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Silverlocke980
2012-05-30, 09:08 PM
My good fellows, ladies and gentlemen alike, I've an urge to engage in a roundabout chat this fine evening around a most particular subject: What do you want in a tabletop game's story?

Not rules. Not powers. Simply storywise. What kind of setting would you like to play in, what kind of stories would you like that setting to have?

Terraoblivion
2012-05-30, 09:30 PM
I want it to do one of two things. Either be vague and abstract enough on the specifics, while strong on themes and toplevel concepts, that you can create your own specifics without others arguing that it is obviously wrong. Or I want it to put a lot of effort into the mundane, everyday realities of the setting to give strong grounding for PCs and social interaction. The former works best for very fantastical settings, focusing on larger than life matters and very abstract topics. The latter works best for grittier settings about more ordinary people and for anything with complex politics that knowing the rules and subtle nuances of can make or break.

What I don't want is metaplots, tons of official NPCs, though samples of the kind of characters a typical PC would be is great to get a feel for the setting, or endless lists of plothooks instead of meaningful description. I can make plots, characters for them and secrets of the setting myself, but making a character from a culture that isn't really explained is pretty damn hard.

Thrawn183
2012-05-30, 09:40 PM
I want a setting that:
- Incorporates lots of fantasy elements.
- At least somewhat takes into account the presence of magic in a setting.
- Has regions for high and low level adventures and justification for why these regions exist/differ.
- Has natural tensions and conflicts between nations/groups that make it easy for a DM to add some detail that requires attention from the PC's.

Shadowknight12
2012-05-30, 09:46 PM
No humans. Or at least, scant few humans left (templated humans are fine).

No "this creature is a monster" mentality, save perhaps truly monstrous creatures like Aberrations, Oozes, Vermin, Dragons or Outsiders (and even then, they should be rare or uncommon). Most (if not all) of the creatures in the MMs should have their culture and be recognised as people.

No "big bads" looming in the horizon. No terrible army of darkness coming from the north or cthonian monstrosity lurking underground.

Every race and nation is "Alignment: Any" or the like. No more alignment tendencies or portrayals that make one race an acceptable murder target. Orcs and goblins and drow should be just as heroic and vile as elves, dwarves and halflings.

More diversity and variety. Enough with the "humans cover 90% of the planet, all elves are high elves, all dwarves are the same" shtick. Give me ten different subraces for everyone, use the creatures from the MMs for nations and kingdoms rather than the ones in the PHB and make sure everything is playable.

No stigmatisation of undead. Someone please make a setting where undead aren't vilified. I'm not saying they're slave labour (unless the setting is willing to portray undead slaves as they would portray any other type of slave, in which case it's cool), but just ordinary people who just happen to be dead. Necromancers should be portrayed like enchanters, mages who use their spells to bend the wills of others (in this case, undead) to their own, and treated thus.

No more vilification of ice. Seriously. Hardcore diehard ice fan here, sick to death of seeing portrayals of ice-themed things as ungodly evil. Combined with the previous item, would be nice if the ice-wielding undead were the nice guys for once.

High magic. I am sick to death of "low magic, low items, everyone is poor and dirty" settings.

Magical terrain. So tired of the same old terrain. Bring on the wild magic zones, the special kinds of sand and ice, the strange trees and the weird stones, the different types of water and fire.

In short, I want a setting that's magical and interesting and actively scorns standard fantasy.

deuxhero
2012-05-30, 10:11 PM
No Elfs, Dwarfs, Hobbits, Orcs or other creatures ripped from LotR.

Not middle ages Europe

DigoDragon
2012-05-31, 07:56 AM
I like settings with a bit of mystery. Like the fantasy world where a significant chunk of history is missing, yet the events before and after are there and don't explain why that chunk is gone.
Or places that don't seem to follow the normal laws of physics/nature, like the eastern European village that sees strange light rains of frogs from the sky on Wednesdays.

Yora
2012-05-31, 07:59 AM
Is this for your own campaign planning?
Because we had such a thread a few weeks ago. I know it, because I started it. :smallbiggrin:
I see if I'll find it again.

Here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=233688) is the one from me.
And one (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=203305) from afroakuma.
And one more (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=195691) form Thinker.
:D

And one from Enworld (http://www.enworld.org/forum/new-horizons-upcoming-edition-d-d/320386-what-kinds-new-settings-do-you-want.html), also by me.

I think the primary question that every setting has to take a stand on, is whether it wants to be a fairy tale setting, or an alternate reality setting.
Both do have their place.
In Fairy Tale settings, things are clear. There are heroes and villains, people and monsters. The lines are clearly drawn and the path for the PCs is clear. This makes for great heroic stories.
In an Alternate Reality setting, the PCs have to deal with situations from the real world, but in different conditions. If our world was like this, what would be do? This makes for stories in which the players have to weight their options, occasionally make mistakes, and may not be able to get a happy ending.

