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

[Quickleaf]

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.

Yeah, I second this!

And WotC still owns Rich Burlew's unpublished setting from the 3e setting search, right? I say bring it on!

 

[Bow_Seat]

I have looked at the forgotten realms with love and disappointment. In a sense I am glad that someone attempted to create a world where everything was linked to everything else and a grand history of connected narratives could be created, because that is how historians record and understand our own history. That said, it pales in comparison to the depth of actual history of the real world. It is obviously just too much of a task for anyone to create a well documented history that is believable.

I think that the best thing that can be done is to create a logically coherent world where, rather than explain the interactions of specific groups/guilds/persons, the books should explain a narrative as to what the world was like during whatever period it is describing:

Take for example (real history) the post-Alexander, Hellenistic world. If I were to describe that world to you I would say that there was this great general from a land called Macedonia, and that he went on to conquer all the known world. When he died while returning home from his conquests he bequeathed the Diadochoi (his generals) with lands that they had conquered together. These generals founded their own dynasties, based around the example set by Alexander. Some prospered more than others, and a few new dynasties began to emerge. The mindset of this time period can be summarized by five emphases: Obsession with Luck/Fortune, Emergence of Cosmopolitanism, a Theatrical Mentality, a Scholarly/Philosophical Mentality, and an emphasis on Individual (rather than communal) Achievement. Given that and a general map, with short descriptions of cities, you should be able to put together a campaign that embodies the spirit and essence of Hellenistic Greece/Anatolia/Asia Minor.

You'll notice that this does not require any lengthy descriptions or statting of groups/guilds/persons, other than just mentioning Alexander and his few generals by name.

 

[Manabarbs]

I feel a little bit differently than I think a lot of other people in the thread do. It really doesn't matter to me one bit the extent to which the world has a deeply realized history or a deeply realized anything, really, except to the extent that it directly affects a campaign that I'm going to be running or playing in. I get that it's possible to look at basically any piece of text written in any setting sourcebook ever and wring something out of it, but that's a very low bar. Some material is just more inspiring than other material. When I read a new setting sourcebook, I really want to be inspired by powerful ideas about the sort of campaigns that could only happen in that setting (or are especially perfect for that setting.) If There Are Some Kingdoms and it happens that Those Kingdoms Are In Conflict, it matters much less to me what the intricate histories of those kingdoms are as it does why that's a backdrop that I should choose for a campaign over any of the other campaign settings available or something that I just make up. This doesn't mean that the setting has to be a total wackyworld, but I don't need yet another arrangement of generic fantasy stuff without strong hooks.

Distilling my experience with different settings, I'd say that the single most important thing a new setting can have is brightly-colored ideas about the sort of things the player characters can be and the ways in which that affects their interactions with the setting. Clear hooks about how characters might be attached to the setting in interesting and new ways. Similarly, a setting with a smaller number of strong, focused ideas is better than a setting that's just sort of a collection of stuff that's kind of around. I can fill in the stuff that's just sort of kind of around on my own, as it matters.

The sort of things I'm looking for aren't mutually exclusive with things like pages of history that it's not obvious to me why I should care about that, but I feel like a lot of settings are presented as though that's the exciting part. The exciting part is inspiring ideas about what sort of person it'd be fun to be in a setting. Take Iron Kingdoms, for example. (I know it's not a d20 book, but it's a good example.) One of the things I dislike most about the book is that it has a tremendously inspiring character options section that makes me want to play in about twenty new campaigns every time I read it. It's absolutely packed with awesome ideas and on top of that is an amazing window into what the campaign world is like. Unfortunately, that section, including the facebreakingly incredible careers section, is buried halfway through the book behind a bunch of dramatically less inspiring geographical and historical cruft that's not the worst example of the form I've ever read, but is all but impossible to care about until you already have a pretty good idea of what the world is like (and even then, it's hard not to rapidly go into skim mode), and it does not do a good job of introducing the world.

I understand the impulse to present a setting like it's a real place, but in the end that is just not as useful to me as a setting book that realizes that it's being read by somebody who wants to be a player or a DM in a TTRPG adventure set in the setting.

 

[Matthias]

I have looked at the forgotten realms with love and disappointment. In a sense I am glad that someone attempted to create a world where everything was linked to everything else and a grand history of connected narratives could be created, because that is how historians record and understand our own history. That said, it pales in comparison to the depth of actual history of the real world. It is obviously just too much of a task for anyone to create a well documented history that is believable.

I enjoy worlds like this--a world with a rich background of history for DMs to draw upon. Speaking from experience, it is difficult and time consuming.

It's easy by comparison to write backstory for a single character, because all the other important people he or she once interacted with in her past can appear and disappear in the backstory like so much quantum foam and you (the DM) never actually have to add detail to those other characters in the actual game being played unless you really want them to make an appearance. It is more difficult to write backstory for a whole country or region because their neighbors will always be there, and a nation's or region's history will always entwine with those of its neighbors.

Just about the only way you can have two countries in a world that know exactly nothing of each other's existence and have zero interaction is if you have some kind of impassable barrier that blocks travel (magical or otherwise) _and_ blocks divination. Because all you need to discover an unknown land using divination magic are (a) the ability to cast a spell that can do the job, (b) the idea that such a land could be found, and (c) the willingness to look for it. I even say "existence" because just the fact of knowing of an exotic land's or people's existence is enough to have an effect on your own history and culture (compare with Star Trek's "prime directive").

