What do you want in a setting?

[Silverlocke980]

My good fellows, ladies and gentlemen alike, I've an urge to engage in a roundabout chat this fine evening around a most particular subject: What do you want in a tabletop game's story?

Not rules. Not powers. Simply storywise. What kind of setting would you like to play in, what kind of stories would you like that setting to have?

[Terraoblivion]

I want it to do one of two things. Either be vague and abstract enough on the specifics, while strong on themes and toplevel concepts, that you can create your own specifics without others arguing that it is obviously wrong. Or I want it to put a lot of effort into the mundane, everyday realities of the setting to give strong grounding for PCs and social interaction. The former works best for very fantastical settings, focusing on larger than life matters and very abstract topics. The latter works best for grittier settings about more ordinary people and for anything with complex politics that knowing the rules and subtle nuances of can make or break.

What I don't want is metaplots, tons of official NPCs, though samples of the kind of characters a typical PC would be is great to get a feel for the setting, or endless lists of plothooks instead of meaningful description. I can make plots, characters for them and secrets of the setting myself, but making a character from a culture that isn't really explained is pretty damn hard.

[Thrawn183]

I want a setting that:
- Incorporates lots of fantasy elements.
- At least somewhat takes into account the presence of magic in a setting.
- Has regions for high and low level adventures and justification for why these regions exist/differ.
- Has natural tensions and conflicts between nations/groups that make it easy for a DM to add some detail that requires attention from the PC's.

[Shadowknight12]

No humans. Or at least, scant few humans left (templated humans are fine).

No "this creature is a monster" mentality, save perhaps truly monstrous creatures like Aberrations, Oozes, Vermin, Dragons or Outsiders (and even then, they should be rare or uncommon). Most (if not all) of the creatures in the MMs should have their culture and be recognised as people.

No "big bads" looming in the horizon. No terrible army of darkness coming from the north or cthonian monstrosity lurking underground.

Every race and nation is "Alignment: Any" or the like. No more alignment tendencies or portrayals that make one race an acceptable murder target. Orcs and goblins and drow should be just as heroic and vile as elves, dwarves and halflings.

More diversity and variety. Enough with the "humans cover 90% of the planet, all elves are high elves, all dwarves are the same" shtick. Give me ten different subraces for everyone, use the creatures from the MMs for nations and kingdoms rather than the ones in the PHB and make sure everything is playable.

No stigmatisation of undead. Someone please make a setting where undead aren't vilified. I'm not saying they're slave labour (unless the setting is willing to portray undead slaves as they would portray any other type of slave, in which case it's cool), but just ordinary people who just happen to be dead. Necromancers should be portrayed like enchanters, mages who use their spells to bend the wills of others (in this case, undead) to their own, and treated thus.

No more vilification of ice. Seriously. Hardcore diehard ice fan here, sick to death of seeing portrayals of ice-themed things as ungodly evil. Combined with the previous item, would be nice if the ice-wielding undead were the nice guys for once.

High magic. I am sick to death of "low magic, low items, everyone is poor and dirty" settings.

Magical terrain. So tired of the same old terrain. Bring on the wild magic zones, the special kinds of sand and ice, the strange trees and the weird stones, the different types of water and fire.

In short, I want a setting that's magical and interesting and actively scorns standard fantasy.

[deuxhero]

No Elfs, Dwarfs, Hobbits, Orcs or other creatures ripped from LotR.

Not middle ages Europe

[DigoDragon]

I like settings with a bit of mystery. Like the fantasy world where a significant chunk of history is missing, yet the events before and after are there and don't explain why that chunk is gone.
Or places that don't seem to follow the normal laws of physics/nature, like the eastern European village that sees strange light rains of frogs from the sky on Wednesdays.

[Yora]

Is this for your own campaign planning?
Because we had such a thread a few weeks ago. I know it, because I started it.
I see if I'll find it again.

Here is the one from me.
And one from afroakuma.
And one more form Thinker.
:D

And one from Enworld, also by me.

