D&D General What makes a setting

[aco175]

I tend to play in Forgotten Realms now-a-days as a world, but was thinking if others would consider a setting something smaller such as Sword Coast, Phandalin, Icewind Dale or another region. Could Waterdeep be a campaign setting? If I was getting players and they asked what setting and I said FR- Chult is that different that if I said FR- Dalelands.

Is a setting a world like Dark Sun, Greyhawk, or Mystara in that has its own flavor and niche rules or can it be something else?

 

[el-remmen]

A setting is where your run your games, however big (or small) that might be. I can imagine, for example, a wizard school being the setting for a campaign where you rarely (if ever) leave its confines.

 

[prabe]

The setting can be a village, or a city, or a world, or a plane, or a multiverse. Heck, in a level 1-20 D&D campaign, it's likely the setting will be some number of those--maybe all--over the course of the campaign. They kinda nest that way.

EDIT: Fixed a sentence that was ugly.

 

[toucanbuzz]

My top 4 reasons a campaign setting is chosen:

1. Inspired. Players and/or the DM have read books or otherwise have a unified vision of the setting. They're excited about having the Pristine Tower from Dark Sun be a part of the game because they've all read the Prism Pentad books.
2. Unique Feature. Players don't have a clue about what Dark Sun is, but something tickles their fancy, such as a post-apocalyptic setting, or psionics, or half-giants and thri-kreen, or defiling magic, and so on. The DM may or may not, in advance, know the feature but is willing to put in the time.
3. Just the Action Please. The Generic pre-fab setting like the Realms that is easier for everyone. You're more concerned about getting to the action than what pantheon is in place or where Baldur's Gate lies relative to your current location.
4. DM Worked Hard. The DM has homebrewed a world and that's where you are going. Unlike #2, there's nothing that really grabs your attention as a player relative to anything else (yet). It's a place to hang your hat and that's fine.

My last campaign: Dark Sun, chosen for #2 because the players thought that sounded cool, even if not a one had heard of it in advance.

Current campaign: a hodgepodge of pre-fab Golarian (Pathfinder world, generic like the Realms), Celtic pantheon (a player suggestion), and largely for reason #3. The campaign is all about kingdom-building and navigating political hazards that make Game of Thrones look like child's play. It could be played nearly anywhere, though immortal sorcerer kings of Dark Sun would detract from the campaign theme.

 

[tetrasodium]

I generally run my games in eberron or an eberron-like setting becausemagic as a science wide magic provides a structure I can build from as does the world balancing on a precarious razpr's edge of intrigue plotting & mistrust in addition to things like he dragonmarked houses to give room for players to go off script in unexpected ways that allows me to use that as a chance for worldbuilding.

Similar applies to darksun (which I have run sometimes). The walled cities are something of islands to themselves but there are themes & norms I can draw on or build off without needing to resort to plot armor & handwaving too much if the players do unexpected things. The setting is very much post apocalypse but was once much more advanced so I can apply magic as a science

The overuse of plot armor effectively unmakes a setting for me as it introduces jarring & out of place areas I can't apply logic & most writers are human to build the plot rails in whatever forking direction players happen to go & need to actively steer them away or just ask them not to look behind the obvious curtain tforcing me to keep track of all the retcons continuity porn & gap fill at a much more detailed level.

 

[Shiroiken]

It's a vaguarady of the language. Technically everything in the world is part of your "campaign setting," but in realty only the parts the players interact with are actually part of the setting. I run Greyhawk, and while to me the entire world is part of the setting, I'm only concerned about the parts that directly impact this game. Your setting can include lots of different part, such that running a different campaign in the same setting is different enough to be noted. For example, my 5E campaigns have been:

1. Web of Destiny - an epic AP style campaign that took the party from level 1 to level 18. It took place over several sections of the western Flanaess, and into the Underoerth, so it's known by it epic story.
2. Nyrond (Nessermouth) campaign - a west marshes style campaign where the player explored and adventured around a small area that slowly expanded. Went from levels 1-4 before Ghosts of Saltmarsh came out.
3. Saltmarsh campaign - the original Greyhawk trilogy from Ghosts of Saltmarsh, with a few other adventures to fill it out. Party is currently level 7, and will probably end at level 8.

