The Components of Setting

[Michael S. Miller]

What components make up Setting?

In the Gamism essay, Ron notes that many people think "Oh, Gamism, I know what that is!" and never give it a second glance. I think Setting suffers a similar fate. (If I've overlooked a thread or three, please let me know.)

To disclose my biases, I've done it myself. You see, I've always hated Setting. I've always felt that Setting hamstrings Situation, dictates play decisions, takes up far too many pages and too much effort on the part of designers that could be better spent elsewhere. Settings bore me and I've dismissed them as wasteful of time and paper, without looking at what they are or why they're important. Even when I was designing Discernment, folks were telling me it needed a Setting and I argued "No!" I finally caved in and the Setting, minimal as it is, helped me to finish the game.

I want to look at what makes up Setting in an effort to understand how it works and why it is vital for RPGs.

Across the broad range of RPGs, we have a vast number of components of Character: attributes, skills, combat abilities, saving throws, personality mechanics, relationships (this bridges to Setting), equipment (this bridges to Setting), and the like. They make up the bulk of RPG rules. But what makes up Setting?

Well, in general story terms "setting" means "the time and place where a story takes place." So there are two components to start with: Time and Place.

Time is the component generally chronicled in those chapters about "and then there were the third goblin wars..." and other "useless history bunk," as Shreyas Sampat calls it in this thread. But why is time important? Situation can can only develop from what has gone on before. Even Cell Gamma's set-up of "you wake up with no memory" drives Situation, because we all instintivly know that something must have gone on before. It's at the root of the game. So Time is a component of Setting that gives context to Situation and to Character.

The need for Place has generated hundreds of maps of worlds with funny names. I've been guilty of this myself in my younger days. Part of Place's importance stems from setting up the expectations of the environment. This extends from "water runs downhill, so rivers flow from the mountains to the sea" to "orcs from the Red Woods hate elves particularly visciously and will often target them to the exclusion of other foes." The game's participants (i.e., players & GMs collectively) draw on these expectations to create and continually recreate Situation. Sometimes these expectations are used to create obstacles: "You're downriver when the dam breaks. Make a Seamanship roll to keep the boat from capsizing." -- to contextualize Character and Situation: "Yes, Legolas, the only person who can guide you in these twisted lands is a Red Woods orc." -- and to create expectations of Situations to come: "The lost Sword of Salvation is buried deep inside a mountain halfway around the world." "Sounds like an epic quest through every terrain type in the book, huh?"

But Place is not just physical location, not just described by mountain passes and mile-high towers. Place also can refer to social Place: your role in society. So Society is another component of Setting. (I've never really liked man vs. nature conflicts, so this component has always seemed very important to me.) The Society component of Setting bridges into Situation: "You're a soldier. You'll be fighting orcs" and System: "You'll need a high Swordsmanship skill if you want to kill a lot of orcs" and Color: "Dwarves are dour and laconic." In certain setting-heavy games (World of Darkness springs to mind) Society virtually dictates Character. The shape of Society also tells us what sort of NonPlayer Character and supporting cast to expect "The men of Ironton are excellent smiths but shrewd bargainers." Because Societies exist within certain locales, several examples in the previous paragraph also touch on Society.

But Societies also do things and build things. How many hundreds of pages of equipment lists sit on your shelves? And how many more hundreds of pages of kewl powerz and dissertations on how magic/magick/magyk actually works? I'll group equipment and special abilities under the name Props. From this abstract vantage point, in-born psionic powers seem to do the same thing in a setting as magic swords and flaming oil: It's something for the Characters to pick up and use. Setting tells us which Props are acceptable and which ones aren't. You don't blow away orcs with your submachine gun (unless you're playing Shadowrun) and wizards don't cast healing spells (unless your Setting says they can).

So it seems to me that Setting is made up of Time, Place, Society, and Props. As with all the elements of role-playing, how they enter play is important.

