Optimizing Campaign Setting Books for use at the table

[Yora]

I am someone who really loves discovering new campaign settings. But I also very often see settings using the Format used by Forgotten Realms, Eberron, and the Pathfinder setting and always think that this really can't be it. There's got to be much better ways to make campaign settings that GMs can use to make adventures for their players.
When we think about what makes a good campaign setting book, I think most would agree on the following assumptions:


The main goal of a campaign setting is to be the place for the players' adventures.
In a campaign, the most awesome thing should be the actions that the players take. No matter how cool the environments, NPCs, and monsters, the player characters and their actions should be even cooler.
The purpose of a campaign setting book is to give the GM material that helps with making adventures in which the player characters are awesome.

But when I look at most campaign settings on the market, I am not really seeing much of that. I see backstories, powerful NPCs, and big events taking place between these NPCs. But where do the PCs factor into this? And I think it would have to be starting level PCs.
I think a great setting should be set up to let the players do great things. Not to have players supporting NPCs in doing great things.The design of a campaign setting should start with the player characters at the center and be built around them. Not creating a world and then having the PCs thrown into it at the end.

But identifying a problem does not automatically provide an answer. What do you think specifically could be done by setting creators to put the PCs more in center of campaigns taking place in those worlds?

[RazorChain]

I am someone who really loves discovering new campaign settings. But I also very often see settings using the Format used by Forgotten Realms, Eberron, and the Pathfinder setting and always think that this really can't be it. There's got to be much better ways to make campaign settings that GMs can use to make adventures for their players.
When we think about what makes a good campaign setting book, I think most would agree on the following assumptions:


The main goal of a campaign setting is to be the place for the players' adventures.
In a campaign, the most awesome thing should be the actions that the players take. No matter how cool the environments, NPCs, and monsters, the player characters and their actions should be even cooler.
The purpose of a campaign setting book is to give the GM material that helps with making adventures in which the player characters are awesome.


I rarely use campaign setting written be other people, I usually make my own. When I was younger I used Forgotten Realms, Nightcity from Cyberpunk, Arkham and Dunwich for CoC, Chicago by night in VtM, Glorantha for Runequest so I can say that I have used a fair amount in my games spread over the decades.

For me the setting is a backdrop and I just change things to my liking, if I don't want to have King Azoun ruling over Cormyr then out he goes and if Elminster never got out of Hell then I'm sure the setting just got better.

In my eyes the purpose of a campaign setting is to serve as a backdrop for where the adventures take place. It's still the GM's job to make those adventures and whether the player characters are awesome or not is up for debate. I'd rather run an awesome adventure rather that stroke my players ego, in fact I've run and played in awesome adventures where the PC's fail to achieve their goal.

Why do the PC's have to outshine everything? Or be the most badass and the coolest? If the PC's manage to be the most badass or the coolest or do the most awesome thing it should really be player dependent and a reward for good roleplaying, lucky die roll or creativity on the player part. If you just drop the PC's into the world and they are the most awesome thing since frozen yoghurt then it diminishes the accomplishment of getting to become awesome. Now some game start with the PC's being badasses already like Exalted and how much more badass they can get is a matter of linear progression, but other games don't



But when I look at most campaign settings on the market, I am not really seeing much of that. I see backstories, powerful NPCs, and big events taking place between these NPCs. But where do the PCs factor into this? And I think it would have to be starting level PCs.
I think a great setting should be set up to let the players do great things. Not to have players supporting NPCs in doing great things.The design of a campaign setting should start with the player characters at the center and be built around them. Not creating a world and then having the PCs thrown into it at the end.

But identifying a problem does not automatically provide an answer. What do you think specifically could be done by setting creators to put the PCs more in center of campaigns taking place in those worlds?

It is the GM's place to incorporate the PC's into the world no matter the starting level, there is nothing that says that you have to start at lvl 1 or equivalent. The event that take place in the campaign settings are completely optional, if you want to pretend the Avatar Wars/Time of Troubles never happened in Forgotten Realms then you can do that. If you want to change how events unfold to incorporate the PC's then that's doable as well. The PC's can also just do something completely different and totally ignore the events taking place between those powerful NPC's.



The design of a campaign setting should start with the player characters at the center and be built around them. Not creating a world and then having the PCs thrown into it at the end.

