Unlimited access to the whole world may be problematic, but even a Briton in a War of the Roses campaign may have traveled in France, the Holy Roman Empire, Italy! or the Vatican, been on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, or even heard of the voyages of Henry the Navigator. Information may have traveled pretty far, even if direct experience is more limited.
Part of the risk I see in opening up the whole world to the PCs is that you end up with players rushing to the far-flung corners of the world to design and create their characters, but then handwaving why they happen to gather at one point. Add in mechanics to the choices, and the rush to find the hidden exploit gem reaches a crescendo (which is why I worry about too many races). So, when I start my War of the Roses campaign, and end up with a samurai, an Aztec war-priest, and a Mongol raider as my PCs, I know it's time to dial it back. Cool as those characters are, they aren't thematically appropriate.
i agree with some of this
the most you have to do to restrict immigrants, is to make them explain where they immigrated from and why they left their homeland on the grounds that it at least seems to fit
usually, nobody is asking to play a japanese schoolgirl clad in black pajamas for a campaign themed around the crusades, but maybe a middle eastern traitor whom defected from the hassasansin to help the forces of King Richard because he saw something his fellow assassins did not, maybe a french knight errant from a disenfranchised family whom seeks to regain his honor by helping england, or even an agent sent by the vatican to watch over and assist Richard's forces
all thematically appropriate but still exotic and interesting characters
Here's the other side of the coin.
Let's say we're having a campaign that takes place in Medieval England. Now yes, I can pull out my Earth Gazetteer, and talk about the nomadic empire of Genghis Khan, the samurai of Japan, Arab traders vying for mercantile superiority over the Indian Ocean. I can talk about the Aztec Empire, of Great Zimbabwe, the caste system in India.
But we're in Medieval England. You're not going to be playing any of those characters.
I have no problem with that. If we are playing in Medieval England, that tells me a lot of what I need to know regarding the things I listed. I may wonder why characters from nearby cultures are not allowed/included, but it would not be a big deal.
My issue is with homebrew settings without defined cultures and thought regarding basic cultural information. It makes it impossible to make meaningful decisions to choose a concept and ground the character into the setting. It also means that I cannot determine if the campaign setting will be one that interests me (based on setting and game elements).
and then there are some Sandboxy DMs whom tell you "here are the primary established areas, but i can add extras based on player input."
"so, you want to play a nomadic young sylph whom was seperated from her caravan of humans, and currently lives in the slums of a massive metropolis, well, i haven't found a place to put one, but i guess we could put a massive portside citystate by the southern beaches, is that fine."
"yes, i had a good idea for the name"
"what?"
"Hunter's Port."
"nice and unique name, i like it. so you live as a street magician on the slums of Hunter's Port, portside city state below the Alexandrian Empire."
"okay, sounds good."
Which is one way to handle it. It is just not a way that I like as a player, because now you are adding new areas and cultures to the setting.
and then there are some Sandboxy DMs whom tell you "here are the primary established areas, but i can add extras based on player input."
as a player, i like the idea, because it allows players to be interactive with the world by designing some of the cultures for you, which allows you to please the players and reduce the burden upon the DM. i swear, a lot of DMs only want the burden to themselves so they can have total control of the characters
as long as you don't add too many cultures at once, or tell the player they might be playing a fish out of water and may end up not finding fellow members of their culture in the area except as a rare occurence, i think it is fine.
Unlimited access to the whole world may be problematic, but even a Briton in a War of the Roses campaign may have traveled in France, the Holy Roman Empire, Italy! or the Vatican, been on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, or even heard of the voyages of Henry the Navigator. Information may have traveled pretty far, even if direct experience is more limited.
Part of the risk I see in opening up the whole world to the PCs is that you end up with players rushing to the far-flung corners of the world to design and create their characters, but then handwaving why they happen to gather at one point. Add in mechanics to the choices, and the rush to find the hidden exploit gem reaches a crescendo (which is why I worry about too many races). So, when I start my War of the Roses campaign, and end up with a samurai, an Aztec war-priest, and a Mongol raider as my PCs, I know it's time to dial it back. Cool as those characters are, they aren't thematically appropriate.i agree with some of this
the most you have to do to restrict immigrants, is to make them explain where they immigrated from and why they left their homeland on the grounds that it at least seems to fit
usually, nobody is asking to play a japanese schoolgirl clad in black pajamas for a campaign themed around the crusades, but maybe a middle eastern traitor whom defected from the hassasansin to help the forces of King Richard because he saw something his fellow assassins did not, maybe a french knight errant from a disenfranchised family whom seeks to regain his honor by helping england, or even an agent sent by the vatican to watch over and assist Richard's forces
all thematically appropriate but still exotic and interesting characters
And one of those might be fine ... But I don't want a whole party of misfits from somewhere else, necessarily.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I do love misfit parties.
