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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jack7" data-source="post: 4812580" data-attributes="member: 54707">Speaking Generally on the matter: (I rarely use published settings having developed the habit of creating my own almost from the start of my first role play experiences. I have played in Greywacke though, and a couple of others and liked em for the most part.)Me personally, as far as a fantasy setting goes, what makes it dull is when magic is predictable and technological. When it lacks damager and excitement. When it comes to sci-fi settings though I like my technology predictable or decipherable or understandable, but cutting edge and expansive. If it is too easy or mundane then that bores me.The opposite of most of these things I find boring (I know some of these things can be the result of other matters, such as campaign or adventure design as much as setting): no suspense or danger. Lack of horror. Too much predictability. Hack and slash to the exclusion of all other things. Combat to the exclusion of role play. Extreme unrealism. Settings that do not change over time (same rulers, same governments, static societies, cultures that do not change or adapt, races that remain predictable and stagnant, etc). Monsters, NPCs, or adversaries that are predictable and are nothing more than the something you can look up in a book to gather Intel upon. Typical locales (bar, castle ruins, underground dungeon, blah, blah). Lack of mystery and adventure. If I can go to a bookstore and pick up the setting and read all about it and know it top to bottom I got no interest in it. If everyone else already knows everything about it, why bother exploring it? Cause you're not really, you're just acting out a pre-designed script for a play in which you encounter nothing new.The one thing that really bothers me though is no real vadding or survival requirements - imagine really living in an environment with monsters and ruins and magic, and the natural environment not being dangerous. It's a ridiculous concept to me to imagine a world like that that does not in itself present enormous survival challenges. Yet in too many settings I have seen played or read of this is never addressed or mentioned. You can't climb a mountain and get snowed in and not understand the constant survival challenges presented by nature, even to the most experienced and prepared of men. Let the temperature drop sixty degrees at sunset and tell me the setting wouldn't eat the bones of most men. So where is the lack of water and food, the being hunted by wild animals, snowed under, caught in quicksand or swamp muck, dying of exposure in the desert, shipwrecked or drowning at sea survival of most settings? It's like many world designers overlook the real hazards of survival instead of stressing them. And I suspect this is because most live comfortable and extremely secure lives (for the most part) in cities and suburbs and themselves rarely encounter real threats (other than things like traffic accidents or crime) and so simply don't understand the survival threats of the natural world. But few things bore me more than a setting that is all temperate climes, daisy fields, and giant rat attacks. Mountain lions kill men, bears rip them to pieces, wolves pack up on ya and scare the living crap out of ya when they wake you up at night, lack of water wastes you, and frostbite numbs and hamstrings you, but rats scurry away if you stomp your foot and throw something at them. Get lyme disease, or a black widow bite, or get caught and exposed in a desert for a few days. Break an arm or a leg hundreds of miles from medical attention. Take a serious infection or contract malaria or jaundice. Then you'll know survival is about far more than killing orcs and goblins. Survival can be an exhausting and incredibly dangerous challenge just in itself. Watch a friend drop unconscious from dehydration when you're too weak to transport them, but know you have no other choice. (And if magic is a no-cost fix-all to every survival problem then that also bores me senseless.) Settings that don't demand anything more of you than travel time from your hometown to the nearest forgotten temple just don't understand the excitement and the sometimes excruciating effort required of living long enough to actually get there.</blockquote>

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