You cant do that with a published setting, you can only do it if you make a setting around your PC's and in that case prepare for one player showing up with a mecha warrior, another with a ninja, the third one with an extraterrestial psionic and the fourth one with something akin to one punch man. Those who publish a setting don't know what kind of characters your players will show up with and how your playing style is.

[VoxRationis]

But identifying a problem does not automatically provide an answer. What do you think specifically could be done by setting creators to put the PCs more in center of campaigns taking place in those worlds?

I'm not intimately familiar with the setting, but I was under the impression that Eberron already did that, by creating a setting where friendly NPCs were mostly magic item makers/vendors who lacked enough field spellcasting power to do anything. Seems rubbish to me. The point of a published setting is to provide a detailed world in which to have adventures. That world will be far older and broader than the PCs or their immediate environments; I don't see why you would bother focusing on that content. That's the DM's job. I also don't like the "PCs are awesome by virtue of being PCs" train of thought.

Edit: But as far as changes to formatting go: I would probably increase the focus on current status-quo situations. I love histories as much as (and likely more than) the next player, but DMs need to be able to answer the questions of "Where's the nearest village?" and "What kind of ships could we hire in this town?"

[Godskook]

In a campaign, the most awesome thing should be the actions that the players take. No matter how cool the environments, NPCs, and monsters, the player characters and their actions should be even cooler.

Oh gawd no. Especially at the start of a campaign. In fact, the players shouldn't be in the top 10 coolest things in the setting. This is a fundamental truth of good story-telling. If your PCs start as the coolest thing in the world, you've no longer got an interesting story. There's no struggle, no risk. Its just powerful people doing powerful things.

For a case study in this, just watch how *HARD* the Matrix Trilogy struggles after the first movie, when Neo surpasses every bar the setting had set for power, up to that point. Its bad, but the trilogy manages to be passable despite this. Had Neo's power progression followed a path closer to Luke Skywalker's from Star Wars, Matrix might've supplanted it as *THE* trilogy. Actually, Luke's another good case study. In the first movie, the VERY FIRST THING THEY DO is establish Darth Vader as the biggest, baddest, most cool character in the story. And then we're slowly introduced to Luke and Han. Guess what? Luke's the most obnoxious character in his own story, meanwhile Han Solo is a slick space cowboy, of a sorts, at least. No Darth Vader, but for a roguish smuggler, not bad. And then, slowly but surely, Luke grows in power, first catching some lucky breaks to defeat Vader at the end of A New Hope. Then, when he next matches Vader, he's clearly gained ground, but is still the weaker warrior by a notable amount. And then, for a Trilogy-ending finale, he's finally able, not through sheer power, but clever skill and exploitation of weakness, defeat Vader. And then he immediately gets pwned by Palpatine. Like....2 seconds later. Just pwned. And then there's LotRs, a story told, centrally, from the perspective of 4 hobbits. I don't need to explain further, do I?

No, this is a fundamental precept of the Hero's Journey, that the Hero must start weak.

[Honest Tiefling]

Yeah, I disagree with 2 and 3. The PCs are the most awesome thing in their story. They are the focus of the story and the plot, but not always the setting. Sometimes, they are demigods who can make the world tremble with a word, but other times they are just extraordinary people who were in the right place at the wrong time. Nothing is wrong with either approach, but I feel as if they are two vastly different approaches to a game. But neither one is better then the other, nor is either one assumed.

Think of the spy or pulp genres. The player character's aren't leaders of nations, just some thugs, mercenaries, or assassins out to complete a mission that won't be noticed by most people. They might be a part of an organization with hundreds of people...But something happened to make their story the interesting one unlike all of the missions that went perfectly.

As for making characters awesome? Most players don't really need help with that. I don't even consider this when building a game. Why would they even need my help? We could probably poll the forums here for people to make an interesting character in 1 minute and hit gold.

[Kol Korran]

Hi Yora, I'll answer in regard to your list first.


...

The main goal of a campaign setting is to be the place for the players' adventures.
In a campaign, the most awesome thing should be the actions that the players take. No matter how cool the environments, NPCs, and monsters, the player characters and their actions should be even cooler.
The purpose of a campaign setting book is to give the GM material that helps with making adventures in which the player characters are awesome.

