There are a number of settings that are great to read but when I go to play in them. they are like straight-jackets.
There is so much information available for them that I am second checking myself all the time.
Players have access to the information as well and have expectations on the setting that if not met them, they are disappointed.
How do you deal with this??
Can you give a few examples of what you mean? Is this for licensed (e.g. Star Wars or Star Trek) settings, or more for those made specifically for gaming (like Forgotten Realms)?
This is one of the reasons why I don't run Star Wars or Star Trek games, despite loving both universes. There's just too much established canon, and while I'm a big fan, I don't have the details and trivia mastered like so many of my fellow nerds.
In general, when I encounter a setting with lots of details, like say Heavy Gear's Terranova, I try to find a little corner of it that inspires me to campaign, and then build outward from there. I'll absorb the details of the larger game world as I need them.
Everything written up to the date in which the campaign starts is true. Everything after that is subject to change.
This is true for both anything written in real life after we start playing and anything already written but with a latter date in the settings timeline.
Quote from: lordmalachdrim on March 21, 2021, 05:47:06 PM
Everything written up to the date in which the campaign starts is true. Everything after that is subject to change.
This is true for both anything written in real life after we start playing and anything already written but with a latter date in the settings timeline.
Does the first part have any limits? Some settings have so much stuff that it's hard to be sure you've got it all. And some have retcons (and retcons of retcons) and "alternate versions" that conflict (sometimes addressed and clarified, sometimes not).
Quote from: HappyDaze on March 21, 2021, 05:16:16 PM
Can you give a few examples of what you mean? Is this for licensed (e.g. Star Wars or Star Trek) settings, or more for those made specifically for gaming (like Forgotten Realms)?
A few examples I can think of, Empire of the Petal Throne, Hellfrost the official Traveller universe.
Obviously, Forgotten Realms has the same issue.
Quote from: lordmalachdrim on March 21, 2021, 05:47:06 PM
Everything written up to the date in which the campaign starts is true. Everything after that is subject to change.
This is true for both anything written in real life after we start playing and anything already written but with a latter date in the settings timeline.
That doesn't solve much when the existing "anything written in real life" is all encompassing.
Quote from: Greentongue on March 21, 2021, 05:11:42 PM
There are a number of settings that are great to read but when I go to play in them. they are like straight-jackets.
There is so much information available for them that I am second checking myself all the time.
Players have access to the information as well and have expectations on the setting that if not met them, they are disappointed.
How do you deal with this??
In general this is most easily dealt with by speaking to the players about what parts of the setting are important to them but also set expectations as to what is open to change.
Also don't be afraid of simply making it clear that it is an alternative setting and details may change. L5R for example has a lot of metaplot background stuff but every campaign I've played in as a PC or GMd has been quite divergent from the official material. The GM has just given an overview of what is in the game and what isn't (to the extent that entire plots, factions and wars have been hand waved away). It has never been a problem.
I'm really trying to justify not using some of the methods where the players help generate the setting from their character building input.
Like "Beyond the Wall and Other Adventures" or "Through Sunken Lands".
I'm sure other games have this, or there should be.
Quote from: Greentongue on March 21, 2021, 05:11:42 PM
How do you deal with this??
Have you tried to co op the player with the most setting knowledge?
Mine their knowledge as your own personal wiki of the setting that way you never have to worry about forgetting the name of the King of X country again.
"This is a non canon campaign."
Setting info is a resource for me to use or not, not a restriction. These days I always go out of my way to make setting changes early on, to establish this is not the official version of the setting. Eg in my Damara 1359 DR campaign, the bad guy Dimian Ree was elected King by the Council of Nobles, not good guy Gareth Dragonsbane as per official Forgotten Realms.
Quote from: S'mon on March 21, 2021, 07:30:32 PM
"This is a non canon campaign."
Even the various editions that explain the seperate Prime Material Planes mentions that there are an infinite number of Greyhawks, Torils, Athas-es, etc.
As a player, I do not mind if the GM get's some picky lore bit about an established setting "wrong".
As a GM, I does my best to know the setting as well as possible. But here's another thing, My Dark Sun is intentionally different from the published one. I disgregard all the lore after Kalak's death, and have made up some of my own lore about the past. It's stuff most players will likely never encounter, and it was very gratifying to see the 4th edition version of Dark Sun took a similar tact.
Mainly, I don't play such settings. I may grab an idea or three for my own settings, but usually that's about the limit. On those rare occasions when I do use such a setting, I'm very minimalist with it. The last Forgotten Realms campaign I ran used the 1st ed. Hardback and a handful of paragraphs and maps from a few 2nd ed. products. I bought the 3rd ed. version. Doubt I used more than 2 or 3 pages out of it, and certainly never cracked the book again after a couple of straight read-throughs.
Oh that's easy, I just ignore the shit I don't like.
Quote from: Ratman_tf on March 21, 2021, 07:50:32 PMAs a player, I do not mind if the GM get's some picky lore bit about an established setting "wrong".
From my experience, you are the exception. What I've found is that people that want to play a game in a specific setting are also the same people that want the setting to match the published material. (Otherwise, what is the point?)
I found it easier to just create a new setting that has a similar theme or feel. For example, despite running multiple campaigns set in Glorantha back in the 80s & 90s, the setting has grown so much that I don't have enough knowledge to run a game in that setting today. So I made my own pseudo-ancients campaign complete with my own Roman and Gaul stand-ins.
If the players are familiar with the setting, I don't use it. I find it's not worth fighting the expectations. If you tell someone you're playing in the Forgotten Realms, and ignore a lot of it, it just leads to frustration among the fans. They don't get to use their hard-earned knowledge of the setting, and everything you change will be compared negatively with the elements you excised. If the players aren't familiar with the setting, that's not a problem. I just pick and choose the elements I like, and run with it.
Quote from: Greentongue on March 21, 2021, 05:11:42 PM
There are a number of settings that are great to read but when I go to play in them. they are like straight-jackets.
There is so much information available for them that I am second checking myself all the time.
Players have access to the information as well and have expectations on the setting that if not met them, they are disappointed.
How do you deal with this??
This is why I love Known World and dislike Mystara. Known World was a bare bones skeleton to make of it whatever you wanted. Mystara takes that, shoehorns it into a new world and tries to fill in every little space with something. Sane for Star frontiers vs Zebulon. SF is very bare skeleton while Zebulon is for all intents and purposes a new setting that uses a similar map and also tries to fill in as many spaces as it can. Just not as much as Mystara.
Greyhawk, least up to the boxed set, was probably the best balance. You had info on each kingdom. But not every little detail.
