What makes a really good universe/setting?

[Yora]

I just wrote a lengthy comment on an article praising the setting of Mass Effect, and it got me thinking what makes certain settings great while others remain somewhat sterile, interchangeable, and generic.

Something I noticed from settings that I consider to be outstanding, is the existance of complex relationships between different major factions. The example of Mass Effect that I mentioned has about 8 major species that inhabit the galaxy and all share some complicated history with each other. Everyone has done some things they are not neccessarily proud of, but they still feel that they ended up being treated considerably worse than their opponents at that time. There's lots of grudges, neccessary cooperations, and also admirations and it's almost impossible two devide the species into two or even three distinct camps. The interactions that arise from that are the part that intrigues me the most, because you can never say how things will turn out beforehand, but after the fact the outcome will still be entirely plausible and consistent with what you already know about the species.

As a counterexample I would mention Star Trek, of which I've been quite a big fan since I can remember, but that just can't excite me anymore. In Star Trek, it is always clear who are the good guys and who the bad guys. They at least tried to add some variation and ambiguity in Deep Space Nine, but it didn't really change things. Yes, some cardassian scientists and opposition politicians are decent people who are apaled by what their leadership has been doing for generations. But 98% of the time, those cardassians who appear are military and they are all of them evil monsters without a single exception. And there are some Federation officers who quit and started an underground rebellion against some colonies being given to the enemy as part of a peace treaty and just want the Federation to not interfere, but they kill and destroy so indiscriminately that you may sympathize with their cause, but not with anyone of their members. And as a result, all interactions are predictable and stereotypical, and none of the conflicts are really that interesting.
One episode comes to mind that dares to go there, and that one is quite consistently considered to be the best Star Trek episode ever made.
In Pale Moonlight: Kill neutral civilians and frame your enemy to get neutral parties to join the war on your side?

So that as one example from me. What do you consider to be the real strength of your favorite universes and settings?

[BWR]

Difficult question. The most important thing in media like films or novels or comics is a good story. What constitutes a good story is not always easy to pin down. A story can be good with good writing but bad setting (Not that I'm exactly a fan, but J.K. Rowling can work as an example - she can write engagingly enough despite a hackneyed plot and crap world building). A story can be good with bad writing and a good setting (William Hope Hodgeson's "The Night Land" is perhaps the ultimate example of this). You can even have a good story with mediocre/bad writing and setting (ASoIaF is pretty much an example of this: Martin's setting is kind of bland, his actual wordsmithing is lacking if not exactly terrible, but the drama and the events are excellent). Regarding Mass Effect, the first two games were decent, though I never bothered with the third, but my feeling was it was very clichéed SF, and not particularly skillfully done. Star Wars is another example of a very clichéed story, yet it did it right and pushes all the right buttons (I saw my first SW movie at the age of 4 and was instantly hooked; may be a bit biased). Whlie some of the EU is pretty awful, I think just the first three movies did a great job of giving an impression of a vast setting filled to the brim with detail and history while focusing on the important elements, making me want to find out more about the galaxy.

When it comes to roleplaying games I tend to like the more unique and flavorful settings over the more 'generic'. Planescape, Dark Sun, Tribe 8, Ravenloft (clichéed as hell in its own right, I know) and Tekumel are far better to my mind than Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, Scarred Lands, Ars Magica or similar settings. It's not that I haven't enjoyed literature and/or games set in the latter settings, it's just that the setting isn't particularly interesting on its own. The example to contradict my general opinion is Mystara, which in many ways is every fantasy cliché stuffed in somewhere, odd sometimes bad world building due to its history, and in many ways as generic as you can get. Yet I love it and apart from some nostalgia I'm at a loss to explain why. The best I can come up with is that in spite of some weird elements in its geography and ecosystems and the very patchwork nature of the Known World, it did a lot to develop unique cultures with an emphasis on history, internal politics and culture and daily life as well as adventuring options. It's not that these things haven't been done in other D&D settings, but I just like the results of Mystara better. Perhaps most importantly, in many of the splatbooks there is a feeling of whimsy and fun, some tongue in cheek that's lacking in many other settings.

