Best-Written Campaign Setting?

[Palanan]

Any game, any genre, any edition. What setting do you find has the best writing overall?

And is there any particular passage or section that really sells you on the game world?

[Milodiah]

Shadowrun, hands down, just for the sheer mass of information out there about anything and everything. It really does feel like a lived in world, rather than just set dressing for an adventure. Most settings would never establish things like the brand names of sodas, or a comprehensive list of gangs found in the city, or a guide to bars, restaurants, and hotels around the city. The different groups all feel authentic and the whole point of the setting is that you live and die in the gaps between all those groups, rather than the factions just being things you interact with sometimes. There's an entire source book dedicated to the differences in corporate cultures between the megacorps, there's a whole source book about the underworld, there's even a source book dedicated to fashion, music, gaming, and sports. There's also an incredibly well established historical timeline, partially because the setting moves along in years as the editions get published. The major modules and pre-written adventures of one edition are referenced in the next as though they're canonical historical events, because they are. The Renraku Arcology incident, the Chicago insect spirits and the subsequent quarantine of the city, all of that is stuff thats remembered and referenced in the world.

[Batcathat]

I'm not sure it'd be my ultimate answer, but my first thought when I read the post was the Spire (https://rowanrookanddecard.com/spire-rpg/). I've barely even played it (I was in a PBP game but it died out after like one page), but there's something about it that just feels awesome. It has a kind of... weird, almost fairy tale-ish vibe that really speaks to me. Not sure why.

[Milodiah]

I'm not sure it'd be my ultimate answer, but my first thought when I read the post was the Spire (https://rowanrookanddecard.com/spire-rpg/). I've barely even played it (I was in a PBP game but it died out after like one page), but there's something about it that just feels awesome. It has a kind of... weird, almost fairy tale-ish vibe that really speaks to me. Not sure why.

This is going on The List.

[Pauly]

Space 1889.

It mixes solidly detailed Victorian history and the classic sci-fi of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells. This creates a setting where people already have basic familiarity and can feel comfortable with it. The primer that ties up all alternate history from the late 1860s to the year 1889 is short, easy to digest and sets up a wide variety of possible adventure settings.

There is a a range of highly detailed source books that give you a solid feel for the sci-fi setting (Venus, Mars and the Moon) and if you want to play on Earth you have an almost infinite amount of source material and then the steam punk tech just gets layered on top.

The introduction is available for free on drive thrurpg here https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/81908/Introduction-to-Space-1889

[dafrca]

Any game, any genre, any edition. What setting do you find has the best writing overall?

And is there any particular passage or section that really sells you on the game world?

Oh this is hard because two of my favorite settings are neither super well written, just very imaginative.

One setting I do think is well written and quite expansive is HârnWorld (http://columbiagames.com/harnworld/). The level of details and coverage is incredible. Makes for fun reading. :smallsmile:

[thorr-kan]

2E Al-Qadim.

A continent-wide common culture just familiar enough to role-play in while alien enough to be engaging.

A stunning depth of lore and history available to the DM and PCs.

A setting big enough to have edges of the map where There Be Genies.

[KorvinStarmast]

Tekumel, original Empire of the Petal Throne.
Followed by Dark Sun.

[Corvus]

Tekumel, original Empire of the Petal Throne.
Followed by Dark Sun.

What little I've read of Tekumel, yeah, it is very detailed.

I was going to raise Dark Sun, though some of the revised stuff released when TSR was churning out products in a desperate event to stay afloat are probably best left ignored.

And also the Cyberpunk setting for 2013/2020/RED (and cp2077).

[Eldan]

Hm. Lots of good candidates, really. Degenesis, Unknown Armies, Eclipse Phase... for D&D, Planescape, and some of the books for original Ravenloft.

Edit: Seems I slightly misunderstood. Writing, not Good Setting.

Probably Unknown Armies, the previous edition? It explains like half the setting entirely through tiny anecdotes that are 1-3 sentences long and are all delightfully weird.

[Yora]

I'm actually struggling to think of any campaign setting that I consider having good writing.
Lots of settings that are very cool and evocative. But the presentation always leaves a lot to be desired.

[Eldan]

I'm not sure it'd be my ultimate answer, but my first thought when I read the post was the Spire (https://rowanrookanddecard.com/spire-rpg/). I've barely even played it (I was in a PBP game but it died out after like one page), but there's something about it that just feels awesome. It has a kind of... weird, almost fairy tale-ish vibe that really speaks to me. Not sure why.

Ooooh. Not a massive fan of the artwork (I've seen this very jagged, high-contrast dark artstyle in comic books before and I don't like it), but the setting looks impressive. I may need to buy that. It basically seems to have everything I like.

[Batcathat]

Ooooh. Not a massive fan of the artwork (I've seen this very jagged, high-contrast dark artstyle in comic books before and I don't like it), but the setting looks impressive. I may need to buy that. It basically seems to have everything I like.

That's funny, I was a little unsure of whether I should call it one of the best-written campaign settings since I like the art so much, I suspected it might influence my opinion on the writing. But I can see why the style wouldn't be in everyone's taste.

[Vahnavoi]

Cheap answer: Tolkien's Middle-Earth.

Slightly less cheap answer: Jaconia and Borvaria of Praedor.

The cheapest: Earth.

[Eldan]

That's funny, I was a little unsure of whether I should call it one of the best-written campaign settings since I like the art so much, I suspected it might influence my opinion on the writing. But I can see why the style wouldn't be in everyone's taste.

I can see that it is very well done from a technical standpoint, and it's very evocative, and I like all the characters, outfits etc. shown, but I just don't like the style.

[dafrca]

I'm actually struggling to think of any campaign setting that I consider having good writing.
Lots of settings that are very cool and evocative. But the presentation always leaves a lot to be desired.

This was how I felt thinking of different settings. Some of my most favorite settings from a creative and or fun to play in are less than great from a written point of view. :smallsmile:

[Milodiah]

This was how I felt thinking of different settings. Some of my most favorite settings from a creative and or fun to play in are less than great from a written point of view. :smallsmile:

God damn does this describe Rifts in a nutshell. It's absolutely ridiculous and almost none of it runs on any logic other than the rule of cool, but damn if it isn't fun as hell.

(The same can't be said for its rule set, but that's just the price you gotta pay).

[Tvtyrant]

Cheap answer: Tolkien's Middle-Earth.

Slightly less cheap answer: Jaconia and Borvaria of Praedor.

The cheapest: Earth.

Earth has terrible writing. All the cool classes get nerfed by Deus Ex Machinas (who has a rock fall down and wipe out most of the factions not once, not twice, but three times?) repetitive ice age cycles, just a mess. Also some of the reskinned factions are just boring, like the leathery winged flyers being replaced by feathered flyers only to quietly reintroduce them tiny with a couple new powers.

[Gurgeh]

Hm, three is awfully specific; to my knowledge, K-Pg is the only mass extinction to definitely result from a bolide impact; most of the other big ones are either deeply ambiguous or down to other/multiple factors (vulcanism, climate, continental reconfiguration, ocean anoxia, etc.)

Which others did you have in mind for impacts?

[Lord Raziere]

Exalted 3e. Because no other campaign setting has made me think so in depth about the world works, what a culture is like, or how people in power think. The way it presents and details how its politics and environment interacts helps inform me how to do so for any campaign I do even if I'm not playing in Creation, because it has a certain way of breaking down all the parts of this or that into discrete and relevant bits of information and connecting all those sections to give you a picture of a larger whole and how those things interact with each other. like the Dragon-Blooded and the Realm books just do a great job of giving you insight into the kind of power differences and struggles the Blessed Isle has, how that informs its interactions with the rest of the world, from the lowest criminal to the highest echelons of power. and it does so not in a dry way, but in a way that is evocative, that is full of life and flavor that lets you get a feel for the world and its tone rather than just dryly stating the facts about it. The Realm alone is probably the best look I've seen into how an empire works, what the concerns are of the people in that empire, and how it could all change or break down because of what is currently happening in the setting, because its showing the events being motion to an extent, because the world never truly stops, its always happening and there are many people moving many directions within it.

[GenericFighter]

Glorantha for Runequest. Chaosium's recent releases for it have been quite impressive, including a $160 two volume setting guide if the $40 one isn't enough. If not the best written, it is indisputably the most written.

