Question - What makes a world work?

[Hibou]

As far as I'm concerned, success is when you see the views/replies steadily go up on your setting thread, even when you don't post new stuff. :)

[Bill Volk]

I have only one piece of advice, and it has to do with play, not pre-game wordbuiulding.

Never look like you're making things up as you go.

Even the most slapdash homebrew setting can be fun and convincing if the players have no idea that it's so slapdash. Even if you're using an extremely detailed setting and have all the source material at your fingertips, there will be times when you have to make something up on the spot. Never betray this fact to your players. When you pull a name from an emergency list of generic names, do not announce that you are doing this. If you're indecisive, don't roll a die to determine a setting detail. Instead, pretend to refer to notes. Take real notes during play to avoid contradicting yourself. Never go back on a setting-related decision you've made. Instead of invoking Rule One all the time ("Because I'm the DM, thats why,") pretend to act more like a disinterested news reporter than an omnipotent DM.

[Matt Larkin (author)]

Good advice, Bill.

As far as I'm concerned, success is when you see the views/replies steadily go up on your setting thread, even when you don't post new stuff.

Given that stuff eventually slips off the front page and people forget about it if not updated, this definition depresses me. It means we have only a handful of successful settings here, Troll :(

Actually, though, it does bring us to the point that a popular setting here may not necessarily be a successful setting for players, for a couple reasons. One, as Bill points out, how a setting is run matters as much as the setting itself. Secondly, sometimes fantastically original ideas can draw interest and be really cool, but not support play in the long term (in fact, we might say certain design cliches are cliches because they work so well).

[Hibou]

Well, I was speaking relatively. Perhaps it's more appropriate for me to say that a successful setting is one that gets a lot of interest for at least a short period of time, even if it later ends up disappearing and getting spoken of only in secret circles afterwards.

There is definitely a difference between popular settings and settings that work for players. You might create a setting that is entirely enveloped in water (which most of my setting Vannerfelle was eventually going to be, with most campaigns taking place among undersea peoples), and even though people might absolutely love it, an aquatic game is arguably more difficult to run and associate with, so it may not be so easily adapted to gaming. This is just one example. I know I've tried to run an aquatic game two or three times, but there are just too many questions.

[Jharviss]

Let me throw in my thoughts on this subject, since it's something that has caused a lot of changes in my world.

I believe that having too many options in a homebrew setting is overwhelming to players. I got to the point where I had so many deities that whenever a player was created his or her character, they'd just ask me which deity fit best rather than looking it up.  I've since cut my list of deities by about 20 and am working on cutting it down more. I think Forgotten Realms failed in this instance, but Dragonlance did phenomenally. Greyhawk is somewhere in-between, but they've done a good job of saying "these are the important gods, and the rest are just hanging out."

Likewise, I too believe consistency leads to verisimilitude. From the above example, I worked to incorporate all of the D&D races into my world and still add one or two for unique flavor. That blew up in my face; what world really lets ogres, goblins, hobgoblins, ogre magi, bugbears, orcs, kobolds, gnolls, lizardfolk, and all of these other savage species become prominent enough to matter? And that doesn't even include all of the elves, dwarves, humans, gnomes, and so on and so forth.  Including these all into a single setting is impossible and/or stupid, in my opinion.  Instead, I cut the major races down to just about 10, at most.  If there are any other races, they're rather hard to find (like ogre magi should be).

Keeping the list of races small allows for more interesting actions between the races. I also support different cultures for each race (hence not all elves [which has no subraces] needs to have the same culture).  I think it's more interesting and realistic.

Echoing what was said before concerning the hook, that's also very important. In a well-made world, I should be able to read any part of it and think, "Wow, that'd make a great place to have an adventure!" or "Dang, I could do so many things with that NPC!" or "Golly-willickers, that has adventure written all over it!"  My friend wrote out some information on outer planes for my world, and each one of them had all of those traits.  That, in my opinion, was good hook creation.

But yes, keeping things familiar to players is important.  As of reading this thread, I think I may just change my days of the week back to Mondays, Tuesdays, and so on.  Maybe not.  Who knows?  I have a binary star in my world, which is cool but is also somewhat hard to communicate to the players. Saying that the suns are up sounds wierd to the ear.  I suppose it's all about making the wierd things work.

