With the exodus from the modern brand to other games, the sensibilities of D&D as a fantasy genre unto itself will never go away.

This is a great time to re-examine what it is we want from our "fantasy settings". Do people even want sprawling kitchensink settings? Or do you want small contained regional sandboxes? Or do you just want "adventure content" like modules or entire adventure paths?

Are you interested in old D&D settings? Do you want them reimagined where all the additional garbage post-2e is removed and the settings are re-established.

Or do you want entirely new settings? Do you want these settings to be idiosyncratic like Talislanta, or do you want a more traditional kitchen-sink quasi-analog world with the usual D&Disms present as expected or with some extra fiddly-bits (Mystara)?

Or do you just want some basic rules and handholds to do homebrew as you see fit?

Oh, boy, you know how to cram a lot of question into a few words. Let me give my ideal for the rules/supplements, see if that answers indirectly:

1. I want some of the default setting embedded into the rules, i.e. not a generic rule set.  There are several reasons for this, but the biggest one is that I think it is the best way to get casual players to absorb the setting. That's because they don't really read background setting material for its own sake, and also because even when they do, some setting in the rules is constantly reinforcing the setting with every rules interaction. 

2. At the same time, the settings I like are neither bland nor extremely weird, but somewhere safely in the middle.  I don't mind elves that have a twist or even a rather major change that switches how they work (e.g. Runequest elves as plant creatures), but I want some of the usual suspects in there.  That's just an example, too.  I don't necessarily want all the D&D races--especially the more recent ones.  But I do want the author of the setting to curate the races and other setting elements to get things that work well together and make sense. Also, no monolithic races--elves as all tree-hugging xenophobes. Make the races a "people". 

3. Fantastical is deliberately and thoughtfully layered on top of the mundane, when the setting is put together.  Not "ancient Rome" with a couple of spell casters--too mundane for me (even when I can see how others would like it).  But not this garbage where everyone casts spells or does fantastical stuff.  A good example of how this can go bad to me is talking animals.  It tends to go to extremes.  Let's use a fox.  The GM wants talking foxes.  So he decides to make some elaborate spell or magic item or god power that is explained in the game to "awaken" foxes.  Conversely, the GM could decide the talking fox is another race that came into existence and then flourished naturally from there--while still remaining essentially a fox--that happens to talk.  Instead, I want foxes are normally mundane foxes.  The party ran into a fox that could talk.  Is there a reason?  Probably, but the fox doesn't know, and the party is unlikely to find out.  Don't even tell me in the GM notes.  Just leave it a mystery.  Don't do the Episode 1 stupid thing where you explain "The Force".

4. I prefer new settings.  Most of the old ones are played out, and even the ones that aren't have so much baggage that it is difficult to see it really breaking away from the past.  Even something like Spelljammer, where there is a lot of room to do something cool, would probably be best served by a new setting "inspired by the kind of thoughts and play that made SJ fun"!

Of course, the problem with all that, is that it is middle of the road.  It's not strange enough to stand out and not bland and/or kitchen sink enough to dominate.  So the last thing I want in the above is design as a setting, but release it as standalone module and/or small locations.  Don't give me a path.  Give me some tools in the sandbox.  Then if you want to spend 4 pages at the back saying how those could be arranged in a path for the readers that want that, cool.

I've mostly stopped buying all supplements because from my perspective is that everything is either too narrow to some niche taste, too bland to fit any good game, or too busy trying to railroad the GM into doing the easy stuff while ignoring getting better. 

Everyone wants something different. Been that way from the start.

Theres been settings that were very limited in race or class, and settings where everything goes. Low fantasy to practically no fantasy, al the way up to high fantasy and even higher.

Add some sci fi? Add some modern? Add some victorian? Add some historical? and so on.

D&D was doing gurps before gurps was even a thought in Steve's hollow head.

This is a loaded question.  I've got pretty much everything I want from 2e in my collection and tons of other games besides.  So for me I'm only really interested in novel new rule sets or settings.  It has to do something in a manner that's new to me.

For instance AiME's voyaging rules and the way it uses rests/inspiration/hit dice mechanics in ways that base 5e doesn't (plus bonus for being Middle Earth!).

Earthdawn has a ruleset that heavily feeds into the regional setting that it is trying to portray.

Yet at the same time I still buy adventures for 2e and earlier D&D because I can just drop them into my homebrew I've been running the last 3 years.

