World ideas that you think are lame

[D+1]

Well, there's what I dislike and what I consider LAME, and I actually can't think of particular world ideas that I would automatically brand as LAME. Lame is as lame does. Only if the actual execution of the concept is thoroughly botched would I begin to see a setting idea as lame. But what do I dislike?

• worlds without a diversity of cultures. Al-Qadim and Oriental Adventures spring to mind. Oriental or Arabic cultures within the world is fine, even good, but not worlds where cultural archetypes are exclusive.
• Ditto for a monotonous terrain type: "Welcome to Underdark World!" "Ocean World has it all!" A world need not include EVERY terrain type but more than two is preferred.
• Automatic assumption of the Great Wheel cosmology of core D&D or anything like it. I want to see settings where the cosmology is changed but the setting itself is not focused on the cosmology.
• settings where the authors take excessive delight in pointing out the ABSENCE of certain elements as if that were reason enough to play in it. "Fleebworld: Gnome-free forever!" If you have to sell your ideas based on what they DON'T have rather than what they do have, then you've already convinced me your world sucks because even YOU can't think of better things to say about it.
• worlds with names of places and people that are unpronounceable. I can play in a world where samurai have names like Sir John Falstaff. I can't play in a world where King Poquhg'kne rules Humuhumunukunukuapua'a.

Actually, I just finally thought of world ideas that I consider genuinely lame.

First, made-up slang. Once and only once have I seen it used and actually work and that's "smeg" in Red Dwarf. Any other time and place it sounds silly. That includes "frak" and "felgercarb" from Battlestar Galactica, and "berk" from Planescape.

Second, this bizarre compulsion to reinvent the calendar and time. Unless your world design in some fashion HINGES upon a 150-day year, with 14.7-hour days divided into 7 months containging between 20 and 33 days each what the [EXPLETIVE!] are you doing it for? If your world has 4 seasons, approximates 365 days in a year - why not just use the modern Gregorian calendar? And unless you really, truly, want and NEED the players to say, "the first Migronk in Yalorfrit," insead of, "the first Wednesday in June", don't EVEN frigging bother. The sole exception that makes any sense is to make changes to add in festival-weeks, or to make every month equal 30 days to simplify recordkeeping, or the like. Now, EVERYBODY does this. I myself am not immune, but then I make only minor changes - and I don't expect the players to ever care, or even take notice. It's a personal preference, a meaningless but fun exercise in world-building minutia. In a published setting there is no such excuse.

 

[Ottergame]

I don't like gloom and doom worlds, they tend to be so colorless and souless I don't bother with them.


Planescape actually started to phase out their slang at the end of the product life. They knew it was annoying too. They even stated in one of the books something to effect of "Younger generations do not use the cant, it is seen as old fashioned and rarely used".

 

[Chain Lightning]

Yeah, this only depicts how different personal tastes are. Although I'm with you in the "no steam and tech in fantasy" camp, I never understood why people who are able to build awe-inspiring towers shood not be able to wear a simple pair of goggles or glasses. That's simply a necessity at flying speed - otherwise you don't see anything. In my campaign, elves cannot stand bright daylight. As they use glass for other things, they also had the obvious idea to wear big hats and sun glasses when forced to be out in the sunshine; that may not fit your bill but seemed logical to me .

You have a point. But....there's still something bugging me about the whole thing.

Okay, I think I know what it is. A tiny part of me just doesn't want to see them at all. But mostly .....if the 'typical default fantasy world' has them, they shouldn't look so well engineered and they shouldn't be close in design to ones we see from World War I and on.

So, if an inventor type is flying around on his magic carpet......I don't want to see him wearing the same goggles as Riddick wears in "Pitch Black". Or goggles that the Red Baron wears. The fact that it looks like something from the year 1850-ish and up is what is ruining it for me. Yes, I shouldn't associate our own technological or fashion time line with a fantasy's, but that's the thing that takes me out of the mood.

Now, if the artist designed them in such a way that seems to fit within the setting. Then I'm all for it. Eye wear should be very rare. Limited to only the rich who also have contact to craftsmen/inventor types that can manufacture these things. Then, the finish product should look very large, clunky, and give us the feeling that this is something being tried out for the first time.

As far as the lens over one eye thing: Its okay by me if I see an appraiser bust out a lens thingy to inspect a jewel, wrap it in cloth and then put it safely away. But the reason why I hate a mechanical lens being brought down over one eye thing is because it reminds me of something I see in sci-fi art way too much. Y'know...the whole one eye targeter that comes down or is fixed over one eye. Usually its done poorly too. Its like a cliche in sci-fi art that has gone on way too long IMHO. Yet, a lot of artists are still doing it.

Well, if its part of a cyber-warrior's thing, then at least do it a bit differently than everyone else. Yeesh. Heh heh...can you tell that this is a sore point with me? I admit I occasioally do it too, but when I encounter the need to do it I try to avoid it. If I can't avoid it (because maybe my client really wants it), I try to do it in a different manner.


Oh...BTW, I'm with you guys who say that they don't like the super ultra realistic campaign settings too. I was in one my friend home-brewed. He's a good GM and all, but I didn't like it. I couldn't get into it at all. Mostly because it wasn't fun or interesting. Only humans, one god, countries were accurate realistic versions of real old Earth civilizations. You were screwed if you twisted your ankle on that last climb down the 20' pile of ruined wall. That gave you minuses on movement for like a year of gaming.

