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Our main DM has a homebrew world that he has meticulously crafted over the past 10+ years. It comes complete with fully fleshed out cities, nations, races, ethnicities, cosmology, gods, lore, and ancient history. He even used a map program to create a pretty detailed map of the main continent.
One of the other features of this setting is a (continually growing) number of NPC's which were former PC's that are in retirement following the completion of a campaign. PC's actions have lasting effects and those characters become permanent fixtures within the setting after retirement. Events can be referenced in a new campaign that took place in a campaign over a decade ago, and the reverberations of those events can lead to new potentials for adventure. Basically PC's are literally the driving force behind any change in the world.
So I am curious, is this relatively common? Do you/your DM, whether using a published campaign setting or a homebrew of personal design, have the actions of the PC's carry over from one campaign to the next as part of the greater world? Or are your groups adventures usually more self contained?
You describe my gaming group pretty well there. Our world is sort of a communal effort. I DM about 75% of the time and the setting is mine on a broad level, but every one of the regulars has spent at least a little time behind the screen, and we've sort of fleshed out the smaller details as we've gone along. At this point, many of the world's particulars have been defined (or changed from the original) by the actions of the various PCs who have lived and died over the years.
I have no idea how common this playstyle really is, though my impression is that it is fairly rare. If it were widespread, I doubt Paizo would enjoy such brisk sales with their various APs.
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No, I don't. Our group has sufficient turnover that there's little point in my nostalgically creating a shrine to Greg's character when Greg hasn't played with us in two years.
I also consider it bad form, personally, because powerful NPCs will tend to overshadow PCs unless handled very adroitly. Either the BBEG is doing something of sufficiently little consequence that it's not really worth getting excited over, or else it's something sufficiently important that Atanamiriel, the epic-level elven bard (Greg's old bard) will hear of it and try to take action, and we're back at the why-didn't-Elrond-teleport-the-Ring-to-Mordor again.
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No, I don't. Our group has sufficient turnover that there's little point in my nostalgically creating a shrine to Greg's character when Greg hasn't played with us in two years.
I also consider it bad form, personally, because powerful NPCs will tend to overshadow PCs unless handled very adroitly. Either the BBEG is doing something of sufficiently little consequence that it's not really worth getting excited over, or else it's something sufficiently important that Atanamiriel, the epic-level elven bard (Greg's old bard) will hear of it and try to take action, and we're back at the why-didn't-Elrond-teleport-the-Ring-to-Mordor again.
So playing in your game is kinda like going through an instanced dungeon in an MMO then, the party goes in and clears the place out, yet its nice and reset for the next group of fellows to happen along. Thats a bummer. Personally I'd rather play in a living world, not a set piece.
So playing in your game is kinda like going through an instanced dungeon in an MMO then,
Goodness, no. It's like playing in several separate and unrelated stories. Greg's Reign of Winter campaign doesn't need to have anything to do with Susan's Skull and Shackles campaign, any more than Dracula needs to have anything to do with Sherlock Holmes, except in (typically very bad) fan fiction.
So playing in your game is kinda like going through an instanced dungeon in an MMO then, the party goes in and clears the place out, yet its nice and reset for the next group of fellows to happen along. Thats a bummer. Personally I'd rather play in a living world, not a set piece.
Me, too. I ran Legacy of Fire for two completely different groups. The second group got really frustrated finding all the dungeons already cleaned out and the monsters dead.
I jest. I mean that might be the case if he were running the same adventures for the same groups, but some of us like to try new things. I had some continuity from one of my homebrew campaigns to the next (referenced here), but after that second one ran its course, I kind of felt the need to try something new, so I made up a whole new campaign world, and about half the players in it were new to my game. If I run another game in it with any of the same characters, I'll have had the events of the previous campaign as part of history, but I'm just as likely to scrap that world and make a new one.
I think that that kind of continuity is pretty natural to a long-running GM in a homebrew. I wonder how many people running in Golarion or other published game worlds have similar continuity from campaign to campaign.
each of our DM's has a homebrew campaign setting they use for all of their campaigns. So when they are DM'ing, you're playing in their world that they created.
