I am trying to put this into words for a video I am making, in which I am trying to differentiate the elements of the world presented in a story that allows it to be good for and RPG to be set in there.

I have a good idea when I compare some of the most interesting fantasy/sci-fi story that makes me think "Yes, outside of the protagonists, I could have a random joe story somewhere else and have a cool campaign", compared to those.

But what are those aspects? Expansiveness I think is important, after all I know that one of the best settings is Star Wars, where despite the important characters that change the setting, you know there is an whole galaxy of lore, characters and location where to put your random joes. In contrast, I don't think most single player Final Fantasy games (like 6 or 7) allow you to have those stories, as in many instances the locations serve the story told by the characters rather than places lived in first. But that goes for most stories, so what makes Star Wars a more interesting setting RPG wise than Final Fantasy 6 or 7, is expansiveness all there is? What other factors play? I'd like some insight if possible.

It all depends on the imagination and dedication of the group. Like, there are tons of rpgs, both official and unofficial, licensed from/based on stories that simply don't lend themselves to ttrpg style adventures. But people make/play them anyway, force the issue, even though in my opinion they suck.

For example, Starcraft. The setting is tiny af. When TSR made the official licensed rpg back in 1998, everything they wrote was written around a random space cowboy because he was the main character of the original video game. The setting supposedly had many billions of inhabitant and hundreds to thousands of light years of space available, but everything revolved around that one space cowboy. This is obviously a poorly constructed setting that doesn't lend itself to satisfying ttrpg stories.

There are also ttrpg original settings that don't lend themselves to satisfying ttrpg adventures, like World of Darkness. It's about some dude's comic book story and characters, who appear in the game as GMNPCs that solve the various "metaplot" events. It's not really about playing games so much as using fake gamebooks as vehicles for its story. The rules aren't even playable and everybody ignores them. It is infamous in more respectable ttrpg circles as that game that you buy to read rather than play. The most recent 5th edition killed off the ancient GMNPCs, because apparently the latest publisher finally realized it was a stupid idea, but fans absolutely hated it and think the changes ruined everything.

The reason Star Wars has accumulated so much cruft is because writers forced it to. If you spend decades writing expanded universe material, then yeah it's gonna feel way larger than it actually is in the movies. Especially when you use an entire galaxy as your canvas and don't have a rigorous canon policy. It still feels like an aimless mess because it is an aimless mess. It's not as bad as starcraft because it has way more writers and some of them are actually competent, but it's still a mess that people only care about because of nostalgia for Luke Skywalker.

You can do this setting expansion with pretty much any story. But should you? I prefer the opposite: design a setting that meant to be played in, then write stories as examples of what can happen.

I see, I thought most of the expanded universe for Star Wars was because of the West End RPG that served as the one and only setting's sourcebook after the movies came out. So the galaxy became and RPG world and the Expanded Universe came after.

To your last point I can't help but think of Dark Sun's Metaplot and how it destroyed the setting by solving the world's problems.

Personally, I don't think Star Wars is particularly good as an RPG campaign setting as evidenced by how much companies like WEG had to change the setting for it to work. It is better, however, if you only consider the original trilogy.

For me, the list of things that make a good RPG setting includes:

1) Multiple factions at odds with each other that are roughly comparable in size and power.
2) There are reasons why a good (or at least neutral) player character would join most of the factions. IOW, few are so cartoonishly evil that PCs can't join them.
3) The setting needs to be of such a size and scale where a victory of one faction over another in one area won't automatically change the entire setting.
4) Finally, the setting should flexible enough to still be interesting even if specific, powerful NPCs are killed or otherwise disposed of.

While it has issues, I think Fallout 4 is a good example of what I'm talking about. Each faction in the game has it's own ideals and while a player might agree with one over another, none are so one-dimensional that they hold no appeal

The Brotherhood of Steel values humans over mutants and robots.
The Railroad considers bio-robots and humans to be of equal value.
The Institute is only concerned about the long term survival of humanity and cares very little about the current inhabitants
The Minutemen care primarily about their members, regardless of who those members are (except if they are synths).

This not only creates an interesting choice for the players but could lead to disagreement between the various players as well.

As for expansiveness, this one is relative. Star Wars, for example, is huge but a player can fly from any point in the galaxy to any other point in a matter of hours while there are still reasons for some areas to be more "remote" than others. But expansiveness isn't really only about size. A large cyberpunk city, for example, can be of similar scope with travel times between one part of the city to another being relatively short (short enough to hand wave away in a game session), but there would still be a variety of different areas with some areas being more populated than others.

However, expansiveness like this comes at a price in that it's harder for the DM to run if players can move about so quickly. Which is why most RPG settings, even those like Star Trek, have slower movement from place to place. Limiting the player's options of movement to make it easier to prep for the next adventure.

