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Kiero
2008-11-22, 08:13 PM
There aren't enough simple settings out there. Far too many of them are over-worked affairs of many pages with too much depth. Of course to an extent it has to be to sell - few people are going to buy something that's pamphlet-sized. There's also a pretty lucrative market for "games for reading" rather than playing. This is not that in any case.

In my opinion, the best and most evocative of settings don't need pages and pages of stuff to make them interesting. Like something you might brainstorm before the session with your players, it should be possible to outline what matters in a (single) page of text. A series of them could even serve as tools in pickup play, where you throw five of them at your players as you sit down, and get them to choose one as a group (or use it to start the discussion on one you create there and then).

Point of this thread is to make up settings/campaign concepts in about a page of text (500 words, say, if you want a hard limit). It's supposed to be all broad strokes, heavy on the implication and low on the explicit detail. Titles and keywords that could be interpreted in a number of ways for stuff is welcome. Plaigiarise other sources to your heart's content, but no campaign pitches for existing stuff, because that defies the point of the thread. You should need nothing more than the one-pager taken from any one post to go off and play a game with it. It's got to be self-contained.

To get a little structure on the proceedings, each one-pager requires the following:

Title: The name of your setting/campaign.

Genre(s): What genre(s) it draws on and are relevant for reference.

Inspiration(s): What sources inspired it, also for reference and convention-mining.

Outline: Outline what this setting is about, major features that distinguish it and the key players, antagonists or personalities that give it some impetus. Probably going to be the bulk of the wordcount.

What are the key tropes or conventions?: As succinctly as you can, such as in a bulleted list what are the major conventions that the game should be faithful to? For example "protagonists are larger than life heroes" or "no good deed goes unpunished".

Who are the PCs?: Most important one of all, IMO, tell us who the protagonists in this setting might be. Are there any archetypes or exemplars you could give us, possibly even a sample concept?

Who's up to the challenge?

Kiero
2008-11-22, 08:14 PM
Title: Spirit of Stone

Genre(s): Sword and Sorcery.

Inspiration(s): Ray Mears' Wild Food, Steven Erikson's Malazan Empire series.

Outline: A fantasy world in which technology remains primarily at the level of the Stone Age. Most people exist in pastoral structures, roving hunter-gathers or subsistence farmers.

This isn't a mundane world, however. There is a spirit world alongside the material in which entities representing nature, ideals and many other things reside. These beings can be contacted, channeled, traded with and even in some cases bound into service. There are demons too, malevolent spirits that like to possess human and animal hosts.

Additionally, those who have the gift can influence the elements, which is especially important in making tools and weapons and preserving fire, as well as assisting crops. Weapons of chosen champions are imbued with magics that prevent breakage and make structures that would normally shatter possible.

There are also the ruins of ancient civilisations long past, some still inhabited by the perverted descendants of the once-mighty peoples who ruled there.

What are the key tropes or conventions?:

This is a dangerous world, with hazards beyond the mundane.
But characters are not concerned with mere survival.
The community is something that must be preserved and protected by the strong.
Dealing with the spirit world respectfully is good, using it to advance your own power and treating spirits as subjects is evil.
Possible tension between the old ways that have served well, and new ways that are more successful.
Large-scale civilisation is inherently corrupt and morally bankrupt.


Who are the PCs?: Protagonists are defenders of their communities, responding to threats to them.

They might be athletic hunters, good at providing for their people and negotiating the wilderness. They might be the champion charged with protecting the headman and seeing off challenges from other communities. They could be a shaman trusted with placating the spirits and controlling the elements. They might be a storyteller preserving the oral traditions and writing new tales of the deeds of their contemporaries.

Knaight
2008-11-22, 08:31 PM
Title: Mods

Genre(s): Science Fiction, Steam Punk

Inspiration(s): Starwars, Metroid, Robotics Class, Jules Verne's work, Isaac Aasimov's work, Arthur C. Clarks work.

Outline: The developments in robotics are starting to create robots with actual personality, even sentience, but humans continue to wage warfare, with these robots killing each other. Companies have evolved, and most everything has turned to weapons or warfare. Behind all of this, companies run illegal operations to try and steal technology from others.

What are the key tropes or conventions?:
* Humans are oppressing people they view as lessers, again.
* Warfare is huge, and robots wage it.
* Robots are vainly trying to be viewed as equals.
* Some robots have decided to just go up against the humans, and wipe them out.
* Companies go to great lengths to steal technology.

Who are the PCs?: The PCs are new robots, just post prototype, called Mod Bots, and are the single best piece of technology that is owned by their company. That company being Cheap Tech, thats not saying much. They are rogues, who happened to wake up on the conveyor belt leading to them being shipped off, and were forcibly ejected from the company, as they expected a repeat of the "rogue 1 incident." Mod bots are little spherical robots with legs, who have some nanotechnology built in that allows them to adapt weapons from almost any company, including those meant for humans. Massive things are out though.

akira72703
2008-11-22, 11:49 PM
Title: Arkelos

Genres: Sword and Sorcery Low Magic

Inspirations: Raymond Feist, Robert E Howard, H P Lovecraft

Outline: Human culture is recovering and beginning to explore the continent of Arkelos after a disasterous war, 500 years ago, with the demi races (collectively called the Sidhe). Humanity lost but in their hour of victory, as the Sidhe surrounded the last human outposts, they for their own reasons simply left this dimension entirely. Nations plot to gain and control the ancient lore and magic of the long gone Sidhe while the Sidhe themselves pass into the realms of myth among the humans.

The Key Conventions
* The supernatural is fantastic, unique, sinister, and incomprehensible to mere mortals.
* Evil is monolithic and has vast resources.
* Moral codes serve to guide man but they can be corrupted.
* There are no designated good guys, might makes right.
* Magic is dark and very dangerous.
* While evil may seem all consuming and ever present, the heroes fight make their little corner of good.

Who are the PC's?
The PC's are any one of the various races of man currently living in one of the Empires or Kingdoms of Arkelos. They could be a pygmy hunter from the Empire of Greater Niktuku , a Mystic from the Dominion of Maharat or a Fell Necromancer from slumbering Neter- Khertet. They could be a swaggering Noble from proud Achmaenid or a sinister thief from Ancient Anazazi or a mad bedoin of the Ijaami of Bershaba.

Morty
2008-11-23, 07:21 AM
Name: I don't really have a name for it. It's partially because I suck at coming up with names.

Genres: Low-powered Dark Fantasy.

Outline: The setting consists of a big continent surrounded by uncharted territories- noone knows what's behind the northern mountains, southern deserts or the ocean surrounding the continent. Some people who gather obscure knowledge suspect however that whatever is over there is better left alone. The continent itself is populated by various races, among whom humans are considered the lowliest. They used to rule a continent-spanning empire that crumbled several hundred years before the time PCs are born due to infighting and non-human rebels. Some records, ruins and legends suggest that there were other races that are now forgotten but ruled the land long before humans started to walk upright.

The Key Conventions:
* The world is less known than it'd seem. While the continent is civilized and mapped out, there are still secrets that can be unraveled- but it doesn't mean they should be.
* The world is war-torn. For some reason, races and nations of the world can't stay in peace for long. Every so often, a huge war erupts. The last one was a bloody conflict between dwarven and goblin nations of the world's biggest mountain range. But it was long ago, so a new war is likely to start soon.
* Magic is unpredictable and dangerous. Despite centuries of research and experiments, the practicioners of arcane magic are still unable to predict its effects precisely. Magic-users are fairly common, but you'd be insane to rely on magic for anything.
* There's no "good guys" or "bad guys" most of the time, but.:
* Monsters are among us. The real evil aren't beasts who eat people in forests and caves, but sentient beings who choose to become monsters and often get away with it.
* Gods are distant and unknown. It's not even sure they exist- priests can perform minor miracles by their faith, but it's not certain they're granted by gods. They might occur through priests' faith being strong enough to change the world, or be granted by... someone else. Most likely, dieties are created in the Void outside moral realm by belief, wishes, fears and hopes of mortals.

Who are the PCs? PCs might be those who wander the world in search of adventure, vagabonds unable to simply stay put in one place. They might also be mercenaries, fighting for anyone who pays them. Finally, they might be sent on a mission by someone. In any case, they're no different than the rest of their race.

Satyr
2008-11-23, 08:38 AM
While I almost completely disagree with the OP about the complexity of self-created settings -there is not uch a thing as "too much depth" for a setting and dedication is best shown in the productive output - this is not much of a challenge, it's only writing a summary.

Title: The Treasure of L'Ollonois.

Genre: Historical, grim and gritty Swashbuckler action

Inspiration: Well, it is a historical setting. So, it is mostly based on historical sources and secondary literature like Carles Johnson's A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most notorious Pyrates . This is especially meant as an alternative draft to romanitcised and disneyfied crap like Pirates of the Carribean. To spice it up, I add the pre-Romero Zombies (like in White Zombie) and Voudoun magic. Other sourcs of inspiration would be Gurps: Voodoo by C.J. Carella and On Stranger Tides by Tim Powers (only with research) and the Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco (for the representation of the supernatural and its adepts).

Outline: Thirty-five years ago, the French pirate Francois L’Ollonois who was infamous for his greed and his extraordinary cruelty attacked a Spanish galleon, the Magdalena. On board of the merchantman was a fortune in silver bullions from the Mexican mines to finance the court in Madrid. Obviously, the silver never arrived. But even for L’Ollonois, 22 tons(!) of silver where an enormous treasure, and he know instantly, that he would be hunted from now on. So he decided to hide the treasure of the Magdalene somewhere on the Yucatan peninsula. L’Ollonois and his four commanding officers made a pact- they would share the profits of the prize when the dust has settled. And to make sure, that no one could lift the treasure without the others, the map to the hiding place was divided upon them. Every officer got one doubloon where a part of the coordinates and marks were engraved; L’Ollonois himself led his favorite slave shave his head and the slave tattooed the map to find the treasure on the skull of his master.
Two years later, in 1667, L’Ollonois and his ship, the Fléau des Espagnois was forced to battle against two Spanish man o’ war, and even after L’Ollonois managed to sink one of the two ships, he and his crew got captured and brought to Maracaibo. Even after three months of torture neither L’Ollonois nor his officers confessed where they had hidden the treasure of the Magdalene. L’Ollonois’ slave, Bertram, managed to escape the punishment and fled with the knowledge about how L’Ollonois hid the silver bullions, and the legend of the treasure of the Magdalene grew with every passing year. Every sailor, every buccaneer and every shanty man knows the story, but most consider it as a pure legend. It is not.

The four doubloons with the coordinates to find the treasure made their round in the Caribbean and are considered to bring bad luck. Now, they have found their way into the hands of an unlike group of adventurers- the Player Characters. Everyone of them has one of the doubloons, and they have no reasons to trust each other (yes, they are considered to work together, but not to like each other- this kind of story is greatly spiced with a little backstabbing). But the coordinates alone are useless without the card, and until last month everyone thought the card was lost until old Betram told the story of the secret tattoo under L’Ollonois hair on his deathbed. L’Ollonois wasn’t hanged like his crew, he was beheaded, and his head was pickled in a jar with Alcohol and is displayed in the castillo of Maracaibo. The card is not lost and therefore there is a chance to lift the treasure of the Magdalene.

But not only the player characters know about these (it wouldn’t be fun without a big bad, would it?) The feared Spanish privateer Carlos Riviera, called El Tiburón knows about the treasure, the coins and the card- because one of the coins was stolen from him. He also knows who owns at least one of the keys to the treasure now, and he is eager to bring the Spanish empire its silver back (after a generous concession for the finder) which will bring him a knighthood at least.

Now, the player are confronted with several problems: They need a ship with a trustworthy captain to bring them to Maracaibo (and afterwards to Yucatan); they have to break in the castillo and a quite successful privateer with a reputation for mercilessness and good manners is hunting them. And they have to hurry, before every buccaneer and pirate knows about the secret map – or their destination.

Paralelly, a Shadow War between the two most powerful sorcerers in the Carribean is waged - on the one side is the dreaded Infernalist Blackbeard and on the other side the only slighlty less dreaded (but lesser known) Hag of Tortuga. The PCs are going to become the pawns of one of these power players. While it will never be sure if the supernatural aspects are 'real' or only superstition.

What are the key tropes or conventions?: It is a treasure hunt. No on can trust any one else but still have to cooperate. The opposition especially the Spanish Privateer is a gentler and much more favorable character than the PCs. Historical facts and fiction are mostly interwoven and interconnected to create a background which is as plausible and consolidated as possible (because the most important attribute of any quality setting is versimilitude). And combats, life and violence is described as close to reality as possible. Who brings himself into peril will probably die, as it should be.

Who are the PCs? A small group of privateers, adventurers, bucaneers or other scum of the ports who were braugt together by sheer fortune - each of them got one of the keys to a giant treasure.

Kiero
2008-11-23, 08:46 AM
While I almost completely disagree with the OP about the complexity of self-created settings -there is not uch a thing as "too much depth" for a setting and dedication is best shown in the productive output - this is not much of a challenge, it's only writing a summary.

I'm not just talking about "self-created" settings, I'm talking about all of them. Most published systems begin life as "self-created" ones, so I see little meaningful distinction.

There is such a thing as "too much depth" when it acts as a barrier to entry and engagement for anyone who isn't the creator. Not to mention that so many of these are both boring and overly long, especially in whatever areas the person creating it has either a special interest, or considers themselves "expert".

This is a challenge if you're playing it properly, creating a setting from scratch that exists only as the broad strokes you paint here. If you're just summarising an existing setting you're playing it wrong. The whole point is that the details are filled out, in play, by the people playing it. That fosters engagement and gives them buy-in because it isn't just something being fed to them, but something they're having an active part in building.

This is supposed to be for fast, low-prep, pickup play. People sit down, pick one out and run with it, rather than spending hours/days/weeks in preparation before the session absorbing the complexities of the setting.

Satyr
2008-11-23, 09:08 AM
There is such a thing as "too much depth" when it acts as a barrier to entry and engagement for anyone who isn't the creator.

I have rarely seen this. I have only seen a lack of dedication and willingness to contribute to the game and get into the setting details, but this are some of the worst and most often disqualifying traits for a player.


Not to mention that so many of these are both boring and overly long, especially in whatever areas the person creating it has either a special interest, or considers themselves "expert".

Yes, there are badly written settings and yes, bad writing and lacking storyteller skills are a hindrance. But that is a shortcoming of the author, not necessarily of the form of the presentation.


This is a challenge if you're playing it properly, creating a setting from scratch that exists only as the broad strokes you paint here. If you're just summarising an existing setting you're playing it wrong. The whole point is that the details are filled out, in play, by the people playing it.

An outline is not a setting. Every campaign must be filled out by the participants, that is nothing new. The question is, if the gamemaster is left alone or not and if the setting is a useful assistance or not. And for a certain quality you will always need a certain quantity and a too brief setting description is not helpful when it does not offer this assistance. If you can do equally well without the description, the description is worthless.


This is supposed to be for fast, low-prep, pickup play. People sit down, pick one out and run with it, rather than spending hours/days/weeks in preparation before the session absorbing the complexities of the setting.
And with this form you will only make it extremely hard to create the atmosphere of commitment, personal dedication, versimilitude and multidimensional characters that is the trademark of high qualit roleplaying. It might be okay for occasional gamers, but as with all fiction, the great stuff is made for the elite, not the hoi polloi.

