What setting does your campaign use?

[Alcamtar]

I'm prepping for a new FH campaign and trying to decide between a homebrew or published setting. This isn't really a "sell me" thread, I'm just trying to sort through my thoughts.

(Also, it's nice to trade ideas and stuff with an online community and I'm wondering how many folks are using the Turakian Age. But I'd love to hear from everyone.)

Personally I enjoy homebrewing and that way you know it inside and out, but it can be a lot of work writing everything up from scratch. Also, a homebrew is limited to only my ideas and can feel stale and/or sketchy. A published setting does things differently than I would and as a result it seems large and mysterious, more real. It also stretches me as a GM far more than I'd ever push myself. Anyone else find this to be true?

So...

What campaign setting are you using? Why did you choose it? How is it working out?

If you've run or played in other FH campaigns in the past, what setting did you find most successful? Least successful? Why?

Mike

[Shike019]

Well, I'm currently writing a fantasy setting. (no where near done), but playing in a champions game. I'm also playing a d20 game (yes I know, but I still like the system some) in the Forgotten Realms. (as I haven't finished my world yet.)

[Eosin]

We (our group) uses two primary settings.

Modern Day games use Dark Champions - Hudson City with a touch of the fantastic to it (like the X-Files but way watered down). THere are a few costumed freaks but mainly it is bad guys with guns.

Fantasy uses The Last Dominion - a setting I published under license from DOJ. To be honest, I pull from everything when running a fantasy game and tend to find myself most influneced by Vampire: Dark Ages, Arthurian Tales that take place just after the Romans withdraw, Midnight, Lovecraftian Mythos/Monsters, and 7th Sea (pretty Lovecraftian if you ask me).

I am thinking that I would like to run a fantasy game of Dark Champions where the Player Characters struggle against the bad guys in some medieval "urban abyss." It would run much like a cross between Delta Green and standard Dark Champions. Ugly stuff and ugly people are out there in positions of authority and the only way to oppose them is to strike from stealth and security.

PS - our most successful games have been using those two settings. We have tried a strait Birthright, Greyhawk, and Star Wars game but they never catch the spark.

[Curufea]

Heavily modified Western Shores (http://wiki.rpg.net/index.php/WS:Index)

[CourtFool]

I had tried to create my own homebrew, but I was no where near completed when I started a campaign with it. The players really noticed that it was not complete and I think it hurt that campaign badly. Since then, I have not had time to sit down and really bang out a world. I know a lot of people suggest starting small, with say a village and build as the players begin to explore. That is exactly what I had tried to do, but failed miserably.

I now use Eberron and Forgotten Realms. There is plenty of material to use and most gamers are at least vaguely familiar with the settings. I found quite a wealth of free material for Forgotten Realms on The Website Which Shall Not Be Named.

I have seriously considered using The Turakian Age. I may in some future campaign.

[Alcamtar]

I had tried to create my own homebrew, but I was no where near completed when I started a campaign with it. The players really noticed that it was not complete and I think it hurt that campaign badly.

That burned me in the last campaign I ran (set in the Wilderlands): I started early and improvised too much. I have a strong desire not to repeat that experience.

[AliceTheOwl]

I'm using a homebrew - Via (http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=44148). I certainly haven't fleshed out the whole thing, but I do have a good overall view of what it's like and where the really major cities are located. But it's meant to be a slight parody of a fantasy world, and contradictions and impossibilities are the name of the game. So, I feel quite comfortable making up the details as I go along.

[teh bunneh]

I run a homebrew world. It's (obviously) not complete, but I find that when the players ask questions or make assumptions, it helps me fill in the facts. When the players ask, "What's the duke of so-and-so like?" I can respond, "You don't know, but you can do a little research..." Over the next few days I figure out who the duke is and why he's that way, and then at next week's game I tell them, "You've talked to some people who know him. The duke is ..."

And now, I have a writeup of the duke for my own sourcebook. :cheers:

[CourtFool]

I think part of the problem I experienced came from dealing with players from the Game Which Will Not Be Mentioned. I am frequently assaulted with questions like, “What class can I be?” When I answer, “Whatever you want.” I get a blank stare.

