Dungeons and Dragons HERESY

[Murtak]

I would rephrase that as: The economy (as well as other large parts of the setting) needs to make sense.

Any large deviations need an explanation. If shadows create more shadows by killing defenseless peasants civilization collapses in a single week. This is an anomaly. We need to know why civilization still exists. When a wizard can create or summon goods and servants worth thousands of gold pieces each day we need an explanation of how this works. Heck, those boring explanations are probably fine plot hooks in their own right. If there is a city in the middle of the desert it is a bullshit city, memorable traits or not. But if there is a city because an underground river is accessible at this place you suddenly have the potential for intrigue, shutting off others' water supply, terrorist plots - to me this is much more valuable than knowing they chop your head off for stealing an apple in Al'Aksala.

[virgil]

Bullpoop. I want details about a world, especially the details that will directly pertain to the lives of the party. Unless the town is an obvious analogue to modern America, then their legal & even moral standards are going to be different. How do they punish thieves? How trained and relentless are the guards? Do duels exist? Are orcs accepted while gnomes are distrusted? If you don't have this sort of stuff and don't give authoritative control of the setting to players, then their entire personality and history will unpredictably change under the whim of the DM.

Actually knowing that Giant Eagles normally feed on man-sized salmon is actually informative and can lead to various conclusions. Now we know that giant eagles don't normally prey on humans, which means we can expect questions to rise if the party's attacked by them. We aren't surprised by fishermen driving a cart filled with 8' long fish, and could use this fact to disguise body bags as salmon sacks (slap a fish head at the front when they look partially in it).

[Thymos]

I either want the world to be really detailed or not at all.

If it's really detailed then it should feel real enough that I feel like I can interact with it.

If it's vague I want to be able to create stuff in it.

The area in-between is just an uncomfortable area of complete DM fiat, you can't really create anything and you also can't really interact with it.

[souran]

I would rephrase that as: The economy (as well as other large parts of the setting) needs to make sense.

Any large deviations need an explanation. If shadows create more shadows by killing defenseless peasants civilization collapses in a single week. This is an anomaly. We need to know why civilization still exists. When a wizard can create or summon goods and servants worth thousands of gold pieces each day we need an explanation of how this works. Heck, those boring explanations are probably fine plot hooks in their own right. If there is a city in the middle of the desert it is a bullshit city, memorable traits or not. But if there is a city because an underground river is accessible at this place you suddenly have the potential for intrigue, shutting off others' water supply, terrorist plots - to me this is much more valuable than knowing they chop your head off for stealing an apple in Al'Aksala.

Some of these things need answers, others you should just be "thats the way it is" because its not worth the time for the answer you are going to get.

The thing is, when you start really really putting pen to paper to answer some of these types of questions you get answers that turn your setting into diskworld. While diskworld is well written, funny and insightful, it loses much of the innocence of fantasy that goes with answers that amount to "just go with it"


The standard is NOT a world that would be self sustaining, or advancing. The standard does not need to be full internal consistancy on every issue and element of the campaign world. The standard is consistant logic nessccary to providing the minimum suspension of disbelief. You just have to get your audiance (players) to the point where they are willing to keep following along and willing to accept the information you dispense. Anything more is just icing on the cake.

[mean_liar]

Actually different settings.

Eberron, as noted, is different. But Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms are generic fantasy lands and there's nothing distinguishing about them other than the Forgotten Realms has NPCs that every hates to see in their games.

I think there's a space for a crunchy setting with economic data and discussions about trade and politics, but you'd want it separate from the "world-as-backdrop" setting where highlights define what's going on. Some GMs and players can handle a setting where factions vie against each other and there are multiple moving parts, and others like it when, after you kill the BBEG the region reverts to peace and perhaps some mild trouble with bandits.

They're different styles of play and they don't need to be catered to by the same setting. One setting needs a shitload of thought about how things actually work and provide hooks on how those mechanics can lead to adventures, and the other needs more thematic hooks divorced of any need to detail out minute interactions between the moderate powers.


...


MY HERESY: Lampshading as many incongruities as possible and working them into the setting. Gold and gems and artwork can be used as fuel to generate magic items? It's because anything valued by mortals "at large" as a cosmic worth that can be remolded into magic. Deities don't have epic levels? It's because being Epic is something that only mortals can do, for unique setting reasons related to mortals and fate and destiny and the nature of the gods. The planes dwellers don't invade the Prime? They can't because of the nature of the setting's planar architecture interacting with the nature of Outsiders. Etc.