Quote from: Lixuniverse on December 12, 2024, 03:15:50 PMI see, I thought most of the expanded universe for Star Wars was because of the West End RPG that served as the one and only setting's sourcebook after the movies came out. So the galaxy became and RPG world and the Expanded Universe came after.

There's a huge multimedia expanded universe for Star Wars. Two, actually. Canon, and Star Wars Legends. They're not remotely self-consistent.

Quote from: Lixuniverse on December 12, 2024, 03:15:50 PMTo your last point I can't help but think of Dark Sun's Metaplot and how it destroyed the setting by solving the world's problems.

In general, metaplots never seem to be done well.

The short of it is: these are fictional settings. They're not real. They're not subject to time. So why give them advancing timelines? What purpose does this serve?

As a simple advancing of the timeline, as seen in games like Cyberpunk 2020, Shadowrun, Traveller, or Battletech, their existence is quite frankly completely pointless and is just a gimmick to try forcing groups to keep buying new books (which doesn't work btw, you know the edition treadmill). Traveller and Battletech actually have separate setting books for different points on the timeline, so you can play in those. The downside is that this assumes that the PCs cannot actually effect on the timeline, even through the butterfly effect. In that case, it's just a cheap way to sell multiple settings under the same brand, similar to how Blackmoor and Mystara were at once point considered different points on the same timeline.

These advancing timelines don't even upset the status quo. Cyberpunk 2077 is functionally identical to Cyberpunk 2020. Traveller and Battletech have completely illusory timelines because different setting books take place at different points, so there's no actual advancement.

When you start upsetting the established, then you risk either upsetting fans who take "the lore" really seriously (again, this is fiction some dude made up, not a religious text, but some people take it that seriously) or you end up removing the setting's established sources of conflict, such as with the Dark Sun metaplot. In a number of cases, later editions would end up resetting these metaplot developments. For example, the latest edition of Planescape undid most the of the consequences of the Faction War aside from merging some of the redundant factions. In fact, you could treat this as a retcon rather than an advancing metaplot and it wouldn't make a difference in play.

The only time I've seen a metaplot that I found remotely interesting was the "evil alien invasion on the frontier" metaplot/subplot in TSR's Star*Drive setting. The game was canceled before they managed to get more than one or two years into it, so I can only judge based on that. The reason I found it interesting is because, while other metaplots are either irrelevant or remove sources of conflict, it generated adventure hooks because it's an evil alien invasion. Think the plot of Halo stapled onto Babylon 5. The setting was large enough that you could just ignore it too. Maybe WotC would've screwed it up if they published more books about it, but we'll never know now.

Quote from: hedgehobbit on December 12, 2024, 03:28:59 PMFor me, the list of things that make a good RPG setting includes:

1) Multiple factions at odds with each other that are roughly comparable in size and power.
2) There are reasons why a good (or at least neutral) player character would join most of the factions. IOW, few are so cartoonishly evil that PCs can't join them.
3) The setting needs to be of such a size and scale where a victory of one faction over another in one area won't automatically change the entire setting.
4) Finally, the setting should flexible enough to still be interesting even if specific, powerful NPCs are killed or otherwise disposed of.

All of this is true for Star*Drive, which isn't surprisingly because it was created specifically to be an rpg setting.

Quote from: hedgehobbit on December 12, 2024, 03:28:59 PMHowever, expansiveness like this comes at a price in that it's harder for the DM to run if players can move about so quickly. Which is why most RPG settings, even those like Star Trek, have slower movement from place to place. Limiting the player's options of movement to make it easier to prep for the next adventure.

Star*Drive also does that. The starships available for purchase by typical PCs only allow ftl jumps of at most 5-10 ly per trip, the trips last 121 hours every time, and you need several days to recharge after each jump.

If it sounds like I'm shilling, I am. Sorry about that. It's not a great setting to shill for because none of the pdfs are legally available.

Expansiveness is a good way to put it. It's the world and the worldbuilding that makes something a good setting for a game. Unfortunately a lot of people seem to focus on characters, when of course you're supposed to be making your own.

I think it's a symptom of the times really — all the reboots and remakes of IPs don't seem to have the guts to drop the original characters even as they get old and their reasons for going on adventures become more and more odd (Star Wars and Indiana Jones, I'm looking at you).

Quote from: Bubu on December 12, 2024, 11:28:18 PMExpansiveness is a good way to put it. It's the world and the worldbuilding that makes something a good setting for a game.

It's important to note that worldbuilding can be done very badly. Expansiveness shouldn't be taken to mean packed with irrelevant detail.

Some settings, like World of Darkness, are vanity projects that write themselves into corners because they're about wanking their exposition dumps rather than making something playable. The amount of freedom you had was basically nil unless you ignored the books, defeating the point of buying them. You wouldn't believe all the anecdotes I've heard where everyone consistently agreed they ignored the rules and setting.

