What makes a setting dull?
- Thread starter Silvercat Moonpaw
- Start date
I quite agree.
More than that, I concur.
There was a very good article written a couple of years back about that problem with settings: when the main "problem" of the setting is solved by a novel series before the players get a chance to play in it. I believe Dark Sun was also given as an example of this. (Was it as part of the lead-up to Eberron? Possibly. Can anyone remember the article I mean?)
When everything you do is lesser than what got you into the world in the first place, then what comes later is rather dull in comparison, and Dragonlance is the poster boy of settings for me where that has occured.
There are many settings I'm not interested in, but I wouldn't describe them as dull. Instead, they just don't have a hook that will draw me in. To describe a couple of the hooks that have interested me in settings:
Greyhawk: A recently-freed evil demigod (Iuz) plots to gain control of the world.
Eberron: A magical catastrophe has destroyed an entire country. What caused it and will it happen again?
For me, the initial hook must also be a spur to adventure. My favourite Greyhawk campaign that I've run has absolutely nothing to do with Iuz. Indeed, it was a threat that I made up myself! However, my early adventures in Greyhawk had a lot to do with Iuz, and from there I expanded my knowledge of the setting into areas where I could explore other areas.
Cheers!
DrunkonDuty
he/him
I like a good flavour to a campaign. And if it's a gumbo that's fine with me. If it's roast meat and potatoes that's fine with me. As long as it works.
I gotta agree: Greyhawk would strike me as pretty boring if published today in it's original format. Fortunately it's grown along the way. And although it is still generic western mediaeval setting 1.0 I think it's got the depth to handle a good variety of play styles and campaigns.
On the Ebberron note: never played it (bar one rather brief foray into one module about an airship, erm, The Golden Dragon? Something like that.) I think the setting is OK but would work much better in another, more flexible, system. Say GURPS or HERO. And you can never have enough bad guys. One group will focus on a few of the BBEGs presented, another group will focus on others. It's a 'broad appeal marketing strategy.'
In fact I'd say that any published setting is many mini-settings put together as a package of related things. Which means that campaign settings usually get one or two bad ideas in them: an inevitable result of them being so big in scope and frequently the result of multiple authors/editors. That's OK, a group can ignore those bits of a setting that don't sit well with it.
Which doesn't actually help with specifics for the OP. Um... Specifics...
Nothing specific comes to mind. It's art. There is no hard or fast rule for art. What works in one combination does not work in another combination. And which combinations work changes depending on who is interacting with the art.
A setting I don't like is Sigil. This is one example of where the execution completely misses the intent. It advertises itself 'as crossing boundaries, pushing limits, anything that the imagination can desire.' It delivers 'you sit in the pub with uber-NPCs to keep you in line until it's time to walk down the road to Plane of the Week.' The Planes are just different rooms in a dungeon. It takes all the alien weirdness out of being in different realities.
One area I think many setting go wrong is with official campaign progressions. It's up to each and every group to play its OWN campaign, not conform to whatever the hell someone back at the Publisher thinks should happen. But again, I feel free to ignore those bits I don't like and only grab those bits I do. Something about the emphasis placed on this stuff does get my hackles up though...
cheers.
I gotta agree: Greyhawk would strike me as pretty boring if published today in it's original format. Fortunately it's grown along the way. And although it is still generic western mediaeval setting 1.0 I think it's got the depth to handle a good variety of play styles and campaigns.
On the Ebberron note: never played it (bar one rather brief foray into one module about an airship, erm, The Golden Dragon? Something like that.) I think the setting is OK but would work much better in another, more flexible, system. Say GURPS or HERO. And you can never have enough bad guys. One group will focus on a few of the BBEGs presented, another group will focus on others. It's a 'broad appeal marketing strategy.'
In fact I'd say that any published setting is many mini-settings put together as a package of related things. Which means that campaign settings usually get one or two bad ideas in them: an inevitable result of them being so big in scope and frequently the result of multiple authors/editors. That's OK, a group can ignore those bits of a setting that don't sit well with it.
Which doesn't actually help with specifics for the OP. Um... Specifics...
Nothing specific comes to mind. It's art. There is no hard or fast rule for art. What works in one combination does not work in another combination. And which combinations work changes depending on who is interacting with the art.
