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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JustinA" data-source="post: 3530031" data-attributes="member: 51618">See, there is a perfectly good wood for talking about where the action in a fantasy story takes place -- it's called "the world". When you are building the place where a fantasy story occurs, you are building the world. But, apparently, that simple English isn't highbrow enough. So, we need a totally new term. CRAFTING A SETTING. Wow, that sounds just so much more impressive than world building. We're not just making a world, we're carefully crafting a setting that's PERFECT FOR THE STORY....I'm deeply suspicious when people take words or terms which have a common meaning, attempt to redefine them in some sort of arbitrary fashion, and then claim that their new definitions should be universally understood to be THE ONE TRUE MEANING OF THE TERM.They're usually playing a stupid and meaningless semantics game like the one you're playing.Instead of trying to ram your non-standard definitions of commonly used terms down people's throats, why don't you just discuss the underlying issue?So, let's discuss the difference between "setting created for a specific purpose in a particular story" and "setting created without a specific purpose in mind".When it comes to RPGs, how -- exactly -- do you tell the difference? You cite the example of deciding that a particular hill was once the site of halfling religious rituals as "indulgent" and "unnecessary". But, in D&D, the relevancy of that information is no farther away than a bardic knowledge check or a legend lore spell.Similarly, when I prepped my current Ptolus campaign the first thing I did was read through the 600 page book and carefully made notes detailing how various locations, NPCs, and organizations would need to be changed in order to fit into the existing cosmology and history of my established campaign world. You'd probably call this indulgent since I had no immediate purpose in mind for much of this work. But in the very first session there were at least a dozen instances of the players asking questions or the PCs going to places that I hadn't anticipated -- but that, thankfully, I had prepped answers for.When it comes to RPGs, your distinction between "good setting (that was needed for the adventure)" and "bad setting (that wasn't needed for the adventure)" can only be determined after the fact. You look back at the adventure and say, "Huh. Guess I didn't need all that information about the hierarchy of the Thieves' Guild, since the PCs just ignored all that and went straight to the dragon's lair. So I guess that was all self-indulgent 'world-building'. Shame on me."Okay, so having bunnies on a hill is "good setting" -- it's needed...But the color of a rooftop is "bad setting" -- it's not needed?What's the distinction, exactly? How far does this go? When I mention that the nobleman the player's are talking to is wearing silk is that "bad setting" or "good setting"? What if I mention what color the silk is?5000 monsters do me no good if what I need for a particular scenario is the 5001st monster that would have been in the next supplement.I've never understood people who get upset when more choices are offered to them. More choices means that there's a higher likelihood that something I want and/or need will be available when I want and/or need it.</blockquote>

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