As far as re-populating the dungeons, we usually have it get re-inhabited, but you never know what moved in. and it's not always the case. But we have had situations where a low-level dungeon for one group was revisited where there were mid-level undead in there. Pesky Necromancers!
Goodness, no. It's like playing in several separate and unrelated stories. Greg's Reign of Winter campaign doesn't need to have anything to do with Susan's Skull and Shackles campaign, any more than Dracula needs to have anything to do with Sherlock Holmes, except in (typically very bad) fan fiction.
So playing in your game is kinda like going through an instanced dungeon in an MMO then,
Aye, its the same in our games, if a campaign takes place on the eastern half of the continent, nothing that happened over on the western side will likely come into play at all. Everything runs off of internal consistency.
Here is a better example for you, lets say you run a Kingmaker campaign and your PCs successfully complete the adventure and set up their own kingdom. You then later run a campaign that takes the new group of characters to the River Kingdoms for some reason (maybe its even a new AP that goes there for a portion of the campaign), will the kingdom from the Kingmaker campaign you ran exist, are they former characters there as NPC's conducting the daily business of their normal lives, etc?
Me, too. I ran Legacy of Fire for two completely different groups. The second group got really frustrated finding all the dungeons already cleaned out and the monsters dead.
I jest. I mean that might be the case if he were running the same adventures for the same groups, but some of us like to try new things. I had some continuity from one of my homebrew campaigns to the next (referenced here), but after that second one ran its course, I kind of felt the need to try something new, so I made up a whole new campaign world, and about half the players in it were new to my game. If I run another game in it with any of the same characters, I'll have had the events of the previous campaign as part of history, but I'm just as likely to scrap that world and make a new one.
I think that that kind of continuity is pretty natural to a long-running GM in a homebrew. I wonder how many people running in Golarion or other published game worlds have similar continuity from campaign to campaign.
Oh I didn't mean dungeons that are cleaned out should stay empty forever, some new group of bad guys will eventually come along and set up shop. After all, good lairs are hard to find!
Goodness, no. It's like playing in several separate and unrelated stories. Greg's Reign of Winter campaign doesn't need to have anything to do with Susan's Skull and Shackles campaign, any more than Dracula needs to have anything to do with Sherlock Holmes, except in (typically very bad) fan fiction.
So playing in your game is kinda like going through an instanced dungeon in an MMO then,Aye, its the same in our games, if a campaign takes place on the eastern half of the continent, nothing that happened over on the western side will likely come into play at all. Everything runs off of internal consistency.
Here is a better example for you, lets say you run a Kingmaker campaign and your PCs successfully complete the adventure and set up their own kingdom. You then later run a campaign that takes the new group of characters to the River Kingdoms for some reason (maybe its even a new AP that goes there for a portion of the campaign), will the kingdom from the Kingmaker campaign you ran exist, are they former characters there as NPC's conducting the daily business of their normal lives, etc?
Probably not. Why should it? Thousands if not millions of stories have been written that take place in the London area (including significant parts of Dracula), but we don't expect to see Bertie Wooster sitting down to tea with Lord Peter Wimsey, Hercule Poirot, Lord Sebastian Flyte, and Albus Dumbledore, despite the fact that they were all "contemporary" in the respective chronologies of their fictitious universes. (I do believe that Bertie once read a Hercule Poirot story -- which given Bertie's well-known mental capacity is a miracle unto itself -- but is also realistic. Bertie knows that in his universe as well as in ours, Hercule Poirot is not real but a fictional character, and in fact, that lends verisimilitude to the Woosterverse.)
Indeed, it's not even clear that the Hercule Poirot stories, the Tommy and Tuppence stories, and the Miss Marple stories were set in the same universe, despite the fact that all three were created by the same author (dear old Agatha, of course). In fact, since Tommy and Tuppence make a habit of parodying fictional detectives, including Poirot -- this implies that to T&T, Poirot is merely a fictional character.