I think the primary question that every setting has to take a stand on, is whether it wants to be a fairy tale setting, or an alternate reality setting.
Both do have their place.
In Fairy Tale settings, things are clear. There are heroes and villains, people and monsters. The lines are clearly drawn and the path for the PCs is clear. This makes for great heroic stories.
In an Alternate Reality setting, the PCs have to deal with situations from the real world, but in different conditions. If our world was like this, what would be do? This makes for stories in which the players have to weight their options, occasionally make mistakes, and may not be able to get a happy ending.

Personally, I only like the second type, but that's merely a matter of personal taste and preference. However, the setting needs to make up its mind about this. The alignment system of D&D works wonderfully in Fairy Tale games, but is nothing but trouble when players want to play an Alternate Reality game.

[Tyndmyr]

My good fellows, ladies and gentlemen alike, I've an urge to engage in a roundabout chat this fine evening around a most particular subject: What do you want in a tabletop game's story?

Not rules. Not powers. Simply storywise. What kind of setting would you like to play in, what kind of stories would you like that setting to have?

Uniqueness. If yours is yet another version of greyhawk with minor changes, I admit I don't really care. Kingdoms of Kalimar? hate it.

I mean, I get it...it's nice and low powered, and this allows time to really focus in on the dirt farming(seriously, first module I bought had a huge section devoting to getting to know a farming village, and indeed, helping them farm), but I just don't care. I want dungeons, I want dragons, I want all manner of awesome things that I haven't seen before and that I can interact with, and I want it to at least casually make sense.

[Acanous]

Tippyverse, with Tyndmyr DMing. Because that'd be awesome.

[Thinker]

Things I like in a setting:

1. Fleshed out world concepts/world plots (prophecies, nations, potential points of conflict).
2. Only humans as playable race, but with multiple cultures.
3. Other races being alien. Elves and dwarfs can have their cities, but they should have a different mindset from humanity; they might treat humans like humans treat dogs or other pets.
4. Have some races that are aggressive and generally hostile. Orcs don't need to be bad for humans because they're innately evil, but they can be bad for humans for the same reasons that lions are bad for gazelles.
5. Magic is acknowledged by the setting; things are better for people who follow a powerful cleric or if a friendly druid lives nearby because they use their magic to help people.
6. Magic is rare and difficult to use so that there aren't guilds of wizards, cabals of clerics, or the like. Each magician is special (and potentially ostracized, depending on culture).
7. Logical low-level and high-level areas.
8. Regions that are unexplored enough to justify a hex crawl.
9. Cultures that are drawn from medieval Europe, not generic "medieval" cultures (there was a pretty big difference in medieval Ireland and medieval Lithuania).
10. Cultures that are drawn from areas that are not Europe, but have their technology adapted to a level on par with medieval Europe (Aztecs with access to iron would be interesting).
11. Chaos as a central theme for evil (similar to old myths of Tiamat, Typhon, Set, etc.).
12. Inspiration drawn from myths, legends, and folklore rather than from other fantasy material.

[MonkeyBusiness]

People. I like people, some of whom might be monsters (because monsters are interesting people). I like to talk to them and interact with them and get to know them as neighbors between dungeon diving. Role playing some non-combat down time between adventures is fun for me.

I like puzzles and riddles and poems and songs in a setting: things that are hints, but detailed. I like the opportunity to solves problems through strategy or negotiation as often as I do kicking evil's butt.

But I do enjoy kicking evil's butt.





.

[Oracle_Hunter]

Settings
Settings must be fleshed well enough to tell the story and be self-consistent enough for Players to make reasonable decisions from.

If your game is about finding dungeons and slaying dragons, the setting does not need a complicated calendar full of holy days and festivals. Likewise, if you establish that dragons only live in dungeons, you'd better have a very good explanation for any dragons found outside of dungeons.

If your game is about living and working within a single town, the setting needs to define the town much more, the kingdom somewhat, and foreign nations far less.

This is not to say that extra details are not appreciated, but they are not necessary.

Stories
Stories should fit the setting, and be supported by the rules. A survival horror story works better in a system where survival is precarious than one where death is a slap on the wrist. Ideally, any story should follow the same conventions that make for good stories in fiction.

[Tyndmyr]

Tippyverse, with Tyndmyr DMing. Because that'd be awesome.

Why thank you, sir. I admit, I do draw some inspiration from Tippy's Thousand Points of Light for my campaign world.

