What makes a world good to explore in traditional stories (novels, games, movies, etc) but not as fun to explore in a tabletop game?

Ages ago, I wrote about "what makes a good setting" for me:

https://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com/2015/12/game-of-thrones-star-wars-and-what.html

A couple of things that are better in novels than RPGs, IMO, are:

- Obvious good x evil.
- Events that cause a risk of destroying the world.
- Characters that are "the chosen one" or similar, since it devalues PCs.

[sorry, posted twice]

Big secrets about a region, that will change the world once revealed. With games, you can't just have one set of lore that keeps getting dropped, and acting like it's a surprise.
Adventuring situations that involve lots of tedious hardship, like escaping a slave camp or going to the mountains to study with the master.
Different races or species that co-exist, when some of them are clearly superior or inferior, and some of them present almost irreducible moral quandries (like intelligent vermin; you can't let them endlessly reproduce, but you don't want to murder or starve them, either). Balance issues and troubling ethical ones abound.
Worlds where heroic powers are often the result of unique secrets. In a game, either they aren't unique, or you have to come up with new powers and origins all the time for new characters.
Massive urbanization. You can write stories about such places, but for adventuring, it's easier when life hasn't been streamlined, organized, commodified, fenced in, and distributed according to status. The only real adventures you can have are rogue or -punk adventures unless you get out of town, or cause a world-changing cataclysm (see above).

Overshadowing NPCs can be a significant problem.  E.g. Luke Skywalker probably doesn't need your PC's help, nor can you reasonably kill Darth Vader unless we're doing a parallel universe thing.

Same with massive reveals.  If absolutely no one in the world is supposed to know what happens in the fourth book, you really need to set your game after those events.

Similarly prophesies and chosen ones aren't terribly welcome when they aren't the PCs. (And honestly I find it gross when they are.)

It really goes to show you how the whole "ancient ruins in the wilderness" setting carried so much weight in the early days of the hobby, doesn't it?

Quote from: MeganovaStella on December 11, 2023, 08:11:14 PM
What makes a world good to explore in traditional stories (novels, games, movies, etc) but not as fun to explore in a tabletop game?

The biggest one for me is settings which rely on the author's tone, style or sense of humor for their appeal. Discworld is probably the best example. There's a Discworld RPG, but if you don't have Terry Pratchett GM-ing it (from beyond the grave no less), all you'd be doing is parroting someone else's jokes.

Quote from: pawsplay on December 11, 2023, 09:09:01 PM
Big secrets about a region, that will change the world once revealed. With games, you can't just have one set of lore that keeps getting dropped, and acting like it's a surprise.

That's a big one. This is the inherent problem people run into when trying to adapt Dark Souls to the tabletop. Each of those games is about slowly uncovering the secrets which underlie the fundamental order and history of the world. You can't really pull that trick more than once without radically altering the setting (say by having a many-thousands-of-years gap between games).

Quote from: Eric Diaz on December 11, 2023, 08:46:42 PM
Ages ago, I wrote about "what makes a good setting" for me:

https://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com/2015/12/game-of-thrones-star-wars-and-what.html

I saw you name-dropped R E Howard's Hyborian Age in that article. I've said for a while that the Hyborian Age is probably the closest you'll ever get to an objectively perfect RPG setting in something that wasn't actually designed to be one. Because it was designed for disconnected short story adventures it maps extremely well onto the RPG adventure format. Because it's nations are pseudohistorical (and lets be honest, reliant on broad national stereotypes), they're instantly recognizable, even to someone with no knowledge of the source material and very little knowledge of history. And because Conan's adventures don't usually have a lot of lasting impact on the setting, there's isn't much canon to worry about screwing up.

Leiber's Nehwon and Moorcock's Young Kingdoms partially share all these traits, but not to anywhere near the same degree. Vance's Dying Earth has the first and third quality, but lacks the instant recognizability. Ditto with Ashton Smith's Zothique, and Gene Wolfe's World of the New Sun.

Quote from: pawsplay on December 11, 2023, 09:09:01 PM
Big secrets about a region, that will change the world once revealed. With games, you can't just have one set of lore that keeps getting dropped, and acting like it's a surprise.