If I'm running a campaign in the River Kingdoms, the NPCs are designed for the purposes of the story I'm running this week, not to the purposes of a story completed months or years ago. Unless there's a specific reason to reuse characters, I won't. Especially since, as I pointed out earlier, I consider it poor form because reused characters tend to overpower the newer ones unless handled extremely deftly.
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... Thousands if not millions of stories have been written that take place in the London area (including significant parts of Dracula), but we don't expect to see Bertie Wooster sitting down to tea with Lord Peter Wimsey, Hercule Poirot, Lord Sebastian Flyte, and Albus Dumbledore, despite the fact that they were all "contemporary" in the respective chronologies of their fictitious universes.
I would totally run that as a League of Extraordinary Gentlemen one-shot.
... Thousands if not millions of stories have been written that take place in the London area (including significant parts of Dracula), but we don't expect to see Bertie Wooster sitting down to tea with Lord Peter Wimsey, Hercule Poirot, Lord Sebastian Flyte, and Albus Dumbledore, despite the fact that they were all "contemporary" in the respective chronologies of their fictitious universes.I would totally run that as a League of Extraordinary Gentlemen one-shot.
I'm sure you would.
Detailed homebrew campaign worlds like the original poster described are amazing.
Except when they're not, because they bore, annoy, or outright offend the players involved.
A friend of mine once did an incredibly detailed homebrew campaign universe, based in the real world, that had created the Pope and the Catholic Church as a major thematic villain. The game crashed within hours, because two of the players were actually rather fervent Cathoilcs and didn't appreciate being cast as bad guys. Which left the GM with an incredibly detailed world and egg on his face, and two very ticked-off players.
Much more frequently, I've seen the game drift away into nothingness because nothing happens; the GM has provided detailed descriptions of the food, the hair styles, the fashions, the architecture, and so forth, to the point that it takes ten minutes to cross the town square, twenty minutes to read the menu at the tavern and order lunch, and thirty minutes for the players to pull out their GameBoys and/or start checking Email.
Because, as I pointed out, the movie does not belong to the producer. It doesn't belong to the scriptwriter, either. If you don't have buy-in from the people who are actually going to be interacting with the world, you don't have a game.
If you want to write a novel, don't expect your friends to method-act it for you.
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This is something my players cite as a feature of my campaign setting.
I tend to build time skips into the campaign setting in order to allow everyone to take their special spots in the history, or in the current environment.
From the 2e days: Events from players then have become legends (sketchy or not) for contemporary players.
Players have founded organizations. Changed how things are resolved. Had a part in changing the Map of the world (literally) and remain movers and shakers.
Unlike people who view it as a 'shrine' its more akin to every player seeing where he can ultimately end up. And high level players are usually taught why 'Elrond can't teleport to Mordor (usually this is complaining about eagles.)'
My campaign setting at the moment has the following:
Several epic level guys from a previous campaign who chose to run my campaign setting with epic, with me approving some of it afterwards. They call this the OVA-Campaign since its only kinda-sorta canonical.
From that campaign we've got:
> An epic level cleric ruling a city at the behest of her deity.
> An epic level paladin taking care of his city and working towards the spread of honor and justice (and succeeding quite well).
> An epic level cg sorcerer who went into the planes and got into trouble via shennigans resulting in him now working for /lawfully/ aligned people as a penance.
The two normal campaigns those characters (among others) came from, gave (and this is a very abridged list):
> A new merchant group ruling out of a formerly destroyed city.
> A no longer destroyed city.
> The rediscovery of lost arts.
> The cessation of the flood of the world (one of the major campaign elements. Yeah, I had to rewrite my campaign book.)
> Heavier involvement of mysterious species.
> Creation of entirely new areas on my world, with races and rules to go with.
For reasons of avoiding my own insanity, I'm not including the two most recent active campaign's accomplishments, or the accomplishments of the game before them.