[Saintheart]

Earth has terrible writing. All the cool classes get nerfed by Deus Ex Machinas (who has a rock fall down and wipe out most of the factions not once, not twice, but three times?) repetitive ice age cycles, just a mess. Also some of the reskinned factions are just boring, like the leathery winged flyers being replaced by feathered flyers only to quietly reintroduce them tiny with a couple new powers.

You might like the Pilots & Panoramas sourcebook, they introduce new Construct type flyers, who they say were all originally invented by a couple of NPCs named Orville and Wilbur Wright. I mean, c'mon, how can you not love a NPC with a name that stupid?

EDIT: And no, I'm still not apologising for recommending the Einstein Adventure Path to you either. If you want to raise the number of nuclear weapons in your campaign from 2 at the end of 1945 to 2,000 less than 40 years later that's your problem as a DM, not me, the writers say right there in the text that you should only consider increasing the number of nukes once your party has passed the "Mars Colony" checkpoint.

[Eldan]

I mainly dislike the new Pandemic supplement for Earth. Whose idea was it to write a supplement book where the party is expected to split up and then stay inside instead of having adventures?

[Saintheart]

I mainly dislike the new Pandemic supplement for Earth. Whose idea was it to write a supplement book where the party is expected to split up and then stay inside instead of having adventures?

Yeah, between the erratas that changed whether Common Masks provide a +5 or -5 to Communicability rolls and that weird optional subrule for Ivermectin I don't think it'll be their best seller. I really preferred the previous edition's Black Death rules. Rat sailors bringing death everywhere they went was just cool.

[farothel]

Shadowrun I can get behind, although I feel that Legends of the Five rings is also very detailed and has a lot of lore. A lot of this is because they had a card game before the RPG and they used the results of the card game tournaments to work out the lore, meaning they had a lot of history in their setting before they actually started the roleplaying game.

[Mordante]

Not sure if this is a correct answer to the question. But of all game setting I think classic World of Darkness has one of the best thought out settings of any game.

[DigoDragon]

I'm going to echo what Milodiah said; Shadowrun's future Earth has had a lot of great stuff written into the setting. While the recent editions mostly stick to the crunch, I love the fluff you get from the early editions, and how later boos and adventures will call back to previous ones like known news (at least within the shadows).

The fact there are rules for some of the really complex future sports like Urban Brawl is pretty awesome.

The other neat thing are the little meta chats you can find throughout the books from various runners that make it seem like they're reading the book along with you. This is something at least modern editions kept in, and I haven't seen anything its equal until D&D 5e came out with Volo's guide and Xanathar's book (I forget which came first).

[Easy e]

Some candidates, but like most co-op efforts the writing has highlights..... and low-lights.

- Shadowrun
- Legend of the 5 Rings
- Battletech
- Warhammer 40K

[Azuresun]

Eberron. If I had to sum up why, I'd say it feels like D&D with thought put into it....okay, that sounds snobbier than I meant it to be, but I love how it takes a lot of the stuff that regular D&D glosses over, and has fun examining and reimagining it WITHOUT going for cheap and glib take-that's or shallow "noble savage orcs vs evil humans"-style deconstructions.

It feels like a morally grey setting. And it's easy to do a "grey" setting badly, by just saying "everyone's a jackass, power inevitably corrupts, people are stupid panicky animals" and leaving it there (see: Exalted). But with Eberron, it's done in a way that opens up possibilities rather than just leaving the reader stuck in a mire of apathy.

To put it another way, you could take nearly any faction in the game, and come up with both a black-hearted villain and a noble hero from their ranks, both of whom are totally plausible characters and who could exist in the same faction without conflict. Are the Ashbound dangerous terrorists, or are they misunderstood heroes fighting to save the world from self-destruction? Is the Church of the Silver Flame a collection of intolerant and corrupt zealots, or beacons of hope and salvation from the evils of the world? Are the Blood of Vol sinister death cultists, or are they compassionate humanists who offer a way for humankind to become great without needing gods? Are the dragonmarked houses an enlightened meritocracy that represent an egalitarian future for Khorvaire after the kings and queens nearly destroyed it, or are they ruthless monopolists who seek to bind the poor into a new form of serfdom? The answer is "yes".

Non-humans feel believably non-human (rather than rubber forehead aliens), without being incomprehensible. If you're playing a changeling, warforged, elf, hobgoblin, orc or halfling, you can play them as just a regular person, or you can lean into the more distinctive aspects and have fun with that.

The depth of the setting, once you get into Keith Baker's blog and secondary material, is amazing. The Dark Six feel like generic Gods of Evil when you first read about them, but then....yes, I can understand why they might appeal to oppressed people who have been failed by society in some way and who must step outside of "civilised" methods to get justice.


I don't think it's a coincidence that my other favourite setting, Fading Suns has much of the same traits.

[Milodiah]

It also seems like a lot of the "what if people get creative with what you can do with magic" stuff gets pushed into Eberron because the writers don't want to threaten the vibe of the generic medieval fantasy worlds of the other settings. Its something that a lot of my settings get into in various ways, what cool stuff you can do if you really dig into how magic works and how it can be combined with other things. Not that I'm saying every setting should be the Tippyverse, but it feels like magic is just tacked on in some places rather than being woven throughout. It feels like a lot of the time wizards are constantly depicted as actively studying the nature of magic and its role in the universe, but when's the last time any of 'em actually found something new? Created a truly revolutionary magic item, or came up with a useful spell? And when they do, nine times out of ten its something obviously combat related, even if this wizard is supposedly purely academic.

Sure, a lot of it is because D&D focuses on adventurer stuff, and something like a wondrous item deep fryer that uses prestidigitation's flavor altering properties to make anything you stick in it delicious doesn't line up with that. But it contributes to the empty feeling I get when reading the "main" published D&D settings, like the world is just set dressing and backdrops for the play that the PCs are putting on rather than a living thing that the PCs are part of.

[The Glyphstone]

That tends to end up in the past, when the great ultra-magical civilizations existed that created all the sweet loot you go dungeon delving for.

[dafrca]

It also seems like a lot of the "what if people get creative with what you can do with magic" stuff gets pushed into Eberron because the writers don't want to threaten the vibe of the generic medieval fantasy worlds of the other settings.
In the original contenst entry it was sold as Film Noir blended with high magic. So I would bet that also plays into the choice to do a lot with Eberron along that vain. It is, after all, the setting they claimed was where magic was super common. :smallsmile:

[Quertus]

Created a truly revolutionary magic item, or came up with a useful spell? And when they do, nine times out of ten its something obviously combat related, even if this wizard is supposedly purely academic.

Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named, regrets the truth of this statement. The few times I've tried to have a Wizard (or Cleric) try to create a new spell with no combat potential whatsoever, the GM has ruled it as ridiculously, prohibitively high level.

[Batcathat]

Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named, regrets the truth of this statement. The few times I've tried to have a Wizard (or Cleric) try to create a new spell with no combat potential whatsoever, the GM has ruled it as ridiculously, prohibitively high level.

Do you know why? I would've thought most GMs would've been more lenient with non-combat spells, not less.

[Milodiah]

Do you know why? I would've thought most GMs would've been more lenient with non-combat spells, not less.

People are, in general, very averse to letting players create new spells. I think it's kind of a slippery slope type argument, where even if they don't see how this particular spell could get abused, it's setting a precedent for introducing new ones. Or that they don't trust themselves to be able to truly look over a spell and gauge its balance for themselves.

Having read through the 3rd party spell lists on the Pathfinder SRD, I can kinda understand that, some of the things they let be cantrips are incredible, like at-will blinding attacks.

I think my opinions came from one of my first GMs, who had his own personal setting that fell about halfway between Eberron and the Tippyverse, with things like your local blacksmith being a wizard who had cast Wall of Iron and was activating scrolls of Fabricate to make whatever you want on demand, with the Wall of Iron being the source. I think part of what lets such a thing happen was his belief (which I share, not to the same degree as him but still) that NPC levels are a little bit understated in most editions of D&D. I refuse to accept that the average person on the street is level one, I say level three, or maybe level four for someone who's experienced/competent but not overly remarkable. He, on the other hand, basically created ways to magically commodify and trade XP on a massive scale, so that magic item creators could just buy XP to fuel their projects; it wouldn't be uncommon for the foreman of a magic item factory to be like level fourteen or something.