The spin-off Chronicles of Darkness (the 2004 edition) left the setting more open-ended so that GMs could mess around without worrying about too much cascade effects. There were various toolkit books like Mirrors, Blasphemies, Mythologies, Chronicler's Guides, etc that provided lots of options. Judging by its consistently high position on the ICv2 from 2004 to 2009, this really paid off. Groups love toolkits and modularity.

When writing a setting, you need to always think "will this information ever be relevant to the PCs?" If it's not, if you can remove it without affecting gameplay, then you should probably cut it. I can't remember how many times I've seen books and adventures provide lore dumps that only the GM would ever be able to know.

I think a great way to put this into practice is to write exposition from an in-character perspective that the PCs can reasonably be expected to learn. Adventure handouts, encounters, etc. If you can't write in that format, then you should rethink whatever you're trying to write.

Quote from: Bubu on December 12, 2024, 11:28:18 PMUnfortunately a lot of people seem to focus on characters, when of course you're supposed to be making your own.

To be fair, audiences of passive media invest in characters over everything else. We need characters to make stories enjoyable. No media franchise has ever gotten and remained popular on the basis of lore alone. Yes, refusal to let characters move on is bad writing, but it's not an entirely baseless decision.

The concept of fantasy races and character classes owes more to specific fantasy characters than actual professions. They want to play Aragorn, Conan, Legolas or Gimli. Fantasy races and classes are a proxy for this, until they develop the creativity to make original characters.

There ARE worlds that are varied in how much details they got that compel many types of audiences. Perhaps a balance of each is the best, like in Traveller where you have hundreds of planets detailed in the wiki from decades... All that when the main books are filled with tables for how to generate planets and sectors.

Is perhaps a balanced of detailed lore and tools for fans to fill the gaps on their own what's required?

I think the core requirement for a story setting to make a good game setting is less about overall details of the setting being expansive enough, but rather that its core conflict (whatever that might be) must be big enough to support stories outside of the original protagonists and villains.

Ex. Ghostbusters and the Star Wars OT work really well for a rpg premise despite actually being pretty thin in terms of setting details, but the core conflict of each (making a living hunting the paranormal and rebelling against a tyrannical space empire) is expansive enough to build practically endless stories that don't have to center around the original protagonists.

Indeed, I'd argue that Star Wars Rebels and the Afterlife/Frozen Empire serieses can almost serve as real life examples of how an RPG spin-off should be structured. A small band of original rebels fighting to save their homeworld and occasionally crossing paths with a few of the series' main characters as "special guests." A next generation trying to keep the family business going with some cameos from the older generation.

But the critical element in both of those is that there are enough variations within the conflict that it starts feeling repetitive. The paranormal has countless variations including motives of the living and the dead to keep it fresh. The unifying elements for the RPG are the Ghostbusters as a business (or franchise in the actual rpg) and specific ghostbusting equipment that keep it from being a generic monster/ghosthunting setting.

Likewise, even just within the three original films it is established that there are smugglers, crime bosses, bounty hunters, colonies, and spy rings in addition to just space battles and shootouts with faceless stormtroopers. Heck, the original protagonists included farm boys, reforming criminals, ousted politicians/royalty, warrior monks, and droids.

Sure WEG went and expanded on it, but the existing elements for myriad conflicts were all right there in the original films.

Star Trek similarly has a broad concept that is easy to extrapolate to other ships of exploration.

By contrast, for all its conflicts and varied locations, the Battlestar Galactica reboot would be a fairly abysmal RPG because it's core conflicts boil down to a single group of some 50k people struggling to find Earth facing the same opponent again and again and without the show's particular interpersonal conflicts, there's not nearly enough there to expand it to where the PCs could have a meaningful role in the recognized conflict.

Similarly, outside of its very specific to specific houses/characters, there is little of A Song of Ice and Fire to recommend it as a game setting. You're there for the story of the Starks and Targaryians. If you're not interacting with them in the game you may as well just use a generic low-magic/no-magic fantasy setting. If winter/the Others aren't coming and dragons aren't on the wing there's nothing worth having a license for outside of a marketing name to put on the cover.

There were Battlestar Galactica and Game of Thrones official licensed rpgs btw.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on December 15, 2024, 06:05:40 PMThere were Battlestar Galactica and Game of Thrones official licensed rpgs btw.

I'm aware, I even own the latter because I was exploring different systems' domain rules at the time.

The thing is, if it didn't have "A Song of Ice and Fire" on the cover and mention the Starks and Lannisters in some of the examples you'd never be able to tell it was the licensed RPG for the setting.

There were no Others/White Walkers or dragons or even the magic of the Faceless Men or the Red Witch.

All it really covered was playing as a lesser noble house trying to improve its standing among its peers and liege at some non-critical point in the setting's history.