This is the biggest one, and you landed it fast.  Settings meant for stories often are built with one or even a few "big reveals", which work wonderfully for the viewers- but they don't work well in any other context.  This is even more of a big deal if the reveals totally change the tone of the world- the mystery of Attack on Titan is compelling during the first couple arcs, but once the reveals have happened, nothing in the prior scenario that looked so solid for a game would ever work.  By the end, the subtext you were sold at the start has been entirely erased.

QuoteAdventuring situations that involve lots of tedious hardship, like escaping a slave camp or going to the mountains to study with the master.

These are actually wonderful if you are doing a 1 on 1 session, because the choices the character makes can be really powerful.  What they don't work for at all is any group situtaion.

QuoteDifferent races or species that co-exist, when some of them are clearly superior or inferior, and some of them present almost irreducible moral quandries (like intelligent vermin; you can't let them endlessly reproduce, but you don't want to murder or starve them, either).

Here's where you lose me.  This is just fine; you have endless stories about the ratfolk if you decide to live with them, or you can do a cool campaign where you genocide them before they genocide you.  I have 0 issue with games with these concepts; in fact, I would say I narrowly prefer them.

QuoteWorlds where heroic powers are often the result of unique secrets. In a game, either they aren't unique, or you have to come up with new powers and origins all the time for new characters

If the heroic powers aren't so overpowering that everyone needs them, only the PCs and a few notable NPCs might have them, and they could still be challenged by pretty much everything in the monster manual.  I think this stuff can work ok, as long as the PCs are either a group hunting down the people with the cool powers (who may be vampires or whatever), or are one of a handful of groups who have the powers themselves, which provides a total excuse for literally everything ("the bad guys want to kill anyone who could oppose them with the powers", "if you don't go and do it no one else can", etc.).  This also lampshades the common issue at midlevel where you could afford a wave of hirelings to mass-farm dungeons or whatever in a standard world- it's now plausible that a squad of four sets off to save the world or whatever.

QuoteMassive urbanization. You can write stories about such places, but for adventuring, it's easier when life hasn't been streamlined, organized, commodified, fenced in, and distributed according to status.

You can do this by setting adventures in warehouses, underground tunnels, outside of the city, etc.  But I 100% agree it's a problem and there are people who try to make it work in settings, with decent success.

I think Kult may have a problem sort of hinted at by the others above. Once you get a whiff of the reality behind the illusion, I think much of the interest starts to wane. Having said that, I never actually played it.

It depends on the type of game you want of course.  A big one for most D&D style games is that the PCs should be the best people available for missions, and they won't run afoul of overwhelming power (like a large government) in doing their thing.  The counterexample for this that comes to mind is the end of "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" where the knights are charging the French castle and then the bobbies come arrest them all.  Good models for this type of setting are the American Old West and the pirate age Caribbean. 

Quote from: Venka on December 11, 2023, 10:26:30 PM

QuoteMassive urbanization. You can write stories about such places, but for adventuring, it's easier when life hasn't been streamlined, organized, commodified, fenced in, and distributed according to status.

You can do this by setting adventures in warehouses, underground tunnels, outside of the city, etc.  But I 100% agree it's a problem and there are people who try to make it work in settings, with decent success.

Urbanized doesn't have to mean safe and civilized.  Shadowrun and Cyberpunk both work in urban settings.  What you do need is a certain amount of lawlessness.

Quote from: Mishihari on December 12, 2023, 01:06:41 AM

Quote from: Venka on December 11, 2023, 10:26:30 PM

QuoteMassive urbanization. You can write stories about such places, but for adventuring, it's easier when life hasn't been streamlined, organized, commodified, fenced in, and distributed according to status.

You can do this by setting adventures in warehouses, underground tunnels, outside of the city, etc.  But I 100% agree it's a problem and there are people who try to make it work in settings, with decent success.

Urbanized doesn't have to mean safe and civilized.  Shadowrun and Cyberpunk both work in urban settings.  What you do need is a certain amount of lawlessness.

I feel like with all of these, there are fun games that violate the rules.