Emperor Tippy
2008-11-23, 09:19 AM
I'm not just talking about "self-created" settings, I'm talking about all of them. Most published systems begin life as "self-created" ones, so I see little meaningful distinction.

There is such a thing as "too much depth" when it acts as a barrier to entry and engagement for anyone who isn't the creator. Not to mention that so many of these are both boring and overly long, especially in whatever areas the person creating it has either a special interest, or considers themselves "expert".

This is a challenge if you're playing it properly, creating a setting from scratch that exists only as the broad strokes you paint here. If you're just summarising an existing setting you're playing it wrong. The whole point is that the details are filled out, in play, by the people playing it. That fosters engagement and gives them buy-in because it isn't just something being fed to them, but something they're having an active part in building.

This is supposed to be for fast, low-prep, pickup play. People sit down, pick one out and run with it, rather than spending hours/days/weeks in preparation before the session absorbing the complexities of the setting.

The point of the published setting's and very indepth homebrew worlds isn't to run a specific game. It's to run a sandbox type game. The world exists and is (ideally) internally consistent. The players are dropped into that world and can do pretty much whatever without running into invisible walls and without the DM having to invent cities on the fly. You don't buy Eberron because you think it's interesting and you want to run a specific story in that setting, you buy it because it's a fully fleshed out world with cities, important NPC's, history, nuanced social dynamics, and a fleshed out economic and political structure. If I want to run a fetch quest I have a ready made benefactor (the dragon marked houses, the 5 nations, and the various guilds and cults), a ready made area in most any environment, and readily avaible consequences for the PC's actions that are understood and don't smack of DM fiat (well you are free to not give the McGuffian to House Cannith like they contracted you to do but that will get House Cannith pissed at you). And you have Xen'Drix for placing all those random dungeons and everything else that you come up with and don't want to worry about fitting into the world. You also have a ready made plot hook for deus ex machina when you want to save/stop the PC's. The dragons and the draconic prophecy. If the players are about to face a TPK you can have a dragon swoop down and save them with the dragons explanation being "It would taint the prophecy if you died today" and have it be a perfectly valid reason for the dragons actions.

FR isn't a setting that I'm familiar with (never been interested in it to be honest) so I can't comment on it.

Kiero
2008-11-23, 09:24 AM
I have rarely seen this. I have only seen a lack of dedication and willingness to contribute to the game and get into the setting details, but this are some of the worst and most often disqualifying traits for a player.

That speaks only to your own personal preferences and tolerances when it comes to detail levels. As does considering it a "disqualifying trait" for a player.

One of the reasons RPGs have such a high barrier to entry to people outside of a particular mindset is this belief that you have to be willing to do homework outside of the game to be "worthy" of playing.

Most other kinds of game don't require you to do this. I don't need to spend hours outside of a game of Monopoly considering strategies of investment to get the most out of a game. Not only that, it isn't even necessary to play every RPG out there, only certain play styles. Which is ultimately what you're purporting as some kind of truth.


Yes, there are badly written settings and yes, bad writing and lacking storyteller skills are a hindrance. But that is a shortcoming of the author, not necessarily of the form of the presentation.

Doesn't matter how well-written it is, too long is too long. If it requires everyone to set aside hours of reading time before they can sit down and enjoy a game, that's a real barrier to entry. There are players who simply won't be willing to make that kind of investment of time. Hell, there are GMs who wouldn't (I'm certainly a GM of that tendency myself).

It's a shortcoming of the form.


An outline is not a setting. Every campaign must be filled out by the participants, that is nothing new. The question is, if the gamemaster is left alone or not and if the setting is a useful assistance or not. And for a certain quality you will always need a certain quantity and a too brief setting description is not helpful when it does not offer this assistance. If you can do equally well without the description, the description is worthless.

You've got several nested assumptions in there which simply aren't universal truth. An outline is a setting, and can be all a group needs to get going if they're of a more collaborative bent than "the GM presents you with this world, you're just actors within it".

Which leads me to the second point, the GM isn't necessarily or even ideally the only person at the table placed to convey the setting.

Quality of setting is not dependent on quantity of material, given there are several human beings around a table, who might be creative enough to come up with good stuff as you go. Depending once again on the group's style of play and those player's preferences.

As to the level of detail, of course simple outline stuff is useful. There's a huge difference between a blank page (which is what you're asserting is as useful as an outline) and something that offers some light structure to fill out. Description doesn't have to be full, broad strokes can be enough to go on. Because the detail can itself inhibit creativity and innovation. A world overly prescribed in advance is one that can't be filled out as easily by everyone as you go.

It's orientation vs animation. You have to strike the right balance between them. If it's all orientation you spend so long defining how to get there, you never leave. If it's all animation you wander aimlessly having not even defined where you're going. The blank page has no orientation to it at all, and is therefore aimless. The outline structure has enough orientation to it that the animation has a direction.

You know what else? People do it all the time. It's nowhere near as hard as you're making out.


And with this form you will only make it extremely hard to create the atmosphere of commitment, personal dedication, versimilitude and multidimensional characters that is the trademark of high qualit roleplaying. It might be okay for occasional gamers, but as with all fiction, the great stuff is made for the elite, not the hoi polloi.

That's nonsense too. For the kind of gamer who expects a world already laid out for them, sure. But not everyone approaches a setting in that way.

You're adding a whole load of baggage to gaming that doesn't even need to be there, outside of personal choice. And in any case, gaming isn't fiction. It might share some traits with it, but it's an active media created by the people consuming it. Not a passive one created by some third party a step removed from the consumption. That makes drawing analogies problematic.

Kiero
2008-11-23, 09:34 AM
The point of the published setting's and very indepth homebrew worlds isn't to run a specific game. It's to run a sandbox type game. The world exists and is (ideally) internally consistent. The players are dropped into that world and can do pretty much whatever without running into invisible walls and without the DM having to invent cities on the fly.

I'm seeing little bar the imagination of the people playing that makes any of those things exclusive to a published setting.

Furthermore, what's wrong with "inventing cities on the fly", and why should the GM be the only person doing it?

A group of people all bought in to the initial premise are just as capable of internal consistency as everyone referring to a pre-existing document that says "this is how things are".

Not even the most detailed setting book covers everything, there are always gaps and places where things have to be improvised. How is that any less susceptible to "invisible walls" than something created on the spot?


You don't buy Eberron because you think it's interesting and you want to run a specific story in that setting, you buy it because it's a fully fleshed out world with cities, important NPC's, history, nuanced social dynamics, and a fleshed out economic and political structure.

I think you're making vasted, unfounded assumptions about why people buy whatever it is they buy. And how people choose to use published settings, or any other kind of material.


If I want to run a fetch quest I have a ready made benefactor (the dragon marked houses, the 5 nations, and the various guilds and cults), a ready made area in most any environment, and readily avaible consequences for the PC's actions that are understood and don't smack of DM fiat (well you are free to not give the McGuffian to House Cannith like they contracted you to do but that will get House Cannith pissed at you). And you have Xen'Drix for placing all those random dungeons and everything else that you come up with and don't want to worry about fitting into the world. You also have a ready made plot hook for deus ex machina when you want to save/stop the PC's. The dragons and the draconic prophecy. If the players are about to face a TPK you can have a dragon swoop down and save them with the dragons explanation being "It would taint the prophecy if you died today" and have it be a perfectly valid reason for the dragons actions.

FR isn't a setting that I'm familiar with (never been interested in it to be honest) so I can't comment on it.

Again why must GM fiat be the only alternative, and why is it even a universally bad thing? No one complains when fiat is used in logical, internally-consistent ways, yet it's still fiat. The entirety of the GM function outside of following processes laid out in the rules is fiat. Indeed choosing what process to follow is fiat. Closing a scene and moving things on to another juncture is fiat. Arbitration when things are inconsistent is fiat.

Furthermore, fiat doesn't have to be the sole preserve of the GM either. Players can be creating stuff as they go too, and I don't just mean submitting suggestions to the GM outside of the game. There's plenty of games with dramatic editing mechanics and the like which allow players to spend resources to have a direct impact on the game reality.

Emperor Tippy
2008-11-23, 09:51 AM
I'm seeing little bar the imagination of the people playing that makes any of those things exclusive to a published setting.
I never said they were exclusive to published settings. My real life group has over 500 pages of setting material for a collaboratively build homebrew world. I have created 3 different fully fleshed out worlds. The thing is the time investment required. I'm fortunate enough to have an income source that gives me a ton of free time to do whatever I feel like doing, meaning that I can spend a hundred hours building a setting. Most people can't take that kind of time.


Furthermore, what's wrong with "inventing cities on the fly", and why should the GM be the only person doing it?
Because the DM's job is to run the world. If your players can make up important things like cities on the fly then you will run into problems. And can you run off a map, list of 100 important NPC's (including character sheets for the important ones), shops, a thieves guild, the current political and social dynamics, and all of the other details that make an immersive city on the fly? If you can go right ahead, but most people can't.


A group of people all bought in to the initial premise are just as capable of internal consistency as everyone referring to a pre-existing document that says "this is how things are".
It's not the initial premise being internally consistent, it the world that you interact with being internally consistent when the players go off the rails.


Not even the most detailed setting book covers everything, there are always gaps and places where things have to be improvised. How is that any less susceptible to "invisible walls" than something created on the spot?
Yes there are. But they are minor points. Eberron didn't forget to provide the government's for the 5 nations. It didn't forget any major actors (and included a ton of minor actors). It provides a framework that you can easily add things to and make those things effect the world in a believable manner with little effort.


I think you're making vasted, unfounded assumptions about why people buy whatever it is they buy. And how people choose to use published settings, or any other kind of material.
Not really. Ask around about why people use premade settings. The answer most of the time is that they don't have the time to put into creating their own, they don't have the ability to create a good setting, or they don't want to deal with creating their own and explaining it too new players in great detail.

Why they buy one setting as opposed to another varies from person to person and for depends on tons of different factors, but why they buy them in the first place is largely the same.


Again why must GM fiat be the only alternative, and why is it even a universally bad thing? No one complains when fiat is used in logical, internally-consistent ways, yet it's still fiat. The entirety of the GM function outside of following processes laid out in the rules is fiat. Indeed choosing what process to follow is fiat. Closing a scene and moving things on to another juncture is fiat. Arbitration when things are inconsistent is fiat.
DM fiat is bad because it isn't believable or consistent. It makes a world less internally consistent.


Furthermore, fiat doesn't have to be the sole preserve of the GM either. Players can be creating stuff as they go too, and I don't just mean submitting suggestions to the GM outside of the game. There's plenty of games with dramatic editing mechanics and the like which allow players to spend resources to have a direct impact on the game reality.

Sure, and D&D isn't one of them. Shadowrun isn't either for that matter. I can't comment on other games because I don't play them.

Satyr
2008-11-23, 10:40 AM
That speaks only to your own personal preferences and tolerances when it comes to detail levels. As does considering it a "disqualifying trait" for a player.

No. The willingness of personal dedication is important for everything, not only roleplaying. Whatever you do, it will only be sufficient whenyou are willing to contribute to it. In a hobby that literally live from personal engagement and participation.


One of the reasons RPGs have such a high barrier to entry to people outside of a particular mindset is this belief that you have to be willing to do homework outside of the game to be "worthy" of playing.

I would say that the problem with roleplaying game is that you will always need a group and can not play alone but you will always need a group of people. And even though I am a very convinced elitist, I never found it difficult to get new people into gaming.


Most other kinds of game don't require you to do this. I don't need to spend hours outside of a game of Monopoly considering strategies of investment to get the most out of a game. Not only that, it isn't even necessary to play every RPG out there, only certain play styles. Which is ultimately what you're purporting as some kind of truth.

If you play Monopoly with more dedicated players you are going to lose terribly without a chance. I know, roleplaying games are not as competitive as traditional board games, and there is rarely a clear 'winner'.
Every game or hobby or job etc. will show extreme differences between those who are willing to get into it and those who are not. The normally less important compatitiveness of RPG's covers this partly, but it is bizarre to claim that this would be the one great exception.
And completely independent from the gaming style, RPGs live from the participation of players and GM. The actual form of this contribution may differ from style to style - sometimes it is more important to be efective on the gaming side, sometimes personal drama and character development are necessary - but the essential rule is - you get out what you put in. The more people are willing to contribute to the game and to identify with the campaign, their characters or the group, the better is the game. Roleplaying as passive entertainment doesn't work very well if at all.


Doesn't matter how well-written it is, too long is too long.
The by far most popular setting/game in Germany consists in total of several thousand pages of texts, including several source books per region, each one around 300 pages, only very little of those filled with crunch. Additionally, every two months a newspaper is published which describes the current events and metaplots in the game. This does not include the two or three adventures published every month. For one setting. I think the total outout is as large as that of WOTC for D&D, but almost all material is coined for the one setting.
The rules are terrible though, but this is the only setting I know which has a least a slight chance to establish the sheer sum of details to create the feeling of versimilitude and identification (besides historical / real world settings).
There is no such things as too much, when it is presented in the right form.


If it requires everyone to set aside hours of reading time before they can sit down and enjoy a game, that's a real barrier to entry.

Why do you say this as if it was a bad thing?


There are players who simply won't be willing to make that kind of investment of time. Hell, there are GMs who wouldn't (I'm certainly a GM of that tendency myself).

And why should anyone pay more attention to those who are not willing to commit than to those who are wiling to inves in the game? That is completely counterproductive. Again, roleplaying lives from participation and commitment. You - as a GM - want that your players contribute to the game as much as possible so that they have a chance to identify with it (because nothing is as precious as the gains of your own investment) and you want that your players put an effort in the game.


The GM isn't necessarily or even ideally the only person at the table placed to convey the setting.

I agree wholeheartedly. This is why it is so important that the personal involvement of the players is so important and why you need a base compromise for the setting. Which should be known to everybody.


Quality of setting is not dependent on quantity of material, given there are several human beings around a table, who might be creative enough to come up with good stuff as you go. Depending once again on the group's style of play and those player's preferences.

You will always need a certain quantity to describe more complex structures. Complex thoughts, social tapestries or even more so moral questions can not be represented in extreme brevity without a massive simplification. A simplification will most surely destroy the complexity or can not show or describe more than just the surface. As soon as you are interested in more complex problem sitiuations, you will need a certain volume to represent it accordingly, and in many cases, the complexity and multidimensional representations are a feature of quality, because almost always the truly interesting or important stuff is in the details, not on the surface.



gaming isn't fiction

And here, you err so completely that you com close to the truth from the other side. Gaming is nothing but fiction. It is a specific form of fiction even a part from the traditional three forms, and it is normally more focused on the direct experience than the representation and has a certain focus on interaction and participative contribution, but how in the seven hells can you actually believe it is not a part of fiction?


It might share some traits with it, but it's an active media created by the people consuming it. Not a passive one created by some third party a step removed from the consumption. That makes drawing analogies problematic.

So a text which is only written by the author and for the author for nothing but the process of writing is not fiction? Theatre sessions that include the audience into the play are not fiction?