It seems that many games (those that led me to dismiss Setting in the first place) unfold the Setting in great detail over dozens of pages of the rulebook, with the unwritten assumption that *someone* will bring it into play. The initial investment of time needed to learn the Setting is high, and the relevance to actual play is variable. Perhaps because of the high initial investment of time, there seems a strong urge not to deviate from the established settings in such games (e.g., World of Darkness tends to attract more "setting lawyers" than "rules lawyers")

Games that have a low barrier-to-entry can convey the components of Setting very quickly to the participants. The simple statement: "You're all orcs out to kill as many namby-pamby elves as you can sink your fangs into. Go!" implies all the elements of Setting: Time (a time of war between elves and orcs), Place (wilderness, perhaps an elven city here or there), Society (orcs are bloodthirsty, elves aren't), and Props (fangs, claws, perhaps a rough-hewn sword). However, games like these often depend heavily on reaching a specific subculture (fantasy gamers, in this example). When stepping outside that subculture, the telegramatic quality of such Settings can become an obstacle to understanding. See Luke Crane's playing Burning Wheel with the Parents for an example.

(Oddly, games based on licenced properties should fall into this second group, but they seem to have as much, if not more than, book-delineated Setting as games with original settings. Perhaps to market to nongamer collectors?)

A third group of games makes creation of the Setting part of play. This decreases pregame time investment and (hopefully) increases participants' emotional investment. What is often sacrificed is detail, as groups may paint with broad strokes. Some games, like Universalis, allow the level of detail to be specified by the group. I'm personally partial towards games like this.

Those are my thoughts on the components of Setting. Comments?

[GaryTP]

The following is only my opinion.:)

I would add that the setting is the reason to care. Whether it's a one-page summary or 250 pages. Size is not the issue as long as it pulls you in.

Setting is the hook, the cover of the book, the genre in which the store will take place. It catches your eye, takes you far away to somewhere you've not been, or feels comfortable like an old friend.

System can be a hook, especially for those immersed in game design or those looking for a way to screen out all the product in the marketplace. It can be comfortable too. Or a thing that supports a sepecific play style. But it is not as strong alone as it is when coupled with setting.

The more one roleplays, the more a person is comfortable with making up their own setting, or stripping a system out of one game, taking parts and pieces of another, and merging it all together in a whole. Setting starts to be less important than the system. The designers designing for other designers thing. But looking back to when you first started playing, what was it about the product that first got you into roleplaying... before you knew all what you know now?

Thoughts?

Gary

[daMoose_Neo]

Likee ^_^

One point, your third group actually has a bonus, though I get the vibe you see it as a detriment.
Finely detailed setting can really bug too many players, especially when you launch into a game with a few hundred years of backstory. You never know where you're going to go as your character when you start a game, so pre-defining everything around you can bite, almost like railroading yourself. Thus, creating a setting with broad, initial strokes, allows them to add finer detail as they play, making it even more personal.
So, I don't see it so much as skipping the little stuff as it is saving it for later ^_^

[Troy_Costisick]

Heya,

One thing I'd like to point out is in response to what you said when some people look at the history of a setting as "useless information."  This history of the people and places of a setting can provide their motivation.  It is what made them the way they are.  It's kinda like a justification or validation of their existance.  It makes the world dynamic.

So, in addition to what has been so far, a setting is IMHO justification for existance of anything encountered in game.

That's all I have for now.  I'll have to chew on this some more.

Peace,

-Troy

[xenopulse]

In regards to the initial question of "What makes up Setting," my answer would be: Potential.

The potential of a setting differs depending on your Creative Agenda.  Most people who start with PnP roleplaying -- and this was certainly true in the case of me and my friends -- start with a Gamist attitude. That's mainly the case because that's all we're used to, from playing other games such as board games and computer games. When we saw a Setting, we saw potential for certain equipment, conflicts, cool (as in powerful) characters and similar things. Some Settings delivered this sort of potential wonderfully, others did not.

After 14 years of RPing, I have become more interested in character development and the creation of stories. Some settings are really not that well suited for this type of play, while others are from the get-go ripe with possibilities. Do you know that feeling of picking up a book, looking at the Setting and getting this great feeling of "Wow, I can see so many great scenes in this?"

The first time I ever picked up an RPG ("Das Schwarze Auge," since I am German), I had that feeling so strongly that it gave me chills, because I suddenly had a glimpse of the potential of RPing as a whole. Nowadays, I look for Settings that can replicate a fraction of that first intense feeling through the Potential of the Setting (or, tied in with this, the structure of the System).

