How loyal are you to published settings you choose to game in? Do you stick to the vision of the author pretty closely or is it merely inspiration? If you discover a follow up publication that conflicts with something you fleshed out on your own in a particular setting, do you change it? Do you move it elsewhere? Ignore it completely?
Obviously the answer is probably "It depends" but Id be interested to hear how folks generally feel about published settings. Are they do be 'gamed in' or merely used to help conjure up a setting of your own?
Zero loyalty. I use published material as a springboard or inspiration at best.
Im rather loyal to BX D&D's Karameikos setting as its essentially a huge blank slate to work on with a few place names and the most bare bones basic descriptions of a few of the kingdoms. I shifted Hoard of the Dragon Queen out of the Forgotten Realms and over to Karameikos.
Same with several other early TSR settings that start out very minimallist and allow often huge freedom to make of it whatever you want.
No loyalty at all. They're just there for me to mine for ideas/inspiration.
Quote from: rgrove0172;922977How loyal are you to published settings you choose to game in? Do you stick to the vision of the author pretty closely or is it merely inspiration?
I definitely don't stick to the authors' vision if it conflicts with my own preference. I'm currently running campaigns set in Mystara, the Wilderlands, and Golarion. I use themes and tropes and flavour from the settings, but I am willing to change, critique and subvert as takes my whim - eg some of Paizo's Golarion stuff has an unpleasant socjus-left political slant which I may critique a bit, or (more commonly) just leave out, while retaining the flavour of the setting. Some of Mystara's 1980s politics (Shia Muslim expy bad! Sunni Muslim expy good!) feels dated or naive too, and I likewise change & subvert, eg IMC The Master of the Desert Nomads conquered Ylaruam (the Arabia expy) after a failed 'nation building' attempt by the Thyatian empire ("They'll welcome us as liberators!"), and is more Osama Bin Laden than the original Ayatollah Homeini figure. With Wilderlands I'll play up some '70s sword & sorcery/sword & planet tropes (eg I often refer to the 1981 Flash Gordon movie!), downplay others. And my recently ended 4e Forgotten Realms game included a parody-Elminster figure in the form of the legendary Hallomakk Stromm, Savant Sage of Waterdeep "So awesome, he created his own Epic Destiny - no you can't have it!" :D
None. I game exclusively in created settings. BUT...I DO like the old Known World wackiness.:-)
Quote from: Omega;922984Im rather loyal to BX D&D's Karameikos setting as its essentially a huge blank slate to work on with a few place names and the most bare bones basic descriptions of a few of the kingdoms.
A lot of published settings tend to start with a good idea, and then junk it up with D&Disms or random stuff that jars with the tone. I stay faithful to the core vision and ignore the rest. For instance, I stay faithful to Allston's Byzantine-Empire-colonizes-Transylvania premise for Karameikos and leave out the sword & sorcery bits and the gonzo 70's heavy metal album cover stuff (like the Hutaaka).
Quote from: daniel_ream;923004A lot of published settings tend to start with a good idea, and then junk it up with D&Disms or random stuff that jars with the tone. I stay faithful to the core vision and ignore the rest. For instance, I stay faithful to Allston's Byzantine-Empire-colonizes-Transylvania premise for Karameikos and leave out the sword & sorcery bits and the gonzo 70's heavy metal album cover stuff (like the Hutaaka).
But the gonzo 70's heavy metal album cover stuff predates the Allston stuff...
I am very loyal to the parts I like. The rest, not at all.
And this creates weird conversations. I say I'm a RIFTS fan, and then people say "well, what about X, Y, and Z? And I shrug because I never used those bits.
Also, I'm a corebook guy and rarely enjoy splats, so when I say I am a Planescape or Dark Sun fan, I get "well, what about metaplot X or totally new change Y"? And I shrug because I never used those bits.
If they're lucky, the author's opinions are taken under advisement.
If they're unlucky, they are used to wipe my ass.
Just the way it should be.
But, to be honest, by the time I get to the point where I am going to run someone's setting, the author has engaged me to the point that we're pretty simpatico on most things. But, if there's something I want or need to change, it gets changed, I don't even think about it or consider if I should.
The only concern would be making sure it gets transmitted to the players that this is not their campaign, it's mine, and if I differ from the author in the presentation of the setting...well he's not running the game, I am.
My WFRP games are pre-Storm of Chaos.
My Rifts games are pre-Juicer Uprising/Campaign of Unity/Siege of Tolkeen.
If I ever run Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms and Dark Sun, I intend to ignore Greyhawk Wars/Time of Troubles/Prism Pentad.