I now have AD&D 2e and D&D 3e/4e/5e, so I have very little appetite for any new editions of D&D.

Quote from: tenbones on November 12, 2024, 06:33:54 PMOr do you want small contained regional sandboxes? Or do you just want "adventure content" like modules or entire adventure paths?

I like small contained regional sandboxes for roughly levels 1-10. I have no interest in entire campaign worlds I'll never explore or levels 11-20. I think tier 1 should be sandbox and tier 2+ can be adventure paths once we know what the characters are interested in.

I like big settings with interesting history, cultures, and politics, or in other words, depth.  A bit of variety is is good but kitchensink is too much.  The D&D setting works as a gaming environment but for me is just kind of silly in any other context.  I'd prefer to start with a realistic world, add a few fantasy "what if?"s and work out the impacts on the setting.  More than this and I have trouble connecting with the setting because it's too divorced from my real life experience.  Give me a setting with depth and a few adventures and I'm good to go.

Quote from: tenbones on November 12, 2024, 06:33:54 PMWith the exodus from the modern brand to other games, the sensibilities of D&D as a fantasy genre unto itself will never go away.

This is a great time to re-examine what it is we want from our "fantasy settings". Do people even want sprawling kitchensink settings? Or do you want small contained regional sandboxes? Or do you just want "adventure content" like modules or entire adventure paths?

Are you interested in old D&D settings? Do you want them reimagined where all the additional garbage post-2e is removed and the settings are re-established.

Or do you want entirely new settings? Do you want these settings to be idiosyncratic like Talislanta, or do you want a more traditional kitchen-sink quasi-analog world with the usual D&Disms present as expected or with some extra fiddly-bits (Mystara)?

Or do you just want some basic rules and handholds to do homebrew as you see fit?

I want meaningful choices that I can make between products.

Sometimes the fantasy itch I want to scratch requires a Tolkienesque setting filled with lore, sometimes I just want something generic where I don't have to worry about the setting itself being another character, sometimes I want the Sword & Sorcery flavor of a Conan story, sometimes I want something unique from someone else like Dark Sun or The Iron Kingdoms or Freeport, sometimes I want something oriental even though Japan-like Edo period is different from Japan-like in the Warring States period is different from China-like which is different from Korea-like which is different from Philippines-like (although for the historical period I'm most interested in, Traveller would work better because of firearms), and sometimes I want to throw all of the above in a blender, and sometimes I want to go through the buffet and grab a little of this and a little of that.

What I definitely don't want is a bunch of settings that are the same as each other but with the serial numbers filed off. If I pay for it, I want it to be able to stand on its own and be original.

I've been spending the past few years collecting old fanzines and magazine articles from the 80's because they capture the unbridled mutant originality of a new form of entertainment coming into its own. A lot of stuff from the early years of d20/D&D 3.0 has that same ingenuity. All of the above is very inspirational to me because, for lack of a better way to put it, when you don't know what you are doing because everything is so new then you become willing to be truly experimental and try different things. Some of the originality is magnificent to read.

That is something that I think a lot of modern gaming has lost. Yeah, settings are vital to the game, but how many of them can easily be swapped out with each other? So I've been looking elsewhere a lot.

Tough question.

Quote from: tenbones on November 12, 2024, 06:33:54 PMthe sensibilities of D&D as a fantasy genre unto itself will never go away.

This right here is the crux of the issue for me. I want new settings, but I want them precisely to the extent that they can get away from the sensibilities of D&D as a genre of fiction. I've been getting more and more disaffected with the genre-conventions of D&D lately, with dungeon delving, fighter/thief/wizard/cleric, advancement through level+loot, D&D-style gods and magic, and so on. Those conventions are basically mechanical in nature, but the vast majority of settings will justifiably aim to synergize with them. I want new settings if they're geared to facilitate a different gaming experience. The problem is that achieving that goal probably requires new rules. The original question seems to have new settings for the D&D rules in mind. I've said before many times that I have a lot of respect for the old TSR approach of setting specific rules, but I think they probably didn't go far enough with it. Dark Sun, as I said in another thread, would benefit hugely from being spun off as an independent game, with its own classes, magic system and progression.