Personally, I only like the second type, but that's merely a matter of personal taste and preference. However, the setting needs to make up its mind about this. The alignment system of D&D works wonderfully in Fairy Tale games, but is nothing but trouble when players want to play an Alternate Reality game.

Tyndmyr
2012-05-31, 08:14 AM
My good fellows, ladies and gentlemen alike, I've an urge to engage in a roundabout chat this fine evening around a most particular subject: What do you want in a tabletop game's story?

Not rules. Not powers. Simply storywise. What kind of setting would you like to play in, what kind of stories would you like that setting to have?

Uniqueness. If yours is yet another version of greyhawk with minor changes, I admit I don't really care. Kingdoms of Kalimar? hate it.

I mean, I get it...it's nice and low powered, and this allows time to really focus in on the dirt farming(seriously, first module I bought had a huge section devoting to getting to know a farming village, and indeed, helping them farm), but I just don't care. I want dungeons, I want dragons, I want all manner of awesome things that I haven't seen before and that I can interact with, and I want it to at least casually make sense.

Acanous
2012-05-31, 08:28 AM
Tippyverse, with Tyndmyr DMing. Because that'd be awesome.

Thinker
2012-05-31, 08:35 AM
Things I like in a setting:

Fleshed out world concepts/world plots (prophecies, nations, potential points of conflict).
Only humans as playable race, but with multiple cultures.
Other races being alien. Elves and dwarfs can have their cities, but they should have a different mindset from humanity; they might treat humans like humans treat dogs or other pets.
Have some races that are aggressive and generally hostile. Orcs don't need to be bad for humans because they're innately evil, but they can be bad for humans for the same reasons that lions are bad for gazelles.
Magic is acknowledged by the setting; things are better for people who follow a powerful cleric or if a friendly druid lives nearby because they use their magic to help people.
Magic is rare and difficult to use so that there aren't guilds of wizards, cabals of clerics, or the like. Each magician is special (and potentially ostracized, depending on culture).
Logical low-level and high-level areas.
Regions that are unexplored enough to justify a hex crawl.
Cultures that are drawn from medieval Europe, not generic "medieval" cultures (there was a pretty big difference in medieval Ireland and medieval Lithuania).
Cultures that are drawn from areas that are not Europe, but have their technology adapted to a level on par with medieval Europe (Aztecs with access to iron would be interesting).
Chaos as a central theme for evil (similar to old myths of Tiamat, Typhon, Set, etc.).
Inspiration drawn from myths, legends, and folklore rather than from other fantasy material.

MonkeyBusiness
2012-05-31, 09:25 AM
People. I like people, some of whom might be monsters (because monsters are interesting people). I like to talk to them and interact with them and get to know them as neighbors between dungeon diving. Role playing some non-combat down time between adventures is fun for me.

I like puzzles and riddles and poems and songs in a setting: things that are hints, but detailed. I like the opportunity to solves problems through strategy or negotiation as often as I do kicking evil's butt.

But I do enjoy kicking evil's butt.





.

Oracle_Hunter
2012-05-31, 09:37 AM
Settings
Settings must be fleshed well enough to tell the story and be self-consistent enough for Players to make reasonable decisions from.

If your game is about finding dungeons and slaying dragons, the setting does not need a complicated calendar full of holy days and festivals. Likewise, if you establish that dragons only live in dungeons, you'd better have a very good explanation for any dragons found outside of dungeons.

If your game is about living and working within a single town, the setting needs to define the town much more, the kingdom somewhat, and foreign nations far less.

This is not to say that extra details are not appreciated, but they are not necessary.

Stories
Stories should fit the setting, and be supported by the rules. A survival horror story works better in a system where survival is precarious than one where death is a slap on the wrist. Ideally, any story should follow the same conventions that make for good stories in fiction.

Tyndmyr
2012-05-31, 09:56 AM
Tippyverse, with Tyndmyr DMing. Because that'd be awesome.

Why thank you, sir. I admit, I do draw some inspiration from Tippy's Thousand Points of Light for my campaign world.

Worlds, really. It's set on tidally locked binary planets.

I did play in a game once that outright intended to be Tippyverse, with Emperor Tippy advising. Great fun while it lasted. I admit I'm not sure why some use the setting as a pejorative.

Thinker
2012-05-31, 10:13 AM
I just realized that I forgot something in my list. I also like a lot of ambiguity and contradictions.

Having contradictory outsider opinions and stereotypes about various cultures is fun: Have you heard about the people from Thinklandia? All stoic goat herders!
Having ambiguous deities is also good: The Goddess Thinka shall descend from the moon on the eighth day of the 20th year of the dark lord or she might ascend from the netherworld on the sixtieth day of the year of silver.
It works with major events, too: The civil war between in Thinklandia began when the Lord of Thinkumbria was killed by Prince Thinker in a duel for the hand of Lady Thinkella. Conversely, it might have been when the Earl of Thinkly's men raided the Baron of Thinkerton's granaries at the onset of spring.
Lastly, it's always fun for prophecy: The stag will evade the huntsman during the festival of Thinka and the light shall fall.

prufock
2012-05-31, 11:46 AM
- Originality.
- Internal consistency.
- Detail.
- Flexibility.