I think your components are probably accurate with regards to the different parts of Setting, and obviously, Props used to be much more important to me than Society, though now that's reversed. I would just add Potential as a qualifier to the quantitative categories of Place, Time, Society and Props. When the question of "What are characters going to do in this Setting" reveals a large Potential with regards to the intended CA, you have a great Setting in hand.

[neelk]

In Keith Johntsone's book Impro, he writes that one of the essential things that make a narrative feel like a story instead of a random collection of incidents is something he calls "reincorporation". That is, when you have a conflict, it gets resolved by an element that was introduced earlier in the story, rather than something new. This is what creates the sense of closure, because the end ties into the beginning and you have a sense of arc and integrity.

That's what setting is for, IMO. Having a setting that all the players are on-board with makes reincorporation much easier to do, which makes it easier to create stories. So, suppose you have problem like "We have called up the militia to face the orcish invasion, but we have a shortage of swords and armor". Now, if you and the other players already knew that "the men of Ironton are excellent smiths but shrewd bargainers", then when someone suggests buying weapons from Ironton they'll get an "ah-ha" from the other players, because it solves the problem in a way that re-incorporates a known fact.

I guess another way of saying it is that the story has a better shape this way than if someone just now improvised Ironton and its smiths into existence, because it doesn't seem like a deus ex machina.

[M. J. Young]

I write a lot of setting for Multiverser, and I've come to understand that in that sense, setting is rules. It is a piece of the rules of the game to which we give this special name, and it functions exactly like rules in play.

Your "setting lawyers" are garden variety "rules lawyers" with a specialty practice.

Like rules, "setting", in this sense, is not part of play. It is an authority to which players refer when making statements to form the content of the shared imagined space. That is, the referee says, "The men of Ironton are excellent smiths but shrewd bargainers" because it is in the book. It is not part of the shared imagined space unless and until he or someone else says it, and thus it's not really part of play if it is never said. If someone were to say that the men of Ironton were by and large religious pacifists who spent their time in meditation and prayer and held to a socialist economy, that would be the way Ironton was in that world--unless someone said, "no they're not, the book says this," at which point system kicks in to weigh credibility. Does the statement backed up by the information in the book override the statement made by the referee who has laid out some sort of adventure for the game? Probably it does, because we give a lot of authority to our written setting elements; but it might not, if the referee has the credibility to rewrite the setting as he desires.

Obviously, "setting" also exists within the shared imagined space. It is the elements of time and place that are created by the players through the use of system. That's really the "setting" that is one of the elements of exploration. That stuff in the book, that's not the setting we explore--that's the authority to which we refer when we wish support for statements made about that setting. If the book says that elves of Lorindorian live on flets built in huge towering trees, we have the book's authority to support that statement. If we say that the king and queen of the elves of Lorindorian live in the largest tree in the forest, in a palatial collection of forty-seven flets totalling nine thousand square feet and reaching to a quarter mile in the sky, that's as much part of the setting in the shared imagined space as the other--even though there's not a word about elven royalty or palatial flets or quarter mile high trees in the book.

The setting material in the book serves as the foundation for the creation of the real setting in the shared imagined space. How little or how much of that you need depends on what you expect your playgroups to do with your world. If you expect that they are going to explore the world for its own interest, you need to provide enough material that it's going to be interesting to explore. If you expect that they're going to do other things in the world, you may need only the barest backbone of what the world is like so that they, individually or corporately, can turn that into the setting that meets their goals.

I hope this helps.

--M. J. Young

[Bankuei]

Hi Michael,

Try thinking of Setting(or Color, or any of the explorative elements) as a set of Legos or building blocks, that the group can put together and use in a fashion to help focus play and answer the question, "What is play about?"  All the points you make in terms of what Setting answers for players helps focus them to what play is about.  

For some cases, players, and groups, "Orks killing elves" is sufficient, just like buying a single Lego set.  For other folks, they might want to build A LOT of different things, so that they need more blocks to work with.  The benefit is now people can use these elements to produce many different situations and foci of play, the danger is that people might lose focus and not know what to do at all.

The personal investment of how much Setting(how many sets) is a question based on each group and game.  I think just as we're seeing games finally free themselves of a lot of System assumptions, at some point down the line we'll also see more games freeing themselves from Setting assumptions(ranging from the Uber-gazeteer of D&D to the 200 page Setting intro of Whitewolf).