My oWoD games ignored everything from the Year of the Reckoning onwards.
You could argüe that I'm more loyal to some settings than the publishers themselves. ;) Nothing ruins a setting, to me, like a supplement treadmill. For me it's a matter of getting psyched with the original version of each setting and being underwhelmed by subsequent metaplot, but you can also file it under "take what I want and chuck the rest."
Not a whole lot. I guess I'm most faithful to the JG Wilderlands setting since I do use the material published for it - which is all pretty sketchy to begin with. It would be pretty damn hard to do something in that setting that could even vaguely be deemed non-canonical.
With Traveller, I've gotten pretty sick of the people who need 25-line .sigs to specify just how true to the Official Traveller Universe they are. I just dispense entirely with the whole Imperium/published sectors/etc. and anything else I don't really like (High Guard for instance) and make my own stuff, borrowing whatever I like (aliens, some 3rd party stuff like Beyond/Vanguard Reaches, etc.). In that respect, it's probably a whole lot more true to what Classic Traveler was all about than any of that other calcified accretion that came afterwards. Not to say I can't enjoy the official stuff (I liked Mark Miller's recent novel Agent of the Empire, for example) but I just would never want to game in that setting myself.
For much the same reasons, I can't really enjoy Greyhawk the way that other people seem to. I would just rather use the original folio and map and that's it. I certainly don't want to get into lengthy discussions online about the political/cultural structure of Furyondy or quote some obscure passage from Gord the Rogue about the Scarlet Brotherhood to back up my arguments. Part of me thinks that by and large the people who do that are not really gaming too much and all they're left with is canon/non-canon bickering.
For a few years I played a FASA Trek game that was pretty close to FASA's canon for that game - which, by today's standards would be wildly non-canonical. I liked it a lot. So much so, that I can't really enjoy whatever Paramount thinks is Trek canon nowadays. Star Fleet Battles OTOH, is just some ridiculous bullshit. :D
Someone asked me once, in a very similar thread, how I'd feel about a group taking my published Scarlet Pimpernel setting and distorting it all out of reason. I don't remember my exact phrasing, but it was along the lines of "I don't give a good goddamn." If you've bought and paid for a setting, well, it's your campaign. Do whatever the heck you like with it. If you're having fun with it, that's great.
IMHO, there's only one reason to be pissed off at how a GM twists a published setting: that your ability to metagame from your own copy's been compromised.
Quote from: Kellri;923028I just dispense entirely with the whole Imperium/published sectors/etc. and anything else I don't really like (High Guard for instance) and make my own stuff, borrowing whatever I like (aliens, some 3rd party stuff like Beyond/Vanguard Reaches, etc.). In that respect, it's probably a whole lot more true to what Classic Traveler was all about than any of that other calcified accretion that came afterwards.
For Classic Traveller, I rolled up my own subsectors and tell the players nobody's heard from the Imperium in 100 years. That was my answer to the canon monkeys who showed up at my events making noise about blah-blah. Actually one of the reasons I jumped aboard the SWN train too.
Quote from: Kellri;923028With Traveller, I've gotten pretty sick of the people who need 25-line .sigs to specify just how true to the Official Traveller Universe they are. I just dispense entirely with the whole Imperium/published sectors/etc. and anything else I don't really like (High Guard for instance) and make my own stuff, borrowing whatever I like (aliens, some 3rd party stuff like Beyond/Vanguard Reaches, etc.). In that respect, it's probably a whole lot more true to what Classic Traveler was all about than any of that other calcified accretion that came afterwards. Not to say I can't enjoy the official stuff (I liked Mark Miller's recent novel Agent of the Empire, for example) but I just would never want to game in that setting myself.
Quote from: Spinachcat;923037For Classic Traveller, I rolled up my own subsectors and tell the players nobody's heard from the Imperium in 100 years. That was my answer to the canon monkeys who showed up at my events making noise about blah-blah. Actually one of the reasons I jumped aboard the SWN train too.
Really quickly, I learned that canon was for authors while everything else was for people playing in Traveller. Also that canon in Traveller was whatever Marc Miller said it was at that particular time, which could and has changed.
Prior to MgT2e, I was writing up my own interpretation of Foreven Sector which envisioned it as a buffer zone between the Zhodani Consulate and the Imperium where a satellite state of the Imperium was growing in an effort to antagonize the Zhodani into prosecuting the Fifth Frontier War before they were ready. Weaving adventure plots in and out of canon was a lot of work, but fun in an intellectual exercise sort of way. However, it only made sense if I was writing it.