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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.

And yet it has been done again and again. I'd also point out that even though many campaign worlds toss in some 'other cultures' they're basically map-edge-fillers more often than not. Exotic locales that the PCs can venture into near the edge of the map so they can have a bit of a romp in the desert, or fantasy Japan, or whatever. Eventually some of the more long-lasting worlds either flesh out some of these areas more, or graft on some secondary setting (as Kara-Tur has been grafted onto various TSR products over the years). Honestly, unless it was supporting a specific game system designed around that milieu I have seen very few settings released that didn't put some sort of fantasy Europe smack in the middle of the map, stick fantasy Arabia off to the lower right, fantasy central Asia somewhere off to the right, etc. The settings that actually DO avoid this tired paradigm are the very ones you label 'trope worlds'.

IMHO the real trope world is the setting that is built around one single idea, not around primarily one culture or family of cultures. A world that is perpetually overrun by the undead, a world where wizards run everything, a world that is all ocean, or all desert, etc. Clearly though there are some pretty good settings that fall into this category, they are just ones that aren't extreme. I think the useful measure is more if you could run many different varied adventures and campaigns in a setting where each one could focus on different things. A world which can support that IMHO is not a trope world. OTOH it could very well be YAFE and frankly at this point that's almost as bad.

So, I will say this, if fantasy Medieval Europe HAS to appear, stick off on the side of the map and put something else in center place. That would be a welcome change, and it would sure be something for US gamers to deal with, so little exposed to different cultures.

 

[Libramarian]

I understand the impulse to present a setting like it's a real place, but in the end that is just not as useful to me as a setting book that realizes that it's being read by somebody who wants to be a player or a DM in a TTRPG adventure set in the setting.

I agree with you. There's quite a bit of what I would call hardcore simulationism in this thread. Maybe because going by the title we're supposed to be talking about "worlds" rather than merely "settings". I'm actually turned off by a setting calling itself a "world"--that's a good tip that it's stuffed with way more left brain-pleasing, macro-level info than I need or want to do some D&D there.

 

[GX.Sigma]

I agree with you. There's quite a bit of what I would call hardcore simulationism in this thread. Maybe because going by the title we're supposed to be talking about "worlds" rather than merely "settings". I'm actually turned off by a setting calling itself a "world"--that's a good tip that it's stuffed with way more left brain-pleasing, macro-level info than I need or want to do some D&D there.

What do you want in a setting product? What are the useful kind of details?

 

[Matthias]

To tell the truth, most "fantasy Medieval Europe" settings don't do a good job of portraying a fantasy version of Medieval Europe because they purposefully leave out all the negative aspects of living in Medieval Europe that aren't really appealing or interesting to modern-day gamers, such as the state of women's rights, children's rights, human rights in general, lack of education (much less literacy), and the power exercised by religious authorities over everyday life. Not that they should try to accurately represent those things, because I enjoy living in a modern-day civilization.

 

[Libramarian]

What do you want in a setting product? What are the useful kind of details?

Some pretty maps and a bunch of adventure seeds with a unifying flavor, basically. I think of a setting as like 5 or 10 adventure products gutted of extraneous detail, loosened up in terms of plot linearity and crammed together so you can criss-cross connections in play. It's a midway product between the ready-to-run adventure and complete homebrew. I'm not interested in "worlds" that are mostly made up of the kind of detail that I wouldn't even bother to come up with in a homebrew setting. I don't particularly care about the geographical extent of the setting, whether it's a city or an island or a province, or whatever--you could run a huge campaign in just one city. Whatever is most appropriate for the unifying flavor. I like some general background detail, but just enough for NPCs to have interesting things to talk about during extemporaneous conversations. "Baking in" some of the flavor in terms of random event/encounter tables and variant rules is cool. Then I don't even have to memorize it.

My fav setting right now is John Stater's Land of Nod, which is a hexcrawl setting with hundreds of one or two paragraph adventure site sketches peppered around the map, for the DM to flesh out into full dungeons if/when the players explore there. I like that. I also like how he writes up cities--there's a keyed map, but it's not the whole city, it's just one neighborhood in size with a couple dozen of the important NPCs but it represents the whole city...kind of like how the "cities" in Skyrim have only like 20 buildings and you can walk from one end to the other in 2 minutes. That is to say--the difference between a town and a city is mostly color. A city is like a town but where the NPCs are the most important NPCs of the city. That's a smart idea I think.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

I do like "deep" setting with lots of history, culture, and physics behind how things are. The main reason is that the most appealing part of RPGs to me is exploration. I want to know what's over the next hill, what kind of people live the next country over, and why orcs hate humans. A deep setting feels much more real to me, which makes exploration that much more rewarding. Middle Earth is a good example of a deep setting; even before reading the Silmarillion I could tell that a lot of history, culture, and reasons were behind the story I was reading, which is the main reason I enjoyed LotR so much.

That said, official D&D settings have never seemed to do "deep" very well, and I don't have high expectations for the future.