In a nutshell, I've got
Two 'Seasons' of Pathfinder era (currently active).
Three 'Seasons' of 3e Era and an epic-level "OVA."
And quite a few 2e seasons.
All in the same evolving campaign setting.
The trick is not building a campaign setting /for/ a campaign. The world has many stories, many heroes in it. A campaign world should have similar accomodations.
And resolving one problem results in others.
To address the 'high level people remove player agency' issue, its bunk. An epic level mage is still just one mage. He can't be arsed to track down every single evil overlord, clerical maniac, or such. He's certain to try though, and that, ladies and gentlemen is where the PCs come in.
High level PCs of days past, mentor new guys, it gives a continuity, it also helps in removing what I like to call 'NPC Mindset Jackassery.'
When you have a lot of PCs in leadership, the NPCs start thinking like PCs too (because the DM, having to NPC the former PCs begins to realize that certain players would react certain ways).
I'll give three examples.
The epic level cg sorc? He doesn't 'seal evil.' He doesn't leave mysterious puzzles and half-assed prophecies. He spells things out as best he's able, and he puts down bad guys hard. He's got really crappy judgement though and doesn't pay attention to things that don't wander in front of him. So he's epic level, but he's not really overly concerned with Buzzmog the Unbidden (he's dealt with worse) who your PCs are dealing with, and he thinks he can handle him if things get bad enough. He's not really in the mood to be proactive. He spends most of hi time with his power just enjoying good coffee and cigarettes and trying to avoid the Planetars who hang around him from noticing non-lawful good stuff he does and lecturing him.
The epic level cleric? She's LG. She /does/ care. However, she's in the opposite boat. She's drowning in responsibilities.
She has a city to run. People to look after. Theological issues to adjudicate (since she has the ear of their goddess). She's devout, but was never a really big book-thumper so the orthodox folks eye her, and the heterodox ones eye her because she knows for-a-fact that her goddess doesn't like their shennigans. She has to handle politics of a country that goes a%$*~%+ over a rumor of what she might have said, and has an entire planet of worshippers who might over-react by her saying stuff like 'I don't like spiced wine' to mean 'Our Goddess Demands NO MORE WINE!' Her entire life is putting out fires. When PCs come to her and explain Buzzmog is causing trouble, she isn't being flippant when she gives them some token help, sends them on their way and asks them to be on a look-out for three or four other problems other adventurers told her about.
Our third guy is a mage. He's not epic, but he's got some cool toys and abilities (think like 18-19th level mage). He made his chops stopping a resurgent god, but also had to deal with some other folks along the way. Folks who really pissed him off. These folks are now the primary focus of his 'retirement.' He works on opposing their actions, learning more about them, and oh yeah, being assaulted by them. These bad guys have cadres of people just as badass as him, so he can't just put on adventuring pants and wipe them out, they're also mysterious and its easier to box the wind. When the PCs come to him to ask him about Buzzmog, he helps them out a bit, but indicates he's still got his own problems and therefore can't dedicate too much to them. Also he lives in a relatively remote area (and talking to him puts you on his enemies sh**list.)
All of these are former PCs. All of these players upon running into themselves at some later point agreed that their situation, mindset and motivations were entirely reasonable. In fact before I made the argument for the cleric, the cleric's player did. The player said something like "This is like asking the Pope to catch a pickpocket, he's going to help, but he's got bigger stuff to do!"
Just because there's more then one group of adventurers stopping more then one planet shatteringly horrible fate doesn't mean the players actions are any less important.
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Detailed homebrew campaign worlds like the original poster described are amazing.Except when they're not, because they bore, annoy, or outright offend the players involved.
Settle down, Beavis. A bad DM can ruin any campaign. What you describe is simply awful DMing; it has nothing to do with the style of gaming in question.
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Just because there's more then one group of adventurers stopping more then one planet shatteringly horrible fate doesn't mean the players actions are any less important.