A lot of the stuff I liked from that exercise is being kept, but used in my own independent setting creation where I can dump things that I find annoying to have to work around (psionics in the OTU, I am looking at you). I aim for the Burgess Shale version of Traveller nowadays and use published material for ideas.
A Tribute to the Burgess Shale Period of Traveller (http://freelancetraveller.com/features/othroads/burgess.html)
Quote from: Freelance TravellerA Tribute to the Burgess Shale Period of Traveller
by Ken Pick
Know, O Travellers, that in the early days of GDW, before the rise of the Third Imperium, there was an age undreamed of, where unknown races and empires and federations strode among the stars, their ships sparkling through Jumpspace between worlds lost to our ken. Once there were many species of Traveller -- other worlds, other races, other galaxies, other times, other roads taken -- only to be eclipsed forever by the Imperium. From many Travellers to one, and when that One shattered and fell, so fell Traveller...
The Burgess Shale Effect
Do you remember when CT
Was only Books 1, 2, and 3
And a homespun setting that you wrote?
-- Doug & Kirsten Berry, "The Traveller Saga" (filk)
The Burgess Shale is a geologic formation in the Canadian Rockies, incredibly rich in fossils from Earth's early Cambrian period -- the earliest known (except possibly for the Edicara) muticellular life on Earth. Over 90% of these fossils are unclassifiable except as "Problematica" (unclassifiable weird ones), matching no known phylum.
Note: A Phylum (plural Phyla) is the next-to-largest step in the Linnaean System of biological classification. For example; all fish, reptiles, dinosaurs, birds, and mammals -- anything with a spinal cord/backbone -- group into a single phylum: Vertebrates.
Apparently, when multicellular life first appeared (possibly spurred on by the DNA-shuffling effects of sexual reproduction), it exploded into a myriad of "experimental" forms (preserved in the Burgess Shale), followed later by an apparent mass extinction. Only the handful of phyla that survived that extinction left descendants; all life on Earth belongs to one of those remaining phyla -- maybe 10-20% of the phyla that lived at the period of the Burgess Shale.
The same phenomenon happened in FRP gaming. Early Traveller (as was typical in FRP games of the day) was a set of basic character rules, small starships, and basic worldbuilding, without any "official" background. As in D&D of the time, the game master had to make up his universe from scratch, filling in the holes and errata in the original ruleset. (Especially since except for the starships and gravs, early Traveller technology was pretty much contemporary; any "really futuristic" stuff had to be homebrewed.) In those days before the official GDW "Third Imperium" universe, each gamemaster built his Traveller universe differently, leading to a variety of star-spanning civilizations and high-tech that has not been seen since.
Just like the Problematica of the Burgess Shale.
I never heard of the Burgess Shale before! Thank you!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burgess_Shale
Very much depends on how much i like the setting in question. Also, it depends a lot on how detailed the setting is in the first place.
Most TSR and DnD settings are not "sacred" to me, so i change what i want to change. Or most of the time, i have not read all there is to read, so i will probably get some stuff "wrong" anyway...and i could not care less.
Some settings on the other hand are so detailed (and i like that they are), that i don't want to change a thing....for example i'd rather NOT play in Middle Earth than play in a distorted/butchered version of it. That means that most often, i will not play in it. Why? Because most of my players have no clue about it and if that is the case, as i said, i'd rather play in a different setting than letting them ruin Middle Earth :D
So settings fall into two categories for me - 1) light enough that i don't care about canon and therefore i make shit up and 2) very detailed stuff (that i love) that i want to keep as close as possible and therefore would need to have "compatible" players for it to be any fun for me to play or GM in.
I cut my teeth in the Burgess Shale. For me to use a published setting I have to really like it. Often I am happiest with a short core rulebook and make the rest up out of whole cloth. The published settings I like best tend to be single author creations with a strong vision of what the setting is about. Ken Spencer's "Rocket Age" is a good example of a published seting I like. The World of Darkness, the Forgotten Realms, and Rifts have all lost focus and drifted into lack of defining vision.
Even in settings that I like I have no compunctions about twisting them to suit my needs and visions. You are playing in Dave's Game, not the author's.
What I keep, I keep because it inspires me or makes my life easier, not out of any sense of "loyalty."
Quote from: Spinachcat;923016I am very loyal to the parts I like. The rest, not at all.
And this creates weird conversations. I say I'm a RIFTS fan, and then people say "well, what about X, Y, and Z? And I shrug because I never used those bits.