They fear freedom.

[CrosshairCollie]

I use Eberron, d20 or HERO. :)

[Dale A. Ward]

Concerning incomplete homebrew campaigns, I am of the same mind as bill.

When I built my old AD&D campaign (back in the late 70's - early 80's), I started running the game with only a few sketchy notes, a bloody huge world map, and a damn fine bunch of players. When they noticed that most of the map was blank (except for really major terrain features), I set them upon a mission of discovery not unlike the Lewis & Clark Expedition.

That one mission took up about 2 years of in-game time and almost 8 months of real time. During that time, my players mapped a large expanse of the main continent and established a trade route between two coasts... not at all what they expected from a fantasy game.

I ended up with a very satisfied group and a much more fleshed out campaign world. I also noted numerous plot hooks for future adventures where my gang would return to further explore the more exotic areas that they didn't have time for the first go-around.

[Fitz]

I've tried using published milieus for my campaign, but I always end up going back to my homebrew -- its been evolving peripatetically for the last 25 years or so and still is nowhere near complete, but I prefer to develop as I go rather than having to learn somebody else's stuff. That's too much like work.

[Erkenfresh]

I'm using a homebrew world. I'm just now getting started with the campaign. The first thing I did was draw a "world map" which is actually just an island about the size of Australia where the party will adventure. I then came up with several playable races and a background for each race. Then, I fleshed out the major historical events. Finally, I split the island up into provinces roughly the size of Texas and gave a brief description for each. I haven't yet bothered to place any cities except for one major one.

During chargen, I asked my players where they wanted to be from, suggesting their race's home area for the location. I let them decide how big the city was and what it was like. Thus, Harborville and Tuscon were born. Yeah, Tuscon, like the one in Arizona.

I haven't run a scenario yet but I should start on that next week. A bunch of my friends were away last night so I couldn't start just yet. ;)

I'd highly suggest homebrewing if you've got a lot of time. If you don't, I'm sure TA plays just fine.

[Erkenfresh]

Also, I don't reveal any of the history or specific geography to the players unless they have the appropriate KS's. This gives a very nice bonus to someone who puts some points into KS: Local History. Otherwise, it remains a mystery to the players (and me too hehe).

[Curufea]

I reward my players for filling in the blanks in my homebrew.

[keithcurtis]

I use Hero specifically because I enjoy homebrewing. Too many other systems are so intimately tied to their settings that it's nigh impossible to do something different. For generic systems, I have run both Hero and GURPS, but settled on Hero because even GURPS cannot shake an adherence to an official mechanic. With Hero I can envision the world first, and then adapt the rules to fit my vision. Very few compromises.

In point of fact, almost any time I have contemplated an off-the-shelf world, I have failed to summon up the level of interest necessary to hold me till the end of the book. I can't even find the passion for adapting an existing property (Serenity, Farscape, etc.) My enjoyment as GM comes from creating.

Keith "YMMV" Curtis

[Yesman]

I'm gearing up to start my second campaign using the SJgames Yrth setting.

Before that I used a homebrew setting loosely based off of Fading Suns, but re-imagined back into a medieval fantasy setting.

[tkdguy]

I use a bunch of different sources, particularly Warhammer and 7th Sea. There is no magic in this campaign, but there's a lot of swashbuckling swordplay and cinematic (but not wuxia level) kung fu.

[teh bunneh]

I think part of the problem I experienced came from dealing with players from the Game Which Will Not Be Mentioned. I am frequently assaulted with questions like, “What class can I be?” When I answer, “Whatever you want.” I get a blank stare.

There's an easy way around that, Llama. When they ask what class they can be, tell them, "Oh, the usual -- fighter, paladin, wizard, bard, whatever." They'll create a character just like they were playing D&D, but eventually someone will say, "I'd like my paladin to be able to pick locks, 'cause he used to sneak out of the seminary at night..."

