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Message: <blockquote data-quote="TheAlkaizer" data-source="post: 8406071" data-attributes="member: 7024893">So, I don't buy setting books. I've never been interested in the core settings of D&D, they've always felt excessively generic to me. But to be fair, I also never really dug to see what else is available; both in term of older editions and 3rd party. So lately, after putting one too many hours prepping a setting for a new campaign, I wondered what it would take for me to buy one. Let's say I was exposed to a product and I could have a glance at the table of contents and the book's content; what could make me go "oh I want to run a campaign in this".And then I realized that I don't any references. I don't really buy adventures either, but I've often read and dug about what adventures people liked, what are the classics and what's cool about them. But not with settings.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 read that the Planescape campaign book for 2E was fantastic, I also own it, read it and not fully understand what's that much better about it. I also started getting into Vampire the Masquerade recently, and their core rulebooks have much more lore and story that I expect from a core rulebook, but surprisingly, I don't hate it.Let's ignore everything marketing or production related (quality of the print, good editing, good name, nice art, etc). Let's focus on the content, what's written in the pages. Also, let's ignore stuff that's splashed over multiple books. I'm curious about what people expect or are looking for in a single product that introduces a setting.I'd like to start a discussion around the following questions:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">What are you looking for in a setting good? <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Mechanical content (custom subclasses, magic items, monsters stat blocks)?</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Lore?</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Good characters?</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">A unique twist?</li> </ul></li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">What proportion of each? A little bit of mechanical content and a ton of lore? Or the opposite?</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Are you looking for something fully detailed and a bit more rigid?</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Or for something more modular and actionable?</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">What's more important to you: not having to put in time to adapt and use the content, or have the content be easy to be modified and adapted?</li> </ul>I'll even go further: what are your favorite setting books? Or what are the worst?Oh, do note that I'm talking about D&D here, but if you have insight regarding setting books for other systems, I think it's applicable.</blockquote>

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