[BeerMug Paladin]

A lot of what makes a setting good to me depends on what the tone of the setting is supposed to be. A good action/adventure setting is going to look very different from a good romance setting or a good horror setting. I think it's very hard to explain what makes a good setting, but relatively easy to explain what is wrong with a bad setting.

For instance, I really dislike the Warhammer 40k setting. If there is no joy, there is no suffering. There is only a constant barrage of unending, samey bleakness.

Though in general I hold the view that settings aren't good or bad and only the story execution within them are, there are a few settings that are hard for me to believe could have a good story in them. Like W40k.

That said, I would say the better settings allow for a broad range of human emotions to exist. In order for there to be misery, there should be joy. In order for there to be wonder, there should be monotony. In order for there to be horror, there should be beauty. In order for there to be tension, there should be relaxation. A constant barrage of any one state dulls it, and unless you include moments of the opposite emotion in the world, the extremes won't be quite as severe.

I can't think of any other general trends for settings I like.

[Tengu_temp]

A good setting is one that's written with attention to detail, with consistency, and with thought on how its various elements interact with each other. Also, it has to be distinct; differences between this setting and other, similar ones have to be clear at a first glance.


For instance, I really dislike the Warhammer 40k setting. If there is no joy, there is no suffering. There is only a constant barrage of unending, samey bleakness.

Warhammer 40k is ruined by fans who never get the memo that you're not supposed to take it seriously. It's an over the top collection of metal album covers given flesh. Unfortunately, at some point those misguided fans started to write the setting itself.

[Closet_Skeleton]

For instance, I really dislike the Warhammer 40k setting. If there is no joy, there is no suffering. There is only a constant barrage of unending, samey bleakness.

Though in general I hold the view that settings aren't good or bad and only the story execution within them are, there are a few settings that are hard for me to believe could have a good story in them. Like W40k.


40k is only tangentially a 'story' setting, its a game setting. You can have narrative campaigns but its not about individual personalities.

It also has so many factions that 'bleak' doesn't really define the setting that much. If you're an Ork, one of the less introspective Chaos Space Marines, a Dark Eldar or a Tyranid then its a paradise. When your playing an army of aliens that might not even have sapient intelligence you don't really want the humans your minions are devouring to be nice people in a functioning society.

If the Imperium was a nice place and wasn't doomed, it would make it even more of the Mary Sue faction and unbalance the game.

[The Glyphstone]

What I value above almost anything else is versimilitude and consistency. I don't demand that a setting be realistic, or relatable to the real world (it helps), or based on 'hard' science or accurate representations of myth. What bothers me, though, is when a setting either has no rules or lays down its rules hen proceeds to break them at will. Magic/Tech A should be Magic/Tech A; Society B should be Society B...better a Planet of Hats than a people who act according to the demands of the plot/author at the moment alone.

[BeerMug Paladin]

What I value above almost anything else is versimilitude and consistency. I don't demand that a setting be realistic, or relatable to the real world (it helps), or based on 'hard' science or accurate representations of myth. What bothers me, though, is when a setting either has no rules or lays down its rules hen proceeds to break them at will. Magic/Tech A should be Magic/Tech A; Society B should be Society B...better a Planet of Hats than a people who act according to the demands of the plot/author at the moment alone.
I agree with consistency. I didn't mention that because I tend to see consistency moreso as a matter of an individual story element than a specific setting. Shared universes often have consistency problems because of communication issues between creators, not because of an intentional choice. Single-author universes have fewer inconsistencies because a single author probably knows everything about their own setting.

Bad writers/storytellers have consistency problems within their own writing, regardless of whether the universe is shared or not.