I personally don't want my main setting to undergo a Magic-Industrial Revolution like his did, or like Eberron sort of is in a more limited way. But I'll actively look for ways to make that happen, then figure out ways to explain the fact that it didn't. Like tweaking Wall of Iron to be more like most conjuration spells, where if you break off a portion of it that portion ceases to be.

[Lord Raziere]

I'd say that Eberron is a very close second to Exalted for me. and if we were talking purely DnD fantasy it'd just be number one straight up. But Exalted slightly edges it out for me because I'd say Exalted's cultures are just better done. now sure I'd take both as inspiration for worldbuilding any setting, but when it comes down to it, I'd go with Exalted over Eberron because there are nuances in culture, belief, spirituality, environment, that Exalted acknowledges and works with that you don't really see in Eberron. Exalted is written with the assumption that these cultures are influencing each other and to some extent spreading themselves so that you have little permutations of this or that that don't quite follow this or that orthodoxy or quite fit into what you'd assume is the normal situation because of their own little circumstances. Its alive in a sense because sure you have the big powers but you have all these little outgrowths and offshoots around and in between them that are their own thing with their own agenda. Its a setting in motion and you see the results of that motion.

Eberron in comparison while I really love it, a lot? falls into the trap of it being written to be static. It is where it is, and its a very good place and has a history of how it got to that place, but once it gets there, its just there. It doesn't move unless the players move, and in Khorvaire in particular it fell into the trap of having a bunch of nations that are roughly equally sized and roughly equally powerful so you don't get any minor nations that offer a mixture of two other nations influence being felt, or something like the Hundred Kingdoms which Exalted has that can be used to show how the warfare isn't entirely gone and how the greater nations of Khorvaire in their power games would use more minor nations as little proxy battlefields in their politics. Xen'drik just seems to be written to be a colonial expanse to explore and nothing more, Argonessen sounds like a place where go find a dragon to learn more about the Draconic Prophecy....and I can't think of anything else you'd do there. Sarlona is continent that inevitably slides towards you liberating them from their psychic overlords. Aerenal is where you go to talk to elves. meaning the worldbuilding in eberron drops off outside one continent, as all the other continents are written to be side pieces in Khorvaire's main show. Exalted on the other hand gives importance to all the directions on its map and writes the people living there as all having their own problems unrelated to anyone elses even while they are influenced by them distantly.

So yeah again I love Eberron, I love me some pulp magitech goodness and how its written with its cultures and history and such elevates it above other DnD settings, but ultimately Exalted is more complete, is more in motion, and has more nuances in how its constructed that makes it feel more alive. Its close, but in terms of being best-written campaign setting its something like that, that really edges it out in Exalted's favor for me.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Milodiah
People are, in general, very averse to letting players create new spells.

I wouldn’t generalize it that far. I’ve had DMs who were enthusiastic about players researching new spells, since they felt it added to the game world. I suspect mileage is quite variable here, but I’ve personally never run into any opposition or downgrading.

[Quertus]

Do you know why? I would've thought most GMs would've been more lenient with non-combat spells, not less.

Simple answer: I'm not sure.

More complex answer: well, I'd say that there's two general categories here. On the one hand are GMs who make *every* researched spell not worth casting; on the other hand, GMs who only make noncombat spells so. (And, yes, on the third hand, GMs who make spell research reasonable.)

For GMs who make everything unreasonable,



People are, in general, very averse to letting players create new spells. I think it's kind of a slippery slope type argument, where even if they don't see how this particular spell could get abused, it's setting a precedent for introducing new ones. Or that they don't trust themselves to be able to truly look over a spell and gauge its balance for themselves.

This is certainly one answer. For another, even more jaded answer, I'd say that plenty of GMs just can't handle players actually having any input in *their* story.

For those who only mega-nerfed noncombat spells? Building off the previous assessment, I would suspect that perhaps they don't want *their* game to be about anything but combat.

Fortunately,



I’ve had DMs who were enthusiastic about players researching new spells, since they felt it added to the game world.

I also encountered some GMs like this as well.

[Satinavian]

Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named, regrets the truth of this statement. The few times I've tried to have a Wizard (or Cleric) try to create a new spell with no combat potential whatsoever, the GM has ruled it as ridiculously, prohibitively high level.
Personally i am reluctant to allow spell creation in D&D as well. If everyone else only gets a few tricks via class, it is utterly unfair to allow some characters to make their own, new class abilities.


But in systems that are made for it ? Ars Magica, Mage, even Shadowrun ? Sure, custom spells are fine there.

[Azuresun]

I'd say that Eberron is a very close second to Exalted for me. and if we were talking purely DnD fantasy it'd just be number one straight up. But Exalted slightly edges it out for me because I'd say Exalted's cultures are just better done. now sure I'd take both as inspiration for worldbuilding any setting, but when it comes down to it, I'd go with Exalted over Eberron because there are nuances in culture, belief, spirituality, environment, that Exalted acknowledges and works with that you don't really see in Eberron. Exalted is written with the assumption that these cultures are influencing each other and to some extent spreading themselves so that you have little permutations of this or that that don't quite follow this or that orthodoxy or quite fit into what you'd assume is the normal situation because of their own little circumstances. Its alive in a sense because sure you have the big powers but you have all these little outgrowths and offshoots around and in between them that are their own thing with their own agenda. Its a setting in motion and you see the results of that motion.

I get that, and I do like the attention to detail in creating an internally consistent and nuanced setting....but for me, my first priority for an RPG setting isn't for it to be a logically consistent places with a weird local culture, I want them to be places where the PC's do cool stuff. For me, Exalted too often falls into the trap of "yes, this is cool, what the heck do I DO with it?", or not giving many ways to make the tortoise riding ancestor worshippers something that players will easily get or have any particular reason to care about. It's why I like Eberron's focus on giving PC's stuff to use or hook their character into.

Generally, when I've run Exalted, it's been in a part of it that's of my own creation, where I'm not deluging the players with sociology and anthropology too early. :-)


Eberron in comparison while I really love it, a lot? falls into the trap of it being written to be static. It is where it is, and its a very good place and has a history of how it got to that place, but once it gets there, its just there. It doesn't move unless the players move,

For me, that's actually another selling point--no metaplot. Because to me, "metaplot" and "moving the setting forward", means "we blew up that place you liked, and some NPC's did cooler stuff than you'll ever be able to, if you're lucky, you get to spectate some of it".

(I'm a veteran of the White Wolf era of authors having wiki edit wars between books)

[Yora]

Timeline advances make settings unusable for campaigns.
No important NPC can be touched, no town actually threatened, and no significant changes be made by the players or the GM. Because the next update might reveal that something different happened for real.

[Quertus]

Personally i am reluctant to allow spell creation in D&D as well. If everyone else only gets a few tricks via class, it is utterly unfair to allow some characters to make their own, new class abilities.

But in systems that are made for it ? Ars Magica, Mage, even Shadowrun ? Sure, custom spells are fine there.

Hmmm… I guess this can go towards discussing *what* one looks for / considers when thinking about what qualifies as a "well written setting"…

So, IMO, having spells like Evard's Black Tentacles, Tensor's Transformation, Mordenkainen's Disjunction, Melf's Minute Meteors, Bigby's Hecatoncheires? That's cool - much cooler than "Flame Blast 3".

However, a setting that has such, but limits it to NPCs, that says "the NPCs are cooler than you will ever be"? That's uncool - worse than "Flame Blast 3". "The setting has flavor, but you are forced to play tofu"?! :smallyuk::smallyuk::smallyuk:

So, I guess, to me, a well-written setting can actually accommodate the presence of cool PCs. In that vein, I prefer Martial and Muggle characters to be able to invent their own signature foo, too.

Further, in older editions, Fighters were the Rockstars, carrying the party. It was only fair that the Wizards got something (other than just the prestige of surviving playing Hard Mode), and ready spell research, making a permanent name for themselves, was a good something for them to get. Whereas, afaict, most people agree that the Mage is the Rockstar in all three of your example systems. So I'm curious *why* you think it's fine in them, but not in D&D, and whether you allow, say, Vampires to create their own… word… bloodlines? Disciplines? "Rotes"?… cyborgs to invent their own Cyberware, or Ars Magica muggles to innovate.

[Milodiah]

Timeline advances make settings unusable for campaigns.
No important NPC can be touched, no town actually threatened, and no significant changes be made by the players or the GM. Because the next update might reveal that something different happened for real.