Honestly, I don't have any one setting that I favour over others. I like to bounce around between settings and styles. As long as a setting meets the above, I'll give it a chance.

Mastikator
2012-05-31, 12:26 PM
Internal consistency, verisimilitude and wealth of detail.
Any character you make within the setting needs to have a "default" or "normal" option of everything, ranging from clothing, weapon, personality, attitude towards other races/cultures, taste in food, etc.
This is not just important for PCs but moreso for NPCs, to give the DM some very good guidelines for how to make them.
I'd rather have few highly detailed races than many meekly detailed. I mean one book for just elves, describing their history, how world events has affected them, what foods they eat, what their attitude towards other races is, which different cultures exist within the elven world, what is their world view and ethic philosophy. Same for every race.
You don't get bored with just a few races (or maybe just a single one) if they are richly detailed, because then they become more interesting.

Talyn
2012-05-31, 12:35 PM
I want to be able to make a difference. I want a setting where, with a lot of hard work, and maybe some hard choices, you can end the campaign having made the campaign world a better place.

"Points of light" style campaigns are the easiest ways to do this, and I do enjoy those, but I'll take any kind of setting where the PCs have an opportunity, if they choose to take it, to truly become heroes.

I think that is one of the reasons I could never enjoy cyberpunk games (Shadowrun, etc.) or anything the World of Darkness puts out that isn't Hunter: the Vigil - at the end of the day, those settings expect that nothing your characters do will end up making the world a better place.

NichG
2012-05-31, 01:03 PM
1. There should be things that are unknown. Big things, unknown to big people. I want a setting where its possible to discover something even the gods don't know, where there are true mysteries to investigate. These mysteries don't actually have to do with any sort of central plotline, though its a plus if they are.

2. I don't want to hate the world, but I want to hate things about it that can be changed. I guess my prime negative example here is the World of Darkness setting. Its in the title of the game: this thing is supposedly to be dark and unpleasant and cruel. In most campaigns you aren't going to make vampires not be horrible people - its a fixed thing about the world that makes you want to go 'nuts to this, I'm going to spend all my time trying to figure out how to escape the setting' (note that this is fine in campaigns where you can change these elements, but its not really supported in baseline WoD). On the other hand, a world where everything is perfect means I don't have as much drive to do things about it.

3. Corollary to 2, I don't want to feel confined by the world too much. I don't really like L5R that much not because of the mechanics or the setting, but because of some of the RP restrictions that come with it. Some confinement is fine - I don't expect the world to do nothing if I start committing murders or steal from shops or whatever - but there's a hazy line of too much that L5R crosses for me.

Beyond those, I generally prefer settings that are partially serious and partially humorous. I'm okay with local extremes of either, but I don't want all serious all the time or all comedy all the time. Slayers, not Looney Toons, not Call of Cthulhu. That said, I have more tolerance for the serious side, and I don't mind seemingly impossible hurdles so long as a solution is actually recognized as a solution when presented. Fantasy or sci-fi is fine, but I tend to twitch at particularly bad science so fantasy or space opera (where psionics and magitech and so on are things) is more likely to get a pass from me. Though that said, I'd love a hard sci-fi setting that was constructed well, but it doesn't generally make a very good game.

Jay R
2012-06-01, 10:46 AM
I had written a long, careful description of what I wanted, but then I remembered this, which says it better than I could.

From Robert A. Heinlein's Glory Road:

What did I want?

I wanted a Roc's egg. I wanted a harem loaded with lovely odalisques less than the dust beneath my chariot wheels, the rust that never stained my sword,. I wanted raw red gold in nuggets the size of your fist and feed that lousy claim jumper to the huskies! I wanted to get up feeling brisk and go out and break some lances, then pick a likely wench for my droit du seigneur --I wanted to stand up to the Baron and dare him to touch my wench! I wanted to hear the purple water chuckling against the skin of the Nancy Lee in the cool of the morning watch and not another sound, nor any movement save the slow tilting of the wings of the albatross that had been pacing us the last thousand miles.

I wanted the hurtling moons of Barsoom. I wanted Storisende and Poictesme, and Holmes shaking me awake to tell me, "The game's afoot!" I wanted to float down the Mississippi on a raft and elude a mob in company with the Duke of Bilgewater and the Lost Dauphin.

I wanted Prester John, and Excalibur held by a moon-white arm out of a silent lake. I wanted to sail with Ulysses and with Tros of Samothrace and eat the lotus in a land that seemed always afternoon. I wanted the feeling of romance and the sense of wonder I had known as a kid. I wanted the world to be what they had promised me it was going to be--instead of the tawdry, lousy, fouled-up mess it is.

valadil
2012-06-01, 12:54 PM
All I want is inspiration and organization.