It depends upon exactly what sort of things the group is fighting. If they're fighting to stop something which could literally destroy the world, it still seems silly that the epic characters around don't do something. (Kind of like how when Batman & Superman are in the same universe it annoys me to no end.)
However, if the lower level party is just stopping some marauders, or even saving a single city, I'd kind of agree with you.
After all - even Metropolis - the city Superman lives in - didn't do away with their police force.
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Just because there's more then one group of adventurers stopping more then one planet shatteringly horrible fate doesn't mean the players actions are any less important.It depends upon exactly what sort of things the group is fighting. If they're fighting to stop something which could literally destroy the world, it still seems silly that the epic characters around don't do something. (Kind of like how when Batman & Superman are in the same universe it annoys me to no end.)
However, if the lower level party is just stopping some marauders, or even saving a single city, I'd kind of agree with you.
After all - even Metropolis - the city Superman lives in - didn't do away with their police force.
Yeah I agree entirely. As threats increase in level, the NPC-PCs tend to increase their assistance. They have trouble with going all-out the way some would like though because there are still /other/ world-threatening threats, or things that might turn into world-threatening threats and they're not precisely limitless in power.
The irony for me is that players seem to get along better with NPCs knowing they're former players (hell I had a player thank a player because his PC-NPC helped him out.)
When high level folks treat you with respect and don't act like Elminster, well...
Your average PC doesn't /want/ to spend the rest of his days sitting around, being mysterious and smoking a pipe. They're still retired though. Its a brinksmanship thing for a DM. You have to be just helpful enough that it makes sense, without taking away the PC's agency.
Also it puts some big guys into the position of 'asset.'
Like 'I can ask the Epic Level Cleric for help on this, but I have to be damn sure its worth calling her out, because while she's helping me, she won't be watching for Buzzmog's lt, the Cornugon Devilboy who might attack our anti-mcguffin mine near her city.'
PCs also have PC problems. They have people they care about. They do dumb stuff. They have stuff happen to them that requires quests.
A party in the current campaign went to talk to the Mage who I used as Example 3. He indicated he personally had to hang back and protect his island and research from trouble, but he gave them intelligence and a staging position to launch their liberation of a nearby island country from (as well as useful insight). He didn't give them goods because, PCs rarely hand out loot to people just for being helpful.
Important people learn to delegate. Active PCs in one of my current campaigns actually cultivated a bunch of adventurers for the sole purpose of having people able to follow up on stuff they thought was important, but wasn't important enough to divert them from what they were doing currently.
The whole "make one campaign world with everything you might possibly want in it and set all your games there" has never appealed to me. It works for a published setting, in a way, but our home campaigns have been in much more varied settings. It allows each to have a very distinct feel and theme.
Agreed. While I can appreciate the verisimilitude provided by a campaign setting with known history, due to many campaigns run in it over a long period of time, I'm a creative guy who enjoys designing custom settings, and I'd actually get bored of a given setting, after a single campaign within it. Creating new immersive worlds is an activity I enjoy as much as playing or running a game. I could never be satisfied playing in just one world over and over again - and is probably the reason I've never campaigned in Golarian, Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, etc.
I might just be bored with the US... (since I've been to all but 3 states). Is there a problem with being bored of the Earth?
Really, though, its not like how you state it, read below to see what I mean.
These days for homebrew settings I generally design regions, not entire worlds and keep the campaign regional only - without needs for globetrotting. This is kind of how/why I conceptualized the Kaidan setting of Japanese horror (PFRPG) which I've published as an imprint under Rite Publishing. This way if I want to do another campaign in fantasy Japan, I've got Kaidan to fall back on.
If I want to play a different theme, I'll design another specific region that uses the theme and run a campaign through it.
One issue is, I don't care for the mixed technologies that Golarian has. If I play in a given "world", I want that world to be consistent technology wise. For example, as stated, I designed Kaidan for the Japan-analog game. However, I'm dabbling on a homebrew Supernatural Old West setting with rifles and revolvers tech. I really wouldn't want Kaidan, and this proposed Old West setting to exist in the same world, or in the same timeline. I don't want "we've got revolvers on this side of the world, but in Kaidan, muskets and single shot pistols is the most advanced tech." They don't belong in the same world, at least to me. So my Old West homebrew setting must exist on a different planet than where Kaidan resides, thus deserves its own setting/world to exist.