A great deal of current Setting Fetish comes from what two co-current trends- the empty role vs. roll playing argument("More Setting=More Meaningful=We're smarter and better than you") and the hope that diving deeper into Sim will someday produce Nar play("If we keep mixing more Setting together, somehow that will change the CA...").  Once people step back and take Setting off its pedestal, and realize it is nothing more than a tool to achieve Creative Agenda, a lot of the problems evaporate.

Chris

[contracycle]

I think this is a grteat topic and that setting does need to be more examined.

The first thought I have is about Time and Place.  I can think of very few settings that are not both, that are not properly Moments.  In many, the specific date of default play start can be dated to a year or three.  Regardless, I can't think of a game that has made use of more than one Now-point.  Just formulating a price list requires that a time be selected.

[Michael S. Miller]

Thanks for so many thoughtful responses!

Gary: I think Setting is the hook for a lot of gamers. A whole lot. I think that's why it's under-analyzed. By the time an average gamer knows a game well enough to look at what works and what doesn't, he's already swallowed the hook so deep that he can't look at it anymore.

Personally, it's rarely been the hook for me.

Troy: You're absolutely right that motivation is how history should be used. My problem has been that it so often isn't. And largely isn't presented in such a way that makes it easy to do so (e.g., the character creation chapter is up front, with the history section not coming for 150+pages or so).

Christian: Thanks for your thoughts on Potential. They seem to me to align rather nicely with M.J.'s thoughts on Setting-in-the-book versus Setting-in-the-SIS. Would you agree with that?

Neel: Thanks for bringing up Impro. It's been ages since I read it. I think we have to keep in mind M.J.'s point that Setting-in-the-SIS being used can serve to establish Johnstone's reincorporation, while Setting-in-the-book which has not yet made it into the SIS would feel more like deus ex machina. Does that seem right to you?

M.J.: Thanks so much for that insight. Differentiating "setting in the book" from "setting in the SIS" helps everything fall into place. My personal preferences had me throwing out the baby (Setting in the SIS) with the bathwater (setting in the book).

Now I can see *why* games like My Life with Master, Sorcerer and Universalis handle Setting-in-the-SIS so well, even though they have little to no setting-in-the-book. They have a set process by which Setting can enter the SIS!

I think that's why I've always gotten so frustrated by setting-in-the-book in so many, many games. It's there for pages and pages and pages, so it must be important, but the game never comes right out and tells you "here's how you use it." Is everyone playing supposed to read the whole thing? This seems like it would certainly help this setting detail come into play, but players are rarely so dedicated, and the setting detail is often in the "GM's section" of the book. Is only the GM supposed to read the whole thing? If so, then how is he supposed to introduce this information to the players in a meaningful fashion. If he says, "Your town is low on weapons" and then says, "Ironton is known for its skilled smiths" that's just a half step better than deus ex machina. GM monopoly on setting-in-the-book seems another tool for the use of Force.

Chris: I can see your point about Setting components being like Legos, except that so very many games don't give you Legos. They give you a motley collection of Legos and lincoln logs and erector set pieces and Duplo blocks and a hot glue gun and assorted bricabrac with velcro stuck to the bottom of it, and dump it all onto the table, without much of a word about what you're supposed to do with it.

Games like MLwM, Sorcerer & Uni, like I mentioned above, seem to say, "We all bring our own stock of Legos & stuff to the table, gathered from our life experience. Follow this process for everyone to put some of their pieces in the middle of the table, so that everyone can then play with them."

contracycle(Gareth, IIRC): You're correct that few games make both Time and Place variable. The GURPS history books usually keep Place constant, while allowing Time to be up to the playgroup. I'm not familiar with Glorantha, but isn't the timeline all spelled out, so that Time is up to the playgroup?

[Valamir]

I would quibble with Gary that Setting is the hook.  Rather I'd claim that Situation is the hook.  Situation is what happens when characters interact with the Setting...the "potential" Christian mentions.

The problem that arises with traditional setting heavy games is that the game designers aren't willing to commit to a Situation.  They want to "leave it open" to the group to come up with the Situation.   Groups are expected to 1) select a character from nearly unlimited options and 2) select a setting from nearly unlimited options to determine the situation that kicks off the campaign.  Because of this Chinese menu approach to situation game designs must have very open "be anything" character design (to select from Column A) and a huge encyclopedia of setting (to populate the choices from Column B).

