What makes a setting dull?

[Desdichado]

If by that you mean 4E D&Dish, then I'd agree. It's pretty ridiculous to claim it's more D&Dish in the classic sense than settings like Greyhawk, Blackmoor or Mystara, though. Kitchen sinking in everything in 3E doesn't offer a one-way ticket to D&D quintessence (in fact, arguably it leads to the opposite).

No, I don't mean 4eish.

And your logic makes little sense to me. If anything, older D&D was the kitchen-sink approach. Stuff was thrown in willy-nilly throughout the development of the game for years and years. Eberron, almost uniquely, although surely someone can find an exception that I'm not thinking of, actually decided to take the rules as written, and the various D&Disms that were too iconic to jettison, and pull them together into a framework that made a lot more sense than the prior settings.

Which really made little sense if you gave them much thought. They were pseudo-Medieval Europe, with mythic Greece and Scandinavia, various pulp and science fiction tropes, and a generous side of Tolkien all thrown in, yet somehow having no effect on the existing pseudo-Medieval European framework.

Although I suspect you're using the word D&Dish in a different manner then me. I'm using it to describe Eberron as the first setting really designed around the ideas of iconic D&D. You're using it to evoke nostalgia of classic D&D settings. whether the iconic elements fit well into them or not.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

Originally posted by Firelance +5

Um, did you intend to respond to Shemeska?

Oops.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

As to why I think Eberron would work better in GURPS of HERO: it's because the campaign was (originally at least) intended to be for low and mid-level play. DnD just doesn't do that so well. Players want to improve their characters. They want to get tangible rewards for the game. I know I do. So this leads to more levels and in DnD the leveling system leads to a very wide power gap in just a few levels. DnD characters very quickly outgrow the mean streets. GURPS and HERO let characters get developed more slowly and not all advancement has to be in terms of a character's personal power (followers, bases, contacts, etc. can be bought.)

And this all matters to Eberron because (as I understand it) Eberron is intended to be pulp and noir. The heroes in pulp and noir are rarely super human, able to wade through seas of minions without breaking stride. Yes I'm sure their are examples of those who can, like Conan. But when I think Pulp and Noir I also think Sam Spade, Tarzan, Flash Gordon, The Shadow. Heroes, yes. Tough, yes. But not anything like a say a 10th -15th level (3.x) DnD character. Pulp characters can be sapped on the head and knocked out. Try doing that to a 10th level fighter.

Whack, whack, whack, whack.
'Erm, what are you doing?'
'Sapping you so that you fall down into a spiralling darkness for the cut scene?'
'Oh.'
'Yeah.'
'Will it help if I take my +5 helmet off?'

Also the 2 other systems I mentioned are much better for modelling low level characters yet still letting them be well rounded in terms of what they can do. This is something I think is good for a Pulp game.

But hey, each to their own. If Eberron is rocking your world, then go for it!

cheers.

PS: there's NO WAY I could be bothered doing the work needed to convert the setting to either GURPS or HERO. My point is purely theoretical.

 

[Desdichado]

Well, I have to admit a personal bias... I never thought D&D did high level very well, so I only occasionally played it (and universally found the experience more frustrating rather than fun.) This was especially true of 3.5, and Eberron was designed around 3.5. So, to me at least, the idea that it avoided the higher levels only made perfect sense. I was already doing that too.

 

[avin]

I'm also think Eberron would work better using GURPS or HERO.

That said, what makes a setting dull for me?

Pretty easy to answer. Any setting based on GOOOOOOOOD vs evil, without good motivation for the antagonists, sounds dull to me.

So, yes, most D&D settings seem a bit dull to me...

 

[NewJeffCT]

I don't think any setting is particularly dull - I think I have enough of an imagination that I can find interesting things in any setting out there.

However, what makes my head spin is too many setting specific rules - inventing a whole new class/style of magic, new world specific races, etc. I can barely keep up with the core rules out there, and don't have the time to learn whole new rulesets on top of the core rules and a few of the splat books. I would prefer to put my limited spare time into designing interesting encounters, adventures and NPCs and villains than in learning extensive new rules.

That doesn't make a setting dull, but it does make the setting a turnoff to me.

 

[Herschel]

There are no dull settings, only dull DMs and players.

The game is what we make of it and a little creative doctoring when the situation calls for it goes a long way.

 

[rounser]

You're using it to evoke nostalgia of classic D&D settings. whether the iconic elements fit well into them or not.

We'll have to call an amnesty on your use of the "nostalgia" word. Look, half D&D's spells are named after Greyhawk magic-users and it happens to be the setting by the guy who wrote the game, emphasising the same tropes he liked enough to put into it; Mystara is the setting of BECMI, and molded by that; and Blackmoor was the original D&D setting. Note that I haven't said whether I think they're any good or not, or whether I'd use them.

But yes, I'm talking in terms of flavour and spirit, not whether it has drow and ticks a bunch of other boxes for "illithids go here, gnomes go here". IMO, that's a completely ridiculous criteria for "quintessentially D&D". If that's the criteria, I could make an even more quintessential setting by kitchen sinking even more than Eberron does, and the result would be even more of a mess.

 

[JeffB]

I'm not sure I can exactly put my finger on "what makes it dull" and I'm certain a good DM can take a outwardly dull setting and make it appealing to his or her group, but "right out of the box", I'd have to say Kalamar, Lejendary Earth (LA) and Aerth (Mythus) totally bored me to tears (sorry Gary ). Perhaps because they hew too closely to our own earth history?

As I've gotten older my tastes have changed. I've come to greatly prefer over the top Eberron vs. classic Forgotten Realms. I love the mythological and fantastic nature of Glorantha and Tekumel, yet I also adore Howards more earthly, gritty Hyboria. I still have a huge love for Middle-Earth but I've grown really tired of how it's influenced many D&D settings.

I do find that (unless it's Greyhawk) I've become extremely tired of and bored with 30 + years of D&D "Canon" or flavor. I tire of the Great Wheel, aspects of Vancian Magic, The Demon Lords, Pantheons, and classic monsters (drow, Yuan-Ti, beholders, githyanki, etc) that we are constantly beat over the head with and gets re-hashed all the time.

In the end "what is dull?" is a tough question to answer - I guess it's just a "I know it when I see it" kinda thing.

 

[Desdichado]

We'll have to call an amnesty on your use of the "nostalgia" word.

I don't know when (or who) decided that nostalgia should suddenly be a bad word. I tend to think that nostalgia is a good thing.

But yes, I'm talking in terms of flavour and spirit, not whether it has drow and ticks a bunch of other boxes for "illithids go here, gnomes go here". IMO, that's a completely ridiculous criteria for "quintessentially D&D". If that's the criteria, I could make an even more quintessential setting by kitchen sinking even more than Eberron does, and the result would be even more of a mess.

See, your first phrase is semantically exactly what I was trying to convey with my use of the word nostalgia.

In any case, I disagree that Eberron runs through the D&D rulebooks with a checklist. In fact, I think to suggest such a thing is fairly absurd. What Eberron did, that no other setting did before, was attempt to make a rational world based on the tropes and rules of the game, extrapolating what a world with that metaphysical reality might actually turn out as, rather than applying the rules (poorly) to the setting after the fact and having a cognitive mismatch between rules and setting.

You're absolutely right, of course, in saying that no other iconic, historical D&D setting has done that before. In fact, that's what I've said too. But the fact that it's done so makes it quintessentially D&D in a way that no other setting ever has been.

That I'm able to think of right now, anyway.