All of these are in my Greyhawk setting, and the players have seen events from the other campaigns affect each other. However, they are independent campaigns set in an area that helps define that particular campaign. In the case of FR, denoting Chult vs Dalelands is a very important thing to add.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I tend to play in Forgotten Realms now-a-days as a world, but was thinking if others would consider a setting something smaller such as Sword Coast, Phandalin, Icewind Dale or another region. Could Waterdeep be a campaign setting? If I was getting players and they asked what setting and I said FR- Chult is that different that if I said FR- Dalelands.

Is a setting a world like Dark Sun, Greyhawk, or Mystara in that has its own flavor and niche rules or can it be something else?

As others have correctly observed, a setting (or a campaign setting) is a term that is used both to describe the following two things:

A. The world, overall, in which a campaign takes place. This can be a published setting/ third party setting (such as Exandria, or Lankhmar, or Eberron, or Pelinore) or a completely homebrew setting, or some amalgamation of the two.

B. That part of the world with which the adventurers interact.

The reason that (B) can matter a great deal is that most worlds are not monoliths.

Take Forgotten Realms (please!).* If you're playing an FR campaign in Waterdeep, it's probably a great deal different than playing an FR campaign in Al-Qadim or Kara-Tur, especially if your FR campaign is going to stay in a geographically restricted area.

On the other hand, if you are playing a "water themed" adventure on the high seas, the differences between playing in Greyhawk and FR are probably going to be minimal compared to the fact that you are playing with a particular theme.

As such, when we talk about settings, we can be referring to both the world (A) or to the part with which the adventurers are interacting (B), but which part matters more or predominates will usually be context-specific.


*Apologies to Henny Youngman. For the 10 people who get that.

 

[aco175]

Thank you all for responding. This is more what I was thinking, but I read that people keep asking for new settings to be published and wonder if that is just more worlds and old worlds with a different flavor. Some people perceive that Icewind Dale / Frostmaiden is a new setting and some see it as just another FR product. It got me thinking how the Wizards/Hasbro people look at it.

I know that a lot of people have a favorite world setting such as FR or Planescape. Each of these has a flavor that appeals like Ebberon with a technology bit or Dark Sun with a desert post-apocalyptical feel. FR crammed a lot of these flavor-settings together like what @Snarf Zagyg said earlier.

Does the 'setting' in a world sense, that a DM tell you about make you want to play or not play more? I play in FR mostly since it is easy and I have a lot of background, but if a DM was making a campaign set in Kara Tur or Chult I would not feel like it was FR, to me, others I'm sure feel like it is normal.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Thank you all for responding. This is more what I was thinking, but I read that people keep asking for new settings to be published and wonder if that is just more worlds and old worlds with a different flavor. Some people perceive that Icewind Dale / Frostmaiden is a new setting and some see it as just another FR product. It got me thinking how the Wizards/Hasbro people look at it.

Great question! I can't answer for the Powers that Be, but based on their output, I would say the following:

They view settings as discrete worlds for adventurers to try out, with some amount of "theming" that makes it different than default D&D and/or with some "tie-in" that would make people want to explore it. This is why we have had Exandria, Eberron, and various "themed" M:TG settings.

On the other hand, it appears that they think that FR is being fleshed out by APs, and otherwise is the generic setting for tables to make their own. Sometimes being the default setting can be more of a curse than a blessing.

 

[el-remmen]

Back in the heyday of Dragon mag there used to be articles written by Ed Greenwood detailing the Realms, but written from the PoV that Greenwood was traveling there to discuss with Elminster and get the info. In one of those (don't remember the issue, but I am sure I still have it), Elminster mentions Kara-Tur (which was originally introduced in Gygax's poorly named Oriental Adventures - suggesting to some that it existed in the World of Greyhawk) and Greenwood responds, "Kara-Tur is here, too!?" (or something like that). Elminster is puzzled by the suggestion there is more than one. The suggestion of the article, I think, is that Kara-Tur was being officially placed in FR - but as a kid I read it as (and still read it as) meaning "You can drop portions of an arch-setting into any other world setting and that's fine."