The more a game designer is willing to committ to a specific (or at least a narrow range) of situations, the more the character options and setting options can be confined to providing the needed potential for just those Situations (rather than any conceivable situation).


Shadows of Yesterday is particularly adept at this IMO.  The racial and cultural Keys directly tie the character into the setting and hense create immediate Situation.  As a result the setting information in the book can be very high level and broad brushed.

[GaryTP]

I would quibble with Gary that Setting is the hook.  Rather I'd claim that Situation is the hook.  Situation is what happens when characters interact with the Setting...the "potential" Christian mentions.

Valamir, you (and 8 others) convinced me.
I had an interesting discussion with some gamers the other night on this and have revised my thinking somewhat.

For them setting wasn't the hook, first was the genera. i.e. Fantasy or Science Fiction or Pulp and the ability to experience something in that genera. When we were all pulled into roleplaying in the late 70's, there was only that Dnd Fantasy genera and Traveller Sci-fi genera to pull us in. We each brought our own idea of what fantasy or sci-fi was to the table, and that's what hooked us, and the potential of what kind of story we could experience.

So I agree, potential is very key. I'm bookmarking this thread!

Gary

[xenopulse]

Michael,

I had a whole long post typed out, but it really comes down to the fact that I agree with MJ's last paragraph (that some people like to explore the world in its own right), so I'll save the space.

I do think that people like coherent settings, however, and those among us with less time or creative talent are always glad to find a setting that provides lots of potential in a manner that makes sense, just as we are glad to find systems that work well without modifications of our own. Also, many players like to have the immersion factor provided by a setting that evolves even without the characters (a semi-autonomous world, if you like), and a well done setting can provide this without too much work by the GM.

And I do agree with Valamir that the possible situations in a setting, i.e. the potential of it, are the real hook. The real point of a setting is to give characters things to do. Make it too narrow or too open, and you leave the game without much substantive potential. It shouldn't be up to the GM to fix this, though oftentimes, it is.

[neelk]

Neel: Thanks for bringing up Impro. It's been ages since I read it. I think we have to keep in mind M.J.'s point that Setting-in-the-SIS being used can serve to establish Johnstone's reincorporation, while Setting-in-the-book which has not yet made it into the SIS would feel more like deus ex machina. Does that seem right to you?

I don't know, honestly. I tend to be able to commit setting to memory very easily, and I usually read the rulebook prior to play, so that the game's setting is generally "at my fingertips". This means that when another player brings up setting, I find myself nodding without trouble -- it rarely feels like a deus ex machina to me.

From the Exalted game I play in, there are a couple of social things I've noticed. First, there's absolutely zero expectation that admonitions about "GM's sections" will be respected -- anyone who suggested it would be stared at as if they had three heads. Second, when a player brings setting from the gamebooks into play, that's good. There isn't any social opprobrium attached to that, unlike with rules-lawyering. Third, it's considered even better when the player takes a couple of disparate details and weaves them together as part of his or her narration, because it shows the player taking ownership and adding his or her own creative contribution to the game. Finally, it's generally not cool to spend a lot of time digging through the books during play, because that's slow and dull.

[John Kim]

Obviously, "setting" also exists within the shared imagined space. It is the elements of time and place that are created by the players through the use of system. That's really the "setting" that is one of the elements of exploration. That stuff in the book, that's not the setting we explore--that's the authority to which we refer when we wish support for statements made about that setting.

This is viewed differently by different groups, I think.  Personally, I don't keep track of this distinction very well.  i.e. In my head, I will have a mix of setting details verbally stated during play, details worked out offline (such as over email or out-of-game discussion), and details given in a published game book or other source material.  I don't distinguish these particularly during play.  There might be disagreement in any of the three cases, and it's handled pretty much the same.  i.e. Someone might forget or misremember something that happened during a session, and someone might forget or misremember a written setting detail.  I generally treat those the same.  I think this is similar to what Neel describes his group as doing.  

In a few cases, we may change written setting details -- but then, in a few cases we may retcon (i.e. retroactively change) what happened in prior sessions.  In this sense, past in-play statements are just another authority which we can refer to.  No single authority is king.  If anything, in case of a clash I will tend to favor written authorities which I can reference so that we won't misremember it again.