Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sunseeker" data-source="post: 7343403">This works for those of you who have been playing with the same group for decades.  You likely don't even need to ask.  For those of us with shorter-lived groups, you take the same approach D&D has always taken: create generic fantasy settings and populate them with some spice.  I would never build a campaign world for a single group.  Waste of time.  I'd more than happily build one that will generally appeal to people who like to play the game I'm building the setting for.  D&D gets generic fantasy.  And to be honest, I don't need to build a world for the vast majority of systems out there.  Only a few actually require it because the world is only implied through the content.  Other games, Warhammer, Deadlands, CoC, Star Wars, Star Trek, the world is explicit in the material.  When we all sit down to play Warhammer 40K, we know what kind of universe we're stepping into.  It will ALWAYS be that universe.  Building a campaign for a specific group?  I don't even think I'd do that either.  If I've got enough people interested in WH40K to run it, then the stock material is exactly what these people are looking for.  Making it an enjoyable, interesting experience?  That's at-the-table work.  The best laid plans at home can never guarantee an enjoyable session.There are a lot of nobodies in the world.  Again, this goes back to my previous point: the number of games that actually require worldbuilding are few.  They're some of the bigger names in the industry, but they make up a smaller number of titles than the many other games which are often explicitly stated to be The Federation, The New Republic, The Weird West, or Modern Times.  You can easily develop characters for these games because the world-lore is readily available to players.  The theme of the game is "Adventures in the Delta Quadrant"?  Are Delta Quadrant races playable?  Yes/No?  Then I can easily go research them, and build a character, with ZERO input for this particular campaign.  Are we making alien-hunting agents of the Human Imperium?  Easy peesy.  Minor, and I mean minor input may be required to fit a specific theme (We're all smugglers!  We're all Sith Lords!  We're all Romulans!) but the character itsself can be easily assembled in those games.And frankly, Session Zero is, IMO, part of the problem sometimes in these homebrew worlds.  Reasonably speaking, even with D&D, you should be able to go home, build a character (mechanically) and then write some generic backstory (Poor farmer kid who dreams of being a soldier) and fit it into 90% of any possible world.  But some worlds step far out of line with the traditional elements of the game, making it difficult to create a character because Session Zero isn't a Session, it's a two-month long series of seminars on how radically different New World is from TraditionalLand.  I wrote about this a long time ago and I'll bring it up again: being creative is great, but there is a point when it becomes too much.  When you are so far outside of the box that it becomes more difficult to parse the world, because it is so out-of-like with the system expectations.I've played in several of these games (am in one now) the worlds are vast, creative, but the DM varies between information overload and playing his cards tight to the chest.  It makes it difficult to operate because in many cases, we quite literally know nothing about how the game world functions.  Which gods are commonly worshipped, what the laws of the land are like, how non-humans are treated, what sort of races are unique to this world, the history of the world.  All those simple things that can help frame the kind of character you make aren't handed out, and when we finally press for them, it's a frikken novel!Anyway.  I just wanted to point out that I find the idea of worldbuilding well..a world for a specific group to be silly.  If you know what game book is going to be brought to the table, you know what kind of content those players will generally enjoy.  There should be no impetus to make a game just for that group unless you plan on gaming with them for ya know, a decade.  Take some of their preferences into consideration as the game grows?  Sure.  Tailor it just for them?  Don't waste your time.</blockquote>

Verification