Kiero
2008-11-23, 10:47 AM
I never said they were exclusive to published settings. My real life group has over 500 pages of setting material for a collaboratively build homebrew world. I have created 3 different fully fleshed out worlds. The thing is the time investment required. I'm fortunate enough to have an income source that gives me a ton of free time to do whatever I feel like doing, meaning that I can spend a hundred hours building a setting. Most people can't take that kind of time.

Sorry, but that isn't necessary for a game to take place at all. Sure some people might like there to be that much investment of time in the game, but that doesn't make it a precursor for a good game to be able to take place.

If reading those 500 pages is a pre-requisite to playing your game, you've just created an artificial hindrance to anyone new getting involved.

Look at licensed settings like Star Wars, for example. People play games of it with all levels of pre-existing knowledge and material. A group might have a mixture of people with differing levels of knowledge of the source material (or even none at all). Yet that doesn't mean the only way a game can proceed is for everyone to go off and read/watch/play up to the same level as each other.


Because the DM's job is to run the world.

Not necessarily, and nor does it have to be their preserve alone. Again that's a particular style of play, where "GM runs the world, players run their characters" but it's by no means the only possibility.


If your players can make up important things like cities on the fly then you will run into problems.

Not necessarily. If they are as invested in internal consistency as the GM, there shouldn't be any difference.


And can you run off a map, list of 100 important NPC's (including character sheets for the important ones), shops, a thieves guild, the current political and social dynamics, and all of the other details that make an immersive city on the fly? If you can go right ahead, but most people can't.

Personally I rarely use a map in the first place...why do you need to be able to do any of those things from a sheet? Why is the GM the only person able to come up with them?

What's stopping a player coming up with the name of an important NPC (or indeed introducing them), or outlining the current political dynamics of the thieves' guild, since as a member of it their character would know?


It's not the initial premise being internally consistent, it the world that you interact with being internally consistent when the players go off the rails.

The world can flow from the premise. I remind you of Star Wars once again, where people being familiar with the ideals of the setting (premise) can be enough for them to be consistent, even with completely different levels of knowledge about the setting.

Why should the players "go off the rails" just because they're involved in the world creation?


Yes there are. But they are minor points. Eberron didn't forget to provide the government's for the 5 nations. It didn't forget any major actors (and included a ton of minor actors). It provides a framework that you can easily add things to and make those things effect the world in a believable manner with little effort.

There's levels of framework. Just because you haven't listed out the major actors and minor ones doesn't mean you've got nothing. Effort that's been put in before a game is still effort. Only difference is where it's coming in.

Furthermore, distributed effort, where everyone is putting things in is less effort for the GM than having to do it all beforehand. Which can often happen even when they've got pre-existing material to work from.


Not really. Ask around about why people use premade settings. The answer most of the time is that they don't have the time to put into creating their own, they don't have the ability to create a good setting, or they don't want to deal with creating their own and explaining it too new players in great detail.

Why they buy one setting as opposed to another varies from person to person and for depends on tons of different factors, but why they buy them in the first place is largely the same.

Again, unfounded assumption. The reason they buy them in the first place varies no less than the reasons they buy one as opposed to another.


DM fiat is bad because it isn't believable or consistent. It makes a world less internally consistent.

So when the GM decides there's five guards, rather than four, or any other number, that's not believable or consistent? When they decide it's raining rather than some other form of weather, that's not believable or consistent? When they decide the castle's walls are 50 feet tall, rather than some other height, that's not believable or consistent?

They're all exercises of fiat.


Sure, and D&D isn't one of them. Shadowrun isn't either for that matter. I can't comment on other games because I don't play them.

White Wolf's Adventure, Eden Studio's Buffy, Angel and Armies of Darkness, Evil Hat's Spirit of the Century, Pinnacle's Savage Worlds (I believe Bennies can be used that way), that's just off the top of my head.

Emperor Tippy
2008-11-23, 11:13 AM
Sorry, but that isn't necessary for a game to take place at all. Sure some people might like there to be that much investment of time in the game, but that doesn't make it a precursor for a good game to be able to take place.
I never said it was necessary for a game to take place. It's not. I've played and run great games where no one had any idea about any of the setting and it was all done on the fly. That doesn't mean that those games were particuarly internally consistent or had settings that made any kind of sense.


If reading those 500 pages is a pre-requisite to playing your game, you've just created an artificial hindrance to anyone new getting involved.
*shrug*
Who cares? If a player isn't willing to invest the 3-4 hours needed to learn the setting then I'm not particularly interested in having them in that game.


Look at licensed settings like Star Wars, for example. People play games of it with all levels of pre-existing knowledge and material. A group might have a mixture of people with differing levels of knowledge of the source material (or even none at all). Yet that doesn't mean the only way a game can proceed is for everyone to go off and read/watch/play up to the same level as each other.
And you think star wars makes any kind of sense as a setting? It's less consistent than warhammer 40K.


Not necessarily, and nor does it have to be their preserve alone. Again that's a particular style of play, where "GM runs the world, players run their characters" but it's by no means the only possibility.
*shrug*
If you want the players running the world or the DM running the players characters feel free, but I don't.


Not necessarily. If they are as invested in internal consistency as the GM, there shouldn't be any difference.
That is a big if. And it also assumes that the players know things that the DM doesn't necessarily want them to know.


Personally I rarely use a map in the first place...why do you need to be able to do any of those things from a sheet? Why is the GM the only person able to come up with them?
So your settings are only skin deep? You don't have your cities mapped, meaning that you can change them on a whim to railroad your players however you want. Your important NPC's don't have stats, meaning that you can change them on a whim to railroad your players however you want. Get the picture? You rely on the players sticking with the story and not testing the setting, its deep enough to run the story and plot you have layed out but it isn't deep enough to run anything else.

And the players can come up with the stuff, if you want them too have that knowledge.


What's stopping a player coming up with the name of an important NPC (or indeed introducing them), or outlining the current political dynamics of the thieves' guild, since as a member of it their character would know?
Nothing, if the DM is inclined to let them. But when the PC's get to define important NPC's, political situations, or organizations you will find that they become amazingly conducive to the players needs. Allowing the players to control the world in most games ends badly.


The world can flow from the premise. I remind you of Star Wars once again, where people being familiar with the ideals of the setting (premise) can be enough for them to be consistent, even with completely different levels of knowledge about the setting.
Because they are choosing to stay consistent and not act intelligently half the time. The base premise isn't consistent in a lot of worlds, which means that it all falls apart once the PC's decide to take actions that they logically and rules legally can but that destroy the basic premise and setting (teleportation networks in vanilla D&D comes to mind).


Why should the players "go off the rails" just because they're involved in the world creation?
The players being involved in world creation has nothing to do with them going off the rails. The problem with a skin deep setting like you talk about is that once the players do go off the rails the setting ceases to function.


There's levels of framework. Just because you haven't listed out the major actors and minor ones doesn't mean you've got nothing. Effort that's been put in before a game is still effort. Only difference is where it's coming in.
Yeah, you might have some idea but the PC's don't without asking you. And unless you can spend 30 miniutes to an hour discussing the political situation of the city and are willing to do so then the PC's are likely to take actions that make no sense in terms of the knowledge that their characters should have. A published setting like Eberron provides you with all of that. You can hand the players the books and say "Read these sections". Same with the history of the setting.


Furthermore, distributed effort, where everyone is putting things in is less effort for the GM than having to do it all beforehand. Which can often happen even when they've got pre-existing material to work from.
Sure, but it depends on the players and the setting and the game and the campaign whether or not that works or is even possible.


Again, unfounded assumption. The reason they buy them in the first place varies no less than the reasons they buy one as opposed to another.
No it really doesn't. The 3 main reasons that campaign settings are bought are as follows:
1) Don't want too put the effort into creating a consistent world and history.
2) Buys all the D&D books anyways and they have the D&D label on them
3) Has an interesting idea or story and I want to see how they handled it and steal the parts I like when making my own setting.


So when the GM decides there's five guards, rather than four, or any other number, that's not believable or consistent? When they decide it's raining rather than some other form of weather, that's not believable or consistent? When they decide the castle's walls are 50 feet tall, rather than some other height, that's not believable or consistent?

They're all exercises of fiat.
DM Fiat? Yes. But those are all things that the DM is supposed to and assumed to decide. The DM arbitrarily changing rules, dice rolls, making god's intervene, or creating things that don't make any sense (instead of 5 guards with pistols having 500 with tanks, choppers, and close air support), isn't believable or consistent.

Kiero
2008-11-23, 11:19 AM
No. The willingness of personal dedication is important for everything, not only roleplaying. Whatever you do, it will only be sufficient whenyou are willing to contribute to it. In a hobby that literally live from personal engagement and participation.

Since when was being prepared to spend hours outside of the game reading stuff the only measure of dedication, engagement or participation?


I would say that the problem with roleplaying game is that you will always need a group and can not play alone but you will always need a group of people. And even though I am a very convinced elitist, I never found it difficult to get new people into gaming.

Oh dear. No wonder you're so scornful of casual players.

If anything I'd say the problem is that the expectations of some people as to what a player should be willing to do outside of a game turns the majority of people off. People who might otherwise have been willing to play, but not pre-play.

It's bad enough that most people would simply find the entire exercise of creating your own entertainment deadly dull, without driving off those who aren't interested in reading and writing stuff beforehand.


If you play Monopoly with more dedicated players you are going to lose terribly without a chance. I know, roleplaying games are not as competitive as traditional board games, and there is rarely a clear 'winner'.
Every game or hobby or job etc. will show extreme differences between those who are willing to get into it and those who are not. The normally less important compatitiveness of RPG's covers this partly, but it is bizarre to claim that this would be the one great exception.

I dispute the entire notion that being willing to read stuff outside of the session is the only meaningful measure of dedication.


And completely independent from the gaming style, RPGs live from the participation of players and GM. The actual form of this contribution may differ from style to style - sometimes it is more important to be efective on the gaming side, sometimes personal drama and character development are necessary - but the essential rule is - you get out what you put in. The more people are willing to contribute to the game and to identify with the campaign, their characters or the group, the better is the game. Roleplaying as passive entertainment doesn't work very well if at all.

Reading before the game has nothing to do with participation. What do you call the stuff people are actually doing, while the game is actually in progress? That's participation. And it isn't conditional on doing homework outside of the session. That's the "active" part, not what's going on outside the session.

Different people engage in different ways. I don't buy the idea that if they're not working outside the session, they're not engaged or contributing.


The by far most popular setting/game in Germany consists in total of several thousand pages of texts, including several source books per region, each one around 300 pages, only very little of those filled with crunch. Additionally, every two months a newspaper is published which describes the current events and metaplots in the game. This does not include the two or three adventures published every month. For one setting. I think the total outout is as large as that of WOTC for D&D, but almost all material is coined for the one setting.
The rules are terrible though, but this is the only setting I know which has a least a slight chance to establish the sheer sum of details to create the feeling of versimilitude and identification (besides historical / real world settings).

All that tells me is that there are particular proclivities of the German RPG market, not that there's some generalisation to be drawn here.


There is no such things as too much, when it is presented in the right form.

Course there is.


Why do you say this as if it was a bad thing?

Because in a lot of ways this is a shrinking hobby with massive self-selection bias inherent in the people who are playing, and the new people who are starting out. If you always do what you always did, you'll always get what you always got.

RPGs are competing for an ever more competitive slice of people's entertainment time. For the majority of people, being able to just pick something up without a load of prep is a must. That's one of the reasons why MMOs are so popular, you only have to play them when you're actually playing.


And why should anyone pay more attention to those who are not willing to commit than to those who are wiling to inves in the game? That is completely counterproductive. Again, roleplaying lives from participation and commitment. You - as a GM - want that your players contribute to the game as much as possible so that they have a chance to identify with it (because nothing is as precious as the gains of your own investment) and you want that your players put an effort in the game.

As above, a wider constituency of players is a good thing to shake this stagnant hobby out of it's rut. And once again, I don't agree that preparation is contribution.


I agree wholeheartedly. This is why it is so important that the personal involvement of the players is so important and why you need a base compromise for the setting. Which should be known to everybody.

Preparation isn't involvement. Base compromise isn't dependent on everyone reading a load of stuff, or the setting being big.


You will always need a certain quantity to describe more complex structures. Complex thoughts, social tapestries or even more so moral questions can not be represented in extreme brevity without a massive simplification. A simplification will most surely destroy the complexity or can not show or describe more than just the surface. As soon as you are interested in more complex problem sitiuations, you will need a certain volume to represent it accordingly, and in many cases, the complexity and multidimensional representations are a feature of quality, because almost always the truly interesting or important stuff is in the details, not on the surface.

Again not necessarily. Sometimes the complex is better grasped at the abstract level, rather than losing it's essence in trying to get to a certain level of granularity.


And here, you err so completely that you com close to the truth from the other side. Gaming is nothing but fiction. It is a specific form of fiction even a part from the traditional three forms, and it is normally more focused on the direct experience than the representation and has a certain focus on interaction and participative contribution, but how in the seven hells can you actually believe it is not a part of fiction?

RPGs are active, being created in the moment by the people consuming them.

Films, books, TV shows are passive. The input of the people consuming them is largely irrelevant and has no impact on what has already been produced.


So a text which is only written by the author and for the author for nothing but the process of writing is not fiction? Theatre sessions that include the audience into the play are not fiction?

What's that got to do with anything? Since when was I defining fiction?

Emperor Tippy
2008-11-23, 11:29 AM
Because in a lot of ways this is a shrinking hobby with massive self-selection bias inherent in the people who are playing, and the new people who are starting out. If you always do what you always did, you'll always get what you always got.

RPGs are competing for an ever more competitive slice of people's entertainment time. For the majority of people, being able to just pick something up without a load of prep is a must. That's one of the reasons why MMOs are so popular, you only have to play them when you're actually playing.
Actually the number of people playing RPG's is growing not shrinking.

Kiero
2008-11-23, 11:44 AM
I never said it was necessary for a game to take place. It's not. I've played and run great games where no one had any idea about any of the setting and it was all done on the fly. That doesn't mean that those games were particuarly internally consistent or had settings that made any kind of sense.

So the sum of your personal experiences are all we need to rule that settings on the fly can't be internally consistent?

There's an ancillary point too, so what if they're not internally consistent? If people are enjoying what's happening with them, surely all that matters is that they're consistent enough.


*shrug*
Who cares? If a player isn't willing to invest the 3-4 hours needed to learn the setting then I'm not particularly interested in having them in that game.

So you'll never know whether or not someone who wasn't willing to invest that might actually have otherwise been a good player, who brought a different dynamic to the group.


And you think star wars makes any kind of sense as a setting? It's less consistent than warhammer 40K.

Yes I think it does. It certainly passes the test of "consistent enough" given how many people are willing to play it with a slew of different systems.


*shrug*
If you want the players running the world or the DM running the players characters feel free, but I don't.

It's not a simple either/or. GM and players can be sharing running of the world. Even under the traditional playstyle, GM sometimes does "run the players characters" (mind control etc). Not to say that isn't problematic in it's own way, but it happens.


That is a big if. And it also assumes that the players know things that the DM doesn't necessarily want them to know.

If it's not a given, I really do have to wonder why that group of people is playing together in the first place.

You're assuming the GM has things they don't want the players to know. That's not a given.