1. I agree about this. Yet unless you're designing for a very specific kind of game and tastes, most campaign setting will seek to encompass many kind of locals, conditions, themes, hooks and possibilities. Mainly the commercial ones, who seek to address a wide crowd.
I see the campaign setting's roles as:
- Provide the backdrop for the adventures, the framework of the world in which these take place. Both the "scenery", but also the rational for how things work and why (In general terms, not necessarily the nitty-gritty).
- Provide inspiration. For the GM and players both. For the GM in terms of major themes, struggles, opponents, allies, and such. For the players in terms of the character's place in the world/ setting, their options, and things of interest to explore.
- Provide Mysteries and hooks. this follows the previous point, but is more specific for adventuring options.

2. I sort of disagree about the PCs actions needing to be the mot awesome thing... Let me explain.
First- define "awesome". What is awesome to one player/ group, will be boring/ distasteful to another. Today it seems many would consider "awesome" as being a powerful badass who gets away with near impossible stuff. But... there are many different play styles and preferences (I've mentioned it a few times- The Aesthetics of Gaming. You've probably read about it in The Angry DM's blog).

For example, lets consider a fairly cliche premise- The Kingdom the PCs have been part of has been attacked by a horrific and powerful army, and the war is going bad. Enter PCs.
Now, what would be awesome here?
Some groups/ players would love to play the kingdom's leadership/ generals, and conduct massive cunning battles, against impossible odds. They would feel it's "Awesome" to play as leaders against desperation, make "hard choices/ sacrifices", and come with strategic ways to battle the foe.
Some would love to play as super powered elite tactic squad, that takes on high risk operation, strike at vital points of the enemy, and ensure the turn of the war by their actions! Action movies are awesome, right?
Some would love to play as regular soldiers, on the front of the war, dealing with survival against the horrible foes, but also the military lives, and being grunts in the army (Just check out the "All Guardsmen" log for example). Hey, grumpy, gritty, military movies are awesome, right?
Some would love to play not as soldiers, but possibly as victims of the war- the farmers who's villages/ lives got destroyed, and deal with the difficulties of survival in a war torn country, possibly looking for their lost loved ones, and so forth, with a PREFERENCE to treat the enemy as truly horrific and terrifying, the focus being evasion and survival, NOT a glorious fight. Drams movies, touching heart breaking scenes, character development and anguish make you really FEEL the characters and the world, wouldn't that be just awesome?

So... "awesome" may be subjective. Even for heroic tales (As some have mentioned), many people like to play out their "humble origins/ beginnings", and see them develop. They may gt to be world altering heroes/ shapers of history, but not all would like that to be the start of the story.

And another point on this, if I may. Lets assume you wish the party to be awesome and highly influential fro the get go. Most settings have SOOOOO much stuff to explore and do, so many mysteries/ hooks/ conflicts/ dangers and more, and enough left for the DM to fill in/ decide upon, that you can easily find something inspiring for the PCs to be involved in from lvl 1 (Speaking in D&D terms), if you wish for it. And most people who seek to "be awesome", want something very exciting, and very influential to the world. They don't need to TOP ALL of the awesome stuff in the world. In fact, many such awesome locals/ people and so on, are what makes it awesome.

I'll use some examples, from Eberron (Since I'm mostly familiar with it):
1- The party explores/ is sent to protect/ steal/ destroy/ make a research by a relatively unknown inventor. The invention turns out to be an important amplifier/ nullifer of dragonmarks! The entire economy of Khorvaire, the shape of it's society will be altered by it! Now they are aided/ chased by the dragonmakred houses, the Aurum, and possibly quite a few other factions.
2- The party explores the Mournland, and finds a discovery that sheds a disturbing new light on some crucial event in the Last War. What will they do, and who else might be interested in it?
3- In darguun, the party accompany a delegation to the Lhesh Haruuc palace, when someone is assassinated! Now they need to survive the tense (and HIGHLY volatile) situation. The way things will turn out, may well reshape the nation, and it's relation to the world.
4- In Sharn, while exploring the deep parts of the cogs, the party comes upon an ancient vault, from the final days of the Empire of Dhakaan. In it they find a hint that explains that the end of the war with the Daelkyr had some... unseen ramifications... They put their effect and mark upon the world. And to the PCs horror, they find notes about early experimentation, that led to disturbing skin patterns and powers- the early dragonmarks... And more than that- the signs are partly alive in fact, as specific variant of an inherited symbionts... one of the Daelkyr passed some of it's essence through them, and they even find clues that as the war drew to a close, it made itself dormant within one such line, to rise again by the combined power of that mark. Who's house is the "infected" one? What are the implication on others?