What to do with this or any other setting is A: find out if any players are interested in parts, and which ones. From experience the players with knowledge of a setting tend to know alot about whatever part interests them, and not so much, if any, outside that. Example: A player I know very much likes the Baldurs Gate area and not much else. Another knows Waterdeep and not much else.
Play off what the players know and do not know.
Also. What they know may be a liiiitle out of date. So feel free to wind the clock forward or back. This is especially true of Forgotten Realms which has had several time skips and major uphevals at each. The whole map has changed in some places and areas have appeared and others have vanishes, and thers have vanished and returned and so on.
Feel free to to hand out lots of reality checks. heh-heh.
Same with Star Wars and Star Trek and Middle Earth and whatever. Theres a thousand times more left unexplored than has been detailed.
Quote from: Omega on March 21, 2021, 11:13:06 PM
This is why I love Known World and dislike Mystara. Known World was a bare bones skeleton to make of it whatever you wanted. Mystara takes that, shoehorns it into a new world and tries to fill in every little space with something.
Same here, it's also why I like the Forgotten Realms of the Dragon magazine articles more than even the Forgotten Realms of the gray box. Once you start encyclopedically defining everything, there's a lot less room for new ideas because everything new has to fit in with all the previously defined elements. That integration quickly becomes a lot of work. There's less stuff to remember when I create the stuff on my own, because there's a lot less material-- I'm only going to design so far ahead, instead of trying to exhaustively cover every possibility. And even if the quantity of the material was the same, it's still a lot easier for me to remember stuff I came up with than someone else's ideas. The best settings give creative seeds that inspire new ideas, strong tone and themes, enough of a framework to work with (maps are useful), and then lots of tools that can be adopted and adapted for various purposes, instead of endless canon and official answers.
Quote from: Greentongue on March 21, 2021, 05:11:42 PM
There are a number of settings that are great to read but when I go to play in them. they are like straight-jackets.
There is so much information available for them that I am second checking myself all the time.
Players have access to the information as well and have expectations on the setting that if not met them, they are disappointed.
How do you deal with this??
I don't use them.
In my experience, trying to run such a setting where you ignore published "canon" or do things your own way is usually not worth the effort. It's very difficult to overcome that "canon inertia" -- maybe not for you as the GM, but for the players who are familiar with the setting. Can you do it? Yeah, possibly. Is it worth the effort? Usually not (again, in my experience).
Tell the players "I've read these three books. You may rely on the information in them. Anything else I'm making up as I go. I'm not going to read the other thousand books unless y'all are going to pay me. If you don't like it, we can play something else."
Quote from: hedgehobbit on March 21, 2021, 11:06:58 PM
From my experience, you are the exception. What I've found is that people that want to play a game in a specific setting are also the same people that want the setting to match the published material. (Otherwise, what is the point?)
The point of using the setting is a GM resource to make the game easier and more fun. Nothing to do with canon-wank.
FWIW I have one Faerun fan in my groups, he has never complained about deviations from canon. He likes to make long posts about his PCs' backstories, about the cultures of the Realms. I've never found this harmful to my game; usually it adds to the game. If something was different IMC I'd point it out, but I've never seen an issue. He did once refer to Gareth Dragonsbane being King of Damara, but for an outsider PC that would be an easy mistake for his PC to make IC.
I think GMs worry about canon far more than players do.
Quote from: HappyDaze on March 21, 2021, 05:54:05 PM
Some settings have so much stuff that it's hard to be sure you've got it all. And some have retcons (and retcons of retcons) and "alternate versions" that conflict (sometimes addressed and clarified, sometimes not).
Yes, published material rarely makes much effort to maintain continuity. Why should I worry? I pick the version I like best, or make my own.
I generally treat the 1987 FR Grey Box as canon, but the entry on Damara conflicts with the FR9 Bloodstone Lands that I'm using for the setting, and I take it FR9 has priority (they seem about 10 years out - Greenwood has the Ford of Goliad maybe 10 years in the past, 1347 DR, where in FR9 it (mostly) happened in 1357, the year of the Grey Box). Either Greenwood or Salvatore or both got confused around the timeline, not surprising when the Bloodstone Wars campaign wasn't initially part of FR.
One thing I do is drill down a lot and make my campaign at a much smaller scale than the published material. My Damara campaign uses 2 miles/hex map
(https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qfRJoD0KF8I/YFhZiJZLg1I/AAAAAAAARwI/uCOs_Ffx7nsZDQ900VzcevqjXtBxO7JIACLcBGAsYHQ/s16000/Hommlet-Gurzun%2527s%2Bannotated%2Bbmp.bmp)
Which fits in a small box of the map of Damara from FR9 Bloodstone Lands
(https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-H550IRnqabI/YDIbvrJCxPI/AAAAAAAARgc/SOvoULqss7oqA1v1thHWrzQJPKNz3AejACLcBGAsYHQ/s16000/Damara%2Bwith%2BPolitical%2BBorders%2B.bmp)
Never mind the published campaign setting maps which look more like
(https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xtxwTwLVcbw/X3WlZsvEegI/AAAAAAAAQgw/Pm94dwUew8srA81DebaaIjVHGezEs8Q2wCLcBGAsYHQ/s16000/map.jpg)
Since published US fantasy RPG maps tend to be ridiculously huge scale from a British perspective, there is always a ton of space to do this. I can add castles, baronies, towns, (many) dungeons etc within the official setting, no problem.
BTW last night I checked how my 2 mile/hex map above compared to the S John Ross Medieval Demographics Made Easy numbers. Even at a Highland Scotland type population level of ca 10/square mile I'm still well short on the number of villages I 'ought' to have. It's just not as silly as the typical fantasy map with 50-100 miles between each village, which you're not likely to see IRL outside maybe the Australian Outback.
Quote from: Arkansan on March 21, 2021, 10:39:20 PM
Oh that's easy, I just ignore the shit I don't like.
THIS^^
I love Star Wars, but there are whole swaths of the canon setting (and EU) that I think are genre-breaking and game-breaking bullshit.
Quote from: S'mon on March 22, 2021, 05:14:18 AM
BTW last night I checked how my 2 mile/hex map above compared to the S John Ross Medieval Demographics Made Easy numbers.
The typical fantasy map is indeed silly, but bear in mind that most rpg settings are "the marches" - they're more like Dark Ages Britain (https://www.historyfiles.co.uk/FeaturesBritain/BritishMapAD450-700.htm) than medieval Britain. 600, not 1200. The collapse of the Western Roman Empire, waves of plague, some climate change reducing crop yields, are all thought to have dropped Europe's population from 400-600, with it being more or less stable overall 600-1000, and growing from there.
