Wisdom of the homebrewers applied to published settings

[rounser]

As the DMG describes, the two most common ways of building a setting are "outside in", whereby you paint the setting in initially in very large strokes of entire kingdoms and mountain ranges and gods...and try and fill in details from there...

...or "inside out", whereby you start really small and detail a single village or town, and slowly expand from there. For homebrew DMs, this is a recommended approach...but is almost unheard of among publishers.

What if a publisher were to break the mold and build a setting "inside out"? By this I mean leaving the most of the big picture and rest of the world a complete blank, but started with a fully detailed village, dungeon, wilderness area of a few miles and built at that level of detail from there. Next supplement might be tens of miles east from the first, with some fully detailed lairs, and villages and dungeons. The next might be to the north of the first, detailing a small city and it's surroundings, and underwater lairs in the bay. And so on and so forth, slowly radiating out from the starting point.

As the setting supplements radiated further from the starting point, the status quo encounter ELs would rise in anticipation of the PCs having gained levels. Each DM could invent their own big picture for the setting, and in doing so, make the world their own on that level.

Would this framework give you what you wanted out of a published setting, or would you miss the big picture being spelled out?

 

[Furn_Darkside]

Each DM could invent their own big picture for the setting, and in doing so, make the world their own on that level.

This is where I think what you are suggesting falls apart.

I tend to have my "big picture" figured out before the first adventure.

If I only had a microcosm of information on the setting, then I would not be able to make that same conclusion until down the line when enough supplements come out.

I am not sure I would like to be on the mercy of the designers either. Campeigns that start from the outside tend to lay down a standard of what kind of expectations to have for their future supplements.

I don't think it would be capable of doing that from other way- without it becoming a cliche of itself.

FD

 

[Reynard]

Maybe the way to go would be mini-settings, then. We have plenty of giant books on worlds. After word, we get books on regions, nations, etc... maybe if we got just nation and some conflicts therein and a "how to put this place on the map" kind of idea, it would work. I guess the real question woul be how do people use published settings. Are they just backdrops, with DMs creating the local areas from whole cloth. Or do most groups actually visit all the great places in those big hardbounds?

 

[kenjib]

We've kinda got some of these elements in stuff already published. When FR first came out for 1e, it was obvious from how it was presented that the dalelands were the microcosmic focal point. They even had a seperate smaller-scale map, so there was a definite bias toward inside out, although it's not going as far as you suggest of course.

On the other side of the coin, we have things like Freeport, Bluffsides, and the like which can be easily dropped into settings. Modules also often come along with regional detail for areas you can plug into your setting. You can even take stuff from published worlds, like Hallowfaust or somesuch, and drop them into your world.

Will the world of Bluffsides be expanded outward in future books?

 

[Furn_Darkside]

Will the world of Bluffsides be expanded outward in future books?

One of their future products, Dry Land , refers to being south of Bluffside.

FD

 

[rounser]

If I only had a microcosm of information on the setting, then I would not be able to make that same conclusion until down the line when enough supplements come out.

I am not sure I would like to be on the mercy of the designers either. Campeigns that start from the outside tend to lay down a standard of what kind of expectations to have for their future supplements.

Alright, what if you were given all this in a paragraph or two, rather than 200+ pages of macro level stuff? E.g. "To the east, there is a town ruled by the evil noble Sir Drobbengard."

By necessity, such a setting would have to be fairly generic at the big picture level. For example, Sir Drobbengard might be an evil noble, but to what throne and what plots he's up to, might be left unspecified. His personality and dealings within the town that he's detailed in would be specified though, such as his cruelty towards his servants.

The scope of what is detailed is reversed from the norm. In a normal, macro level detailed setting, you'd find out that Sir Drobbengard is plotting to overthrow the throne, but you don't have any stats for him, encounters for his town and manor, or the fencing school he instructs at. You'd have to fill in all that yourself.

Th difference is that the DM is filling in the big picture of what Sir Drobbengard is up to, not the small detail work. Yes, the setting might have a generic feel on the macro level, but perhaps that would be made up for by a richness of detail on a low level - the level that the PCs actually encounter, and walk through.

 

[Furn_Darkside]

Th difference is that the DM is filling in the big picture of what Sir Drobbengard is up to, not the small detail work. Yes, the setting might have a generic feel on the macro level, but perhaps that would be made up for by a richness of detail on a low level - the level that the PCs actually encounter, and walk through.