[The Glyphstone]

I agree with consistency. I didn't mention that because I tend to see consistency moreso as a matter of an individual story element than a specific setting. Shared universes often have consistency problems because of communication issues between creators, not because of an intentional choice. Single-author universes have fewer inconsistencies because a single author probably knows everything about their own setting.

Bad writers/storytellers have consistency problems within their own writing, regardless of whether the universe is shared or not.

Though there are exceptions, as noted - single-author universes can still have consistency problems, usually when it's a case of valuing the needs of the story at the moment over the quality of the universe as a whole, or that author changing their vision later on without considering the ramifications of those changes. And shared universes, if done properly and with the right communication and oversight, can be immensely more vast and interesting thanks to the parallel contributions of many minds and many sets of hands. The alt-history setting Ring of Fire is an excellent example of this, with one primary author collaborating with three secondary authors on various storylines while providing an open world for dozens more minor authors to write pieces in.

[Terraoblivion]

Consistency is only really required if all the various stories are to be true at once. Touhou has a highly popular setting in the form of Gensokyo that goes radically in the opposite direction. Pretty much everything canon is subjective ICly and likely distorted to make the people telling it look better and the fandom has made a point out of making highly personal visions of what it's like. As a shared setting, it's pretty much all about letting people come up with their own interpretations and twists to fit the story they're trying to tell, regardless of what other stories it contradicts. It has proven to be quite effective in spurring creativity and passion for the setting. It does require approaching it from a rather different perspective than the obsession with cataloging trivia and filling out blanks spots of the map that nerddom is so defined by.

In general, I'd say that stimulating imagination and having room for multiple different stories beyond the main one without making it seem forced is the most important thing for settings that are to see repeated use. Nothing is worse than a setting that's just dull or where everything you might do is in the shadow of the one story that matters and which has always been told. For settings that are just used for one story, what matters is that it supports the specific story being told and the themes of that story, while still seeming organic enough to not come off as a forced metaphor to hammer in the point.

[GoblinArchmage]

A story can be good with bad writing and a good settings.

Are you sure about that? I'm pretty sure that a poorly written story is just a bad story, and if the writing is bad then the setting probably isn't so great either. The setting might have a lot of potential in such a situation, but without good writing I doubt it could ever live up to that potential.

Edit:

For settings that are just used for one story, what matters is that it supports the specific story being told and the themes of that story, while still seeming organic enough to not come off as a forced metaphor to hammer in the point.

I agree with that. It's important that the setting serves the story, rather than the story being just a vehicle for the author to show off her/his "totally sweet setting." It sometimes seems to me that people forget that when they get all worked up over how great someone's "world building" is. There's nothing wrong with world building, but it should never overshadow the actual story.

[warty goblin]

Setting serves story. The only sensible way to judge a setting is whether it aids and abets the story it is built to tell.

[Terraoblivion]

Setting serves story. The only sensible way to judge a setting is whether it aids and abets the story it is built to tell.

I'd generally agree, but that isn't true for settings specifically made to tell multiple stories. Campaign settings RPGs for example need to be more open-ended than that, though they both can and should have clear goals for what they offer, whether in terms of aesthetics, themes or narrative styles.

[Closet_Skeleton]

Setting serves story. The only sensible way to judge a setting is whether it aids and abets the story it is built to tell.

Except you get some really terrible extremes if you follow that line of reasoning.

Such as novels where the setting is perfect for the story because its a ridiculously contrived world that only exists to allow the story to say a moral that would be very hard to apply to the real world.

An JRPG setting where every location on the map is a visit-able town or dungeon and the world map is clearly a true world map of all known continents and the only mythology is are prophecies about the chosen one main character or legends about the sealed final boss will probably have some weaknesses as a setting despite being perfectly tuned to the story.

Sometimes the best way a setting can serve a story is for it to create the illusion that it isn't.