It's not commonly-appreciated, but the setting of the world of Greyhawk is essentially like that, with a (former) Great Kingdom (https://greyhawk.fandom.com/wiki/Great_Kingdom) which has after many wars and plagues shrunk, leaving behind many smaller principalities ruled by - well, barbarians. With far fewer people, and much poorer.
Into Dark Ages Britain came waves of invaders and migrants - there was land to spare, and even when not spare it was poorly-defended. This was the time of Beowulf and Sigurd and the Rheingold, a time where an ambitious man who fought and led well could make himself a king - of a small kingdom, of course, only small - but a king nonetheless.
So while a population density like that of a typical rpg fantasy map makes sense, one lower than medieval Europe makes sense, too. War, plagues and barbarian invasions bringing about the destruction of many lives and the fall of a great king - D&D is commonly a postapocalyptic setting. It's
Mad Max with swords.
Quote from: Greentongue on March 21, 2021, 06:05:23 PM
That doesn't solve much when the existing "anything written in real life" is all encompassing.
For an example take the Battletech universe. If I was to start a campaign set in it today in the in game year of 3025 then anything published after today no matter what year it was set in is not valid for the campaign. And anything that occurs in cannon after that starting date (clan invasion date, wars, weddings, etc) are all subject to change and can not be relied upon by the players.
I've found that if the players know this stuff going in it allows them to more freely engage with the campaign and they also don't bother you with cannon mistakes you make in regards to the material that is in use.
Quote from: jeff37923 on March 22, 2021, 06:25:54 AMI love Star Wars, but there are whole swaths of the canon setting (and EU) that I think are genre-breaking and game-breaking bullshit.
Star Wars is a good one because the vast majority of Star Wars fans don't like 100% of the canon anyway. Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk are similar in that many fans prefer the older versions over the current ones.
Quote from: Kyle Aaron on March 22, 2021, 07:34:58 AM
Quote from: S'mon on March 22, 2021, 05:14:18 AM
BTW last night I checked how my 2 mile/hex map above compared to the S John Ross Medieval Demographics Made Easy numbers.
The typical fantasy map is indeed silly, but bear in mind that most rpg settings are "the marches" - they're more like Dark Ages Britain (https://www.historyfiles.co.uk/FeaturesBritain/BritishMapAD450-700.htm) than medieval Britain. 600, not 1200. The collapse of the Western Roman Empire, waves of plague, some climate change reducing crop yields, are all thought to have dropped Europe's population from 400-600, with it being more or less stable overall 600-1000, and growing from there.
Sci-fi settings have their degree of silly too. Star Wars more-or-less ignores anything less than a planet, turning homeworld into "hometown" and sector into "county/parish" when telling stories. An Imperial Moff is really little more than the Sheriff of Nottingham and Hutt Space is a gang territory that should be vast bsed on the galactic map, but comes off as just being the wrong side of the hypertracks. It works OK for Star Wars in big swipes, but it makes telling smaller scale stories feel awkward at times.
Then too you have fantasy that goes even beyond FR. I've been looking at Soulbound lately, and it takes the Warhammer Age of Sigmar setting as its base. You have a continent map of the Great Parch, which is itself only one continent on one world (of 8 major and potentially many more minor worlds) in a setting where travel between the worlds is a common thing (for heroes). They do a good job of not over-mapping it all though...for now.
Having to worry about players with an encyclopedic knowledge of the Empire of the Petal Thrones setting would be both wonderful and terrifying.
Quote from: S'mon on March 22, 2021, 05:01:08 AM
Quote from: hedgehobbit on March 21, 2021, 11:06:58 PM
From my experience, you are the exception. What I've found is that people that want to play a game in a specific setting are also the same people that want the setting to match the published material. (Otherwise, what is the point?)
I think GMs worry about canon far more than players do.
Very much this. I am struggling to think of a single example in 25+ years of GMing where deviating from canon intersected with superior player knowledge
and it impacting the plot.
Changing rules to make an encounter run smoothly on the other hand...suddenly everyone has an opinion.
Maybe this is just me, but I think in that huge gap between canon fidelity and setting parody, there are different tripping points. If I'm going to bother to run an established setting, I don't care about canon but I do care to know enough about the setting to understand its feel. Running Forgotten Realms, I wouldn't feel compelled to honor anything after the (early) established campaign point, but I do want the kinds of adventures that happen in the various FR media to set the tone and expectations of what is possible. I wouldn't, for example, want to run a FR campaign with an ancient Greece myth feel. (I might start with a "FR as Ancient Greece" mashup concept, but I wouldn't pitch that to the players. I'd just steal shameless from FR locations and maps and so forth.) Roughly, I think of this as "taking the setting seriously", or at least as seriously as you can take any pretend elf games. Maybe "taking the setting on its own terms."
This is why I never will run Star Trek and will never run Star Wars again. I'm incapable of running either as anything but parody, because I take both less seriously than even "own their own terms." I don't have players that care about canon. I do have players that do want to take those on their own terms.
Quote from: Kyle Aaron on March 22, 2021, 07:34:58 AM
Quote from: S'mon on March 22, 2021, 05:14:18 AM
BTW last night I checked how my 2 mile/hex map above compared to the S John Ross Medieval Demographics Made Easy numbers.
The typical fantasy map is indeed silly, but bear in mind that most rpg settings are "the marches" - they're more like Dark Ages Britain (https://www.historyfiles.co.uk/FeaturesBritain/BritishMapAD450-700.htm) than medieval Britain. 600, not 1200. The collapse of the Western Roman Empire, waves of plague, some climate change reducing crop yields, are all thought to have dropped Europe's population from 400-600, with it being more or less stable overall 600-1000, and growing from there.
It's not commonly-appreciated, but the setting of the world of Greyhawk is essentially like that, with a (former) Great Kingdom (https://greyhawk.fandom.com/wiki/Great_Kingdom) which has after many wars and plagues shrunk, leaving behind many smaller principalities ruled by - well, barbarians. With far fewer people, and much poorer.
Into Dark Ages Britain came waves of invaders and migrants - there was land to spare, and even when not spare it was poorly-defended. This was the time of Beowulf and Sigurd and the Rheingold, a time where an ambitious man who fought and led well could make himself a king - of a small kingdom, of course, only small - but a king nonetheless.
So while a population density like that of a typical rpg fantasy map makes sense, one lower than medieval Europe makes sense, too. War, plagues and barbarian invasions bringing about the destruction of many lives and the fall of a great king - D&D is commonly a postapocalyptic setting. It's Mad Max with swords.