My character inspiration most recently was Mads Mikkelsen's character Tristam from King Arthur, who despite being a 'Knight' in England uses a japanese sword style with a chinese dao. Because awesome.
I also was in no way phased or riled by Idris Elba playing Heimdall. I like rollin with the strange.
I do love misfit parties.
My character inspiration most recently was Mads Mikkelsen's character Tristam from King Arthur, who despite being a 'Knight' in England uses a japanese sword style with a chinese dao. Because awesome.
I also was in no way phased or riled by Idris Elba playing Heimdall. I like rollin with the strange.
i like rolling with the strange too
lotsa people may not like having misfits in their party, but i enjoy them
thing is, misfits tend to draw attention, a major weakness
And some campaigns end up that way. Like the last one run, actually. Ended up with a disgraced enforcer of a god from an extremely lawful neutral bordering on lawful evil society from the far north, an exiled dwarf from the insular and isolated dwarven kingdom, who was the twin brother of the prince now king of the dwarves who voluntarily exiled himself to subvert a prophecy regarding royal twins, a gypsy styled tinkerer and thief from a peninsula that is occupied by, more or less, a collection of merchant princes, and what amounted to a barbarian who signed on to a merchant caravan with said gypsy.
A collection of misfits can make for a grand campaign. Buts it's not for every campaign.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
absolutely nothing, say it again, hah!
*my tribute to the great musical gift to the world, “War”
In another thread a sort of disparaging comment was made toward Homebrew Campaign Settings and it made me want to bring this up as a possible topic of conversation.
Mainly I have a pet peeve regarding published Campaign Settings. It’s not that I do not like them, on the contrary, I find most of them very interesting and fun to read about (except the Forgotten Realms, I do not like the Forgotten Realms and wholeheartedly wish they would be, you know, well, Forgotten)
My pet peeve is this.
Why does it seem that some players feel it is necessary to have as much information available to them as possible about a Campaign Setting when it is highly unlikely that their characters would ever know all the things the Player wants to know?
I mean, first off I get that if you are setting your game in a large city, with traders visiting on a daily basis (merchant ships or overland caravans)bringing news of the world in on a regular basis, and a regular citizen might know who the Rulers of the kingdom are, what court life is like, who the movers and the shakers are, okay, sure I would see that in this case the PCs would want access to a good amount of information about the setting, but
If the game is set in a small village (say with a population of less than 1,000 people), then why is it so necessary for the Player to know what all of the different cultures of the setting are like, who are all the gods and heroes of antiquity, and the myriad of other details that the local first level character would simply not know?
Dose anyone want to play in a campaign setting where part of the game is learning about the setting, and by learning I do not mean making Knowledge Skill Check Rolls, but by actually investigating the setting, asking NPCs questions, or exploring?
I could, easily, bore you to death with the details of my homebrew campaign setting (it has been in continuous use for “x” years) but I...
While the characters might not know nearly as much about the world, as some players want to know, that doesn't mean that information is useless to them.
1. When creating characters players will want to achieve a certain flavor, for which it is important to know the different cultures of the world. If you want to have a viking style character, it's good to know that he would hail from the Land of the Linnorm Kings. Or your character is supposed to be a staunch defender of democracy and his government. You might not want to accidentally have that character be at home in Cheliax.
2. There are a lot of details about a campaign world that are relevant to characters that help roleplaying. Holidays, the way the calendar works, the way your home country interacts with its neighbors, same for the country you set the game in. What kinds of neighbors do the individual human settlements have in the area you're playing? So that players can for example pick up on something unusual by themselves rather than have the GM spell it out to them along the lines of "The orc attacks seem strange, considering there are no orc tribes known this far south in this country."
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The one-campaign campaign setting is a bit easier then the 'lived in' version. I've got one of those, and while players like it, its daunting for new players to deal with.
Personally, I prefer homebrews because homebrews don't suffer from what I used to dub the 'novel problem' of 2e.
This was the problem where your group of adventurers campaigns in a world, and likes the setting, so everyone reads the books, etc. And then the books predicate on you never doing something, and all of the subsequent sourcebooks suddenly are sort of invalidated, or require DM rework.