When I read about a locale, my reaction should always be "I want to go to there." The locale should have unanswered mysteries for the PCs to investigate and for me to answer (and for other GMs to answer differently!).

Organization is key too. I don't care if a city is explained in a paragraph or has its own book. When the players go to that city I want to have all the available information on it. I'm more than happy to fill in the gaps, but I have to know where those gaps are. A problem I always had with FR is that I know more information is out there. When I read up on something if a detail is missing, my temptation is to dig deeper. I want that detail indexed somewhere so that I at least know where to look.

Silverlocke980
2012-06-01, 10:24 PM
Thank you everyone. I'm not doing this for my own personal fan setting, but more just as a question of what people are looking for in a setting; if anything I'll use this for my writing more than anything else.

willpell
2012-06-02, 04:56 AM
This is an extremely good question and I'm not even close to having an answer for it. Really, I think of my life as the process of figuring out answers like this.

Jay R
2012-06-02, 09:30 PM
I want a consistent world that is different from ours.

I want magic to be mysterious, not technology with the serial numbers filed off.

I want other races to be different and alien.

I want my character to be a real entity, not a pile of numbers. I want the people he interacts with to be more than piles of numbers.

I want morality to matter.

If there are peasants and royalty, I want to be able to tell the difference in their attitudes and their approach.

I want climate, geology, flora and fauna to affect the play of the game. If the PCs travel 500 miles north, they should get colder (or hotter, in the southern hemisphere). If they climb a mountain, they should be short of breath. Or there should be a reason why it's different.

Scalenex
2012-06-02, 09:59 PM
I've been working for a very long time on making a world that incorporates most things common in D&D setting and makes sense anyway. Very brief summary.

I'm working on a world where a creator god made everything so he could feed on the souls of mortals. He created several servants to help feed him. He created his servants with antithetical view points so they couldn't rise up against him (one was LG, one LE, one CE, etc), but they rose up anyone when they were convinced that their master planned to eat them. The surviving gods of the rebellion were collectively called the Nine.

After joining forces to destroy their tyranical master and splitting the world between them, they pretty much stopped working together and started feuding amongst themselves for power and worshippers at the expense of the other eight. They presided over a world ruled by dragons under their civilization collapsed, then the elves until their civilization collapsed, and now the humans.

Falconer
2012-06-03, 02:24 AM
Enough room to play a wide variety of character types and run a wide variety of campaigns. I look for versatility above all else in a campaign setting; more generic settings tend to allow for both "classic" D&D with all the traditional tropes, as well as room to play around and mess with the normal way things work. You can have your cake and eat it, too.:small tongue:

Particularly I like taking the old cliches and deconstructing them or examining them. Sure, orcs have a tendency to form raiding parties and invade surrounding nations once every few generations, but why? Turns out it's not so much Chaotic Evil tendencies so much as it is population troubles: the land can't support that many orcs, and so the younger ones with no land or future prospects band together, grab some weapons, and try and take land and loot from the nearby 'umies.

Jay R
2012-06-03, 10:22 AM
"a world that incorporates most things common in D&D setting and makes sense anyway"

Much wisdom is contained in that phrase.

Man on Fire
2012-06-03, 11:18 AM
Something that haven't been done before, that doesn't just repeat same old nonsense all fantasy setting do. None of that cliched myth of creation, none of that golden age of ancient civilizations, none of that boring, predictable stereotypes - "Elves are better", "Orcs are chaotic evil", "dwarves are drunk" - it's been done, give us something new. The setting must have something that makes players want to play in it, something they cannot find in other settings or games. Look at my criticism of Tippyverse - it's just the same old, no matter how you look at it, and what new it offers Dark Sun already did and did much better, so why should I want to play it? if the game doesn't have the hook, something that sucks the players in, then it's worthless. And well-known cliches offered by several D&D settings at this point just doesn't cut it.

Morph Bark
2012-06-03, 01:36 PM
No humans. Or at least, scant few humans left (templated humans are fine).

No "this creature is a monster" mentality, save perhaps truly monstrous creatures like Aberrations, Oozes, Vermin, Dragons or Outsiders (and even then, they should be rare or uncommon). Most (if not all) of the creatures in the MMs should have their culture and be recognised as people.

No "big bads" looming in the horizon. No terrible army of darkness coming from the north or cthonian monstrosity lurking underground.

Every race and nation is "Alignment: Any" or the like. No more alignment tendencies or portrayals that make one race an acceptable murder target. Orcs and goblins and drow should be just as heroic and vile as elves, dwarves and halflings.

More diversity and variety. Enough with the "humans cover 90% of the planet, all elves are high elves, all dwarves are the same" shtick. Give me ten different subraces for everyone, use the creatures from the MMs for nations and kingdoms rather than the ones in the PHB and make sure everything is playable.

