As a sort of complement to the still ongoing "worst backstory" thread, I thought it might be cool to do a "worst setting" thread. For all those just nonsensical setting ideas you (and your GMs) have come up with. I'll start with a few of my own awful ideas I have brought into play.
-Genericland: my more or less homebrew setting. Anything goes in genericland. At the moment, there have only been a few games within the setting, but it will get confusing eventually.
-The "dream/illusion" world: this is one I have yet to bring into play, simply because the idea is too ridiculous. Basically the whole world (in some setting) would be an illusion(in this case by a "god"). I players ever got ridiculous will saves (IE +25 and over) they would start disbelieving reality (temporarily). The DC would be ridiculous (45 or higher). The idea is absurd, and luckily no players ever became willfull enough for this to be an issue.
So, what ridiculous homebrew settings have you folks seen? I'd love to hear about them.
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I did the illusion world once, but the players never got past the simulacrum blue dragon. It was a one-shot adventure, and once the players would defeat the illusionist the world would fade away starting with the illusionist's tower. While they would race down the tower the PC's get to make disbelieve checks. Those that overcome the DC vanish. As the last PC vanishes he realises that his existence was just an illusion.
The best part would be the subtle hint that you don't always want to disbelieve everything. I had various traps like a symbol of weakness covered by an illusionary wall, disbelieving the wall would activate the trap.
Other than that, not much. There was this one game where you had to be a member of an adventuring guild. Never came back, but that was more because of the stench coming from the litterbox...
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How 'bout the one where the whole game world is mish-mash of tropes from a dozen unrelated fictional settings and non-fictional time periods. Each one carelessly vivisected from it's original narrative scope and plopped unceremoniously next to the others with no real attempt at integration. All this strung over a pre-existing game mechanic framework that manifestly does not support the trope-menagerie playing style proffered by the game designer.
I would say more but it might get me in trouble. ;>
"I'm not really a fan of Golarion, but some folks dig it so I guess it has its charms" would have been a lot less sarcastic and flamebaity, but we get the idea.
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How 'bout the one where the whole game world is mish-mash of tropes from a dozen unrelated fictional settings and non-fictional time periods. Each one carelessly vivisected from it's original narrative scope and plopped unceremoniously next to the others with no real attempt at integration. All this strung over a pre-existing game mechanic framework that manifestly does not support the trope-menagerie playing style proffered by the game designer.
I would say more but it might get me in trouble. ;>
Forgotten Realms? =p
An "anything goes" setting where you had a stone data pad (before iPads) that had EVERY SPELL EVAR on it), magic stores where anything was for sale for almost nothing, mixing Spelljammer, Planescape, Dark Sun, Forgotten Realms, and Greyhawk all inside a Dyson's Sphere. Monsters weren't a challenge, traps, puzzles, and riddles weren't a challenge; it was all designed so the players could do anything with no hassle or adventuring.
I haven't played in any homebrew but my own, which my players all seem to like, both playing in and contributing to.
For published worlds, I've lost whatever love I once had for FR, various things about Golarion and Greyhawk never grabbed me, Dragonlance lost me after the first six or seven books. I'm more a Planescape/Eberron/Spelljammer sort myself these days, but more that I frequently crib things from them (and occasionally from Golarion, as despite me not caring for the setting as a whole there's bits and pieces I like) to add to my own world.
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"I'm not really a fan of Golarion, but some folks dig it so I guess it has its charms" would have been a lot less sarcastic and flamebaity, but we get the idea.Forgotten Realms? =pLOL! I <3 it.
Because I wasn't thinking of either of these published worlds.
Srsly though all game worlds are "charming" from a certain POV. It's just that with one in particular, for me, it's more than a little difficult to get my head around the in-game explanations of why things are the way they are. The sort of make-believe an 8-10 year old comes up with. .. Which can be "charming" in it's own way but I'm not going to pay $$ for it.
Somehow I don't think suggesting that the folks who make their living writing these things are no more intelligent than an "8-10 year old" is doing much for your opinion, either.
I mentioned it in a post about worst game played in, but it's worth repeating. A person I gamed with in high school decided that he would try being the DM. In truly ambitious fashion, he also decided that he would create his own setting to do so. It's worth mentioning that he was the guy who never made an original character. Every character he'd made, for both AD&D and White Wolf games was basically a recolour of an existing character from a book, movie, comic or video game he had seen. He was also the group powergamer.
He drew up maps, and declared he was ready. The first game session, our characters are brought to a strange new world and greeted by his self-insert avatar character, who is the literal God-wizard creator of this world. For about two hours he simply leads us on a tour of his world, showing off all the "awesome" parts of it (which are all borrowed or recycled things from other fiction). By then we were all bored to death of the whole thing. Another player was (and still is) the "dangerous when bored" type. So, as the mighty wizard is showing us the tower at the heart of this world, he explains that these three floating spheres are what keep the world whole and balanced. That if they were to be disrupted, the world would be torn apart. The dangerous when bored player has his character knock them all off the pedestal. We never did play in that setting again.
