Personally, I often find the earlier (in OOC time, not in IC chronology) incarnations of a campaign setting to be more interesting than the later ones. The first iteration of a campaign setting (or at least a good campaign setting) is all primed and ready for gaming, all the possibilities are open, opportunities for adventure are neatly hardwired in, and so on. Later editions - those which don't simply update the old material for a new version of the game they're attached to, or expand on the original content (like Harn supplements) - tend to move the timeline forward a bit, at which point possibilities are closed off, adventure opportunities are squelched - often contradicting people's home campaigns - new adventure opportunities are slipped in which aren't necessarily as fresh and interesting as the old ones (because the designers used their best ideas the first time around), and the setting generally begins to groan and creak under a slowly-growing weight of continuity and canon. Prequels avoid some of these problems, but often have the additional issue of setting the game in a time period which was originally only devised to provide an interesting backdrop and isn't necessarily as interesting to adventure in as the original time period.

For a non-RPG example, compare the vision of Star Wars presented in the original trilogy with the Expanded Universe (for an example of moving settings forward in time) or the prequel trilogy (for an example of moving backwards).

Can anyone point me to settings which actually improved over time? The Pundit's mentioned the From the Ashes incarnation of Greyhawk over in the Forgotten Realms thread, but I understand that some fans of the setting would dispute that. Any others?

2nd ed Heavy Gear is better than 1st ed. They released more setting material, made the corebook more than a wargame manual with persistent pilot stats, moved the timeline forward a tiny bit and gave you more and better character options and ideas. 2nd ed ended well, with the destruction of Paxton Arms, but SilCore never really attracted me.

GURPS Bane Storm

I've always thought that the Champions setting improved with each new edition (with the exception of FUZION).  

In non-paper and pencil RPGs, Fallout 2's setting was a lot better than the world of Fallout.

There are a bunch of settings that didn't really change, but just got better produced and more detailed.  Harn is one example.  I think Ars Magica 2nd and RuneQuest 2nd were substantial improvements as well.  Subsequent editions were more mixed, but there was a lot of good material along with some bad.  

I haven't followed in detail, but White Wolf's new editions have generally been well received, including the latest NWoD ones that reset everything.  

There are also fans of Greyhawk's prior updates, even though they included a catastrophic reset in "From the Ashes" (1992) bringing the setting into the 2nd edition era.  

Call of Cthulhu had an update of sorts in Delta Green that was well-received (though they continue to release material in the old era).

I prefered Vampire the Masquerade Revised to Vampire the Masquerade First. By a lot. I prefer Vampire the Requiem to both (Ithink It combines both of their strong pints, and has an easier, more concise ruleset)

Ars Magica is a good example, really - the 3rd Edition was something of a nadir for the setting, but the last couple have been big improvements. (4th Edition got rid of the Realm of Reason, an ill-thought-out attempt to make AM the backstory for the World of Darkness, and 5th Edition finally severed the Tremere-vampire connection, finally allowing the Tremere to be something more than "the House that's secretly run by vampires".)

Delta Green is a good example, except it wasn't an official update to the setting so much as a third party supplement.

GURPS: BANESTORM, a.k.a.  Yrth got better with the recent newer version.

Many parts of it were made more realistic. (at least somewhat). Also, the full color illustrations and flavor text story examples actually helped set the scene and mood in many places.  One of the few examples where I actually liked that stuff and I thought it enhanced things.


- Ed C.

Interesting. Would it be fair to say that part of the reason Yrth fell flat with some people first time around was that it was presented as the default setting in earlier editions of GURPS Fantasy? I can see how the presentation of the setting may have been undermined by the necessity to also throw in guidelines for generic fantasy in GURPS.

Blue Planet.  V.2 wasn't just an update, it was a completely different system, and it was a great improvement.  The original was a very blah, very whiff-prone percentile-based system with a lot of complications and not a lot of joy.  V.2 is  a d10-based simple system that may not be the most wowing, but is perfectly serviceable and gets out of the way when it needs to.  The only places it really sticks are for genetic and cybernetic enhancements, which are still bought per the original system at character creation, but that's easily house-ruled.

That's lovely, but what about the setting? I'm not disputing that there are systems out there which have improved over time.

Skyreams of Jorune improved a lot from second to third edition. (For those who don't know, Jorune is pretty much Gamma World with an attempt at Tekumel-level detail.)

Second edition tended to focus on how PCs could become citizens in order to have more power within their community. BOORRRING. I've never found a player who gave a crap about that stuff. Perhaps I failed as GM (or Sholari, ahem) to convey a sense of excitement about the prospects of citizenship.

Third edition had more artwork, more detailed timelines, more races, etc, that should have been in the second edition books--- more on the lamorri, trarch, tologra, etc.