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Strange this came up for me in another thread, we game in Golarian, but we shift around the AP start dates and consequences so that they are happening sometimes contiguously and sometimes separated by generations. We have characters that are the children of previous characters, and a mix of light cameos and gentle touches on the campaign so that it feels like one world. We don't worry about it to much, and just enjoy the flavour our Golarion has.
One of my favourites was after the second module of Second Darkeness, the antagonist Clegg (can't recall last name) beat the party to the new chunk of sky metal, and claimed it for himself. He then set himself as the sole supply of this rare new metal, and in his hubris called it Cleggsteel. Noquol might be what the sages know it as, but on the open market its Cleggsteel. At least for me it has carried on as perhaps the one time the players were not as victorious as they usually are.
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I do admit, I love my campaign setting, but there's a lot I'd do differently if I made a new one. And I kind of wish I could sometimes. Its an odd sensation.
I love my campaign, its foibles, characters and such. It also feels lived in.
I don't really hunt for novelty, but I can see the appeal. I can also see the appeal of being able to not have to constantly think of effects on a campaign world at large as opposed to in an AP where you live in your own world.
I just think that giving continuity does help the folks who stick with it. I've tended to have at least a few veterans in all of my campaigns.
As I said, they like seeing the changes, and newbies like knowing that one day something they do will have effects on another player.
I love also when players look at my timeline and can't tell the established stuff from the stuff the PCs did. I presume, it makes it feel like PCs are part of the world instead of designated protagonists who got shuffled into it.
Then again my campaign world tends to change quite a bit (the map changes) and nations come and go.
I also tend to put biiig time skips between editions (the 2e era was different from the current era), although the 3.5 to PF one was small since they're similar.
One of the biggest 'problems' I've had with a continuing world is that PCs have a net positive effect and these effects add up to make the campaign increasingly weirder to deal with.
Goblins, Orcs and Kobolds for example aren't monsters under beds, they're parts of society. Illithids are extinct (that one came in handy for when pathfinder came around). And outsiders are damn near everywhere.
Also my campaign was originally huge on naval stuff, in the fifteen years since its now based on huge nation states and the naval stuff only comes in occasionally.
One of the conceits moving into 3.5 was the world was flooding. The heroes fixed the problem in the second 3.5 game.
Reminded me a bit of the Dark Sun setting in 2e. It was based on post-apocalyptic desert survival. The conceit didn't survive past the introductory novel series.
One issue is, I don't care for the mixed technologies that Golarian has. If I play in a given "world", I want that world to be consistent technology wise. For example, as stated, I designed Kaidan for the Japan-analog game. However, I'm dabbling on a homebrew Supernatural Old West setting with rifles and revolvers tech. I really wouldn't want Kaidan, and this proposed Old West setting to exist in the same world, or in the same timeline. I don't want "we've got revolvers on this side of the world, but in Kaidan, muskets and single shot pistols is the most advanced tech."
Yeah, I could see that. There's no way that in the same world, you could have revolvers on in one part of the world and single-shot muzzle-loading weapons in another.
Oh, wait. Earth, 1836. Samuel Colt patented the modern revolver in 1836, and at the same time the contemporary Japanese were experimenting with flintlocks.
There are -- literally -- more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
One issue is, I don't care for the mixed technologies that Golarian has. If I play in a given "world", I want that world to be consistent technology wise. For example, as stated, I designed Kaidan for the Japan-analog game. However, I'm dabbling on a homebrew Supernatural Old West setting with rifles and revolvers tech. I really wouldn't want Kaidan, and this proposed Old West setting to exist in the same world, or in the same timeline. I don't want "we've got revolvers on this side of the world, but in Kaidan, muskets and single shot pistols is the most advanced tech."Yeah, I could see that. There's no way that in the same world, you could have revolvers on in one part of the world and single-shot muzzle-loading weapons in another.