Nice post. Yeah, I tend to go for that dark age/post-apoc feel, so populations more around 10/sq mile not 100/sq mile. A lot of fantasy settings are under 1/sq mile even in supposedly settled areas & that really strains my credulity though.
This is why my system's default setting consists of a single 100 x 150 mile map with a few names for places just off the map (i.e. if you follow the Ironspar River upstream you'll reach the kingdom of Ironhold; the old King's Road leads through the mountains to the Blood Wastes of Bestia) and split all the details on this region into the player species history sections and as example results when using the Region Building chapter (not anything an experienced GM would need, but the world is full of amateurs).
The result should be enough to play in the region while still having plenty of open room to add whatever details you wish.
Total population density for the whole map is ridiculously low (c. 10/sq. mi.), but this is a bit misleading as maybe 10% of the map is actually "civilized lands" (along the fertile banks of a Mississippi-sized river with good fishing and yields augmented by magic) where population density is extremely high (c. 200/sq. mile.) and the remainder is monster-haunted wilderness (less than 1/sq. mi.).
So even on the basic regional map there's room to plop another few good sized (for the setting) realms down onto it if you needed to... or, just as easily, run through the Region Creation guidelines and drop your own region onto the map dozens, hundreds or even thousands of miles from the default setting.
There's also a lot of flexibility inside the player species too. There's no pre-set number of types of beastmen, eldritch or mutants and the backgrounds and classes are deliberately setting agnostic to help you shape your region and make it yours.
My follow-up plans are to stick close to the default regions and add more to the places just off the borders; so as to leave as much of the world as possible open to aspiring GMs. By my rough estimates, the total area I care to detail amounts to about 0.01% of the Earth's landmass so for those worried about too much detail the other 99.99% (plus all the seas which are three times that) is yours to do with as you wish.
Quote from: Kyle Aaron on March 22, 2021, 07:34:58 AM
War, plagues and barbarian invasions bringing about the destruction of many lives and the fall of a great king - D&D is commonly a postapocalyptic setting. It's Mad Max with swords.
An option for sure. That was then, this is Now.
You might know what Was there ...
Quote from: S'mon on March 22, 2021, 05:01:08 AM
Quote from: hedgehobbit on March 21, 2021, 11:06:58 PM
From my experience, you are the exception. What I've found is that people that want to play a game in a specific setting are also the same people that want the setting to match the published material. (Otherwise, what is the point?)
The point of using the setting is a GM resource to make the game easier and more fun. Nothing to do with canon-wank.
FWIW I have one Faerun fan in my groups, he has never complained about deviations from canon. He likes to make long posts about his PCs' backstories, about the cultures of the Realms. I've never found this harmful to my game; usually it adds to the game. If something was different IMC I'd point it out, but I've never seen an issue. He did once refer to Gareth Dragonsbane being King of Damara, but for an outsider PC that would be an easy mistake for his PC to make IC.
I think GMs worry about canon far more than players do.
I am similar to S'mon. I like using familiar settings because it is a resource to make the game easier. Especially, I like well-understood settings because they can cut down on the learning curve - and let you jump into gaming without asking lots of questions about what things look like, how people think, etc. The real world (including historical settings) is especially great for this - but some common settings can function like this too. If I run a Star Wars game, players can jump in instantly and have character ideas they create and start playing - rather than having hours of explanation about what ships are like, what technology is, etc.
I also agree with S'mon that GMs are more likely to worry about canon. That said, I have seen cases where players complained about canon. I think it is better to draw a harsh dividing line over what you include or don't include - so players who know more about the setting have a clear idea about what they can expect and what they can't. For some examples:
1) I ran an original-series-era Star Trek campaign where I specified that the TV episodes should be treated as if they were in-character "based on a true story" fiction in that world. This easily allows that there is dramatization, and I don't have to stick to specific lines of dialog or little details, but the broad strokes were accurate.
2) As S'mon says, working in a smaller-scale pocket within the setting. It can also help if the campaign setting is a little off-center from the canon. For example, I also ran a campaign based on Naomi Novik's Napoleonic-era fantasy series Temeraire - but the setting was in a country *not* visited in the series. (It was set in Korea, while the books touched on England, France, South Africa, China, Japan, and Russia.)
Quote from: Chris24601 on March 22, 2021, 01:51:53 PM
Total population density for the whole map is ridiculously low (c. 10/sq. mi.), but this is a bit misleading as maybe 10% of the map is actually "civilized lands" (along the fertile banks of a Mississippi-sized river with good fishing and yields augmented by magic) where population density is extremely high (c. 200/sq. mile.) and the remainder is monster-haunted wilderness (less than 1/sq. mi.).
Now I'm imagining a fantasy world that borrows from middle 19th century America, with steamboats running up and down a grand old river between fortified cities and towns, and vast stretches of farmland. But a day or two travel from the shores, and it's wilderness. Orcs, dragons and other monsters rules the lands. Could mix it up with a bit of the Nile, with fantastically opulent priest kings trying to keep things like gunslingers and floating casinos in check. The PCs come from the disaffected classes, seeking their fortune in the wilds, and finding patrons or going it alone to push back the borders.
Quote from: Pat on March 22, 2021, 05:38:50 PM
Now I'm imagining a fantasy world that borrows from middle 19th century America, with steamboats running up and down a grand old river between fortified cities and towns, and vast stretches of farmland. But a day or two travel from the shores, and it's wilderness. Orcs, dragons and other monsters rules the lands. Could mix it up with a bit of the Nile, with fantastically opulent priest kings trying to keep things like gunslingers and floating casinos in check. The PCs come from the disaffected classes, seeking their fortune in the wilds, and finding patrons or going it alone to push back the borders.
Sounds a bit like DJ Butler's Witchy Eye series.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30753675-witchy-eye
I definitely do think that TTRPG settings are generally better off having a few well defined areas where the GM can mine ideas if they want, but also having plenty of undefined space; the classic "here there be monsters" area on the map.
In a sci-fi setting, this can be having a few example planets which are deeply defined, 1-2 each from the various planetary classes, but without defining most planets across the galaxy. For fantasy it should generally be easier, as the nature of magic should make less known by characters even in-setting.
Quote from: Pat on March 22, 2021, 05:38:50 PM
Quote from: Chris24601 on March 22, 2021, 01:51:53 PM
Total population density for the whole map is ridiculously low (c. 10/sq. mi.), but this is a bit misleading as maybe 10% of the map is actually "civilized lands" (along the fertile banks of a Mississippi-sized river with good fishing and yields augmented by magic) where population density is extremely high (c. 200/sq. mile.) and the remainder is monster-haunted wilderness (less than 1/sq. mi.).