[souran]

Bullpoop. I want details about a world, especially the details that will directly pertain to the lives of the party. Unless the town is an obvious analogue to modern America, then their legal & even moral standards are going to be different. How do they punish thieves? How trained and relentless are the guards? Do duels exist? Are orcs accepted while gnomes are distrusted? If you don't have this sort of stuff and don't give authoritative control of the setting to players, then their entire personality and history will unpredictably change under the whim of the DM.

Except you won't remember half that crap once play begins and once play begins you won't want the DM leafing through the campign setting "just to be sure." What do you need to know about their legal standards? Most legal codes are collections of things people really "know" already. You probably figure that murdering people, outright thievery, or a plunder and pillage mentality will get you in trouble. If you get arrested for something seemingly minor that can add interest, especially if it was NOT detailed in some "cannon" source. All of those questions are vital/junk questions. Either the characteristic is really important "yes, they fight duels at the drop of a hat" or junk "you can fight duels but its not really normal', or worse "No, they don't fight duels." A No means that if you then have the adventure lead up to trial by combat as the "old and ancient" law of the land players are going to feel like you just shredded cannon. But if the the setting is silent on a topic you can insert whatever.

Actually knowing that Giant Eagles normally feed on man-sized salmon is actually informative and can lead to various conclusions. Now we know that giant eagles don't normally prey on humans, which means we can expect questions to rise if the party's attacked by them. We aren't surprised by fishermen driving a cart filled with 8' long fish, and could use this fact to disguise body bags as salmon sacks (slap a fish head at the front when they look partially in it).

This information should be specific to adventures, not the monsters, and just because that is the story of your campaign world doesn't mean it should even end up in mine. In my game the giant eagles normally eat humanoids so their homelands are only populated by small creatures that can hide well. AGain, this begins to tell the adventure, so it should NOT be in the monster book. Additionally, what we BOTH don't want is for their to be TWO stat blocks for gaint raptors, one for giant raptors that never eat people and one for giant raptors that eat people, but are otherwsie really similar. And besides, in either case we are pretty much planning a showdown between PCs and gaint birds and so more time spent on how the giant birds do their thing so that the fight is memorable is a good thing. We BOTH want our players to go "Remember that time we fought the Eagles!"

[Vebyast]

This information should be specific to adventures, not the monsters, and just because that is the story of your campaign world doesn't mean it should even end up in mine. In my game the giant eagles normally eat humanoids so their homelands are only populated by small creatures that can hide well. AGain, this begins to tell the adventure, so it should NOT be in the monster book. Additionally, what we BOTH don't want is for their to be TWO stat blocks for gaint raptors, one for giant raptors that never eat people and one for giant raptors that eat people, but are otherwsie really similar. And besides, in either case we are pretty much planning a showdown between PCs and gaint birds and so more time spent on how the giant birds do their thing so that the fight is memorable is a good thing. We BOTH want our players to go "Remember that time we fought the Eagles!"

I don't see anybody saying that this should be in the monster books. However, even you agree that this should be part of the campaign setting, which is what the original point was. There are better places to put it, but it's still a really good idea for it to be in there somewhere. Otherwise you will eventually run into a wall banger somewhere, and that could ruin an encounter or even an entire session.

Additionally, recall that you don't have to go all the way down. As you say, the line for "ok, I can start saying 'that's just how it is'" has to be there somewhere. I'm just arguing that it should be at least one or two levels down from where it is right now. Sure, I'd be fine with saying "that's how it is" when the PCs ask why the casters don't start killing more monsters so they can create more magic items, driving the economy up the supply side. But I wouldn't be fine with saying "that's how it is" when they ask why the RNG gave the magic store in the capital city a +1 icy burst/+3 gnomish double war pick.

[violence in the media]

The standard is NOT a world that would be self sustaining, or advancing. The standard does not need to be full internal consistancy on every issue and element of the campaign world. The standard is consistant logic nessccary to providing the minimum suspension of disbelief. You just have to get your audiance (players) to the point where they are willing to keep following along and willing to accept the information you dispense. Anything more is just icing on the cake.

Emphasis mine. I want that icing.

I want that icing, as a player, so that I can be proactive with it. I want the gameworld to be resilient enough to not have wealth-by-level bullshit. If I make a fortune on the opium black market in Upper Moralistan, then I want the game to be able to accomodate the adventures of Filthy Lucre and the Lotus Company. I don't want every adventure to be reactive, preserve-the-status-quo, save-the-princess garbage. I want to be able to kidnap the princess so I can indirectly blackmail the king into granting me land and a title for her rescue. I'd like a little authorial control of the world and my character's fate, but I don't want to make crap up in a vacuum.