So your settings are only skin deep? You don't have your cities mapped, meaning that you can change them on a whim to railroad your players however you want. Your important NPC's don't have stats, meaning that you can change them on a whim to railroad your players however you want. Get the picture? You rely on the players sticking with the story and not testing the setting, its deep enough to run the story and plot you have layed out but it isn't deep enough to run anything else.

And the players can come up with the stuff, if you want them too have that knowledge.

Nope, but nice attempt to label me with the railroad slur. I rely on players engaging with the game as much as I do. It's rare that the layout of a place matters enough that I'd have to change it to accomodate what's going on. I don't play that kind of a game.

Incidentally, my important NPCs have stats much like the players do, but they're not that pivotal to what happens anyway. My game of choice doesn't work that way. I have zero problem with players knowing everything, and don't place much store in "secrets".

As to "the story", it isn't my story. It the whole group's story, it's not like I need to force the players to go along with things that are happening because they're making them happen.


Nothing, if the DM is inclined to let them. But when the PC's get to define important NPC's, political situations, or organizations you will find that they become amazingly conducive to the players needs.

If they do, so what? This is entertainment. I tend to assume my players are mature enough to know what's more fun for them, and that doesn't usually mean having a smooth path with no complications throughout the game.


Allowing the players to control the world in most games ends badly.

Speaks more to the state of "most players" then, rather than some universal truth.


Because they are choosing to stay consistent and not act intelligently half the time. The base premise isn't consistent in a lot of worlds, which means that it all falls apart once the PC's decide to take actions that they logically and rules legally can but that destroy the basic premise and setting (teleportation networks in vanilla D&D comes to mind).

Once again, this isn't a problem with mature players who are actually bought into the game.


The players being involved in world creation has nothing to do with them going off the rails. The problem with a skin deep setting like you talk about is that once the players do go off the rails the setting ceases to function.

Long as everyone is enjoying the game and able to proceed, there is no "going off the rails". You're assuming something has to be there in the first place which doesn't.


Yeah, you might have some idea but the PC's don't without asking you.

Yes they most certainly can without asking me. Hell one of the fundamentals in my favourite game is that players can and do declare things, and they happen there and then. They don't have to play "Mother May I" to get to where they need to go.


And unless you can spend 30 miniutes to an hour discussing the political situation of the city and are willing to do so then the PC's are likely to take actions that make no sense in terms of the knowledge that their characters should have. A published setting like Eberron provides you with all of that. You can hand the players the books and say "Read these sections". Same with the history of the setting.

Again not really. If everyone is comfortable with a shared vision, rather than being "allowed" to tip-toe around the GM's vision, you don't necessarily have an issue at all.


Sure, but it depends on the players and the setting and the game and the campaign whether or not that works or is even possible.

That's the same for every game and every group. Everything "depends on the players" (in totality, including the GM).


No it really doesn't. The 3 main reasons that campaign settings are bought are as follows:
1) Don't want too put the effort into creating a consistent world and history.
2) Buys all the D&D books anyways and they have the D&D label on them
3) Has an interesting idea or story and I want to see how they handled it and steal the parts I like when making my own setting.


Actually the number of people playing RPG's is growing not shrinking.

I'd appreciate a link to the market research you've used to to draw these conclusions from.


DM Fiat? Yes. But those are all things that the DM is supposed to and assumed to decide. The DM arbitrarily changing rules, dice rolls, making god's intervene, or creating things that don't make any sense (instead of 5 guards with pistols having 500 with tanks, choppers, and close air support), isn't believable or consistent.

It's all fiat, you were implying only the abuses are. Fiat is the means by which the game functions, no fiat, no GMing.

Emperor Tippy
2008-11-23, 12:38 PM
So the sum of your personal experiences are all we need to rule that settings on the fly can't be internally consistent?
No. And I never said that an on the fly setting can't be internally consistent. I said it was unlikely.


There's an ancillary point too, so what if they're not internally consistent? If people are enjoying what's happening with them, surely all that matters is that they're consistent enough.
Whether or not the players are enjoying the setting doesn't have anything to do with the internal consistency of the setting.


So you'll never know whether or not someone who wasn't willing to invest that might actually have otherwise been a good player, who brought a different dynamic to the group.
*shrug*
If they aren't willing to invest the few hours required to learn the setting then no, I'm not particuarly interested in gaming with them. Reading is fundamental. They could be the greatest roleplayer of all time but if they need me to explain things that their character should know and would know if they had bothered to read the provided material then I don't want them in the game because they will ruin immersion with the constant questions and corrections needed.


Yes I think it does. It certainly passes the test of "consistent enough" given how many people are willing to play it with a slew of different systems.
How many people play something has nothing to do with how consistent it is.


It's not a simple either/or. GM and players can be sharing running of the world. Even under the traditional playstyle, GM sometimes does "run the players characters" (mind control etc). Not to say that isn't problematic in it's own way, but it happens.
No. The DM is still just running the world and environment. The fact that the PC is now part of the world and the environment is irrelevant. The DM isn't just taking over a character because he feels like having them do something.


If it's not a given, I really do have to wonder why that group of people is playing together in the first place.
Ok, so you tell your players every plot point in advance. All the political cloak and dagger going on in the setting. All of the favors owed that NPC's have floating around. Where the secret entrances are to the enemy base. And all those other ancillary details that they and their characters have no reason at all to know?


You're assuming the GM has things they don't want the players to know. That's not a given.
Go play Shadowrun and give the players the maps to ever mission in advance with no leg work. That's essentially what you are saying the DM/GM should do.


Nope, but nice attempt to label me with the railroad slur. I rely on players engaging with the game as much as I do. It's rare that the layout of a place matters enough that I'd have to change it to accomodate what's going on. I don't play that kind of a game.
The layout matters in a ton of games. Those where it doesn't matter are largely free form. As for the railroad slur, could my character decide that adventuring is too risky so he is going to just go and set up his teleporation network and take over the world inside a month that way? Or would you start throwing up all kinds of roadblocks and use DM fiat to stop me?


As to "the story", it isn't my story. It the whole group's story, it's not like I need to force the players to go along with things that are happening because they're making them happen.
Good for them. And if you wanted to play, in a starwars game, a mission to sneak into the death star and plant a bomb but instead the players decide that they want to go and hijack an ISD and become pirates you are ready to run with it and let them? You have all the relevant rules and fluff to let them run around as pirates?


Speaks more to the state of "most players" then, rather than some universal truth.
You say you want to make it simpler for people to get into RPG's. IF that's the state of most players then you think you would want to raise the bar for admission. I'll take 2 good players over 5 mediocre players any time.


Once again, this isn't a problem with mature players who are actually bought into the game.
If by mature you mean willing to go along with whatever story you want to tell or make happen.


Long as everyone is enjoying the game and able to proceed, there is no "going off the rails". You're assuming something has to be there in the first place which doesn't.
If the world ceases to function for whatever reason then the game being able to proceed is not a given. And if you don't have rails at all then you need a fully fleshed out world (or to be able to create a world on the fly).


Yes they most certainly can without asking me. Hell one of the fundamentals in my favourite game is that players can and do declare things, and they happen there and then. They don't have to play "Mother May I" to get to where they need to go.
Good for you. Not a system that I'm interested in. And doesn't work with lots of other systems.


Again not really. If everyone is comfortable with a shared vision, rather than being "allowed" to tip-toe around the GM's vision, you don't necessarily have an issue at all.
Who said the DM had a vision? The DM has a world. The players can do whatever they want in that world. At least ideally.


I'd appreciate a link to the market research you've used to to draw these conclusions from.
You brought it up first. Provide market research showing that RPG's are loosing players.


It's all fiat, you were implying only the abuses are. Fiat is the means by which the game functions, no fiat, no GMing.
Some things are assumed to be the province of the DM. Some things aren't. Making random gods appear to save the PC's is one of those "not the province of the DM" things.

Satyr
2008-11-23, 01:47 PM
Since when was being prepared to spend hours outside of the game reading stuff the only measure of dedication, engagement or participation?

It is preparation, and sometimes necessary to bind in the character in the gaming world. Sometimes one of the most important objectives of a gaming group is targeted on the plausible presentation of the gaming world and in those campaigns it is actually important that the background of the characters are based on a mutually accepted background, including many, many details.


It's bad enough that most people would simply find the entire exercise of creating your own entertainment deadly dull, without driving off those who aren't interested in reading and writing stuff beforehand.

That is why I use very easy accessable games based on mostly known backgrounds, most often pseudohistorical ones like the one above. Sure, when you have virgin brain gamers in the group the expections towards those are not as high as towards more experienced players, that goes without saying. But in the long run, I expect the same from every player.


I dispute the entire notion that being willing to read stuff outside of the session is the only meaningful measure of dedication.

I never said that is the only way and it is certainly no alternative to direct participation in the gaming sessions. Which is likewise no repalcement for sufficient preparation. There are many aspects of dedication to a game, hich are all important.


Reading before the game has nothing to do with participation. What do you call the stuff people are actually doing, while the game is actually in progress? That's participation. And it isn't conditional on doing homework outside of the session. That's the "active" part, not what's going on outside the session.

Okay, it is dedication, not participation. Still, knowing the background is at least as important as knowing the rules and breaking the game's versimilitude through lack of knowledge or sheer ignorance can just be extremely annoying.


Course there is.
You can do better than that. Based on the assumption that the representation is built modular and written in a style that through the reading, constantly new plot and character hooks clangto the reader's mind and those who are interested in doing so can read for hours and hours and those who are not can just read the summaries and will feel the loss in the game. Now, where is the problem?


Because in a lot of ways this is a shrinking hobby with massive self-selection bias inherent in the people who are playing, and the new people who are starting out. If you always do what you always did, you'll always get what you always got.

Certainly, you need young blood. But watering the standards is certainly the wrong way because quality in the gamers is more important than the quantity. No gaming is still better than no gaming. And driving away the older players through simplification is not helpful either.


RPGs are competing for an ever more competitive slice of people's entertainment time. For the majority of people, being able to just pick something up without a load of prep is a must. That's one of the reasons why MMOs are so popular, you only have to play them when you're actually playing.

RPGs sshould target another, more intellectual audience. You will rarely be able to compete with computer games etc. for the broad masses, but for the more intellectual and thoughtful minority, it would work much better.


As above, a wider constituency of players is a good thing to shake this stagnant hobby out of it's rut.

But lowering the standards will certainly only watering down the contetns and the quality of the game. And while new people certainly bring new ideas, it is normally the established elite that has the skills and knowledge to create captivating and high quality contents and rules. One great idea is normally much more useful than two hundred ordinary ones.


RPGs are active, being created in the moment by the people consuming them.

Only if you ignore the whole creation process, which is a very one-sided perspective.


Films, books, TV shows are passive. The input of the people consuming them is largely irrelevant and has no impact on what has already been produced.

Only if you exclude the creative process behind the final product. Which does not work, especially when you want to talk about setting creation.


What's that got to do with anything? Since when was I defining fiction?

You seem to define it enough to exclude certain artforms such as RPG's. If you can exclude one medium so strictly you seem to have a personal definition. Also when I think that this definition is wrong.

rayne_dragon
2008-11-23, 02:14 PM
Wow, lot's of debating.... Anyways, this is a setting I've meant to run for ages.

Title: The Ancients' World

Genre: High Fantasy, High Magic Sword and Sorcery

Inspiration: Atlantis, The Kingdom of Zeal from Chrono Trigger, mythology in general

Outline: The basic idea is that all the myths about an advanced civilization before some cataclysm are true. This world of the ancients was an enlightened magical society spanning many worlds with many species (ever wonder why there are so many different sentient species on so many fantasy worlds?) and monsters. Many people have an aptitude for powerful magic while gods and their servants mingle with mortals. The difference between demons and angels exists, but is as yet unknown to any.

But this age of magic, peace and prosperity is ending. Large populations of people are becomming more greedy and selfish, seeking to exploit their fellows. In their quest for knowledge some mages have discovered arts best forgotten and abuse them for their own power. Forces outside of civilization have brought their attentions upon the worlds and seek to suck the very life essence from them. As pressures from within and without come to bear on each world, they each fall, one by one, into isolation, separated by their own disasters.

What are the key tropes or conventions?:
- protagonists are larger than life heroes
- the world runs on magic (teleporters are fairly common, traveling from one world to another is similar to taking a plane between two cities and learning magic is as simple as attending a university for it)
- the good old days really were good (people are getting less nice as time progresses)
- if there's a myth of it, it exists somewhere
- the worlds are rich (currency is often measured in gemstones rather than coins)
- the worlds are doomed, although the heroes can avert some disasters

Who are the PCs?:
The PCs might classical heroes (similar to Jason, Hercules or Gilgamesh), powerful wizards, or even creatures like celestials and dragons. If they're good they fight against the forces of decay trying to preserve society. If they're evil, they're trying to get as much wealth and power as they can without being screwed by other villains.

The players may also play characters sent by magic to explore new worlds and establish a connection with them if they find intelligent life.

Knaight
2008-11-23, 02:14 PM
So your settings are only skin deep? You don't have your cities mapped, meaning that you can change them on a whim to railroad your players however you want. Your important NPC's don't have stats, meaning that you can change them on a whim to railroad your players however you want. Get the picture? You rely on the players sticking with the story and not testing the setting, its deep enough to run the story and plot you have layed out but it isn't deep enough to run anything else.

Or you can decide not to change them on a whim, and just give a consistent description because you know where everything in, the NPC's get stats made when they are introduced, and stay that way because you decide not to change them all the time. It is fully possible to run a deep setting with little to no prep time, assuming that you put a bit of thought into it, and don't use some sort of cripplingly slow setting. Plus NPC stats are liable to change anyways as the NPCs advance in the world, when Epsilon(a robot) downloads a few new combat programs and gets funded by a nano technology company to better fight the players in the future the stats are going to change.

On the player input systems-Spirit of the Century, which I actually know about, the only things the players are going to define, by spending extremely important points in the game, are minor details that can be attributed to coincidence. The guard had a bad dream the night before, and is twitchy, and so accidentally, while semi asleep, forgets to restock ammunition for a turret or gun, weather changes suddenly and helpfully, the plane chasing you had a mistake in it go through checking because the person checking it had other things on their mind at the time, etc. What you don't have the capability to do is realign cities and create massive things.

Piedmon_Sama
2008-11-23, 03:52 PM
Title: People title their campaigns? I wasn't aware of this. I'd call it 'the Aurrex game' I guess.

Genre(s): High/Heroic Fantasy, Political Intrigue, War, Steampunk/Magitech

Inspiration(s): Warhammer Fantasy Battles, Warcraft, Full Metal Alchemist (in a VERY oblique way), the history of Late Medieval/Renaissance Europe to some extent.

Outline: This setting can stand on its own (in which case there are only two human nations important to the meta-plot) or quite easily be plugged into a preexisting setting (in which case the two new nations can just be drawn in on the map).

It takes place 200 years after the first appearance of Aurrex, an ancient Gold Dragon, more commonly known these days as The God-Dragon, and the calendar is set at 200 A.D (Aera Draconis... wooi'msoclever). When Aurrex first appeared, mankind was divided into five kingdoms, each with a number of royal families who had engaged in feuds and power struggles for generations. They ignored the pleadings of the Gods' Temples and the sufferings of their people (or so the Official Histories go) and the great dragon Aurrex swooped down to replace them. Settling over the great city of Whitespire (which gave its name to the largest and richest of the five kingdoms), Aurrex first declared that he was taking over the lands of man for their own good, and then with his powerful magic created an abundance of food and water for all the people to enjoy.

