Is that a Siembieda drawing?

Quote from: SettembriniIs that a Siembieda drawing?

I wouldn't be surprised.  He did a lot of art for JG before starting up Palladium.

Quote from: estarP.S. Most of my ideas revolved on how to present a setting where each part is usable as a drop into some GM's fantasy game but when combined makes for a entire consistent setting.

I think the mistake that a lot of setting books (and RPG supplements in general) make is that the deal with things that aren't relevant to the characters and ignore things that are.  An example I used in the past, when SJG was revising GURPS Space (the third edition), was that you'll get rules in science fiction games for how far a planet is from the primary in AUs but what most characters really need to know is what the whether is like on the planet when they step off of their spaceship.

Similarly, I've run into roughly two types of history books on the ancient worlds (sometimes elements are combined).  

The first is a "what happened" type book that describes major events that happened during that period of history.  So I might find lists of kings and queens, descriptions major battles and migrations, major plagues and famines, and relations with foreign powers.  Maybe there will be some information on mythology, often talking more about what the deities were in charge of and things they did rather than how they were worshiped.  

The second is a "life in" type book that describes how day-to-day life worked for the people during that period and in that place.  So I might find out how much an ox cost, what the penalty for adultery was, what kinds of professions were in the various social classes, and some details about not only what the deities covered but how they were worshipped.  

I think that a lot of role-playing supplement authors, apparently more familiar with the first sort of history book rather than the second, write up their setting history more like the first kind than the second kind, when what I think most players and GMs need is the second kind (with a quick summary of what happened along the lines of, "1492: Columbus find America.  1600s: English settle the eastern coast of North America.  1770s-1780s: A group of English colonies calling themselves The United States of America declares independence from England and win a short war with England.  1860s: United States has a long and bloody civil war over slavery, economic differences, and cultural differences between the Northern states and Southern States."  Etc.  The really big stuff that everyone would/should know.  If you must get into detail, it should be about events during the character's lifetime.  For example, a Western can and probably should give some detail about events from the 1850s or 1860s to the turn of the century but doesn't need to go into great detail about the 1700s nor include anything about Medieval European or pre-Columbian Native American history, unless it's going to be relevant to an adventure, such as finding the remains of Viking explorers in the New World.  

Better yet, I think it would be useful for setting writers to read travel guides rather than history books, because a travel guide is closer to what most players an GMs need to run a game in a setting than a history book.  After all, I think most people would by a travel guide to a foreign country they are about to visit than a history book about the place.  And travel guide writers are pretty good at covering the interesting things and making them interesting to read about without going into too much detail.

So my advice is for authors to model their setting guides on "life in" history books or, better yet, travel guides instead of "what happened" history books, though I suspect that at least some of the people who buy setting guides to read rather than to use during play are actually looking for "what happened" type of book.

Quote from: John MorrowBetter yet, I think it would be useful for setting writers to read travel guides rather than history books, because a travel guide is closer to what most players an GMs need to run a game in a setting than a history book.  After all, I think most people would by a travel guide to a foreign country they are about to visit than a history book about the place.  And travel guide writers are pretty good at covering the interesting things and making them interesting to read about without going into too much detail.

Sage advice. What do travel guides get right? They collect and give you things which are interesting. "You can buy roast cats in the bazaar!" is so much more useful than reading about noble families and their petty conflicts.

Quote from: MelanSage advice. What do travel guides get right? They collect and give you things which are interesting. "You can buy roast cats in the bazaar!" is so much more useful than reading about noble families and their petty conflicts.

imo-
Ethnographies, historical accounts, and actual travel for the win.

Quote from: AkrasiaHmmm.  When we ran Greyhawk campaigns in the early 1980s, we always rolled for wandering monsters when on long overland treks.  There were some cool tables in the box set for random encounters.

True enough (or true enough for the 2nd edition Greyhawk boxed set with the two books). However, those tables were pretty generic. They didn't make travelling across Keoland much different from travelling across Almor.
 

Quote from: AkrasiaIn retrospect, the Judges Guild Wilderlands would have been a far more appropriate setting for that kind of play.  But we were kids, and preferred the shiny TSR products over the paper JG stuff.

Yeah, we were the same. Those glossy poster maps for Greyhawk are one of my gaming - make that childhood - icons. Everyone had the maps pinned to their walls.

Though I have to say the massive City State of the World Emperor was one of the best birthday presents ever. Paper or not, that thing was impressive. And I did run a brief but well-received campaign on the Wilderlands Map 6.

Quote from: John MorrowBetter yet, I think it would be useful for setting writers to read travel guides rather than history books, because a travel guide is closer to what most players an GMs need to run a game in a setting than a history book.  After all, I think most people would by a travel guide to a foreign country they are about to visit than a history book about the place.  And travel guide writers are pretty good at covering the interesting things and making them interesting to read about without going into too much detail.