Also, I'm a corebook guy and rarely enjoy splats, so when I say I am a Planescape or Dark Sun fan, I get "well, what about metaplot X or totally new change Y"? And I shrug because I never used those bits.
Haha that's me.:D
Usually I run my own setting material but if I run a published setting I will generally stick to the material as intended with minor tweaks here or there for taste. The one setting I tend to run frequently would be Ravenloft. I use all the material for that from the boxed sets up to about the death of Van Richten (the quality seemed to drop around some of the later modules and the metaphor with Death taking over Darkon is where I stopped using any official changes). The 3E setting material I almost completely ignore.
But a setting like that, and I think most settings, starts to deviate from sourcebooks if you run it long enough (even if you are loyal to the setting).
Fold. Spindle. Mutilate. A published setting is either just a time saver, or I want to do something specific with it that's going to blow up the status quo.
I don't use settings--I use modules. :D I've just never played in a group or ran a group where setting mattered.
I really dearly love that Burgess-Shale article - and pretty much everything else from Ken Pick. It's pretty inspiring stuff. When I first read that a number of years ago it was a real revelation and directly led to my own decision to basically start from the beginning and stick with the beginning. I've seen it referred to as Proto-Traveller as well - and to me, that's all Traveller ought to be about. Far too often, discussion seems to devolve into some guy beating his chest and pointing out that his .sig identifies him as an official Duke of Sylea who just will not tolerate the very idea of jump torpedoes.
Quote from: Tod13;923060I don't use settings--I use modules. :D I've just never played in a group or ran a group where setting mattered.
Wow, that's just...incredible. No offense to you of course, only that your approach is so totally alien to me and the people Ive gamed with. The setting IS THE GAME to us. I cant imagine playing a game without a fairly thorough understanding and familiarity with the background, and I mean pretty extensive. I have seen some other groups at conventions and such just start off in a generic tavern or whatever, go beat the bad guy, take his stuff and finished off having a ball but like I said, totally weird to me.
Quote from: rgrove0172;922977How loyal are you to published settings you choose to game in?
I don't see it as a matter of "loyalty". "Interpretation" is the word I'd much rather use:).
QuoteDo you stick to the vision of the author pretty closely or is it merely inspiration?
Usually I do stick closely to it, because if I didn't...why not use another setting entirely? I've got settings I like already. Why am I not running one of them, if I have to rewrite a large part of the setting?
QuoteIf you discover a follow up publication that conflicts with something you fleshed out on your own in a particular setting, do you change it?
I'd change what was written in the publication, yes, but nobody's offered me that option! Or were you asking whether I'd change what I had fleshed out:D?
(Jokes aside, I'd only change what I've fleshed out if 1. the PCs have never interacted with it so far, whether they know it or not, and 2. it wouldn't disrupt anything and 3. it makes sense. All of them have to be cumulatively true for me to even try and salvage stuff that contradicts my campaign - meaning, events almost never get salvaged. And yes, that means I've got no use for metaplots, unless revealed in the corebook).
QuoteDo you move it elsewhere?
That's a change in order to salvage stuff, and has to fit the conditions above.
QuoteIgnore it completely?
That's the default.
QuoteObviously the answer is probably "It depends" but Id be interested to hear how folks generally feel about published settings. Are they do be 'gamed in' or merely used to help conjure up a setting of your own?
Both are possible;).
I prefer having a setting that's usable without too much work on my side. Some work is fine. Rewriting stuff from the ground up isn't, not anymore. Been there, done that, will skip it next time;).
it's hard to stick closely to a setting that is highly detailed, but my desire is to experience it as closely as possible to the way the author presumably did. we tried to do that with Night City, for example. but really there is no way that you'll be able to avoid inserting your own spin on things. inevitably you miss some of the details in play, or contradict them-- and there are always going to be gaps you'll have to fill in on your own.
Quote from: rgrove0172;923071... The setting IS THE GAME to us. I cant imagine playing a game without a fairly thorough understanding and familiarity with the background...
Well, D&D itself is a setting, or at least a set of setting parameters, premises, and presumptions. When I ran Temple of Elemental Evil, I didn't bother with a setting beyond "This is D&D universe. The rest will emerge through play."
To answer the OP, I don't follow published settings, but I will use them as a springboard to go off in my own direction. I mean, my Star Wars campaign was certainly not loyal to any canon or sourcebooks, though the mood was Star Warsy and it did have wookies in it.
Quote from: AsenRG;923074Usually I do stick closely to it, because if I didn't...why not use another setting entirely? I've got settings I like already. Why am I not running one of them, if I have to rewrite a large part of the setting?
