In general, through most of my roleplaying "career" I've been the GM, and one of the things I liked doing was coming up with whatever stuff I needed for the setting I was using, and not necessarily using the stuff from the book for it. In my old AD+D days, I drew maps of places. For Traveller, I generated my own star systems and the like. In almost every "urban fantasy" game, I'd create a town or city for things to be set, made up all the politics and the like, and went for it. I thumbed my nose at meta-story and featured NPCs and the like; that was for the less-awesome-than-me.

And now, as I've discovered, I am not that guy anymore. Just got the Classic Traveller Supplements 1-13 Reprints today in the mail. Finished a major bit of work and took a break for lunch, reading the book. When I ordered the thing, I'd really just wanted the Supplement 4 (Citizens) and Supplement 6 (76 Patrons). I was sort of "meh" about the rest.

But reading it, I realized - the Sector descriptions ROCK. And the Library Data entries are just awesome. Have to dig more carefully, but there you go. I'm starting again at 1001 characters and I find myself happily looking through the lists of characters (and that's all they are, 2-line lists of stats and skills).

It's strange to me, given how I felt about things even a few months ago. Is this a function of age (soon 37!)? Or just tiredness and not wanting to do the heavy lifting anymore? Or something else? The minimalist old writing style? I have the Classic Books 0-8, but never in my life saw any of the supplements, so for them, there's no direct nostalgia factor; in fact, I'd shunned them, as I described above.

Anyone discovered the same? Love charts and pre-made settings and all sorts of maps and diagrams? Pretty sure I'll be heading towards a Classic Trav game in a few months now.

It varies. It don't mind a bit of pre-fab setting in games. U don''t tend to get very excitement about the setting alone, but it's a starting point.

Generally speaking the setting isn't the star of my games - it's functional a backdrop for the players characters, the adventures and to a lesser degree the NPCs. I like it to be instantly accessible to intuitive to the players, something they can get straight into without having to read up on exotic cultures, environments and social conventions before hand.  

So if I'm running Barabarians of Lemuria "Parsool" or "Lysor" are as good name for cities as any I could come up with and if there is a pretty map to go with it that's nice too - just don't expect my treatment of the official setting to be canonical in any shape or form.

Quote from: Soylent Green;493790So if I'm running Barabarians of Lemuria "Parsool" or "Lysor" are as good name for cities as any I could come up with and if there is a pretty map to go with it that's nice too - just don't expect my treatment of the official setting to be canonical in any shape or form.

Ah, canon, no, that I won't be touching - I just thought it was neat to have a bunch of stuff already made that I could use as I wished. And it makes for good imagination fodder, too, I think.

Like movies, books, plays, etc, RPGs has timeless classics, duds, and the enjoyable but forgettable.

The Third Imperium as outlined in original Traveller is pretty much a classic. The details save work in setting up a campaign, interesting to read, but when it comes down a campaign they get out of the way so you can create something unique. It is an empire of 11,000 worlds and dozens of sectors coupled with a RPG that has rules capable of generating all that content.

Even the most detailed of supplements (for example the Traveller Adventure) barely touch on the possibility that even a single subsector brings. You could combine all the Classic Era supplement for the Spinward Marches (Classic Traveller, GURPS Traveller, Mongoose Traveller)

The only pre-made setting I have any interest in running is Dark Sun, and if I ever do so (which is not very likely really) I'll be replacing the elves and Dwarves with something else. However, for the most part I'm all about making up my own.
I've only run one pre-made setting, Barsaive, for Earth Dawn and although I liked it well enough in the beginning, it put me off the game in the end.

@ Soylent Green: are you using a home brewed supers setting for ICONS, or something else?

Quote from: Aos;493832@ Soylent Green: are you using a home brewed supers setting for ICONS, or something else?

Last years campaign was home brew based in San Francisco. The pitch was sort of Batman: The Animated Series so more street level with superheroes still being a new concept and not necessarily trusted by the public.

Currently I am running an ICONS Necessary Evil campaign so that's canned setting. I've tweaked the setting a bit, but not really that much.

In between I've run a whole bunch of one shots using sometimes of the published ICONS scenarios other times running my own stuff with nothing more that a loose implied setting concept. In one instance the players decided the wanted to play British characters so I transposed the adventure (The Skeletron Key) to the UK, making the team an offshoot of MI6.

I kind of feel the urge to run a goofy campaign in ICONSverse on the lines of the Batman Brave and the Bold cartoons using all the pun-based villains from the Villainomicon with cameos from the "iconic" characters like The Hangman, The Mighty Saguaro and of course Spider-Fridge. It strikes me between that and the actual rule book there are like 80 supervillains, and each one had 3 plot seeds, many of which are pretty good. That's like 240 plot seeds and a lot gaming.

I also want to run a space-based supers at some stage. Not figured how I want to do this yet, still waiting for the right inspiration but it's on the list.

Quote from: Soylent Green;493840Last years campaign was home brew based in San Francisco. The pitch was sort of Batman: The Animated Series so more street level with superheroes still being a new concept and not necessarily trusted by the public.

Currently I am running an ICONS Necessary Evil campaign so that's canned setting. I've tweaked the setting a bit, but not really that much.

In between I've run a whole bunch of one shots using sometimes of the published ICONS scenarios other times running my own stuff with nothing more that a loose implied setting concept. In one instance the players decided the wanted to play British characters so I transposed the adventure (The Skeletron Key) to the UK, making the team an offshoot of MI6.

I kind of feel the urge to run a goofy campaign in ICONSverse on the lines of the Batman Brave and the Bold cartoons using all the pun-based villains from the Villainomicon with cameos from the "iconic" characters like The Hangman, The Mighty Saguaro and of course Spider-Fridge. It strikes me between that and the actual rule book there are like 80 supervillains, and each one had 3 plot seeds, many of which are pretty good. That's like 240 plot seeds and a lot gaming.

I also want to run a space-based supers at some stage. Not figured how I want to do this yet, still waiting for the right inspiration but it's on the list.

I may steal some of the plot seeds from the Villainomicon, but i doubt I'll use any of the villains straight up. I've already taken my game into space once, but I plan on doing so again. I think that I'm going to use Starblazers design the setting.

I love pre-made setting material. I'm a "time & place" kind of gamer, so setting is the main attraction. Could be I'm not very inventive or lazy but I do like tweaking settings to make them more of my own. Earthdawn and Dark Sun are pretty cool and the Butcher mentioned Hot War on another thread. But what I really like are those rare occasions when I come across settings on blogs or message boards which spark my interests. Over the years I stumbled across a few. That's were the honey is IMO. Stuff like Psuedoephedrine's Kadiz and now Emern and of course The Metal Earth (which my old crew want me to run (if we ever manage to meet up) with GammaWorld 1E, for some reason.

Regards,
David R

Quote from: David R;493856I love pre-made setting material. I'm a "time & place" kind of gamer, so setting is the main attraction. Could be I'm not very inventive or lazy but I do like tweaking settings to make them more of my own. Earthdawn and Dark Sun are pretty cool and the Butcher mentioned Hot War on another thread. But what I really like are those rare occasions when I come across settings on blogs or message boards which spark my interests. Over the years I stumbled across a few. That's were the honey is IMO. Stuff like Psuedoephedrine's Kadiz and now Emern and of course The Metal Earth (which my old crew want me to run (if we ever manage to meet up) with GammaWorld 1E, for some reason.

Regards,
David R

Aye,that stuff can be good too, especially if someone else came up with the maps and the like. Maybe it IS lazy, but I find it easier to riff off someone that come up with certain things whole cloth. Not that I haven't and can't do so, just it's...easier. Helps me be creative.