D&D 5E What would you want for a *new* 5E campaign world?

[Matthias]

A new game world is attractive to me when its quirks and oddities and the other aspects of its unique flavor are reflected by the game mechanics which support the gameplay in that universe. For flagship game worlds this is harder to pull off because they are supposed to set the standard for how the game is to be played--"house rules"do not exist almost by definition.

I think that for 5E, each flagship world should incorporate certain differences that make the gameplay different for each. One world may use "traditional" magic, another may emphasise psionics as the "FX", and a third may be designed to support a low-magic campaign in the style of Iron Heroes, etc.

 

[karolusb]

For that reason I prefer a generally generic fantasy world to a 'hook as world' or 'trope as world' setting. If you can describe what is interesting about your world in 5 sentences or less, then your world isn't generic enough to serve as a stage for the variaty of tables that would want to use it. Some of those settings might be really interesting - Ravenloft, Planescape, etc. - but you don't want to offer that up as the setting that is default for your generic fantasy rules set.

I love what you say, and vehemently disagree with all of it (only for the purposes of this thread). He didn't say the new setting had to be the default setting. I think we have plenty of default settings. Merely that it had to be new. I am the guy who tracks climate patterns, currency debasement, the effect that having a longer orbit has on culture and growing cycles. And I can tell you in my entire life, I have never GMed for anyone (anyone, ever) who cared. As I am about to explain how the surplus barley yield in the area. . . (no must stop, even though I have this big smile on my face, players rolling eyes, they don't care, they were just complaining that mead was too expensive). Setting as hook is what I would spend money on. Or really awesome maps. If you gave me really awesome maps with nothing else (no country names, no explicit culture parallels) I would but it. But when you give me your interpretation of lunar influence on the development of longstanding trade routes, I probably won't agree with your math anyway, so I would have to rework it, at which point all you did was sell me a map (and probably a tiny map with a huge amount of verbiage I don't need, as opposed to a wall sized supermap).

I would probably like something that gave me a local but rich flavor (Moorish Spain inspired might work for me, or pirates, or Moorish pirates, hmm Moorish pirates), or something with meaty but non-silly localized (in a game context) mechanics (ala birthright, red steel, blackmoor etc., sadly two of my three examples were kinda silly, but you get the idea). So that I could have an optional "module" related to the world, but not mandatory, that would add an extra dimension of play.

 

[Plaguescarred]

I would love a water-based setting, something like Chris Perkin's Iomandra campaign setting.

 

[Celebrim]

I love what you say, and vehemently disagree with all of it (only for the purposes of this thread). He didn't say the new setting had to be the default setting. I think we have plenty of default settings. Merely that it had to be new.

I don't think we are as far apart as you think. My main problem with 'trope worlds' is that they have a certain amount of 'one size fits' all built into them. I dislike them for the same reasons I dislike races that can be represented a a single personality type so that one individual represents the entire race (once you know one, you know them all), or races that are represented as being basically pastiches on a single real world culture (an entire world with a single uniform culture implies again a people without any individuality or anything like a real history), or worlds which are basically single real world terrain types or ecosystems. I wouldn't expect the real world to be so simple, nor do I find a fantasy world to be world to be worth exploring in the long term if it is so simple.

So, you say you want something new - say a setting focused on Moorish Pirates. Sounds great. Let's make that the first supplement for our setting, the core area of play we are going to lavish detail on at first, and set the initial published campaign within. But, there is no need to make the whole campaign world 'Moorish Pirate' world. A world is huge and we can devote huge sections to Moorish inspired kingdoms and even make that the focus of most of our initial supplements. But how many thousands of square miles do you need for that? How much truly interesting variation on that do you think you can come up with?

 

[Oligopsony]

So, you say you want something new - say a setting focused on Moorish Pirates. Sounds great. Let's make that the first supplement for our setting, the core area of play we are going to lavish detail on at first, and set the initial published campaign within. But, there is no need to make the whole campaign world 'Moorish Pirate' world. A world is huge and we can devote huge sections to Moorish inspired kingdoms and even make that the focus of most of our initial supplements. But how many thousands of square miles do you need for that? How much truly interesting variation on that do you think you can come up with?

If you have a passion for early modern North Africa? Quite a bit. (With the "Moorish Pirates" premise in particular you would in fact want a great deal of diversity beyond North African expies just to represent the original premise, but.)

Late medieval Western Europe gets to not be a "trope" for the same reasons I, as a white dude, get to not be "ethnic." Pretty much any time and place is as cool and deep and neat as late medieval Western Europe, and I don't think anyone would say a fantastic version of that isn't a perfectly serviceable setting.

 

[Salamandyr]

Well, to a great extent, campaign worlds based around Medieval European worlds actually include all those other cultures-Moorish areas, Arabian Nights, the Far East. Look at Hyborea, or the Forgotten Realms. Even Middle Earth. You can't actually even have a "Medieval European" expy without all those other nations blended in, since so much of European history was about the clash of civilizations.

That's kind of the thing about so-called "kitchen sink" style fantasy worlds. They're a lot like the real world. Over here you've got knights in shining armor, over here you've got steppe nomads on ponies, while over in this area you've got desert warriors and fabulous cities. And every once in a while, they all get together and fight. The question is...where should the point of focus be? On the Arabian knights country, or on the Arthurian England country.

 

[Celebrim]

Late medieval Western Europe gets to not be a "trope" for the same reasons I, as a white dude, get to not be "ethnic."

Err... what? News to me.

Pretty much any time and place is as cool and deep and neat as late medieval Western Europe, and I don't think anyone would say a fantastic version of that isn't a perfectly serviceable setting.