I am similar, with a caveat. I'm more inclined to make a few big changes to the setting, rather than dozens of little customizations. Basically, for reference purposes, it's easier both for me to look things up and for the players to understand the differences if I have just a few changes, though they can be big. If there's a little difference where I think "I'd do that differently" but it's not a big deal, then I'm probably not going to change it just for convenience.
On the other hand, I have no loyalty at all and will kill any number of sacred cows if I don't like them or I want to do something different. For example, I'm sort of running in the Forgotten Realms at present, but at the start of the campaign, a plague of dragons descended on the surface world - wiping out all the big cities and essentially destroying civilization. So while I'll use some FR material, most of the stuff is largely irrelevant.
Quote from: Chainsaw;923052What I keep, I keep because it inspires me or makes my life easier, not out of any sense of "loyalty."
This is pretty much all that I can say on the matter too.
Elements which I like are kept, but they can and WILL change due to player interaction.
Elements which I dislike are used as toilet paper.
Quote from: Tod13;923060I don't use settings--I use modules. :D I've just never played in a group or ran a group where setting mattered.
Early on, this is what our group did.
Some settings need to be changed to become bearable. Like Forgotten Realms. Or you can just ignore everything outside of the 1st edition gray campaign box.
Quote from: rgrove0172;923071Wow, that's just...incredible. No offense to you of course, only that your approach is so totally alien to me and the people Ive gamed with. The setting IS THE GAME to us. I cant imagine playing a game without a fairly thorough understanding and familiarity with the background, and I mean pretty extensive. I have seen some other groups at conventions and such just start off in a generic tavern or whatever, go beat the bad guy, take his stuff and finished off having a ball but like I said, totally weird to me.
No problem and no offense. :)
How much setting do you need really need? Real question there, since demonstrably, I feel like I need but a minimal setting. (You're in a science-fiction version of a medieval kingdom--don't insult the king or poach his alien deer. You are in a anarcho-capitalist space station--don't forget your oxygen payments.) I find it an interesting question since I knew a lot of people liked setting books. But I never imagined
needing one. I'm writing an RPG for my group and I have a minimal setting mostly used to determine background careers and experiences (living the mountains or working fishing ships or growing up in a space station type of stuff).
How much of your character's personality is based on setting and why would it change (setting deities aside) for a different setting?
None of us have wanted to worry about or play at politics or empire building, which is where I see setting being important. And NPCs can still have personalities and react to the character's actions and fame over time without needing a specific setting outside of the current adventure. We lay down a basic "these are sapient and these are not" about monsters and will agree before character generation what sort of social prejudice or any caste system there is, so if someone plays a half-orc or a thief or a specific caste, they understand what is going on. But that is about it.
Quote from: Tod13;923117How much of your character's personality is based on setting and why would it change (setting deities aside) for a different setting?
By contrast, the Mythras boys are pretty invested in the notion that this stuff absolutely does matter.
Quote from: daniel_ream;923004A lot of published settings tend to start with a good idea, and then junk it up with D&Disms or random stuff that jars with the tone. I stay faithful to the core vision and ignore the rest. For instance, I stay faithful to Allston's Byzantine-Empire-colonizes-Transylvania premise for Karameikos and leave out the sword & sorcery bits and the gonzo 70's heavy metal album cover stuff (like the Hutaaka).
Part of the problem I've seen and had confirmed by some TSR staff was an urge by later designers to cater to incessant bitching from players that the published settings were "too underpopulated" and so someone diligently sets out to "fix" that. Which ignores the fact that some of these settings were deliberately left clear so DMs could embellish them with their own stuff. Or that some of these settings are essentially on the verges of new frontiers or the aftermath of cataclysmic disasters. Also the complaints often totally miss the point that a-lot of those empty spaces are overflowing with MONSTER populations, some of theme with their own cultures and cities.
Quote from: rgrove0172;923071Wow, that's just...incredible. No offense to you of course, only that your approach is so totally alien to me and the people Ive gamed with. The setting IS THE GAME to us. I cant imagine playing a game without a fairly thorough understanding and familiarity with the background, and I mean pretty extensive. I have seen some other groups at conventions and such just start off in a generic tavern or whatever, go beat the bad guy, take his stuff and finished off having a ball but like I said, totally weird to me.
My players pretty much demand a setting to game in. The difference is they only want to know the basics of their start location and anything thats common knowledge. The rest they want to learn as they travel and adventure. Which pretty much mirrors my own ideals. With the group I game with as a player though its totally laid back know nothing till it happens start in a tavern style. Especially Kefra who looooves that sort of startup. But because she comes from a culture with a strong oral tradition she is really into picking up the lore of the setting as she goes.
