Stuck in the setting

[Zero Zeed]

[Anders Larsen]

Hi, and welcome to the Forge

The way I normally create setting is through actually playing in the setting. This is not the most efficient way to of doing it, but it is a good way to get your imagination going.

What I do is trying to come up with a campaign which will be relevant for the type of setting I am going for, and then just create the elements of the setting which are strictly necessary for the campaign to start. Then, during the campaign, I will flesh out more and more of the setting as needed for the story to move forward.

What I normally start with is some general concepts of the setting: The feeling I want to have, the technological level, how magic works (if it exists), the races and cultures which are important for the campaign, and the conflicts I want to work with in the game (I many cases this will be conflicts between cultures and races). I will always draw a map - which give a very good visual understanding of the world - but only put down the cities (and other places) which are necessary for the campaign. From this foundation it is then possible to slowly expand the setting as the game progress.

In this way you will write the setting from the inside, and you will properly get a lot of help from the players. I find that this will give a much more coherent setting, without too much extraneous materiel. But as I said, this is a slow way of doing it, you have to run a good number of campaign in the setting before it is complete.

 - Anders

[Ry]

Hi guys, I’m new to this forum so I will introduce myself, my name is Ciro and I am from Venezuela so sorry if my english get too wrong. I’m developing a game. But I have a problem writing the setting. It’s a fantasy game but not an adventurous one. the mood and themes are more like Mage Revised than D&D. Is a game in a fantastic interpretation of Greece with philosophers being like Jedis. Anyway y have some problems writing the setting. I don’t know where to start. Can you tell me you own experience on this? Or give me some suggestions?

A year ago another GM I know had a similar problem, and since then a few different people have said this helps.

The Amusement Park

(please forgive that the analogy is lighthearted, it still works for serious campaigns so long as you are really interested in the players' side)

[Jason Morningstar]

Welcome to the Forge! 

One thing that works, as Anders mentioned, is to play your setting using an existing system for a while.  For yours, The Shadow of Yesterday seems like it would be a great fit.  As you play, you may find things that don't work or that you'd like to change.  These points of departure are the areas where your own game can emerge. 

[Zero Zeed]

b]LOGOS<

[Anders Larsen]

It is an interesting concept you have there, but, as rycanada put it in his blog, what you have there is background, so what you need to focus on is some more foreground. Background is fine to give an overview, and it is also good to justify why things are like they are now in the setting. But what is really important are the elements of the setting which are relevant for the actual game (the foreground). So this is a good place to start writing your setting, by focusing on that which are close to the characters during the game.

Here are two questions to get you going:

If you think about a typical group of player characters in this setting, what type of character would they most likely be? Farmers? Philosophers? Politicians?

What problems would they most likely face? What conflicts would these people engage in during the game?

 - Anders

[Zero Zeed]

b]Zero Zeed

this is a sample Pytagoric.

edited to change image to a link - RZero Zeed[/b]

this is a sample Pytagoric.

edited to change image to a link - RE

[Daniel Davis]

Ciro, I want to encourage you in the development of your game! The background, as the others have already said, sounds wonderful. It's certainly right up my alley (but that may be because I was a philosophy major back in university and personally maintain a certain epistemological affinity with Platonism).

One thing I'm confused about, however: how, exactly, will the player characters effect change in the world? You mentioned fighting in wars (both intellectual and physical) and re-creating myths. How would the PCs do this: by influencing other people or by taking up arms themselves?

Answering that question should lead to another: what kind of "philosophers" are the PCs? Are they somehow superhuman? (That's the feeling I'm getting.) Or are the merely human, although with exceptional intellect and force of personality?

Once you settle what it is, precisely, that the characters will be doing in the game, you'll have a much easier time of fleshing out the setting.

Something else you might want to decide: is the game designed so as to emphasize solidarity and cooperation among the player characters, or will they be competing against one another? Obviously, some of both might happen; but what is it that you want the characters to do most of the time?

[Zero Zeed]

[Anders Larsen]

You see, starting by describing who the characters are, what they do and what role they have in society, give a very good understanding of what to do with the setting, so that is what I will recommend starting with; and then you can expand it from there. You can begin to look at what type of NPC the characters typically will interact with and what roles they have in the society. How does the society look at the characters, and what is the political situation surrounds the characters. And so on...

For every new element you add you should ask yourself how does this relate to the characters and what they should do in the game, and how relevant is this for the type of stories you want to tell in this setting. If there is no strong tie there, you should consider not adding it.

Where exactly to set the limit of what to have and what not to have in the setting, is of course a personal opinion. I normally prefer not to have too much setting material. I like it when there is lot of room for me to expand on the setting to make it fit the actual game I am running. I don't want to much history about the world, maybe some resent background for why people behave like they do. And I do not want to many concrete things, like, for instance, full descriptions of all cities. I prefer just a general description of what a typical city look like, so I can use that to put together my own stuff. But this, as I said, is just my personal opinion.

 - Anders

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Ciro,

Here's a little idea that might help as well.

Setting is a big term. It refers to a lot of things, but the main point is that setting is much larger than the characters in it. It includes the history before the time of play, for example, and even things that the characters will never see.

I like to think, instead, in terms of Situation. That's a much more specific part of Setting - in fact, it's the part that the real people pay attention to, when playing. It's the particular location and time within the setting in which the events of play occur.

A lot of people fall into a trap when they design a role-playing game. They add to the Setting, and then they add more, and then they add more. But they never quite manage to arrive at any Situations, or to show how a group of real people might construct a Situation within that Setting. Not even "example scenarios" do a good job for that purpose.

What I suggest is to imagine exactly the right Situation that you'd like to use in the very first session that you actually play this game. What's going on in that particular location and time? What might the player-characters actually see, and what might they do?

If you can imagine even two or three of these, and if you manage to play some of them for real, you will find that the Setting has grown, organically, in your mind. I think you will also find that many things that you might have put into your Setting turn out to be unnecessary or comparatively uninteresting, and so you have saved yourself and your game a lot of effort for something it does not need. And finally, you will also find through actual play what the other people really need to know in order to enjoy the Situation fully - and that, right there, is what you need to present in your game text as Setting.

Best, Ron