As I grow as a person and a gamer, I personally am less interested in the super powerful stuff, fighting unimaginable world endangering dangers. I find that very hard to relate, somewhat childish, and missing the point. We recently ran a very "awesome powered campaign, in which the PCs are THE center", but it became... less interesting after some time...

As someone once told me- "What do you find more exciting? Playing the nigh unstoppable sorcerer, demolishing the uber dragon abomination of the 11th layer of the prison dimension, or the town guard, who's village is attacked by an overwhelming foe, who but seeks to get his family to safety, as his village burns down? Who can you relate to more? For whom do you feel more? Who is more in danger? Who is more courageous? What is more exciting?" Not a simple answer...

3. I disagree here as well. I've allready touched on what I think the campaign setting's roles are, but I'll touch on another subject, also from the "8 aesthetics of play" article by The Angry DM... He mentions there that game systems such as D&D, should not be confused as games. They aren't games, but game engines. As such, they give the rough layout and potential rule sets for actual games, but a game is made by the group's agreements, their focus, their choice of rules, what they add, what they don't, what they actually play.

In a similar scope, a campaign setting isn't the campaign. It's the rough layout and potential components and aspects in which actual campaigns can take place. Similar to the point made in the article, I'd argue that making adventures that help the PCs be awesome, is in the making of the campaign, the adventures, and the game itself, and NOT part of the campaign setting design, or purpose. You can run TONS of different kind of games, with very different focuses in most commercial campaign worlds, and even in most of the more limited/ focused/ themed campaign settings.

But that onus falls upon the group, the GM and the players. Quite a lot of it on them really... You can make the most awesome concept, but if the players don't do anything quite exciting with it, well... too bad. The game will suck regardless. The players' pro-activeness and involvement turn a campaign concept from potential to realization, for better or worse.

The first campaign in my adult life was in Eberron, and I was inspired by various materials, some of them from the campaign setting, but a lot of them my own, and a lot of stuff came from the players. (They totally surprised me and took the campaign in different places). I provided interesting scenes, situations, and opponents (arguably), but it's what they did that made it so damn awesome!

I plan another campaign (Very slowly nowadays) in Eberron, with a VERY different focus. And again, I will provide with interesting situations, but the players will be the ones to make it awesome/ suck.

Or to sum it up:
The campaign setting's main role is to provide inspiration and a framework in which groups can make different types of campaigns. Making these campaigns exciting and fun falls on the specific group, specific game, and specific gaming aesthetics the game focuses on. A campaign setting CANNOT as such fully address all such possibilities, just provide a good enough, detailed enough (But not TOO detailed) of a "ground work" to use. Nor should it. The rest is up to the group, who actually make the campaign, the adventures and the game.

At least that's my opinion...

[Yora]

What I meant is that the actions taken by the players should be the most interesting thing in each game session. The PCs don't have to be the most amazing or powerful characters in the setting, But whatever it is they are doing, they must not be supporting characters. They have to be the protagonists of the adventure. The people who decide the outcome of things.

I think Eberron made some efforts in that direction by generally going with lower levels for the major NPCs than you find in other D&D settings. But I still think that the opponents provided by the setting are too big. The Blood of Vol and the Emerald claw are led by this really cool half-dragon elf lich. The aberrations of Kyber are spawn/minions of demigods of madness. The Inspired are actually immortal demons who rule an empire spanning continent. They are all really cool antagonists, but the way they are set up and presented I am always under the impression that players are really supposed to fight and beat their powerful leaders. How do 2nd level characters gain a meaningful victory over immortals? What can they do to these groups that makes the villains at the top even aware that something happened at all?

This is what I mean by starting the design of the world with the (starting level) PCs. What adventures is the setting offering to starting characters that will lead to meaningful victories for them? You can always fight bandits, orc bandits, and goblins bandits, and later on ogre bandits. But these are usually not "main features" of the setting. Fighting humanoids who rob and plunder isn't what most settings are advertising themselves as.
I think a well created setting should set up the groundwork for great adventures with a strong thematic style, which players can experience right from the start.

[obryn]

The main goal of a campaign setting is to be the place for the players' adventures.
In a campaign, the most awesome thing should be the actions that the players take. No matter how cool the environments, NPCs, and monsters, the player characters and their actions should be even cooler.
The purpose of a campaign setting book is to give the GM material that helps with making adventures in which the player characters are awesome.
I fully agree with all of these. All too often, campaign settings can become stale fake-history texts and/or showcases of NPC actions. A game should be about the players' characters and their actions.