It's part of why I make my own settings most of the time. I'm running into that issue in the Pathfinder game I'm in now, the GM is trying to pin a certain date in a certain year in the timeline so that he has control over the timing of the big ass metaplot events they rolled out with the supplements for the new edition, or if he wants to have them at all. But if he sticks to it as written, then we've all got out of character knowledge of stuff like Lastwall getting wrecked, the evil bad wizard guy escaping to the Isle of Terror, and all those other things because our campaign is currently in that region.

I figure he probably won't. The only established campaign setting I've run a game in (other than true or true-ish history) is Shadowrun, and I've moved a few things around myself. I don't care for the fact that Lone Star lost the Seattle contract to Knight Errant, so they didn't. But overall I don't run into things like that in Shadowrun where the metaplot storyline dramatically shifts the tone of a setting.

[Lord Torath]

IFor me, that's actually another selling point--no metaplot. Because to me, "metaplot" and "moving the setting forward", means "we blew up that place you liked, and some NPC's did cooler stuff than you'll ever be able to, if you're lucky, you get to spectate some of it".)This is what happened to Dark Sun with the Expanded and Revised Setting Boxed Set, so hard.

I think the first boxed set was really well-written. The Wanderer's Journal was a joy to read. Then they had the NPCs do everything the PCs were supposed to do.

[Lord Raziere]

I get that, and I do like the attention to detail in creating an internally consistent and nuanced setting....but for me, my first priority for an RPG setting isn't for it to be a logically consistent places with a weird local culture, I want them to be places where the PC's do cool stuff. For me, Exalted too often falls into the trap of "yes, this is cool, what the heck do I DO with it?", or not giving many ways to make the tortoise riding ancestor worshippers something that players will easily get or have any particular reason to care about. It's why I like Eberron's focus on giving PC's stuff to use or hook their character into.

Generally, when I've run Exalted, it's been in a part of it that's of my own creation, where I'm not deluging the players with sociology and anthropology too early. :-)



For me, that's actually another selling point--no metaplot. Because to me, "metaplot" and "moving the setting forward", means "we blew up that place you liked, and some NPC's did cooler stuff than you'll ever be able to, if you're lucky, you get to spectate some of it".

(I'm a veteran of the White Wolf era of authors having wiki edit wars between books)

Then we'll just have to agree to disagree then. I've had enough "feature not bug" talk thrown at me for a lifetime.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Azuresun
For me, that's actually another selling point--no metaplot. Because to me, "metaplot" and "moving the setting forward", means "we blew up that place you liked, and some NPC's did cooler stuff than you'll ever be able to, if you're lucky, you get to spectate some of it".

So much this.

Also, welcome to Golarion, where this is dialed up to 11.

And where, at the conclusion of one AP, everything you did for the past six books can be rendered irrelevant because the main villain, a vicious tyrant who engineered a genocidal war, can be talked down with some easy skill checks.

And this option, after further metaplot, became the canonical resolution to the AP, which raises some real issues for any party that trounced the villain the old-fashioned way.

[Telok]

The solution to metaplot that my groups always used was to say "metaplot events up to date X in areas Y & Z are true, game starts at date X and everything after that is not on metaplot". Works great for us.

Edit: also Dunkelzahn's will is great.

[White Blade]

In terms of which setting I liked best: Eberron, I don't know if it's the best written but it gets what a campaign setting is supposed to do. Old Republic ("Legends") Star Wars is up there as well, just to be realistic.

But for writing and understanding what it was doing and how it worked, I really loved Changeling: the Lost (1st edition) and bought all of its stuff. It was enough more hopeful than standard WoD or CoD fare while still being dark and interesting. Few other settings have ever sparked in me the longing to play in other people's sandbox. It has this authentic feel of being like an unused setting for an Urban Fantasy story that is, yes, dark and dramatic but isn't hung up on its own Drama and the characters are dedicated to surviving, becoming better people, and healing from their trauma - But that this might not stop them from spiraling totally out of control in spite of their best intentions.

[Batcathat]

The solution to metaplot that my groups always used was to say "metaplot events up to date X in areas Y & Z are true, game starts at date X and everything after that is not on metaplot". Works great for us.

Yeah, this is usually what I've done as well (unless the metaplot was just ignored entirely). A setting having a metaplot is a pretty neat idea in theory, but I'm not sure it can be used well in practice.

[Satinavian]

Hmmm… I guess this can go towards discussing *what* one looks for / considers when thinking about what qualifies as a "well written setting"…

So, IMO, having spells like Evard's Black Tentacles, Tensor's Transformation, Mordenkainen's Disjunction, Melf's Minute Meteors, Bigby's Hecatoncheires? That's cool - much cooler than "Flame Blast 3".

However, a setting that has such, but limits it to NPCs, that says "the NPCs are cooler than you will ever be"? That's uncool - worse than "Flame Blast 3". "The setting has flavor, but you are forced to play tofu"?! :smallyuk::smallyuk::smallyuk:

So, I guess, to me, a well-written setting can actually accommodate the presence of cool PCs. In that vein, I prefer Martial and Muggle characters to be able to invent their own signature foo, too.
Yes, i can understand that. If the setting implies that spells come from single powerful casters, then it is nice when PCs can create their own. I am not against that per se.

But well, in Ars Magica and SR creating a new spell is not really a problem as the offiial spells are just templates and there are rules about spell creation. Any new spell you research yourself could have been a spell you started with as one seomeone else taught you. And the costs of learning are even similar/identical. This whole "spell creation" does allow your caster to leave cool new spells in the world with a personal touch but they don't really expand their options ruleswise. So that is fine.

Then we have something like TDE. In the main setting, spells are basically fixed but once in a while some NPC introduced a new one or modifies one. And there are rules for PCs to do the same. But it costs months to years of research, it costs the equivalent of a feat change to be able to do it, it costs around half a level worth of experience (but your total experience is not changed so it basically gives you the quivalent of ECL) and the new spell must be based on one or two of your spell you have at a really high value an is some kind of modification of it. Which guarantees that if someone researches several spells, they kinda share a theme.
Now in practice ? The hurdles are too much for most PC casters. Which fits the world as most casters never research new spells. But some PC do and depending on the spell, might be counted among the great ones. Ballancing ? Well, they tried and failed. Even with the modifications you could make ridiculously broken spells, so you need a potential veto anyway
TDE in the Myranor setting works more like Ars Magica.

So I'm curious *why* you think it's fine in them, but not in D&D, and whether you allow, say, Vampires to create their own… word… bloodlines? Disciplines? "Rotes"?… cyborgs to invent their own Cyberware, or Ars Magica muggles to innovate.Basically no, i would not allow any of that beyond the creation/invention rules that already exist



But back to settings.


Honestly i am not sure what counts as "best written" or what the criterions are.

From all D&D settings i like Eberron and its writing the most

WoD has a lot of flavorful stuff but even more that is utterly cringeworthy and most of the metaplot is beyond stupid. I had a lot of fun games with the Dark Ages subsetting though. Having been written years later and not getting all the stupid novels/campaigns seems to help.

The deepest setting i know comes from TDE. And it certainly manages to be more consistent than FR despite similar age and deapth. But as every other extensive setting with decades of contribution, the writing quality varies and design visions have shifted several times.

Then there is Splittermond and its setting. It is generally well written, but it is neither super-innovative nor super detailed.

[Eldan]

Put down another vote for "Metaplot sucks".

I don't think Campaign Settings should change. They should provide a sandbox, where things could happen at any moment, but whether they do and how is up to the individual group. So, by all means, put in your setting that "nations X and Y are on the brink of war". But don't publish a new edition a year later where "X has won the war against Y". That's you doing the DM's job.

Now, I do like putting in events in the world that the players had no part in. Occasionally, in a campaign, the players will read a newssheet where it says "The Kingdom of X has declared war on Y and has taken three border fortresses in a surprise assault, they are expected to reach the capital by spring". But that's a background detail, that's not the setting's writers telling me how things went while my campaign was on.

[Quertus]

On the subject of metaplot, I'm torn.

I mostly hate it. The idea that our campaign went one way, the plot went the other, but the only details we get are for things that match the plot (see also "adventure paths").

However, on the flip side, if "the plot" were informed by what the players do? If everyone's Waterdeep got Quertus' spell component shop? That would be cool!