I want that icing, as a DM, to provide me with a lot of groundwork that I really don't want to have to make up on the spot. I want that information to provide some explaination for the players, like myself, that are never wholly satisfied with "just go with it" as a response. I want the players to be able to anticipate and predict moves and motives of NPCs without me having to spell it out for them. I want players to be able to move against their enemies, or further their goals, indirectly and without me having to explicitly authorize such things as a DM. I want that information to help me and the players understand, and care, about the game world.

[souran]

I don't see anybody saying that this should be in the monster books. However, even you agree that this should be part of the campaign setting, which is what the original point was. There are better places to put it, but it's still a really good idea for it to be in there somewhere. Otherwise you will eventually run into a wall banger somewhere, and that could ruin an encounter or even an entire session.

You said you wanted the monsters to have more information on their ecology. I think that ecology is crap you won't use when you finally decide to use that monster in the story. We have already come up with 2 ecologies for our giant birds just talking here. Why do we need the printed book to devote a paragraph to ecology?

This information has been included in monster manuals before.
When people say that they want ecology information I think back to my 2nd and 3rd edition monster manuals that allocated at least a paragraph of space to this information. However, its just NOT really useful information. I never read the monster's ecology and said "well I am not going to use this monster it just doesn't fit here ecologically" I don't want those paragraphs back. I don't want to argue with players that hippogriffs live in temperate climates so they shouldn't find a hippogriff nest in the tundra.

If you hard code the fluff into the monsters that much it becomes weapons for rules lawyer players to slow down games.

Additionally, recall that you don't have to go all the way down. As you say, the line for "ok, I can start saying 'that's just how it is'" has to be there somewhere. I'm just arguing that it should be at least one or two levels down from where it is right now. Sure, I'd be fine with saying "that's how it is" when the PCs ask why the casters don't start killing more monsters so they can create more magic items, driving the economy up the supply side. But I wouldn't be fine with saying "that's how it is" when they ask why the RNG gave the magic store in the capital city a +1 icy burst/+3 gnomish double war pick.

I guess I have not been really clear with my point. I think its bad when you add detail just because you need to get to one of franks 100k word books.

Detail for details sake, sucks. Most of your players won't know about it/remember it until the GM tells them. Your players that have access to the cannon source will be frustrated the more you deviate from it, because it makes there investment in having learned that cannon less valuable.

This means that detail for details sake can really only negatively impact a game and game master. MOst players simply won't care but the ones who do care will be expecting things to be a particular way. The more minutia the greater the chance of bickering over it.

So instead of filling your campaign setting with things that are there for completenes, like population totals, racial breakdowns, etc. Put the things in there that make that location memorable . If the only thing that was interesting about a place is that it was the evil kingdom ruled by skeletor from spider skull island put the detail into spider skull island, and the history section. Shorten the economy, politics, and everything else down to a paragraph and say "since the death of skeletor, the serfs have been freed but have little leadership. They mostly continue their hard scrabble lives." Don't spend lots of time on it.

Basically, focus on memorable don't write for completeness.

[Vebyast]

You said you wanted the monsters to have more information on their ecology. I think that ecology is crap you won't use when you finally decide to use that monster in the story. We have already come up with 2 ecologies for our giant birds just talking here. Why do we need the printed book to devote a paragraph to ecology?

And both of those ecologies made the game more interesting. Remember the idea where you could sneak into the city by hiding in the eight-foot salmon? The point of the ecology isn't just to have the ecology. It's to provide a base for fractal detail if the players get interested. If you don't have at the very least one sentence, then when the players ask, you have to go "that's how it is". If you have that one sentence, then the game is better, because it gives you ideas. You can bullshit that reason on the spot, sure, but if you do it beforehand the idea will be better.

This information has been included in monster manuals before.
When people say that they want ecology information I think back to my 2nd and 3rd edition monster manuals that allocated at least a paragraph of space to this information. However, its just NOT really useful information. I never read the monster's ecology and said "well I am not going to use this monster it just doesn't fit here ecologically" I don't want those paragraphs back. I don't want to argue with players that hippogriffs live in temperate climates so they shouldn't find a hippogriff nest in the tundra.

If you hard code the fluff into the monsters that much it becomes weapons for rules lawyer players to slow down games.

