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View Full Version : Campaign Setting Design: Triumphs & Mistakes?



Bluepaw
2013-09-25, 12:25 AM
Hey folks,

I've broken ground on my first full campaign setting design (previously I've run games using, e.g., Eberron or heck, good ol' Middle Earth), and while I'll be back here for sure when there's more to workshop, I figured there's no reason not to call on your expertise early:

Those of you who have designed settings, what mistakes did you make when you were setting out? If you could do it differently (or have), how? Favorite stories of when something really went right?

Or if you've played in someone's homebrew setting / homebrew mechanics, what did you wish they'd have done differently? What did they knock out of the park?

Just to give another detail, my project is an alt-history setting based on the Ottoman Empire. A mechanic I'm playing around with is stripping out most magic except for contracted partnerships and provisions of service with Jinn of various types. Humans can access magic by collaborating with (or coercing) Jinn -- and meanwhile, the Jinn (available as PCs? I'm not sure) are up to the same thing in the other direction, seeking access to technological power (which I've built up as a power source in the vein of "primal power," "divine power," etc). So a kind of two-way economy. Meanwhile plenty of history-inspired intrigue, assassination, exploration, industry.........

*sleeves rolled*

Amechra
2013-09-25, 12:31 AM
I've always just winged it and allowed settings to emerge on their own.

But that's just me.

ArcturusV
2013-09-25, 12:54 AM
I'd say that my first mistake I made when I started making campaign settings of my own was just... "trying to be too clever". I didn't realize what made the adventures I liked to run (Like Keep on the Borderlands and Isle of Dread) fun. I put in a lot, really too much, work on setting details, plots going on, backstory and history... And it just wouldn't come up in game or players wouldn't be interested in it, and I'd be ticked at all the wasted time and sometimes try to force the story that I wanted to tell on the game, despite them, because I had put in all that work.

The other problem was just not allowing simple archetypes to be believable (At least simple archetypes as the system had established) and trying to kitbash it into something the system wasn't really meant for.

My first real success is when I finally did just kind of sit down, shut up, and make a "simple" campaign setting in a Robotech RPG. Fleshed out a zone based off New Seattle Settlement for the third invid war. Put up typical encounter zones, made sure all the book stuff could be used, and just put down some random interesting NPCs and simple, easily mutable plot hooks and not much else. Worked like a charm. And that setting just reminded me of what I now hold as a truism of setting crafting and adventure plotting. Just keep it simple. Focus on making good, solid contact rather than going swinging for the fences, and it works out so much better.

At least it works for me that way. More clever people than I would probably be able to pull off the home runs easier.

TheFamilarRaven
2013-09-26, 12:32 PM
I think my biggest mistake when I made my campaign setting/world is that the first major campaign I ran (that is to say when I actually knew what I was doing ... kinda ... and not say, 10 years old) is that I wanted my players to experience EVERYTHING in the world I created. What actually happened was, they just went around from dungeon to dungeon doing adventurers stuff.

My success, and what really established my campaign world, was the next campaign I ran, I focused on ONE region of ONE country. But I still allowed for my PC's to come everywhere in the world. This allowed me to create NPC that were memorable (some even showed up in later campaigns), and the PC's themselves actually felt like they mattered.

Edit: also, it was the first time I had really let my players loose, which really helped the "wing it" method mentioned above.

Never underestimate the "Wing it" method, the "Wing it" method is very powerful.

BWR
2013-09-26, 01:15 PM
You can put as much or as little work as you like into the details of the setting and NPCs and plots and history and whatnot but it all boils down to one thing:

Players experience the setting through you.

You might have the most wonderful setting in the world but if it's all in your head and not conveyed to the players, it won't be much fun. Unless you want to sit down and write a campaign setting book and give it to the players your entire focus has to be on how the PCs will interact with this setting. This applies to all games. With established settings, player knowledge can help make up for lack of GM description but in the end both homebrew settings and premade ones need the GM to bring them to life.
Keeping this in mind has helped me with GMing.

The idea of throwing in a lot of colorful NPCs, a few plots and some random encounters works surprisingly well.

Yora
2013-09-26, 01:24 PM
We got an extra section just for all the worldbuilding thread. Maybe one of the mods can move this one there. Or you might like to take a look in the Worldbuilding Talk Thread.

We also got the Playgrounders Guide to Worldbuilding (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=227507), where we collected a huge amount of advice from lots of people for the most commonly asked questions on the subject. If you're interested in something specific, you can take a look.

Bluepaw
2013-09-27, 05:59 PM
Thanks for the tip, Yora (and everyone for the insight). Would be great to move the thread over to Worldbuilding [but...how?] -- I hadn't even noticed it! Will peruse for sure; but in the meantime, I'd love to hear other success and horror stories from the memory vaults...

Here's a softball for the moment: What happens when refluffing character classes tips into a redesign of game mechanics? What are some less-obvious consequences of playing fast and loose with those mechanics?

Zaydos
2013-09-27, 06:11 PM
Mistakes

Interra: I tried to put too many different things in and the whole world ended up a fantasy kitchen sink with no real distinctive flavor to it and the relationship between societies had no real meat to it. I was like 13 at the time.
Chikyuu: The world made no sense. It was made on the fly (I did not know I was DMing the night I made it so I just grabbed a map I was using to study Japanese). The world design felt schizoid and like it didn't even relate to itself.
My last game: I actually tried to focus on the world, but I just didn't have the time between other things to really make it work. The PCs were gods in the making and I set it up as a three way confrontation and while some things came off well I had trouble getting people to pay attention to the meat of how being a god in the setting worked.


Those are the three big mistakes I can think of.

Successes:

The Three Worlds: Three parallel primes which actually had meaningful trade and social connections. Campaign lasted 2 years so I'd say it's a success. Did make a lot of fluff no one will ever look at but I like world-building for its own sake.
Chikyuu: Despite being something I was disatisfied with I had someone else try and run a game in it which is to me a big success on a setting. It was completely and resolutely not planned ahead of time but did manage to grow into something resembling a world as the game went on albeit with early instalment weirdness.

Jyton
2013-09-27, 06:28 PM
I'd really like to hear more about how your parallel primes worked. How did they communicate? Move around? Handle resources rights?

Zaydos
2013-09-27, 06:41 PM
I'd really like to hear more about how your parallel primes worked. How did they communicate? Move around? Handle resources rights?

There were no spells to directly communicate, but there were some naturally occurring portals (short term ones were common, most lasted months or years) with long term ones (stable for generations) being hubs of trade, and ancient artificially made permanent ones being major trade centers. I didn't actually get into resource rights in detail, but had some notes that there were conflicts over them between the powerful but isolationist empire of one world and some of the countries of the pseudo-European world, and the third world was divided between a lawless monster land (a red dragon was taking control of the region) and the overstretched empire of a gold dragon which was actively trying to avoid expansion because its ability to control the empire is stretched too thin as is.

There were more details (the worlds were sealed off from each other ~12000 years ago and while the seal was weakening for thousands of years it was within the memory of some entities for example the dragon emperor had finished his expansionist phase before the connection became easy).