Oh, wait. Earth, 1836. Samuel Colt patented the modern revolver in 1836, and at the same time the contemporary Japanese were experimenting with flintlocks.
There are -- literally -- more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
True, but when I included flint-lock muskets and pistols in Kaidan, I was trying to accomodate GMs who want to use gun tech in a Japan game. Really, I prefer to run Kaidan as katana and yumi bow tech and no guns at all - I generally am not a fan of guns in fantasy. That said, my Old West homebrew idea is experimenting with gun tech in games, that I normally don't care for, but am willing to give it a try.
However, I wouldn't say Japan was experimenting with flint-locks in 1836, rather, when Japan acquired the arquebus, that was current "modern" gun tech at the time, as the Portuguese brought flint-locks to Japan in the 1500's. That said, Japan wasn't all into modernizing gun tech, as once the arquebus showed, up, Japan was still using arquebus tech in the late 1800's. They weren't experimenting with flint-locks, it was thoroughly a part of their warrior culture, they just didn't advance the tech, like the rest of the world. Of course, Japan had closed its borders with outside tech, remaining outside, and everything already in Japan tech kept "old school".
Aside from different technologies, as TheJeff mentions in his examples. The cosmology of Kaidan is completely different from that of Golarian or most other standard fantasy worlds - in Kaidan there is no multiverse, on 7 specific planes of existence, with 5 of them co-existing on the prime material. Also Kaidan has its own death and reincarnation mechanic, unique to Kaidan and really doesn't fit standard PF worlds. So there are more differences than technology - that was just one point I was using as an example on why I don't play congruent worlds with every setting I design.
I can see the advantage to having one big setting where the PCs can wander around the whole thing as they see fit (or as the needs of the campaign and their abilities drive them) and interact with old PCs or at least their legacies. It's not really a big draw for me, but I can see it.
What's the advantage to cordoning off settings, but still putting them in the same world?
Not much, but a technologically uniform Holiday Inn world isn't a tremendous advantage, either. The "planet of hats" is a standard but discredited trope common in badly written sci-fi, and I'd hope no one's actually suggesting that it's something that should be imported into FRPGs.
The minor advantage with "cordoning off" parts of the world is that you can tell interesting stories about crossing the cordon, as indeed James Clavell did. If you're publishing a world, this creates opportunities for your buyers. If you're developing for home use,.... well, you're at least trying to avert the "planet of hats."
However, I wouldn't say Japan was experimenting with flint-locks in 1836, rather, when Japan acquired the arquebus, that was current "modern" gun tech at the time, as the Portuguese brought flint-locks to Japan in the 1500's. That said, Japan wasn't all into modernizing gun tech, as once the arquebus showed, up, Japan was still using arquebus tech in the late 1800's. They weren't experimenting with flint-locks, it was thoroughly a part of their warrior culture, they just didn't advance the tech, like the rest of the world.
I'm afraid this isn't true. Japan didn't import the flintlock from Portugal (or from anywhere); the imported weapons were matchlocks. The flintlock wasn't invented (in Europe) until the mid 1600s and never made it to Japan, but they were, as I said, experimenting with them in the early 19th century for roughly the same reasons that the Europeans had done so two centuries earlier -- but of course, without the impetus of the Thirty Year's War, and with the bakefu's embargo, tech progressed more slowly.
The minor advantage with "cordoning off" parts of the world is that you can tell interesting stories about crossing the cordon, as indeed James Clavell did. If you're publishing a world, this creates opportunities for your buyers. If you're developing for home use,.... well, you're at least trying to avert the "planet of hats."