Hence for some players its more fun to not know the setting much.
Since I have several settings I love, I at least try to "get them right" at least in spirit, if not detail. But I find detail important if the world is important to me, and I seldom run a setting I dont have affection for. So it becomes circular.
I am very much a "Setting-GM". When I feel an urge to play something, I generally think of a specific setting. Be it our own world through Lovecraft, Middle-Earth ,Hyborian Age, Mutant Chronicles etc. I am very much in the camp of "rules should support the setting", but at the same time dont care much at all for world-simulation. I generally favor genre-simulation. As a player I love delving into the lore of a setting when I am fortunate to be the player and not GM. Though D&D ,as many have said before, has a large portion of its owns setting baked into its presumptions. In the Mentzer D&D game I am fortunate to be a player in at the moment I am totally fine with the DM say "It's the Known World, but without the Gazetteers" I know what to expect and not expect and I am totally fine with that. A setting does not have to be very much detailed for me to enoy it, but I have to have something I can relate to in some way, be it only by genre.
I seldom ever create and run my own settings. I have done so successfully at least once but there is so much I want to do and see in already published settings I dont feel I have time for it. But when feeling creative I take a very sparse world and flesh it out to give it my own spinn on it.
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;923054The one setting I tend to run frequently would be Ravenloft. I use all the material for that from the boxed sets up to about the death of Van Richten (the quality seemed to drop around some of the later modules and the metaphor with Death taking over Darkon is where I stopped using any official changes). The 3E setting material I almost completely ignore.
Any particular reason for ignoring the 3E stuff? I'm not criticizing, I'm just curious about your reasoning. I can see several possible reasons, ranging from changes they made, changes forced on them, or the schizophrenia of the 3E Ravenloft line. :)
I have a group who completely do not care about setting. I honestly think setting matters less to them than video game skins. All they want to do is punch stuff in the face and collect treasure. Sometimes they don't even care about the treasure.
It kills me to run games for them because I love good world building.
Quote from: rgrove0172;923071I have seen some other groups at conventions and such just start off in a generic tavern or whatever, go beat the bad guy, take his stuff and finished off having a ball but like I said, totally weird to me.
And pretty common to much of the gaming world, where a lot of groups view "setting" as nothing more than a save point between dungeon crawls. I hate that approach myself, but it's not "weird," really. It's just the game they prefer to play.
Quote from: Omega;923119Part of the problem I've seen and had confirmed by some TSR staff was an urge by later designers to cater to incessant bitching from players that the published settings were "too underpopulated" and so someone diligently sets out to "fix" that. Which ignores the fact that some of these settings were deliberately left clear so DMs could embellish them with their own stuff.
You see a bug, I see a feature. If you think about it, there's
nothing the gaming companies peddle us (aside from equipment) that we can't make ourselves: adventures, dungeons, cities, settings, expansion material, rule systems. You can infer "What's wrong with those lazy sods so that they can't be assed to fill out the setting?" But we could readily respond with "What's wrong with those lazy sods that they needed to pay TSR for a setting in the first place?"
As in damn near every walk of life where we pay people to produce things for us because we're either unwilling or incapable to do it ourselves, or because more talented people are just better at it than we are, gamers do as well. There are gamers who want to play the game, not build worlds, and if TSR didn't sell them what they wanted, some other company would have.
Right. But it also drove off those who liked the original open settings.
Quote from: Omega;923120My players pretty much demand a setting to game in. The difference is they only want to know the basics of their start location and anything thats common knowledge. The rest they want to learn as they travel and adventure. Which pretty much mirrors my own ideals. With the group I game with as a player though its totally laid back know nothing till it happens start in a tavern style. Especially Kefra who looooves that sort of startup. But because she comes from a culture with a strong oral tradition she is really into picking up the lore of the setting as she goes.
Hence for some players its more fun to not know the setting much.
Add to this "at the start", and I'd agree with you:). But without it - well, you said it yourself: they demand a setting, they just don't want to know it at the start.
Quote from: Tod13;923117How much setting do you need really need? Real question there, since demonstrably, I feel like I need but a minimal setting. (You're in a science-fiction version of a medieval kingdom--don't insult the king or poach his alien deer. You are in a anarcho-capitalist space station--don't forget your oxygen payments.) I find it an interesting question since I knew a lot of people liked setting books. But I never imagined needing one.
If you use the setting, you demonstrably don't need a book - there are homebrew settings.