[warty goblin]

I'd generally agree, but that isn't true for settings specifically made to tell multiple stories. Campaign settings RPGs for example need to be more open-ended than that, though they both can and should have clear goals for what they offer, whether in terms of aesthetics, themes or narrative styles.
Valid point. Allow me to add some plurals. Setting serves story. A setting should be judged by its ability to aid the sort of stories people want to tell using it.


Except you get some really terrible extremes if you follow that line of reasoning.

Er, so? The ability to arrive at stupidity through extremism isn't proof the original argument is particularly faulty, only that extremism is stupid.


Such as novels where the setting is perfect for the story because its a ridiculously contrived world that only exists to allow the story to say a moral that would be very hard to apply to the real world.
In this case it seems like a sucky story kinda takes the setting down with the ship, no? That is they are both crap, since the setting can only support a crap story. Maybe it does a good job of that, but it's supporting a turd sundae, so who cares about it?


An JRPG setting where every location on the map is a visit-able town or dungeon and the world map is clearly a true world map of all known continents and the only mythology is are prophecies about the chosen one main character or legends about the sealed final boss will probably have some weaknesses as a setting despite being perfectly tuned to the story.
I said serve, not tuned to. Setting serves a story by enhancing it, not by necessarily being the most bare-bones version of itself necessary to support the narrative. You seem to be interpreting what I said in a very peculiar way.


Sometimes the best way a setting can serve a story is for it to create the illusion that it isn't.
Which is fairly covered by what I in fact said.

[BWR]

Are you sure about that? I'm pretty sure that a poorly written story is just a bad story, and if the writing is bad then the setting probably isn't so great either. The setting might have a lot of potential in such a situation, but without good writing I doubt it could ever live up to that potential.

Yes, I'm sure about that. I gave an example of an author who to my mind fulfills these criteria. I would not have made this claim or given an example if I didn't think the story was good or if I felt the writing was ok. I cannot claim to have read all of Hodgeson, but what I have was at best of mediocre quality prose. "The Night Land (http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/10662/pg10662.html)" was actually painful to read because of its prose but I couldn't put it down due to the setting. I just had to see what other sights and encounters were in that world, and felt as though I had read a great story when I was done.

[BeerMug Paladin]

Some of the most frustrating things I've encountered is a bad story in a good setting. The sorts of things that make you wonder, "Why isn't the story about that?!"

Another point to contribute in regards to what I feel makes for a bad setting. For a setting to be good it has to have some identity of its own, something to distinguish its own style and sense of identity from other, similar settings. It has to 'exclude' some possibilities for stories outright for the type of setting it is.

I don't like Firefly, but I can at least agree that it uses an interesting setting, with its own sense of identity. And that's at least in part because it doesn't put superintelligent AIs, robots and other 'given' futuristic stuff in the world it has. No ultra-advanced nanotech solving all our manufacturing needs. People still do basic farming, mining and other assorted tasks. Most of the technology doesn't seem far off from what modern technology looks like.

For an example of a failure at this, one setting that really drops the ball here is Orion's Arm. It's far too 'anything goes', except there's also the added pretension that you need to be smart enough to come up with some explanation for your 'anything goes' for it to be included in the setting.

But as that's essentially a crowd-sourced setting, it's going to have the same problems that any massively shared setting is going to have.

[Vanitas]

Some of the most frustrating things I've encountered is a bad story in a good setting. The sorts of things that make you wonder, "Why isn't the story about that?!"
That makes me so sad. I remember when I watched Dragon Crisis I kept thinking "but but but there are these relics and people are hunting them and there is a ranking system... who cares about the badly written romance?!?!"

[Yora]

Isn't that what some website calls "They wasted a perfectly good plot"?

Are you sure about that? I'm pretty sure that a poorly written story is just a bad story, and if the writing is bad then the setting probably isn't so great either.
I would mention the Appleseed movies. The stories of the movies are attrociously bad, but I still enjoy them a lot fow how the setting gets portrayed. However, I already knew the setting from the manga, so I might possibly have used existing setting knowledge that doesn't actually get "provided" by the movies themselves.