No stigmatisation of undead. Someone please make a setting where undead aren't vilified. I'm not saying they're slave labour (unless the setting is willing to portray undead slaves as they would portray any other type of slave, in which case it's cool), but just ordinary people who just happen to be dead. Necromancers should be portrayed like enchanters, mages who use their spells to bend the wills of others (in this case, undead) to their own, and treated thus.

No more vilification of ice. Seriously. Hardcore diehard ice fan here, sick to death of seeing portrayals of ice-themed things as ungodly evil. Combined with the previous item, would be nice if the ice-wielding undead were the nice guys for once.

High magic. I am sick to death of "low magic, low items, everyone is poor and dirty" settings.

Magical terrain. So tired of the same old terrain. Bring on the wild magic zones, the special kinds of sand and ice, the strange trees and the weird stones, the different types of water and fire.

In short, I want a setting that's magical and interesting and actively scorns standard fantasy.

While I don't like some of your earlier points and think some don't entirely make sense, the high magic and magical terrain comments make me think of a setting I have that is controlled by an epic lich sorceress who controls the weather in the entire setting and causes the terrain to shift every so often so that every few weeks or so your village suddenly is neighbour to a different village than two weeks before.

Plus utilizing a lot of the supernatural hazards from Stormwrack, Frostburn and Sandstorm and the magical locations from many of the books.

Granted, the intention is that the lich does try to make sure the level of magic other than her own stays low, but that is easily tweaked and the lich herself isn't a BBEG per se, more like a semi-mortal trickster goddess of sorts.

Asheram
2012-06-03, 07:52 PM
I'd just like the world to make sense.

If there's a town built somewhere I want a Reason to have been built there.
If it's prosperous then Why is it prosperous
If there's a large population then how are they sustained?

I don't want a perfect simulation (though it would be neat), all I want is to look at it from an outside perspective and say "Yes, this could work."

Vitruviansquid
2012-06-03, 11:52 PM
All I really want in a setting is to changes the players' ways of thinking.

I think the genius of the Warhammer and Warhammer 40k "grimdark" settings is that they achieve this particularly well from a pretty elegant premise. If demons exist and can be summoned by religious deviants, then the players/readers realize, "okay, in this setting, religious persecution = good." And eventually, those players/readers will catch themselves thinking "it's a non-conformist! Stab him! Burn him!... wait, what did I just say?"

Morithias
2012-06-04, 12:40 AM
A setting where technology actually evolves. It's annoying when the whole "technology never evolves" thing is in practically every campaign setting.

Are you seriously telling me that in Faerun, they can make spells powerful enough to kill gods, but no one can figure out how to make a bloody Musket?

Also a setting where Elves are Rogues, and Tieflings are wizards. I'm sorry, but the elves's racial features, are just better fitting to being rogues, dex bonus, being able to find secret doors.

It seriously seems that the only reason an elf's favored class is the most powerful one, is so the people who have a fetish for tolkien's "our elves are better and superior to humans, Hiel Us" have something to like.

At least the tiefling has a bloody intelligence bonus.

kieza
2012-06-04, 12:50 AM
Hmmm. I guess I can boil my tastes down to a few bullet points:

-Some sort of technological advancement; at the very least, the world shouldn't be stuck in medieval stasis, but I'm really fond of magical steampunk.
-Lack of active gods. It should be an open question whether clerics derive their powers from gods or their belief in gods.
-"Cold War" style conflict, where the major powers aren't at each others' throats, but are fighting wars by proxy, spying on each other, and struggling in the court of public opinion.
-Moral ambiguity. No country, god, or species is unambiguously good or evil.
-No single-race countries or single-country races. (i.e. no "elven" lands that all elves are from.)


Every race and nation is "Alignment: Any" or the like. No more alignment tendencies or portrayals that make one race an acceptable murder target. Orcs and goblins and drow should be just as heroic and vile as elves, dwarves and halflings.

More diversity and variety. Enough with the "humans cover 90% of the planet, all elves are high elves, all dwarves are the same" shtick. Give me ten different subraces for everyone, use the creatures from the MMs for nations and kingdoms rather than the ones in the PHB and make sure everything is playable.

This is a big one for me. My homebrew setting has high, wood and dark elves; traditionalist, progressivist, and city dwarves; city, tribal, raider, and "lost" orcs; tribal, tinker, and imperial goblinoids (plus the hob/gob/bugbear split); and river, gypsy, and urban halflings; each with their own racial features and feats. And none of them are outright evil, even the nastier orc types.

Agrippa
2012-06-04, 12:53 AM
Also a setting where Elves are Rogues, and Tieflings are wizards. I'm sorry, but the elves's racial features, are just better fitting to being rogues, dex bonus, being able to find secret doors.

It seriously seems that the only reason an elf's favored class is the most powerful one, is so the people who have a fetish for tolkien's "our elves are better and superior to humans, Hiel Us" have something to like.

At least the tiefling has a bloody intelligence bonus.

