PDA

View Full Version : On Published Settings for D&D



Chainsaw Hobbit
2014-02-13, 01:18 PM
I wrote a blog post (http://manicenthusiasm.com/2014/02/12/on-published-settings-for-dd/) where I discuss the presentation of published D&D settings, and how it could be improved.

Thoughts?

Morty
2014-02-13, 01:33 PM
I disagree, rather strongly. When I look at setting books, I look for colourful, vibrant descriptions of the places, people, cultures and dangers to be found therein, from which I can draw my own stories. Giving me the mathematical probability of encountering this or that forgettable enemy tells me nothing of value. I can build encounters myself based on what I think is appropriate for this area.

BWR
2014-02-13, 01:43 PM
I disagree, rather strongly. When I look at setting books, I look for colourful, vibrant descriptions of the places, people, cultures and dangers to be found therein, from which I can draw my own stories. Giving me the mathematical probability of encountering this or that forgettable enemy tells me nothing of value. I can build encounters myself based on what I think is appropriate for this area.

What he said.
In general I like established campaign settings. They are flavor, society, locales and locals and cultures I can enjoy and make me want to run games in them. They give me something to work with, much of the work has already been done, I can share it with others who like the setting and if I don't like everything about it I can change the relevant bits in my game. Those who wish to write their own settings are perfectly welcome to do this.

Random encounter tables and that sort of stuff are, quite frankly, some of the least useful and most boring stuff you can find in a setting description. If the setting is described well, a throw away sentence such as "The ogres of the Grakken Wood never venture out of it and seem to keep all strangers out of it, or perhaps they keep something in." is far more evocative and useful for planning encounters and adventures than "Grakken Wood: 1d6+2 ogres"

erikun
2014-02-13, 01:59 PM
Minor note: Golarion is not a published setting for Dungeons & Dragons, from what I know.

Major note: I buy setting books for the settings. I pick them up for the interesting locations and characters inside, and with the assurance that the mechanics are compatable with the game I am familiar with. This both gives me material that I can use immediately, and lore than I could use in other games or that can prompt my imagination for creating new adventures.

This doesn't mean that the random encounter tables are a bad idea. Indeed, at the end of a description for an area, some random encounter tables and general challenge rating (Zakhara coast: CR 3-8) would give DMs an already-prepared tool for generating opponents. However, that is in addition to the lore presented in the setting book. Reading through tables of random encounters is even more dull than reading through dry lore. What's more, the random encounter tables are even more worthless to me than pointless lore is. While with pointless lore I can still steal a few ideas, such as the spikes which run blood during the full moon in the Temple of Yog-Sothoth, I don't even get that with a table reading "1d6 pirates, 1d4+3 zombies, 1d2 demonic crab swarms".

What's more, if I want to set an adventure in the area that isn't inside the recommended challenge range, I will find myself being forced to change the tables anyways... basically re-writing the one thing that the campaign book would be providing!

Morty
2014-02-13, 02:02 PM
Assigning challenge ratings to whole areas strikes me as a rather pointless thing to do, indeed.

Knaight
2014-02-13, 02:16 PM
I disagree, rather strongly. When I look at setting books, I look for colourful, vibrant descriptions of the places, people, cultures and dangers to be found therein, from which I can draw my own stories. Giving me the mathematical probability of encountering this or that forgettable enemy tells me nothing of value. I can build encounters myself based on what I think is appropriate for this area.

Agreed - though I would add concise to this. I do not need every detail, broad brushes are fine, and if a detail is included it had better be because it is particularly interesting. I also can't say I've been impressed with any of the D&D published settings, though there are published settings elsewhere that I have liked (REIGN, mostly).

erikun
2014-02-13, 02:28 PM
Assigning challenge ratings to whole areas strikes me as a rather pointless thing to do, indeed.
That's pretty much what happens when you assign specific monsters to an area, or specific groups. I'm just noting that if you're doing so anyways, it would be nice to have the CR range so that new DMs could see what are appropriate challenges for the party without difficulty.