My best advice? Check out the Godbound RPG by Kevin Crawford. It's a full sandbox setting wherein the PCs are going to be some of the baddest hombres around given their new godhood. It's nominally an OSR game, but with some real design innovations. It provides tools for a GM to expect, encourage, and work with the critical changes the PCs will wreak. There's a free version on DTRPG (http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/185959/Godbound-A-Game-of-Divine-Heroes-Free-Edition) and a Deluxe Edition for money, with more neat stuff (http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/185960/Godbound-A-Game-of-Divine-Heroes).

In other ideas, the 4e Neverwinter Campaign Guide did a good job, here. It's a smaller-scale setting, but it is very proactive with cues as to what adventurers might do.

[RazorChain]

What I meant is that the actions taken by the players should be the most interesting thing in each game session. The PCs don't have to be the most amazing or powerful characters in the setting, But whatever it is they are doing, they must not be supporting characters. They have to be the protagonists of the adventure. The people who decide the outcome of things.

I think Eberron made some efforts in that direction by generally going with lower levels for the major NPCs than you find in other D&D settings. But I still think that the opponents provided by the setting are too big. The Blood of Vol and the Emerald claw are led by this really cool half-dragon elf lich. The aberrations of Kyber are spawn/minions of demigods of madness. The Inspired are actually immortal demons who rule an empire spanning continent. They are all really cool antagonists, but the way they are set up and presented I am always under the impression that players are really supposed to fight and beat their powerful leaders. How do 2nd level characters gain a meaningful victory over immortals? What can they do to these groups that makes the villains at the top even aware that something happened at all?

This is what I mean by starting the design of the world with the (starting level) PCs. What adventures is the setting offering to starting characters that will lead to meaningful victories for them? You can always fight bandits, orc bandits, and goblins bandits, and later on ogre bandits. But these are usually not "main features" of the setting. Fighting humanoids who rob and plunder isn't what most settings are advertising themselves as.
I think a well created setting should set up the groundwork for great adventures with a strong thematic style, which players can experience right from the start.






This is mostly a question about power level and where to start the characters. Let's take Cyberpunk 2020, starting characters just aren't going to take down Saburo Arasaka or the Arasaka Zaibatsu from the start. But they can start working on it when they start play by running ops against Arasaka or that are in favor of Arasakas rivals. In Vampire the Masquerade our character had to work our way up for a long time before we could challenge Lodin, the prince of Chicago.

In both of these systems you start as a fairly competent individual and that's DnD problem if you are starting at level 1 or 2 and the level scale of your enemies....and the enemies have to be sooo badass...a half-dragon, half demon, shapechanging demi lich....or a demi god...or something even MORE awesome! It's like my children playing...my son says while making a hero factory character "my guy is THE death....which means he can't be killed" and my daughter rebutts "Ok then I'm his mother and he has to do what I tell him to do".

Which is why I like to focus on more humane bad guys, it doesn't have to be about fighting the ultimate evil that threatens the world. For me it was fun for maybe 5-6 years but as I explored more systems and matured I found that style of play boring.

In my game one of the main antagonists is the Francis Corleone, played by 50 year old Robert de Niro and runs organized crime in medieval Tarento. The PC's can kill him with a one well placed crossbow bolt but he's still alive and kicking thwarting the PC's when they get in his way. The players love to hate him, they are deathly afraid of his left hand man, Helmut Stahl, a giant blooded Swabian. They have never crossed swords with him but are still afraid of him...just because of his reputation.

My players are still having awesome adventures, they just don't have to save the world to do it. I mean they saved a whole village! After the local priest had been seduced by heresy and conducted a diabolical ritual and awakened a demonic revenant and the whole graveyard rose from the dead, the PC's gathered all the villagers inside the church and defended them. That was one awesome battle and their third adventure.




As I grow as a person and a gamer, I personally am less interested in the super powerful stuff, fighting unimaginable world endangering dangers. I find that very hard to relate, somewhat childish, and missing the point. We recently ran a very "awesome powered campaign, in which the PCs are THE center", but it became... less interesting after some time...

As someone once told me- "What do you find more exciting? Playing the nigh unstoppable sorcerer, demolishing the uber dragon abomination of the 11th layer of the prison dimension, or the town guard, who's village is attacked by an overwhelming foe, who but seeks to get his family to safety, as his village burns down? Who can you relate to more? For whom do you feel more? Who is more in danger? Who is more courageous? What is more exciting?" Not a simple answer...

