Quote from: apparition13;650508Likes: maps, see Harn. Nitty gritty detail, population levels, location names, etc., see Harn, the first Greyhawk module, Citystate, etc. Also, interesting cultures and beings, see Talislanta, Jorune.

Me and one of the other designers are fans of Harn, so that is going to be an influnce.

QuoteDislikes: metaplot, detailed characters, political relationships between NPCs, etc.

The first are things that I can reference to make my life easier as a GM and stir the creative juices, the second are things I'll come up with on my own and don't need preconceptions about and that tend to inhibit my creativity.

While there is no real metaplot like you have in vampire (we arent going to release books that infold things), I am a 2E era GM and that will have an infuence on some of the setting material.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;650638How do you feel about fantasy settings in this respect? I've already established the content of my setting, but just curious if this matters to you in a purely fantastic setting with no connection to our own world.

Fantasy settings can get away with a lot. Viewed from a High Fantasy PoV they are suppose to paint things bright white and darkest black, so having a nearly perfect fantasy Good Guy kingdom is rather acceptable.

That said, I'm so locked in a Middle Earth mindset that a place that completely escapes what I would call innocent "strangers are others, and thus suspicious" (labeled racism by many today) and reasonable (what most people now days would call) sexism would feel odd to me.

Meanwhile, I'm also of the mind that things can be too Dark. I'm not at all fond of LotFP style art or Carcosa writing as these are way pass the pale and represents the worse the hobby has to offer although the OSR is close in its own way.

Quote from: gleichman;650646Meanwhile, I'm also of the mind that things can be too Dark.

I agree things can be too dark. I am fine with settings that feel historical and dont paint things in terms of clearly being good or evil. At the same time I also like settings that have heroes and villains. This particular game leans more in being morally gray.

The setting for this game is inspired largely by my interest in ancient and middle east history. But it also is very anachronistic at times---in terms of our own history (there is a large coastal empire of halfling merchants modeled loosely on the Carthaginians but they have canons, coffee and more advanced armor).

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;650653(there is a large coastal empire of halfling merchants modeled loosely on the Carthaginians but they have canons, coffee and more advanced armor).

For my part, things to leave out include "any non-human race from a Tolkien book", and "any setting that is clearly a real-world culture with the serial numbers filed off".

Fantasy should be fantastic, not a rehash of the same old tropes and tripe from four decades of gaming.

Quote from: daniel_ream;650658For my part, things to leave out include "any non-human race from a Tolkien book", and "any setting that is clearly a real-world culture with the serial numbers filed off".

Fantasy should be fantastic, not a rehash of the same old tropes and tripe from four decades of gaming.

Then you probably won't like this game

No, and I don't expect to, nor do I expect you to change your business plan just to suit one outlier.

That said, I do think that fantasy gaming is as creatively moribund as fantasy fiction is.  I don't think this is hurting it any economically, as the market seems to prefer warmed-over stale tropes, but I miss the Skyrealms of Jorune and Talislanta-esque settings.

I am not too fond of mundane details on what farmers, shopkeepers and feudal estates do. A cultural baseline is good, but too much of it ends up wasting space. I prefer setting information which is

• game-relevant (affects the way the players interact with the setting),
• colourful (focuses on the fantastic instead of the commonplace), and
• to the point.

Sometimes, the right kind of information on everyday life can mean a lot, like explaining the role of hospitality or barter in some pre-modern settings. But a lot of the time, it just ends up deadly dull, or overstays its welcome and squeezes out the good stuff.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;650653(there is a large coastal empire of halfling merchants modeled loosely on the Carthaginians but they have canons, coffee and more advanced armor).

CC&A, with those life can hardly get better.

Feel free to deluge me with a metric fuckton of setting info.  I chop out whatever I don't like.

Here's a metaphor, that might get mangled in the posting.

Larry Niven once said (paraphrased) that in fantasy fiction, you have to describe the thumb well enough so that people think they've seen the whole hand. Describe a limited particular, and it implies the whole.

RPG's are different. Here, you describe parts of the whole well enough, that GM's can make up the rest.

This "making up the rest" is actually pretty important. It gives GM's the "room" to insert their own ideas into the campaign. Too much campaign detail, and GM's are too constricted. (IMHO.)

Monte Cook actually has a great approach to this — detailed in a post on your blog, now that I recall. So, my advice is to do that.

For everyone else, here's Monte's approach:

Instead of detailing every city to the exact same level of detail, you detail one city at a moderate level (key stats, general neighborhood outline, overview street map). In another city, you give more details, and in a third just the basics.

This leaves the cities open to GM interpretation. By describing one city in the region in detail, GM's can extrapolate from there, elaborating on those basic ideas as they see fit.