Nah, no thanks. When I want fantasy, its a way for me to seek escapism into a world that will show me sights and have me do things that are unlike any on my own world.

 

[Nifft]

"Eye-wear" IMC looks like masks: anything from an African ritual mask to a Venetian costume mask. How do they protect your eyes? Magic and gemstones.

I agree about most eyewear, but I kinda like the monocle look for gemstone inspectors & other "detection" type stuff.

-- N

 

[Haradim]

Only ones I dislike:

Blatantly high magic worlds: I somewhat like high, earth-shattering magic, but not when it's everywhere.

Doom worlds: I find it takes a really good GM to make these games fun, given that you are generally told at the outset that you can't actually accomplish anything, or you're going to be killed off within sessions.

 

[Trickstergod]

• worlds without a diversity of cultures. Al-Qadim and Oriental Adventures spring to mind. Oriental or Arabic cultures within the world is fine, even good, but not worlds where cultural archetypes are exclusive.

Actually, I just finally thought of world ideas that I consider genuinely lame.

First, made-up slang. Once and only once have I seen it used and actually work and that's "smeg" in Red Dwarf. Any other time and place it sounds silly. That includes "frak" and "felgercarb" from Battlestar Galactica, and "berk" from Planescape.

First, Planescape used a good chunk of Cockney slang to it. Berk, for example.

Second, the diversity of culture brings to mind something else I don't like about game worlds: Too much diversity of culture. If there's one thing I don't like about 3rd edition, it's the monk. I don't like cultures that are out of their element. Oriental monks in pseudo-European settings, which is what most D&D is, don't work well by me.

 

[Epametheus]

Fruitworld

 

[Hypersmurf]

Or....when I was totally turned off by Forgotten Realms when I heard Egyptian gods had visited at one time.

The Goa'uld are false gods.

-Hyp.

 

[Kichwas]

Agreed, if there is one setting that should have never seen the light of day due to its blandness, it is Kalamar. I could care less about realistic geography.

It's interesting how different tastes can be.

My list of things that ruin it for me on a setting:

• Geography that makes no sense, causing me to be jarred out of character or story everytime I look around. Even if magic alters something, unless the magic is kept constant and at beyond Epic levels simple wind, moisture, erosion, and tectonics (earthquakes for example) will correct it. With all but the last of those, the correction will only take days to a single season...
• Politics that makes no sense - groups that war or make peace when they shouldn't given their resources, religion, culture, location, and other factors.
• Multiple pantheons. If the gods are real, how did different ones all create the same world? You can have multiple views on the same pantheon (Zeus vs. Jupiter or Allah vs. Jehovah), but in a real gods world only one pantheon can actually exist.
• Pantheons that make no sense. Either gods are shaped by mortals, or mortals are shaped by gods. So the gods need to make sense and represent actual archetypes in the human, demihuman, and humanoid subconscious - just like all religions (even monotheism) do in the 'real world'.
• Magic used as a crutch too often to explain mass-scale failuires in logic. Magic in Dnd has known limits and a known way of working. Using it to explain a failure in geography, politics, religion, economics, or any other factor is a cheap shot and at worst an insult to the intelligence of the consumer.
• Race relations that make no sense. Having no reason other than alignment for why this or that group is in conflict or peace with this or that group - these things should be driven by logical reason, as per my comment on politics above.
• Meta-plots. I want a setting, not a novel. If I pay money for a setting I want to own the story. I want me and my gaming group to shape what happens, not somebody else. A setting is a place to -put- my game, not drive it. I'm the one in the driver's seat here. When I want to buy a story, I'll buy a novel or a module.
• Author-PCs / Super-NPCs. I don't need ultra powerful iconics literring my setting and getting in the way of my plots. NPCs belong in modules as suitale encounters. The people in a setting should make sense, have sensible abilities, and not crowd out the stage. I want to able to decide how prominant my PCs will be without having the script out or otherwise change the setting.
• Carbon-copy cultures: Copying things from famous novels or the real world, and only barely filing off the serial numbers. In some cases even using the same names as historical figures with a few letters changed in the spelling. This can come across as racial stereotyping at worst, and a lack of creativity and true authoring talent at best.

 

[Dirigible]

The Goa'uld are false gods.

Except Anubis, sho'vah!

First, made-up slang. Once and only once have I seen it used and actually work and that's "smeg" in Red Dwarf. Any other time and place it sounds silly. That includes "frak" and "felgercarb" from Battlestar Galactica, and "berk" from Planescape.

Umm... smeg's a real word. It means something Granny wouldn't like me to talk about. Something intimate, male, and biological, if you catch my drift.

So's berk. It means idiot, annoying git.


What don't I like, world-wise...

I can't say there's anything I'd rule out totally, as so much of it depends on how it's written and conceptualised. I've played 'doom and gloom' before, f'rinstance; I loathed Ravenloft, had a few good sessions of Masque of the Red Death, didn't think much of a friend's homebrew 'insurrection vs the dark hosts' setting... but I love Midnight.