The Oni
2014-02-13, 02:29 PM
The approach you describe in your post is not necessarily *wrong,* but it is an approach that appeals to extremes. The only groups that would benefit from such books are the absolute kick-in-the-door types (for whom lore is unimportant) and the consummate world builders (who will bake their lore from scratch, using the building blocks you offer in your model). The majority of groups - which fall somewhere in the middle - would not be satisfied with this model.

Chainsaw Hobbit
2014-02-13, 03:46 PM
The setting doesn't just have to be expressed through random encounter tables and images. There can also be monster entries (with very concise descriptive text), sample magic items, short sample adventures with vague context, one-sentence plot hooks, rules for setting-specific activities (like piloting an airship), and maybe brief snippets of lore or in-universe quotes. The idea is just to imply the setting though mechanics and mechanical content, rather than state it explicit. To make the setting dynamic, malleable, and open to interpretation.

To me, reading though a 400-page Forgotten Realms book takes similar time and effort to just writing the content I need myself. Why not leave the Game Master the fun part: coming up with detailed lore? That's the easy part. I've enjoyed that since I first discovered D&D at age eight.

BWR
2014-02-13, 04:42 PM
Plot hooks and adventures are fine. I still disagree with you about the mechanics focus. I am far less interested in mechanics than I am in fluff. The point of a campaign setting is fluff. Sure, there are often specialized mechanics for any given setting and there is a place for that, but the mechanics should reflect the fluff and be subordinate to it.

As I said, if you or any other DM wants to make up all the fluff on your own, fine, but you are seriously not getting the point of settings if you think the fluff should be replaced by more mechanics.

Morty
2014-02-13, 05:00 PM
If I didn't want long and detailed descriptions of places, I wouldn't bother using existing settings. The whole point of using them is to have in-depth lore ready-made for me.

Thrudd
2014-02-13, 05:10 PM
The setting book should include the detailed fluff, population guidelines, and NPC's as well as tables of random encounters for different regions. This would let someone use the setting as a sandbox right out of the box, if they wanted. Random encounters are for a simulation game, in which detailed information about the culture, economy and environment of the world is definitely wanted as well as mechanics for expressing those details.
Of course, nobody is forced to use the random encounters and wandering monsters if they don't want to. But it would be worth the cost for someone who doesn't want or have time to build their own world.

Rhynn
2014-02-13, 05:38 PM
I think the right kind of encounter tables (http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.fi/2011/08/cobalt-reach.html) can tell you a lot about regions in a succinct way, but they're far from sufficient for a whole setting. Even a D&D setting is a lot more than the sum of its ecology and regions.

Knaight
2014-02-13, 05:44 PM
The setting doesn't just have to be expressed through random encounter tables and images. There can also be monster entries (with very concise descriptive text), sample magic items, short sample adventures with vague context, one-sentence plot hooks, rules for setting-specific activities (like piloting an airship), and maybe brief snippets of lore or in-universe quotes. The idea is just to imply the setting though mechanics and mechanical content, rather than state it explicit. To make the setting dynamic, malleable, and open to interpretation.

This is a different matter entirely than the images and encounter tables, and one I'm more on board with. That said, anything written evocatively will have implications coming from it, and the matter of explicit statements is more one of settings occasionally being written like textbooks or technical manuals. However, for implying the setting to work, it helps to have the setting painted out in broad enough brushes to contextualize the more implicit parts.

I'm going to use REIGN as an example here, because it really shines at this. It paints the cultures of its world in broad brushes, with the occasional detail where things get interesting. However, a lot of the details come out through either the mechanics or the story excerpts that are included. For instance, there's a short segment wherein a foreign mage is hired as a mercenary for someone attacking an island settlement of another foreign people they dislike. The mage talks about how it will be easy, as the people are a primitive culture and as such wouldn't be able to deal with his preferred form of magic - flying above them spewing lightning. This works, right up until the point where they release a bunch of attack bats on the guy, and he plunges into the seas nearby and is fished out by the person who hired him.