I've played and had lots of fun with games in urban settings (Shadowrun, James Bond 007, etc.), and with unique superpowers (like Marvel Superheroes), and in settings with iconic characters (Middle Earth, Star Wars), and so on.

I'd agree there are challenges to making some of these games work well, but it depends a lot on the players and how they work.

Quote from: Mishihari on December 12, 2023, 01:06:41 AM

Quote from: Venka on December 11, 2023, 10:26:30 PM

QuoteMassive urbanization. You can write stories about such places, but for adventuring, it's easier when life hasn't been streamlined, organized, commodified, fenced in, and distributed according to status.

You can do this by setting adventures in warehouses, underground tunnels, outside of the city, etc.  But I 100% agree it's a problem and there are people who try to make it work in settings, with decent success.

Urbanized doesn't have to mean safe and civilized.  Shadowrun and Cyberpunk both work in urban settings.  What you do need is a certain amount of lawlessness.

The quote edited out the last sentence I wrote there:  The only real adventures you can have are rogue or -punk adventures unless you get out of town, or cause a world-changing cataclysm (see above).

Working against the status quo is an option.

I'm going to comment on the article only:

1. He's right when he talks about setting books. I say this as someone working on a setting book. Good fiction is better for describing a world.

2. He sucks a lot of George Martin cock throughout. I hope he swallowed.

3. I prefer good vs. evil over morally ambiguous tripe.

4. He got real boring as he went on and I couldn't finish the thing.

Quote from: ForgottenF on December 11, 2023, 10:09:18 PM

Quote from: Eric Diaz on December 11, 2023, 08:46:42 PM
Ages ago, I wrote about "what makes a good setting" for me:

https://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com/2015/12/game-of-thrones-star-wars-and-what.html

I saw you name-dropped R E Howard's Hyborian Age in that article. I've said for a while that the Hyborian Age is probably the closest you'll ever get to an objectively perfect RPG setting in something that wasn't actually designed to be one. Because it was designed for disconnected short story adventures it maps extremely well onto the RPG adventure format. Because it's nations are pseudohistorical (and lets be honest, reliant on broad national stereotypes), they're instantly recognizable, even to someone with no knowledge of the source material and very little knowledge of history. And because Conan's adventures don't usually have a lot of lasting impact on the setting, there's isn't much canon to worry about screwing up.

Leiber's Nehwon and Moorcock's Young Kingdoms partially share all these traits, but not to anywhere near the same degree. Vance's Dying Earth has the first and third quality, but lacks the instant recognizability. Ditto with Ashton Smith's Zothique, and Gene Wolfe's World of the New Sun.

Yup, agreed.

It is easier to use Hyborian Age than something like Middle-earth because Conan is not the "chosen one" fighting "the dark one". And familiarity, even trough stereotypes, is a big plus.

Quote from: Eric Diaz on December 11, 2023, 08:46:42 PM
Ages ago, I wrote about "what makes a good setting" for me:

https://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com/2015/12/game-of-thrones-star-wars-and-what.html

A couple of things that are better in novels than RPGs, IMO, are:

- Obvious good x evil.
- Events that cause a risk of destroying the world.
- Characters that are "the chosen one" or similar, since it devalues PCs.

Quote from: mcbobbo on December 11, 2023, 09:55:11 PM
Overshadowing NPCs can be a significant problem.  E.g. Luke Skywalker probably doesn't need your PC's help, nor can you reasonably kill Darth Vader unless we're doing a parallel universe thing.

Same with massive reveals.  If absolutely no one in the world is supposed to know what happens in the fourth book, you really need to set your game after those events.

Similarly prophesies and chosen ones aren't terribly welcome when they aren't the PCs. (And honestly I find it gross when they are.)

It really goes to show you how the whole "ancient ruins in the wilderness" setting carried so much weight in the early days of the hobby, doesn't it?

Agreed that chosen ones don't work for trad ongoing campaign RPGs.

I wrote a one-shot GMfull game this year, God-Killer Prophecy, that is explicitly about the companions and chosen one going on a quest to kill a dark lord. I'm really happy with how the card mechanics create tension and that it usually isn't a pure victory for the good guys.

If you are interested you can read a little more about it here.