Enough for now.

[Queenfange]

Keeping the list of races small allows for more interesting actions between the races. I also support different cultures for each race (hence not all elves [which has no subraces] needs to have the same culture).  I think it's more interesting and realistic.

I completely agree. While I do use subraces in some circumstances, cultural groups also add a lot to a setting, and make it more than just a hodgepodge of rules. This approach also enables one to make even humans (which come across as very vanilla in many settings) distinctive. I'm really glad you made this point.

[sparkletwist]

What always made a world work for me is the sense that "this could exist." That doesn't mean it has to obey any specific rules or anything, mind you, just that it feels fleshed out and internally consistent.

Part of this realism is, of course, having people (or sentient creatures) have some diversity to them, because just about any "realistic" world needs lots of diversity. So I'm all about having different cultures, too. It rather annoys me when I see races treated as monolithic groups, as though a "racial identity" is the only thing of importance to a group of people. It seems to me like culture would be a lot more important, and if there are strong cultural influences, it might even happen that a human and an elf who come from approximately the same area will likely have more in common with each other than with some other member of their race from across the continent.

One point I'd like to make, though, is that I feel the key to immersing the players isn't neccesarily to start with things that they know, but to make sure that they are able to think like a person from that world, and not be lacking basic facts about that world that anyone born and raised there would absolutely know. One easy way to do this, of course, is to make many of these facts the same in the created world as in the real world. This is not the only way, though-- but it takes more work if you're trying to re-invent things a bit more. Concise writing is of course a must: being able to sum up the major concepts of the world in brief is very useful to draw players in. Nobody is going to be able to sort through pages and pages of meandering text for all of the intricate details on your 10 cool new races, but if you can sum them up in a paragraph each, then you just might be in business. Visual aids are also immensely valuable. A picture of the new races will solidify them in the players' minds.

If you're going to break some more fundamental rules of what the players know and understand, being succinct and to the point is even more important. Visual aids will probably help a great deal here too, perhaps a colorful chart instead of just a paragraph how your cool new system works. If you're going to change the calendar, then, have an actual calendar to show them, and so on.

Out of character, it never hurts to mention your inspirations for various aspects of the world, then, players can start thinking along the same lines you were, and probably feel more immersed.

[Raelifin]

That was really helpful, Sparkles. Thank you.

[MAK]

[ic=Sparkletwist:]...they are able to think like a person from that world, and not be lacking basic facts about that world that anyone born and raised there would absolutely know.[/ic]

This is an excellent summary of how the setting can support immersion! I'd still like to add one point: there is (often a big) a difference in what is unfamiliar for the player and what is unfamiliar for the character. If you consider a truly alien world, everything is unfamiliar to the player, but for the character there should be nothing special about it. This makes is much harder to play such character, at least if one wants to portray the character as "realistic". It is also much more difficult for the DM to surprise the players, since everything is new an unfamiliar.

[ic=]DM in ominous voice: "You notice that the flagh'args eyes gleam red..."

Players: "That was the big klingon-like thing, right? So? Aren't they supposed to?"

...the mood the DM wants to set is ruined.[/ic]

The opposite is of course also true, if the player is very familiar with the setting it may be hard to play a character who is an outsider - but in that case it's more of a roleplaying challenge and could be also fun (a simple farmer's son comes to the big city for the first time)

There is a point there somewhere, and it's the same which I briefly touched in my earlier post: while it is fairly easy to make a world where the wow-factor comes from everything being different, it might be much more satisfying to make the setting familiar on the surface (which satisfies Sparkle's point of player immersion) and build the wow-factor slightly deeper so when the players uncover the strange things they will be equally strange to their characters. When done like this, the players don't have to do a lot of pre-study to appreciate the setting but can learn as they play.

[Matt Larkin (author)]

There is a point there somewhere, and it's the same which I briefly touched in my earlier post: while it is fairly easy to make a world where the wow-factor comes from everything being different, it might be much more satisfying to make the setting familiar on the surface (which satisfies Sparkle's point of player immersion) and build the wow-factor slightly deeper so when the players uncover the strange things they will be equally strange to their characters. When done like this, the players don't have to do a lot of pre-study to appreciate the setting but can learn as they play.