The story itself is not much longer than my summary, and it tells a lot. It highlights where magic fits in the world, and how mages could easily be overconfident. It highlights how even "primitive" cultures have a lot up their sleeves. It highlights the extent to which mercenary work is mundane, and it adds flavor to the setting. It is also one of about twenty little shorts, and among the least revealing of them (though it works with the least context). These things are really helpful, and a sidebar including them or their use in the place of an image if properly formatted really does accomplish a lot.

As for rules for setting specific things - the magic rules in REIGN tell you a lot. The esoteric disciplines (skill tricks, basically) all have a little bit of fluff tying them to some organization or other that is probably never even mentioned elsewhere, but that fleshes out the world far more than the few sentences would suggest. The martial paths (think combat feats) are similar. However this would not work without a strong basis in the non mechanical stuff and the broad brushes that cover the setting and the cultures within it.

jedipotter
2014-02-13, 07:15 PM
I disagree, rather strongly. When I look at setting books, I look for colourful, vibrant descriptions of the places, people, cultures and dangers to be found therein, from which I can draw my own stories. Giving me the mathematical probability of encountering this or that forgettable enemy tells me nothing of value. I can build encounters myself based on what I think is appropriate for this area.

I agree with Morty. I want tons and tons of fluff from a setting. This is why I love the Realms. I can, and do, make up my own stuff to an extreme....but I like having things to attach it too and bulid from and so on. I don't like crunch like encounter tables, that is a huge waste of space.

My Realms is not 100% by the book. I take the published stuff, add to it and mix it around, and come out with a unique place.

You don't ''need'' to read the setting cover to cover to use it. If it says ''Fort Doom is full of goblins'', and you don't read it, and make it ''full of trolls'', it does not matter. But if your the type that does not like to read a lot, then a setting is not for you.

You also need to think of new gamers and people with limited time. It is nice to have pre made stuff for both of them. And even more so, not everyone is creative.

squiggit
2014-02-13, 08:29 PM
I disagree, rather strongly. When I look at setting books, I look for colourful, vibrant descriptions of the places, people, cultures and dangers to be found therein, from which I can draw my own stories. Giving me the mathematical probability of encountering this or that forgettable enemy tells me nothing of value. I can build encounters myself based on what I think is appropriate for this area.

Morty basically said everything I wanted to say.

Hell, in books that do give hard mechanics to certain areas I usually throw them out altogether or at best just use them as inspiration.

Savannah
2014-02-13, 09:58 PM
To me, reading though a 400-page Forgotten Realms book takes similar time and effort to just writing the content I need myself. Why not leave the Game Master the fun part: coming up with detailed lore? That's the easy part. I've enjoyed that since I first discovered D&D at age eight.

So coming up with detailed, internally consistent lore is fun and easy for you? That's great, and I'm a bit jealous. Serious question: Why, then, are you wanting to use a pregenerated setting? Stat blocks and random encounter tables can be found in many sourcebooks, if that's what you have trouble with/find boring. Make your own lore (fun/easy for you) and plug in the encounter tables. Now, me? I find coming up with lore incredibly time consuming and not particularly fun. I can use setting books for the lore, and if I need an encounter table, whip one up out of my available monster manuals in just a few minutes. I certainly don't think that there should be no encounter tables just because I find them easy to come up with (I understand that there are many DMs who don't find them easy, and RPG books must be useful to as many people as possible to sell). You seem to be suggesting that there should be no detailed lore and ignoring the fact that for many DMs, it's the lore that's the hard part.

Also, it's worth pointing out that using nothing but stats and pictures completely ties a given setting book to a given system. I'd never buy a book of random encounters for a system I don't play, but I might very well buy a book of lore for a system I don't play.

Chainsaw Hobbit
2014-02-13, 11:05 PM
So coming up with detailed, internally consistent lore is fun and easy for you? That's great, and I'm a bit jealous.
Not easy so much as easier. In the right mindset, I can enjoy coming up with fluff in the same way I enjoy writing stories. Crunch, on the other hand, is almost always tedious and often painful. Writing about a monster is more fun than figuring out how many hit points it has, or deciding what treasure table works best for its lair.