The goal, with an RPG, is to communicate the feel of the region/country/campaign world, and let GM's loose. "Roman Empire meets Chinese culture? Cool."

While this approach doesn't work for everyone — and can be odd when first encountered — it does seem like a great approach.

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;652317Here's a metaphor, that might get mangled in the posting.

Larry Niven once said (paraphrased) that in fantasy fiction, you have to describe the thumb well enough so that people think they've seen the whole hand. Describe a limited particular, and it implies the whole.

RPG's are different. Here, you describe parts of the whole well enough, that GM's can make up the rest.

This "making up the rest" is actually pretty important. It gives GM's the "room" to insert their own ideas into the campaign. Too much campaign detail, and GM's are too constricted. (IMHO.)

Monte Cook actually has a great approach to this — detailed in a post on your blog, now that I recall. So, my advice is to do that.

For everyone else, here's Monte's approach:

Instead of detailing every city to the exact same level of detail, you detail one city at a moderate level (key stats, general neighborhood outline, overview street map). In another city, you give more details, and in a third just the basics.

This leaves the cities open to GM interpretation. By describing one city in the region in detail, GM's can extrapolate from there, elaborating on those basic ideas as they see fit.

The goal, with an RPG, is to communicate the feel of the region/country/campaign world, and let GM's loose. "Roman Empire meets Chinese culture? Cool."

While this approach doesn't work for everyone — and can be odd when first encountered — it does seem like a great approach.

Monte's blog entry on that was pretty good. I think it makes sense. However I also think there are details you sometimes want to comprehensively cover. While I might not want every city or province detailed, having the names and minor details of all the governors, mayors, kings, etc can be helpful (at least I usually find that helpful). But I do like the approach of detailing representative samples for each region.

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;652317By describing one city in the region in detail, GM's can extrapolate from there, elaborating on those basic ideas as they see fit.

In archaeology, it is common practice to classify all sites from a particular discovered culture with the name of first site that was uncovered.  This leads to some awkwardness when, as is often the case, the first site is not at all typical of the culture.

The danger in the approach you're describing is that subsequent writers will treat the first city/region as a kind of ur-city which provides a template for all the others, when that might not be the author's intent.  You can end up with the Chicago By Night/Milwaukee By Night problem, or to use an OSR reference pretty much the entire corpus of AD&D 1st ed. modules.

Quote from: daniel_ream;652340The danger in the approach you're describing is that subsequent writers will treat the first city/region as a kind of ur-city which provides a template for all the others, when that might not be the author's intent.

That is a good point — you don't want the detailed city to become a cliche, or for every other city to be a photocopy of that.

I'm assuming, for this example, that Brendan & co-writer are the ones writing their own material, so they can elaborate, or not, as they see fit.

I would also include in the material a note saying "This is typical for Fooistan. Others are not detailed, and for the most part won't ever be, so GM's should feel free to make up whatever serves their campaign the best."

Always make it clear what you're doing.

Again, this approach won't suit every situation, but it seems like it could be a match for Brendan's.

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;652351I'm assuming, for this example, that Brendan & co-writer are the ones writing their own material, so they can elaborate, or not, as they see fit.

Yes, this is the case. I also do not intend to fully embrace Monte's approach. In some places it just won't work as well as others and some details I really want in the book regardless

QuoteAgain, this approach won't suit every situation, but it seems like it could be a match for Brendan's.

I am taking it case by case. On paper the approach sounds great, but we are detailing a whole continent with a wide variety of cultures and governments. The halfling's for example have colonial cities on coasts and islands all over the southern region of the setting, and each one is pretty unique because there are local elements interacting with the halfing culture. These cities also come in several different types. So it would be difficult to just detail one of those cities and expect the GM to extrapolate from it. Also, even though the amount of detail will vary from entry to entry, I do want to have a description (even if small in some cases) of everything labeled on the map. So I wouldn't take his idea to the extreme of leaving out actual entries and just letting the GM ride with earlier examples. I personally find it a bit frustrating if something is important enought to get a name on the map (whether its a tribe, kingdom, city or ruin) but it has no description in the book. For me, I am using the idea more as a way to guide how much detail each entry gets.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;652371I personally find it a bit frustrating if something is important enought to get a name on the map (whether its a tribe, kingdom, city or ruin) but it has no description in the book. For me, I am using the idea more as a way to guide how much detail each entry gets.

It sounds like you've hit on an approach that suits your needs: detail what needs to be detailed, at the level of detail necessary. That's a good rule of thumb, and there's no need to didactically follow Monte's ideas. (Not that I would have recommended that, in any case.)

I'm looking forward to seeing the final product.