Now I'm imagining a fantasy world that borrows from middle 19th century America, with steamboats running up and down a grand old river between fortified cities and towns, and vast stretches of farmland. But a day or two travel from the shores, and it's wilderness. Orcs, dragons and other monsters rules the lands. Could mix it up with a bit of the Nile, with fantastically opulent priest kings trying to keep things like gunslingers and floating casinos in check. The PCs come from the disaffected classes, seeking their fortune in the wilds, and finding patrons or going it alone to push back the borders.
Sounds like an interesting variation on the 'points of light' style setting. Civilization is only strong along the river where it can remain connected and support each-other, while in the wilderness people sometimes just vanish. You could even add fluff as to why many of the scariest beasties avoid being too near the river.
Quote from: Charon's Little Helper on March 22, 2021, 06:09:48 PM
Quote from: Pat on March 22, 2021, 05:38:50 PM
Quote from: Chris24601 on March 22, 2021, 01:51:53 PM
Total population density for the whole map is ridiculously low (c. 10/sq. mi.), but this is a bit misleading as maybe 10% of the map is actually "civilized lands" (along the fertile banks of a Mississippi-sized river with good fishing and yields augmented by magic) where population density is extremely high (c. 200/sq. mile.) and the remainder is monster-haunted wilderness (less than 1/sq. mi.).
Now I'm imagining a fantasy world that borrows from middle 19th century America, with steamboats running up and down a grand old river between fortified cities and towns, and vast stretches of farmland. But a day or two travel from the shores, and it's wilderness. Orcs, dragons and other monsters rules the lands. Could mix it up with a bit of the Nile, with fantastically opulent priest kings trying to keep things like gunslingers and floating casinos in check. The PCs come from the disaffected classes, seeking their fortune in the wilds, and finding patrons or going it alone to push back the borders.
Sounds like an interesting variation on the 'points of light' style setting. Civilization is only strong along the river where it can remain connected and support each-other, while in the wilderness people sometimes just vanish. You could even add fluff as to why many of the scariest beasties avoid being too near the river.
Yep, I'm inclined to double down on the points of light aspect. Instead of a monolithic empire strung along a waterway, or a great nation of the floodplain, I'm thinking a string of city states, divided by natural barriers. That allows the trip along the river to be an adventure in itself, exploring new cultures and facing new and unknown dangers. The Nile and the Mississippi are the main real world inspirations, but only very loosely. The great wheels of the paddle boats might provide a reason for the monsters to stay away -- they also allow the river to be quickly traversed, meaning force can be quickly projected up and down river very quickly, but much slower inland. In 24 mile hexes, only the hex or two along the river would be safe.
Quote from: Pat on March 22, 2021, 05:38:50 PM
Now I'm imagining a fantasy world that borrows from middle 19th century America, with steamboats running up and down a grand old river between fortified cities and towns, and vast stretches of farmland. But a day or two travel from the shores, and it's wilderness. Orcs, dragons and other monsters rules the lands. Could mix it up with a bit of the Nile, with fantastically opulent priest kings trying to keep things like gunslingers and floating casinos in check. The PCs come from the disaffected classes, seeking their fortune in the wilds, and finding patrons or going it alone to push back the borders.
That actually IS exactly the feel I'm going for. A cataclysmic event caused extreme depopulation coupled with monsters and so pockets of humanity gathered around the most accessible resources (or some other feature that gave them an edge in survival) with the wilds as a more dangerous frontier littered with ruins of the empire that fell 200 years earlier.
There's a small representative republic, a feudal theocracy, an imperial remnant caught in a civil war, a traditional feudal kingdom, a merchant plutocracy, several pirate havens, and scattered barbarian tribes along the length of the river that is navigable by sailing ship.
Inland from the riverlands are heavily forested hills akin to the Appalachians filled with the ruins of a vast metropolis that once filled the entire valley region before the Cataclysm. the hills eventually transition into mountains along the north and east of the region while the south partially collapsed into the sea during the event leaving a ruin-filled saltwater swamp/marsh.
The idea was basically to create an "ideal" adventuring region for GMs who don't want to create their own region with enough empty space for GMs to customize with ruins and isolated settlements and the like.
Quote from: Pat on March 22, 2021, 07:15:18 PM
Yep, I'm inclined to double down on the points of light aspect. Instead of a monolithic empire strung along a waterway, or a great nation of the floodplain, I'm thinking a string of city states, divided by natural barriers. That allows the trip along the river to be an adventure in itself, exploring new cultures and facing new and unknown dangers. The Nile and the Mississippi are the main real world inspirations, but only very loosely. The great wheels of the paddle boats might provide a reason for the monsters to stay away -- they also allow the river to be quickly traversed, meaning force can be quickly projected up and down river very quickly, but much slower inland. In 24 mile hexes, only the hex or two along the river would be safe.
One thing that might work even better than paddleboats (if you want to go all-in on the points-of-light) is air-ships. You don't even need extra fluff for why monsters don't mess with the cities - just have them all be high in a series of mountain ranges, and the scariest monsters are all big don't fly. (I played around with switching my setting around after coming up with my boarding rules for my 'swashbuckling space western' system as I came up with it really early on, as the mechanics would work just as well or better for an airship. I stuck with sci-fi because I think the scaling rules mesh better there.)
The PCs could be part of the tenuous link between the cities by manning an airship, and occasionally dive into the jungle/forest/whatever to scavenge the ruins of the ancient world before monsters and daemons roamed the earth. Hint at some ancient wizard who delved too deep with magic and opened a Doom style portal - and there you go.
duplicate and couldn't figure out how to delete :'(
Quote from: Chris24601 on March 22, 2021, 08:04:33 PM
Quote from: Pat on March 22, 2021, 05:38:50 PM
Now I'm imagining a fantasy world that borrows from middle 19th century America, with steamboats running up and down a grand old river between fortified cities and towns, and vast stretches of farmland. But a day or two travel from the shores, and it's wilderness. Orcs, dragons and other monsters rules the lands. Could mix it up with a bit of the Nile, with fantastically opulent priest kings trying to keep things like gunslingers and floating casinos in check. The PCs come from the disaffected classes, seeking their fortune in the wilds, and finding patrons or going it alone to push back the borders.
That actually IS exactly the feel I'm going for. A cataclysmic event caused extreme depopulation coupled with monsters and so pockets of humanity gathered around the most accessible resources (or some other feature that gave them an edge in survival) with the wilds as a more dangerous frontier littered with ruins of the empire that fell 200 years earlier.
There's a small representative republic, a feudal theocracy, an imperial remnant caught in a civil war, a traditional feudal kingdom, a merchant plutocracy, several pirate havens, and scattered barbarian tribes along the length of the river that is navigable by sailing ship.
