Your views on settings -- the good, the bad, and the useful

[Psion]

Don't forget Slacerian Dragons Psion!

The what?



Sorry, Nightfall, they do nothing for me.

 

[Desdichado]

I'm sorry, William, are you asking us specifically to spell out what we found good, bad and useful for each campaign setting? Or more generically how we use campaign settings?

Before I type up a lengthy reply, I want to make sure that's what you're looking for.

 

[Mystery Man]

I suspect I'm not typical in this regard, but one of the things I most dislike about settings is the amount of material included that the PC's never interact with, that they never have a reason to interact with, and that the players would be bored silly interacting with. I don't need 50 pages of culture, or history, or pantheons, or rituals. A page or four on each of those is probably plenty.

I want stuff that I can use in adventures (you know, that stuff the players get to do). I want stuff that will provide an interesting challenge for the PC's and a fun time for the players. Anything that doesn't affect the PC's should be kept to a minimum.

Yeah, there just are not enough feats, spells, and prestige classes. It should be a 90-10 split in favor of those three main staples of DnD.

 

[Desdichado]

I suspect I'm not typical in this regard, but one of the things I most dislike about settings is the amount of material included that the PC's never interact with, that they never have a reason to interact with, and that the players would be bored silly interacting with. I don't need 50 pages of culture, or history, or pantheons, or rituals. A page or four on each of those is probably plenty.

I want stuff that I can use in adventures (you know, that stuff the players get to do). I want stuff that will provide an interesting challenge for the PC's and a fun time for the players. Anything that doesn't affect the PC's should be kept to a minimum.

So, in other words, you want campaign settings to be a big collection of adventures?

 

[DarrenGMiller]

So, what do you think are the good points, the bad points, and the useful things in each setting? How do you use settings and setting materials? What makes for a good setting and for a bad setting?

The World of Greyhawk has lots of room for DMs to place their own creations, and has a somewhat different feel than the Forgotten Realms. Many of the powerful NPCs seem to be a little more in the background than they are in the Realms. I think that the World of Greyhawk has some great adversaries for player characters, such as Iuz and the Scarlet Brotherhood.

In the end, I think it is up to each DM and the players to breath life into a setting. Like much else in D&D, a great deal depends on the individual gaming group as to how much fun they are having in a setting.

SO, WHAT DO YOU THINK?

I am a Greyhawk DM for several reasons. First, it was the first setting that I found that came alive for me. Also, there were not many detailed settings available at the time. I liked the early FR stuff and bought most of it as it came out, but it quickly became overkill as every aspect of the world was detailed. With Greyhawk, as long as I stay pretty faithful to the Georgraphy, the major historical events, and a few core NPC's that the PC's never have to meet, I can pretty much do what I want. I am also a homebrew DM, but do not have the time in my life right now to homebrew. I DO have time to make MY version of Greyhawk MY OWN. I have changed place names (Gnarley Forest has become Gnarled Forest). I have changed historical events (the party triggered the fall of the ToEE as played through T1-4, then went through some of the events of RttToEE, though they have never been to the temple itself). They are traipsing around the Cold Marshes, which is detailed enough to give me lots of ideas, but not to the point that I have to stick to a published source all the way. They should soon head to Sterich, where Greyhawk "canon" will be turned on its head once again. But hey, its my game.

So, that is what I like in a setting. Greyhawk is generic enough to inspire creativity, but fleshed out enough to inspire creativity. It is default, so there are not a dozen books of PrC's, feats, special spells, etc. I can save the money that others spend on the latest hardcover detailing the fourth mountain to the north of the second largest city in the third most populous province in my campaign world. Instead, if my PC's go there, I can use a product from another setting, create my own, whatever. I like the flexibility.

DM

 

[Kanegrundar]

I tend to think of campaign settings in terms of how much I can mine from them for my own setting. (the more I want to take the better.) If I really want to play in a setting, then I think it's really good.

