The Subtle Hand of Awesome

[rob_donoghue]

I'm a big fan of the Birthright setting that TSR put out back in the day. It hit a lot of notes I really liked - the world felt populated, politics had a powerful role, monsters felt mythic - it just rocked. But one subtle note always impressed me. In one of the nations of the game, the default one detailed in the core book, the High King's

Comments

[samldanach]

There are a few tricky bits to that approach, though, from a writer's perspective (I realize that I'm now the choir preaching to the preacher here, but

[rob_donoghue]

This is part of the reason I really feel like setting (and by extension, adventure design) is the red-headed stepchild of game design. There have been some really solid innovations, but they have been strongly outpaced by the focus on rules and such. Add to this the desirability of creating IP which can be used to create novels, video games and such, (as well as the growth of "our world, but..." Setting design) and it's not hard to see why setting doesn't get the love it deserves.

[samldanach]

I think that one of the other reasons that setting design continues to flail rather than proceeding is that too many people keep trying to apply principles from writing. Developing a good setting for a novel or film is not remotely the same as developing a good setting for an RPG. Well, there are some lessons that carry over, but they are mostly the basic ones (make it engaging, throwaway lines do a lot to extend the setting in the mind of the reader/viewer, keep it consistent

Solomon's judgement

[samldanach]

My own take, as a procrastinating champion who spends far too much time designing and far too little GMing is as follows

Re: Solomon's judgement

[samldanach]

Hmm. I'm not sure I like that approach. It tends to set the PCs up as Messiahs, and makes the world revolve around them, rather than simply including and challenging them. You end with epic fiction in the vein of Terry Goodkind and, to a somewhat lesser degree, Robert Jordan. I prefer even my epic fantasy to feel more like Tolkein, in which there are clearly all sorts of stories unfolding at the edges of the PCs stories which they might not even influence at all.

I also find that a living setting (one where NPCs continue to struggle against each other and advance plots whether or not the PCs are there) tends to write its own campaigns. All you have to do is give the PCs a little bit of power, a few connections, and a reason to join the fight. The machine of a relationship map will pretty much do the rest. The biggest advantage to this is that it also strongly enables story-telling at a variety of levels. Your method strongly enables epics, but wouldn't work so well to tell, say, Saving Private Ryan. The machinations of the

Re: Solomon's judgement

[samldanach]

Well, to be honest, I like the PCs to be important, to have an impact (or at least a chance at one). Hence, they need to be larger than life or have a big lever