Whingeing aside, I'd also like to address the more general question of what I want out of new fantasy settings. The answer is basically "lots of things, and lots of variety", but let me isolate two:

1. What I guess I can only call "cohesiveness". The most interesting fantasy settings to me are ones which are different from the real world at some fundamental level, whether that's physical, metaphysical or cosmological, and where the fantasy elements of the setting flow out from that. This is a difficult idea to explain, but I don't think tabletop gaming has engaged with it much. To bring it down to ground level, I'm tired of settings where the world just operates like the real world except that there's also magic, and the nature of magic is "it's just magic". I want "magic" (or the local equivalent) to be an expression of the way in which the setting is fundamentally different than the real world.

2. I want settings that facilitate what I guess I'll call more "human" conflicts. The Hero's Journey is a fine thing, but playing it out every week in its simplest form (enter the underworld; slay the monster; get the treasure) gets monotonous. I find that my best sessions come out of scenarios where the players are put up against rational actors (whether or not they are technically human is irrelevant) with intelligible motives, and then forced to play some kind of chess game of move and countermove before they come to blows. I want settings that facilitate that. In fairness, this has always been possible in D&D. I do it all the time.  But I find that in a lot of settings, you can clearly see that the design priority was on facilitating the more traditional mode of fantasy adventure.

Greetings!

Hmmm. What kind of setting do I want? I am happy with my world of Thandor setting. It is an enormous world, mostly embracing an Ancient World/Dark Ages milieu, with an overlay of Sword & Sorcery and a dash of "Gonzo". Fantasy, with large doses of real-world Historical flavour, with lots of inspiration from mythology, as well as some elements of historical conspiracy theories, marginal historical analysis, and dark METAL.

Thandor features a simple, core group of humanoid races that dominate the main continent, with more distant lands and separate continents being the playground for additional animal races, as well as more bizarre races. All the different races are thus not all encountered in the same area, like some kind of street faire in modern Seattle. Technology, economics, governments, and laws all tend to embrace a similar Dark Ages to Medieval framework, with some unusual attributes featured amongst the largest and most advanced and sophisticated empires.

Thandor easily accommodates traditional dungeon exploration, wilderness adventures, as well as urban and politically based campaigns and adventures. There is always something going on, everywhere. Warfare is very common, and can be very devastating. Genocide, mass slavery, plagues, famine, and chaos are common threads encountered everywhere, to various degrees.

Thandor has sophisticated religions, with many different kinds of Pagan religions, as well as several kinds of monotheism, and traditions of mystical spirituality.

So, yeah. I have everything I could want or need with Thandor.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: jeff37923 on November 13, 2024, 02:57:45 AM

Quote from: tenbones on November 12, 2024, 06:33:54 PMWith the exodus from the modern brand to other games, the sensibilities of D&D as a fantasy genre unto itself will never go away.

This is a great time to re-examine what it is we want from our "fantasy settings". Do people even want sprawling kitchensink settings? Or do you want small contained regional sandboxes? Or do you just want "adventure content" like modules or entire adventure paths?

Are you interested in old D&D settings? Do you want them reimagined where all the additional garbage post-2e is removed and the settings are re-established.

Or do you want entirely new settings? Do you want these settings to be idiosyncratic like Talislanta, or do you want a more traditional kitchen-sink quasi-analog world with the usual D&Disms present as expected or with some extra fiddly-bits (Mystara)?

Or do you just want some basic rules and handholds to do homebrew as you see fit?

I want meaningful choices that I can make between products.

Sometimes the fantasy itch I want to scratch requires a Tolkienesque setting filled with lore, sometimes I just want something generic where I don't have to worry about the setting itself being another character, sometimes I want the Sword & Sorcery flavor of a Conan story, sometimes I want something unique from someone else like Dark Sun or The Iron Kingdoms or Freeport, sometimes I want something oriental even though Japan-like Edo period is different from Japan-like in the Warring States period is different from China-like which is different from Korea-like which is different from Philippines-like (although for the historical period I'm most interested in, Traveller would work better because of firearms), and sometimes I want to throw all of the above in a blender, and sometimes I want to go through the buffet and grab a little of this and a little of that.

What I definitely don't want is a bunch of settings that are the same as each other but with the serial numbers filed off. If I pay for it, I want it to be able to stand on its own and be original.

I've been spending the past few years collecting old fanzines and magazine articles from the 80's because they capture the unbridled mutant originality of a new form of entertainment coming into its own. A lot of stuff from the early years of d20/D&D 3.0 has that same ingenuity. All of the above is very inspirational to me because, for lack of a better way to put it, when you don't know what you are doing because everything is so new then you become willing to be truly experimental and try different things. Some of the originality is magnificent to read.

