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<blockquote data-quote="rounser" data-source="post: 712391" data-attributes="member: 1106">Yep, and most setting sourcebooks provide too much high level detail and not enough low level stuff.&nbsp; I've argued in the past that the high level stuff should be left to the DM to create, and that the designers should be doing the verisimilitude heavy lifting of designing encounters and low level detail.Look at the Shadowdale book in the 2nd ed box set of Forgotten Realms.&nbsp; It details stuff down to the level of individual farms, it's a DM's playground.&nbsp; You could impose whatever political or magical struggles you wanted over that framework.&nbsp; I think publishers are stuck in a rut of traditional thinking that something is either a plotted adventure, or a high-level birds-eye-view sourcebook, and that's why you don't see many products of the type I'm referring to.&nbsp; I think Creative Mountain Games' Locus - Jalston is the sort of thing I'm referring to.You can pack a location to the brim with adventure without imposing a heavy-handed overplot.&nbsp; A sphinx's lair in the cliffs, the denizen of which picks off town fishermen who don't answer it's riddles correctly.&nbsp; The town guard being in league with the wererats in the sewers....their lair being a dungeon that the product actually details down to encounter level.&nbsp; You don't need to impose goals for a DM's playground - they're intrinsic in the setting, and can be left to the DM to impose his own campaign plot on the place.&nbsp; Controversially, I'd also suggest not bothering to name the place - it's just one more thing to have to ignore when the DM plonks it down in their world..&nbsp; That's leaving the fun stuff like naming and plotting to the DM, instead of to the designer, IMO.&nbsp; Of course, I can see why designers love naming &quot;generic&quot; cities for marketing and feelings-of-ownership reasons, and stamping their own high-level-political-and-setting-detail all over it, but it just seems counterproductive to me...that's the sort of thing DMs love to do too, and they'll have to rip out such &quot;helpful&quot; foliage before they can grow their own, unless they're sticklers for canon.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="rounser, post: 712391, member: 1106"] Yep, and most setting sourcebooks provide too much high level detail and not enough low level stuff. I've argued in the past that the high level stuff should be [b]left to the DM[/b] to create, and that the designers should be doing the verisimilitude heavy lifting of designing encounters and low level detail. Look at the Shadowdale book in the 2nd ed box set of Forgotten Realms. It details stuff down to the level of individual farms, it's a DM's playground. You could impose whatever political or magical struggles you wanted over that framework. I think publishers are stuck in a rut of traditional thinking that something is [i]either[/i] a plotted adventure, [i]or[/i] a high-level birds-eye-view sourcebook, and that's why you don't see many products of the type I'm referring to. I think Creative Mountain Games' Locus - Jalston is the sort of thing I'm referring to. You can pack a location to the brim with adventure without imposing a heavy-handed overplot. A sphinx's lair in the cliffs, the denizen of which picks off town fishermen who don't answer it's riddles correctly. The town guard being in league with the wererats in the sewers....their lair being a dungeon that the product actually details down to encounter level. You don't need to impose goals for a DM's playground - they're intrinsic in the setting, and can be left to the DM to impose his own campaign plot on the place. Controversially, I'd also suggest not bothering to name the place - it's just one more thing to have to ignore when the DM plonks it down in their world.. That's leaving the fun stuff like naming and plotting to the DM, instead of to the designer, IMO. Of course, I can see why designers love naming "generic" cities for marketing and feelings-of-ownership reasons, and stamping their own high-level-political-and-setting-detail all over it, but it just seems counterproductive to me...that's the sort of thing DMs love to do too, and they'll have to rip out such "helpful" foliage before they can grow their own, unless they're sticklers for canon. [/QUOTE]

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