The supporters of the five monarchies were overwhelmed by all the common folk, who as one welcomed the Great God-Dragon with open arms (again, according to Official History). In short order, Aurrex unified all five kingdoms of man and declared the birth of the Gold Dragon Empire (and its new calendar was set to 1 A.D.) But almost immediately, there came dissent.

Spread throughout the Five Kingdoms were seven great Mage Academies, where the arcane secrets passed to man from the long-vanished Elven race were taught, the infinite bounds of the multiverse explored and the raw forces of nature and matter wielded. The Archmagus of each Academy met shortly after Aurrex's takeover, and agreed that something must be done. With the greater part of their students, the Seven Archmagi prepared a grand expedition to the wild east. The dispossessed noble families, bereft of their powers and lands but still in possession of numerous liquid assets, funded the expedition and joined it along with thousands of followers. The expedition soon became an alarmingly large exodus, and many worried the new Empire would fall apart with such a loss--but the Gold Dragon, already constructing a new palace in Whitespire the size of a small city, wasn't bothered.

The enormous exodus passed through over 100 miles of hills, fields and glades before coming to the edge of the continent's largest continuous tree-stand, a forest marked on maps as The Endless. What lay on the eastern side was unknown: it was literally the edge of the known world. Temporarily setting up a sprawling camp on its edge, the pilgrims sent began sending expeditions into the forest, and eventually ideal spots were routed. It was decided each of the Archmagi would take some followers and there found a new settlement. However, the old ways would not be continued (none of the Archmagi were fans of the old nobility); each city would be a free Republic, and they would be bound together only in a loose confederacy. Thus was born a new nation, in the same year as the Gold Dragon Empire. It was called the Seven City Alliance.

It was rough going at first, as The Endless turned out to be home to a race of small but ferocious humanoids that came to be called Demigoblins (after their more well-known cousins, the Hobgoblins). Feeling the humans were barging in on their home and stripping away the very forest to build their ugly, smoking cities (in fairness this was perfectly true) the Demigoblins engaged in brutal raids from the back of their intelligent Worgs, led by strange beings with formidable mental power called "Blues." Nevertheless, the Demigoblins couldn't hope to win and were increasingly pushed back into the east, until, after several massacres of their dwindling encampments, they surrendered fully to the humans. Today Demigoblins are a relatively tolerated part of Alliance society, allowed to retain their culture and practice their Druidic rites so long as they keep to their enclosures. Ultimately, the Alliance prospered: the Free Republics kept their fingers strictly out of commerce so much as possible, and the tradeguilds, banks and workshops that sprung up in the town flourished. The Archmagi themselves were rarely seen; having founded new Academies, they were busy training up a new generation of Magi to protect the Alliance. In the end, the society they created was like those who built it: ambitious, innovative, and utterly ruthless. Although they weren't allowed to resume sola regna, the old noble families of the Five Kingdoms set themselves up in grand style and became influential in business and politics; often those who headed the tradeguilds and those who sat on City Councils were the same people, and able to trace their blood back to the kings of the old days. The mercantile families who made up the noveau rich treated the underclasses no better, and as production stepped up so did exploitation. Ironically, the free workers of the Republic were treated much worse than their ancestors had been as serfs and bonded men.

Meanwhile, the Gold Dragon Empire had flourished as well. Over the years, as Aurrex continued to provide bountiful harvests and craft beautiful new homes for everyone with his magic, the people came to see him as godsent, if not a god himself. Aurrex did nothing to quell these rumors, and a new Temple started up, the Cult of the Gold Dragon. Simultaneously, attendance of the old Temples and devotion to the old gods began to recede. One by one, the Priesthoods of the old faiths moved their sees out east, joining the clamoring mix of factions within the Alliance. The Imperial citizens cared little at this point, however; the Gold Dragon Temple was firmly established as the Empire's official religion, and a new order--the Knights of the Golden Scale--created to act as police force and elite soldiery of Aurrex's Empire. The Gold Dragon realized he would need loyal administrators to oversee the realms outside Whitespire, and so the Priestesses of the cult were awarded the honor of bearing him powerful Half-Dragon sons to be his satraps. An important facet of the new society was the ability of the Knights of the Golden Scale to root out evil with intrinsic magic, making them almost perfect police. Any criminals caught by the government, instead of being expensively jailed, underwent a reform program using a spell introduced by Aurrex, sanctify the wicked. After a year of rehabilitation, criminals never failed to be productive and enthusiastic proponents of the new order.

War between the states was inevitable, and in 40 A.D. it broke. Aurrex had baldly declared shortly after his ascension that all the land from the western sea to the edge of The Endless was his domain. Ignoring this command, the Alliance had begun founding new farming villages out in the pastoral fields west of the forest, which the Empire had never so much as placed a fort in. The Alliance also began rapidly building a great stone barrier, and the merchants heavily armed their trade fleets, wisely betting war would soon break--and welcoming it, for the nations had been looking for any excuse to tear at each other since both were founded. Sure enough, Aurrex founded a grand army, headed by his Knights of the Golden Scale, backed by Priests and Wizards and led by his four Half-Dragon sons.

The war brought the Alliance to the edge of collapse. They found themselves badly outnumbered (even after generations the Alliance barely had 1/5th the Empire's population), outgunned and outfought (the Empire had raised generations of fanatically loyal and chivalrous troops, whereas Alliance soldiers tended to be mercenary at best). In short order, the Empire burned the Alliance's fleet, and captured five of the Seven Cities. (Once the war reached The Endless Forest, the Demigoblins attacked both factions enthusiastically). Eventually, however, the ingenious Alliance general Frederick Felheim II came to command, and brilliantly exploited the rivalry between the four brothers who led Aurrex's army. They were goaded into literally racing their four armies against each other to reach battle first, each hungry for glory. Felheim met them in a massive stone quarry and slaughtered half the Imperial Army and two of the dragon's sons. The other two tried to bunker down in the cities they had captured, but were quickly overwhelmed. A third brother died, and the last had to sign a peace treaty under humiliating terms. The last and youngest brother immolated himself alive upon his return to the homeland.

Enraged by his sons' deaths, Aurrex at last came on his very own to the Alliance realm. He utterly leveled one of their cities, slaughtering thousands of troops in his rage, until at last the two still-living Archmagi reappeared from their long exile (the other five had died by age or accident), and engaged the Dragon. A long battle ensued, costing both mages their lives but grievously wounding the Gold Dragon. He flew home and went crashing into his palace, marking the Gold Dragon's last public appearance. Aurrex has (supposedly) sat in his throne-hall for the last 160 years: some say he has ascended to true godhood and no longer goes among mortals. A few make blasphemous whispers and say that in his sorrow and desperation, he turned to dark magics and became a Dracolich. And some japers suggest Aurrex simply died of his wounds, and his "faithful servants" have been running things in his name ever since.

Back in the Alliance, Frederick Felheim was quick to take central stage in reconstruction. The war that made his career is known as The Great Patriotic War in Alliance parlance, while the Imperial Histories dissmissively call it "The Eastern Expedition." Felheim, even as all the land was flush with victory, warned his people that "seditious and treasonous persons" had undoubtedly allowed the Empire to go so far as they did, and that these malefactors still lurked hidden amongst the populace. For the safety of all, Felheim took up the burden of leadership "for a time, until this crisis is ended." He took the special title of Governor General, and created a new troupe called the Governor's Guard. During his life, he finalized a highway amongst the towns, rebuilt the trade-fleets bigger and better, and instituted some protections for the poor working-class, as well as formally recognizing the pantheon of the old temples as the Alliance's state religion. When Felheim finally died after 40 years as first citizen, the Alliance was more powerful and industrialized, but immediately the centralizing reforms he made were peeled back and it returned to a quasi-anarchic confederacy.

In the 160 years since the war, things have somewhat normalized between the Empire and the Alliance. Although both cultures find the others' cherished ideals mortally repugnant, they have teamed up to combat greater evils--the subterranean Hobgoblin Empire, the Undead Armies of the Lich Warlord Heinrich Javier, the bizarre Cult of the Star-Children and their Illithid masters. Some trade now goes on, and their police forces--the Order of the Golden Scale, and the Arcane Watch (Wizards and Spellswords equivalent to Federal Marshals in their decentralized land) prefer to work together than fight. Nevertheless, for many in both countries, the other human nation is a mortal enemy and it seems always like a single spark could light the fire once more.

~*~

This is the most basic, truncated version of the setting backstory (for which I wrote a massive timeline, it's sadly on my old computer) I could manage. I left out numerous other features---the Saga of Szigizgrt, Warrior-Prince of the Hobgoblins, of the coming of the Gnomes (hardened refugees from another dimension, they settled with the Dwarf Kingdom and introduced guns, steam engines and other gadgets to the setting), of the Trade-Wars between the Dwarves and the Alliance, the longrunning battle with the necromantic Javier family (one of the old noble houses), the Alliance trade-fleet making first contact with the Isle of the Elder-Folk (Elves). This setting was basically the first time I just cracked open all the various Monster Manuals and spell lists and let myself go, instead of trying to do D20 History 101, and it was tons of fun to write. XD

What are the key tropes or conventions?: Uh, my trope-knowledge is hardly encyclopedic. I'll just speak to the central theme of the setting.

What I tried to do when I wrote my timeline was make it so both the Alliance and Empire have their flaws and their virtues. Yes, the Empire is an invasive theocracy with Orwellian overtones, but its footsoldiers also regularly put their lives on the line to keep the commoners safe. They battle monstrous armies and magical threats, and do whatever is necessary to keep the people safe, because they genuinely want to make the world a better place. In contrast, the Alliance might look on paper like the more laudable society, but it's really a cutthroat, almost anarchic nation where you're clever and quick or you're exploited at best. This is not to say that the Alliance is utterly without heroes, but it's much tougher to stay idealistic in that land (and they usually have a massive cultural bias against "Knight in Shining Armor" types, almost an indoctrinated cynicism).

In the end, it's a world where there is no perfect solution (nor should there be--I may enjoy fantasy, but not quite that much.) Both nations have their laudable ideals, but both fall far short and perhaps always will.

Who are the PCs?: This world is looked at from a distinctively human perspective. Nevertheless, all the following races are possible: Human, Dwarf, Orc (Orcs in this setting are mercenaries who will be found in the armies of literally every major faction), Shara-Kim (a more intelligent and 'civilized' sub-breed of Orc, they live in the Dwarven realm and act as liaisons to the Orc tribes), Ghoul (the Javier family founded a literal City of the Dead, using the Libris Mortis book you could certainly be a Ghoul adventurer), Gnome, Wood Elf and Grey Elf (the two peoples represent the two differing ways of Elven life and are the only Elf races in this setting), Hobgoblin (they are a big enough power at this point that the humans just have to deal with them), Kobold (enslaved by the Hobgoblins, a free faction has allied with the Dwarves who are also seeing their Kingdom eaten up by the Hobgoblin advance), Demigoblin (standard goblins, they're mostly accepted by the Alliance, which is too lassez faire to encourage racism), and Warforged (the Gnomes built them as a Protector Race after the loss of their original world).

As you can tell from that overlong historical summary, politics matter a lot in this world. Nevertheless, the year 200 A.D. sees a relatively calm period when the continent's three biggest powers (Imperial, Alliance, Hobgoblin) are at peace (Hobs/Orcs are still fighting Dwarves/Gnomes/Warforged/Orcs, though.) A Hobgoblin Assassin, an Imperial Knight (a minor order, or perhaps one of the Paladins of the Golden Scale), an Alliance Wizard and a Gnome engineer could all certainly work together, though things would be tense to say the least. Almost any archetype can fit in in either nation: just because the Alliance dislikes traditional knights doesn't mean an eccentric nobleman can't buy a suit of armor and ride around town on a white charger if he wants to. Similarly, even with the strict controls, the Empire has a small underworld if you really want to be a Rogue in Whitespire (much more dangerous than in Redbrick, where the mob effectively has its own public lobby.)

Perhaps in brief, the most iconic party to show off this setting would be....
-A Paladin O.G.S of the Empire
-A "Merchant Adventurer" (Rogue or perhaps Rogue/Fighter) of the Alliance
-A Wizard of the Arcane Watch, focused in Divination and obsessed with routing out criminals
-One "exotic" character, from one of the inhuman factions.... a Gnome artificer, Orc Barbarian, Dwarf Fighter or Hobgoblin Knight could all be used.

I see part of the challenge of this setting being in characters from the different factions getting over politics and coming to see each other as trustworthy comrades (maybe even friends!) Perhaps over time, the Paladin might admit his Order goes too far trying to protect people, while the Alliance Merchant comes to appreciate the genuine goodwill and altruism that holds the Empire together.

Inyssius Tor
2008-11-23, 04:10 PM
Er, I would have to use six-point Times New Roman to just barely fit that into one page, and even then I would have to reduce the margins to .25 inches each. I think you might possibly be missing the point just a little, here. :smalltongue:

Piedmon_Sama
2008-11-23, 04:12 PM
I guess I should have checked it while I was writing, sorry. U_U

I'll try to parse down the post.

Kiero
2008-11-23, 09:15 PM
No. And I never said that an on the fly setting can't be internally consistent. I said it was unlikely.

Whether or not the players are enjoying the setting doesn't have anything to do with the internal consistency of the setting.

It's vitally important in assessing what level of internal consistency actually matters to the players. Not everyone prioritises it at the top concern.


*shrug*
If they aren't willing to invest the few hours required to learn the setting then no, I'm not particuarly interested in gaming with them. Reading is fundamental. They could be the greatest roleplayer of all time but if they need me to explain things that their character should know and would know if they had bothered to read the provided material then I don't want them in the game because they will ruin immersion with the constant questions and corrections needed.

If that's how you roll.


How many people play something has nothing to do with how consistent it is.

As above, it has everything to do with whether or not consistency is that big a deal.


No. The DM is still just running the world and environment. The fact that the PC is now part of the world and the environment is irrelevant. The DM isn't just taking over a character because he feels like having them do something.

It means the basics are not inviolable. There are times when the GM takes over a character. So why's it such a big deal that there might be times when a player can run a part of the world?


Ok, so you tell your players every plot point in advance. All the political cloak and dagger going on in the setting. All of the favors owed that NPC's have floating around. Where the secret entrances are to the enemy base. And all those other ancillary details that they and their characters have no reason at all to know?

Put words in my mouth, I'm sure it's easier than actually responding to what I said.


Go play Shadowrun and give the players the maps to ever mission in advance with no leg work. That's essentially what you are saying the DM/GM should do.

I've had the misfortune to play Shadowrun before. Not something I'd care to repeat. Also teaches players some pretty bad habits with regards to over-planning, as well as an unnecessarily adversarial view of how player and GM interact. It really becomes a problem when they take those to other games and settings. Had trouble playing alongside a group locked in the Shadowrun mindset when playing a game of There Is No Spoon (which is a rules-light game set in The Matrix).


The layout matters in a ton of games. Those where it doesn't matter are largely free form. As for the railroad slur, could my character decide that adventuring is too risky so he is going to just go and set up his teleporation network and take over the world inside a month that way? Or would you start throwing up all kinds of roadblocks and use DM fiat to stop me?

