I don't want to highjack MAR Barker's thread anymore than it already has been.

Some settings are just difficult to to grasp by your average gamer. Tekumel and Glorantha are probably near the top of the list. Both have exotic worlds, with lots of really strange, non-Western, aspects to them. It's very likely why neither is a huge commercial success. People get offended if you say this, though. Many hint at the player being "racist" or something, because he can't be bothered to learn about a proto-Aztec culture (or Mayan or whatever) that he's not interested in.

Yet both have large fan bases. Many of the followers of these settings own every single supplement for it, and often multiple copies of many of those supplements.

However, it's not just strange settings that get this treatment. Look at Harn. Just from glancing at it, it's a very Western setting. However, if you go onto the Harn forum or the various mailing lists, there are long flamewars about whether potatoes are natural to the world. Not to mention all of the various flavors of Agrikan chapters and how they get along with each other and the general populace. And the arguments about whether the population figures are a scale too low from a realistic setting.

For whatever reason, certain settings attract obsessive fans who really love to dig into the small details. Sometimes, I think they lose track of the big picture, forgetting that the setting is a game and not a real world.

Quote from: danbuter;523324For whatever reason, certain settings attract obsessive fans who really love to dig into the small details. Sometimes, I think they lose track of the big picture, forgetting that the setting is a game and not a real world.

Gotta leave for work, so I'll do the short version for now...

Really crunchy games and very detailed settings appeal to people for whom that kind of detail increases immersion into the setting.  For those people, it REALLY increases the immersion.  So yeah, in a sense it is a real world if it is detailed and consistent enough, isn't that kind of the whole point of roleplaying?

Quote from: danbuter;523324For whatever reason, certain settings attract obsessive fans who really love to dig into the small details. Sometimes, I think they lose track of the big picture, forgetting that the setting is a game and not a real world.

Wonder if it's the same type of individuals that would be into "continuity porn", whether Forgotten Realms, Star Wars, Star Trek, Marvel Universe, DC Universe, etc ...

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ContinuityPorn

It's how you tell 'em.

Fading Suns' backstory isn't particularly difficult, but it is among the most turgid reads ever.

Show don't tell, would be how I would approach it.

Quote from: danbuter;523324For whatever reason, certain settings attract obsessive fans who really love to dig into the small details. Sometimes, I think they lose track of the big picture, forgetting that the setting is a game and not a real world.

I like Glorantha as a role playing game setting. Not some sort of topic of scholarship, alternate universe or whatnot. As a gaming setting.

I registered to the Glorantha mailing list a few years back and ... Oh. My God. Obsessive is a bit of an understatement, to be honest.

My advice is to just ignore those dudes. The best way to get into Glorantha and treat it as the gaming setting it's meant to be is to get yourself a copy of RuneQuest 2 or 3, a copy of Genertela: Crucible of the Hero Wars and Gods of Glorantha, and that's it. You got all the setting info you'll need for years and years of gaming (Griffin Mountain is great too, in the local sandbox style. Pavis is awesome. There's a lot of good stuff, but these are not truly "needed"). Then game the hell out of it. That's it.

The OCD guys are also in GURPS, in 3.5, in anything that is meaty enough to support an Obsessive personality.

Also anytime you have a group that has a barrier to entry, that gives a feeling of fulfillment and exclusivity to the people in that group that have passed the barrier.  The problem is when the OCD people actively add to that barrier to prop themselves up and increase that feeling.

I've never encountered a setting that I felt was too complicated to be learned, but I can see where some people might not feel like investing the time to buy into some games.

I avoid complex, exotic settings. It's not that I don't see the appeal it's just not worth the trouble.

I like to run campaigns with settings which the players "just get" intuitively without having to do homework or listen to tons of exposition. I like players to hit the ground running form the very first session, I want them to feel empowered to just be able to do things without worrying whether it is  appropriate for the specific setting. And I want to leave enough blanks in the setting so that we, both GM and players, can invent stuff as we go along.

Modern day is great in that respect. But even space opera or fantasy setting as long it is full of cliches and largely implied.

In the end the setting is just a backdrop, a functional thing. It's the player characters and the situations they get into that need to be interesting, not the setting.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;523359Show don't tell, would be how I would approach it.

Yeah, that seems the best policy.
Our Earthdawn GM has a real love for that setting and every once in a while he will cross over into lecture mode and get out his maps and tell us about the history and geography and legends and... my eyes just glaze over.
For one thing little of it is of any immediate import to what's going on in the game... and second, I don't think my PC would actually know much of what he's telling us. So why bother? (I understand that he is sharing something he enjoys with us...). Especially since, when our characters travel, he often chooses to gloss over lots of 'local color' and just have us arrive at our destination. It seems to me that stumbling upon some local festival in progress would be a better place to drop in a bit of history/folklore.

He's a good GM though and I shouldn't complain.

Quote from: Serious Paul;523455I've never encountered a setting that I felt was too complicated to be learned, but I can see where some people might not feel like investing the time to buy into some games.

This.

Quote from: Soylent Green;523456I like to run campaigns with settings which the players "just get" intuitively without having to do homework or listen to tons of exposition. I like players to hit the ground running form the very first session, I want them to feel empowered to just be able to do things without worrying whether it is  appropriate for the specific setting.

Yup.

Quote from: Benoist;523363My advice is to just ignore those dudes. The best way to get into Glorantha and treat it as the gaming setting it's meant to be is to get yourself a copy of RuneQuest 2 or 3, a copy of Genertela: Crucible of the Hero Wars and Gods of Glorantha, and that's it. You got all the setting info you'll need for years and years of gaming (Griffin Mountain is great too, in the local sandbox style. Pavis is awesome. There's a lot of good stuff, but these are not truly "needed"). Then game the hell out of it. That's it.

Problem is, you need to go back to those products, unless you want to read an anthropology treatise. The last ten years or so, every Glorantha setting book is just as dense as a college textbook.

Quote from: CRKrueger;523326Gotta leave for work, so I'll do the short version for now...

Really crunchy games and very detailed settings appeal to people for whom that kind of detail increases immersion into the setting.  For those people, it REALLY increases the immersion.  So yeah, in a sense it is a real world if it is detailed and consistent enough, isn't that kind of the whole point of roleplaying?

you sure hit that one out of the park.

Quote from: LordVreeg;523552you sure hit that one out of the park.

Yeah, he's right. For some gamers, that'll matter a great deal towards immersion, much like super-detailed critical hits rules and the like. That's a good point.

Talislanta is another one that doesn't get the love it deserves.

Odd really, because it's split into regions that are pretty easy to grok by themselves.

I think the important thing to get across with 'alien' settings is that you don't need to absorb all the info in one lump. If you seperate them into parcels, you can employ the 'drip feed' effect, and IME, that's one of the best ways of getting a setting across.