The only way I can really see it working is if it was built into the setting that multiple realities, multiple copies the setting existed, and that all copies of the world would morph and shift and conform to the "real" / base world. And if there was a good feedback method, whereby the designers would hear of Quertus' spell component shop, or a new Vampire bloodline, or new cyborgs, or a "Gru can dodge 4 missiles" ability, or a werewolf senator, or a riot that the PCs caused, or a statue they made (perhaps utilizing the "floating rocks" introduced in <adventure path>), or the corporate merger they brokered, or whatever. If the designers could contact the group, and ask to add "Mordenkainen's Disjunction" or "President Superman" or "Clan Steel Dragons" or "Quertus' spell component shop" or the group's story of how Mystra died again to canon. And there were actual mechanics for it, currency that the group could spend to make their actions canon.

In a situation like that, with a weekly paper of Unreality updates delivered to the players' door, where they can see what everyone was up to, and everyone can see (some of) their actions? That would be cool. Otherwise, I'm not a fan.


Changeling: the Lost (1st edition)

Oh man, no discussion of metaplot or "best written" would be complete without Changeling.

Changeling is all about the death of glamour, the death of cool.

The original Changeling books were full color, loaded with images of fun things in the margins (different on every page). But, as time went on, the Changeling books became more banal - color slowly drained away, there was less Joy in the books. And it was gently paralleled in the other lines, too - most notably IMO the cover of Werewolf, which originally had a "claw mark" so deep, you could see and touch the inside page, but later printings just had a normal cover.

The story of Changeling really was masterfully told through the gradual decline of the WoD product line.

[Eldan]

Closest I can think of would be the Legend of the Five Rings card game, where tournaments decided things like which factions were currently ascendant, who was at war with who and which characters died.

Not an RPG, though.

[Milodiah]

However, on the flip side, if "the plot" were informed by what the players do?


This is only tangentially related but I guess it definitely pertains to the original thread-

Some of the middle editions of Traveler like MegaTraveler are canonically set in the same timeline as Twilight: 2000, not that it really comes up all that much because its set so far in the future. But when they decided to make Traveler 2300, it became a lot more relevant because Earth didn't have a unified government or anything like that and it really was a matter of national governments striving against one another to get ahead in the whole race to the stars thing.

So what the writers apparently did was sit down, assume the roles of each of the major countries, and game out the three hundred years between the two settings to see how the geopolitical environment turned out. I don't know the specifics of how they did it, but the idea of that fascinates me because instead of them just sitting around pitching ideas as a group, they had an arguably more realistic depiction of this adversarial series of events by actually setting stakes, assigning roles, and having each player/writer try to make decisions they felt were in the best interests of their respective nation.

I understand France actually ended up in the ascendant because at the beginning it was comparatively less scarred by WW3, and the person "running" it parlayed the initial advantage of more intact infrastructure into greater success, which is why its one of the larger forces in Traveler 2300.

It just seems like a really cool way to approach advancing your timelines as writers.

[Easy e]

Closest I can think of would be the Legend of the Five Rings card game, where tournaments decided things like which factions were currently ascendant, who was at war with who and which characters died.

Not an RPG, though.

Ummmm.......

It was an RPG too.

[Xervous]

When I take the time to look past all the features of Eberron I detest there’s plenty of good writing. But I’m inevitably drawing comparisons between the dragon marked houses and Shadowrun mega corps. Maybe it’s the presentation style of Shadowrun writers, but in all I’ve brushed against Eberron I’ve only felt the occasional bit of insight into the mood of the setting. So many things are stated plainly, blandly, and with all the marvel that one would convey after stepping off the plane for the hundredth time flying economy. Details of import are dropped in a sentence and hardly explored, though it should be noted that exploring all the details would likely span multiple volumes. I look at it all and can’t see far past the myriad prebaked plot hooks.

But maybe I’m just overly grumpy at how the setting squanders dragons.

[Milodiah]

I'm starting to realize just how unique Shadowrun really is when it comes to "oh you want details, here, have a truckload.

I'm almost always GMing games, so when I do get to play characters I find myself putting as much work and research into their backstories as I would an entire campaign arc. It's not to be melodramatic or rub people's noses in it, I just feel the need to provide a detailed answer to each question I come up with until there's basically no vague "lost time" in a character's life. For example: I was playing in a Gothic horror Wild West game. My character was a former slave turned drifter who'd had odd jobs ranging from train coaler to circus stagehand to saloon musician. I delved into that, with hours of research into historical documentation. By the end of it I had the name of the plantation he had escaped from in early 1865 (the Patton Place plantation), which railroad he was a coaler on (the Columbia-Palestine spur of the I&GN), what saloon he was a musician/handyman in (the Hearne & Boyett in Bryan), etc etc. I knew that on October 8, 1877, he was falsely accused of stealing jewelry from guests' rooms, and sentenced to 15 years in the good ol' Walls Unit in Huntsville where he joined the infamous John Wesley Hardin's escape attempt on January 17th, 1879 (and the one singular fantastical twist here, my presence meant that the escape attempt succeeded rather than failed).

I didn't need any of these things in my backstory, but it's super cool to me to just KNOW these things about my character, because they color the way I play them. And I tend to discover a lot of stranger-than-fiction facts about them by doing this much research; had I not done this research, for example, I'd have realized I had a chance to weave John Wesley Hardin into my backstory and actually make him an ally/benefactor for my character. In another historically-set game, I had a veteran of the Kaiserliche Marine, and needed to pick a U-Boat he was on. I chose the U-39, without even realizing that I had put myself in the same vessel as a certain Oberleutnant der Zee Karl Dönitz, who would later be known as Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz.

Then I try to do that kind of thing in, say, Pathfinder. Ok, my character was enslaved and sold to a Cheliax noble.

Who?

I dunno. Unless I were to pore over the various adventure paths, there's, like, two or three named ones, ever.

Fine, guess I'll pick this guy, who exists only to be executed for treason in a later adventure path. Fine.

Then I'm liberated by a resistance group.

Which?

Even though the sourcebook says there's a lot of them, the only one they ever go into any detail about is the Silver Ravens, which is on the exact opposite side of the country from me. Guess I'll just make one up then.

And it goes on, me just making up these things a lot. I get that it's insane to expect that from RPG authors, and yet...

I get that out of Shadowrun. My favorite runner of all time is a disgraced Lone Star SWAT officer, and I was able to weave in all sorts of historical events into his backstory. When he was a rookie patrolman, he was one of the guys who was on the crime scene cordon for a victim of the Emerald City Ripper. He was on a raid against one of the Universal Brotherhood's compounds, where he saw insect spirits first hand. The Laughing Death outbreak was when he first began to truly despise cannibals and by extension people infected with HMHVV, which would come back to bite him (figuratively) later. The widespread chaos and utter breakdown of society as a whole of Crash 2.0 in 2062 is when he finally proved himself worthy of leading his own team of SWAT officers.

I have access to details about all these historic events, information on people involved in them, and what effects they had on the world around my character as well as on him. Sure, there's stuff like that in a lot of settings, but its rarely ever depicted in a coherent, interconnected way that lets you actually put together your character's life.

[Satinavian]

I'm starting to realize just how unique Shadowrun really is when it comes to "oh you want details, here, have a truckload.
TDE has probably more detailes. Of course as Shadowrun is based of the real world, you could always supplement it with non-SR sources.

[farothel]

Closest I can think of would be the Legend of the Five Rings card game, where tournaments decided things like which factions were currently ascendant, who was at war with who and which characters died.

Not an RPG, though.

Absolutely an RPG too. We're currently playing a campaign in 4th edition, we've done a campaign in 3rd some years ago and I think they're already at 5th edition at the moment.

A very large campaign setting is Star Wars. 10 movies (for now), a couple of animated series and while not officially canon, a whole set of books, comics and what not. With a whole galaxy to play in, you never need to meet any of the canon characters, although you can if your GM wants to.

[Eldan]

To clarify, I know it's an RPG too, I'm just not sure if the card game tournaments influenced the RPG setting.

[Mordar]

Here's a list of the ones I found particularly engaging - does that mean "best written"? I suppose if the intent was to engage me, then yes!


Shadowrun (as many have mentioned) coupled with Earthdawn (spoiler alert?);
Original World of Darkness including the 2nd edition VtM and WtA;
Deadlands.


I didn't include these others that I really liked that are based off other established properties because it is hard for me to separate the game side from the established fiction side:


Call of C'thulhu;
Stormbringer;
Middle Earth Role Playing.