I am on the same opinion....the super power stuff gets.....boring after a while. I like to focus more on smaller things, the characters journey, goals etc. I like to center my campaigns around the characters and you can bet that they don't have as a goal to save the world. Now I only like to save the world once or twice per decade, that is enough for me.

[2D8HP]

...As I grow as a person and a gamer, I personally am less interested in the super powerful stuff, fighting unimaginable world endangering dangers. I find that very hard to relate...


...I am on the same opinion....the super power stuff gets.....boring after a while. I like to focus more on smaller things, the characters journey, goals etc....

"Boring after a while"?

I'd say boring at the start!

To put this in genre movie terms The Seven Samurai, and The Road Warrior interest me.

Avengers age/curse of Whatever?

Not at all.

Humane scale adventurers in fantastic worlds.

More First Men in the Moon, less X-Men.

Why is that so rare now?

[Godskook]

What I meant is that

Yeah, we understood. You meant this:


the actions taken by the players should be the most interesting thing in each game session. The PCs don't have to be the most amazing or powerful characters in the setting, But whatever it is they are doing, they must not be supporting characters. They have to be the protagonists of the adventure. The people who decide the outcome of things.

And again, I say, look at actual protagonists in actual stories outside D&D. Protagonists suck in good stories. This is the whole point of the Hero's Journey.


How do 2nd level characters gain a meaningful victory over immortals? What can they do to these groups that makes the villains at the top even aware that something happened at all?

This is the *WRONG* question.

Level 2 characters, in D&D, are not notable people, by and large. Want a setting where level 2 characters are notable? That's Season 1 Game of Thrones, *MAYBE*. There's a good argument that some of those dudes are levels 3-6 range. But in Eberron, a level 2 is barely not-a-commoner, and that's fine. The setting allows for varied levels of play. Wanna get hired on as security guard? That can be done at level 2 just fine, but you're glorified police at that point. If you wanna face Immortals, you're supposed to be higher-leveled.

"Why can't I fight CR 13+ stuff when I'm level 2" is a bad question, and fundamentally misunderstands the genre you're applying it to.


This is what I mean by starting the design of the world with the (starting level) PCs. What adventures is the setting offering to starting characters that will lead to meaningful victories for them? You can always fight bandits, orc bandits, and goblins bandits, and later on ogre bandits. But these are usually not "main features" of the setting. Fighting humanoids who rob and plunder isn't what most settings are advertising themselves as.

A perfectly fine storyline-progression, as an adventure module example, is Scourge of the Howling Horde into Forge of Fury into Red Hand of Doom. Especially if you run it E6


I think a well created setting should set up the groundwork for great adventures with a strong thematic style, which players can experience right from the start.

The problem you are identifying is not with the setting. The problem you are identifying is with character generation and power growth curves. If you want PCs, in D&D, to be able to *START* at the juicy-tasty stuff, then you *NEED* to run E6, or a variant within your desired level-range. Vanilla D&D does not support the type of play you seem to want, and that is not a problem with the setting. Its not even ~really~ a problem with the system. Its a preference you have for how power levels should be managed.

[RazorChain]

I think the fundamental problem here is looking at campaign settings through the DnD lens. DnD campaign world represent the system where you start as schmuck (lvl 1) and become a demigod (lvl 20). The setting then has to incorporate both of those extremes as you have to be able to play both as a schmuck and a demigod. If you put on a level cap then you either have to reduce the power of the super cool shapechanging elven lich half dragon vampier thingy or just write off that the PC's are going to be fighting deities or equivalent.

When you look at other settings representing other systems then often you have no problems doing cool stuff from the start, but then again the focus of those campaign settings might not be to fight something like Tiamat

[RazorChain]

"Boring after a while"?

I'd say boring at the start!

To put this in genre movie terms The Seven Samurai, and The Road Warrior interest me.

Avengers age/curse of Whatever?

Not at all.

Humane scale adventurers in fantastic worlds.

More First Men in the Moon, less X-Men.

Why is that so rare now?

I know you were there, I know you must have seen it, it's no denying it! Even though I started in '87 I played the red box and then this existed


https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d3/TSR1017_Dungeons_%26_Dragons_-_Set_5_Immortal.jpg

[Yora]

Interestingly, back in the day when D&D classes had a name for every level, a 1st level fighter was a Veteran and a 4th level fighter was a Hero. And the level progression really only went up to 9th level. 6th level spells have effects that are generally considered to be the ultimate magical power that you could find in fiction, like completely annihilating a creature to dust, raising dead, and talking to gods. And when dragons had only 40 hit points.
The problem of putting the cool stuff out of reach of the average PCs is something that really started in the post-Dragonlance and post-Forgotten Realms era of D&D.