Serious question: Why, then, are you wanting to use a pregenerated setting?
Sometimes, I like to use worlds thought up by other people in order to keep myself from becoming repetitive or predictable. Also, Spelljammer is pure genius.

Rhynn
2014-02-13, 11:18 PM
Some of my favorite short & concise settings are Carcosa and Savage Swords of Athanor (http://swordsofathanor.blogspot.fi/). Both present what feels like a very tight and unique setting, but neither does it with long descriptions of ... anything. I think you are on to something, Chainsaw Hobbit, but a bit off the mark: they don't present encounter tables, but they do present e.g. setting-specific mechanics and lists of items and spells, which give you a great sense of the setting itself.

jedipotter
2014-02-14, 02:14 AM
Not easy so much as easier. In the right mindset, I can enjoy coming up with fluff in the same way I enjoy writing stories. Crunch, on the other hand, is almost always tedious and often painful. Writing about a monster is more fun than figuring out how many hit points it has, or deciding what treasure table works best for its lair.



Maybe you should play another game other then D&D? One with more fluff and less crunch?


And asking for ''published'' crunch is just awful. You will get the most bland and boring crunch. Wow, the guards have.....swords!, just wow! Polar bears are a common animal encountered in cold climates, wow, who would have thought.

Eldan
2014-02-14, 02:52 AM
Yeah, sorry, but I'm on the disagree side. I love reading fluff books, even if I mostly write my own fluff. As you said, I have to spend hours reading a book and if I do, I'd rather read about a new world I can later explore in play, instead of pages after pages of "to hit" scores and new player abilities. That's dull, dull, dull.

I love how Planescape did it. You could pick up a book with a hundred pages of fluff and only a few small sidebars with some very short rules. Perfect. Monsters with two pages of fluff under a short statblock. Beautiful.

So yes. I do write my own fluff. But I also like reading other people's. A good setting, in any case, is open enough that a DM can do his own thing within it. It has unexplored regions and big mysteries.

Thrudd
2014-02-14, 02:58 AM
Why can't they publish both the fluff and crunch? So you don't need to come up with either on your own if you don't want to? It's not as though they would be forcing you to use either or anything you don't want to in your game, but it just gives everyone what they might want. If you don't care about the random tables, don't pay attention to them. If you want your own fluff and only the tables, don't bother reading the fluff.
Maybe it should be two volumes, one that is all fluff and the other with all the tables in it.

Knaight
2014-02-14, 03:10 AM
And asking for ''published'' crunch is just awful. You will get the most bland and boring crunch. Wow, the guards have.....swords!, just wow! Polar bears are a common animal encountered in cold climates, wow, who would have thought.
To be fair, this is localized. WotC tends to make bland and boring crunch (though bland and boring is often pretty utilitarian), but I've seen some excellent crunch elsewhere. Granted, most of this excellent crunch is attached to much cooler concepts than the stock fantasy stuff - you've got space opera games with fun characteristic technology, you've got magic systems that have individual schools that are flavorful and interesting (e.g. People who tend to a magical garden wherein they sacrifice animals to create hybrids which literally grow out of the trees), and other such things.

GungHo
2014-02-14, 09:41 AM
Assigning challenge ratings to whole areas strikes me as a rather pointless thing to do, indeed.

It works if you're designing an MMO with area-style progression, like World of Warcraft. Of course, if I wanted to play in an MMO world with area-style progression, like World of Warcraft, I'd just go play World of Warcraft. It would save a hell of a lot of time.

jedipotter
2014-02-15, 01:02 PM
Why can't they publish both the fluff and crunch? So you don't need to come up with either on your own if you don't want to? It's not as though they would be forcing you to use either or anything you don't want to in your game, but it just gives everyone what they might want. If you don't care about the random tables, don't pay attention to them. If you want your own fluff and only the tables, don't bother reading the fluff.
Maybe it should be two volumes, one that is all fluff and the other with all the tables in it.