Amusingly, the dangerous when bored player would later make the "guided tour instead of a game" mistake himself later, but with a published setting he felt like we just had to witness all of his prewritten story build-up for.
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Another player was (and still is) the "dangerous when bored" type. So, as the mighty wizard is showing us the tower at the heart of this world, he explains that these three floating spheres are what keep the world whole and balanced. That if they were to be disrupted, the world would be torn apart. The dangerous when bored player has his character knock them all off the pedestal. We never did play in that setting again.
... I fail to see the problem here.
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Another player was (and still is) the "dangerous when bored" type. So, as the mighty wizard is showing us the tower at the heart of this world, he explains that these three floating spheres are what keep the world whole and balanced. That if they were to be disrupted, the world would be torn apart. The dangerous when bored player has his character knock them all off the pedestal. We never did play in that setting again.... I fail to see the problem here.
Now I wonder if he planned to have us eventually return to the tower for a multi-tiered boss battle. :P
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A terrible Tolkien-esque setting where every race was incredibly more powerful than Humans who had no special abilities whatsoever (even feat and skills were removed)
And it goes from there.
^--- this, although not to the degree where everything cool for humans got stripped.
I have been plopped into this exact setting so many times I can't even point to a specific one. Just, we get it - humans suck and you obviously hated high school.
The only other terrible one I can think of is a homebrew world where the gods had come to reside on the material plane. You don't know railroading until the king you're meeting with is a literal god - good luck with any bluff check, sense motive, perception, etc.
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I mean one of my old settings had humans as terrible, racist slavers who treated all the other races as 4th class citizens, and were abusive, there were camps. The Empire, or Nazis basically. And they invaded a continent where all the other races lived in peace of them. So, nobody was allowed to make a human, not even a disillusioned one, and that was one of the most fun games I ever ran.
But this dude was terrible.
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The worst setting is the one that keeps the game from being played.
Many of us have at least one setting that has haunted us for years, undergoing constant alteration to make it perfect for that one campaign we will some day run.
Whenever you try to actually run that campaign, watch as the setting crushes the attempt.
At some point, I learned to love some aspects of "bad" settings, because their flaws are actually what enables the game to go forward.
Raise the narrative bar of a setting too high, and you make decent improvisation very difficult.
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Then there's the one where any race was allowed to the heroes thanks to the Savage Species splatbook, the Yuan-ti attempt to take over the world while both sides fought against each other and interdimensional Nazis. I will plead the Fifth on who wrote this one.
The worst campaign setting was one I GM'd over and had the PCs transported to temporarily. Even if it was only for a couple of sessions, it was of my regrets as the campaign progressed after that.
The party spent two sessions bumming around a maximum-security research facility with no magic, no gear, and wearing nothing but grey prison jumpsuits. In-game, several months passed. They were subjected to all sorts of strange experiments, and were taught basic English by the illusion of big yellow feathered monster projected inside a glowing box. There was a lot of awesome roleplaying opportunities as the party met the other "aliens" who were trapped there (among them a Runelord and a Tralfamadorian). After a an epic jailbreak, and some sci-fi tomfoolery, they eventually made it back to their world to resume their adventure.
I say that this was "the worst" setting I had seen was because it totally screwed over the non-roleplay-heavy characters in the party. Now their characters not only have no personality, but they had no gear or magic either. Luckily, it was only temporary, but I regret not talking to them beforehand despite the fun story/roleplaying encounters that occurred.
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The worst was where they asked for ideas to help build the setting but threw the ideas out...
The Landseer kept a Blinkdog pack and had a collection of feats oriented toward Blinkdogs. One allowed him to travel with his hounds when they dimension-doored, the other allowed him to see through the eyes of the pack.
The landseer sent his pack to slaughter a band of knights who were burning villages, and delivered a sack full of heads to the baron's Bedchamber...
What could be more awesome than a barbarian shaman with a pack of Blinkdogs and feats allowing him to dimension travel with the pack and scry through their eyes?
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The worst was where they asked for ideas to help build the setting but threw the ideas out...
The Landseer kept a Blinkdog pack and had a collection of feats oriented toward Blinkdogs. One allowed him to travel with his hounds when they dimension-doored, the other allowed him to see through the eyes of the pack.
The landseer sent his pack to slaughter a band of knights who were burning villages, and delivered a sack full of heads to the baron's Bedchamber...
What could be more awesome than a barbarian shaman with a pack of Blinkdogs and feats allowing him to dimension travel with the pack and scry through their eyes?
Honestly, this sounds kind of awesome for a mid level boss. Or even high level if played right.