I think that D&D elves were ment to have a more Melnibonean (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melnibon%C3%A9) influnce than Tolkeinesque. Hence their aptitude for wizardry/sorcery.

Morithias
2012-06-04, 01:06 AM
I think that D&D elves were ment to have a more Melnibonean (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melnibon%C3%A9) influnce than Tolkeinesque. Hence their aptitude for wizardry/sorcery.

I still hate them. Maybe I need to reread LOTR again, but I always found them haughty either way.

Either way. DOWN WITH ELVES. There is a reason why in my setting, the elves are evolved from the humans, and why most of the empires are ruled by humans. (The humans were the first humanoid race. They're literally the first race, EVERY humanoid is evolved from them)

Gnome Alone
2012-06-04, 01:20 AM
I still hate them. Maybe I need to reread LOTR again, but I always found them haughty either way.

Don't you mean, "We hates them, precious. Nasty cruel elves." ?

Ravens_cry
2012-06-04, 01:41 AM
I still hate them. Maybe I need to reread LOTR again, but I always found them haughty either way.

Either way. DOWN WITH ELVES. There is a reason why in my setting, the elves are evolved from the humans, and why most of the empires are ruled by humans. (The humans were the first humanoid race. They're literally the first race, EVERY humanoid is evolved from them)

Heh, I have a setting in the works where elves evolved from the exploratory spore of a single species ecosystem. Their whole forest, nature shtick is kind of trying to regain that lost connection. Ironically, actual SSE or 'fey forests' hate them, its an immune response kind of thing.
Orcs were a forest dwelling species that evolved from primates most like gorilla. While mostly peaceful, twins and other multiple births were exposed on hill tops. However, most survived and the crazy savages were where most orc stereotypes come from.
There is a crashed spacecraft in the setting that everyone assumes brought the elves.
Actually, it brought the dwarves.
The whole idea is is an science fictionalized modern day fantasy alternate history of my local area.
***
What do I look for in a setting?
Room for players to grow.
I don't like God Mode NPC who by all rights should be solving the problems and who do when things don't go the DM way.
Generally I don't like the idea of an overarching meta.
While it's a neat idea in theory, I feel it tends to be too restricting.
Players should be able to bash the walls out of a setting if that's where the whim takes them.
They generally shouldn't, it's really unfair to the DM, but they should be able to, if that makes any sense.
Races whose default traits are disruptive to fellow players are a no-no in my opinion.

Scalenex
2012-06-04, 02:32 AM
I guess I should explain what I mean by make sense.

Most settings seem to fill a pantheon based on "I want a Good war god, I want an god for elves, I want a god for gnomes, etc"

So instead I came up with a global creation myth with the vague goal of explaining why the world is D&D like.

A creator god created the world so he could feed on it, he needed powerful servants to help him but feared they would overtake him so he created servants that would disagree with each other on fundamental levels and not rise up against them. (One was LG, one NG, one CG, one LE etc). That's why the nine alignments have their imprint on the world. They rose up and killed their creator despite this becoming gods in the process, hardwiring the process that all beings on the world can become stronger by overcoming powerful foes (establishing exp and levels!). I try to come up with an explanation for everything be it a D&D thing like (how do bards make magic with music?) or classical mythological quest (why are there four seasons?).

I got most of a mythological framework in place. Now I'm trying to figure out how nations and realms would logically evolve. I'm trying to use real world anthropology data for inspiration but it's hard to figure out how level PC class people would change political and economic systems.

slaydemons
2012-06-04, 08:59 AM
I personally like it when there are no good or evil choices just bad ones, and I like it when what the antagonist does something that makes half the players go "huh he has a point." I also like it when evil is just a matter of perspective.

Jay R
2012-06-04, 10:12 AM
A setting where technology actually evolves. It's annoying when the whole "technology never evolves" thing is in practically every campaign setting.

Are you seriously telling me that in Faerun, they can make spells powerful enough to kill gods, but no one can figure out how to make a bloody Musket?

I disagree completely here. It was best explained by Terry Pratchett in The Colour of Magic.


Rincewind: I don't know. A better way of doing things, I suppose. Something with a bit of sense in it. Harnessing - harnessing the lightning, or something.
Imp: (giving him a pitying look) Lightning is the spears hurled by the thunder giants when they fight. Established meteorological fact. You can't harness it.
Rincwind: I know. That's the flaw in the argument, of course.

(And later)

It was all very well going on about pure logic and how the universe was ruled by logic and the harmony of numbers, but the plain fact of the matter was that the disc was manifestly traversing space on the back of a giant turtle and the gods had a habit of going round to atheists' houses and smashing their windows.