I have never said that it should be part of the monster manual. I am saying that it should be part of your personal campaign setting. When you go and write your campaign, you place the cities, you figure out who worships who, you figure out the terrain and geology, you write a sentence or two per city describing its economy and why its population behaves like it does, and you write a sentence or two per common or interesting monster explaining why it's common or interesting. Then, when the player reach your city, you have data that you can RP with. You can say "Peasant 1 hates the PCs because people that look like them are undercutting his business". When the players encounter a monster and make a knowledge check, they get a chance to avoid the fight by fixing whatever problem is disturbing the hippogriff.

I guess I have not been really clear with my point. I think its bad when you add detail just because you need to get to one of franks 100k word books.

Detail for details sake, sucks. Most of your players won't know about it/remember it until the GM tells them. Your players that have access to the cannon source will be frustrated the more you deviate from it, because it makes there investment in having learned that cannon less valuable.

This means that detail for details sake can really only negatively impact a game and game master. MOst players simply won't care but the ones who do care will be expecting things to be a particular way. The more minutia the greater the chance of bickering over it.

It's not detail for detail's sake. It's detail for the sake of preventing head bangers and for giving the players and the DM more options, as Violence in the Media points out. When the players just know that the laws are different, they get arrested in five minutes, and that's that. If the players have a two-page sheet of paper with the laws on it and they have to follow those laws while RPing, that's a completely different session. Ever played mao?

So instead of filling your campaign setting with things that are there for completenes, like population totals, racial breakdowns, etc. Put the things in there that make that location memorable . If the only thing that was interesting about a place is that it was the evil kingdom ruled by skeletor from spider skull island put the detail into spider skull island, and the history section. Shorten the economy, politics, and everything else down to a paragraph and say "since the death of skeletor, the serfs have been freed but have little leadership. They mostly continue their hard scrabble lives." Don't spend lots of time on it.

Basically, focus on memorable don't write for completeness.

This is not about completeness. This is simply a different way to generate memorability, and it works by enumerating possible interesting things in the setting, which happens to also generate a complete and logically coherent background for the setting. You go for memorability by figuring out What's Different and bullshitting The Why when the PCs ask. I go for memorability by figuring out The Why and then putting together the What's Different.

[souran]

And both of those ecologies made the game more interesting. Remember the idea where you could sneak into the city by hiding in the eight-foot salmon? The point of the ecology isn't just to have the ecology. It's to provide a base for fractal detail if the players get interested. If you don't have at the very least one sentence, then when the players ask, you have to go "that's how it is". If you have that one sentence, then the game is better, because it gives you ideas. You can bullshit that reason on the spot, sure, but if you do it beforehand the idea will be better.

Except that if you write one of those ecologies down in a rulebook it becomes cannon and then the second ecology becomes False in the eyes of the player base. That sucks. That means you end up with two kinds of giant eagles, the kind that eat fish and the kind that eat people. While that makes it easier to write Monster Manual 7, when that books says "150 new monsters! on the back and you find out that one of them is a reprint of giant fucking eagles as a player you get pissed off.

I have never said that it should be part of the monster manual. I am saying that it should be part of your personal campaign setting. When you go and write your campaign, you place the cities, you figure out who worships who, you figure out the terrain and geology, you write a sentence or two per city describing its economy and why its population behaves like it does, and you write a sentence or two per common or interesting monster explaining why it's common or interesting. Then, when the player reach your city, you have data that you can RP with. You can say "Peasant 1 hates the PCs because people that look like them are undercutting his business". When the players encounter a monster and make a knowledge check, they get a chance to avoid the fight by fixing whatever problem is disturbing the hippogriff.

I think we are closer in thought than this argument seems. First where should the ecological information go. Really, the best place for either of these ideas is the adventure that makes use of the creatures ecology as its motivation. Putting this information in the campaign setting is also a good idea, as long as you don't waste time on it when it is not important. If the INTERESTING thing about a region is its man sized fish that giant eagles eat thats fine. Infact, its even ok for that the be the only cool thing about a region. But if it is don't write three more pages about this location detailing every detail of how man sized fish effects their lives. Move on, don't waste more time on this zone.

It's not detail for detail's sake. It's detail for the sake of preventing head bangers and for giving the players and the DM more options, as Violence in the Media points out. When the players just know that the laws are different, they get arrested in five minutes, and that's that. If the players have a two-page sheet of paper with the laws on it and they have to follow those laws while RPing, that's a completely different session. Ever played mao?