But the info in the Referee's head will amount to at least a setting book. Possibly with supplements.
QuoteI'm writing an RPG for my group and I have a minimal setting mostly used to determine background careers and experiences (living the mountains or working fishing ships or growing up in a space station type of stuff).
Nothing wrong with that.
But what kind of mountains are that? Is it a place split between multiple clans that's not rich enough to have any export but mercenaries? Or is it a place which is fully self-sustainable, albeit suffering under an occupation?
The two will produce quite different experiences;).
QuoteHow much of your character's personality is based on setting and why would it change (setting deities aside) for a different setting?
Let's compare two characters from well-off families living in the plains, both of whom went to join the respective navy.
One of them is a well-off in a country that reinforces individualism, rule of law is prevalent and in his plains at least, military career or successful business ventures are thought of as a supreme accomplishment. In this setting, being LGBT is something to be hidden.
The other is a well-off family in a country where the society enforces collectivism to the point that your clan name comes before your own, criminal punishment always impact the whole clan, connections are more important than law, and the supreme career is being in the clergy or part of the administration, while money gained from business (as opposed to land ownership) lowering your standing.
Do you really think "Social 9 out of 12, melee 3, shooting 2" covers adequately the differences that the two are likely to have in their outlook on life:D?
QuoteNone of us have wanted to worry about or play at politics or empire building, which is where I see setting being important. And NPCs can still have personalities and react to the character's actions and fame over time without needing a specific setting outside of the current adventure.
...well, see above. What are the values of those NPCs? Do they think of their clan first (because being clanless is worse than death), or their own good name? What is the criminal system? Will the local law enforcement take a bribe to look the other way? Whether you're playing the game of politics - what will the NPCs think of you, based on your allegiances or lack thereof?
All questions for a setting book;).
QuoteWe lay down a basic "these are sapient and these are not" about monsters and will agree before character generation what sort of social prejudice or any caste system there is, so if someone plays a half-orc or a thief or a specific caste, they understand what is going on. But that is about it.
So, there is a setting, after all;). That's a big part of what you have to make clear in any setting book.
Quote from: Omega;923185Right. But it also drove off those who liked the original open settings.
True, but then, why didn't you just ignore it?
Serious question - I wasn't even born at the time, much less able to play RPGs, so I don't have first-hand memories of how it happened. Mostly, that's just idle curiosity. I know we'd do that, today. What I wonder is why you would be pushed away rather than doing the same thing.
Quote from: RunningLaser;923116Early on, this is what our group did.
Some settings need to be changed to become bearable. Like Forgotten Realms. Or you can just ignore everything outside of the 1st edition gray campaign box.
FR1 - to FR5 (Savage North) are pretty much in the spirit of the Grey box in my opinion.
Quote from: Omega;923120Especially Kefra who looooves that sort of startup. But because she comes from a culture with a strong oral tradition she is really into picking up the lore of the setting as she goes.
Which culture would that be?
Quote from: AsenRG;923194Nothing wrong with that.
But what kind of mountains are that? Is it a place split between multiple clans that's not rich enough to have any export but mercenaries? Or is it a place which is fully self-sustainable, albeit suffering under an occupation?
The two will produce quite different experiences;).
That's up to the player to decide if they wish when they pick a specific career or based on their character concept. If you want to do things randomly, this is more of "you grew up in" or "worked for a while" in the mountains, so you should know the critters, weather, and maybe mountain climbing.
Quote from: AsenRG;923194So, there is a setting, after all;). That's a big part of what you have to make clear in any setting book.
LOL. Minimal. ;)
I wanted to address this separately.
Quote from: AsenRG;923194Let's compare two characters from well-off families living in the plains, both of whom went to join the respective navy.
One of them is a well-off in a country that reinforces individualism, rule of law is prevalent and in his plains at least, military career or successful business ventures are thought of as a supreme accomplishment. In this setting, being LGBT is something to be hidden.
The other is a well-off family in a country where the society enforces collectivism to the point that your clan name comes before your own, criminal punishment always impact the whole clan, connections are more important than law, and the supreme career is being in the clergy or part of the administration, while money gained from business (as opposed to land ownership) lowering your standing.
Do you really think "Social 9 out of 12, melee 3, shooting 2" covers adequately the differences that the two are likely to have in their outlook on life:D?
...well, see above. What are the values of those NPCs? Do they think of their clan first (because being clanless is worse than death), or their own good name? What is the criminal system? Will the local law enforcement take a bribe to look the other way? Whether you're playing the game of politics - what will the NPCs think of you, based on your allegiances or lack thereof?