It may as well have just been set somewhere in Europe in the High Medieval period for all the importance GoT/ASoIaF lore had to the system.

And that's the fundamental problem with those settings as RPGs. The conflicts are too specific to specific people and places and events for a group of PCs to have any adventures that feel remotely connected to the universe unless you're either letting them play the protagonists (and are willing to let them go off script) or forcing them to play second fiddle to the story protagonists.

You'd be better served just ripping off plot points from GoT and applying them to a game of your choice. You'd get a ton of the feel and not have to worry about "contradicting canon."

Expansive settings are fantastic, if there's interesting things going on in them apart from the official stories.

The Star Wars OT has the prospect of "a thousand thousand worlds" a pervasive evil empire, rebels, scoundrels and criminals and bounty hunters, and enough of a tech base and a magic system to extrapolate all manner of adventures having nothing to do with the main story but which still feel like they could be happening in the same universe.

Star Trek is similar as it's easy to envision another crew of another ship exploring in a different direction and having adventures and the episodes providing examples of the sorts of things you might run into out there.

Both also have specific identifiable technologies and organizations that are more expansive than what we see in their media.

Other stories lack either the expansive concept or an element unique to its setting to make it worth an actual IP-based RPG.

For example, Westerns as a whole are worth an RPG because its an expansive concept with lots of potential conflicts, but without something more it's not going to be worth making "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly the RPG."

Campy James Bond is probably right on the edge of what qualifies as a good setting; there are other 00- agents, there are Q's distinctive gadgets, there are some recurring villainous organizations.

You'd still be better off grabbing and generic-ing its stuff and throwing in Mission Impossible's bits and any of a dozen other spy shows/films because what there is is fairly thin and widely aped elsewhere.

Quote from: Chris24601 on December 16, 2024, 04:48:28 PMAll it really covered was playing as a lesser noble house trying to improve its standing among its peers and liege at some non-critical point in the setting's history.

So...it's very much like the Dune RPG.

One "hack" that helps immensely in making a playable setting is to simply set the game in "the real world, but with X."

For instance, Buffy the Vampire Slayer worked well as a game, because you know the basic setting, reality, and are intended to learn about where and how the setting deviates from reality as the game goes along.

This is also how Ghostbusters and Call of Cthulhu works.

Quote from: HappyDaze on December 17, 2024, 01:51:22 AM

Quote from: Chris24601 on December 16, 2024, 04:48:28 PMAll it really covered was playing as a lesser noble house trying to improve its standing among its peers and liege at some non-critical point in the setting's history.

So...it's very much like the Dune RPG.

The Dune RPG ironically ignores the entirety of the books beyond the appendix. The plots deal with the feudal status quo being upended by the actions of the Atreides and their descendants millennia into the future. The RPG is just a generic scifi feudal game. You could invent your own setting from scratch and it wouldn't make a difference. All aesthetics, no substance or themes or anything challenging.

Frank Herbert must be spinning in his grave. His stated intention for the end of the series was for humanity to form a democracy.

Quote from: Lurkndog on December 17, 2024, 10:43:52 AMOne "hack" that helps immensely in making a playable setting is to simply set the game in "the real world, but with X."

Otherwise known as contemporary fantasy. Ironically, it's a very underserved genre.

Quote from: Chris24601 on December 16, 2024, 04:48:28 PMThe Star Wars OT has the prospect of "a thousand thousand worlds" a pervasive evil empire, rebels, scoundrels and criminals and bounty hunters, and enough of a tech base and a magic system to extrapolate all manner of adventures having nothing to do with the main story but which still feel like they could be happening in the same universe.

Star Trek is similar as it's easy to envision another crew of another ship exploring in a different direction and having adventures and the episodes providing examples of the sorts of things you might run into out there.

Both also have specific identifiable technologies and organizations that are more expansive than what we see in their media.

Other stories lack either the expansive concept or an element unique to its setting to make it worth an actual IP-based RPG.

For example, Westerns as a whole are worth an RPG because its an expansive concept with lots of potential conflicts, but without something more it's not going to be worth making "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly the RPG."

Campy James Bond is probably right on the edge of what qualifies as a good setting; there are other 00- agents, there are Q's distinctive gadgets, there are some recurring villainous organizations.

You'd still be better off grabbing and generic-ing its stuff and throwing in Mission Impossible's bits and any of a dozen other spy shows/films because what there is is fairly thin and widely aped elsewhere.

So, aside from a setting that feels expansive enough to easily imagine more stories going on separate from the main one, there has to be identifying elements within the setting to tie it specifically with the universe, rather than genre like western, whose rules are tied to a specific place and time.

I wonder if diversity of themes is also important. One of Star Wars main axioms is the presence of the force, where some people have it and the powers that come with it. Psionic powers are present in many other settings, but only Star Wars "has" the force in that way that it's unique to Star Wars instead of any other franchise.