Who says a whole world of medieval western europe isn't a 'trope world'? You can fit all of medieval western Europe in some place well, the size of Europe. You could have three Europe's simultaneously on the same map, one based of Dark Ages Europe, one based off of High Middle Ages Europe, and one based off of Early Modern Europe, and you'd still not fill up 1/4 of an Earth sized campaign world. Just how much diversity do you think you could dig out of Europe and make it interesting enough for a whole planet without wanting maybe to vary the tropes abit or build in some interaction with non-european inspired cultures?

I'm not talking about the setting of a particular adventure path or a paticular supplement. I'm talking about an entire campaign world. I do indeed protest that middle western europe, or even just 'europe' is insufficiently broad material to base a campaign world on.

 

[Kaodi]

I wish they would have a new setting search because I have an idea for a campaign world I would love to pitch to someone.

 

[karolusb]

But, there is no need to make the whole campaign world 'Moorish Pirate' world. A world is huge and we can devote huge sections to Moorish inspired kingdoms and even make that the focus of most of our initial supplements. But how many thousands of square miles do you need for that? How much truly interesting variation on that do you think you can come up with?

I completely agree, which comes back to why I disagree ;-). Trying to do a whole world justice is all but impossible, trying to make a whole planet one thing is preposterous. For a campaign setting (as opposed to a campaign world) I would prefer to simply be focused. you need outside influences for that focused setting to work, you can't pretend those things don't exist, but you can sideline them. 7th Sea is an excellent example of a setting that frustrated me, they wanted age of sail, so they had it. They didn't ask what was necessary for it to make sense (no Cape of Good Hope + Indian Spice trade = no 17th century sailing vessels), they just hand-waved it without a single explanation for why these people would sail at all.

So for Moorish pirates you need logical stand in's for classical Phoenicia, classical Jerusalem, medieval Egypt, Post-Frankish Europe etc.. Without all of those Moorish pirates make no sense. But we don't need the 'setting' to be about Post-Frankish Europe, we merely have to acknowledge that something that would serves the role of Frankish Europe existed, over there somewhere. Trying to give an in depth treatment to everything is too ambitious, and the setting suffers. Denying that past events influenced the current world makes the setting illogical ( a horrible pet peeve of mine). And over defining the world stifles creativity. I loved FR when it came out. A gorgeous map, and 2 paragraph descriptions of 100 places. It was a huge boon to my creativity (though I was also like 14 at the time, I would be more critical now), then they wrote books, then they killed gods, then they retconned nations without so much as a by your leave, then they filled every corner of the planet with named npcs. Now it is possible that that was always the goal, but for me, it made the setting far much less useful.

Discrete pieces, perhaps made in such a way that they could be assembled seamlessly, after the Moorish Pirate setting you could have the Post-Frankish Europe setting, they could relate, but hopefully not mandate each other. That would interest me.

 

[Celebrim]

I completely agree, which comes back to why I disagree ;-). Trying to do a whole world justice is all but impossible, trying to make a whole planet one thing is preposterous. For a campaign setting (as opposed to a campaign world) I would prefer to simply be focused. you need outside influences for that focused setting to work, you can't pretend those things don't exist, but you can sideline them. 7th Sea is an excellent example of a setting that frustrated me, they wanted age of sail, so they had it. They didn't ask what was necessary for it to make sense (no Cape of Good Hope + Indian Spice trade = no 17th century sailing vessels), they just hand-waved it without a single explanation for why these people would sail at all.

You sound like a man after my own heart. So, briefly, yes, trying to give treatment to everything is too ambitious. I'm not suggesting that. I am suggesting that thought has to be given to the world in its broad outline before you can even reasonably establish a single cultural entity. As you say, very distant parts of the world can impact the culture and economy of bits and peices of it. But I'd never suggest you try to detail all of it, just that your broad conceptions made some sort of passable sense.

I never found FR particularly useful. It had lots of detail, but none of the detail I wanted. I consider FR the archetypal bad campaign setting.

That said, let me fork completely off topic. In my own homebrew, my characters are currently in Talernga on the eastern coast of Sartha. Talergna is the major intellectual and financial hub of the region, historically as the gateway to Sartha and also lynchpin of the entire Storm Coast trade (the major north/south trading route for goods in that part of the world). Way on the other side of the equator to the southwest, there is a nation I haven't done much with ruled by an immortal god king, and loosely based on a romanticized sub-saharan African kingdom - a medieval Benin on a grand scale. Now, this conception dates back to middle school, and lately I've been thinking, "What sort of commercialism does this ostencibly wealthy kingdom run on? Does it have any reason to trade with the northern regions of Sartha?" What prompted this thought was I was going to have an ivory dealer from the far south in Talernga, but then I realized - Talernga doesn't need imported ivory. I've already established the existence of domesticated mastadons along the Sword Coast, and there are wild herds of both mastadon and mammoth elsewhere in the region. So, what would drive long distance trade, and even more critically, what would you exchange? Much more emphasis is put on what was coming back from the far east than what was being used to purchase it. Was it just European silver flowing east in return for all those 'exotic' commodity items? If you were a European trader on the outbound voyage where you moving goods in short hops eastward between the intervening cultures, or did you have some commodity in addition to coin that you were taking the distance? Conversely, what might a eastern entrepreneur headed to Europe be hoping to buy? I can't think of anything really other than glassware, but that opens up another can of worms - if we accept a glass mania in our 'spice' region that is trading for glass, how does that impact the arts and architecture of our 'spice' region? I'd rather have more going than glass, and more balanced intercontinental trade.

Feel free to fork if you want to essay.