What makes a great campaign setting?

[Pants]

Here's the question: do you use your own setting or one that was designed by someone else?

In the case of Wombat, it seems that almost no published setting will engage his attention, so none will be great. Fair enough.

Cheers!

I do both. I've run countless homebrew worlds (some good, some not-so-good) and I've run a couple of FR campaigns (the infamouse 'Evil Faerun' and a short-lived campaign centered around the Grandfather Tree). I'm also interested in running Iron Kingdoms and Eberron (more likely Eberron) because of the flavor they evoke.

What hitches me on a CS is... the potential for fun and adventure. I have my problems with FR, but there is no doubt in my mind that I could run a fun and interesting campaign there. Eberron is rife with such possibilities; treasure hunting in Xen'Drik, exploring the Demon Wastes, battling evil cultists of the Dragon Below, being manipulated by the various politicians, stopping an invasion of the Quor and the Inspired. I could run near anything with Eberron.

The Iron Kingdoms inspires me is the tech, the look, the flavor, and... pretty much everything. Guns, dangerous sorcery, mecha-like constructs, along with some gritty warfare. Great stuff.

 

[Galethorn]

1. Enough room for a variety of things to be going on; a small, volcanic island with two major factions, both different yet the same, and in an everlasting war would be on bad footing despite whatever other good features there were, so long as it wasn't just a part of a larger setting.

2. A Consistant Theme; A campaign setting needs a theme, and it has to stick to it. The more abstract and vague the theme, the better. A setting with the theme 'Petty Kingdoms Vying for Power' would be good because of its open scope and potential (yet specific enough to potentially give the whole setting a particularly dark-age feel), whereas 'Vikings...But With Katanas!' would be bad because it's too specific, and it doesn't really add much depth beyond the fact that most people in that setting are probably pillaging seafarers, and they use katanas for some reason. That said, a setting can have more than one driving theme, though its best to have them at different levels of abstraction and vagueness(sp?).

This is my major problem with FR; it doesn't seem to have an underlying theme. What it really has is too much variety. If it was five or ten smaller settings, I think most would be pretty cool...but no, it's one big 'value pack' where literally everything exists. If The North, The Sword Coast, The Dalelands, The Unapproachable East, The Shining South, and Calimshan were all settings of their own, usable by themselves or together, I think it would be a lot more game-friendly, at least for me personally. It would sure screw up their precious novels through, truth be told...

That said, I don't think whole worlds or continents ever make truly great campaign settings, simply because it's so hard to pin a definate theme onto such a large tract of land without making it seem artificially homogenous.

3. Internal Consistency/Verisimilitude/Believability/Authenticity; a setting has to make sense. Period.
Now, I can suspend my disbelief when a dragon flies, or when an elf lives for a long time, or when there's a metal superior to steel for arms and armor. What I can't help but cringe/scoff/laugh/puzzle at is when people don't act like people in a setting; if magic is common enough for most people to have seen, no ruler would be stupid enough to let his local supply be open to anybody. If magic is powerful and common enough for spellcasters to be a major contributing part of an army, no general would be stupid enough to fight on an open field.

4. Realism where it counts; unless there's a very good reason for otherwise, rivers should run down hill, people should die quickly from arterial wounds (and arterial wounds should happen rather easily with almost any sharp weapon that gets past the skin), armor should protect, metals should melt at the right temperatures, and things should fall at 9.78m/s^2, to a terminal velocity approaching 150kph (for suitably flailing and baggy-clothed humanoids). Nuff said.

 

[Eremite]

I like my settings to have a lot of history which is probably why I like FR and Midnight amongst others.

For me, however, novels are a real turn-off. I like the past to be detailed but the future to be shaped by the actions of the PCs and the choices of the DM. Novels tend to spoil this.

Also, IMO, too many novels, or novels with a really wide scope, can also ruin a world for adventuring because the stories have effectively already been told. I think this is why I have always disliked Dragonlance and why I would never attempt a campaign in Middle Earth.