The Chronicles of Talislanta is written as a travel guide and it's an excellent introduction to the setting. It gives brief contemporary accounts by a traveller to some of the more notable and colourful locales in the setting, including a narrative of the adventures he has along the way, which serve as examples of the kind of adventures that the PCs can have.

Quote from: MelanSage advice. What do travel guides get right? They collect and give you things which are interesting. "You can buy roast cats in the bazaar!" is so much more useful than reading about noble families and their petty conflicts.

I highly recommend travel writer Jan Morris' book Last Letters from Hav, a book about a fictional city, as a model of what sorts of things are interesting to focus on.  In her review of the more recently expanded version in The Guardian, Ursula K Le Guin (who calls it "science fiction") writes:

   It is not an easy book to describe. Hav itself is not easy to describe, as the author frequently laments. As she takes us about with her in her travels of discovery, we grow familiar with the delightful if somewhat incoherent Hav of 1985. We climb up to its charming castle, from which the Armenian trumpeter plays at dawn the great lament of Katourian for the knights of the First Crusade, the "Chant de doleure pour li proz chevalers qui sunt morz". We visit the Venetian Fondaco, the Casino, the Caliph, the mysterious British Agency, the Kretevs who inhabit caves up on the great Escarpment through which the train, Hav's only land link to the rest of Europe, plunges daily down a zigzag tunnel. We see the Iron Dog, we watch the thrilling Roof Race. But the more we learn, the greater our need to learn more. A sense of things not understood, matters hidden under the surface, begins to loom; even, somehow, to menace. We have entered a maze, a labyrinth constructed through millennia, leading us back and back to the age of Achilles and the Spartans who built the canal and set up the Iron Dog at the harbour mouth, and before that to the measureless antiquity of the Kretevs, who are friends of the bear. And the maze stretches out and out, too, half around the world, for it seems that Havian poetry was deeply influenced by the Welsh; and just up the coast is the westernmost of all ancient Chinese settlements, which Marco Polo found uninteresting. "There is nothing to be said about Yuan Wen Kuo," he wrote. "Let us now move on to other places."

Quote from: John MorrowI highly recommend travel writer Jan Morris' book Last Letters from Hav, a book about a fictional city, as a model of what sorts of things are interesting to focus on.

Looks fascinating. Brings to mind Jorge Luis Borges and Italo Calvino.

The original Dark Sun, with its Wanderer's Guidebook or whatever it was called, did the travelogue thing well. There was no "Ten million years ago halflings changed the colour of the sun" crap, it was "Tyr is run by a sorceror-king called Kalak who will eat your soul if you cast spells. Try the baked lizard!"

If I was going world I hadn't made up I would use one from a set of books.
Its quick easy accessible I don't have to buy anything new. The players have either read the books and know of the world or they are unlearned peasants or whatever.
We have done adventures in the worlds of David Eddings, David Gemmel, Jack Vance etc etc ...  After all what is D&D if you aren't playign in the worlds of Lankhmar, Middle Earth or whatever.
The advantages are everyone who has read the books has context. They know who the good and bad guys are and they have an idea about the languages and history.

It also depends on context  if you are doing low level games, guarding a caravan on the way to market, setting up a theives guild in a small town without one or whatever you don't need much detail on history or political aligences of teh nations. If you are playing a high level game with armies and politics you need more of that stuff.
If you play in cities, my favoured locale, you just need plot, NPCs and imagination. You don't need maps of every house. I have played with DMs like that and everything you go into a shop they have the owners stats and his wife and a background an a drawign of the shop.. .but it means that a lot of the events do not progress the story and you need to carry a lot of paper or in this particular case a6 Index cards.
If you play in a dungeon you need full detailed floor plans.

in any case you can make all this stuff up almost as fast as you can read and assimilate the stuff that has been written by someoen else.

This is link has an interesting essay on the subject

http://www.phreeow.net/wiki/tiki-index.php?page=Canon+and+the+death+of+everything+we+hold+dear

The last line has some punch to it.

QuoteThe story, ultimately, has to be yours. When the publisher takes ownership of the story, he steals your game.

Enjoy
Rob Conley

P.S. Story in this case seems to refer to plot not as in story gaming.

Quote from: HaffrungLooks fascinating. Brings to mind Jorge Luis Borges and Italo Calvino.

I briefly toyed with the idea of a campaign based on Calvino's Invisible Cities, but I wasn't sure my players would take so much surrealism, so nothing came out of it. As for Hav, it is now on my to-buy list; looks very interesting.

Quote from: estarThis is link has an interesting essay on the subject

http://www.phreeow.net/wiki/tiki-index.php?page=Canon+and+the+death+of+everything+we+hold+dear

The last line has some punch to it.



Enjoy
Rob Conley

P.S. Story in this case seems to refer to plot not as in story gaming.

Unless, of course, you are the publisher.

-clash

Quote from: MelanI briefly toyed with the idea of a campaign based on Calvino's Invisible Cities, but I wasn't sure my players would take so much surrealism, so nothing came out of it.

Dude, if I ever move to Hungary I'll play in that campaign.