Worlds, really. It's set on tidally locked binary planets.

I did play in a game once that outright intended to be Tippyverse, with Emperor Tippy advising. Great fun while it lasted. I admit I'm not sure why some use the setting as a pejorative.

[Thinker]

I just realized that I forgot something in my list. I also like a lot of ambiguity and contradictions.

• Having contradictory outsider opinions and stereotypes about various cultures is fun: Have you heard about the people from Thinklandia? All stoic goat herders!
• Having ambiguous deities is also good: The Goddess Thinka shall descend from the moon on the eighth day of the 20th year of the dark lord or she might ascend from the netherworld on the sixtieth day of the year of silver.
• It works with major events, too: The civil war between in Thinklandia began when the Lord of Thinkumbria was killed by Prince Thinker in a duel for the hand of Lady Thinkella. Conversely, it might have been when the Earl of Thinkly's men raided the Baron of Thinkerton's granaries at the onset of spring.
• Lastly, it's always fun for prophecy: The stag will evade the huntsman during the festival of Thinka and the light shall fall.

[prufock]

- Originality.
- Internal consistency.
- Detail.
- Flexibility.

Honestly, I don't have any one setting that I favour over others. I like to bounce around between settings and styles. As long as a setting meets the above, I'll give it a chance.

[Mastikator]

Internal consistency, verisimilitude and wealth of detail.
Any character you make within the setting needs to have a "default" or "normal" option of everything, ranging from clothing, weapon, personality, attitude towards other races/cultures, taste in food, etc.
This is not just important for PCs but moreso for NPCs, to give the DM some very good guidelines for how to make them.
I'd rather have few highly detailed races than many meekly detailed. I mean one book for just elves, describing their history, how world events has affected them, what foods they eat, what their attitude towards other races is, which different cultures exist within the elven world, what is their world view and ethic philosophy. Same for every race.
You don't get bored with just a few races (or maybe just a single one) if they are richly detailed, because then they become more interesting.

[Talyn]

I want to be able to make a difference. I want a setting where, with a lot of hard work, and maybe some hard choices, you can end the campaign having made the campaign world a better place.

"Points of light" style campaigns are the easiest ways to do this, and I do enjoy those, but I'll take any kind of setting where the PCs have an opportunity, if they choose to take it, to truly become heroes.

I think that is one of the reasons I could never enjoy cyberpunk games (Shadowrun, etc.) or anything the World of Darkness puts out that isn't Hunter: the Vigil - at the end of the day, those settings expect that nothing your characters do will end up making the world a better place.

[NichG]

1. There should be things that are unknown. Big things, unknown to big people. I want a setting where its possible to discover something even the gods don't know, where there are true mysteries to investigate. These mysteries don't actually have to do with any sort of central plotline, though its a plus if they are.

2. I don't want to hate the world, but I want to hate things about it that can be changed. I guess my prime negative example here is the World of Darkness setting. Its in the title of the game: this thing is supposedly to be dark and unpleasant and cruel. In most campaigns you aren't going to make vampires not be horrible people - its a fixed thing about the world that makes you want to go 'nuts to this, I'm going to spend all my time trying to figure out how to escape the setting' (note that this is fine in campaigns where you can change these elements, but its not really supported in baseline WoD). On the other hand, a world where everything is perfect means I don't have as much drive to do things about it.

3. Corollary to 2, I don't want to feel confined by the world too much. I don't really like L5R that much not because of the mechanics or the setting, but because of some of the RP restrictions that come with it. Some confinement is fine - I don't expect the world to do nothing if I start committing murders or steal from shops or whatever - but there's a hazy line of too much that L5R crosses for me.

Beyond those, I generally prefer settings that are partially serious and partially humorous. I'm okay with local extremes of either, but I don't want all serious all the time or all comedy all the time. Slayers, not Looney Toons, not Call of Cthulhu. That said, I have more tolerance for the serious side, and I don't mind seemingly impossible hurdles so long as a solution is actually recognized as a solution when presented. Fantasy or sci-fi is fine, but I tend to twitch at particularly bad science so fantasy or space opera (where psionics and magitech and so on are things) is more likely to get a pass from me. Though that said, I'd love a hard sci-fi setting that was constructed well, but it doesn't generally make a very good game.