That is something that I think a lot of modern gaming has lost. Yeah, settings are vital to the game, but how many of them can easily be swapped out with each other? So I've been looking elsewhere a lot.

I definitely agree with this.

My favorite fantasy articles are ones like these that reinvent the cliches: https://web.archive.org/web/20210427051630/http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/tag/reinventing-fantasy-races/

I saw the exact same problem happen with World/Chronicles of Darkness in the latter half of the 2000s. The writers were more than happy to just make stuff up in toolkit books like the Chronicler's Guides, Mirrors, Mythologies, Blasphemies, Changeling: The Lost, Hunter: The Vigil, etc. After 2009 they abruptly started fossilizing, for lack of a better word. This reached its nadir with the release of V5 in 2018, which has this huge af canon that you're supposed to memorize and obey if you want to be part of the tribe.

It's so fucking stupid. These are elfgames. You're supposed to use and share your imagination, not be an uncreative zombie slave. Canons are the death of imagination.

I like a bit of each. A fully fleshed out setting like FR just feels like too much, too vast. But barely anything and "DIY" feels like you get nothing. Honestly, i felt the 4e approach was perfect. You had a default pantheon, a basic overview of a land (not a whole world that I recall) with some history that you could expand on, and a location (Nentir Vale, i can't remember if they expanded out of that area) to start with but do things with. Say what you want about 4e as far as the rules but IMHO the way they handled the implied setting was the best I've ever seen (hell the pantheon was so good Critical Role stole it for Exandria or w/e Mercer's homebrew world is)

I've always homebrewed my settings. I do read about other settings, even occasionally purchase one if the price isn't too steep and it looks original, just for inspiration and imagination fuel. In that situation the weirder the better. I don't need to know any more about Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, or the latest Tolkien-inspired fantasy world as that is old news.

For example, the latest setting I picked up was the free quick start on DriveThru for Rad World - a Shadowdark setting. Despite being chock full of AI art (yuck) it was something I hadn't seen before - post-apocalyptic neon punk setting where everyone plays a goblin. Am I going to play it? Nah. But it was fun and free to flip through.

Another setting I liked was implicit in a short OSR adventure module I picked up - Tomb Robbers of the Crystal Frontier. Cool fantasy-western setting with an SF Barrier Peaks vibe. Thoroughly enjoyed it. But again very inexpensive and part of a rules agnostic adventure - not an official setting baked into or sold for a specific game.

i think one of the things that old D&D did right was to have a set of rules and then a set of optional settings a DM cold choose from.

Quote from: BadApple on November 14, 2024, 09:34:19 PMi think one of the things that old D&D did right was to have a set of rules and then a set of optional settings a DM cold choose from.

I wish other rpgs did this. Unfortunately, it seems every genre outside medieval fantasy is only allowed to have one setting.

Quote from: Nobleshield on November 14, 2024, 09:01:12 AMI like a bit of each. A fully fleshed out setting like FR just feels like too much, too vast. But barely anything and "DIY" feels like you get nothing. Honestly, i felt the 4e approach was perfect. You had a default pantheon, a basic overview of a land (not a whole world that I recall) with some history that you could expand on, and a location (Nentir Vale, i can't remember if they expanded out of that area) to start with but do things with. Say what you want about 4e as far as the rules but IMHO the way they handled the implied setting was the best I've ever seen (hell the pantheon was so good Critical Role stole it for Exandria or w/e Mercer's homebrew world is)

I'm pretty much in this camp. For my own game system I included a well-detailed region while leaving the rest of the world to vague descriptions of immediate neighbors and the complete unknown after that. Its enough for a GM who doesn't want to create a setting from whole cloth to work with, but leaves an entire world beyond those boundaries for them to fill in if they wish... either via the prompts for the neighboring regions, using my region-building system* in the GM's Guide, or whatever other method they wish.

My personal preference for setting is what I call a guided sandbox. The world is open, but the campaign starts with some kind of inciting incident(s) for the PCs to engage with if they choose.

* it has tables you can roll on, but it's really meant to be a list of things to brainstorm off and reminders of things a new GM might overlook when doing their first world build. Most important for me is the events section to ensure its not a static locale, but one with things going on that the PCs might be interested in becoming involved in.