I've played in a few rather good homebrew settings, then there was one that made me shake my head. It was 3.5 and the DM had a thing for Dragonlance, nothing wrong with that, I like Dragonlance. But he had a "homebrew" setting that was totally not Krynn, hated spontaneous casters and evocation magic, said that the world economy was in fact much better than a standard setting yet refused to give the pc's any gold at all (even petty cash) and also refused to give out magic items. While low magic can be fun, at least warn your players. He had it with me when I built a cleric, just a straight dwarven cleric, designed to kick butt and ask questions later. No tricks, no metamagic shenanigans, just I hit it with my non-magical sword (we were lvl 9 btw and I didn't have a magic weapon or armor). I dropped a smite evil spell on a few hell hounds and a demon, finishing it up in a single round. The DM just about yelled at me for killing his carefully planned encounter where we would uncover various things as the rounds dragged on as the monsters had DR that was going to take us a while to get through.
I was done with totally not Krynn for a while until I heard he had gotten better as a dm, he asked me to come back and play. I played for two sessions until we broke his world shattering railroad plot by accident. A very well thought out plot, but not a very good one as it involved time travel shenanigans.
Splode that is freaking awesome and I would love for that to happen. Sadly in my group there would be some rage from certain people as others are happily playing along. Some people just don't handle the 'temporary' lost of their perceived awesomeness very well.
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I'd have been all over Splode's side-jaunt, myself. In one game I played, we did in fact end up in the modern world (though there was a lot of underground magic going on, we didn't find out about it until much later). At one point, we hit a supermarket. My character - who'd grown up a poor grave-digger's son - got down on his knees and wept at the sight.
And then promptly bought as many fresh seeded fruits and vegetables as he could, bought as many starter-seed packets as would fit in his pouches, and got ten pounds of peppercorns.
Upon their return to their game world, he sold half the peppercorns for land (spices, y'all. They're EXPENSIVE.) and bought a horse farm.
He married the girl of his dreams and retired to raise horses. Only time I've ever "won" an RPG. :)
The worst setting is the one that keeps the game from being played.
Many of us have at least one setting that has haunted us for years, undergoing constant alteration to make it perfect for that one campaign we will some day run.
Whenever you try to actually run that campaign, watch as the setting crushes the attempt.
At some point, I learned to love some aspects of "bad" settings, because their flaws are actually what enables the game to go forward.
Raise the narrative bar of a setting too high, and you make decent improvisation very difficult.
I can understand that. My own game tend to be either set in something very vague (like my favorite "Genericland") or in something quickly cobbled together.
I do tend to avoid pre-made settings (despite loving golarion) simply because I feel the responsibility to be "accurate", which throws of my usual tendency of pulling world ideas out of thin air...
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I'm building a world that has some minor time travel anomalies and half a dozen dimensions/universes all based on Fictional books that the PCs have to jump back and forth between to complete their quest. I'm still trying to figure out how I want to make it work though. I haven't started writing it yet, just an outline, because I decided I was going to use it for NaNoWriMo (the story part of it anyway) which starts tomorrow and about all you're allowed to do before hand is outline and research.
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I'm building a world that has some minor time travel anomalies and half a dozen dimensions/universes all based on Fictional books that the PCs have to jump back and forth between to complete their quest. I'm still trying to figure out how I want to make it work though. I haven't started writing it yet, just an outline, because I decided I was going to use it for NaNoWriMo (the story part of it anyway) which starts tomorrow and about all you're allowed to do before hand is outline and research.
In the campaign I mentioned above where they went to Earth, there were other portals and offered them glimpses to other worlds. For 90% of the campaign, they just assumed these worlds were other planets, alternate planes, or alternate universes.
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It's a quest to retrieve a mcguffin for a Time Dragon (Thus the Time Shenanigans)
It's a quest to retrieve a mcguffin for a Time Dragon (Thus the Time Shenanigans)
Have you figured out what the McGuffin is going to be?
It's a quest to retrieve a mcguffin for a Time Dragon (Thus the Time Shenanigans)Have you figured out what the McGuffin is going to be?
Not yet.
So, to get back to the actual thread...
I actually haven't seen many homebrew worlds and know little about most of the settings, but a single player forever ruined any chance of me enjoying Eberron.
One time I played in this campaign where the wizards were color-coded for alignment but they all had to go to the same meetings. Oh, and they used steel for money, so oversized metal weapons were worth more as raw steel than we could sell them for as weapons.
I tease. I played in mostly homebrews and FR, and never really encountered a really terrible SETTING per se. Some were just not fleshed out at all, and in some, the world outside the dungeon walls never came into play. One campaign I played in consisted of needing to get from a starting point to location X, and rolling so many random encounters (truly random, not specified for our level) using insane crit and fumble tables (Arduin Grimoire, for the record) that we'd have at least one or two deaths on the way there, so that player would have to make up a new character (or just not come back, which happened a lot), before we got to location X, which might be two or three sessions later, by which time only one or two of the people who walked out the door at the starting point were left. So would something like that be the setting or the DM?
