Which of these games would you rather play (and why)?

[Raven Crowking]

No further information or rewording in this thread changes my option. The difference, AFAICT, is that Option 2 is player-driven, whereas Option 1 -- no matter how worded -- drives the players.

I don't play games to be driven.


RC

 

[TheClone]

I have chosen option 2. I really like Points of Light settings. You have much room to play and create. You may chance things in the world, in fact you may change to world. Option 1 provides a really dense world, where there is civilization everywhere (except behind the evil hordes). Everything has been settled and within the lands there are spies for the evil ones at beat. Everything else is about stopping the tide. Killing evil monster and prevent them from destroying your home (or killing the one that pays you). It all set and done and allows less freedom of decision compare to option 2. Option 1 is less diverse and is absolutely standard and nothing new.

You could say: Option 1 is Forgotten Realms (D&D 3e, don't know the other editions) and option 2 is Dark Sun (D&d 4e, don't know the other editions).

I'm really happy to see that many other voted for option 2, because I love that kind of openess and sandboxy style. And the more love that style, too the more likely I'll get good adventures

 

[Desdichado]

I like the description of option #2 better, but it also makes me nervous that it's just an excuse for a bunch of generic dungeon crawls. Blegh. Option #1 sounds like it might be more fun in actual play, despite my disliking (relatively speaking) of the premise.

Undecided.

 

[BrokeAndDrive]

Option #1 is yawn-inducing cliche city.

Option #2... I like my gaming to be a little rugged.

 

[Traveon Wyvernspur]

Option 3

Because I am a horrible horrible instigator, I wonder what they would look like mashed together....

[sblock=Option Infinity]
History is draped in the corpses of fallen empires, nations lost to time. The most recent attempt to resist this collapse is The Kingdom of Elaria, is a fairly peaceful and stable realm, formed with an alliance of races. However, Elaria's peace comes at the hands of its tyrant-king, nicknamed the Iron Rod due to his capital city being a mining town known as the Iron City. Outside of the nation live fiends and barbarians, creatures of darkness and legend. Inside the nation is a tenuous allegiance of elves, dwarves, and other races, all kept in check by the fear of the Iron Rod's military might. However, the kingdom is splitting at the seams as old rivalries barely kept in check start to bubble into true rebellion. The Iron City, they say, is rusting.

Meanwhile, an entity known as the Shadow-King is organizing the various monsters and tribes outside of the Kingdom into a cohesive force, in savage mockery of the Elarian alliance. Here, they find ancient and powerful artefacts buried in the rubble of previous ages, and bring these old technologies to bear against the Kingdom.

A call goes out from the Iron Throne. Heroes are needed. Of course, in their own homes, heroes are beset. Spies. Monsters. Rebellions. Crackdowns. A brooding, distant army, and dark clouds on the horizon. Only those who can combine their powers to survive will prosper and, perhaps, lead the Kingdom to a new gilded age...
[/sblock]

I like this option

 

[haakon1]

I picked Option #1. I prefer Tolkien/Greyhawkism to gothy-emo-woe is me/4e-ism.

And I like militaristic campaigns, and politics, and a campaign with some meat in the setting, all of which I read into Option 1.

A true Dark Ages campaign would be awesome, but I'm thinking it would come out more "I didn't bother making a coherent setting but woo-hoo, it's dark and scary" in Option 2.

 

[Lanefan]

And I like militaristic campaigns, and politics, and a campaign with some meat in the setting, all of which I read into Option 1.

A true Dark Ages campaign would be awesome, but I'm thinking it would come out more "I didn't bother making a coherent setting but woo-hoo, it's dark and scary" in Option 2.

While I certainly get your point about option 1, allow me to play devil's advocate for option 2 here...

To start a campaign, you really don't *need* a setting, coherent or not. All you really need is an adventure, perhaps a town as a base of operations, a vague idea about the local culture (Norse, medieval, Aztec, etc.) and climate (desert, temperate, jungle, etc.), and away you go. All the rest can be filled in later, as you go along.