Again, they don't make up all that great of crunch. Most published crunch is only useful if you want beyond bland things. You'd be better off getting crunch from the internet.

Tvtyrant
2014-02-15, 01:37 PM
Is not monsters unique to a setting published crunch? And that is where the majority of monsters into the "default setting" or "generic setting" from. Warforged and Eberron, for instance. Or Neogi and Spelljammer.

jedipotter
2014-02-15, 03:53 PM
Is not monsters unique to a setting published crunch? And that is where the majority of monsters into the "default setting" or "generic setting" from. Warforged and Eberron, for instance. Or Neogi and Spelljammer.

Well....your milage may vairy. Sure lots of setting come up with vague ideas for monsters/creatures. But other then that, they mostly fizzle. Warforged get only a couple of paragraphs in the Eberron setting book, for example. And the Races of Eberron adds more, but that is just about it.

Zaydos
2014-02-15, 04:53 PM
In my experience the best setting books were the ones which while they had new and unique mechanic (not new items and monsters, but things like spacefaring, planar mechanics, Dark Sun) focused primarily on having unique and engaging fluff (Spelljammer's general zaniness, Planescape's factions and cant, Dark Sun's world that was so different from base D&D). All of these demand new crunch in the form of setting specific monstrous compendiums, new races, and in the case of Dark Sun new classes but it's the fluff that pulls me in. Monte Cook's planescape fluff is enough for me to get books just for that.

Crunch is nice, but I'm not going to get a setting book just so it can tell me sample encounter for an area. PCs vary far too much in optimization for me to have any use for that; I already find that I have to make my own arch-fiend stats for each game. Really I always felt that 3e went too far towards crunch in its setting books. I mean I can see why (FR and Eberron never struck my interest fluff-wise but I still picked up some for their crunch), but in many ways it's why they failed for me as setting books and I'd rather have had that crunch in things like Complete Warrior.

That said good illustrations can make a huge difference.

Talakeal
2014-02-15, 04:59 PM
So I have been trying tog et my setting published for a couple of years, and I have found art to be incredibly difficulty. Commissioning art is, for the most part, incredibly slow, unreliable, and expensive, and artists are often creative people who want to show their own vision rather than work to show someone else's setting and wont follow small details. While it may be different if you are a big company with a team of in house artists, I cant imagine trying to get across a setting primarily through illustration.

Thrudd
2014-02-15, 05:20 PM
Again, they don't make up all that great of crunch. Most published crunch is only useful if you want beyond bland things. You'd be better off getting crunch from the internet.

Maybe some people are not understanding what I'm thinking of. I would like to see settings published for D&D as hex crawl sandbox worlds. The "crunch" I want done for me is the keyed or partially keyed hex maps, population and demographic statistics, random encounter tables representing those demographics, weather tables for different parts of the world, in addition to any setting-specific rules for new races or classes, technology or forms of magic.
Yes, this is stuff I can do myself, but it can be quite time consuming. Having a big chunk of the world already mapped and keyed with encounter tables ready to go saves a ton of time, and there is no chance the players can go somewhere that I'm not prepared for.
The reason someone would pay for such a product is so that they have a world they can use for their game right out of the box. If the setting isn't giving me this type of information, there is still a significant amount of prep work required before I even get to the actual campaign and dungeon designing phase.

jedipotter
2014-02-15, 05:38 PM
Maybe some people are not understanding what I'm thinking of. I would like to see settings published for D&D as hex crawl sandbox worlds. The "crunch" I want done for me is the keyed or partially keyed hex maps, population and demographic statistics, random encounter tables representing those demographics, weather tables for different parts of the world, in addition to any setting-specific rules for new races or classes, technology or forms of magic.


The things you list are what most publishers are very bad at doing. Population and demographics? Your just going to get the bland 99% human and 1% others, unless it is an offical spot for another race. And your going to get the ''everyone is a commoner'' and other bland stuff. And then random encounters baised of that? Oh, wow, 1-4 human commoners...