In a special category are L5R, Mutant Chronicles, WHFRP and the Dark Millennium stuff - I think that might be slightly backwards (was WHFRP contemporaneous with WHFB?) for one...but these were settings that engaged me as CCG and wargames first, and then RPGs. And yes, I know Mutant Chronicles isn't particularly well written from objective points of view...but it successfully engaged my interest.

Eldan: Yes, by the way, the L5R CCG did influence the RPG, sometimes in meta-ways (winning CCG-based events or special fanbase engagement events got you the opportunity to influence/insert things in the RPG books).

- M

[Quertus]

when I do get to play characters I find myself putting as much work and research into their backstories as I would an entire campaign arc.

Then I try to do that kind of thing in, say, Pathfinder. Ok, my character was enslaved and sold to a Cheliax noble.

Who?

I dunno. Unless I were to pore over the various adventure paths, there's, like, two or three named ones, ever.

Fine, guess I'll pick this guy, who exists only to be executed for treason in a later adventure path. Fine.

Then I'm liberated by a resistance group.

Which?

Even though the sourcebook says there's a lot of them, the only one they ever go into any detail about is the Silver Ravens, which is on the exact opposite side of the country from me. Guess I'll just make one up then.

And it goes on, me just making up these things a lot.

This is the big reason why my characters are "not from around here". I do the world-building to have settings; it doesn't feel like a chore (for me) to answer all those questions.

OTOH, "doing research" is pretty antithetical to my being.

Think about it: I could do all this work, and end up with a small piece of someone else's setting, that I'll likely never use again, or more richness to my own setting(s), that I'll use forever.

Also, everything i learn through boring research is something that I cannot have the joy of learning for the first time in character.

Lastly, if the GM has a rich world with things to learn, and (for simplicity) say that I learn 1 in 20 of them to make a character. It should be very little difference for the GM to show me 20 vs 19.

So, if the GM has the skills to let a character Explore the world, it's about the same for the GM¹, more fun for me as a player, and more valuable to me as a GM, Wins all around!

¹ a little more work at times, but balanced by characters who experience Wonder at the Mundane. Most GMs IME appreciate getting more out of the same content, and those with their own custom settings should, IMO, appreciate the setting being viewed with fresh eyes. YMMV.

[Telok]

So, if the GM has the skills to let a character Explore the world, it's about the same for the GM¹, more fun for me as a player, fresh eyes.

Big if. Big big if. As a GM its something I try to do. As a player... I've had maybe two GMs in 30 years capable of it, sometimes, maybe 75% of the time at best. Good when it happens tho.

[farothel]

To clarify, I know it's an RPG too, I'm just not sure if the card game tournaments influenced the RPG setting.

Yes, they did. Our current L5R GM used to judge L5R card tournaments years ago, and at the end depending on who won, they could choose something for their clan from a large list of items (if I recall correctly). And all those tournaments all over the world then made the RPG setting.

In fact, at one point they had made a typo on some of the cards, having some with Horiuchi instead of Iuchi, so they made that a small Unicorn family just to keep the card game and RPG consistent.

[Azuresun]

Then we'll just have to agree to disagree then. I've had enough "feature not bug" talk thrown at me for a lifetime.

Sorry, didn't mean to come across as picking a fight. I do like both settings (and I love the tools Exalted laid out in 1e to make your own corner of the setting), and I can understand why someone might like Exalted more.

[Quertus]

Big if. Big big if. As a GM its something I try to do. As a player... I've had maybe two GMs in 30 years capable of it, sometimes, maybe 75% of the time at best. Good when it happens tho.

Ah, sadness. I was hoping that my experiences in that regard were atypical. Thanks for reminding me to appreciate what GMs do well.

[TalonOfAnathrax]

One campaign setting I found really good was Eclipse Phase. It's an absolutely crazy setting in which basic, fundamental realities of real-life society are thrown out the window, and yet the writers did an excellent job of making it feel real and understandable. The adventures and short stories really help, too.
I used to read the splatbooks just for the lore and place descriptions. It was always creative without feeling impossible to play in.
Second Edition > First Edition, if only because the rules better match the setting now.

[Yora]

I am coming around more and more to the idea that a good campaign setting primarily has to serve a function as the stage and context of a campaign, rather than being rich in content and style in itself. Too many settings seem to want to be fiction in themselves first, with the aspect of being a tool for GMs often being forgotten in the process.
You can always heap on more and more creative details, but the practical considerations of running adventures must come first if it is supposed to be a campaign setting.

[Actana]

I am coming around more and more to the idea that a good campaign setting primarily has to serve a function as the stage and context of a campaign, rather than being rich in content and style in itself. Too many settings seem to want to be fiction in themselves first, with the aspect of being a tool for GMs often being forgotten in the process.
You can always heap on more and more creative details, but the practical considerations of running adventures must come first if it is supposed to be a campaign setting.

Agreed, and this is why my nominee for best written campaign setting is, surprisingly I guess, the Neverwinter Campaign Setting for D&D 4e. It's a very low key book that doesn't get mentioned often, but it presents a very good campaign setting full of thematic character choices, plotlines and inspiration. It doesn't give all the answers and leaves enough blanks for a GM to do their own thing, and is primarily made to be an adventure location. It's limited in scope (only levels 1-10) and knows what it's doing, and does a fantastic job at interconnecting several plotlines so you can run the setting several times and still have different hooks to go through.

[Azuresun]

I am coming around more and more to the idea that a good campaign setting primarily has to serve a function as the stage and context of a campaign, rather than being rich in content and style in itself. Too many settings seem to want to be fiction in themselves first, with the aspect of being a tool for GMs often being forgotten in the process.
You can always heap on more and more creative details, but the practical considerations of running adventures must come first if it is supposed to be a campaign setting.

Definitely. There's quite a few that make me thing "well, this would be a good novel, but no idea what sort of game I'd run here".

I think a good yardstick is to look at the antagonists of the setting--a common mistake is that authors get too invested in them, and make them too entrenched, self-aware and powerful to ever be defeated by those uppity player characters. It comes across as the authors slapping themselves on the back about the fact that they read the Evil Overlord list, while forgetting the the entire point of setting up bad guys in the first place is so that PC's can beat them.

[Milodiah]

Honestly for the most part I could give a rat's ass about the BBEGs of most of these settings, except for their impact on the world around them. I pretty much never intend for my players to be going after any particular major villain at the start of my games, because I know that unless I TELL them that's what they should be doing they're almost guaranteed to pick something else. And why should I tell them what to do? Its their game, I'm just running it.

And besides, it feels counterproductive to focus so much on creating something that's designed to be targeted for destruction. You're building in a set-in-stone climax for your campaign arc, which feels strange to me. Unless you do the stereotypical "I lied this is the New Evil-er Evil Guy That Was In Charge The Whole Time" trope, there's not going to be much that's as big to the players. You'll be sorting out the aftermath, I guess, which is interesting to me personally, but its hardly Adventuring with a capital A which is the "norm".

But I guess thats just a matter of personal preference. I've never been one to consider a campaign as something to be "completed", then everyone says "wow what fun time for the next one". To me it's something to be enjoyed until people desire something else.

[Psyren]

The more I read Ravenloft the more I get into it. You can do all kinds of horror tropes there, from bog-standard Castlevania gothic horror in Barovia, to Lovecraftian cosmic horror in Bluetspur, to the Mummy in Har'Akir, evil circus in The Carnival, zombie apocalypse in Falkovnia, Frankensteiny/flesh-stitiching in Lamordia, slasher/predator horror in Valachan, murder mysteries and many more. Best of all, the Mists/Powers can just suck in a party from anywhere, so you have a ready excuse for just dropping the players there out of nowhere.

[Azuresun]

Honestly for the most part I could give a rat's ass about the BBEGs of most of these settings, except for their impact on the world around them. I pretty much never intend for my players to be going after any particular major villain at the start of my games, because I know that unless I TELL them that's what they should be doing they're almost guaranteed to pick something else. And why should I tell them what to do? Its their game, I'm just running it.

And besides, it feels counterproductive to focus so much on creating something that's designed to be targeted for destruction. You're building in a set-in-stone climax for your campaign arc, which feels strange to me. Unless you do the stereotypical "I lied this is the New Evil-er Evil Guy That Was In Charge The Whole Time" trope, there's not going to be much that's as big to the players. You'll be sorting out the aftermath, I guess, which is interesting to me personally, but its hardly Adventuring with a capital A which is the "norm".

