I was probably a player for about 5 years before i decided to try my hand at being the DM.

The first question i was asked by a player when i turned up with my books tucked under my arm was "Where's your world?"

Seems like both a simple and a weird question looking back on it.

Simple because without a world how could we play?

Weird because in what other type of entertainment is such a question asked?

We all took it as read back then that if you ran a game, you also had your own game-world to go along with it. What's more, if you finished one campaign and decided to run a new one, more often than not it came along as an entirely new game-world to discover and play in.

As time has gone on, i think it's safe to say that we've spent more time gaming in pre-made game-worlds.

What has changed?

Lack of time? Dedication? Inspiration? More things to snag our attention these days than back then?

Probably all of the above.

Yeah, anyone I played with had their own world... and I had mine when I ran games. I kept on building on them though and they're still with me... so no need for pre-fabs, though I do look at them for ideas.
All the games I've played in lately have been published settings... except for Pathfinder, but that one's just a sandbox of various D&Disms.

Quote from: One Horse Town;723138What has changed?

Lack of time? Dedication? Inspiration? More things to snag our attention these days than back then?

Burnout.

Quote from: One Horse Town;723138The first question i was asked by a player when i turned up with my books tucked under my arm was "Where's your world?"

I didn't even know about the official "worlds" (ie. Greyhawk, etc ...), until I met other players in the dorms during freshman year of college.

Previously, the DM just made up "worlds" either by random tables, or haphazardly.

We ran our own worlds and occasionally "visited" other pre made worlds usually through plane shifting and hand waving.


To be honest I spend less time creating a world than it would take me to learn a pre-made one. I have a weakness at any sort of detail memorization. I do read pre crafted stuff but mostly for idea mining.

I find it less work to create everything on the spot and and fairly decent at it.

This hasn't changed to me. I run both my own worlds and pre-made settings, as I did when I started role playing with AD&D, the Dark Eye and Stormbringer/Hawkmoon.

That said, I think a lot of games now are either systems that come with their own default setting, or games that are built to emulate a specific world or piece(s) of fiction.

Gone are the days it seems where systems like AD&D, Rolemaster, GURPS and the like dominated the market.

There's Pathfinder of course, which can be declined in any number of ways with different settings, but Paizo defines a lot of its value and appeal on the setting of Golarion - they really are two intertwined properties. Behind we find games that are specifically built to emulate Star Wars, Warhammer 40K and the like, or games with their specific settings, like Shadowrun, Numenera and the like. Maybe part of that current zeitgeist has to do with a backlash against d20 and the "one system to rule them all" kind of thing that went on with the 2000s. I don't think it tells the whole story though - it might have to do, for instance, with the fact that more and more of these games are thought of as IPs, as worlds of fiction, rather than games and tools, with all that entails of "canon" and "novel series" and multimedia "the video game based on Numenera" and all that.

But then again, in OSR circles, there are many aficionados who build their own worlds and campaigns and love doing just that, so I don't think DIY and personal world building are dead by any means.

My experience matches Benoists'. I do a mix of my own settings and pre-made. There are some classic worlds out there I love to run. I love making my own as well. Sometime during the 90s, I did start to encounter more players who wanted to play in a specific setting (usually because they had read novels set there). I think that faded a bit (at least within my circles). I do agree with Benoists that a large number of games come with their own setting these days. For me, that is okay as long as people are still making their own settings (it can be helpful to see how other people construct worlds by looking at published material).

I've tried running a few games, most of the time in my own world (One being 40k), but I don't think I've quite got the hang of being sandboxy yet... or maybe the players haven't, I don't know. Maybe it's both. Maybe I'm just rubbish at GM'ing! Who knows.

Still! I'm optimistic. I want to try again, insanity being to do the same thing over and over and hope for different results...

Quote from: Ladybird;723157I've tried running a few games, most of the time in my own world (One being 40k), but I don't think I've quite got the hang of being sandboxy yet... or maybe the players haven't, I don't know. Maybe it's both. Maybe I'm just rubbish at GM'ing! Who knows.

Still! I'm optimistic. I want to try again, insanity being to do the same thing over and over and hope for different results...

You don't have to do a sandbox to do your own setting. You could run another adventure structure if you are more comfortable. My advice if you do want to go off the rails, is don't worry about it blowing up in your face. I find the less I stress out about stuff, the better the game is. Just keep doing it, and you get the hang of it and discover what works for you. If you can, try to run a regular game every week for a bit. But the third week or so you should start getting into a groove.