A setting I don't like is Sigil. This is one example of where the execution completely misses the intent. It advertises itself 'as crossing boundaries, pushing limits, anything that the imagination can desire.' It delivers 'you sit in the pub with uber-NPCs to keep you in line until it's time to walk down the road to Plane of the Week.' The Planes are just different rooms in a dungeon. It takes all the alien weirdness out of being in different realities.
One area I think many setting go wrong is with official campaign progressions. It's up to each and every group to play its OWN campaign, not conform to whatever the hell someone back at the Publisher thinks should happen. But again, I feel free to ignore those bits I don't like and only grab those bits I do. Something about the emphasis placed on this stuff does get my hackles up though...
cheers.
Because different people have different interests, they are likely to find different things uninteresting.
In sword-and-sorcery or science-fiction RPGs, settings sometimes seem to me too contrived. I have developed quite a tolerance for the classic "underworld" or "dungeon" of D&D, and I accept that to some extent a game world is going to be tailored for gaming. However, there can be a point at which I come across one too many things that scream "game world" to me.
I think it may boil down to sheer lack of variety and depth, perhaps not so obvious for the first decade or so of one's gaming career. Eventually, one may realize that there's just a superficial "novelty" to the Latest Cool Thing which, once one scratches the surface, is really just a trope one has seen again and again. From a distance, it may seem something more; up close, it turns out to be a two-dimensional stage backdrop.
One such trope is One-Note Warring Factions. Whether nations, clans, cabals, or whatever, their programs make (if one is lucky) about as much sense as a Saturday morning cartoon. Sure, nothing beats the real world for lunatic fringes -- but they generally are the fringes, not the defining orientations of society.
I like to see things with more of the messy complexity of real life, because that tends to provide more facets to discover and more axis on which to engage.
There's always room for such simple stuff as seemed awesome when I was 10 years old -- just not so much room in my imagination these days.
In sword-and-sorcery or science-fiction RPGs, settings sometimes seem to me too contrived. I have developed quite a tolerance for the classic "underworld" or "dungeon" of D&D, and I accept that to some extent a game world is going to be tailored for gaming. However, there can be a point at which I come across one too many things that scream "game world" to me.
I think it may boil down to sheer lack of variety and depth, perhaps not so obvious for the first decade or so of one's gaming career. Eventually, one may realize that there's just a superficial "novelty" to the Latest Cool Thing which, once one scratches the surface, is really just a trope one has seen again and again. From a distance, it may seem something more; up close, it turns out to be a two-dimensional stage backdrop.
One such trope is One-Note Warring Factions. Whether nations, clans, cabals, or whatever, their programs make (if one is lucky) about as much sense as a Saturday morning cartoon. Sure, nothing beats the real world for lunatic fringes -- but they generally are the fringes, not the defining orientations of society.
I like to see things with more of the messy complexity of real life, because that tends to provide more facets to discover and more axis on which to engage.
There's always room for such simple stuff as seemed awesome when I was 10 years old -- just not so much room in my imagination these days.
I'm A Banana
Potassium-Rich
I'm sure this thread is all sorts of contradictory opinion-launching flamebait. 
Myself, I find it more useful to talk about what settings do WELL than what they fail at. Generally, what they fail at, isn't played in.
I can't think of a published setting that I know of that I would describe as dull. There's plenty that I wouldn't DM for one reason or another without some heavy tinkering (Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, etc.), but there aren't very many that I just find dull on the face of them.
Perhaps an exception for Middle-Earth, but I find the old-school fantasy and high-minded stodgy style too...historical for my tastes. I liked the characters of the hobbits better than anything else about M-E.
It's hard for a setting to be truly boring to me...too many cool world-building ideas out there, I think.
Myself, I find it more useful to talk about what settings do WELL than what they fail at. Generally, what they fail at, isn't played in.I can't think of a published setting that I know of that I would describe as dull. There's plenty that I wouldn't DM for one reason or another without some heavy tinkering (Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, etc.), but there aren't very many that I just find dull on the face of them.
Perhaps an exception for Middle-Earth, but I find the old-school fantasy and high-minded stodgy style too...historical for my tastes. I liked the characters of the hobbits better than anything else about M-E.
It's hard for a setting to be truly boring to me...too many cool world-building ideas out there, I think.