But I guess thats just a matter of personal preference. I've never been one to consider a campaign as something to be "completed", then everyone says "wow what fun time for the next one". To me it's something to be enjoyed until people desire something else.

It's not just about directly beating them up, but it is a good tell-tale of what the designers see the role of the PC's in the setting being.

Aberrant is a good example of how to do this badly. The big hitters of the setting are designed to be out of the grasp of anything a PC could do to them, including one whose power is almost literally "you lose times infinity" and a notorious module where if you try and intervene in a fight between bootleg Superman and Dr Manhattan, they just automatically just flick you out of the way.

They are designed that way because they are there to keep the story on track to where the metaplot says it has to go, no matter if the PC's want it to go somewhere else. Do you want to prevent the brewing war? Expose corruption in the big superhero organisation? Ascend to being the number one supervillain? The assumed mode of play is that you can't, because these people are gatekeeping it and they have bigger numbers than you'll ever get.

Of course, this can be ignored for any given campaign, but it's still very telling about designer intent. It's a setting that fights against the PC's being the coolest people in the story.

By contrast, I think Demon: The Fallen does it really well. The Earthbound are tremendously powerful adversaries, but they also have very clear limits that PC's can exploit so that they don't get squashed right out of the gate--they can't physically move, they need the worship from their cults to keep them active.

[Quertus]

Definitely. There's quite a few that make me thing "well, this would be a good novel, but no idea what sort of game I'd run here".

I usually have trouble with the opposite: “this is a cool setting, but I already know exactly what one game anyone would ever run here.”


they are there to keep the story on track to where the metaplot says it has to go, no matter if the PC's want it to go somewhere else.

It's a setting that fights against the PC's being the coolest people in the story.

Yeah, looks like you get (a different version of) what I’m talking about.

[Vahnavoi]

Re: metaplot:

Mos of the issues with metaplot come from approaching the whole thing from a publisher to consumer paradigm, where the game designer makes whatever and the end user buys it as a complete product, with little to no feedback from the actual games played being given to the publisher.

To make it work, the paradigm needs to be closer to programmer to beta tester (etc.), where the designer is getting constantly getting feedback from actual play of the end users. Because this set-up doesn't scale all that well without help from communication technology, the most succesful large scale examples exist in the realm of videogames. On a smaller scale, such as a convention campaign or live-action roleplay meant to include dozens to a few hundred people, it can and has been done.

One of the simpler ways you can do this, which I've implemented on tabletop and various Dark Souls-type videogames I observe to have also implemented, is to allow players to leave in-character messages to future players of the same module, adventure or campaign. Some Lamentations of the Flame Princess modules, such as redone Death Frost Doom and Book of Antitheses, have a framework set up for this, in the vein of multiple worlds theory mused about by Quertus. F.ex. of one group of players draws a map of a location, the next group can use it. In a linear time campaign, of course, you can also allow for actions of one group to leave a mark in the campaign world - so the next group will find some doors broken, some treasure looted, maybe drawings on the wall, dead bodies of unlucky player characters etc.. If you have another game master doing the same thing with the same module, you can occasionally exchange notes.

[Mordar]

The more I read Ravenloft the more I get into it. You can do all kinds of horror tropes there, from bog-standard Castlevania gothic horror in Barovia, to Lovecraftian cosmic horror in Bluetspur, to the Mummy in Har'Akir, evil circus in The Carnival, zombie apocalypse in Falkovnia, Frankensteiny/flesh-stitiching in Lamordia, slasher/predator horror in Valachan, murder mysteries and many more. Best of all, the Mists/Powers can just suck in a party from anywhere, so you have a ready excuse for just dropping the players there out of nowhere.

I wasn't a Dark Sun fan (more by timing and lack of exposure - have no basis for opinion on it), but I was really a Ravenloft fan from the very beginning. Bought Ravenloft material even when there wasn't a twinge of interest in playing (A)D&D anymore simply because of the enjoyable imaginative experiences I had, and the non-game fun of reading the material. In my opinion, a very clever way of accommodating exactly what you lay out above...don't have to worry about integrating these different sub-genres of horror, don't have to worry about consistency issues...just make good use of the available bridges and off you go.

- M

[Psyren]

I wasn't a Dark Sun fan (more by timing and lack of exposure - have no basis for opinion on it), but I was really a Ravenloft fan from the very beginning. Bought Ravenloft material even when there wasn't a twinge of interest in playing (A)D&D anymore simply because of the enjoyable imaginative experiences I had, and the non-game fun of reading the material. In my opinion, a very clever way of accommodating exactly what you lay out above...don't have to worry about integrating these different sub-genres of horror, don't have to worry about consistency issues...just make good use of the available bridges and off you go.

- M

Hilariously, you can do Dark Sun in Ravenloft too :smallbiggrin: Hazlan is more or less a miniature Athas, seasoned with some Dune spice and a few teaspoons of Thay, Anauroch and Cyre.

[Lord Torath]

And Kalidnay was officially a domain in Ravenloft that originated on Athas. The sorcerer king and high templar swapped genders somewhere in canon there, but it's still official.

[adso]

For me, Eberron is the setting where the mechanics of D&D seemed to have actually informed the structure of the world and so the characters seem to fit into the world better than in most other settings. Plus the lack of uber-powerful good NPCs help make what the players do actually important at all levels of play, which players tend to appreciate. With 5e obviously the setting has needed to adapt the mechanics similar to other settings, but it's still less of a stark contrast than you'll find elsewhere. Plus, the level of content and depth that is available with the published books and Keith Baker's blog/podcast are very impressive. I pretty much don't run games outside of Eberron anymore and don't really intend to do so in the near future; almost any story I want to tell fits into Eberron at least as well as it would elsewhere.

[thorr-kan]

<SNIP!>...almost any story I want to tell fits into Eberron at least as well as it would elsewhere.
That's an excellent observation: the type of game you enjoy informs the setting(s) that pique your interest.

[Psyren]

That's how I feel about Golarion - I can do pretty much any subgenre or recreation there, from high fantasy to science fantasy to horror fantasy to pulp to mystery etc.

[The Glyphstone]

The vitrolic responses that Numeria and its sci-fi Sufficiently Advanced Technology always seems to provoke baffles me a little in that regard. Literally anything else in the massive kitchen sink that is Golarion is mostly tolerated, but not robots.

[Psyren]

I mean, you can do science fantasy without Numeria if that place is objectionable. Instead of robots and aliens, you can do utopian genetics with Hermea, mutants and guns with Alkenstar/The Mana Wastes, or even go to other planets in Golarion's solar system like Castrovel via the Elfgates / Starstone if a spaceship feels out of place.

Hell, you could warp a PF party into Starfinder (or at least Starfinder's setting) without too much work.

[LibraryOgre]

Shadowrun, especially 1e and 2e, were excellently written, with the first parts of books being primarily in-universe posts, with online comments (and comments from the moderators about how they cleaned up a bunch of garbage replies, etc.). There were characters there, with personalities and backstories. It was some gorgeous work, a lot of which carried over to Earthdawn, by the same company (where the comments were marginalia, instead of online comments, as befit the setting).

For D&D? Dark Sun was such a lovely, evocative, desolation. While it got tagged with a lot of Mad Max post-apocalypticism, it was really more Barsoomian... a world of ancient empires, crumbled to dust and fighting over scraps.

Some honorable mentions?

Fading Suns.
Legend of the Five Rings was a pastiche Asian setting, but the very brilliance of the Merchant's Guide to Rokugan (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/25423/Merchants-Guide-to-Rokugan?affiliate_id=315505) gets it a nod.
Dragonlance SAGA system... not the AD&D stuff, but the card-based system that came after. The system was largely crap, but it was some great writing.
Kingdoms of Kalamar can be a bit spare, but they put their research in to the physical geography.

[oxybe]

I think Psyren hit why I love both Ravenloft and Eberron:

In practice, they're wonderful theme parks you can get lost in. The former being steeped in a more gothic and brooding horror while the second a buffet of close-ish locales for set-piece adventures fit for Big Darn Heroes.

Also, Ravenloft has some of the best written soucebooks of ADnD IMO. The 8 Van Richten Guides (or the 3 compilation books which are the 8+an unreleased one) of old are the gold standard for monster ecology books, imo. I always keep going back to them for light reading.