It is detail for details sake. If you are going to have a session that focuses on the laws of a place you detail them out. You don't let generic places accumulate detail that will wreck stories and sessions. The detail needs to go into what is important and the other stuff left really brief. IF the laws are strange tell me the strange laws and cut economic stuff and enviromental stuff. If the country has an undead army then fine detail that. Don't detail the army of strangelawland or the laws of undead-army-nazi-topia

This is not about completeness. This is simply a different way to generate memorability, and it works by enumerating possible interesting things in the setting, which happens to also generate a complete and logically coherent background for the setting. You go for memorability by figuring out What's Different and bullshitting The Why when the PCs ask. I go for memorability by figuring out The Why and then putting together the What's Different.

What! Have you ever read through a "campaign setting" book? Page afte page of the same boring ass shit told over and over. Effectively obliterating anything interesting in the setting under mounds of mundane crap.

Additionally, I HATE how once something makes it into the setting sourcebook it becomes unassailable, unchangable, and therefore UNUSED. Why the hell do they bother to detail out all the places of these campaign settings if the first thing that they do is put everybody into an ill-defined area of the setting and basically build out from scratch. That SUCKS.

For whatever reason if you put the details into the monster book, or the setting book then those details will never get used. But if you put the detail into an adventure, and then you make that adventure kick ass people will reprint "return to your adventure" variants for 30+ years![/b]

[Username17]

A monster's ecology, diet, lifestyle, and so on are the things that make it different from a random pile of stats. Without that information, the world information, the role playing information, every monster is just a number.

Griffins want to eat your horses. That's what they care about. Eating things. Specifically horse flesh. That gives them a reason to harry the player characters (wanting their horses), a reason for the PCs to come into conflict with them (not wanting to lose their damn horses), and a hook that players can use to avoid combat or lure the monster into a trap or whatever. It is that information that makes griffins a fucking legendary beast that you can tell epic tales of defeating rather than "Flying Brute: SCALE TO LEVEL."

When the game removes that crucial information, and leaves them a fucking flying brute that is scaled to level, it robs the entire game of any meaning. There is no longer a reason for you to fight the griffin or a reason for it to fight you. There's no conflict. And with no conflict, there can be no victory.

Monsters need to have goals that put them at odds with the goals of the player characters. If they don't have that, the game is fucking pointless.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty2]

A monster's ecology, diet, lifestyle, and so on are the things that make it different from a random pile of stats. Without that information, the world information, the role playing information, every monster is just a number.

Griffins want to eat your horses. That's what they care about. Eating things. Specifically horse flesh. That gives them a reason to harry the player characters (wanting their horses), a reason for the PCs to come into conflict with them (not wanting to lose their damn horses), and a hook that players can use to avoid combat or lure the monster into a trap or whatever. It is that information that makes griffins a fucking legendary beast that you can tell epic tales of defeating rather than "Flying Brute: SCALE TO LEVEL."

Yeah, when you're talking about non-sentient monsters, you have to generally know what it eats and why. For intelligent stuff, I generally just prefer to leave most of its information blank, and let the campaign setting figure out where orcs fit in or whatever, because why they want to kill you is going to be less biology dependent and more setting dependent.

[Vebyast]

Except that if you write one of those ecologies down in a rulebook it becomes cannon and then the second ecology becomes False in the eyes of the player base. That sucks. That means you end up with two kinds of giant eagles, the kind that eat fish and the kind that eat people. While that makes it easier to write Monster Manual 7, when that books says "150 new monsters! on the back and you find out that one of them is a reprint of giant fucking eagles as a player you get pissed off.

Which is why it should never make it into a rulebook. Even if it does, there are such things as house rules. Don't tell me you've never just thrown out a section of a rulebook and said "that's retarded, here's how it works in otherzbekistan.".

I think we are closer in thought than this argument seems. First where should the ecological information go. Really, the best place for either of these ideas is the adventure that makes use of the creatures ecology as its motivation. Putting this information in the campaign setting is also a good idea, as long as you don't waste time on it when it is not important. If the INTERESTING thing about a region is its man sized fish that giant eagles eat thats fine. Infact, its even ok for that the be the only cool thing about a region. But if it is don't write three more pages about this location detailing every detail of how man sized fish effects their lives. Move on, don't waste more time on this zone.

Yes. Put in just the most minor amount of information you can to lay out who things work. You don't need to calculate predator/prey populations. You don't need to calculate caravan frequency. But I think that it's very, very useful to have a paragraph explaining that ore gets mined in these mountains and that it gets shipped by camel in this direction and tame owlbears in this direction.

