D&D General What makes a good setting book?

[akr71]

I've read many times that the Sword Coast book for 5E was not great. I own it, I read it but I don't understand what's wrong about it.

I also own it, but I don't consider it bad, just overpriced. It has the shortest page count by far but the price didn't really reflect that. Bigger maps, especially for cities and towns, would have been nice.

Back to the question at hand. What do I think makes a good setting book?

• Maps, lots of maps. Maps of cities and towns, maps of regions and nations.
• Organizations. General descriptions of the organizations at play - nations, powerful guilds, trade groups, priestly orders (or knights, or whatever) - organizations that have an agenda and may span nations. I don't need to much detail - a bit of history, their motivations, their allies and adversaries.
• People & Culture - what makes the people that live here different from the ones that live over there? It can include species or ancestry breakdown, but I will likely ignore that.
• How is it different? What mechanics or things make this setting different from any other vanilla D&D fantasy setting?
• Hooks. Lots of adventure hooks. Spark my imagination. When I read about a thing, I want my imagination to take over and say "Oooh, that would be a fun adventure! I could do this, or this, or this."
• NPCs and interesting folks for the PCs to interact with. This is a very low priority item, but sometimes 'drag and drop' items are useful when under the gun to get a session prepped.

 

[Lyxen]

Are you talking about Planescape? Because this sounds much like Planescape.
Amazing world, but offers nothing to have adventures in it.

Huh ? No adventures in Planescape ? I have tons of adventures in Planescape, there were dozens published with the setting including long campaigns, including real gems like the Great Modron March and Dead Gods.

And almost every story arc that we have used in our campaigns ever since Planescape came out brushes the Great Wheel and Sigil, and sparks of incredible adventures. In our Descent into Avernus campaign, they've already gone through the infinite staircase and plan to get help from Sigil.

Best setting ever, although I agree that it's not for everyone. Playing Planescape:Torment is almost mandatory, and a good idea to see if the setting pleases you. It's an iconic game for many reasons, and the updated version with better graphics makes it much easier to play.

 

[TheAlkaizer]

Play hooks. I have seen settings deliver on great lore, mechanics, and such, but then utterly fail with play hooks that make it easy to understand what the players would be doing besides setting themepark tourism.

Play hooks is generally how I develop my own stuff for my games. I prepare a ton of small quests, or conflicts that my players can latch unto and let them take whichever bait they want. So that makes sense to me, that's also what I'd want.

an explanation of why magic works the way it does in the setting

That feels specific to me. Do you have an example from a setting where they explain why magic works the way it does?

character options, a section for DM advice, a gazetteer section, a monster section, and a lore section

And what's the balance of all that? Which ones would you be willing to sacrifice, or sometimes wished there was more of?

 

[Bolares]

It must be written by Keith Baker

 

[Malmuria]

Are you talking about Planescape? Because this sounds much like Planescape.
Amazing world, but offers nothing to have adventures in it.

Planescape is an interesting example here because it's both a great, inspiring setting and yet the box sets include lots of lore and fluff an comparatively less easily gameable material. The factions, for example, are very evocative and fun when you first read about them, but for the most part are not anchored to the setting and to each other by concrete plots that the players can get involved in, partially because their goals are abstract.

But it is still my favorite setting, because it does such a great job of getting the mood right. Tony Diterlizzi's art does a lot of the work here. You could just show me pages after pages of his art and I would feel inspired to run the setting. The cant is...an acquired taste I suppose, but at least served the purpose of making the setting different from others. And there were lots of really neat ideas, even if they were sometimes buried in walls of weirdly formatted text.

The included adventures in the box sets and most (all?) of the modules ended up being a combination of fetch quests, railroads, and glorified random encounters. Which I suppose is fine...it was the height of 90s trad gaming after all.

 

[jmartkdr2]

For myself, I'm only interested in setting books (or other supplements) that let me do something I couldn't easily do already - ie 5e DnD doesn't have great ship-combat rules in the core books, so a seafaring setting would be cool. But I wouldn't buy a setting without a hook like that (ie more elves isn't gonna catch my interest because it's easy to make new elf subraces.)

The exception would be modules / adventure paths, since they (should) do a lot of the prep work for me.

 

[jdrakeh]

That feels specific to me. Do you have an example from a setting where they explain why magic works the way it does?

Sure. Shadow World (Rolemaster) explains how the three different types of magic work within the confines of that world. The Dying Earth RPG does the same (and, no, it doesn't work exactly like D&D magic, despite D&D magic being termed "Vancian" by many). In d20-ish games, The Wheel of Time RPG (based on D&D 3x) explains in some detail how magic works in its world. There are a lot of other examples.

 

[Shardstone]

Having successfully kickstarted setting books, consulted for setting books, and written for other setting books, I've come to the conclusion that a successful and strong setting is one that gives a very strong and diverse array of experiences with an equally strong and somewhat unique genre.

To break that down, a setting needs to be associated with a good experience for it to catch on. That includes the reading of it, thinking about it (probably the most important part), and lastly, the playing of it. The setting needs to provoke thought and inspire creativity when read, and while the book doesn't need to and shouldn't transmit an exact experience, it should give the reader, thinker, and player a "flavor" that they unmistakably associate with the setting forever more.

It can be hard to achieve this, and hard to do it in new ways, but that's why we keep doing it I suppose.

My favorite setting is my own, but I don't want to be accused of shilling, so my 2nd favorite setting right now is Absolute Tabletop's A Deadman's Guide to Dragongrin.

 

[Eltab]

The 3e Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting is the Book of 10,000 Plot Hooks. IMO the best campaign setting book, it describes lots of things to do.

An interesting campaign setting will be different from other worlds somehow. Ebberon has magitech; in Dark Sun defiling removes the "throw magic at a problem" option; Ravenloft is like entering a black-and-white-era horror movie. Forgotten Realms / Greyhawk in contrast have become the baseline for D&D.

 

[Mind of tempest]

Having successfully kickstarted setting books, consulted for setting books, and written for other setting books, I've come to the conclusion that a successful and strong setting is one that gives a very strong and diverse array of experiences with an equally strong and somewhat unique genre.

To break that down, a setting needs to be associated with a good experience for it to catch on. That includes the reading of it, thinking about it (probably the most important part), and lastly, the playing of it. The setting needs to provoke thought and inspire creativity when read, and while the book doesn't need to and shouldn't transmit an exact experience, it should give the reader, thinker, and player a "flavor" that they unmistakably associate with the setting forever more.

It can be hard to achieve this, and hard to do it in new ways, but that's why we keep doing it I suppose.

My favorite setting is my own, but I don't want to be accused of shilling, so my 2nd favorite setting right now is Absolute Tabletop's A Deadman's Guide to Dragongrin.

what is your setting anyway?