All questions for a setting book;).
That is more setting than personality to me. We tend to use a variant of DwD Studios' BareBones Fantasy Moral Code and Personality Quirks (I forget offhand their word for the latter). My players seem to like that more than the setting background type stuff you described. (Moral Code is things like being very honest and somewhat selfish. Personality Quirks are stuff like "swims every chance they get" or "has a fascination with needlessly complicated plans" or even "I like potatoes".)
Even then, what you described isn't necessarily dependent on setting. You could run either character in any of my games. We just say you're from "some other" land "way over there" or there are other reasons for being that way. In some ways, the reasons for how the character act are irrelevant beyond the fact that the character acts a certain way. YMMV. ;)
I love thick, rich settings. I read them for enjoyment and when GMing I freely ignore stuff that I want. I encourage my players to read any setting material they want with the following warning: "All the lore you know as a player is really just some shit your character heard in a tavern. Some of it could be true but I'm not gonna tell you which parts. That's on your characters to determine."
And from there we kill monsters and make our own damn stories. And Elminster? He's just a dude with a really good publicist.
Quote from: Tod13;923209That's up to the player to decide if they wish when they pick a specific career or based on their character concept. If you want to do things randomly, this is more of "you grew up in" or "worked for a while" in the mountains, so you should know the critters, weather, and maybe mountain climbing.
Or you might not need to know the critters, because your place is secure enough that you can pass by with a "default check". Both options tell us something about your setting:).
QuoteLOL. Minimal. ;)
Yeah, only half a setting book at best...no, wait, you said you have the gods, too, right? Then you can probably publish that;).
Quote from: Tod13;923214I wanted to address this separately.
I feel privileged. (Maybe I should go check my privilege out?)
QuoteThat is more setting than personality to me.
Your question was "how the setting would impact the personality". Of course I answered it with a list of setting traits that would, in all likelihood, impact your personality - given the exact same background...
QuoteWe tend to use a variant of DwD Studios' BareBones Fantasy Moral Code and Personality Quirks (I forget offhand their word for the latter). My players seem to like that more than the setting background type stuff you described. (Moral Code is things like being very honest and somewhat selfish. Personality Quirks are stuff like "swims every chance they get" or "has a fascination with needlessly complicated plans" or even "I like potatoes".)
Nothing wrong with that - but in my book*, this should depend on the setting features.
*Quite a literal turn of phrase, though I'm not sure I'd ever finish it.
QuoteEven then, what you described isn't necessarily dependent on setting. You could run either character in any of my games. We just say you're from "some other" land "way over there" or there are other reasons for being that way. In some ways, the reasons for how the character act are irrelevant beyond the fact that the character acts a certain way. YMMV. ;)
I already pointed out that they should be relevant at least to the GM. And if the players have to persuade anyone, at least part of them would become suddenly relevant to the PCs as well - whether the players know or care.
And of course, mileages obviously vary, here - nothing wrong with that. I'm just pointing out that they don't vary that radically;).
Ive tried to play without a full fledged setting (published and custom) and 10 seconds in Im finding I need it.
Ill admit much of the reason is the style Ive adopted to running the narrative. I guess Ive read way to many fantasy novels because it just seems impossible to say something like "A few merchants appear, their wagons laden with goods. They wave as they pass on their way to the next village."
Ive got to mention that from the garish colors the wagons are painted and the odd way they tip their heads when acknowledging the players they recognized as Tords, a gypsy like culture from South of the Verneez Mountains that peddle their goods and perform for pennies during the mild months. One of the older men asks if the ford at the River Quay is crossable up ahead, the storms in the foothills a few days past have them worried it may not be. The players inform him it was clear two days past when they crossed but it was still raining then. He smiles and thanks them and then places his thumbs together and fingers to his temples in a time honored gesture of good will as they continue on.
Its only a momentary and essentially meaningless encounter but without even knowing it, and especially if generating such details off the cuff, Ive created details in the world that must then be recorded and filed in order to remain consistent. Its a lot easier when most of this sort of thing is prepared in advance.
I suppose even when I don't have a prepared setting, there still is one, in my head. It just takes a bit more creative energy to present it on a whim...and I think I lose something in quality, cohesiveness and originality when rushed.
Quote from: CRKrueger;923207Which culture would that be?
African. Though of the international players I know shes the only one with that particular outlook combo so no clue if others would have similar likes or not.
As someone who has written several commercially published RPG books with settings, I would say "Fuck Setting Loyalty". I want people who get my books to make their version of my setting into whatever the fuck they want.