World ideas that you think are lame

[Blue_Kryptonite]

I have to day I'm just the opposite. I hate low-magic, gritty, super-arc-less messes of Nothing Special To Do. I could go play Dark Age Of Camelot instead. As a DM, all my games are high-magic, high-fantasy, super-cinematic type things. Heck, I don't think a PC has accidentally died since the late 70s. I see my games as a TV series. Most TV series don't last long if you constantly kill off the cast members.

 

[Felon]

I loathe worlds where religion is foisted upon every character, especially to a degree where everyone is assumed to devoutly worship some specific deity.

 

[Wormwood]

Tolkien-inspired Elves, Dwarves and Orcs.

Another batch of D&D sacred cows ripe for the slaughter.

Of course, this shouldn't mean exclude them in existing worlds. And I'm eagerly awaiting Eberron in spite of the inclusion of these Middle-Earth hangovers.

Addendum: I really dislike settings that nominally exclude those three races, but instead add thinly-veiled analogs in their place ("The Splorfs are stout, dour and clannish, while the Shmelfs are noble, magical and fey. But watch out for the Sporks, because they're brutish and nasty and breed like rabbits!")

 

[Emiricol]

I loathe worlds where religion is foisted upon every character, especially to a degree where everyone is assumed to devoutly worship some specific deity.

Other than clerics and other devoted religious types, I can't imagine a world with multiple real gods where people didn't offer up a prayer or two - to whichever one was appropriate at the time.

 

[Eosin the Red]

Dislike unreal geography...that requires more suspenion of disbelief.
Dislike gimmicks in general (meaning deviates from real world physics) like Waterworld or Steamtech world.
Dislike patchwork monoworld where all tech, language, and knowledge is equal.

I want the setting to provide interest in the story but really the story is about PCs not about the world. Get wild and it the story is about cool wild stuff, not about players.

 

[caudor]

Some of my least favorite campaign worlds are those which lock you into a narrow band of climate/culture/etc. Dark Sun, while I'm sure it had strong points, did not appeal to me for this reason. Just about everywhere was hot & dry. Kinda rules out a good swamp-romp when the mood strikes you.

Another dislike of mine is a campaign where famous NPCs outshine PCs. Dragonlance novels are a terrific read, but if you chose this world as a campaign, the spectre of Raistlan seems to hang over any wizard PC (whispering...you are not as great as me).

 

[Acid_crash]

The worlds I don't like are those that attempt to emulate medieval europe to much...Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, Scarred Lands, and especially Kalamar. Greyhawk because its bland, same for Kalmar, FR for its powerful NPC's that seem to overshadow the PC's no matter what they do, and Scarred Lands because it just bored me.

 

[Felon]

Other than clerics and other devoted religious types, I can't imagine a world with multiple real gods where people didn't offer up a prayer or two - to whichever one was appropriate at the time.

Yes, but I've known a lot of DM's who try to incorporate little incentive programs into their world to "encourage" PC's to choose a god to worship...and, consequentially, to penalize players who aren't devoted to one god. I've never gotten the point of any of that, other than it's easier to railroad players when they're all commited to obeying a deux ex machina.

 

[Turjan]

Hmm... let's see!

- I dislike worlds that are nearly direct rip-offs of other age-old existing campaign worlds.

- I'm not into steam tech or gunpowder in any of my campaigns, because this destroys the fantastic feeling for me.

- I don't like campaign settings that are based on books, because they tend to be very uniform; a good book is about well developed characters, not about world building, and this usually shows.

- I don't like these very common absolutely symmetric pantheons which don't have any resemblance at all to any real world religion; although I have to admit that Scarred Lands succeeded to breathe at least some life into some of their gods (Enkili or Corean are great concepts).

 

[Derulbaskul]

I think novels are world-killers.

I like strong metaplots. I don't like (a polite way of saying, "hate, loathe and detest") those metaplots being resolved by novels.

A good novel can bring a world to life. A good one that is particularly ambitious can ruin a world as a place for playing games. And bad ones are just dreck.