 

[dvvega]

The following things are my "What Makes a Campaign Setting Great" List:

1. A good background, enough fluff to be able to know what a city's people are like, their trade goods, clothing, etc ... but not every single thing explained or hinted at being explained in an expansion.

2. Lots of varying cultures/climates for me to explore or run different styles of campaign in (for example my Homebrew currently supports 2 - was 4 - seperate campaigns in varied climates/cultures).

3. A good map. One that dislpays the relationship of the lands, natural features and so forth. This could run a campaign if there was nothing else since you could make educated guesses.

4. Must be attractive to the players. If nothing else, it is the players who drive the story/campaign. If they don't like it, or they can't find interest in it, then they will not enjoy it and thus the campaign will degrade into a "you are in a tavern" kind of style with no focus ont he world itself.

Probably a lot more but they will do for a start.

 

[Turjan]

A difficult question, because it depends very much on taste. Anyway, I'm in the camp that considers novels doing more harm for settings than doing them any good. Plus, although I'm a big fantasy fan, I don't like most of the fantasy novels, because they are often pretty bland.

Nevertheless, I consider the FR to be one of the best settings around, because it's just the right mixture of playing out stereotypes with many elements that makes them interesting but familiar at the same time. It does many things "right".

1) It's a modern setting. Yes, you have wizards, elves, nobles, but they are just there for the icing. The society of the FR is modern, with modern ethical standards and urban centers that resemble modern cities in their organization, just without cars but with the occasional "magical shoppe". They are definitely not pseudo-medieval, there is no hint of a feudal society, and except pseudo-Egyptian Mulhorand there is no carbon copy of historical places. This modernity makes it easily accessible to everyone.

2) It's playing on nostalgia. Villages in the FR have a certain feel of the 1950's to 1960's to them (though more American than European in style). At least older gamers may have a soft spot for this scenario, and even younger ones know this from TV. The core of the setting, the Heartlands and the North, have a very coherent feel to them, which resembles the Wild West of the late 1800's, though more specifically the version of pre-1970's TV westerns. The American Indians are replaced by orcs and goblins, which makes it perfectly politically correct. Both aspects make the setting accessible and in a nostalgic way enjoyable at the same time.

3) There's the fantasy effect, of course, in all its escapist and entertaining facets. You have lots of Tolkien references that everybody knows, like wizards with pointy hats and elves with pointy ears. However, those wizards don't have very much in common with a Tolkien wizard except this pointy hat, and elves don't really play the role they represent in LotR (no big elvish powers). It's a similar thing with lots of other fantasy stereotypes the FR draw on: they have a very nice twist that makes them interesting and playable. This is a very clever point: drawing from a common memory among most people makes the setting easily accessible, although a closer look makes clear that these memories are most of the time heavily altered. The often heard claim that the FR are a mere copy of "standard" fantasy forgets that the FR actually defined many of these standards.

4) Diversity. Yes, this is often mentioned as a drawback, but i really don't understand that argument. There's no force that prevents anyone from sticking to the Sword Coast or the North for his campaign(s). These are options, many options, and you are allowed to pick one or as many as you like. The villains are interesting. Zhentarim, Red Wizards, Malarites, all of them are great concepts for exciting villains who can keep your campaign on its way for ages. If those bore you, you probably don't use their potential.

All in all, these four points do it for me. Yes, I also have "my homebrew". However, I'd happily play a FR game if opportunity strikes .

 

[Galethorn]

4) Diversity. Yes, this is often mentioned as a drawback, but i really don't understand that argument. There's no force that prevents anyone from sticking to the Sword Coast or the North for his campaign(s). These are options, many options, and you are allowed to pick one or as many as you like. The villains are interesting. Zhentarim, Red Wizards, Malarites, all of them are great concepts for exciting villains who can keep your campaign on its way for ages. If those bore you, you probably don't use their potential.

Let me explain why I don't like it...

In theory, it's true; you can play in one specific area. However, there is one force that is strong enough to defeat any such theoretical game; the players.

