What should I write for my Campaign Setting?

[Sidran7e]

I need peoples opinions about what sort of information you want as players from campaign settings.

I am currently piecing together a setting for my friends that has some aspects of STAR WARS integrated into a fantasy setting (i.e. lightsabers, ships to travel around in, "Blasters").

Just need ideas about what player information is useful to a campaign setting.

 

[HalfordAskold]

Thats a good question. How much should your PCs know? If they grew up in the area that they are exploring then they would know a lot it. Maybe they have heard rumors or have a lower Knowledge: Local skill when they roll for something. I look at it as what would I know as a player if I was from this area? Have they seen an orc before? or do they have an orc patrol sergeant in town, so its no big deal? Do the spellacasters wear black because they are evil or because they like the color and think it makes them look cool? Do they know of the dozen of village children that disappeared 27 years ago, and know with the disappearances happening again, people might draw a similarity? You don't want to give them too much or they might take something as a red herring and run with it, when you were wanting them to go another away. Ask the players what they want to know might be best.

 

[Jawsh]

Definitely tell them if you intend to change any rules, ban any classes or races, ban feats or combinations. Players need to know if magic works, and whether it works the same way as in the books. If you intend to nerf anything, try to let them know as soon as possible. An outright ban is often preferable to a serious nerf. But little nerfs are probably okay.

In a space fantasy setting, they might want to know what planet they can be from. Too many choices or too wide a field can overwhelm your players. I suggest a brief description of two possible home planets. They could be Star Wars style single-environment planets like Hoth and Tatooine. It stretches believability, but it makes assimilating the information about the setting a lot easier and quicker. Players can pretty much know exactly what to expect if you say "this is the ice planet".

My other question, of course, would be "can I play a Wookiee?" Other players will have similarly bizarre ideas. Boba Fett will probably come up.

Technology level will also be an early question. D20 Future has its Progress Level Scale.

 

[paradox42]

For building a campaign from the ground up, and with no information about the players or starting territory, the question can't be answered honestly by anything except "all of the above." Different players find different sorts of information useful- serious roleplayers who like writing character backstories, for example, will want lots of world history and "fluff" text, while dedicated powergamers will insist on detailed mechanical rules (i.e. "crunch") that they can tinker with to build optimized characters.

In other words, we can't really answer the question; our opinions will not necessarily match the opinions of your own players. Best solution is to just go to your players and find out from them what they want: though admittedly, many players will just answer something like "anything you can give us" and leave you back at square one. This is when you'll have to fall back on knowledge about their gaming styles.

This is why it can help to do some research and find already-published settings that you can steal er... "borrow" from. In your case, I'd suggest looking at Dragonstar; it probably has a lot of what you want. One attempt to convert it from 3.X to Pathfinder can be found here.

 

[Sidran7e]

Thanks for the input everyone.

Most of my friends are into the crunchy stuff of a campaign setting. A few things about my idea. It doesn't involve space, though it has airships, and its blasters, lightsabers are semi-magical items which are quite common. Both standard magic, and Force is going to be used. Although I am using a variant form of Psionics for my Force Powers.

Example


FORCE STEALTH
Aspect: Control
Level: Universal 1
Manifesting Time: 1 Standard Action
Range: Personal
Target: Self
Duration: 1 minute/Level
Power Points: 1
You manipulate the force to conceal your presence from the minds of others. You are able to use the Stealth skill even while being observed.
Augment: If you spend 4 additional points you gain a +5 bonus on Stealth checks. For every 2 additional points you spend thereafter, you gain an additional +1 bonus to your Stealth checks.