It is detail for details sake. If you are going to have a session that focuses on the laws of a place you detail them out. You don't let generic places accumulate detail that will wreck stories and sessions. The detail needs to go into what is important and the other stuff left really brief. IF the laws are strange tell me the strange laws and cut economic stuff and enviromental stuff. If the country has an undead army then fine detail that. Don't detail the army of strangelawland or the laws of undead-army-nazi-topia

Agreed. When I say "economies and ecologies", I mean really, really high-level stuff. Like "the region is in a major economic depression because $event and $socialproblem interacted to cause $majorevent, which caused a downward spiral only halted because the entire middle class died". For a city, one sentence. Maybe a paragraph if it's a major trade hub. Typically my entire economic system is two maps of trade routes and political borders and a page of text. If you want to have a particular encounter, find a good spot for it then modify the area's interactions until it fits perfectly. Do this until you have a campaign laid out.

What! Have you ever read through a "campaign setting" book? Page afte page of the same boring ass shit told over and over. Effectively obliterating anything interesting in the setting under mounds of mundane crap.

As a matter of fact, I have not read any "campaign settings". If that's what they're like, they're shit.

I either go with the "completely untyped" system or I write my own (possibly based on cherry-picked first-party ideas). If I write my own, I start with whatever races I want in the area. Then I create some geology (more than once, using dwarf fortress). Then I populate the geology as it would be a few thousand years before the game. Then I spend an hour or two (sometimes more, it's really fun) making the entire system evolve until I get a really nice setting, with hatreds, alliances, wars, history, famous people, magical items, and working ecology. I end up with well-detailed settings without minutia or blathering.

Say what you want about my system, but it works great for me, and this is a thread about DND heresy.

Additionally, I HATE how once something makes it into the setting sourcebook it becomes unassailable, unchangable, and therefore UNUSED. Why the hell do they bother to detail out all the places of these campaign settings if the first thing that they do is put everybody into an ill-defined area of the setting and basically build out from scratch. That SUCKS.

For whatever reason if you put the details into the monster book, or the setting book then those details will never get used. But if you put the detail into an adventure, and then you make that adventure kick ass people will reprint "return to your adventure" variants for 30+ years!

I think that you might be looking at it backward. The ill-defined stuff is the base. Then you layer a campaign setting on top of it. If you do any programming, it's a class-instantiation relationship. You're not actually supposed to play in the ill-defined base world. You're supposed to play in one of the campaign settings they create. Always overlay the less general on top of the more general, replacing more general with less general where they conflict.





Also, I agree with Frank. Not just with monsters, too. A random city is just a city, like every other, unless you give it something different, like a working economy because it has a mages' guild that's flourishing because there's a ley line junction under the town square.

[souran]

Monsters need to have goals that put them at odds with the goals of the player characters. If they don't have that, the game is fucking pointless.

-Username17

Except when you instatutionalize those goals you make EVERY encounter with that monster the same thing. I never ever want to hear a player tell me "a griffon wouldn't do that." FUCK THAT. You end up having to fight to take back access to the monsters concept.

There are plenty of ways for players to learn "what is a griffon" and especially in D&D monsters take in all kinds of elements of monster mythology. So what is an X is fluid anyway.

Not all ice crackens are found at the poles, not all minotaurs live in labrinths, and not all encounters with griffons are because they want to eat your horses. So why should any source materials waste my time filling up books with griffons eat your horses crap.

[Vebyast]

Except when you instatutionalize those goals you make EVERY encounter with that monster the same thing. I never ever want to hear a player tell me "a griffon wouldn't do that." FUCK THAT. You end up having to fight to take back access to the monsters concept.

The correct response is "Then why is it doing it?". If you're set up right, that's quality RP, and I encourage it whenever possible, especially during world creation.

[souran]

Which is why it should never make it into a rulebook. Even if it does, there are such things as house rules. Don't tell me you've never just thrown out a section of a rulebook and said "that's retarded, here's how it works in otherzbekistan.".

Agreeded, it shouldn't be in the rulebook. But its a heresy to say that because like Franks comment shows, lots of people think that if you have not codified it somehwere then the monster is incomplete and it should be! Also if everybody except the author is going to have to house rule something why do we want them to write the rule in the first place!

Yes. Put in just the most minor amount of information you can to lay out who things work. You don't need to calculate predator/prey populations. You don't need to calculate caravan frequency. But I think that it's very, very useful to have a paragraph explaining that ore gets mined in these mountains and that it gets shipped by camel in this direction and tame owlbears in this direction.

I would have even tougher standards than that, a single sentece can suffice unless there is something there worth really polishing and making memorable. Making sourcebooks be page after page of 1 paragraph about locations politics, one about its racial mix, one about its economy, is what I am done with. They blur together into nothingness.