[Jay R]

I had written a long, careful description of what I wanted, but then I remembered this, which says it better than I could.

From Robert A. Heinlein's Glory Road:

What did I want?

I wanted a Roc's egg. I wanted a harem loaded with lovely odalisques less than the dust beneath my chariot wheels, the rust that never stained my sword,. I wanted raw red gold in nuggets the size of your fist and feed that lousy claim jumper to the huskies! I wanted to get up feeling brisk and go out and break some lances, then pick a likely wench for my droit du seigneur --I wanted to stand up to the Baron and dare him to touch my wench! I wanted to hear the purple water chuckling against the skin of the Nancy Lee in the cool of the morning watch and not another sound, nor any movement save the slow tilting of the wings of the albatross that had been pacing us the last thousand miles.

I wanted the hurtling moons of Barsoom. I wanted Storisende and Poictesme, and Holmes shaking me awake to tell me, "The game's afoot!" I wanted to float down the Mississippi on a raft and elude a mob in company with the Duke of Bilgewater and the Lost Dauphin.

I wanted Prester John, and Excalibur held by a moon-white arm out of a silent lake. I wanted to sail with Ulysses and with Tros of Samothrace and eat the lotus in a land that seemed always afternoon. I wanted the feeling of romance and the sense of wonder I had known as a kid. I wanted the world to be what they had promised me it was going to be--instead of the tawdry, lousy, fouled-up mess it is.

[valadil]

All I want is inspiration and organization.

When I read about a locale, my reaction should always be "I want to go to there." The locale should have unanswered mysteries for the PCs to investigate and for me to answer (and for other GMs to answer differently!).

Organization is key too. I don't care if a city is explained in a paragraph or has its own book. When the players go to that city I want to have all the available information on it. I'm more than happy to fill in the gaps, but I have to know where those gaps are. A problem I always had with FR is that I know more information is out there. When I read up on something if a detail is missing, my temptation is to dig deeper. I want that detail indexed somewhere so that I at least know where to look.

[Silverlocke980]

Thank you everyone. I'm not doing this for my own personal fan setting, but more just as a question of what people are looking for in a setting; if anything I'll use this for my writing more than anything else.

[willpell]

This is an extremely good question and I'm not even close to having an answer for it. Really, I think of my life as the process of figuring out answers like this.

[Jay R]

I want a consistent world that is different from ours.

I want magic to be mysterious, not technology with the serial numbers filed off.

I want other races to be different and alien.

I want my character to be a real entity, not a pile of numbers. I want the people he interacts with to be more than piles of numbers.

I want morality to matter.

If there are peasants and royalty, I want to be able to tell the difference in their attitudes and their approach.

I want climate, geology, flora and fauna to affect the play of the game. If the PCs travel 500 miles north, they should get colder (or hotter, in the southern hemisphere). If they climb a mountain, they should be short of breath. Or there should be a reason why it's different.

[Scalenex]

I've been working for a very long time on making a world that incorporates most things common in D&D setting and makes sense anyway. Very brief summary.

I'm working on a world where a creator god made everything so he could feed on the souls of mortals. He created several servants to help feed him. He created his servants with antithetical view points so they couldn't rise up against him (one was LG, one LE, one CE, etc), but they rose up anyone when they were convinced that their master planned to eat them. The surviving gods of the rebellion were collectively called the Nine.

After joining forces to destroy their tyranical master and splitting the world between them, they pretty much stopped working together and started feuding amongst themselves for power and worshippers at the expense of the other eight. They presided over a world ruled by dragons under their civilization collapsed, then the elves until their civilization collapsed, and now the humans.

[Falconer]

Enough room to play a wide variety of character types and run a wide variety of campaigns. I look for versatility above all else in a campaign setting; more generic settings tend to allow for both "classic" D&D with all the traditional tropes, as well as room to play around and mess with the normal way things work. You can have your cake and eat it, too.:small tongue:

Particularly I like taking the old cliches and deconstructing them or examining them. Sure, orcs have a tendency to form raiding parties and invade surrounding nations once every few generations, but why? Turns out it's not so much Chaotic Evil tendencies so much as it is population troubles: the land can't support that many orcs, and so the younger ones with no land or future prospects band together, grab some weapons, and try and take land and loot from the nearby 'umies.

