventure hooks at the end of the chapter for each region, then add a few more periodically on a product support website. The hooks do not depend on each other, they try to explore a new aspect of the setting instead. They use a newspaper or 'town crier' format to give a feeling that time is advancing, but the stories are basically brand new.

Thanks for the suggestion and feedback, it's helping immensely. Any other thoughts on campaign settings in general or specific?

 

[Wil]

Anyone else have opinions on campaign settings that are laid out like adventures?

When done well, it can be great. Tribe 8 has two entire campaigns that advance a metaplot and, while they are not without their problems (mostly in terms of pacing, some amount of railroading and some inconsistencies in tone and direction) what they do right is provide opportunities for the PCs to be the center of attention. Of course, if you're writing for an audience that is used to "dungeon adventures" and DMs that need everything spelled out it winds up being an enormous task to write and coordinate - the Cycle books for Tribe 8 assume that the GM is going to do some legwork and may even completely rewrite it. As such, there are few characters (and sometimes even events) that are integral to the story continuing. If I were to write a long prepublished campaign, that would be the way I'd do it - relatively freeform, identifying the major players, who they can be replaced with if necessary, as instead of identifying concrete places for events to happen ("When you reach #3 on the Wilderness Map, this happens..."), identify just the event itself (what's important about it, what effects it will have, locations it could happen).

I'm sure I'm not the only one that when running a prepublished adventure and, when the PCs don't go to the tavern where they get their important information, I move the event to where the PCs did go. Published campaigns that anticipate a GM will have to do this, and provide information to allow them to, are ones that are the best in my experience.

 

[Tuzon Thume]

I'd like to see an abundance of detail. especially on NPC's. They should have personalities.
unique rules only if they are trully unique and not just someone else's idea with little or no modifications.
Tons of maps including interiors.
Reality, or believability through life experience.
I believe that the campaign authorsshould have first hand knowledge about what they are creating. If you've never been in a bar can you really pull off creating one or do you rely on other people's descriptions?
detailed originality and perspective sums it up somewhat.

 

[jaldaen]

Between a good TOC and a good Index I should never have to hunt very long for general information.

Amen to that!

It would depend on the Folio's design and price... Now if he added in the major city layouts both player and dm versions I would jump on it. Throw a few 'village' layouts for random small unnamed towns, and perhaps a few 'special' locales, a few random dungeons (let the DM stock them). And your talking an ideal product.

Thanks for the feedback on the map folio idea... any one else have suggestions?

Within the Campaign Book in your Adventure Hook setting have them numbered. Use those numbers in the Folio to reference the suggested hook.

Pretty good idea... so make a map with numbers on it that correspond to adventure hooks... niffty.

Now another idea that would earn you love and whatnot from fans.
Make a GREAT Campaign Book.

Hmmm... interesting. Would any one else be interested in a campaign book (with maps) based on adventure hooks in the main book? What other things would you want in it?

Make a Political/Economic Accessory, go into detail for the individual politics detailed within your Campaign Book... Again use the Adventure hooks and then for your Web supplement, provide castles, guildhouses, city halls, places of worship that are partially detailed in the supplement (i.e. tells what room is 1a Abbot Tuck's Room) but the individuals are fully detailed in your Accessory (Abbot Tuck 13th Level Cleric of Lathandar).

Interesting... who else would be interested in a political/economic accessory? What other things would you want in it?

I like giving input and my opinion.

I like listening to input Thanks!

 

[gizmo33]

I don't think it can be done on a large scale without an insane amount of work being involved. The Dragonlance "Chronicles" series of adventures are a globetrotting example of what you're describing; they're also one big railroad with regards to where the PCs must go next, and which NPCs cannot die because it would ruin the plot.

Good points, but I meant something less "epic".

For example, following the "glossary of historical figures" could be a dungeon consisting of a tomb of a famous general. The section on fashion styles of the coastal baronies could be followed by some sort of adventure that actually used that information.

In some ways, the Greyhawk campaign setting was like this in the early years. A lot of what was known about the setting was based on adventure modules. I'd rather have an adventure like Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth rather than some "Merle the Explorer's Flufflopedia of Greyhawk" any day.

 

[Wil]

There's a discussion on RPG.net that reminds of something that I actually like seeing: stuff that's there pretty much just for color. For instance, there might be a shrine to an unknown god at a crossroads. There's no adventure hook there, there's no overarching reason for it - it just is because it is. Another good example was instead of the adventurers settling down in a village for the night (like they might do in a typical game world), instead they find themselves in the ornate ruins of an ancient city that was the capital of a long-forgotten empire, where a village has grown up in the ruins of the palace. There's no dungeon underneath the city; there's no "the PCs are the heirs of the lost Empire who seek to restore its glory" - it's just there. Another good example are the stoneheads on Terra Nova in Heavy Gear - no one knows how they got there or who made them. They were just there when the colonists arrived.

The thing is, that in the real world cultures have lived amongst ruins and artifacts of the past without blinking twice about what it really was. This kind of thing in a campaign really helps bring it to life for me, at least. It helps lend a sense of history, if it makes any sense that the inclusion of things that really have no history would do so.

 

[jaldaen]

The other approach is to create a limited-scope "DM's playground". Ruins of Adventure (aka Pool of Radiance) presents a ruined city and surrounding countryside. There is no particular order in which the PCs need to explore the wilderness or parts of the ruins, resulting in (gasp!) meaningful player choice. The other module which is a good model for this is The Secret of Bone Hill, which presents a town and surrounding countryside which is full of interesting stuff to discover, so PCs can go exploring and find something other than on-the-fly DM improvisation (how novel!).

It sounds like the Shackled City book that my DM ran this past year... Anyone else interested in a "DM's playground" product that explores in-depth a particular locale in a campaign setting? What are the things you would want to see in such a product (maps, NPCs, more maps, advenutre hooks, etc.)?

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Seeds, not necessarily huge plots. It's nice when, if a big adventure comes out involving Evil Organization XYZ that whoever led that plot is some high ranking guy we've never heard about, instead of Sammaster, Vol, or some other well known bad guy. What happens to that well known bad guy should be in the hands of the GM.

No uber good guys. Keep the deities remote! The best DnD setting I've ever been in had two deities with little power who did not represent good and evil. What a breath of fresh air. We actually talked to them without being told what to do.

Don't have magic dictating every plot. Please. One reason why I'm reluctant to play in a Star Wars-based campaign; the big plot involves someone [verb]ing the Force or a big machine that lets you [verb] the Force... you get the idea.

 

[jaldaen]

If I were to write a long prepublished campaign, that would be the way I'd do it - relatively freeform, identifying the major players, who they can be replaced with if necessary, as instead of identifying concrete places for events to happen ("When you reach #3 on the Wilderness Map, this happens..."), identify just the event itself (what's important about it, what effects it will have, locations it could happen).

Hmmm... cool idea... It reminds me in some ways of the Wrath of the Immortal campaign, which had only three (IIRC) set adventures with a whole bunch of suggested adventure seeds in between that you could choose to follow through on or ignore... Anyone else interested in adventures written in such a way as they present the events along with alternative NPCs and locations the event could play out with?