FR: Hated it in 2E. The 3E implementation has been pretty good so far. True there's a LOT to sift through there, but new players that are just playing the setting blind with no prior knowledge about the setting beyond what is written in the 3E books don't really have that problem (though they are likely the minority of FR players). I mine a few PrC's (re-written in spots to fit in with my homebrew), lots of spells, monsters, and the occasional race. The one thing I take away more than anything from the Realms are locations and ideas for cultures/dungeons/cities. It's a good setting, IMO, though I would never run a solely Realms game I would play in one.

Dragonlance: This is very much a "meh" setting for me. There's not much beyond a couple races and some monsters that I even want to bother with bringing over to my homebrew. It feels boring and uninspired to me. Don't get me wrong the new products out for the line are light years better then any of the old material, but it still doesn't grab me.

Eberron: Excellent. I love the flavor of the setting. I mine the races, many of the PrC's and much of the tone for my homebrew. I like settings that aren't anything more than LotR++. Eberron is fantasy in a way that fantasy just it's shown to be beyond the Final Fantasy series of games. Not that I like a video-gamey feel, just something different than the average world of dwarves, elves, dragons, and orcs is what I like. I don't think I'd ever run Eberron, but every now and again I start to think that I'd like to.

Iron Kingdoms: Excellent. I like this setting so much that it's serving as the base for my homebrew. I'm taking Western Immoren, the cultures, the contries, etc. and adding in things from other settings. This is the only campaign setting out right now that I would run unmodified, but I'm too much of a kitbasher to do so!

Arcana Evolved/Diamond Throne: The setting isn't nearly as interesting as the system. I take everything mechanics-wise from the setting and use it in other places. That is not to say that DT isn't a good setting, but it isn't nearly as compelling to me as IK.

Warcraft: I like the setting, though it's a little too simple for me. There's nothing that I haven't seen before in some other setting. I mine a few of the races and a couple of the classes for my own games. That said, the new World of Warcraft book is top notch. It's really good.

Scarred Lands: I never really got into the setting, but I use pieces of it from the books that I've bought like the city of the dead (the name escapes me ATM) and the Hornsaw Forest over to my homebrew as well as many monsters, but the setting itself never really did it for me.

Those are the major settings I mine from off the top of my head. Most other settings really only offer me monsters and the occasional race, so they aren't really worth mentioning anyway.

Kane

 

[Mystery Man]

Since I bought City State of the Invincible Overlord, I've really been looking forward to this new Wilderlands setting. The more info I get on it the more I know I'm going to like it. It looks modular and flexible enough to do some of the things that I have planned for that I just couldn't do with FR. Don't get me wrong though, I love FR and always will but I'm ready for a change into something homebrewish but with a foundation already there that I can build on.

 

[The_Gneech]

So, in other words, you want campaign settings to be a big collection of adventures?

Well if he doesn't, I sure as heck do!

-The Gneech

 

[delericho]

I'm not interested in a generic fantasy setting, except perhaps to steal from it. That being the case, I don't want to see lots of new rules, or things being too tied in to the setting as a whole.

If I'm looking at a non-generic setting, I'm looking to run it as-is. That being the case, what I need are conflicts around which I can tell stories, and hooks to interest the players. I also emphatically don't want to encounter a metaplot (particularly in novel form) that comes to a resolution and changes or negates some key part of the setting concept.

That being the case, here's what I like and dislike about some published settings:

Dragonlance: this setting has been killed by the novels IMO. The 'big story' has been told, and anything the PCs do is almost certain to be less interesting. That said, I've not looked at the latest RPG incarnation, so it might have been redeemed.

Dark Sun: Another setting ruined by the novels. The initial boxed set was pretty cool, but within months the first novel set in the world had established a 'free city' and made massive changes to the campaign concept.

Spelljammer: As mentioned earlier in the thread, there's not enough by way of a central conflict.

 

[MonsterMash]

Well I've said it before and I'll say it again:
I use the old Judges Guild Wilderlands and CSIO and now I'm buying the Necromancer/JG versions.

Why I like them is there is enough detail to pretty much run the game from with them, but plenty of scope for the GMs imagination.