[Jay R]

"a world that incorporates most things common in D&D setting and makes sense anyway"

Much wisdom is contained in that phrase.

[Man on Fire]

Something that haven't been done before, that doesn't just repeat same old nonsense all fantasy setting do. None of that cliched myth of creation, none of that golden age of ancient civilizations, none of that boring, predictable stereotypes - "Elves are better", "Orcs are chaotic evil", "dwarves are drunk" - it's been done, give us something new. The setting must have something that makes players want to play in it, something they cannot find in other settings or games. Look at my criticism of Tippyverse - it's just the same old, no matter how you look at it, and what new it offers Dark Sun already did and did much better, so why should I want to play it? if the game doesn't have the hook, something that sucks the players in, then it's worthless. And well-known cliches offered by several D&D settings at this point just doesn't cut it.

[Morph Bark]

No humans. Or at least, scant few humans left (templated humans are fine).

No "this creature is a monster" mentality, save perhaps truly monstrous creatures like Aberrations, Oozes, Vermin, Dragons or Outsiders (and even then, they should be rare or uncommon). Most (if not all) of the creatures in the MMs should have their culture and be recognised as people.

No "big bads" looming in the horizon. No terrible army of darkness coming from the north or cthonian monstrosity lurking underground.

Every race and nation is "Alignment: Any" or the like. No more alignment tendencies or portrayals that make one race an acceptable murder target. Orcs and goblins and drow should be just as heroic and vile as elves, dwarves and halflings.

More diversity and variety. Enough with the "humans cover 90% of the planet, all elves are high elves, all dwarves are the same" shtick. Give me ten different subraces for everyone, use the creatures from the MMs for nations and kingdoms rather than the ones in the PHB and make sure everything is playable.

No stigmatisation of undead. Someone please make a setting where undead aren't vilified. I'm not saying they're slave labour (unless the setting is willing to portray undead slaves as they would portray any other type of slave, in which case it's cool), but just ordinary people who just happen to be dead. Necromancers should be portrayed like enchanters, mages who use their spells to bend the wills of others (in this case, undead) to their own, and treated thus.

No more vilification of ice. Seriously. Hardcore diehard ice fan here, sick to death of seeing portrayals of ice-themed things as ungodly evil. Combined with the previous item, would be nice if the ice-wielding undead were the nice guys for once.

High magic. I am sick to death of "low magic, low items, everyone is poor and dirty" settings.

Magical terrain. So tired of the same old terrain. Bring on the wild magic zones, the special kinds of sand and ice, the strange trees and the weird stones, the different types of water and fire.

In short, I want a setting that's magical and interesting and actively scorns standard fantasy.

While I don't like some of your earlier points and think some don't entirely make sense, the high magic and magical terrain comments make me think of a setting I have that is controlled by an epic lich sorceress who controls the weather in the entire setting and causes the terrain to shift every so often so that every few weeks or so your village suddenly is neighbour to a different village than two weeks before.

Plus utilizing a lot of the supernatural hazards from Stormwrack, Frostburn and Sandstorm and the magical locations from many of the books.

Granted, the intention is that the lich does try to make sure the level of magic other than her own stays low, but that is easily tweaked and the lich herself isn't a BBEG per se, more like a semi-mortal trickster goddess of sorts.

[Asheram]

I'd just like the world to make sense.

If there's a town built somewhere I want a Reason to have been built there.
If it's prosperous then Why is it prosperous
If there's a large population then how are they sustained?

I don't want a perfect simulation (though it would be neat), all I want is to look at it from an outside perspective and say "Yes, this could work."

[Vitruviansquid]

All I really want in a setting is to changes the players' ways of thinking.

I think the genius of the Warhammer and Warhammer 40k "grimdark" settings is that they achieve this particularly well from a pretty elegant premise. If demons exist and can be summoned by religious deviants, then the players/readers realize, "okay, in this setting, religious persecution = good." And eventually, those players/readers will catch themselves thinking "it's a non-conformist! Stab him! Burn him!... wait, what did I just say?"