Why is it either/or? I don't go in for this passive-aggressive "make players do things through the auspices of the game world". I break out of the game and say "dude, what's going on? How is this fun for everyone sitting around the table with you to try and deliberately play against type?"

Cos at the end of the day what matters is that there are several human beings sitting around the table with expectations and wants. Part of the GM's role is reconciling all those things so everyone can enjoy themselves.

Why waste time and effort trying to achieve through the game, what can be achieved much faster and more directly by simply having a conversation with the player?


Good for them. And if you wanted to play, in a starwars game, a mission to sneak into the death star and plant a bomb but instead the players decide that they want to go and hijack an ISD and become pirates you are ready to run with it and let them? You have all the relevant rules and fluff to let them run around as pirates?

Assuming we suddenly hit this kind of expectation-break, same again, stop the game there and then and talk it out.

As for "relevant rules and fluff" I'm making stuff up just the same, so what difference does it make? You're assuming levels of preparation I never make for any game I run.


You say you want to make it simpler for people to get into RPG's. IF that's the state of most players then you think you would want to raise the bar for admission. I'll take 2 good players over 5 mediocre players any time.

Two players is a pretty small and uninteresting group for me. I'll take four with a mix of "good" and "mediocre" if they're all at least interested in making the game fun for everyone.

Hell, I'll take mediocre if that doesn't come with a massive sense of entitlement and wanting their own fun at the exclusion of everyone else just because they think they're "good".


If by mature you mean willing to go along with whatever story you want to tell or make happen.

Because that's exactly what I said. If you want to argue with yourself, be my guest.


If the world ceases to function for whatever reason then the game being able to proceed is not a given. And if you don't have rails at all then you need a fully fleshed out world (or to be able to create a world on the fly).

Again with the either/ors. What a blinkered world you must live in. I can and have created worlds on the fly, using some outline material at the beginning and whatever ideas the players and I (not I alone) come up with.


Good for you. Not a system that I'm interested in. And doesn't work with lots of other systems.

Can work with some other systems, there's quite a few that operate on the "Yes, but" or "Say Yes" principle. Where the idea is that the GM doesn't simply shut down everything the players come up with, but rather works to incorporate anything that isn't completely contradictory in what's been going on.


Who said the DM had a vision? The DM has a world. The players can do whatever they want in that world. At least ideally.

Ideally if you are playing in a particular style of play. That's what it comes down to; you seem to be looking at this as immersion and versimilitude are king, everything else secondary.


You brought it up first. Provide market research showing that RPG's are loosing players.

Fair enough, I've got nothing, you've got nothing.


Some things are assumed to be the province of the DM. Some things aren't. Making random gods appear to save the PC's is one of those "not the province of the DM" things.

Those "things" are entirely down to whatever the group agrees. Making random gods appear to save the PCs might be one of those things, if that's what the people playing are into.

Emperor Tippy
2008-11-23, 09:23 PM
Fair enough, I've got nothing, you've got nothing.
I don't have anything that's public domain. I have some market research that I got as part of a due diligence package but that's covered under an NDA.

I'll respond to the rest of your post later.

Kiero
2008-11-23, 09:46 PM
It is preparation, and sometimes necessary to bind in the character in the gaming world. Sometimes one of the most important objectives of a gaming group is targeted on the plausible presentation of the gaming world and in those campaigns it is actually important that the background of the characters are based on a mutually accepted background, including many, many details.

And sometimes it isn't necessary. Indeed it depends entirely on the preferences of the group in question. As I was saying to Tippy, "plausible presentation" matters only as much as the group cares about it.


That is why I use very easy accessable games based on mostly known backgrounds, most often pseudohistorical ones like the one above. Sure, when you have virgin brain gamers in the group the expections towards those are not as high as towards more experienced players, that goes without saying. But in the long run, I expect the same from every player.

What you consider "easy accessable" and what someone else might could be two different things. Experienced players aren't necessarily better about being willing to learn stuff than newbies.


I never said that is the only way and it is certainly no alternative to direct participation in the gaming sessions. Which is likewise no repalcement for sufficient preparation. There are many aspects of dedication to a game, hich are all important.

No, they vary in importance depending on the people playing. Preparation may not be important at all. If we're playing a string of one-shots, for example, then preparation may be irrelevant.


Okay, it is dedication, not participation. Still, knowing the background is at least as important as knowing the rules and breaking the game's versimilitude through lack of knowledge or sheer ignorance can just be extremely annoying.

If the sanctity of the game's versimilitude is important. It's not universally so. If you're playing a "beer and pretzels" type game, it probably doesn't matter.


You can do better than that. Based on the assumption that the representation is built modular and written in a style that through the reading, constantly new plot and character hooks clangto the reader's mind and those who are interested in doing so can read for hours and hours and those who are not can just read the summaries and will feel the loss in the game. Now, where is the problem?

Too long is too long. I won't tend to read more than 50 pages in a go. Most RPG books are written in the dry, dull manner of textbooks which isn't conducive to lengthy periods of reading.

If you can't convey a setting in the briefest of summaries, then either you don't know what the essence of it is well enough, or it isn't evocative enough to be able to communicate that. Length is not a signifier of quality. Brevity has it's own kind of elegance.


Certainly, you need young blood. But watering the standards is certainly the wrong way because quality in the gamers is more important than the quantity. No gaming is still better than no gaming. And driving away the older players through simplification is not helpful either.

"Watering down the standards"? We're talking about games of make-believe, collective delusions for adults, doing the kind of thing that is normally the preserve of children.

Not only that, it isn't even younger games who tend to prefer simpler games, it's usually older people with a lot less time to spend prepping between games. Kids usually don't have busy lives with many priorities to sort through that all compete for entertainment time. Younger minds are also usually a lot more receptive to complexity.


RPGs sshould target another, more intellectual audience. You will rarely be able to compete with computer games etc. for the broad masses, but for the more intellectual and thoughtful minority, it would work much better.

Good luck on interesting that group in roleplaying.


But lowering the standards will certainly only watering down the contetns and the quality of the game. And while new people certainly bring new ideas, it is normally the established elite that has the skills and knowledge to create captivating and high quality contents and rules. One great idea is normally much more useful than two hundred ordinary ones.

Again, I think the idea of standards of make-believe is laughable.

And in the process of coming up with ideas, it's a rarity for one golden nugget to materialise without having to sift through two hundred ordinary ideas.


Only if you ignore the whole creation process, which is a very one-sided perspective.

Reading RPG books is not playing them. The play is what matters.


Only if you exclude the creative process behind the final product. Which does not work, especially when you want to talk about setting creation.

Generally the people watching a film, or reading a book have no input at any stage of the "creative process". Which makes any consideration of that process pretty much irrelevant. Unlike in an RPG.


You seem to define it enough to exclude certain artforms such as RPG's. If you can exclude one medium so strictly you seem to have a personal definition. Also when I think that this definition is wrong.

RPGs as artform now. Funny.

Lappy9000
2008-11-23, 09:51 PM
So, Kiero, how do you feel in regards to setting with Adventurer's Guides and the like?

Eberron is an example, with the Campaign Setting book being chock-full of fluff, and the (albeit overpriced) Adventurer's Guide that boils down everything into smaller, easy-to-read paragraphs with plenty of graphics.

However, this probably isn't the approach for published setting, 'cause it can come off as money-grubbing since the Adventurer's Guide or whatever it's called obviously doesn't add in any new content.

The best solution may be for the DM to boil down a setting into a similar format for the interest of the players. If the players show interest in the world and want more information regarding the world, it's all there, but it isn't forced upon anyone.

Emperor Tippy
2008-11-23, 10:06 PM
Good luck on interesting that group in roleplaying.
It's actually the primary demographic. Nerds are the target demographic for tabletop RPG's.

The Glyphstone
2008-11-23, 10:40 PM
Why should anyone except the DM, and even then not always the DM, be required to know everything there is about a campaign setting? Use the big bloated granddaddy of all giant campaign settings, Forgotten Realms, as an example. I'm perfectly capable and very happy running or playing, say, a low-level game about a group of thieves in Amn or Waterdeep, and don't have to care one bit about what's going on in Neverwinter or Thay. If I'm a player, it could be quite in-character for me to not actually know anything concrete about those far-away places. As the DM, if the campaign will never go to those places, you don't need to study them beforehand - and if it looks like they do, you can read up on the relevant portions without having to cram in the entireity of the setting into your notes.

ClericofPhwarrr
2008-11-23, 11:04 PM
For most people, the primary purpose of RPGs is to have fun. Consistency within the game world, while nice to have, is not a requirement unless it interferes with fun (for most people; Tippy appears to be an exception--or perhaps he plays RPGs solely to make stories). If the players are having fun, you are succeeding in your role as GM.

I've read both sides of the argument, and Kiero has convinced me his side is correct. I'd like to point out that the presence or absence of railroading is completely unrelated to the level of internal consistency a setting has.


And if you wanted to play, in a starwars game, a mission to sneak into the death star and plant a bomb but instead the players decide that they want to go and hijack an ISD and become pirates you are ready to run with it and let them? You have all the relevant rules and fluff to let them run around as pirates?

Yes. In a "shallow" setting, I don't need to pull out another rulebook or three and read them before adapting to a different plotline. I might give a 5-10 minute smoke break while I prep a few possible encounters (if I feel its needed, which I probably wouldn't). In fact, the idea that you need a slew of additional rules and fluff for your example seems preposterous.

Piedmon_Sama
2008-11-24, 12:37 AM
Yeah, Tippy, I don't know what your games are like but they honestly sound a lot more involved than what my friends and I go with, and I'm someone who habitually makes settings that will be way more detailed than necessary. I don't see the point of this discussion in the first place, since this is something totally subjective: some groups will want to work through numerous details about their characters and the setting before the first die is rolled, others will just pick a race/class combo they like and get going, and most will fall somewhere between the two extremes. None of these methods is "lesser" than the other: is a player who spends a week combing books for the perfect feat combo and two minutes thinking of a backstory "more of a player" than one who spends that time writing a novella about his character's history, his parents', and the town they live in? It seems like a really stupid question to me in the first place.

This doesn't seem like something you need to draw up in iron contracts beforehand, when common sense will do nicely: obviously you shouldn't let your players write the backstory of their whole native kingdom if they're just doing it to set themselves up as heir to the throne with 50 10th-level bodyguards, but it seems kind of overbearing as DM to say "no, you have to be from this village in this economic bracket and so forth" unless the players are all cool with it beforehand.

Samurai Jill
2008-11-24, 02:26 AM
It's actually the primary demographic. Nerds are the target demographic for tabletop RPG's.
Ah, but is that a case of cause or effect?- I mean, do we only target nerds because role-playing is niche, or is role-playing niche because we only target nerds? :smallsmile:

I guess it all depends on what you want. If you're all simulationists intent on exploring setting, then detail is fine. If you're narrativists, then the setting exists purely as fuel for addressing premise, in which case a glut of detail can be suffocating as it limits freedom of action (particularly, it seems, when combined with detailed pre-play character creation.) Gamists- well, pure gamists just want a challenge, so beyond a given point you should conserve effort for detailed monster listings.

I mean, personally I view predefined details in a setting as desireable only to the extent that the content is superior to what I can come up with on-the-fly, and on a large scale broad overview level, that can be 'pretty damn often'. But the more detail you cram in on a smaller and smaller scale, the less likely it becomes that the material will fit the changing needs of a particular playing group. If your needs don't change, then you won't have a problem, but guaranteeing this actually requires a highly specific style of play.

At any rate, I think Kiero's challenge serves a useful function even if you plan to write a highly detailed setting- it forces you to summarise your 'campaign premise' in a compelling fashion, thus providing a coherent scaffolding for further detail or elaboration. In other words, if you can't 'hook' players within the limitations imposed by this writing style within 500 words, then odds are poor that another 5000 or 50,000 will help. So if you can't meet this challenge, it may be a sign that you need to rethink the setting.


At any rate, here's my own wee contestant:
Title: Babel
Genres: Technological-fantasy.
Inspiration: Aesthetically- probably Stargate, adapted from biblical/zoroastrian narrative and real-world myth cycles. Various influences include D&D, warhammer40K, hellraiser, and the art of Wayne Barlowe.

Outline:
The Tower of Babel, labour of generations, stretched to the heavens themselves, and pierced the veil between worlds.
Mankind stepped forth onto other planes, holding discourse with the wisest of immortals, and laid bare the true nature of the cosmos. Wisdom and power beckoned for the worthy, arcane magic and high technology were won as trade and secrets flowed between the Nine Worlds. But the kingdoms of Man, governed by fear, and ruled by hereditary despots who fear their own usurpation, have twisted those arts to corrupt and perverse ends. The old religions crumble in the face of truth, and mortal rulers paint themselves as immortal Deities.
The knowledge of the heavens has been as much a curse as a blessing, and some fear Man's enlightenment was premature.

* This resembles an alternate Earth, set in the temporal equivalent to the 5th century BC, but is neither exactly earth nor exactly faithful to historical convention. There are 3 main factions here, within Midgard Babel itself- the Empire, which is modelled after the Achaemenid Persians and general near east, the Eastern Kingdoms, modelled after Han China, (plus general far east) and possessing particularly high technology, and the various fringe city-states a la the mediterranean, with many barbarian tribes of the West adept in natural magic.

* This is a flat, disc-shaped world, with a distinct Eastern/Western Law vs. Chaos influence to the setting, and The Great Tower of Babel at the physical and ethical heart of the plane. Technology here can be very advanced, but is dependant on the influence of Law and blends with magic continuously- it doesn't resemble steampunk so much as conventional scifi blended with the aesthetic sensibilities of ancient societies. Magic is also present, but the most potent forms are inherently Chaotic and dependant on powerful individual emotions or imagination.

* Most of the common people have been subjugated using the knowledge acquired from other planes. They have little knowledge of the true nature of reality as revealed to their elitist scholars, and for the most part continue to serve the interests of a tiny and privileged nobility, just as they have done for centuries. There is almost no middle ground between serfdom and nobility or priesthood. Punishments for infringement upon the social order are always severe.

* The heavens, the earth, and the underworlds are not as divorced as they would be in most settings. Death is not as final as it would be, for the planes are intimately connected- Death, in fact, can be a useful step in gaining supernatural awareness or 'career advancement.' The soul is also effectively immortal and indestructable, which has both good and bad effects- most notably, souls after death retain all the 'habits' of life, and must feed, void and avoid pain much like a mortal. Shedding these habits is a slow process, and done prematurely can lead to insanity.

* There are no non-human races, monstrous or otherwise, but there are many forms of supernatural being in the afterlife which can be applied as templates to human petitioners.

* This setting has an explicit cosmology along the Good/Evil and Law/Chaos axes, and there is one Plane for each alignment. The key players, so to speak, are the Gods of each plane.
{table]The heavens:|Celestia(LG), ruled by Ahura Mazda, the Wise Lord|Asphodel(NG), ruled by Ahura Mitra, the Seal of Life|Dreamtime(CG), ruled by Ahura Apam Napat, the River to the Soul
The earth:|Firmament(LN), ruled by the Divine Emperor and Titans|Babel(TN)|Pandaemonium(CN), ruled the the Djinni and the Sky Dragons
The underworlds:|Xibalba(LE), ruled by the Leviathan Metnal, the Iron Unity|Abaddon(NE), ruled by the Leviathan Abaddon, the One Unnameable|Ginnungagap(CE), ruled by the Leviathan Ahriman, the Adversary[/table]

Who are the PCs? The players here represent rebels, secret or otherwise, against the social order of their time, privileged by both a knowledge of the truth and the moral courage to act upon it. Some may represent sly aristocrats seeking to subvert the system from within, others rebellious savages who aim to seize equality by force. All will face difficult moral and ethical choices in a world where a single soul could tip the balance of the planes.

