Many of us are enthusiastic worldbuilders. And many of us worldbuilders also try to make our RPG settings “original”.
Yet there is a danger to making a setting that has too many unique elements. After all, the setting isn’t just for the game master, but also for the players. They need to understand the setting enough to play convincing characters that exist in that world, and act accordingly. And the more setting information they have to absorb to do so, the more difficult it will be to get buy-in from your gaming group.
Personally, I think settings work best when there are a few strong, central unique elements that support strong themes on what the setting - and the campaign - are supposed to be all about, scaffolded by numerous familiar, common tropes from the intended genre (such as science fiction or fantasy). This should help convey the information the players need most effectively.
But I am curious how you see this issue. Do you regard this as a problem at all, and if so how do you approach it?
I play PbtA games, and those specifically tell you not to do too much work beforehand and “play to find out”. As you say, I start with a few core ideas and touchstones. Then, when the players ask a question about the world, I often turn it around on them and say “you tell me. What do you think?” Sometimes I’ll make them roll, sometimes not, but I’ll always incorporate at least some and often all of what they give me. This gives the players more buy-in, I’m not just reading my bullshit to them; and also gives me a lot more jumping off points for later stuff. Way less work for me, players feel a sense of authorship, win-win imo.
Worldbuilding is actually one of the elements I don’t particularly enjoy, I’m here to hang out with my friends and tell cool stories. The less effort I have to put in the better from my standpoint. My preference tends towards games with their own settings or settings easily explained with a few touchstones.
My favourite game so far has been in the Dresden files RPG, which is very easy to grasp the setting of even for someone who has never read the books. I set the game in our hometown and scattered a few options for problems around for the players to encounter and just built a story from there. My worldbuilding setup was collaborative presenting aspects of the Dresden universe which I was interested in running and asking what my players were interested in.
I have also run a few Mothership games with great success and very little worldbuilding - you’re basically in the Alien universe where “The Company” owns everything. If you have a common touchstone like the Alien films to give everyone a shared idea of the world it makes it so much easier to set the tone and mood of a game with very little effort on my or the players parts.
Is this AI generated? You completely disregarded the premise of the OP just to namedrop a few RPG systems? And why has this any upvotes? I’m confused.
Touchstone is fine. It just would not work if some players know a lot more lore than others, especially than the GM.
Depends how collaborative you want to be. How does x work in this universe is something I often ask my players. How do we see this thing or what might that look like. Let’s creation be shared and gives us all common ground to work with. If someone is more familiar with source material than me, great they can help shape things. GM always has veto, “that’s not how it works in this world”. I’m not getting rules lawyered out of a cool plot just because one player has read (or retained) more of the setting than I did.
@juergen_hubert I think the real balance is between how complex the world is, and how much is exposed to the players at any single moment. Then the players can decide what matters to them. The downside is that most of the work of the DM might be lost if the players don’t explicitly go looking for it.