Both options, truth be told, give more information that I as player would expect to get when going in to a campaign. All I'd expect could be as little as "Desert climate, somewhat Egyptian culture where you're starting, Hobbits are banned, metal armour is rare and very expensive thus you cannot start with it. Roll 'em up." Simple, huh?

The story will unfold (I hope) through play.

Lan-"Hobbits in metal armour probably *should* be banned, come to think of it"-efan

 

[the Jester]

Option 2.

Option 1 is both too black and white and also too cliched for my tastes. It's pretty much Tolkien without mentioning the Rings.

Option 2 is cliched, but it sounds like a lot more fun. More meaningful choices to be made. It's definitely more my style.

 

[Camelot]

If you had said "Tolkien" instead of "war campaign," I would have picked that. I love Tolkien. Except I always almost spell his name wrong.

 

[haakon1]

To start a campaign, you really don't *need* a setting, coherent or not. All you really need is an adventure, perhaps a town as a base of operations, a vague idea about the local culture (Norse, medieval, Aztec, etc.) and climate (desert, temperate, jungle, etc.), and away you go. All the rest can be filled in later, as you go along.

Both options, truth be told, give more information that I as player would expect to get when going in to a campaign. All I'd expect could be as little as "Desert climate, somewhat Egyptian culture where you're starting, Hobbits are banned, metal armour is rare and very expensive thus you cannot start with it. Roll 'em up." Simple, huh?

The story will unfold (I hope) through play.

I agree with you about not needing a setting to be in place to start play.

As a DM, I prefer to start with the bold strokes done -- I'm running Greyhawk, so I know most of what exists -- plus an overall "these are the current megatrends" view.

Then I start from the bottom up, adventure by adventure, building the local area mostly from published adventures, but altering so it's coherent in feel and so that the trends are pulled through (even if they were not there in the original) to fit with what's gone before and what I'm planning in the future.

For example, I'm finishing up running "The Last Baron" by Paizo. In my campaign, the town it's set in is the closest town to the Ket/Bissel border (on the Bissel side -- the home land for the PCs') and perhaps more interestingly, closest to The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth.

The border of hostile states idea fits what was in the adventure to begin with (one reason I picked it). But I've also added in links and clues connecting back to groups encountered in 3 previous adventures for this party, and a whole lot of backstory from a previous campaign where the previous party (including two current players and one current PC) did the Lost Caverns. The main villain is now motivated by obsession with Drelnza, Iggwilv's daughter and treasure in the Lost Caverns, who in my campaign is missing but not dead. In the original, he was motivated by . . . well, mostly just being a bad guy.

The original material had factions, but not the factions and motivations I've converted them to -- in most cases, it's close, but the Greyhawk essence makes the Asmodeus cult something more than JUST another evil cult. I've altered it so it has hidden connections stretching all the way back to the first villains in the Keep on the Borderlands, if the PC's ever figure it out. Bwahahaha!

I'm writing the campaign more like "Enterprise" (hey, I've kinda got some plot arcs and themes, but I'm also shooting from the hip and linking to whatever's gone before as often as possible) than Babylon 5 (it's all figured out in advance). Which kinda makes sense, since this way the campaign can follow the PC's around, while being more than just "some adventures I felt like running" . . .

Option 2 actually reminded me of the 4e campaign I'm a player in. I suspect the DM doesn't have a setting in mind at all (he doesn't seem to care about settings), so the default "points of light" works best -- he doesn't need to bother with setting. But I might be wrong. We had a VERY unusual session where we mostly talked to NPC's while investigating, instead of just killing stuff, so it could be he's hankering for more than setting-less hack & slash too.

Bottom line, I picked Option 1 because it was clear that DM wanted to HAVE a setting, whereas in Option 2, I wasn't sure I'd get anything but dungeon crawling.