D&D General What makes a good setting book?

[Fenris-77]

For me? One thing - cool evocative details. Stuff that makes me say "ooooh, that's cool" and makes me want to put in right in a game. Cosmology? Geopolitics? Even normal politics? Yawn. I own it or I can write it. But cool images, little awesome places or people or ideas? Those are gold. That's my two cents anyway.

 

[Mind of tempest]

For me? One thing - cool evocative details. Stuff that makes me say "ooooh, that's cool" and makes me want to put in right in a game. Cosmology? Geopolitics? Even normal politics? Yawn. I own it or I can write it. But cool images, little awesome places or people or ideas? Those are gold. That's my two cents anyway.

so fighting robot worm riders on legally not mars?

 

[Fenris-77]

so fighting robot worm riders on legally not mars?

I'll take whatever is given. On a more serious note, this is why I love Mork Borg so much, not because I'm ever going to run it as-is, but holy cow have I stolen bits and moments from it a lot. Or been inspired to write. Both are great.

 

[Mind of tempest]

I'll take whatever is given. On a more serious note, this is why I love Mork Borg so much, not because I'm ever going to run it as-is, but holy cow have I stolen bits and moments from it a lot. Or been inspired to write. Both are great.

I was being mostly serious.

 

[Fenris-77]

I was being mostly serious.

I know, I did find it funny, sort of, but my actual reply wasn't really much to do with your post as much as something I maybe left unsaid. So for that bit, my apologies.

 

[Lyxen]

But it is still my favorite setting, because it does such a great job of getting the mood right.

I was planning to reply to this thread along these lines but you beat me to it. The technical details of the settings and what it contains are way more important than the mood and whether it captures my imagination.

For example, I like SciFi, but first way less than heroc-fantasy, and I dislike mixes, they are usually poorly done and an excuse to hide flaws in the fantasy design. Also, for D&D, I like High Fantasy, which is what the setting needs to capture because it suits the design of the game.

These are mood breakers for me.

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.

Exactly ! The combination of a few words, the images, the setting of pages, etc. are for me way more important to fall in love with a setting.

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.

But not only, because it's very much a roleplaying setting. The adversaries are usually way stronger than the adventurers, you can't succeed without cunning, negotiation, roleplay, and especially without dealing with the alien nature of creatures from all corners of a multiverse.

 

[Mind of tempest]

I was planning to reply to this thread along these lines but you beat me to it. The technical details of the settings and what it contains are way more important than the mood and whether it captures my imagination.

For example, I like SciFi, but first way less than heroc-fantasy, and I dislike mixes, they are usually poorly done and an excuse to hide flaws in the fantasy design. Also, for D&D, I like High Fantasy, which is what the setting needs to capture because it suits the design of the game.

These are mood breakers for me.



Exactly ! The combination of a few words, the images, the setting of pages, etc. are for me way more important to fall in love with a setting.



But not only, because it's very much a roleplaying setting. The adversaries are usually way stronger than the adventurers, you can't succeed without cunning, negotiation, roleplay, and especially without dealing with the alien nature of creatures from all corners of a multiverse.

the latter depends on the right type of players and dm thus I would not back a setting that is purely like that as it can go super wong super fast.

 

[Lyxen]

the latter depends on the right type of players and dm thus I would not back a setting that is purely like that as it can go super wong super fast.

It's certainly a matter of taste, and I won't dispute tastes inherently, but we have been playing "planescape-style" ever since it came out, actually, we were playing it that way in a number of cases before the game came out, so for us it actually came super right.

But why exactly would you say that a game like the one I described ("But not only, because it's very much a roleplaying setting. The adversaries are usually way stronger than the adventurers, you can't succeed without cunning, negotiation, roleplay, and especially without dealing with the alien nature of creatures from all corners of a multiverse.") can go super wrong super fast ? What is the danger here ?

 

[Mind of tempest]

It's certainly a matter of taste, and I won't dispute tastes inherently, but we have been playing "planescape-style" ever since it came out, actually, we were playing it that way in a number of cases before the game came out, so for us it actually came super right.

But why exactly would you say that a game like the one I described ("But not only, because it's very much a roleplaying setting. The adversaries are usually way stronger than the adventurers, you can't succeed without cunning, negotiation, roleplay, and especially without dealing with the alien nature of creatures from all corners of a multiverse.") can go super wrong super fast ? What is the danger here ?

you need everyone to like that and you need a dm who can do that properly, you have to know ahead of time or you end up with a guy going off in anger over to being able to hit things this week or the dm can't get the magic and the world falls flat.
it was made to compete with that vampire game right?

 

[Shardstone]

what is your setting anyway?

Scavenger! Bronze age science fantasy setting about extinction events, hope, and using an alien world to try and survive a mysterious and near-supernatural Cataclysm of non-stop natural disasters.