The players' introduction to the last game I ran included the following:


A warning about meta-knowledge. In a game in which stone gargoyles can fly and people can cast magic spells, modern rules of physics and chemistry simply don’t apply. There aren’t 92 natural elements, lightning is not caused by an imbalance of electrical potential, and stars are not gigantic gaseous bodies undergoing nuclear fusion. Cute stunts involving clever use of the laws of thermodynamics simply won’t work. Note that cute stunts involving the gross effects thereof very likely will work. Roll a stone down a mountain, and you could cause an avalanche. But in a world with teleportation, levitation, and fireball spells, Newton’s three laws of motion do not apply, and energy and momentum are not conserved. Accordingly, modern scientific meta-knowledge will do you more harm than good. On the other hand, knowledge of Aristotle, Ptolemy, medieval alchemy, or medieval and classical legends might be useful occasionally.

If there are consistent rules of physics, then people should eventually learn them, but the mere existence of a wish spell shows that whatever rules there are, they aren't consistent.

But different people have different tastes, and that's fine. I agree with you that there should be some reason that the culture is in stasis, if it is.

(And for the record, my current DM agrees with you, and my character has developed gasoline, rubber, steam power, and gunpowder, and he's working on cannons and steamships.)

Masaioh
2012-06-04, 11:12 AM
A setting that makes no effort to be close to real life. This is fantasy, not medieval Europe with magic and dragons. I can't stand people complaining about anachronisms in a setting where people can survive re-entry from space because they have lots of hit dice and fire resistance.

Man on Fire
2012-06-04, 11:23 AM
A setting that makes no effort to be close to real life. This is fantasy, not medieval Europe with magic and dragons. I can't stand people complaining about anachronisms in a setting where people can survive re-entry from space because they have lots of hit dice and fire resistance.

It's not about realism, it's about characters being belivable and acting reasonably, I seen this defense of yours used too many times to justify characters acting like a morons.

Masaioh
2012-06-04, 11:37 AM
It's not about realism, it's about characters being belivable and acting reasonably, I seen this defense of yours used too many times to justify characters acting like a morons.

That wasn't what I was referring to. I understand the difference between realism and verisimilitude. Just because characters don't act the way they would in real life doesn't mean that they aren't acting reasonably.

Man on Fire
2012-06-04, 07:36 PM
That wasn't what I was referring to. I understand the difference between realism and verisimilitude. Just because characters don't act the way they would in real life doesn't mean that they aren't acting reasonably.

But I don't want them to act reasonably - humans don't act reasonably all the time (scientifically proved, our behavior is very irrational). I wan't characters living in the setting to act like I would expect from living, intelligent beings who are both rational and emotional and act accordingly.

Dr.Epic
2012-06-04, 07:41 PM
Is it wrong to say explosions and scantily clad females?:smallwink::smalltongue:

Man on Fire
2012-06-04, 07:42 PM
Is it wrong to say explosions and scantily clad females?:smallwink::smalltongue:

Former no, but why would you want the latter? :smallconfused:

GolemsVoice
2012-06-05, 06:49 AM
Because he likes scantily clad females? I like them, too. Anyone else can substitute whatever scantily clad gender he/she likes.

What do I want from a setting?

I want to be entertained, and for that to happen, I want to play something that ISN'T the real world. That doesn't mean that I don't enjoy a game of Vampire or Hunter, all set in the real world, but I want to encounter supernatural beings and solve strange cases, not play "Day Job: The Accountening". That applies to fantastic settings, too. Give me magic, dragons, flying carpets, demons, angels, everything. I don't care if it's not logical or not internally consistent, I don't want to read a four page treatise on anthropoligical studies and the effects of physics in a high-magic environment. I want to immerse myself into another world, and I'm willing to ignore that it isn't entirely logical. Up to a certain point, of course.

Terraoblivion
2012-06-05, 09:30 AM
You know, not everyone prefers watching members of the gender or genders they're attracted to scantily clad, I'm pretty fond of women looking badass or wearing genuinely interesting, pretty and well-designed clothes, to the point of gushing over the clothing itself at times. Not just that, but I actually find a lack of clothing off-putting when it appears to mostly be done for the sexual appeal, it effectively makes the woman less attractive than if she wore something that looked nice and was actually appropriate for the context.

In my experience this view of clothing helping make a person attractive is the norm among women and is far from rare among men. So even without going into questions of gender politics, I have an easy time understanding why Man on Fire was puzzled from a purely aesthetic perspective. And then of course there is the fact that woman with little clothes don't actually do much to develop the setting.

Dr. Yes
2012-06-05, 11:08 AM
I like settings that are basically playgrounds—monsters, floating islands, tribes of crystalline beast-shamans, and so on—but don't run completely on handwavium. If your desert land is a day's hard ride from your spooky marsh, that's cool and fun, but it's also kind of immersion-breaking unless there's a reason for your world to ignore how climates work. Why are there like fifty sentient races, and why are only some of them considered "people"? Settings that can accomodate the Rule of Cool and still answer those kinds of questions are by far my favorite.


