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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FalcWP" data-source="post: 4368582" data-attributes="member: 16858">My ideal setting would probably be pretty close to Eberron - even more than various ideas I've come up with, that's always struck me as awesome.  The things I love from it (and plan to incorporate in a homebrew I've been toying with):1)  PCs are heroes.  I won't run a setting with tons of high-level uber characters (I'm glaring at you, Forgotten Realms).  There might be people out there who are more powerful than the PCs, but very few, even fewer who are on their side.  Any campaign should be the PC's story.2)  Alignment, if it exists, is not a hard and fast rule.  I prefer having NPCs with a motivation rather than an alignment, anyway.  Much more interesting.  But even if alignment is in play, I don't want every Orc to be evil and every Elf to be good.  Or even the *majority* of a race to be good or evil, and the ones who aren't are the notable exceptions.  There's a range.  3) Intrigue.  This actually ties in with motivation/alignment, above.  I want various groups competing, openly and covertly, working together at one moment and against each other the next... or even at the same time.  It makes the setting feel more real to me, particularly if each group has specific goals and preferred methods that they generally stick to - The Order of the Dark Blade wants to remove the nobility, and they use skilled assassins to do so.  Why?  Maybe they want a democracy; maybe their secret leader is fourteenth in line to the throne - but there's a motivation there, and a method, and that makes the world seem more real.4)  Room for a variety of adventures.  Having a wide open world full of dungeons and ruins is great.  So is having a number of intricately detailed cities.  But there needs to be a balance - if I feel like running a city adventure after a series of dungeon crawls (or vice versa), I want to be able to without it being contrived or screwing up what I've established about my world.  Looking again at Eberron, Xen'drik is good for this - any number of reasons to send the PCs there, tons of dungeons, and it leave Khorvaire open for other types of adventures (though there are more than a few dungeons to be inserted there, as well).Just a few things I look for in choosing a setting and keep in mind when I try to design one.</blockquote>

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