You tell him that of course he can do that -- just buy the appropriate skill. "What, I don't have to waste tons of points because it's a cross-class skill?" Nope, sez you, just go for it. It may take a few sessions for this fact to catch on, but when it does, watch your players' eyes light up with the possibilities. :king:

[Kabluey]

At least based on the replies, I'm one of the few people who actually uses a published setting, Harn specifically. Like a lot of the people here, I've been GMing 20+ years or so, and in that time I've created quite a few worlds. But I've never really been happy with them. I've tried various approaches, but none of them have really worked satisfactorily for me.

Harn meets my desire for a consistent, low-magic, realistic-yet-still-fantastic world. It's got beautiful maps, and since it's been supported now for over 20 years, there's a ton of information out for it (including an inordinate amount that is fan-produced and of high quality and free).

We're still pretty early in the campaign, but thus far it's worked out wonderfully. I've sent the party on a quest that will take them from one end of Harn to the other, thus giving me the opportunity to show off all the wonderful places I've been reading about, and will give me the chance to tie in to some of the bigger political plots present in Harn (the Jarin rebellion and the Kaldor succession crisis, to be specific).

And overall I think the players have responded well to it. I was a little concerned, given that we all had a long D&D/high-magic background, but thus far the response to Harn's lower-magic setting has been quite positive.

[Markdoc]

Homebrew. There are certain "official" worlds that I have enjoyed GM'ing (principally Tekumel and Glorantha) and I have done a number of "historical" campaigns (I actually like that because it's less work), but like Fitz, I always end up looping back to my own homebrew.

What I tend to do, though is run each campaign in a different part of the world, so that I flesh out a new magic system, new culture, new geography, etc, each time I do it, thus extending the level of detail of the world.

cheers, Mark

[Krieghandt]

Hybred :eek: I like to take the initial release of a world, and change a few odds and ends, then move it in a new direction. My next one will be TA, but I've already rewritten the League cities histories and race compisitions. I've also added in salt and buffalo trading systems in the player areas (ALWAYS annoyed me where all those carnivores were getting lunch. At 1200 lbs, a bull buffalo presents a good sized snack) I've also stolen ideas from Keith "keep creating" Curtis :thumbup: that have changed things as well. Namely the magic ranges/decay rates in Savage Earth. Now my wilderness stays wild :sneaky:
Krieghandt

[AliceTheOwl]

I reward my players for filling in the blanks in my homebrew.
As do I. I've been giving out contacts and XP for filling in gaps.

Sadly, only one player is still cooperating. Ah, well. He's a LEAST as creative as I am . . .

[Edsel]

Currently I have a character in Eosin's Last Dominion campaign.

The last time I ran a Fantasy Hero campaign I used a homebrew that borrowed from several places (Westen Shores, SJ Games Yrth, Middle Earth, etc.)

[Alcamtar]

I've also stolen ideas from Keith "keep creating" Curtis :thumbup: that have changed things as well. Namely the magic ranges/decay rates in Savage Earth. Now my wilderness stays wild :sneaky:
Krieghandt

Do you have a link? ;)

[Gwarh]

When I built my old AD&D campaign (back in the late 70's - early 80's), I started running the game with only a few sketchy notes, a bloody huge world map, and a damn fine bunch of players. When they noticed that most of the map was blank (except for really major terrain features), I set them upon a mission of discovery not unlike the Lewis & Clark Expedition.

That one mission took up about 2 years of in-game time and almost 8 months of real time. During that time, my players mapped a large expanse of the main continent and established a trade route between two coasts... not at all what they expected from a fantasy game.

I ended up with a very satisfied group and a much more fleshed out campaign world. I also noted numerous plot hooks for future adventures where my gang would return to further explore the more exotic areas that they didn't have time for the first go-around.

WHY IS THIS FANTASTIC IDEA not occured to me already :p What a great Idea. I mean what would be more fun than acctualy exploring, discovering the world. Any Wargame like Civilization or the old Empire game was all about uncovering the map.

I think Players tend to resit being railroaded into Adventures or Directions or Travel. Letting them do the Exploring with open ended, loose goals might be a great way to do it. The entire World could already be Mapped out, your just uncovering it like a Dungeon map would be on an old school Dungeon Crawl. At least for me the Map and exploration was half the fun in those Old School sessions.

