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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Zaran" data-source="post: 5299736" data-attributes="member: 56710">So I am an avid player of 4e DnD. I think it's the best edition for encounter design and character balance. While I have my issues with some of the things WotC has done (Where's my freaking mule!?) I wouldn't choose any other system or edition to play a fantasy based game.  With that being said, I have really HATED the campaign settings I have seen so far in 4e. I have bought both Forgotten Realms and Eberron. Dark Sun is in the mail as I write this. And I've been thinking, what exactly would make me happy with a campaign setting? First of all, I would want the setting to based around the most popular time period. I don't really know where that would be in Forgotten Realms but I know it's not 100 years later. In Dragonlance, I would pick the War of Lance Era for the setting. That way the GM has a good grasp on what is going on in the background. If the campaign is painted into a time that is blank then there isn't much backstory to pull ideas from. Secondly, I don't want to see just a vague outline with entire regions only having a paragraph of information devoted to it. I'd like to be able to look up an area in the index, go to that areas section and learn what kind of creatures are in the area. I'd like to know about the local government and what kind of groups I would see there. As a GM I would rather have too much information to use than to have to make everything up. And I'm sure there are alot of GMs out there that like to do eveything from scratch and don't want all those details. So I ask, why do you need a campaign book to begin with? If I buy a setting book I don't want to have to make up anything except the story line and the encounters that go along with that. What really gets to me is the fact that the combat is ruled out to deal with every concievable situation with the caveat that the GM can ignore any rule they don't need. Why not use that same design concept on the campaign worlds?  Third, take out the silly adventure in the back of the book. That's space that could have been used for more reference material. Sell me a module to go along with it if you have to. I don't want a whole chapter to be useless to me after the first adventure. And last, keep giving us more. The outline idea for a campaign setting isn't bad if you keep giving us more books to fill in more info. If you just put out one book on setting and say "That's all you get this year. Good Luck!" ... well that's just lame. I understand that the general merchandising concept is to sell to as many players as possible and that selling to just the GM is said to be not profittable but I disagree. A friend of mine said it well, if you give a GM good material to work with they will bring more people into the game. Those GM aids might not be sold to everyone in the group but they could get players to buy other books. Sorry for the long post.  What would you like to see in a campaign book?</blockquote>

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