Inland from the riverlands are heavily forested hills akin to the Appalachians filled with the ruins of a vast metropolis that once filled the entire valley region before the Cataclysm. the hills eventually transition into mountains along the north and east of the region while the south partially collapsed into the sea during the event leaving a ruin-filled saltwater swamp/marsh.
The idea was basically to create an "ideal" adventuring region for GMs who don't want to create their own region with enough empty space for GMs to customize with ruins and isolated settlements and the like.
I was thinking more sixguns & khopesh, but there's a lot of variation possible on a society strung along a great river. It has one advantage over a standard hex crawl -- a sense of direction. You're not picking a random direction, you have a binary choice, whether it's up or down river, or between staying on the river or hitting the wilderness. That can help focus players; an open map sometimes causes decision paralysis.
Quote from: Charon's Little Helper on March 22, 2021, 10:07:53 PM
Quote from: Pat on March 22, 2021, 07:15:18 PM
Yep, I'm inclined to double down on the points of light aspect. Instead of a monolithic empire strung along a waterway, or a great nation of the floodplain, I'm thinking a string of city states, divided by natural barriers. That allows the trip along the river to be an adventure in itself, exploring new cultures and facing new and unknown dangers. The Nile and the Mississippi are the main real world inspirations, but only very loosely. The great wheels of the paddle boats might provide a reason for the monsters to stay away -- they also allow the river to be quickly traversed, meaning force can be quickly projected up and down river very quickly, but much slower inland. In 24 mile hexes, only the hex or two along the river would be safe.
One thing that might work even better than paddleboats (if you want to go all-in on the points-of-light) is air-ships. You don't even need extra fluff for why monsters don't mess with the cities - just have them all be high in a series of mountain ranges, and the scariest monsters are all big don't fly. (I played around with switching my setting around after coming up with my boarding rules for my 'swashbuckling space western' system as I came up with it really early on, as the mechanics would work just as well or better for an airship. I stuck with sci-fi because I think the scaling rules mesh better there.)
The PCs could be part of the tenuous link between the cities by manning an airship, and occasionally dive into the jungle/forest/whatever to scavenge the ruins of the ancient world before monsters and daemons roamed the earth. Hint at some ancient wizard who delved too deep with magic and opened a Doom style portal - and there you go.
I think that's an interesting alternative, but it does weaken the connection to the river. Airships can go in any direction, so society would tend to spread out more. In fact, I think it would work well, to borrow from a completely unrelated property, with the basic concept from SJG's Car Wars -- fortified cities, separated by vast tracts of dangerous wilderness. It might make for a great Gamma World campaign, as well, where the flora and fauna can be ridiculously deadly (cf. the story of a patch of grass that ate a fleet of death machines in one of Ward's games), allowing relatively safe passage between the isolated sanctuaries. Though to borrow more from the Car Wars model, another alternative is to bring it back to ground, and have some kind of road, and caravans that travel along the roads at high speeds, somehow. Could be sleds in the far north skidding along glaciers and seasonal ice flows, giant running beasts with howdahs on top or pulling half-carriages half-trains down paths carved by ancient juggernauts/golems, whatever.
Quote from: Greentongue on March 21, 2021, 05:11:42 PM
There are a number of settings that are great to read but when I go to play in them. they are like straight-jackets.
There is so much information available for them that I am second checking myself all the time.
Players have access to the information as well and have expectations on the setting that if not met them, they are disappointed.
How do you deal with this??
With most game sessions, players chit-chat about rules while their minis sit on the same spot on the map for 3 hours. Meanwhile, nothing about the setting is ever brought up.
Quote from: Pat on March 22, 2021, 10:42:01 PM
I was thinking more sixguns & khopesh, but there's a lot of variation possible on a society strung along a great river. It has one advantage over a standard hex crawl -- a sense of direction.
Well, they're called "projectors" and are finicky enough to need special training, but there is a six-gun equivalent in setting. There are also steam boats, though their complex enough that most consider them a type of low magic.
As I've mentioned before on other threads the setting's primary inspiration is actually Thundarr the Barbarian so there's a blurring between arcane magic and super-science.
The improved technology also justifies slightly higher urban density as I'm using crop yields and labor requirements closer to America c. 1850 instead of medieval demographics (basically only 80% instead of 95% of the population is needed for farm labor and yields on good ground can support 200/sq. mile instead topping out at around 100/sq. mile using medieval techniques).
Basically, instead of a population of 10,000 having only 500 non-farm workers, it can support 2000 and instead of needing 200 square miles of cultivated land to support that population (a 14x14 mile square; nearly a day's travel for a laden horse cart from center to border) it needs only 50 square miles (a 7x7 mile square; or close enough to travel from center to border and back again in a day and for less laden riders to get from center to border in well under an hour).
Thus, a realm like the main heroic realm in the setting (the republic) with its mere 35,000 people can support the same quantity of non-farm businesses as a medieval realm of 140,000 and the land area is small enough that the farm labor can reside within the fortified walls of larger towns and capitol city for protection (no more than an hour's walk or ride to the fields in the morning, and the same to get back) and the wyvern cavalry from the capital can reach even the furthest points in the realm in about 20 minutes.
This also means the size of the military is sufficiently small (310 full time guards, 40 wyvern cavalry using the traditional standard that a society can support 1% of its population being full-time military) that it NEEDS adventurers to explore and expand its borders into the wilderness because the standing army is only sufficient for defense of the realm, not campaigns into hostile territory.
* * * *
As to fantasy Egypt, they aren't along the default setting river, but they are in the desert (called the Blood Wastes due to the high iron content in the sands) past the Eastern mountains of the default setting region along their own river system... the ancient kingdom of the Beastmen, Bestia.
Yeah, I couldn't resist making the main inhabitants of my fantasy Egypt all have animal heads, but they're actually the first worshippers of the astral gods (most of humans converted from the Old Faith after losing a war to the Beastmen).
* * * *
In terms of the thread topic there's another axis upon which too much data can reside and that's history. It's not just that the Realms' geography is laid out in extensive detail, it's that the history is also extensively detailed with little room for GMs to insert their details without it colliding with some established bit of history.
Likewise, in the same way that many fantasy worlds' population densities are all out of whack; recorded histories that extend back tens of thousands of years, human kingdoms and dynasties that last millennia.
There's a reason my Cataclysmic happened just 200 years ago. 200 years is a wonderful cut off point for being past the point of living memory (the only common species with longer lifespans didn't arrive in the until dragged there by the cataclysm), but still recent enough that the elderly remember the stories of the time before told by their own grandparents (who experienced it as children).