You see, most of them might not mind sticking to one specific area. They might not even mind playing characters that fit with the area and/or the adventure/campaign. However, there's usually at least one 'Realms Scholar' in the group, who wants to play a red wizard of thay in what's supposed to be a group of barbarian heroes in the north, or a rashemi barbarian in a very political/cloak-and-dagger adventure in calimport...or a gondsman with a gun...in any game.

Also, it should be said that the diversity makes a FR game very inaccessable for a new player in a group of veterans, since they would inevitably be using all the FR supplements, increasing the number of races to something like 25, the number of feats to the hundreds, and so on.

So, I think the diversity is good, but I think it's just too much of a good thing.


On a side note, I also dislike the 'modernization' of FR with a passion; the whole reason I like fantasy is because I like all the medieval stuff so much. Oh well, it's a great setting when the DM is good, but my enjoyment goes out the door when they try to include a little bit of everything...which the two DMs I've played FR under have done without a doubt...<grumbles about a transdimensional bungalo with a toilet that flushes into the abyss>

That said, just about any setting is good to play in with a good DM, but as a DM I just don't like most of the stuff out there for reasons of taste. Now, I've got my homebrew for the low-magic-elves-and-dwarves-and-orcs style game, but I'd really like to see an all-human, super-rare-magic dark-age setting in a similar grain as the one in George R R Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire...but with a much more fractured geopolitical situation...pretty much 9th century western europe, but with a different geography, different (but not too different) cultures, and just enough real supernatural stuff to make things a bit more interesting.

Come to think of it, I might be willing to work on such a setting with somebody on the boards, if the concept sounds good to anybody else. I'd want to use Grim Tales or some similar adaptation of d20 modern rather than D&D for the rules...I guess people can email me at (my posting name)@gmail.com if they're interested. If not, I'll just keep working on my personal homebrew in my free time.

 

[Sargon the Kassadian]

The setting I'm working on will be more late midieval time-wise, with imperialism and small states/clans competing. It will be a world of islands and small continents, with many wild and unexplored places (plot hook plot hook!) and a weird feel im not sure i even understand yet

 

[Ry]

For me, great campaign settings often have a distinct authorial voice rather than the feeling of something written by a committee. When you read the campaign material, you sense the guiding hand of just one or two creators for whom the campaign world is a labor of love or an obsession. I also tend to like campaign settings that cover new territory, or reinvent a tired old genre. Tekumel, Space: 1889, and Nyambe all come to mind.

I'd go even further than that; I'd say that great campaign settings have _focus_ - while the history and diversity of features are there, these features lead back to a common theme. I think both Midnight and Scarred Lands are great examples of this, along with the old 2e Dark Sun. At one point I'd say Dragonlance was the same, but I can't speak to the more current Dragonlance.

Now this isn't to trash FR and Eberron; I think there may be great campaign settings _within_ those worlds - but I can't help but see them as several different campaign settings stacked on top of each other - trying to be all things to all DMs. To have a great campaign setting, you have to sharpen the focus - and I think this happens when you set a campaign in a very tight FR region, like Thay.

 

[caudor]

I tend to put less focus on campaigns and more on adventures. After all, it is the adventure that drives the story, and it is the story that captures our imagination. Weave together those stories (in whatever place they occur) and you have a great campaign.

I guess you would call that bottom-up design instead of top-down. In short, the campaign is the backbone; the adventures are those baby-back-ribs that everyone shows up for.

 

[MonsterMash]

With published settings I tend not to like too much detail available, especially things like novels published or canonical things. I prefer the Judges Guild Wilderlands setting because a lot of the time things on the map are little more than a place name and a small block of stats which gets me thinking - how did these get here or why is the town called that?

I also like the diversity round the Wilderlands area - plenty of scope to get players into jungle, desert, or nautical adventures as well as temperate lands.

For homebrews I could go either with the bottom up or use a setting I originally got using a set of rules published in a magazine for solo tabletop wargamers which used semi random events to generate a set of nations in a mapped area, but even then I wouldn't build huge amounts of detail before beginning the campaign.