Best-Written Campaign Setting?

[The Glyphstone]

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

[dafrca]

It also seems like a lot of the "what if people get creative with what you can do with magic" stuff gets pushed into Eberron because the writers don't want to threaten the vibe of the generic medieval fantasy worlds of the other settings.

In the original contenst entry it was sold as Film Noir blended with high magic. So I would bet that also plays into the choice to do a lot with Eberron along that vain. It is, after all, the setting they claimed was where magic was super common.

[Quertus]

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

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

[Batcathat]

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

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

[Milodiah]

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

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

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

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

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

[Lord Raziere]

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

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

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

[Palanan]

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

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

[Quertus]

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

Simple answer: I'm not sure.

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

For GMs who make everything unreasonable,

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

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

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

Fortunately,

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

I also encountered some GMs like this as well.

[Satinavian]

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

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


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

[Azuresun]

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Yora]

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

[Quertus]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Milodiah]

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

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

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

[Lord Torath]

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

This is what happened to Dark Sun with the Expanded and Revised Setting Boxed Set, so hard.

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

[Lord Raziere]

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

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



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

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

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

[Palanan]

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

So much this.

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

Spoiler

Show

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

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

[Telok]

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

Edit: also Dunkelzahn's will is great.

[White Blade]

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

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

[Batcathat]

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

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

[Satinavian]

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

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

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

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

Yes, i can understand that. If the setting implies that spells come from single powerful casters, then it is nice when PCs can create their own. I am not against that per se.

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

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

So I'm curious *why* you think it's fine in them, but not in D&D, and whether you allow, say, Vampires to create their own… word… bloodlines? Disciplines? "Rotes"?… cyborgs to invent their own Cyberware, or Ars Magica muggles to innovate.

Basically no, i would not allow any of that beyond the creation/invention rules that already exist



But back to settings.


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

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

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

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

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

[Eldan]

Put down another vote for "Metaplot sucks".

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

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

[Quertus]

On the subject of metaplot, I'm torn.

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

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

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

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

Changeling: the Lost (1st edition)

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

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

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

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

[Eldan]

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

Not an RPG, though.

[Milodiah]

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Easy e]

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

Not an RPG, though.

Ummmm.......

It was an RPG too.

[Xervous]

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

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

[Milodiah]

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

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

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

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

Who?

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

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

Then I'm liberated by a resistance group.

Which?

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

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

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

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

[Satinavian]

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

TDE has probably more detailes. Of course as Shadowrun is based of the real world, you could always supplement it with non-SR sources.

[farothel]

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

Not an RPG, though.

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

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

[Eldan]

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