Agreed. When I say "economies and ecologies", I mean really, really high-level stuff. Like "the region is in a major economic depression because $event and $socialproblem interacted to cause $majorevent, which caused a downward spiral only halted because the entire middle class died". For a city, one sentence. Maybe a paragraph if it's a major trade hub. Typically my entire economic system is two maps of trade routes and political borders and a page of text. If you want to have a particular encounter, find a good spot for it then modify the area's interactions until it fits perfectly. Do this until you have a campaign laid out.

Towns that are nothing more than a dot and a name are not bad. They give you freedom to put something memorable there. Again, the standard I would place on if something makes the cut is "is it memorable."

As an example of what I would consider good world design and bad world design I would compare the warhammer armies books to the 2nd and 3rd edition forgotten realms campaign guides.


The warhammer armies books are the "good" in this case. They spend half their content on fluff. They really hammer at the iconic elements of each group. For example. The High Elf history takes up about HALF of their fluff. There history is long and detailed. There discussion of each of the provinces is much less so. The high elves have an economy based on sea trade, but that is really more implied than given its own paragrpah.

Compare to say the Humans where the whole history of the empire fits into three pages. Time is spent discussing the mages guild, the role of religion in society, etc. Or the Orcs where NO real history is given, except to name the leaders of a couple of previous hordes. Mostly it discusses how a society that is tribal but also bent on constant war and conquest funtions by being disfunctional.

On the other hand the 2 and 3e forgotten realms books have a chapter about each region, with a subsection about each nation. Each nation has the same sections in the subsection. They discuss ancient history, recent history, economics, major players. In 3e they give breakdowns by race in each nation. Because its laid out like a report you have to read each identical section to see if there is anything worth knowing. The highlights are not pulled out. It really makes the whole thing totally unremarkable. Maybe that is the reason why they are the forgotten realms, because there is nothing worth remembering about them.

As a matter of fact, I have not read any "campaign settings". If that's what they're like, they're shit.

Agrreed.

I either go with the "completely untyped" system or I write my own (possibly based on cherry-picked first-party ideas). If I write my own, I start with whatever races I want in the area. Then I create some geology (more than once, using dwarf fortress). Then I populate the geology as it would be a few thousand years before the game. Then I spend an hour or two (sometimes more, it's really fun) making the entire system evolve until I get a really nice setting, with hatreds, alliances, wars, history, famous people, magical items, and working ecology. I end up with well-detailed settings without minutia or blathering.

If you are going to write your own setting then its hard to include information that you don't want or think is important.

Say what you want about my system, but it works great for me, and this is a thread about DND heresy.

If your writting your own game system and worlds then do whatever you want. Its not heresy until you demand that the people who write these books as products write them in the way that we as consumers would find most helpful that its heresey.

I think that you might be looking at it backward. The ill-defined stuff is the base. Then you layer a campaign setting on top of it. If you do any programming, it's a class-instantiation relationship. You're not actually supposed to play in the ill-defined base world. You're supposed to play in one of the campaign settings they create. Always overlay the less general on top of the more general, replacing more general with less general where they conflict.

I get that your method works. What I don't get is why wizards of the coast would make every forgotten realms adventure happen in places with the least detail. Setting anything in waterdeep or cormyr or the dales (i.e. places with something memorable) just doesn't happen often. Usually your in some wild lands area. Same thing with all published campaigns. White wolf also has a bad habbit of saying "everything awesome happens here. To bad you are not there!"

Also, I agree with Frank. Not just with monsters, too. A random city is just a city, like every other, unless you give it something different, like a working economy because it has a mages' guild that's flourishing because there's a ley line junction under the town square.

Exactly, a random city needs its thing that makes it worth going to. However, you don't need to give the city tons of other factoids because you won't use them. Give the city only the things that make it awesome and let the rest be improvised, or detailed when it is relevant.

[RandomCasualty2]

I get that your method works. What I don't get is why wizards of the coast would make every forgotten realms adventure happen in places with the least detail. Setting anything in waterdeep or cormyr or the dales (i.e. places with something memorable) just doesn't happen often. Usually your in some wild lands area. Same thing with all published campaigns. White wolf also has a bad habbit of saying "everything awesome happens here. To bad you are not there!"

Mainly because there's a lot of FR backstory and most authors probably don't know it all. In fact, I'd honestly be surprised if Greenwood knows it all by now. So whenever you set an adventure in a well detailed area, you run a high probability of conflicting with existing stuff and you may not even know it.

This is actually quite simply why I don't like running the realms as a DM. There's just too much information on it and you can never really make the world your own. In fact if your PCs read any realms novels, adventures or books, they're going to know some things about the world that you as the DM do not. And that's really bad. Because at some point they're going to say "I go to Griffonblade hall to meet with the griffon riders." And you're going to say "what the fuck? I never heard of that."