Well when I designed Kaidan, I had getting it published in mind from the start. One of my goals was to create a complete , stand-alone, fantasy Japan, as an archipelago of islands, so that buyers of the setting material could drop the archipelago in some ocean on their existing world, if they didn't already have a Japan-analog already in existence. Kaidan probably wouldn't fit in Golarian, since Golarian already features Minkai and the Dragon Empires region of the world. Though you could still drop Kaidan into the ocean next to Minkai, still it ideally doesn't fit Golarian well.
James Clavell's Shogun, though diverges from historical canon greatly, is based on a true story. An English ship's captain did indeed shipwreck in feudal Japan and was a guest in Nobunaga's court.
The intro trilogy of modules set in Kaidan is very much "westerners" delivering a trade transaction with the newly opened borders of the Japanese empire, so it kind of is the story of a cordoned off region, when crossing that border is its own story. The Curse of the Golden Spear trilogy is that exact story, as the PCs aren't local Kaidanese, but from somewhere else. The trilogy doesn't require a specific somewhere else, so a GM can pick their own origin location outside of Kaidan to begin. Its not part of the trilogy story, so where they start can be anywhere a GM wants, as long as its not comparable to another Japan.
Edit: Orfamay Quest, you are correct, the arquebus used by the Japanese are indeed matchlocks, and not flint-locks (my post wasn't intended on discussing accurate historical tech so much as being different to modern guns.)
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My own experience is that people try to build worlds that are way too big, in fact. The worlds end up big, general, and bland. I usually design my worlds very small, basically a city or a small state, so I can layer detail easily in places the PCs have actually shown an interest in. It also allows PCs to have a large part in shaping the world by being big fish in a small pond. For example, Kaer Maga is a GREAT pre-canned setting for an entire game; there's so much weird stuff and interesting people that there's no reason to be running all over the world.
I would add that while nowhere in any Kaidan supplement does it specifically say so, there is the implication of a Japan-analog of times before Sengoku Period, as if the Kamakura Bakufu survived up to 1400 and Kaidan is loosely based on the Kamakura Bakufu (under a Minomoto shogun) rather than that of the Tokugawa Era. So late 19th century is not really comparable to where Kaidan sits on a comparable timeline. Kaidan ideally is comparable to a period in Japan between 1200 and 1400, as a pre-gun technology region. When we released Way of the Samurai, the UC just got released, so we shoehorned the gunslinger into Kaidan in that supplement, but know that it was shoehorned and not part of the original intent to include gun technology, when the setting was originally conceived.
My own experience is that people try to build worlds that are way too big, in fact. The worlds end up big, general, and bland. I usually design my worlds very small, basically a city or a small state, so I can layer detail easily in places the PCs have actually shown an interest in. It also allows PCs to have a large part in shaping the world by being big fish in a small pond. For example, Kaer Maga is a GREAT pre-canned setting for an entire game; there's so much weird stuff and interesting people that there's no reason to be running all over the world.
Agreed. Jane Marple barely left her tiny village, but the stories in St. Mary Mead seem endless. Nero Wolfe found hundreds of stories in New York City, and Phillrp Marlowe stayed in Southern California his whole career.
My own experience is that people try to build worlds that are way too big, in fact. The worlds end up big, general, and bland. I usually design my worlds very small, basically a city or a small state, so I can layer detail easily in places the PCs have actually shown an interest in. It also allows PCs to have a large part in shaping the world by being big fish in a small pond. For example, Kaer Maga is a GREAT pre-canned setting for an entire game; there's so much weird stuff and interesting people that there's no reason to be running all over the world.
This is a good point. Trying to develop an entire planet in detail is a fool's errand. I basically keep the homebrew world we play in focused on a single tumultuous region. There is a whole world (not to mention universe) out there and the party occasionally ventures out into it, but it is mostly there as background to a more focused regional setting.
Keeping the campaign focus small also makes it easier to justify non-intervention by the powerful NPCs in the world. When the PCs are fighting mostly for the survival or a single city, region, or province, many of the world's NPCs either won't care or will be happy to see the downfall of place_x.
Striking the right balance between depth and breadth is critical in homebrew worlds. Nobody with an actual life can create an entire world in all its diversity.