Someone mentioned E6, which adjust d20 games back to this range of power distribution. And I think that this is one of the big and important ways that setting creators can make their settings more accessible and useful for play. Spread the content out over 10 levels instead of 25 if the world is made for a D&D type game.

But I think it's not simply a mechanical issue. Just as problematic is the unspoken but generally assumption that players are not allowed to mess with the established world. Which really is the result of regular timeline advances. When you can expect the world to see an update in a few years or month that will give new information on what happened to major NPCs, organizations, and countries in the meantime, then GMs are pressured not to let anything happen in their campaigns that could conflict with these future developments. And much more so than major NPCs being too powerful to challenge with an average party, I think this requirement to keep them alive and their power unbroken makes them effectively unusable as antagonist in actual play.
The same goes obviously for friendly NPCs and I think that's just the setup that leads to the situation where these NPCs appear pretty much only as quest givers, if at all.

What are GMs supposed to do with major NPCs in a setting that is presented like this? As little interest as I have for Greyhawk as a fantasy world, a very important thing to understand is that the major characters of the setting were not NPCs created by the GM. They were the player characters. Robilar and Mordenkainen were not NPCs, they were PCs. Can anyone even name a major character of Grayhawk that wasn't a PC, other than dungeon bosses and unique monsters?

Some 10 years ago, the big bad word of controversy in RPGs was Metaplot. I think having timeline advances is the single most reason that reduces PCs as errand boys. Even more so than overly broad power curves.

[RazorChain]

But I think it's not simply a mechanical issue. Just as problematic is the unspoken but generally assumption that players are not allowed to mess with the established world. Which really is the result of regular timeline advances. When you can expect the world to see an update in a few years or month that will give new information on what happened to major NPCs, organizations, and countries in the meantime, then GMs are pressured not to let anything happen in their campaigns that could conflict with these future developments. And much more so than major NPCs being too powerful to challenge with an average party, I think this requirement to keep them alive and their power unbroken makes them effectively unusable as antagonist in actual play.
The same goes obviously for friendly NPCs and I think that's just the setup that leads to the situation where these NPCs appear pretty much only as quest givers, if at all.

What are GMs supposed to do with major NPCs in a setting that is presented like this? As little interest as I have for Greyhawk as a fantasy world, a very important thing to understand is that the major characters of the setting were not NPCs created by the GM. They were the player characters. Robilar and Mordenkainen were not NPCs, they were PCs. Can anyone even name a major character of Grayhawk that wasn't a PC, other than dungeon bosses and unique monsters?

Some 10 years ago, the big bad word of controversy in RPGs was Metaplot. I think having timeline advances is the single most reason that reduces PCs as errand boys. Even more so than overly broad power curves.


I remember one DM who almost cried when the group ganked Elminster, Cyric, Kelemvor and Midnight. We were sick and tired of playing second fiddle and running around like good dogs through Time of Troubles (Shadowdale, Tantras, Waterdeep)

I say that you should throw caution to the wind and let the PC's romp through the setting. If a GM is waiting vicariously for next timeline advance then he should look for another job.

[LibraryOgre]

The main goal of a campaign setting is to be the place for the players' adventures.
In a campaign, the most awesome thing should be the actions that the players take. No matter how cool the environments, NPCs, and monsters, the player characters and their actions should be even cooler.
The purpose of a campaign setting book is to give the GM material that helps with making adventures in which the player characters are awesome.


In a campaign, yes, but not necessarily in a campaign setting.

I think a lot of campaign settings are written to provide hooks... places a GM can hang an adventure, without necessarily making the PCs the only actors in the game.

[GungHo]

I'm not intimately familiar with the setting, but I was under the impression that Eberron already did that, by creating a setting where friendly NPCs were mostly magic item makers/vendors who lacked enough field spellcasting power to do anything. Seems rubbish to me. The point of a published setting is to provide a detailed world in which to have adventures. That world will be far older and broader than the PCs or their immediate environments; I don't see why you would bother focusing on that content. That's the DM's job. I also don't like the "PCs are awesome by virtue of being PCs" train of thought.
That aspect of Eberron was a reaction to the opposite effect over in Forgotten Realms where the item makers/vendors were purportedly level 14 wizards who only needed to hand out quests as a matter of delegation rather than necessity. (This was largely an exaggeration, but if you go look at some of the old stat blocks in things like Forgotten Realms Adventures or other setting books that mix fluff with stat blocks, after awhile, you do notice a trend where a lot of the leadership are retired adventurers or somehow achieved high levels through advanced paper shuffling).