And then they'll go on about how in Drizz't novel X or something, these griffon riders bailed out Drizz't and helped him slay a green dragon or some other bullshit. And that's particularly bad for adventure design, because it means that one missed detail may totally throw off your entire design. And in FR, there's a fuckload of shit to miss.

[Orca]

I've never seen a campaign setting book which could get stuff like this down to a well-polished sentence, and yes, I have read several. Not saying it couldn't be done, but they seem to find it necessary to embed useful info in multiple paragraphs of waffle. Waffle must be easier to write.

I have seen monster descriptions get useful info in a single paragraph of ecology. Having that para also makes it much easier to read and remember the monster descriptions.

[Crissa]

Strangely, in Starcraft, all the sides use the same mechanics, they just have exclusive or differently priced access to abilities.

While we can make up reasons easily, we're all writers and devote time to thinking about this. But a product that's a game should have these things already thought up for the GM and players to then move the parts round and use as they wish. But they won't even do that if they don't know how the parts can fit together once.

What always gets me are 'trade cities' - they need to trade with someone. So I say, 'okay, it's a trade city. That means most of the people aren't actually from here, but instead from each of the trading partners. So, give me an elvish part of town and a pier for the potatoes from the Isle of Lamb and a place where the dwarves park their camels. Because without that, it isn't a trade city.

Yeah, the GM can change these things around. But if the GM doesn't know what the basic level is, the game will suck. I know, I have a GM who can't think that far ahead. She seriously answers questions with 'I can't explain how this all works'. But that's what the setting should do. It should explain, and fascinate the players into wanting to play there.

-Crissa

[Lago PARANOIA]

This is actually quite simply why I don't like running the realms as a DM. There's just too much information on it and you can never really make the world your own. In fact if your PCs read any realms novels, adventures or books, they're going to know some things about the world that you as the DM do not. And that's really bad. Because at some point they're going to say "I go to Griffonblade hall to meet with the griffon riders." And you're going to say "what the fuck? I never heard of that."

This, right there, is the biggest reason why the paradigm of 'DM unilaterally creates the world' has got to go.

[Red_Rob]

A Monster Manual should never just be a collection of game stats and pictures, thats terrible. Game stats alone don't make for a memorable monster, and when I'm flicking through trying to decide what to include in my next adventure I'd rather have one cool hook that starts my creative juices flowing than 10 bare stat lines.

This thread at RPG.net has thrown up a ton of cool ideas just from the ecology paragraphs in the 2e Monstrous Manual. Its stuff like that that i remember when i read a monster description, not the bare game stats. Ideally the fluff and the rules should support each other, but just reading a list of game stats is like eating crackerbread - dry and devoid of flavour.

[Crissa]

If a DM doesn't know about an important city in a country he's running a game in really is a big problem with the maps and sourcebooks he's using.

-Crissa

[norms29]

I just want to weigh in on the less vs. more debate.

I've always been in favor of more. the only legitimate complaint about that I've heard so far is possibility that someone will say " but griffons don't work that way"... what kind of players do you have that things acting abnormally is an impassable fault instead of the basis of an adventure? the griffons were obviously trained, or sick, or confused, or any on the other reasons a real animal would act "out of character"

because frankly, if rangers, Druids, barbarians, Clerics of nature, elves, or any other character who should know what's normal behavior for a griffon are allowable character types. then the players need to have enough information that when they encounter griffons that behave differeantly than EVERY OTHER GRIFFON IN THE WORLD, they can say "hmm, that was strange... I wonder what caused that?" instead of "hmm, attacked by mobs... oh well."

[Murtak]

Because at some point they're going to say "I go to Griffonblade hall to meet with the griffon riders." And you're going to say "what the fuck? I never heard of that."

I love it when my players do that. Heck, if they are willing to I let them go ahead and flesh out NPCs and places of note. I am quite content to not do everything myself.

And then they'll go on about how in Drizz't novel X or something, these griffon riders bailed out Drizz't and helped him slay a green dragon or some other bullshit. And that's particularly bad for adventure design, because it means that one missed detail may totally throw off your entire design. And in FR, there's a fuckload of shit to miss.

And in those cases you can just throw out the material. You can tell your players "sorry, not in my version of the world". You can tell them the griffon riders are currently fighting off the Djanns in Darkmoor. You can tell them they require you to prove your worth before they help you. I can see no way in which those griffon riders would actually hurt your game.