And they are bad with setting specific rules too. Just look at Eberron. They made ton of new rules for all the new magic for Eberron, right? Oh wait, they did not. They just tossed ''um they make flying ships somehow'' and ''um, they don't make anything else''. It's not like they made new large item creation rules.

Rhynn
2014-02-15, 05:56 PM
Maybe some people are not understanding what I'm thinking of. I would like to see settings published for D&D as hex crawl sandbox worlds. The "crunch" I want done for me is the keyed or partially keyed hex maps, population and demographic statistics, random encounter tables representing those demographics, weather tables for different parts of the world, in addition to any setting-specific rules for new races or classes, technology or forms of magic.
Yes, this is stuff I can do myself, but it can be quite time consuming. Having a big chunk of the world already mapped and keyed with encounter tables ready to go saves a ton of time, and there is no chance the players can go somewhere that I'm not prepared for.

Same. I want stuff that would be too much of a hassle for me to make. For instance, for my Undermountain campaign, I'm using the original Waterdeep & The North books for lists of guilds, Waterdeep maps, encounter tables, and a city index; and the Ruins of the Undermountain boxed set for maps of the Undermountain levels (which I'm largely re-keying, though I'll keep a lot of the stuff).

But at the same time, I'm pretty much rewriting a lot of the other, less fiddly stuff: Waterdeep's Masked Lords are brutal tyrants who throw malcontents into the Undermountain, the "evil" gods (like Talos, Loviatar, etc.) are worshipped by essentially "satanic" secret cults (with secret shrines in the Undermountain), etc. ...

Thrudd
2014-02-15, 06:13 PM
The things you list are what most publishers are very bad at doing. Population and demographics? Your just going to get the bland 99% human and 1% others, unless it is an offical spot for another race. And your going to get the ''everyone is a commoner'' and other bland stuff. And then random encounters baised of that? Oh, wow, 1-4 human commoners...

And they are bad with setting specific rules too. Just look at Eberron. They made ton of new rules for all the new magic for Eberron, right? Oh wait, they did not. They just tossed ''um they make flying ships somehow'' and ''um, they don't make anything else''. It's not like they made new large item creation rules.

Your argument makes no sense.
So nobody should try, and I shouldn't want it, because you haven't seen it done well before? No one has tried to do this at all, not since the modules of the late 70's and early 80's which were fairly small scale. I want the equivalent of those sort of hex crawl modules, but on a larger scale.

The demographics are not just who lives in the towns, but what sorts of monsters and animals are found in the wilderness. Yes, it would be stupid if all the encounter tables were filled with humans, but who would do that?
In one wilderness region you might have orcs and gnolls, an occasional ogre. On the other side of the mountains, goblinoids live, and the tables reflects this sort of thing. I'm not sure you can even imagine what I'm talking about, based on your responses.

You want to see a setting that is not so human-centric. Why would that be impossible?

I don't think it is likely WoTC will put out such a thing, unless the new edition of D&D really shifts gears. Likely nobody will be doing this, because the OSR movement is not a big enough market to enable large scale publishing, and that is pretty much the only group that wants to play hex crawls. But I can dream, can't I?
Maybe I will publish my own setting like this someday, and other people will find it useful and time-saving.

edit: for an example of what I want to see more of, check out the 1983 Guide to the World of Greyhawk.

GungHo
2014-02-17, 11:24 AM
So I have been trying tog et my setting published for a couple of years, and I have found art to be incredibly difficulty. Commissioning art is, for the most part, incredibly slow, unreliable, and expensive, and artists are often creative people who want to show their own vision rather than work to show someone else's setting and wont follow small details. While it may be different if you are a big company with a team of in house artists, I cant imagine trying to get across a setting primarily through illustration.

I'd imagine when you commission art externally, you may have to consider changing the little details in the setting to match the art rather than the other way around because, as you've realized, it's much harder to do it the other way. You're in control of your words.