I can imagine a Fantasy World that was Devistated Centuries ago in a Great War of the Gods, and it took that long till there City/Kingdom whathaveyou to recover and set out to discover what happened to the rest of the world. You could even throw the Players a loop and make it our earth and the Magic Items and Mosters as Genetic Mutations or Robotic Leftovers. Sort of an "Expedition to the Barrier Peaks" take on Magic. Don't tell the Players right out, but drop hints and see if they figure it out on there own.

Heck playing World of Warcraft or any other MMO I enjoy the exploration and discovery more than anything else myself.

Thanks for the great Idea Dale A.Ward.

[Gwarh]

Homebrew. There are certain "official" worlds that I have enjoyed GM'ing (principally Tekumel and Glorantha) and I have done a number of "historical" campaigns (I actually like that because it's less work), but like Fitz, I always end up looping back to my own homebrew.

What I tend to do, though is run each campaign in a different part of the world, so that I flesh out a new magic system, new culture, new geography, etc, each time I do it, thus extending the level of detail of the world.

cheers, Mark

Hello Markdoc

Does your friend Fritz ever post here on the HERO forums? And if so under what nicname. I ask as I'm a big fan of his Fantasy HERO (well his RPG website period) page and content. I've gotten allot of good use out of it in the past. I guess I should thank you too as your Massive Spell Book is there as well correct?

P.S.

I don't know why I never put this together, the fact that the "Ultimate Grimore" page is your work. I have to say a special thankyou to you for all your hard work on this project. I've used this page so many times in the past, I owe you a Pint of Guiness at the very least.

[Pentoth]

I have a homebrew setting that I have been using for about 12 years. It is a setting where magic is rare but extremely powerfull. The way I handled the growth and development of it was I started the players off in a hamlet. From their as they travelled around I developed the regions. I let it's history dictate where things appeared geographically. At present I am working on the "eastern" part of the continent. Some of my players are really into oriental style of adventures so I am kinda looking at various sources (mostly historical) to flush everything out. As always I too rewarded players for assisting me in flushing out regions of the world.

[Outsider]

My campaign setting? Stun, usually. :)

Seriously, though, I've used home-brew for a long timel and would continue to use it if I had a fantasy game I was running. Back when I started GMing time were a lot easier to come by than prepublished campaign sourcebooks, or the money to buy them. Nowadays, that relationship is reversed, but I already have a fairly extensive (though not KillerShrike or KeithCurtis level) campaign setting worked up.

A big advantage of the homebrew is that I always know more about the setting than my players do.

[AliceTheOwl]

Yeah, but that can also come back to bite you when players who don't know much about your setting, beyond the tone, are playing characters who've lived there their entire lives. It can be difficult keeping the players informed of things their characters should know.

Which makes it a LOT easier when your players aren't interested in taking any background skills . . . :rolleyes:

[CrosshairCollie]

Yeah, but that can also come back to bite you when players who don't know much about your setting, beyond the tone, are playing characters who've lived there their entire lives. It can be difficult keeping the players informed of things their characters should know.

Which makes it a LOT easier when your players aren't interested in taking any background skills . . . :rolleyes:

Just what I was thinking, albeit without that last line. This is especially important if your campaign world doesn't play to the popular tropes/stereotypes/genre bits.

[TheQuestionMan]

GURPS Fantasy/Banestorm/Yrth and 18yrs worth of Campaign History.

[Markdoc]

Hello Markdoc

Does your friend Fritz ever post here on the HERO forums? And if so under what nicname. I ask as I'm a big fan of his Fantasy HERO (well his RPG website period) page and content. I've gotten allot of good use out of it in the past. I guess I should thank you too as your Massive Spell Book is there as well correct?

Yep - Fitz is around - he posts under the name "Fitz" :) He and I gamed together back in the ages before the dinosaurs.

I don't know why I never put this together, the fact that the "Ultimate Grimore" page is your work. I have to say a special thankyou to you for all your hard work on this project. I've used this page so many times in the past, I owe you a Pint of Guiness at the very least.