A campaign setting doesnt stay the same after a campaign happens in it. It shouldn't.
The trick with having the same world again and again for different groups though is the campaign setting goes to weird places. Fun places, but weird. It can be tricky to be a new guy coming in who wants to play a character concept that players invalidated.
A campaign setting doesn't stay the same after a campaign happens in it. It shouldn't.
Agreed 110%. When I started running Pathfinder I had no prior notions of what the world was going to be like aside from the absolute basics (magic? that's a thing) and built it up from there as my players realized what they wanted from it.
In my first game, in a town called Eastport, the players were was attacking by mage-summoned fire elementals and it got nearly destroyed. Needless to say, with the players' help they managed to get through it and took the opportunity to build a bigger, better town.
That campaign ended, and when I started the next one up the following season, the game was a generation later, in "New Eastport", where during the local holiday of Flame Run, where half the children in town would dress up in red tissue paper costumes while the other half chased them around with buckets of water. If the "elementals" weren't all drenched by sundown, they won.
The new players loved it as a taste of a more elaborate world and the returning players loved that something they participated in had a lasting effect.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
My campaign world has been heavily impacted by the PCs who have adventured in it.
Towns are named after famous PCs. One of the PCs was lifted to demigod status and has actual temples and worshippers. Songs are sung about them. Some of them have become integral NPCs after the player had to move away or for some other reason no longer plays.
I take the whole "collaborative story telling" meme very seriouusly.
My campaign world has been heavily impacted by the PCs who have adventured in it.
Towns are named after famous PCs. One of the PCs was lifted to demigod status and has actual temples and worshippers. Songs are sung about them. Some of them have become integral NPCs after the player had to move away or for some other reason no longer plays.
I take the whole "collaborative story telling" meme very seriouusly.
It's the one thing tabletop games have to offer that video games, films, and novels aren't capable of. There are a lot of fun things about the hobby but that's what keeps bringing me back.
I could make a list of things that TTRPGs do that computer games, films and novels currently aren't capable of. I would say that the ability to incorporate PCs into the game world is really something that requires a custom home-built campaign world.
The things that keep me gaming are mostly the potential to role play an interesting character in a fantasy environment and solve interesting problems or engage in tactical combat with friends.
I've often thought that in the event of a global catastrophe, the experiences I have had as a TT RPG gamer might serve me well in the daily battle against the zombie invaders.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
As a developer of a published setting, Kaidan setting of Japanese horror, I try to include interesting geographic, cultural details, sometimes I mention common plants and trees (along with climate information) for a given area. I like to include mentions of local legends, mysteries and important historic events, all accompanied by a gorgeous map - and that's about all I include in published setting detail. Anymore detail, might appear in a specific adventure set in a given locale.
As a homebrew GM, and a world builder I like to create vast amounts of detail, and include such in my homebrew worlds. However, just because there's a vast amount of detail, doesn't mean the player characters have access to this information. Really they might only know 5% of the knowledge compared to what has actually been written there. Players should have a good working knowledge of a given locale if they grew up there and continue to adventure there as an adult. However, they still should lack much information. Mysteries should still exist even to locals born in the area. They might now some clues that outsiders would not have, but those clues are still about something that has not been revealed.
For me, it's simply about consistency.
I like that if I go to a friend's house and play in their game, and if they go to a friend's house and play in another game, we're all playing in basically the same world. That means, if you play regularly, and in more than one group, you inevitably become far more knowledgable about that setting, and being able to take that knowledge to the next game vastly improves immersion.
While I do enjoy the unbridled creativity of a homebrew setting, it makes it a lot harder to keep up with what's going on when you have to effectively "start over" every time you start a new game.And I say all this despite having run homebrew settings for the vast majority of my game mastering career. I am a relatively new convert to this philosophy of running published settings, but it only seems to become more enjoyable the more I assimilate my fellow DMs to do the same.
ONE OF US.
ONE OF US.OTOH, with a published setting you run the risk of one of the players being more knowledgeable about it than you are and of conflict when you get things wrong.
Or of later publications contradicting things you'd filled in. That was more of a problem in settings with more of a dynamic metaplot than Golarion has.
The changeover from classic Traveller to Megatraveller was like that for me. I mean, the Third Imperium was about as dynamic as a pre-internet setting could get, what with the JTAS News Service or whatever the hell it was called. I was fine with the Travellers' Digest revelation about the origins of the Aslan jump drive, but when the Megatraveller box set came out I was all, "That's not how the next 5 years played out in my Third Imperium . . ."