Samurai Jill
2008-11-24, 03:53 AM
Ah, crap. I just realised I went over 800 words. Well, that'll learn ya.

Kiero
2008-11-24, 08:14 AM
It's actually the primary demographic. Nerds are the target demographic for tabletop RPG's.

While there might be quite a few "nerds" who think they're "intellectual" or otherwise clever, that doesn't make them so.


So, Kiero, how do you feel in regards to setting with Adventurer's Guides and the like?

Eberron is an example, with the Campaign Setting book being chock-full of fluff, and the (albeit overpriced) Adventurer's Guide that boils down everything into smaller, easy-to-read paragraphs with plenty of graphics.

However, this probably isn't the approach for published setting, 'cause it can come off as money-grubbing since the Adventurer's Guide or whatever it's called obviously doesn't add in any new content.

The best solution may be for the DM to boil down a setting into a similar format for the interest of the players. If the players show interest in the world and want more information regarding the world, it's all there, but it isn't forced upon anyone.

Personally, I never buy anything besides the (single) corebook for a game. Quite happy to make the rest up, using whatever outline material was provided in the core.

Satyr
2008-11-24, 10:18 AM
I find this discussion extzremely frustrating, because it made me realise how limited my ability to deal with English sometimes is; I think I am trying to say explain stuff and utterly fail on the language level. It is annyoing.


"Watering down the standards"? We're talking about games of make-believe, collective delusions for adults, doing the kind of thing that is normally the preserve of children.

Yes, I think there is something like standards even in roleplaying games. This is why FATAL is so generally disliked, because it is, in content and often the rules as well, sub-standard. While I completely agree that there is a wide variety of different approaches to this, and different groups and different playing styles require different skills or engagement, etc., this does not mean that there is no standard or even less, that there should be no standard. Only with a certain amount of trive for quality you are able to achieve improvements.


I won't tend to read more than 50 pages in a go. Most RPG books are written in the dry, dull manner of textbooks which isn't conducive to lengthy periods of reading.

Okay, please don't understand this wrong, I do not want to affront you, but is it not possible that you project your unwilligness to read into the area of a general virtue? I know many people who read for fun. This is no question of quality, but of attention span.
50 pages is nothing. I am more or less required to read around 1200 pages per week, mostly scientific or research texts. Sometimes I read them for fun, or because I am just interested in the topic for one reason or the other. 50 pages of a coloquial ropleplaying text? That is loosening up and taking a break.


If you can't convey a setting in the briefest of summaries, then either you don't know what the essence of it is well enough, or it isn't evocative enough to be able to communicate that. Length is not a signifier of quality. Brevity has it's own kind of elegance.

I agree that a brief summary is an important feature of a game, but if you can not put any flesh on this basic construction, then it is not much better. If the seting has not the appeal to capture your attention for an hour or two to read, how should it attend your attention for a whole night or two of gaming?


Good luck on interesting that group in roleplaying.
I don't know if this is a cultural or regional difference but here at least two thirds of all roleplayers are university students.


Reading RPG books is not playing them. The play is what matters.
And the playing will be sigificantly improvced though the knowledge of the rules and the background, which requires reading.

What you neglect is the importance of the creative process of the development of a setting. Writing a setting is a creative process. What else?


RPGs as artform now. Funny.

Again, what else? I would even say that RPG is a form of literature.

Samurai Jill
2008-11-24, 10:31 AM
And [play] will be sigificantly improvced though the knowledge of the rules and the background, which requires reading.
Yes, but that's sort of the point. The shorter you make the rules and background, the more likely it is they'll get read, thus improving- indeed, making possible- informed play.

What you neglect is the importance of the creative process of the development of a setting. Writing a setting is a creative process. What else?
Yes, but it's a creative process monopolised by one person- who may not even be playing. Role-play is intended to be collaborative. If you get a gang of players together who basically fill in the blanks as they go, then developing the setting becomes a creative process that everyone at the table can enjoy and get a stake in. Again, some players don't want that- they want as many concrete facts about the 'internal reality' of the game to be deterministic and concrete beforehand- that is the essence of simulationism. And there's nothing wrong with that, but hard-core simulationists are actually in a minority, even among role-players. Most role-players lean toward either gamism or narrativism.

(On an unrelated note, I personally think your english skills are dandy.)

Kiero
2008-11-24, 10:50 AM
I find this discussion extzremely frustrating, because it made me realise how limited my ability to deal with English sometimes is; I think I am trying to say explain stuff and utterly fail on the language level. It is annyoing.

In fairness to you, your English is very good. Certainly better than my German! :smallbiggrin:


Yes, I think there is something like standards even in roleplaying games. This is why FATAL is so generally disliked, because it is, in content and often the rules as well, sub-standard. While I completely agree that there is a wide variety of different approaches to this, and different groups and different playing styles require different skills or engagement, etc., this does not mean that there is no standard or even less, that there should be no standard. Only with a certain amount of strive for quality you are able to achieve improvements.

But what you're talking about are "standards of roleplaying". To which I say "doesn't matter to me much at all". If everyone is enjoying themselves, and no one is feeling put off by what someone else is doing, then that's it for me. So for me there is no "standard" at all, fun is all that matters.

Furthermore when it comes to rules, I want less, not more. I prefer a light, abstracted set that stays out of the way, to a more complicated but possibly more "accurate" one.

As to FATAL, it's disliked because of the rather distasteful way it's written, and it's design goals. The fact that the rules are crap is secondary to the fact that the guy writing it is a moron. If we could, we'd do better to leave it and other games like it (Racial Holy War, etc) out of the discussion altogether.


Okay, please don't understand this wrong, I do not want to affront you, but is it not possible that you project your unwilligness to read into the area of a general virtue? I know many people who read for fun. This is no question of quality, but of attention span.
50 pages is nothing. I am more or less required to read around 1200 pages per week, mostly scientific or research texts. Sometimes I read them for fun, or because I am just interested in the topic for one reason or the other. 50 pages of a coloquial ropleplaying text? That is loosening up and taking a break.

I know of lots of non-gamers who might be willing to play, but are even less willing to read than I am. Fortunately my system of choice can be explained, in it's entirety in about five minutes. No reading required at all.

Let's get something clear. I read fiction for fun. I have no problem reading or even re-reading something lengthy for entertainment. My favourite series features books which are all in the 700-1000 page range.

I don't find RPGs remotely entertaining to read (they're not "colloquial text" to me at all), and I won't read anything that isn't entertaining by choice. I hate studying, and am glad I'm done with university. I sure as hell won't go back, or study anything else, ever again, unless I'm forced to.

People who have lives (meaning adults who work, have families, children etc) have a lot less time for reading stuff than children or students do. Which again means page upon page of reading is an absolute barrier to involvement.


I agree that a brief summary is an important feature of a game, but if you can not put any flesh on this basic construction, then it is not much better. If the seting has not the appeal to capture your attention for an hour or two to read, how should it attend your attention for a whole night or two of gaming?

You can put flesh on it - during play. This is what I'm talking about, it doesn't need to be written down to be real or useful.


I don't know if this is a cultural or regional difference but here at least two thirds of all roleplayers are university students.

Because they've got the time and inclination to put up with the state of roleplaying as it is now. Back to my point about a self-selection bias.


And the playing will be sigificantly improvced though the knowledge of the rules and the background, which requires reading.

What you neglect is the importance of the creative process of the development of a setting. Writing a setting is a creative process. What else?

Again, no it doesn't require reading. And I dispute that writing a setting is even necessary in this creative process. Once again, it can be developed in play. Depends entirely on what you're doing, and what people want.

There are even games based on this very idea. Primetime Adventures is a game of TV show-style drama. The first session sets up the game, no one can do any preparation for it before you sit down. Nothing is pre-written or prepared before that happens. Everything happens at the table, once people start playing. You might argue everyone needs to read the rules (about 30 pages) before that happens, but they're really not that complicated.

I've never played it, but In A Wicked Age is similarly prep-free. Again everything you need to play is developed at the start.


Again, what else? I would even say that RPG is a form of literature.

When children play with toys, is that art or literature? RPGs are a form of entertainment, I think you'd really struggle to call them much more than that.

Satyr
2008-11-24, 12:18 PM
But what you're talking about are "standards of roleplaying". To which I say "doesn't matter to me much at all". If everyone is enjoying themselves, and no one is feeling put off by what someone else is doing, then that's it for me. So for me there is no "standard" at all, fun is all that matters.

"Everyone is enjoying themselves" is already a standard; it emphasises the personal entertainment over other aspects (e.g. immersion, storytelling, etc.), but you establish a certain objective - namely that everyone has fun- and you are willing to focus on this; from this point of view, the game ia aub-standard when not everyone has fun.
My standards are just more elaborated and pseudo-intellectual; that is all.


Furthermore when it comes to rules, I want less, not more. I prefer a light, abstracted set that stays out of the way, to a more complicated but possibly more "accurate" one.

Which is a coompletely legitimate objective. For certain settings, too complex rules are just a hindrance. For others, too surficial systems lack the details for what you need. The system's granularity and focus certainly are a one of the most important aspects of a campaign. I have no real preferences in this area, as long as I have the feeling that I can develop a character I want to play.
Still, independent from the complexity of the rules, all players need to know them wnough to not regularly cut in ther game flow with rule questions. It is not very different with the background - the players should know enough to guarantee an uninterrupted gameplay. Obviously, the less background there is for the campaign, the easier this is, but for many campaigns a complex and feasible background is an intriguing feature and the reason why one setting is chosen over the other.


I don't find RPGs remotely entertaining to read (they're not "colloquial text" to me at all), and I won't read anything that isn't entertaining by choice.

And with this we are back at the point of the writing quality and the form of presentation - a game which is written well enough in a way that it is an enjoyable read, would be more assessible, right? There are ot many out there ( I particular enjoyed Unknown Armies and De Genesis) and many RPG authors just can't write interesting prose, no matter what they try, I know.


I hate studying, and am glad I'm done with university. I sure as hell won't go back, or study anything else, ever again, unless I'm forced to.

A notion I have every times at the end of a semester... still, I enjoy this and will probably stay in the academic environment for the rest of my professional life...
Like most interests, this is completely subjective, I guess.


People who have lives (meaning adults who work, have families, children etc) have a lot less time for reading stuff than children or students do. Which again means page upon page of reading is an absolute barrier to involvement.

Well, I have a family and two jobs apart from my studies... The last thing I have is 'too much free time'. This is not as much a question of time, but willingness, I think.
And, on the other side, a well laid out prefabricated background is a way to increase the playability of a game, especially for people who have not as much time at their hands - if you have a common and mutualy accepted background, you do not have come up with all the details yourself and have a common reference which makes it much easier to find other players for the specific setting.
A capacious background helps you to concentrate on the game because it frees the capacities you would otherwise need to create the background details yourself.


When children play with toys, is that art or literature?


Art yes, literature not so much - literature is mostly language fixated, while the more usual child plays are more focusedon the artefact - the toy - or the activity.


Yes, but that's sort of the point. The shorter you make the rules and background, the more likely it is they'll get read, thus improving- indeed, making possible- informed play.

I don't know. For certain campaigns, yes this isa very likely, and I am not a friend of volumptious rules myself. But still, there are people, for whom the game's objectives include elements like versimilitude, a living, breathing background, complex social structures etc. which all becomes harder if you reduce the background on a minimalistic level.
And I would say that creating a setting and diverse background elements is harder and takes more effort than reading the same amount of background. Certainly, the connection is stronger when you create your material, but this is really work. Reading is a timefiller, most of the time.

Andras
2008-11-24, 01:40 PM
I like the idea behind this thread. Sometimes you just want a summary for the setting rather than the entire setting, and a lot of the time, if you're a player, knowledge of a substantial part of the setting is detrimental. In addition, too many minutia at first can severely mask the feel of a setting.

I'll post mine in a bit.

Samurai Jill
2008-11-25, 07:13 AM
I don't know. For certain campaigns, yes this isa very likely, and I am not a friend of [voluminous] rules myself. But still, there are people, for whom the game's objectives include elements like versimilitude, a living, breathing background, complex social structures etc. which all becomes harder if you reduce the background on a minimalistic level.
I don't disagree on any particular point.

And I would say that creating a setting and diverse background elements is harder and takes more effort than reading the same amount of background.
Again, I don't disagree, but for some people, constructing the world and it's personalities is kind of the point. Others may find that being able to fill in details offers them more freedom to adapt the setting to particular themes or challenges.

I don't agree that having the details of a world all pre-specified necessarily saves time for players, because it's highly unlikely that every corner of the world will be explored, so much of the reading will be wasted effort. I mean, by analogy, reading a transcript of play is certainly less effort than actually playing the game- but which do you think will tend to be more entertaining? Role-playing isn't really a spectator sport.

Samurai Jill
2008-11-28, 06:44 AM
Well, I got another one. How's about a setting based off L.A. Confidential?

Kiero
2008-11-28, 08:06 AM
Well, I got another one. How's about a setting based off L.A. Confidential?

If you can do it concisely, go for it!

Dacia Brabant
2008-11-28, 01:16 PM
I'm going to avoid the debate though I generally agree with the OP that starting your setting small but thematically consistent, and letting it grow collaboratively through gameplay, is usually a good way to go. Here's one idea I've been wanting to try:

Title: Heimsfall Saga

Genre: Dark Ages Sword and Sorcery

Inspiration: Europe in the Early Middle Ages, Norse-Germanic myth/folklore/saga, Nietzsche, Tolkien, Howard, Lovecraft, bits from various RPGs.

Outline:
Four great kingdoms of Men once ruled the known world, a huge landmass divided into subcontinents by natural boundaries. The North, South, East and West alternated between warfare and trade with each other while a fifth, otherworldly kingdom of spirit-beings often acted as intermediaries between the races of men—for good and ill.

This balance of order continued on for an indeterminately long period until an event simply known as The Fall—the moment when the Monsters of the Abyss came into the world, resulting in the eventual devolution of human society to the state of nature. What caused this incursion is unknown to mortals, but since they poured out into the world from the points of contact between it and the spirit-kingdom, its inhabitants have largely been blamed for it.

Now the world is in a state of constant change, with individuals, families, tribes and clans often moving about seeking more permanent forms of safety and sustenance. City-states and petty kingdoms rise and fall like the tide. Technology is at mostly Iron Age levels, with a few places a little higher and some much lower. Cults are common and diverse, while true deified priests are rare and unorganized (but are usually the keepers of learning and generally valued by society). Humans are the only sapient species although enough have been changed in form by monstrous or spiritual influences to comprise new races of their own.

What are the key tropes/conventions?