It sounds interesting- I would like to see it tried.

I am not convinced it would work, but I can see the possibilities.

FD

 

[rounser]

They even had a seperate smaller-scale map, so there was a definite bias toward inside out, although it's not going as far as you suggest of course.

It was done even better in the 2E box, with the 64 page book solely on Shadowdale. I guess it's similar to books of this type slowly spreading out over the Dalelands at that level of detail.

On the other side of the coin, we have things like Freeport, Bluffsides, and the like which can be easily dropped into settings.

Sort of. I think a setting of the kind I'm alluding to would need even less setting requirements and assumptions than these books make. That they're not really setting-generic enough at a macro level of detail to do exactly as you claim has been commented on in the past - and I think it's possible to come closer to not dictating terms to the DM with regards to big picture stuff than that.

 

[Graf]

...or "inside out", whereby you start really small and detail a single village or town, and slowly expand from there. For homebrew DMs, this is a recommended approach...but is almost unheard of among publishers.

This is a pretty keen anaysis. You're spot on except:

Its been said before but this was also how FR started. You had the dalelands, and a few other choice (or utterly random) bits and that was it. You had the Moonshae isles from some novels and Icewind dale. They were all pretty much hick towns removed from the hustle and bustle. Sembia wasn't even defined at all (so DMs could create their own games there). Eventually they went out and started to fill in the world. For a while the best resource were actually the comic books they were doing by Jeff Grubb.

Just about every roleplaying game has started out the same way, Vampire, Rifts, Earthdawn, Shadworun, etc. They all started with a simple structure based on a small area geographically and began to expand outward filling in details and adding new layers of complexity.
In D&D world Dragonlance, Ravenloft, Darksun, Spelljammer did this too.
I think most game writers leave themselves lots of openings to expand and go into more detail....

 

[rounser]

This was also how FR started. You had the dalelands, and a few other choice (or utterly random) bits and that was it. You had the Moonshae isles from some novels and Icewind dale. They were all pretty much hick towns removed from the hustle and bustle. Sembia wasn't even defined at all (so DMs could create their own games there). Eventually they went out and started to fill in the world. For a while the best resource were actually the comic books they were doing by Jeff Grubb.

Unless I'm misunderstanding what you mean, I think that that's almost the exact opposite of the approach of a "microsetting" such as what I'm describing.

FR, from the 1E boxed set forward was as an entire continent thousands of miles wide detailed very sparsely, with sporadic points of a bit of detail (such as Shadowdale) or, later, an airy sparrow's eye overview of each region. When a boxed set did go into detail, it often bit off more than it could chew (e.g. Undermountain). The Volo's Guides come close, but they too almost attempt to cover too many square miles of territory - it would take the collective page count of all of them to cover the Dalelands without skipping much, as they always do.

If you ripped out all of the pages of macro level overview (which is almost the entire Cyclopedia of the Realms) and replaced them with a level of detail equal to the Shadowdale book of the 2E boxed set on a limited area (such as the Dalelands), that would be more like what I'm suggesting. Yes, there are focal points in the Realms (the classic ones being Eveningstar, Waterdeep, and Shadowdale, and to a lesser extent, Daggerford), but for the most part the focus is on a birds eye view of a continent, not expanding out in rings from one of these focal points in a "2E FR boxed set Shadowdale book" level of detail.

Apply the "microsetting" approach to Eveningstar, and you'd not only have a fully detailed Eveningstar, but populated nearby dungeons, lairs, wilderness, villages, towns etc. all down to encounter level. Building in a ring around that, you might eventually cover Cormyr at that level of detail. Likely that would take a page count equal to all the FR regional supplements to do, but unless you're doing a road trip campaign, you probably wouldn't need a sparsely detailed continent much anyway - DMs are generally good at sparse high level detail because they love creating it - look at any homebrew web page for evidence. Low level stuff is too much like hard work. Guess which kind of work designers prefer to do too.

No, it wouldn't be a "something for everyone" campaign setting, because obviously, if you don't like Cormyr, you're screwed. But then again, it wouldn't be Cormyr, but something more generic on a high level of detail than that. FR has a lot of high level detail already decided for you, and thanks to the metaplot, more of that each quarter.