[Chronic]

For 5e, there is Odyssey of the dragon lords, a Greek themed setting and campaign that blow out of the water anything official.

For futuristic genre, it's infinity Rpg (a modiphius 2d20 game) that does it. It's based on a tabletop wargame of some renown and the setting was first invented when the founder played pen and paper rpg. It's a realistic and futuristic setting, not utopian and not grim dark either. The fact that it makes sense on a societal, economic and political level while still having many cool futuristic tropes makes it great. You have resurrection altered carbon style, an AI that is working in symbiosis with mankind, 4 meters high armored suits, transhumanism and post humanism and fairly recently: aliens. It's a setting where open war is fairly rare (war in space is very expensive) so most of the warfare is made by elite soldiers equipped with top of the line gear engaged in border skirmishes, industrial espionage and plots to destabilize the opponents in one way or another.

[Asmotherion]

I love the detail of Eberron.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

I've been a big fan of Midnight (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/TabletopGame/Midnight) for a long time now. It's a 3rd Edition D&D setting from Fantasy Flight where the forces of darkness won and dominate the world, with the PCs as some of the last, flickering candles of light waging guerilla war against the minions of Izrador.

I especially like how it reimagined a bunch of fantasy ancestries; having multiple kinds of dwarves, elves, halflings, etc. who could intermingle with each other instead of exclusively with humans (in fact, humans can't have kids with anyone but humans, but dwarves can have kids with gnomes and orcs and elves can have kids with halflings)! It's clear the writers put a lot of thought into the details in it, it's positively dripping with mood, and I really, REALLY wish it'd be revived for 5e or something.

[KorvinStarmast]

Thieves' World: Sanctuary (Robert Asprin, Lynn Abbey, et al) gets a nod from me as a setting I'd like to see more of.
(I read all of the books and the spin offs as they came out).
Unfortunately, while the setting book for 2e is still on my shelf, I seriously doubt that I'll ever have the time to figure out how to morph it into 5e.

[Jarawara]

Thieves' World: Sanctuary (Robert Asprin, Lynn Abbey, et al) gets a nod from me as a setting I'd like to see more of.
(I read all of the books and the spin offs as they came out).
Unfortunately, while the setting book for 2e is still on my shelf, I seriously doubt that I'll ever have the time to figure out how to morph it into 5e.

I agree. Thieves' World has a good, well developed setting, but plenty of room to expand in any direction.

I never got all of the books, and as far as I can tell, no bookseller knows how many there actually are. Korvin, could you list off the whole collection? I have the first 12-ish books of the main series, but I remember seeing a book titled Thieves' World 17, so there must be more.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I agree. Thieves' World has a good, well developed setting, but plenty of room to expand in any direction.

I never got all of the books, and as far as I can tell, no bookseller knows how many there actually are. Korvin, could you list off the whole collection? I have the first 12-ish books of the main series, but I remember seeing a book titled Thieves' World 17, so there must be more.

As a shared world, I'm not sure anyone knows how many books got printed with that label. Sort of the old Star Wars Extended Universe, without the central authority making money off of it, so no one really kept track. Or at least that was my impression.

[KorvinStarmast]

I agree. Thieves' World has a good, well developed setting, but plenty of room to expand in any direction.

I never got all of the books, and as far as I can tell, no bookseller knows how many there actually are. Korvin, could you list off the whole collection? I have the first 12-ish books of the main series, but I remember seeing a book titled Thieves' World 17, so there must be more. I think that after 11 or 12 (and there was the spin off set of books with Roxanne and Tempus and Niko) I stopped looking for them in book stores since I moved overseas. I'd need to do some research and get back to you. Somewhere in the attic I have boxes and boxes of books that I refuse to throw away, but I think that I lost at least one box of books during a move.

This may take some doing.

[Kriegspiel]

Some great mentions so far, one that needs to be added....Delta Green

[DigoDragon]

Shadowrun, especially 1e and 2e, were excellently written, with the first parts of books being primarily in-universe posts, with online comments (and comments from the moderators about how they cleaned up a bunch of garbage replies, etc.). There were characters there, with personalities and backstories.

That was always the best part of those books for me. It added a lot of world building, flavor, and adventure ideas in one place. The later editions kind of tried to continue it, but felt really scaled down by comparison.

I kinda like that WotC tried to copy some of that in their 5e books, though with a lot of hit-and-miss. I think the humor with Xanathar's guide was a fun addition.

[LibraryOgre]

I kinda like that WotC tried to copy some of that in their 5e books, though with a lot of hit-and-miss. I think the humor with Xanathar's guide was a fun addition.

I *hated* the commentary in Xanathar's guide. It felt like it was coming from an 8 year old, not an ancient super-genius.

[Psyren]

I *hated* the commentary in Xanathar's guide. It felt like it was coming from an 8 year old, not an ancient super-genius.

He's not actually ancient - "The Xanathar" is a title, assumed by a number of beholders of varying dispositions over the centuries. Its current bearer (Zushaxx) comes off immature in that book's in-universe commentary because he is (i.e. quite young for the role.)

With that said, I agree with you that not all the jokes landed. I did like the monk one.

I found Tasha's commentary to be much funnier (as befits the witch best known for making people split their sides), and Mordenkainen did a perfect job of portraying the ultra-paranoid batman wizard in his book. I'm looking forward to more of that in MotM, and it sounds like we'll be getting more Tasha there too.

[Azuresun]

I *hated* the commentary in Xanathar's guide. It felt like it was coming from an 8 year old, not an ancient super-genius.

I quite liked it, because if you think about it, the Xanathar is an unstable and trigger-happy narcissist who can instantly kill anyone who displeases him. So of course nobody is going to tell him his jokes are lame, they're going to laugh and laugh for minutes on end (because nobody wants to be noted as the one who stopped laughing first).

[DigoDragon]

I *hated* the commentary in Xanathar's guide. It felt like it was coming from an 8 year old, not an ancient super-genius.

Having no prior knowledge of who he is, I just assumed that Xanathar was the beholder equivalent of a "man baby" crime boss who gets anything he wants.

Maybe he is a genius and the commentary is completely off. Or he is purposely trolling everyone.

[LibraryOgre]

Having no prior knowledge of who he is, I just assumed that Xanathar was the beholder equivalent of a "man baby" crime boss who gets anything he wants.

Maybe he is a genius and the commentary is completely off. Or he is purposely trolling everyone.

It still results in annoying, mostly un-funny, interjections.

[Talakeal]

Planescape.
Werewolf the Apocalypse.
Exalted.
Warhammer Fantasy, when they don't go overboard with the grimdark edgelord nonsense.

[Psyren]

Having no prior knowledge of who he is, I just assumed that Xanathar was the beholder equivalent of a "man baby" crime boss who gets anything he wants.

Maybe he is a genius and the commentary is completely off. Or he is purposely trolling everyone.

As I mentioned above, there is not just one "Xanathar." The current bearer of the title is childish because they are a young Beholder, hence the caliber of the sidebar jokes in XGtE.

Mark might have been thinking of Kirukeskai, the most famous crime boss 'Xanathar' throughout 3rd edition, or its predecessor the original Xanathar (which might have been that creature's name) who was secretly slain back in 2e.

[LibraryOgre]

As I mentioned above, there is not just one "Xanathar." The current bearer of the title is childish because they are a young Beholder, hence the caliber of the sidebar jokes in XGtE.

Mark might have been thinking of Kirukeskai, the most famous crime boss 'Xanathar' throughout 3rd edition, or its predecessor the original Xanathar (which might have been that creature's name) who was secretly slain back in 2e.

TBH, I don't care who the Xanathar was. I just thought the writing was boring.

[Psyren]

TBH, I don't care who the Xanathar was. I just thought the writing was boring.

My comments were intended to be more generally elucidatory on the subject than aimed at you specifically :smallsmile:

[Azuresun]

Some great mentions so far, one that needs to be added....Delta Green

And it's more of a sub-setting, but I love the recent Berlin sourcebook for Call of Cthulhu. It really gets across the feel of a broken and traumatised nation reinventing itself in ways both wondrous and horrible and the lingering after-effects of a disastrous war, and I love the quirky historical details in there that would just be too weird to make up. Especially the detailing of the LGBT+ subcultures of the time, which (at least for me) feels like it approaches the subject in a respectful and rigorous way without either being exploitative or sanitising history.