MMM. Guinness :D Anyway, I'm glad it's useful. I was thinking the other day it needed updating, but given how hectic life is, I'm not sure when that will happen.

cheers, Mark

[Killer Shrike]

I ran many campaigns in mostly Carl Sergent style Greyhawk over the course of about a decade and a half, about a 45-45-10 split between AD&D 2e, HERO System 4th, and D&D 3e. There was also some AD&D 1e before all of that as well, but that was very early in my gaming "career", we were all very young, it was the era of really bad adventures, and the less said about that the better. ;)

My last Fantasy campaign was run in a homebrew setting that Ive been slowly building up as the muse (and available time) strike....its here:

http://www.killershrike.com/sandora/SanDora.shtml

[Old Man]

A big advantage of the homebrew is that I always know more about the setting than my players do.

Yeah, that was always a big problem in D&D 2e and Shadowrun, when a player would show up with the new Complete Half-Drow Ranger Mage Handbook that no one had seen before (least of all the GM).

[Wolfe-Chan]

I'm prepping for a new FH campaign and trying to decide between a homebrew or published setting. This isn't really a "sell me" thread, I'm just trying to sort through my thoughts.

(Also, it's nice to trade ideas and stuff with an online community and I'm wondering how many folks are using the Turakian Age. But I'd love to hear from everyone.)

Personally I enjoy homebrewing and that way you know it inside and out, but it can be a lot of work writing everything up from scratch. Also, a homebrew is limited to only my ideas and can feel stale and/or sketchy. A published setting does things differently than I would and as a result it seems large and mysterious, more real. It also stretches me as a GM far more than I'd ever push myself. Anyone else find this to be true?

So...

What campaign setting are you using? Why did you choose it? How is it working out?

If you've run or played in other FH campaigns in the past, what setting did you find most successful? Least successful? Why?

Mike

Well I am working on my own setting because the few I found that were steampunk did not feel right to me. I started working on a Machine verses Man idea and then went tech verses magic aswell and a little bit of other stuff for veriety. An island of undead some Zepplin using pirates and an Analytical Engine that is so large it became sentient and evil.

I basically wanted bit of both worlds but wanted to do things how I thought they should work I am borrowing a lot of stuff from other sources. As well as making up a bunch of my own.



Wolfe-Chan

[Cosmosemeritus]

A long time ago on a dinner table far, far away...

My best friend and I started an AD&D (1st ed, as it was later known) campaign using the boxed Greyhawk setting and the recently published T1-4 Module. We didn't play it often, mostly playing a modern-genre game using Palladium's Heroes Unlimited, but we did play it semi-regularly until I left for college about 3 years later.

When I returned home from college I brought 4th ed Hero with me and started the long and painful process of converting my old gaming group from their pagan d20 habits. Oh how they wailed when I threw their platonic solids in the crucible and burned their saving throw tables at the stake!

It was during this tumultuous time that our old Greyhawk game was re-born. Since the original campaign was based out of only a few supplements, much of the game world was devoid of detail. Over time the details have played themselves into being, with the players creating much of the campaign background themselves through the backgrounds and actions of their characters.

Today the campaign probably bears little resemblance to the published campaign world, but its ours and we're happy with it. Magic bears no resemblance to AD&D systems, having more in common with Gygax's Mythus Magic system. Gunpowder, but not guns, exists in the game though the PC's don't know from where it arrived.

[swobeas]

I use the Warhammer-Setting using HERO rules, a bit adopted to catch the flair of the setting.
I love reading novels in the gaming world to get as much as possible of the atmosphere :rolleyes:

and Warhammer provides me with a setting consisting of a elaborated world, a dark and deadly atmosphere and a portion of humor that should never miss if people play games:thumbup:

[Savinien]

Do you have a link? ;)

http://www.savageearth.net/

Currently, I'm running two campaigns in the Fourth Age of Middle Earth. After long debates about mood and theme, I finally decided to simply do what I wanted. Of course, those overall styles still exist and I try to adhere to them, but they're really sort of like meta-gaming or game mechanics. They are there, but transparent to the story taking place.

Using Middle Earth isn't easy because the majority of players have some ideas concerning what Middle Earth is and should be. Going contrary to that isn't always easy but I try to be up front that this is MY Middle Earth, not yours, his, or some other dudes.