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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Man in the Funny Hat" data-source="post: 2767022" data-attributes="member: 32740">I avoid "high concept" settings.  The more complex they try to make a setting the LESS interested I am.  I don't want or need new classes, prestige classes, spells, feats, skills, monsters and so forth.  My enjoyment of D&D is not predicated on having a steady supply of shiny new baubles to keep me pacified.  I've been playing for about 30 years and I STILL don't need anything more than PH straight classes and races to come up with new, fun, interesting, and creative characters, settings, and adventures.  I have yet to play a character that uses a prestige class although admittedly I have a few in mind that might.  Players in my campaigns have used them only a couple of times.  The more a setting relies on being "shiny", the more it clutters up the landscape with something new with go-faster stripes just for its own sake the less I'll care for it.Maps.A setting first and foremost needs maps.  Maps with detail and interesting features.  The first thing I look at for a setting and the thing that gives me the most information about it at a glance is the campaign map.  If the maps show only general information and try to make you overlook their insufficiencies by dazzling you with meaningless color I'm already turning away.  The map for a campaign setting is where you get to make that great first impression so you need to get it RIGHT.Maps can tell me more about the world geography than several chapters of prose, however inspirational.  It can also tell me about culture, language, and the political landscape.  It can have me looking at interesting terrain features and ALREADY coming up with my own adventures even before I know what the authors think is there. That's how important maps are to a setting.  A good map can inspire me to work past a settings weaknesses.  A bad map can make me ingnore its strengths.Well you need the basics - you need a default area in which new players can start a game.  That's where you provide a little extra effort in details.  Otherwise you simply need to lay out the political landscape - the nations, cities, and individuals who are the most influential, who are DRIVING world events.  Whether the PC's are ever even intended to get involved in those events is irrelevant, you just need to put up the backdrop.  If you want to organize that information by one chapter per nation or region, or to organize it by having an NPC chapter, a "nations" chapter, an "organizations" chapter, etc.  Doesn't matter.  You just need to provide it in a way that the DM will read it and be able to assimilate the information.  Then you need to keep in mind that DM's need to be able to willfully disregard tons of all your carefully laid out setting information.  You should never be DICTATING to a DM "how this world should be," only how YOU see it.  DM's will make up their own minds if you were right.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />So you focus on the basics.  The rest will fill in just fine that you don't need to hit it all that hard.One thing that I don't think I've ever seen anyone do is to address more of the monster population spread.  Not just "Hyere be draygonnes," but "here be giants, orcs, owlbears, dire wolves, ents, and giant venus flytraps."  Usually, if addressed at all this sort of thing is relegated to an encounter chart.  I want more than just encounter charts.  I want more than just a new monster or two.  I want to know what role the DEFAULT monsters are playing in this setting.  I want to know if the Purple Plains have herds of horses, elk, cows, kangaroos, all the above or if the wandering rocs and bulettes keep it fairly sparse.  I don't need the migration patterns of the red-spotted stirge but tell me SOMETHING about the ecology more than "76-81...Athatch (2-4)"  Ecology is NOT just a page of random table entries.  It has as much or MORE of an impact on a D&D setting as 15th level wizards and the Black Kingdom of Arrgh and needs to be treated as such.Story lines are what _I_ put into a setting.  The things that the setting authors may choose to emphasize are VERY unlikely to be the same things that I immediately want to emphasize.  They can waste chapters trying to get you to buy into their story line of, "Organization X has a master plan to rule the world and for the last 1000 years Nation Y has fought the good fight to keep the village of Mudpuddle safe for Democracy," but what if I happen to think that the 1 paragraph of description of the valley of Microputt ruled by Mayor Boofu sounds like a fun place to start?  You let ME decide what I want to do with your setting after you present it to me.  Feel free to suggest a few possibilities for those who have no imagination but if you want to write novels then stick to that.  Story lines are MY job.Either is acceptable really, but a setting must be ABLE to stand on its own merits.  Unless you INTEND that it be combined with other settings there's no reason to take that into any design consideration.  I mean, if I'm going to integrate it with another setting nothing do is going to stop me.ALL settings need to have something you can hand over to players and let them get the basics of it without the DM needing to tell them, "Oh, by the way, don't read past page 29 or you'll spoil it."  Players need access to certain setting-specfic information and they need to have certain information specifically KEPT from them.  So if you are only publishing ONE book that covers everything about your setting keep the player info to the front and keep the most sensitive DM info to the back where they are less likely to "accidentally" read the interesting secret that the DM may just happen to focus an entire adventure or the whole campaign upon.Kinda falls under the heading of "History".  There needs to be RECENT and LOCAL history that the average Joe PC will know.  The DM needs more obviously but the DM DOESN'T need to know 100 centuries of humanoid migration patterns and extinction rates.  Look at real-world human history as an example.  If you're going back more than a few thousand years you're already likely going MUCH further than you need to for purposes of being familiar with the setting and being able to run it.  The closer to present time the more detailed history should be, the further from the present the briefer it should be because it eventually becomes irrelevant.  Again, for those DM's who lack imagination or time you can be nice and provide some projection into the future - but remember that once the campaign begins the events that the individual DM perpetrates can and WILL rapidly render a future years worth of events incompatible.Again, let ME handle the direction the campaign will take.  Feel free to give me as many starting points and individual adventure ideas as you like but... don't run my campaign FOR me.  And that goes double for those with that lack of imagination I mentioned.  If they don't use it they'll lose it.  No need to give them more crutch than is good or necessary.SPECIFICALLY as a player?  No.  I'll pick up plenty as a DM but see there's this thing called meta-gaming and...  Wait, you HAVE played this game before haven't you? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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