Campaign settings with sketchy details that are great because of it

[Yora]

Some years ago there was a bit of talk about fantasy settings and the idea of Grand Unified Theories of the worlds. Which basically means that the setting starts with an explanation of how the world was created, how the cosmic laws work, and why everything is now the way that it is. And it was talked about because not everyone likes such worlds.

Of course, there are plenty of people who do. People like lore binging on The Elder Scrolls, Forgotten Realms has always been hugely popular, and the website for Harnworld boasts with "Hârn is one of the most detailed fantasy worlds ever created", as if that alone is proof of excelent quality. Any time I've been talking to people here about the setting of The Dark Eye, the main selling point was the huge amount of detail.

You can like it or you don't, but there's also a different approach that probably originates, or at the very least is strongly associated with pulp stories. Hyperborea, Barsoom, to some extend the Hyborian Age, the non-expanded Star Wars universe, and of course the first box set for Dark Sun. (Soon after they began adding some metaplot and introducing a Grand Unified Theory, which a lot of people really hated.)

For the purposes of running a campaign, having a setting that is scarce on details and rather sketchy on most things is certainly a big convenience. Much less preparation, fewer things to remember and keep straight, and less need to dump large amount of background lore on players who might not particularly care about such things. It also leads to an often distinctive aesthetic quality where there is a lot more exploration of the unknown and discovery of completely unexpected things, which is usually absent from big, well established settings.
But just like having a lot of detail, backstory, and explanation doesn't make a setting great by itself, simply having little information doesn't make it good either. It can very well still end up as just being shoddy and uninteresting.

So the big prize question is this: How do you make a small and compact setting with minimal backstory in a way that is still exciting and interesting? What are the elements that make very small settings great?

[Vitruviansquid]

The way I see it, you can strip away everything from a setting, one by one, and it will still essentially be the same setting, until you take away the tone. The tone is the core of what a setting is all about to me, and if you change away the tone, then it becomes a different setting even if you don't remove anything else.

So how would I make a small setting that's interesting?

I would start by telling my players the very essential, tone-setting information in a nutshell. Then, reveal the circumstances of the start of the campaign, such as where the PCs are, what the PCs are doing (or ask the players what they think they would be doing). After the adventure starts, reveal information about new locations or McGuffins or whatever as they become relevant.

[goto124]

Isn't the point of a setting that a GM doesn't have to spend time and brain power coming up with material?

[Eldan]

In my current campaign, it sort of happened by accident.

Namely, I was asked to run a campaign for a few people with a week of preparation time. Didn't want to use a pre-made world, so I printed out a randomly generated map from online.

That map happened to look very Mediterranean. An ocean in the West, a connected inland sea with lots of gulfs and penninsulas and islands and then just vast stretches of land in all other directions.

So in the end, I put three cultures around that Mediterranean, which were roughly Egyptian, Greek and Carthaginian and worked those out in detail. THe rest of the world was given very broad climate zones (steppe, forest, mountains) and a few descriptive sounding names, nothing more.

Then I explained to the players that the coastal civilizations thought of everyone they couldn't reach by boat as barbarians and didn't know much about them, except they were there. There was some trade, but no one know the cultures much.

Worked out well so far, for two sessions.

[hymer]

Isn't the point of a setting that a GM doesn't have to spend time and brain power coming up with material?

I've spent more time familiarizing myself with FR for a campaign I was asked to run than I normally spend preparing for a campaign. And I'm nowhere close to a full understanding. Every session takes longer to prepare, simply because I have to look up so much stuff, rather than coming up with it or knowing it because I made it.
So time, no. Brain power, possibly.

[Yora]

The way I see it, you can strip away everything from a setting, one by one, and it will still essentially be the same setting, until you take away the tone. The tone is the core of what a setting is all about to me, and if you change away the tone, then it becomes a different setting even if you don't remove anything else.


So in the end, I put three cultures around that Mediterranean, which were roughly Egyptian, Greek and Carthaginian and worked those out in detail. THe rest of the world was given very broad climate zones (steppe, forest, mountains) and a few descriptive sounding names, nothing more.

Then I explained to the players that the coastal civilizations thought of everyone they couldn't reach by boat as barbarians and didn't know much about them, except they were there. There was some trade, but no one know the cultures much.

I think the most amazing example of such a technique is are the early Star Wars, which is the true genius of George Lucas. (It's certainly not his storytelling.) The officers of the Empire wear Nazi uniforms and their soldiers wear armor that looks like skeletons. And their leader are a black knight with a skull mask and a robed sorcerer. With almost no exposition everyone recognizes everything instanty, even if they are not aware that they do.
In the tales of Conan, the Stygians live in a desert in the south and worship Seth. It doesn't need to be explained for everyone to immediately think "Egyptians".

Pulp tales tend heavily towards stereotypes to the point of caricature, which is where much of its unfortunate implications come from. But it's a very efficient method of communicating a lot with saying very little. Which is crucial when publishing serial short stories in magazines, but also useful as a shortcut to introduce players to a new campaign setting.
When you create fictional worlds the audience all already have a lot of existing building blocks in their head. Instead of making everything from scratch and telling it through exposition you can just build using those blocks saving much time and work.

The downside is that it hampers creativity and giving the world a unique character. Everything that the players have seen before a dozen times probably won't be interesting anymore. You can use archetypes as a foundation to save a lot of time, but to make a setting great it probably needs some new and unusual elements that go on top and heavily define the tone.