Man is naturally at war with his surroundings, including himself, which restricts the growth of society.
But Man naturally loves what is his and will strive to protect it, which is the root of all morality and ethics.
Monsters are real but of unknown nature/origin, and they all mean you harm.
Spirits are real and knowable, and as varied in type as they are in motives--but the Gods are unknowable and hardly ever providential.
Supernatural power is real and obtainable, but at a high cost: "Those who fight monsters should beware lest they become monsters,” etc.
You and your world are doomed. What you do in spite of—or because of—that fact is the measure of who you are.


Who are the PCs?
They could be the guardians of their people, ready to defend their homes against threats both human and inhuman. They could be explorers, seekers of hidden knowledge, lost treasure or just thrills beyond their homelands. They could be mercenaries, selling themselves to gain fame and fortune for their own sake. Or they could be bandits who simply take what they want from others and enjoy it as long as they can. The paths of their lives are limited only by their will, ability and, of course, their surroundings.

KingGolem
2008-11-28, 08:19 PM
Very interesting. I've had a few campaign setting ideas floating around in my head for a while, and this seems like an ideal way of recording them. I typed this first one in a word document, so it may be kinda long though. :smallsigh: I thought of this setting while trying to figure out a backstory for my Picture Wars army. You can see it in the link in the Inspiration section. They're supposed to be a white-collar organization from Sendrineth called Elsewhere Materials Incorporated, and their criminal intent is denoted by the little derbies I tried to draw on them. :smalltongue:

Title: Tempiezo’s Continuum

Genre(s): High Magitech, coupled with Plane-Hopping

Inspiration(s): Eberron, the myriad planes cosmology on page 213 of the Manual of the Planes, the Dimension X campaign model on page 39 of D20 Future, and my army from Picture Wars http://i140.photobucket.com/albums/r23/KingGolem/Picture%20Wars/EMIRevised.png, Elsewhere Materials Incorporated

Outline: Tempiezo’s Continuum refers to a theoretically infinite span of dimensions, of all shapes, sizes, and geometries, that are always in contact with five other planes. However, these planes slowly churn around, creating new contacts and severing old ones. With certain magical technology, one can cross the bounderies of adjacent planes, for better or for worse. The plane that is the local hub of the dimension hopping craze is Sendrineth, the plane of the humans. Sendrineth is a self-contained sheet-like plane about the quarter the size of our planet Earth. It also has very little landmass; there is only one continent a little bit larger than Australia, and numerous islands and archipelagos, with a mostly tropical climate. Centuries ago, Sendrineth was directly next to the plane of Vwam, a watery realm of massive, enigmatic, piscine leviathans of god like power. Throughout Sendrineth’s early cultural development and history, these leviathans were able to subtly communicate with the early humans, who began to worship them as gods. However, as time passed, the plane of Vwam drifted from Sendrineth, severing the faint telepathic link between the Vwamic Leviathans (as they are referred to) and the humans. However, a new plane that formed a link with Sendrineth, and it became known as the Churn, as it was a churning mass of all four elements. The link with the Churn influenced Sendrineth, causing magical storms to rain down elemental energy upon Sendrineth from time to time. The people of the main continent were at a sort of Renaissance level technology at the time, and inventors and scientists began to study the strange energies that rained from the sky. One of these was named Bantas Tempiezo, who developed two key devices: Tempiezo’s Resonator and Tempiezo’s Siphon. The resonator was a device that was intended to find the source of the elemental energy, and it revealed that five dimensions surrounded Sendrineth, not just one where the elements came from. Tempiezo established the theory that Sendrineth is just one plane of existence in an infinite field of planes, which he named Tempiezo’s Continuum. Shortly after building the resonator, he build his siphon; a device that could produce a reliable source of pure elements for study. After this invention, Sendrineth went through a magitech revolution, creating incredible (sorta futuristic) technologies that ran on raw elements. However, with the low landmass and high technology, there was a rapid overpopulation. Now the main continent is a dystopian metropolis made of about 40 cavernous city levels the height of skyscrapers, most of which are inhabited. Desperate for living space and raw materials, the humans finally managed to invent a device that would make temporary portals to the adjacent realms, so they could be explored/exploited. They just didn’t count on some of these realms being inhabited by other sapient races, who do not take kindly to having their worlds exploited. Now there has been a vast leap in exploring Tempiezo’s Continuum, for science and for commerce.

What are the key tropes or conventions?:
• Dystopian Society: Sendrineth sucks to hell and back. You could probably make a great deal of money selling food, water, and supplies to some of the very lower class districts.
• Magitech: All kinds of technology is feasible by manipulating raw elements, but there is no real spell casting.
• White Collar Crime: There is heavy competition for resource gathering operations on other planes.
• Aliens: Kinda. The sapient races from the other planes have their own language, customs, and societies, but they’re from other dimensions, not other planets. If I ever make this campaign setting, I plan on making about five playable races from different worlds.

Who are the PCs?: Players could fill various different roles. They could be colonists of some new dimension, they could be agents of one of the mighty extraplanar resource gathering corporations, or even the members of some sort of resistance movement against the corrupt criminal oriented corporations that own everything. The possibilities go even further when you take the extraplanar races into account.

Dacia Brabant
2008-11-28, 09:06 PM
Heh, just an observation but it's interesting how settings, with few exceptions, seem to get divided between grimdark low-tech and heroic sci-fantasy. Always nice to see when genre expectations get switched around a bit. :smallsmile:

Archpaladin Zousha
2008-11-28, 10:26 PM
Title: Hunters In The Dark

Genre(s): Urban fantasy, gothic, horror

Inspiration(s): World of Darkness (especially Hunter: The Vigil), d20 Modern, Hellsing, Vampire Hunter D, Ghostbusters, Supernatural, Hellboy, etc.

Outline: Throughout history, people have told stories of creatures and people who hid in the darkness and lashed out at mankind. The boogeyman, the werewolf, the vampire, the ghost. Most people believe they are just stories. They are wrong. These monsters are as real as you and I are, and they are every bit as dangerous as the stories say they are. Fortunately for humanity, there exists a group of men and women who guard them from the creatures that go bump in the night. This is the Society of Umbra Trucido, a secret organization that started with the Catholic Church, but became relatively secular shortly after moving to America. The Society, as it's often called, has chapterhouses in the major cities of the world, where they organize groups called coteries and dispatch them on missions against the creatures of the night. It is a war without end, and many lives have been lost, but these people know that they're the only thing standing between their neighbors and the unknown. Some of the more progressive leaders have even opened the Society's gates to monsters who claim to have reformed, or have managed to control their nature. These individuals have led to the Society's role changing from a military force to more of a police force, existing in an uneasy peace with the supernatural forces of the world, and only becoming involved when something steps out of line and harms humans. But this truce is very fragile. If either the Society or the monsters break it, there will be war again.

What are the key tropes or conventions?:

Monsters are real, but not everyone knows about them.
The people who know about the monsters fight them, whether to protect innocents or out of a need for revenge.
These people are all part of a secret group that has existed for centuries, and is the single greatest repository of occult knowledge.
As Nieztche said, "Be careful when you fight the monsters, lest you become a monster yourself."
Monsters are dangerous, but not all of them are evil, and they may even help accomplish a greater good.
While monsters are the single greatest danger out there, there is a fragile truce between them and the Society, allowing them safety if they stay away from humans or attempt to reform and control their urges.


Who are the PCs?: Every PC in Hunters In The Dark is a member of the Society. Most would be contacted shortly after they first experience the supernatural. They come from all walks of life, some teens just out of college, some hardened army veterans, some clergymen, but all share the scars of having witnessed the dangers in the shadows firsthand. Some characters may even have more experience. Experience that some members may think dangerous. These characters are actual monsters, who have learned to control themselves and now aid the Society, some keeping their true nature secret, while others cannot. The Society may be leery of such members, but cannot deny their usefulness in the ongoing war.

Archpaladin Zousha
2008-11-28, 10:27 PM
What do you think?

SuperPanda
2008-11-28, 10:30 PM
Title: Myth-Quoted

Genre(s): Victorian Occult, Investigation, Conspiracy, Folklore, Science Fiction, Historical Fiction

Systems: Focus on Historical Fiction: GURPS, Focus on Occult: WoD, Focus on Indian Jones style archeology: DnD

Inspiration(s): Indiana Jones, Sherlock Homes, X-Files, Torchwood, Doctor Who, The Mummy, Beowulf, Terry Pratchett, Godzilla, Jurassic Park, Stephen King, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Gulliver's Travels, Shakespeare, Mage: The Awakening's Order of Reason, Illuminati.

Outline: People say little things like "you right about what you know" or "the best lies hold a grain of truth" very often without ever following those things to their logical conclusion. This is a world based around the notion that stories, were at least partially true at sometime, and that the truth is a dangerous thing. In the distinctly proper era of Victorian Enlightenment and Expansion man has begun turning up lost relics which hold great power. But with the power of the ancients so returns the threats that plauged them, and for each new bobble dredged from a temple, some ancient guardian is unleashed to find it.

But even that isn't interesting enough for the intellectual elite. No for the masterminds of good and evil in the shadow society of Occult researchers, the prize is a control of civilization and reality as we know it. For them it is not about harnessing the powers of the past... it is about using them to create new and wonderful things in the present.

What are the key tropes or conventions?:
• Secret Societies and Conspiracy to rule the world.
• Sherlock Homes style investigation: Turn to the impossible because sooner or later it happens.
• Allusions-take any chance you can to hint or wink at something else.

Who are the PCs?: This setting works best with the PCs as people who either respect the power of the artifacts and are trying to reclaim them for the good of all, or as characters who rightfully own/protect the stolen artifacts. In the case of the latter, the DM is urged to make the artifacts that they had stolen from them of key importance to the plot.


Example: I tried this once before, my players were loving it but I had to leave the country (work abroad) and was forced to cancel it:

Players: Greek Hoplite, Lady of the Summer Court, Anubishta, Japanese Fox Spirt, Occult Investigator and Archeologist, and a werewolf.

The items: The armor of Achillies (Hoplite released from Hades and charged by Zeus to return with it); a charmed mirrior (which prevented the Lady of Summer to return to the Fey Lands); valuables from a Pharos' Tomb (which caused Anubis to send his warrior in search of them); dinosaurs taken from an Island in Asia that was surrounded by radio active rocks... or Godzilla (which the Fox was hunting because it was her people's charge to prevent that beast from escaping its island prison); Faust's book of Incantations (which the investigator was after); and a vial of the werewolf's own blood (which she wanted revenge for more than anything else).

elliott20
2008-11-29, 09:41 AM
Title: Spirits of the Galaxy

Genre(s): Sci-fantasy, (as the science part is rather non-existent) space opera, and a splash of cyberpunk

Systems: Spirits of the Century mod

Inspiration(s): Starwars, Battle Angel Alita, Firefly, Legend of the Galactic Heroes, and several Pulp magazine covers.

Outline

The galaxy is was once a good place to live. Humanity saw it's golden age in the Galactic Empire as civilization flourished with new ideas and humanity was at the brink of a spiritual and cultural break through. It was a good time to be alive.

But eventually, the Galactic Empire grew bloated and corrupt, it's government rife with graft. It wasn't long until planets began to rebel against them, and one by one systems started to break off from the empire.

The Galactic Empire gripped on tighter as it saw a new age of revitalization - through it's constant military expansion both in equipment and in ideology. Soon, war was upon them as the Galactic Empire sought to reclaim what was once rightfully theirs, and the planets fought back.

Realizing that the end would be near if something is not done, the rebellious planets banded together to form the Confederate Alliance, and for the first time hundreds of years, the Galactic Empire had a nemesis.

War raged on for decades, as two generations of men and women grew up in a world that knew no peace, and one would always have an enemy. War became a way of life, and both sides settled in, with both sides experiencing revolts and power shifts.

The war finally came to a close, as an unassuming scholar turned general struck the decisive blow that would break the Galactic Empire's back. His success, however, cost him his own life, and many believed the soul of the Confederate Alliance.

The Confederate Alliance won, but at great cost. The galaxy was left a war torn wreck as many planets were devastated by the fighting. And even then, the Confederate Alliance itself was beginning to dissolve as individual factions no longer saw a reason to be tied down to their Allies. The surviving Imperial planets were still out there, and so there was much work to be done.

Unfortunately, the Confederate Alliance, much like Galactic Empire, has become a mockery of itself, ruled by ideology, and ran by selfish leaders who only sought to find gain in their own planet at the cost of the rest of the world.

It became clear to many that there were only two things you can rely on in this world: your wits, and your ship.

What are the key tropes or conventions?
• No Aliens: counter-intuitive to most space opera tropes, I did away with aliens for the simple reason that we had enough problems with just human cultures.
• Cybernetics exist, as well as cybernetic brain implants
• Psych powers exist, but only in very small numbers and it's acts as a double edged sword
• There is no clear "good" side in this world, as both the Galactic Empire remnants and the Confederate Alliance have significant amount of problems.
• Like Firefly, many planets while are aligned with a particular government (mostly Confederate Alliance), they tend to be very much ran locally with little central government interference as the central government just don't have the resources
• Space Martial Arts, Cybernetic Martial Arts, Gun Kata, classic martial arts re-vamped for the future are all in. take your pick, and go crazy with it. Yes, I know it's silly and stupid.

Who are the PCs?
Outcasts from society who find refuge on a wondering ship. Each PC, however, is very much a hero of their own right. Each one of them has had their own adventures and stories. They gather on this one ship in the hopes that the open road before them never ends, and that freedom will always be their friend.

Example:

I ran two campaigns with this setting. One fell apart due to the PbP attendance rate dropping. The f2f one did get itself to a sort of conclusion, but like most Spirits of the Century games, the conclusion of one game does not mean the end of the series. The PbP crew was significantly more serious and dramatic as their characters took on far grimmer outlooks in life while the f2f group was far more slapstick and light-hearted. (I believe this had very much to do with the fact that the captain of the second crew decided to be a very incompetent Captain Kirk as opposed to the shining hero that the other one went for)

Group One (PbP)
Psychic War Vet, born of a noble stock (Captain)
Genetically Engineered War Machine and his sister in a jar
Criminal Smuggler/thug from an over populated industrial planet
Eccentric Scientific Genius who just HAS to upgrade everything he touches
Ace Shooter Pilot

Group Two (f2)
Captain Kirk, but without the compassion, awareness, or even skill. Has robotic legs from the war. (What made this more fun was when I made his nemesis a copy of Captain Zapp Brannigan) His origins aspects hinted at a destiny far greater than he lets on but we never got to explore that.
Jaine with a sword - distrusts all governments with a passion
A flamboyant space pirate with nerves of steel - yes, I do mean the kind that says "ARRRRR!"
A young boy who has a computer for a brain and has the schematics of a wormhole stored in his head somewhere. (queue aspect: "head full of wormholes")
A mercenary soldier who has a hidden psychic gift. it's origins were never explored
ex-military Sharpshooter who has a gigantic ocular implant
Ex-Imperial engineer who is built like arnold, speaks like arnold, and apparently, blows things up just like arnold.

elliott20
2008-11-29, 09:46 AM
as for the whole "detailed" vs. "not detailed" settings, I personally go for the latter, mostly because of two things: a) I'm lazy as hell and b) half the fun of the game for me is to let my players help fill in the details. this is why spirits of the century works so well for me as it allows the players to shape the way the world works just by virtue of what they write down on their character sheet, let alone what they do in game.