Shemeska
Adventurer
Different people can come away with seriously different takes on a setting. Have you actually played within a campaign set in or using Sigil? One of the big things that Sigil (and in a broader sense its parent setting) was created to do was to make planar campaigns something other than extraplanar dungeons. It added a lot of depth and flavor to the planes, added a whole hell of a lot of alien wierdness where a lot of it had previously been pretty bland, and added a dose of horror when appropriate.
And as far as Sigilian NPCs, many of the influencial people in the city weren't necessarily epic level. I can only think of one off the top of my head, and he was effectively a recluse (Lothar the Master of Bones). Politics came into play a lot more than character level, and the setting was designed to get characters involved in that if they wanted to.
I look at 1e planar material and I see little detail, and a sense that the planes are only the bigger dungeons with larger monsters you go to when you're high level (H4... good God, uggghhh... kill it, burn it, send it to hell). I look at 3e material and at times I see the depth of some of the 2e stuff (Fiendish Codex I & II), and at times I see some stuff that's just boring (Planar Handbook). I like wierd, I like dangerous, I like depth, I like out of the mundane normal material world. The planes aren't normal, they don't always make rational sense, and I found that in a lot of the 2e planar material, with Sigil being in the mix.
Of course, some people look at the same stuff and claim it made the planes into wierd, alien worlds populated by aliens. I don't understand it, but I've heard it enough to understand that people can and do carry away seriously different opinions of the same material (admittedly, a lot of that viewpoint was from 1e fans I've found, and I'm coming from a background of having started in 3e).
I agree completely; DL is one of the few settings in which I have never had any interest. In fact, the more I've learned about it, the less interested I've become.Dragonlance.
*snip*
Sorry, guys.
Paladine is Bahamut. Takhisis is Tiamat. So why did they have to change their names and pretend that they're separate entities from the core beings?! ("Paladine" isn't exactly a hugely original name for the dragon-lord whose ideals line up so closely with the archetypical Paladin.)
I just don't get it.
billd91
Not your screen monkey (he/him) 🇺🇦🇵🇸🏳️⚧️
One thing sure to turn me off is a campaign setting trying to out-do itself and other settings with MORE wonder! MORE magic! MORE mystery! And it's why late 2e FR became pretty tedious to me (the Volo guides really killed my interest).
It's one of the reasons I found myself really detesting Attack of the Clones and not being particularly fond of the last 2 Indiana Jones films. They feel like the film makers are just trying to top their last releases with more eye-popping action, more of this, more of that, and more importantly, more of the exact same stuff that people liked last time but with the volume turned up to eleven.
One of my favorite setting books is Mythic Europe - and that's pretty mundane, but it's well written, has some interesting hooks, and isn't coming to me raving like a wild-eyed schoolboy talking about his first attempts at building a setting.
It's one of the reasons I found myself really detesting Attack of the Clones and not being particularly fond of the last 2 Indiana Jones films. They feel like the film makers are just trying to top their last releases with more eye-popping action, more of this, more of that, and more importantly, more of the exact same stuff that people liked last time but with the volume turned up to eleven.
One of my favorite setting books is Mythic Europe - and that's pretty mundane, but it's well written, has some interesting hooks, and isn't coming to me raving like a wild-eyed schoolboy talking about his first attempts at building a setting.
There can be a fine line between trying too hard and not trying hard enough. In the late '80s, I got heartily tired of the "dwarves, elves, hobbits and orcs in drag" (outer space, cyberpunk, steampunk, other punk, savage, painted green, etc.) deal. I would really rather have either the classic Nordic via Tolkien via D&D races or something really different -- such as the non-humans of Tékumel or Jorune.
That said, I early on thought of elves primarily with reference to the fey folk of Michael Moorcock's novels, the Melniboneans (Elric) and Vadhagh (Corum). I still like that (perhaps more Celtic) take, at least occasionally.
That said, I early on thought of elves primarily with reference to the fey folk of Michael Moorcock's novels, the Melniboneans (Elric) and Vadhagh (Corum). I still like that (perhaps more Celtic) take, at least occasionally.
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Most dull for me was Kingdoms of Kalamar. A lot of minutiae, without any feel of a grand sweep of history. Names that looked like random collections of syllables. Uninteresting gods with generic names. And a very dull writing style. It seemed pointless.
It even had the word "ass" in the back-cover blurb.
It even had the word "ass" in the back-cover blurb.
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