Basically, everything relevant to the political world has occurred in the last 200 years (and I only cover the high points with even passing specificity). History that can be unearthed from the ruins of the pre-Cataclysm empire goes back to about 800 years ago (details are known, but vast chunks are missing/incomplete). Myths and legends about the foundations of the major religions date to c. 2000-3000 years prior and are as fragmentary as our understanding ancient Egypt or Greece (resulting in actual disputes over the truth of various religious dogmas since the gods are distant and inaccessible in the setting).
In short, there's whole chunks of empty space in the history to drop whatever details you wish. I also didn't even lock down a canon "hidden history" in the GM material. Instead I presented a number of questions about the past where I included deliberate contradictions and groups with different interpretations that were presented in the player side material and provided several potential answers to each for the GM to pick from.
As such, there is literally no way a player can ever know more about the setting than the GM because key bits of lore including truths about the gods/religion and history are specifically left for the GM to decide. There's not even a canon cause for the Cataclysm that establishes the setting (for most games all that's important is that it happened not why it happened; I've got half-a-dozen possibilities if the GM ever does need an answer though).
I can't take any real credit for this approach though. I actually first encountered the approach in the old Mekton Empire supplement where it included a section on the mysteries of the galaxy with blanks and multiple choice answers for each that ranged from relatively mundane reasons for everything to a grand galactic conspiracy if you assembled the multiple choice answers the right way.
I HIGHLY recommend that approach (and checking out how Mekton Empire did it if you can dig up a copy) for anyone looking to build their own published setting as it hits the sweet spot of both the advantages of a pre-built setting for GMs and of a custom-built setting where there are actually mysteries the players will have to work to uncover instead of being able to find them all in the GM material.
Quote from: Chris24601 on March 23, 2021, 11:24:34 AMI HIGHLY recommend that approach (and checking out how Mekton Empire did it if you can dig up a copy) for anyone looking to build their own published setting as it hits the sweet spot of both the advantages of a pre-built setting for GMs and of a custom-built setting where there are actually mysteries the players will have to work to uncover instead of being able to find them all in the GM material.
Which reminds me, when is this game of yours going to hit the market again?
Here's my solution:
1) For almost every game, I only use the core book. If its not in the core book (or a chosen supplement), then it doesn't exist at the table. Traveller is even easier. I roll up my own subsector with its own problems. I bring along only as much 3rd Imperium baggage as I want and a dozen systems (many with inhabited moons and multiple planets) is more than enough for a years long campaign.
2) I declare a starting point and make it clear that future events in the canon MAY or MAY NOT happen. In L5R, there's a whole blahblah about what the Scorpion clan may have done and how a minor clan became major, so when I run L5R, I'll pick the when point and make sure the players know their mega-canon knowledge post that start point isn't relevant.
3) When looking at where to set my campaign, I look for an area that's been sparsely discussed. For instance, Warhammer is heavily focused on faux-Germany part of the setting, so I go south into the Border Princes - a mishmash of kingdoms that get glossed over in the corebook.
4) Star Trek and Star Wars is a challenge, especially as the later installments by retards have shat all over what made the original setting beloved. In these cases, I look to focus on TIME vs. LOCATION, aka putting the Star Wars game in the years after Return of the Jedi as the Empire crumbles and locating the game in a far cluster of my own planets.
A very fun Star Wars thought experiment is using the 1977-79 Marvel comics as the setting. AKA, the crazy Marvel creations based on only knowing the Star Wars movie. The reason is you get all the kickass visuals you could desire, great creative new places, and none of the baggage.
http://readallcomics.com/category/star-wars-legends-the-original-marvel-years-epic-collection/ (http://readallcomics.com/category/star-wars-legends-the-original-marvel-years-epic-collection/)
5) I avoid canon junkies who can't handle their mouths. A buddy of mine loves FR with a passion (yes, he's a wanker), but he's also a GM so doesn't bring his FR knowledge to bear beyond what his character would know.
Regarding the examples used by the OP as having too much detail, especially Tekumel...
As someone who's run a Tekmel campaign the setting really isn't as hard as people think. They look at how much has been written about it and get intimidated, but the mistake here is thinking that you need to know all of this to run a Tekumel game.
I look at it this way.
No matter how much work is put into describing a fictional setting it will never be as detailed or complex as the real world. Does this mean that no GM can ever pick a place and period from real world history and run a game set there unless they have a PhD on that exact period? No. You can take as much or as little as you want, study in the exact level of detail you feel is needed and then ignore the rest.
The appeal of detailed settings is that if someone wants more detail then it's there. You aren't obliged to use it. Possibly you have a player at the table who knows more than you, but he can either work with you and accept mistakes or not get to play in this setting he likes after all.
For Tekumel, the only real change for players is learning to react to NPCs annoying them with "Demand Shamtla*!" rather than "I waste him with my crossbow!" (OK, so it's more than just that but memorising a few key details are what makes a setting stand out. ;))
(*And to forestall the inevitable question- Shamtla is a concept that combines the old idea of Weirgeld or Blood Money for murder with the modern American notion of throwing lawsuits around for anything people do that you don't like.)
Quote from: Tantavalist on March 25, 2021, 09:07:59 AM
Regarding the examples used by the OP as having too much detail, especially Tekumel...
As someone who's run a Tekmel campaign the setting really isn't as hard as people think. They look at how much has been written about it and get intimidated, but the mistake here is thinking that you need to know all of this to run a Tekumel game.
Yes, the GM can use as much or as little as they want. trying to separate what is from is not being used when you are a player is the main problem.
Quote
For Tekumel, the only real change for players is learning to react to NPCs annoying them with "Demand Shamtla*!" rather than "I waste him with my crossbow!" (OK, so it's more than just that but memorising a few key details are what makes a setting stand out. ;))
Shamtla is not in the original publication of EPT. So while it is huge in later releases of the setting, it changes the complete tone of the game. People that just have the original core rules would likely be playing an entirely different game then people that have the newer release. EPT and Tekumel: are very different. Players could be very confused by the mixing of them.
IMHO
Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on March 23, 2021, 08:45:28 PM
Which reminds me, when is this game of yours going to hit the market again?
To answer seriously and snarkily at the same time; when it's done. One of the advantages of this being my first endeavor and not seeking outside funding until the writing is done is that, if something isn't quite working, I can take the time to get it right.
I'm in the last section to write; one to aid new GMs in creating ruins (more accurately "adventure sites", but Ruin is the colloquialism I'm going with alongside Realms and Regions to define geographic elements); and I feel it's really important to get it right because that first adventure is your one chance to make a first impression.