[2D8HP]

I know you were there, I know you must have seen it, it's no denying it! Even though I started in '87 I played the red box and then this...


:redface:

RazorChain, to my current shame (since I'm now a D&D partisan), I read 1985's Unearthed Arcana,

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/7/7c/UnearthedOld.jpg/220px-UnearthedOld.jpg

....and left it in the store without buying it, so I didn't buy any new D&D rules after the 1980 Deities & Demi-Gods, so I missed Immortals, the Rules Cyclopedia, and all of 2e AD&D.

What was I playing instead?


http://www.trulyrural.com/cyberpunk/cyberpunk2013.jpg

[RazorChain]

:redface:

RazorChain, to my current shame (since I'm now a D&D partisan), I read 1985's Unearthed Arcana,

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/7/7c/UnearthedOld.jpg/220px-UnearthedOld.jpg

....and left it in the store without buying it, so I didn't buy any new D&D rules after the 1980 Deities & Demi-Gods, so I missed Immortals, the Rules Cyclopedia, and all of 2e AD&D.

What was I playing instead?


http://www.trulyrural.com/cyberpunk/cyberpunk2013.jpg


Of course you were playing Cyberpunk, we all were :) The dystopian future was fun

[obryn]

This is hardly relevant to the thread topic, but while tween/teen me loved Unearthed Arcana, adult me finds it wretched just about from top to bottom. The salvageable rules are (1) weapon specialization, (2) simplified unarmed combat, (3) cantrips and some of the spells, minus the obviously broken ones like Chromatic Orb, and (4) ... uhhh ... do the polearm pictures count as a "rule"?

Otherwise it's just broken, top to bottom. Races, classes, spells, new method of stat rolling...

[Psikerlord]

Someone mentioned E6, which adjust d20 games back to this range of power distribution. And I think that this is one of the big and important ways that setting creators can make their settings more accessible and useful for play. Spread the content out over 10 levels instead of 25 if the world is made for a D&D type game.


There are a bunch of games these days that have a smaller level bracket built in. 13th Age (1-10) and Low Fantasy Gaming (1-12) are just two.

[LibraryOgre]

Someone mentioned E6, which adjust d20 games back to this range of power distribution. And I think that this is one of the big and important ways that setting creators can make their settings more accessible and useful for play. Spread the content out over 10 levels instead of 25 if the world is made for a D&D type game.



There are a bunch of games these days that have a smaller level bracket built in. 13th Age (1-10) and Low Fantasy Gaming (1-12) are just two.

Conversely, you can spread the same amount of content over more levels. Hackmaster's PH goes from levels 1 to 20... but a 20th level character is more akin to a 10th level AD&D character in terms of power. Those smaller increments... fewer HP, less powerful spells... concentrates the game prior to the "problem levels" for AD&D, while still giving you a lot to work with and space to grow.

[RazorChain]

Conversely, you can spread the same amount of content over more levels. Hackmaster's PH goes from levels 1 to 20... but a 20th level character is more akin to a 10th level AD&D character in terms of power. Those smaller increments... fewer HP, less powerful spells... concentrates the game prior to the "problem levels" for AD&D, while still giving you a lot to work with and space to grow.

This ^


This is one of the reason I like point buy systems or systems with lesser power curve. You just dole out points on the bases of how powerful the starting character is and have much tighter control over the power progression.

The players will still be receiving points to upgrade their characters but won't go from having a hard time fighting a house cat to a super being that laughs in the face of minor deities.

[Yora]

There are a bunch of games these days that have a smaller level bracket built in. 13th Age (1-10) and Low Fantasy Gaming (1-12) are just two.

I also find it quite interesting that most AD&D modules (https://www.acaeum.com/library/addmodchart.html) fall into the 1st to 10th level range, with GDQ making up the lion's share of higher level material. With BECMI it's obviously a bit more spread because they were making modules specifically for the Companion, Master, and Immortal Sets, but even there almost all of the popular and famous modules are in the lower level range.