Quote from: One Horse Town;723138We all took it as read back then that if you ran a game, you also had your own game-world to go along with it. What's more, if you finished one campaign and decided to run a new one, more often than not it came along as an entirely new game-world to discover and play in.

As time has gone on, i think it's safe to say that we've spent more time gaming in pre-made game-worlds.

This is something that bugs me a lot, as someone who enjoyed homebrewing his own campaign settings as a youth, but has seen precious little opportunity to actually sit the fuck down and design a game world in the last 15 years.

But I'm looking forward to changing that soon enough.

Quote from: One Horse Town;723138What has changed?

Lack of time? Dedication? Inspiration? More things to snag our attention these days than back then?

Probably all of the above.

Absolutely. To which I'd add: the increasing availability of very good published settings. Sure, 99.9% are still crap, but all it takes is that one out of a thousand published settings be great, and you're set for a long, long time gaming-wise.

For D&D, I rarely consider published settings outside of my 90s TSR favs (Dark Sun, Ravenloft and Planescape) as I have not found any official D&D setting to be as enjoyable and inspiring. However, I have found consistent enjoyment from people's homebrew campaigns over the years.

As for "where's your world?", I have to agree that FOR ME "one campaign = one world" most of the time and I usually whip up a new world with its own issues for the next campaign.

Whenever I ran a Traveller campaign, I'd usually choose a new Sector or Subsector (or make one), even if it was in the Imperium.

Quote from: The Butcher;723273To which I'd add: the increasing availability of very good published settings.

I was going to say "Eye Candy", but then I am bit more cynical.

It started with Darlene's Greyhawk map that put every homebrewed effort to shame. Why use crude lines on white paper when you can have this piece of art on your table, don't have to worry about getting geography right, and get descriptions of those places on top?

That led to the descriptions, the interactions between places and NPCs becoming ever more important. So published settings were adopted not for the ease of use but for the story and metaplot that came with them.

And finally, new rule sets got married to settings. Who wants to use Shadowrun in a setting of his own?
Some games are being played in spite of their rules.

When I use a premade setting, like Dark Sun or Ravenloft, I make them mine to some extent.

Does anyone intentionally use a premade world with an eye to conforming to other gm's use of that setting?

I don't.

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;723372I was going to say "Eye Candy", but then I am bit more cynical.

Some games are being played in spite of their rules.

Great post! Fantastic summary of the history of settings.

Nevertheless, I find that there are two sorts of settings that appeal to me:

One is the "Darlene map Greyhawk" type you've mentioned above. I'd love to whip up my own gonzo science fantasy D&D megadungeon, but after picking up Anomalous Subsurface Environment, I find it highly unlikely that I'll ever outdo Mr. Wetmore's magnum opus, even if I actually manage to put even half as many hours as he did on the project.

A more dramatic example may be the upcoming Auran Empire setting for ACKS. It's pretty much the same basic set-up I've been using for my D&D games in the last 15 years (i.e. a deliberate calque of the historical Dark Ages, with a mighty empire freshly fallen and a continent balkanized between feudal warlords, with monsters and bandits haunting the wilderness and sparse civilization), but I'm a potential buyer because they may yet give me a pleasing, ready-made version of smething I can do on my own, albeit at an expenditure of time I am not always able to afford (as OHT pointed out).

The other is the less rational "OMG this is awesome" setting. Nowadays not a lot of settings do this for me. It's got to be something that I would never, ever think of my own and that feels like a setting my players and I can set a kick-ass game in. Tékumel, Talislanta, Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed/Evolved, The Day After Ragnarok and Eclipse Phase all spring to mind as good examples of this category.

In any case, the big advantage that ready-made settings offer to me is that they save time without stifling your own creative juices. As a GM I'm free to modify and ignore large swathes of writing, mix and match bits and pieces and even entire settings into a Frankenstein patchwork of imaginary worlds, and do just about whatever tickles my fancy with those ideas I've picked up from someone else. They assist and do not necessarily subtitute (at least not entirely) my own creative whims.

But I digress. I agree with you that there are plenty of settings out there that are eye candy and little more, but there's also great material to be found amidst the chaff. Don't cheat yourself out of it.

Greyhawk - awesome map
Forgotten Realms - a crapload of great maps
MERP - Pete Fenlon is the god of maps
Shadowrun - Thomas Guide (before teh intarwebs)
WFRP - great maps again
Basic D&D - Gazetteers mapped the whole world almost.

Now that I think about it, all the great long-term campaigns I ran were all in settings that had great maps.  Maybe it's due to my lack of drawing skill, or it could be the fact I do better taking something and running wild with it rather then starting from a blank page once we get larger then a town/city.