A bit of designer philosophy here... I've said my game is more "big damned heroes" than "zero to hero", but even big damned heroes get outmatched in their stories and have to run sometimes; ex. the crew in Serenity when the Reavers show up.
The part I want to get right is that, with big damn heroes, if they do choose to run when outmatched, they should be able to survive.
I've spent a fair amount of my design work on the balance between health and damage so that, within a healthy range (ex. a level one party stumbles onto a level 5 monster) a PC at full health will survive a single turn of attacks from a single monster and still be able to act the following turn (i.e. like a big damned hero they get to make a choice to fight or flee).
It's not perfect; a lucky crit or a situation where a PC getting attacked twice or more is the only logical action for the monsters to take can happen; but as a general rule of "PCs get a turn after the monsters act where they can judge and still reasonably run away" it works.
The trick is when you move out of the isolated encounter and into a ruin/dungeon ecosystem you can get a particularly bad call by the players or GM could see multiple encounters happen at once (ex. the guards have time to sound a warning and so creatures from nearby rooms come running to assist) and because they're big damned heroes you want them to be able to survive if they make the right call of immediately retreating.
If they choose to stand and fight, they can live or die as the dice dictate... but death for big damned heroes should be because of more than a single bad choice or incident of bad luck. TPKs from one bad roll or miscalculation is more "zero to hero" style as I see it... and so I want the ruin building rules presented for new GMs to reinforce that sort of result.
I actually DO know the upper limit value for a "fighting retreat" style encounter where PCs effectively face multiple encounters one at a time without being able to stop and rest; because its one of many conditions I've tested for (it's about twice what a group can handle if you threw everything at them at once; i.e. if they could survive 10 guards all at once, they could survive about 20 in a fighting retreat).
I also know the approximate TPK threshold (enemies with total health of about 2.5x the parties' health).
So, basically, what I'm trying to find the best way to express is basically "don't pack more than about 4x the party's total health worth of monsters close enough that they can all respond to the PCs in a single encounter."
Four times the PC's health is a very difficult (but survivable with smart play, though they'll likely to be done as far as further encounters until after a good night's rest afterwards) fighting retreat.
Five times will probably be a TPK even if they do a fighting retreat (the only way to avoid a TPK at that point is flat out run and hope they give up pursuit before you run out of health).
Three times the PC's health might even be reversible into a win if retreating lets them drop some of the enemy while taking comparatively few hits themselves.
Note: there's nothing wrong per se about throwing that 5x or more setup at the party, particularly in a sandbox game where you've dropped plenty of clues they're marching into something well beyond their abilities. The point of the system though is to let the GM KNOW that's what's most likely going to happen in the situation that's been set up, so if that's NOT what they intended a challenge to be they can adjust it (up or down) in the adventure prep stage as opposed to feeling the need to fudge things at the table because results aren't lining up with expectations.
So anyway, the present bit I'm dealing with is how best to give a newbie GM the right information to set up their ruins to get the results they want without making it too confusing.
Right now my thinking is to break up the total "monster budget" (so to speak) into threat groups that would be isolated (by distance, because they're rivals, because they're golems and just don't care unless you enter the area they're programmed to protect) and create a sort of cap on the maximum threat the PCs might face at once (though nothing says that cap has to be survivable for the PCs at their present level in a sandbox game... but again; the GM deserves to KNOW that going in).
* * * *
Anyway, once that's done, I'll be doing one more front to back editing pass myself before getting the Kickstarter (for art, publication and a professional editing pass) organized. Then it's just dealing with art/printing deadlines for release.
All that said; if you don't mind the lack of newbie GM tools, I'm always looking for people willing to read/review/playtest the system. Player/Reader feedback has been the single greatest factor in improving the system throughout development. If anyone doesn't mind sharing their thoughts afterwards they can PM me and I'll hook them up with the current rules document.
Quote from: Greentongue on March 25, 2021, 02:02:51 PM
Shamtla is not in the original publication of EPT. So while it is huge in later releases of the setting, it changes the complete tone of the game. People that just have the original core rules would likely be playing an entirely different game then people that have the newer release. EPT and Tekumel: are very different. Players could be very confused by the mixing of them.
IMHO
Moreso if you factor in the the "Adventures in Tekumel" set of booklets. I do not recall it being in those books either. I am not seeing it in the starter booklet so far.
Quote from: Greentongue on March 21, 2021, 05:11:42 PM
There are a number of settings that are great to read but when I go to play in them. they are like straight-jackets.
There is so much information available for them that I am second checking myself all the time.
Players have access to the information as well and have expectations on the setting that if not met them, they are disappointed.
How do you deal with this??
This obviously depends on the specific setting. But one thing I think is useful to is to only use the original setting book, and treat any future supplements as non-canon (that allows you to build on the foundation of its first presentation but not be shackled to a sprawling canon that was built over a decade. When I run Ravenloft, I sometimes just what it in Black Box mode for this reason.
Quote from: BedrockBrendan on March 26, 2021, 08:05:45 AM
This obviously depends on the specific setting. But one thing I think is useful to is to only use the original setting book, and treat any future supplements as non-canon ...
Seems like a good policy and may weed out the players that would be trouble later.
Quote from: Greentongue on March 26, 2021, 01:32:13 PM
Quote from: BedrockBrendan on March 26, 2021, 08:05:45 AM
This obviously depends on the specific setting. But one thing I think is useful to is to only use the original setting book, and treat any future supplements as non-canon ...
Seems like a good policy and may weed out the players that would be trouble later.
Another advantage is it preserves mystery in the setting where it needs to be because the GM effectively is the one generating new canon for the campaign. Players can't rely on knowledge in some later supplement that stats out an important NPC for example.
That and keep in mind that for some settings new books are just short of a new setting unto themselves. Forgotten Realms for example has had several. Dragonlance has as well.
Others like Known World vs Mystara, Ravenloft modules vs Ravenloft setting, or Star Frontiers vs Zebulons Guide ARE new settings. Or pretty much every edition of Gamma World.
Quote from: Omega on March 27, 2021, 03:29:26 AM
That and keep in mind that for some settings new books are just short of a new setting unto themselves. Forgotten Realms for example has had several. Dragonlance has as well.
Others like Known World vs Mystara, Ravenloft modules vs Ravenloft setting, or Star Frontiers vs Zebulons Guide ARE new settings. Or pretty much every edition of Gamma World.
And in Ravenloft it is complicated because many modules are essentially domain setting books (and which ones you choose to keep are pretty subjective: I really like the setting content in Feast of Goblyns and Castles Forlorn for Example).