A few months back...Wow. Back in March of 2014, nearly a year ago. Wow. Well, I promised it would move slowly, and damn if I wasn't honest. We got through basically an adventure, maybe two depending on how you look at it. But, I've been thinking over the last six months or so.
First, I've done a ton of map making, world building, and setting development. Stuff that will almost never be used and almost certainly never be appreciated by any player. Mainly, because I didn't do it for my players. I did it for me. In fact, the entire setting has nothing to do with my players. I don't even want them to really read the history and setting stuff. It will likely bore them to tears or remind them of some other setting that did it similarly and likely better. That's okay... It's not for them.
Second, that begs the question. If the setting is almost entirely for my own enjoyment, why am I making my players play in it? It's next to impossible to share the depth I have into the world with them. I don't plan on writing a novel (which would be agonizingly derivative and familiar). That would be the easiest way to share it, but I don't want to ask my players to labor through a novel to be able to enjoy a D&D game. That's dumb.
Third, I like to be a player-centric GM. I have good reason to be, and I think that makes the most sense. So I should use a setting that was player-centric. A homebrew setting *can* do that, but it puts more pressure on the player. They have to learn your setting after you share it. They have to read or listen or somehow experience the setting in a way similar to how I develop it to know what the hell is going on. That's annoying. I mean really, who enjoys reading the 7-page history or someone's homebrew setting. Hell, I rarely enjoy reading my own.
And...That's what I've been thinking about. Over the past couple months I stepped back and thought about what I was trying to do with the Elohim setting. What I ended up with was a list of games, book, movies, and so forth that I enjoyed and wanted to play in. Some are popular and well know, others are very obscure.
At first I believed this sort of thinking was taking me nowhere, so I stopped and tried a new approach. I asked myself if I was going to run a different kind of game, like say the mirror of fantasy RPG...Science Fiction (or fantasy, argue among yourselves), what would I run? Took a whole two seconds for me to say "Star Wars". Because of course Star Wars.
Wait. Why of course? Okay. Well. Hu. After some thought I came up with the following.
First, it's wide open for exploration and adventure. It's a universe with magic. Just about *everything* is on the table. Dragons? Sure, several already in the setting (granted the expanded universe, but whatever). Angels? Yup, those too. Elves? Yup, two times in fact. Plus room for just about everything else. Limits are for whims.
Second, it's shared with just about everyone. Certainly everyone who I might play with. Plus, even if I go drag something crazy into the game that is not in the movies, it takes a google search to get up to speed.
Third, It's not mine. One thing that happens with a homebrew setting is a tendency to be attached to it. You can idealize it and changes can be painful to watch. If you intentionally design the setting to be wrecked by your players, that's fine, but hard to do. If you don't, you can find yourself either lamenting the changes or resisting them. Neither is helpful to a game.
Okay. Fantastic. If i was running a space-game, I'd do Star Wars for good reasons. But, I'm not. What would be the fantasy equivalent of Star Wars. Short answer: there isn't one I can think of. Nothing has that kind of history, that kind of following, that kind of exposure, or that kind of open-ended-ness.
Longer answer: No, Middle Earth doesn't work. It is relatively small, linear, and limited. You don't toss steam-punk into Middle Earth. Anything from the Far Realm or Lovecraft is tough to fit into Middle Earth and have it make sense. Plus, the difference between the movies and the books causes all sorts of issues. Basically, it has all the same problems of playing a home-brew setting...because it is Tolkien's home-brew setting. Star Wars, by comparison, has been out of Lucas's hands and open to others since forever. It hasn't been 'his' in a long time. It is shared. It is everyones.
There are other contenders. The world of Avatar the last Airbender is widely known enough to be easily recognize and certainly accessible. It's more or less open-ish. But adding elves and orcs and stuff like that is tough. Azeroth is likely the strongest contender. It's open enough to allow almost anything, and has introduced most of it anyway. It's well known enough that most people who would play D&D would know enough to call it shared. Just slapping a medieval fantasy skin on Star Wars could work. But, weirdly and you may as well just play star wars. Conan would work, but only because it is generic, but it's not exactly well known like the others are. I mean, do you know the name of the world of Conan. I do, but I bet I'm rare among my friends on that point. I'm sure there are others.
I guess I don't have an answer to this.
For now, I'm gonna plug along with Elohim. None of my players are complaining overtly so It's not a problem I need to deal with directly. Of course, there are several people who are not playing that might if the game was more accessible, shared, and familiar. Not sure. Love to know.
What would be the best setting for a Fantasy RPG? Where do you want to play?