I find that you can maintain the sense of complete wonder only so long. If the appeal of a setting is its alienness, it can probably only support a short campaign. After time, that sense of wonder will fade, and the campaign will need something else to stand on.

I'll call this the Dark Crystal phenomenon. Dark Crystal's a fun movie, but imagine it as a TV series running for seven seasons, 154 hour-long episodes. The sheer wierdness factor of the movie would be lost, and they would be left with appeal to little children that like crazy puppets, but for those of us just there for the fantasy elements, it would be unlikely to support our interest because it's not grounded enough in our own reality.

[Ivar]

The topic for today's discussion: what makes a world successful, and why does it work?

the[/i] two most important things for a successful setting.  All else aside, you have a good setting if people want to use it.  Reviews, views, comments, compliments, etc. don't really matter in terms of success.  What we really try to create settings for are use by DMs and players (whether that be yourself or other DMs).

The "why" aspect is more difficult to define, but I think a setting would make people want to play it if it is easy for the DM to generate a campaign or the players to imagine a good campaign based on the world/setting.  Interesting locations, consistency, themes, flavor, strange or familiar settings, etc. all could be reasons that a setting is easy to have fun in.  But that's what the main goal of a setting should be.

[Matt Larkin (author)]

I think, along with the idea of wonder/alienness, you can have a setting (or race) people think will be really fun, and if it's too strange, it doesn't hold up in the long run.

[sparkletwist]

It is also much more difficult for the DM to surprise the players, since everything is new an unfamiliar.

Point taken, but I think your example is a good example of how the DM has to work a little harder if the constants of the world are going to be a little different.
[ic=Let's try it this way]DM in ominous voice: "You notice that the normally docile flagh'args eyes gleam an uncharacteristic and menacing red..."

Players: "Uh oh!"

:D
[/ic]

Of course, it's a balancing act to avoid being too heavy-handed in the narration, but by adding a bit of exposition to the story and reminding the players how the world works it makes the game go more smoothly-- it's sort of filling in the gaps that the subconscious minds of the characters would anyway.

in some cases when the population of a "race" is small enough (I use quotation marks because in my setting I use race to refer to mortal races only, not spirits, though here I'm mostly talking about fae) the race may not have developed divergent cultures. This is especially true when the entirety of the race lives together in a single environment. To use everyone's favorite example, elves, if all elves live in a single city, they're likely to have a single culture, just like the culture of any other homogeneous city.

Well, ok, if the whole race lives in a single city, they may have a single culture, but that's because that's the culture of that city-- it has to do with locality, and not being a monolithic race. :D

[LordVreeg]

[blockquote=Ivar] Do DMs and players want to play in the world/setting?  Those are the two most important things for a successful setting. All else aside, you have a good setting if people want to use it. Reviews, views, comments, compliments, etc. don't really matter in terms of success. What we really try to create settings for are use by DMs and players (whether that be yourself or other DMs).[/blockquote]

So here, Ivar mentions wanting to play in the world.  I thinks an important 'flavor' for successful games is motivation, and by this I mean creating goals and passions for the players.  Pathos and conflict are crucial to make the players care about things in the setting, and by reflection, care about their characters and thus the setting itself.
Creating huge good vs. huge evil is boring, but creating guilds and leaders they want to be with, NPC's the PC's care about or hate (Morator, the Arcanic of the Coom Isle Collegium Arcana once captured one of my PC's dog, Jared, and the PC found it in a dungeon that way...hate and emnity was created in spades) organizations they support and despise.
Pc's love underdogs, and love evening the odds.  Create organizations and relationships that allow them to do this, and they will keep coming back.

[Matt Larkin (author)]

Creating huge good vs. huge evil is boring, but creating guilds and leaders they want to be with

Sometimes the good vs. evil conflict can be fun (though I tend to use a twist). Not everyone thinks it's boring, it's just not what you want to every campaign. On the same note, some players I've had get bored dealing with complex and factions and so forth, and would rather be out saving the world.