You know, not everyone prefers watching members of the gender or genders they're attracted to scantily clad, I'm pretty fond of women looking badass or wearing genuinely interesting, pretty and well-designed clothes, to the point of gushing over the clothing itself at times. Not just that, but I actually find a lack of clothing off-putting when it appears to mostly be done for the sexual appeal, it effectively makes the woman less attractive than if she wore something that looked nice and was actually appropriate for the context.

In my experience this view of clothing helping make a person attractive is the norm among women and is far from rare among men. So even without going into questions of gender politics, I have an easy time understanding why Man on Fire was puzzled from a purely aesthetic perspective. And then of course there is the fact that woman with little clothes don't actually do much to develop the setting.

Fairly sure Dr. Epic was making a joke, using silly action movie clichés to imply that he prefers his RPGs light on thinking and heavy on fun. I wouldn't take it too seriously.

GolemsVoice
2012-06-05, 11:15 AM
That was the way I understood it, too. And I like watching badass persons much more than barely clothed persons, too, just so that we're on the same page.

Libertad
2012-06-05, 03:21 PM
An overarching theme of sorts, to give a sense of direction, purpose, and grandness:

In Eberron, you had Pulp action where the PCs were adventurers thwarting the schemes of evil masterminds and retrieving MacGuffins from long-dead civilizations. Two-fisted adventuring scholars, spies, and relic hunters fought against the chessmasters of vast conspiracies who desired nothing less than world domination.

In the original Dragonlance adventures, you were adventurers who stood at the pinnacle of world-changing events. You discovered the Disks of Mishakal and brought back knowledge of the Gods, you discovered the secret to forge the legendary Dragonlance and turn the tide of battle against Takhisis' Empire. For its time, it was an epic saga unseen in D&D adventures.

I also want a setting full of interesting, detailed worlds. I don't want a bunch of throw-away countries with bland descriptions, or of places with little in the way of conflict or adventure. Such places need to stick out and grab the attention of the DM and players, make them say "man, wouldn't it be cool to have an adventure here?"

Man on Fire
2012-06-05, 03:42 PM
Fairly sure Dr. Epic was making a joke, using silly action movie clichés to imply that he prefers his RPGs light on thinking and heavy on fun. I wouldn't take it too seriously.

I didn't get a joke. Sometimes they doesn't work on the internet.

Also, another thing I want, or rather don't want - I don't want motley of motives and plot points witout sense, climate or consistency. As someone once said, if your setting is about hunting ghosts, then powerful mega-corporation with incredibly advanced technology, bent on the world domination, has no place in it. Just because an idea is cool, it doesn't mean it belongs to this setting, it may be better for for completely different one.

Angry Bob
2012-06-05, 09:43 PM
Self-awareness. In-game acknowledgement, obvious or subtle, of game mechanics or genre conventions.

Adventuring as a combination of time-honored tradition and necessary evil: Send your violent sociopaths out to deal with the encroaching bandits/goblins/orcs/dragons.

A frontier, final or otherwise. Something for the characters to explore, discover, or very probably kill, for the first time in the recorded history of the setting.

A wide selection of unsolved mysteries that could serve as explanations or plot hooks later on so the DM can look more prepared than he or she actually is.

A fully-destructible setting. If the party wants to, they should be allowed to try to defeat iconic or characters from the setting without the DM intervening for or against them, on their own power. Example from a game I was in: one of the players wanted to challenge a LeShay archmage that had led the continent-spanning guild pretty much since anyone could remember. The first match was a draw, the rematch was a resounding defeat on the archmage's part. The player became the new archmage of the guild and had tea with the old archmage at least once a month until the end of the setting.

A foreseen and inevitable end of the world. This is really a personal preference and something I'd have to have the players' permission on before doing it in a game I run. You might be surprised at what your players do in response. In my case, my players defeated a neutronium golem(what they believed to be a unique creature, "The Leveler" Which had annihilated countless layers of the abyss, working its way up from the "bottom" of the great wheel, before being sealed away by the Archmage from before), only to learn that the Great Wheel itself was imploding, releasing atrocities that had been sealed away in the gaps of planar geometry, including the Gibbering Cluster(the setting equivalent of Azathoth, basically a multiheaded lernaean pseudonatural gibbering orb with an assload of other templates that had no problem firing upwards of 400 disintegrates a round, among other nastiness), and the demiliches of the Bronze Chain, a voltron of ~400 ravening force dragon draco-demiliches. The party sorcerer, with his newly acquired real ultimate power from defeating the Neutronium golem(its unnecessarily high CR making him level something stupid like 10^700), and his practically infinite wealth from the ~400 sets of epic-level gear the Bronze Chain had, made an epic spell that absorbed the fragmenting wheel into himself(some fiat was necessary, but freely given), effectively turning himself into a living(if the term could be said to even apply to him afterward) backup of the wheel's past and present, cast just as an army of "Levelers" warped into the prime material to finish the job one of them could not. Then he set off to wander what used to be the Far Realm, looking for a place to plant the seeds of a new world.

He's definitely showing up in my future campaigns, one way or another.