The Virtues of a Small Setting

[cailano]

I've only run one campaign in PbP that had a truly epic sweep: the Pathfinder AP Jade Regent. The PCs traveled thousands of miles in that game, from the frontier cites of Varisia to the Norse-themed capital of Kalsgaard, to the Artic wastes of the Crown of the World, and finally into the Asian-themed Dragon Empires. It was fun, and it felt big.

But, in general, I feel smaller settings are better for PbP. They keep the action front and center and allow for greater depth.

Even in Jade Regent, the setting for each module in the AP was small and focused. The first module had one town, a bit of a road trip, and a dungeon. The second module was one city and a dungeon. The third module was more of a hex crawl and was fairly wide open. Perhaps an exception that proves the rule.

My recent campaigns featured small settings as well. Sailors on the Starless Sea was just a dungeon with basically no setting at all. Doom of the Savage Kings was one village and a dungeon. One of my ongoing campaigns, The Web of All Torment, is set entirely in one building. We've been playing that game for months, and while a lot has happened, even after hundreds of posts, that building is still only partially explored. It’s not a castle or anything, either. It’s just an inn.

Bottom line, PbP is a slow format. I like it a lot, but I think it is best that as Game Masters (for those who are Game Masters) we try to choose or build campaigns that lend themselves to the strengths and limitations of our format.

How long do you want your campaign to last? Is it going to last years? If so, you could describe an entire region or part of a kingdom. Do you want to move on to something else after a few months or a year? You might consider keeping both your setting and the story simple. You can have a lot of fun with a tight, detailed area.

How does this recommendation align with your experiences here on the site? Can you tell us about the games that have shaped your opinions? How do your current games align? If you're a player rather than a GM, would you rather have a deeper, smaller setting in a PbP campaign or a more expansive one?

Please discuss. Remember to be excellent to each other.

 

[yxanthymir]

In my experience, to make games flow faster, you need to cut the superfluous parts of your adventure, essentially making them a smaller setting. So if I use a module, I cut all unnecessary combat scenarios and superfluous rooms and encounters. I only use those essential to the narrative or with fun encounters. To compensate, I normally make them a little harder than normal.

Also narrative RPGs are way better since you can resolve things a lot easier.

[cailano]

I'm confused on the narrative RPG thing. Are they just rules-lite systems like FATE?

[eltorin]

Yes, like FATE and PbtA games, typically.

[roryb]

Often narrative games offer a richer set of outcomes than strictly binary yes or no, as well as some more player agency. Typically, these run on the lite spectrum of crunch with some notable exceptions (Burning Wheel).

[cailano]

Gotcha. I tend to play OSR systems, and the small setting thing works well in that paradigm, too. I suspect it would in any system.

[Powderhorn]

So, let me preface this with the fact that I continue to learn and find what works best for me.

Right now, I have two games on MW that I'm running on polar opposite ends of the spectrum. One, I have been running in varying formats for... a long time. That is To Lands Unknown (its current iteration), which you can see in the Setting Information is very widely fleshed out, with lots of stuff. The "World Map" is a massive hex crawl, and understanding that each hex is 25 miles, there has been a LOT of travel in and around the area. This is, for me, grand fantasy, where there are things moving in the background that I try to update on my notes on the back end, so that the world feels as big as it is in my head.

In some ways, for PbP, it can be tough to do such a grand thing because, like you said, a tighter focus tends to lend itself to the medium. Over time, there is always attrition. Some players have lost interest in the game, some players have lost interest in the site, and some players I suspect have passed on in the real world. Props to @thesloth who I believe has been there since the beginning, and will likely have his own unique insight on it. Still, for all the negatives of grand, sweeping narrative in PbP - I like it, and PbP lets me do this sort of thing when my RL group would not.

In an effort to ever more closely hone my own DM abilities, I also run a game on the other end of the spectrum. This is my Powderhorn's One Shots game. It's exactly what it sounds like - I write an adventure, the setting exists only as far as is narratively necessary (right now a city, a village, and a town, roughly in the shape of a triangle, with the city on the coast, the village in the mountains, and the town north of the city for about a week's journey by road). Here the focus is much tighter, though I do find myself tying to try things together into larger arcs as new groups and places are introduced. I think this does lend itself better to PbP, and is absolutely fun, so I don't want to discourage people from taking this path either.

[Aavarius]

9 hours ago, cailano said:

Bottom line, PbP is a slow format. I like it a lot, but I think it is best that as Game Masters (for those who are Game Masters) we try to choose or build campaigns that lend themselves to the strengths and limitations of our format.

Regardless of preference for small or big scopes, this is just solid general advice for GMing.

[thesloth]

🌪️you summoned me M'Lord? @Powderhorn

I was not there at the actual beginning, as I missed the landing sequences. There had been a human wizard who bowed out right before I brought my proto-paladin in. I will say that between Eric and you, I have "subbed in" to many games. I've been in another game that is several years in the running. In all those games regardless of scope or size, I saw lots of character churn. It is definitely a recurring hurdle for PbP.

For me, I see it as a bigger game killer than narrative size. I glanced through this discussion, which is more setting oriented than player churn oriented I think. But setting, in my opinion, affects player interaction and therefore churn.

 

As for setting size, I think the GM/DM has to manage "setting interaction" more than setting size. I enjoy the feeling of a broad world with a huge background. I like thinking about where some of my actions might be putting me/us in that broader world or impacting events. But, I have also seen a few games bog down badly over the characters walking through the market to talk to the next NPC, while they discuss preparations.

The failure as I think about it was that the setting, large or small, didn't give the players the necessary narrative structure for them to build in their mind's eye a picture of who or what they could interact with. I see DM/GMs who don't want to box players in become afraid to move the story along. I see players who, desiring to be respectful and inclusive, are all afraid to narratively push the group into an interaction.

I don't suffer from that, I have to remind myself to hold back. Especially as time zones for other players get involved.

In the market example there was not a descriptive context that let us see the merchant's tower (the goal) through the market, or even how the market was set up. Or even where the market was in relation to the inn we had just left. The GM was probably just interested in giving us a free hand to explore and prep. Three separate people not picturing the same setting will either clash horribly as they envision radically different but rational responses or, as we did, freeze awkwardly waiting for someone else to set the tone.

In Powderhorn's game we have a map, extremely incomplete from our perspective, but it gives us a common picture to work with. We just melded two groups, which went surprisingly well. Now we face a decision to go sneak up on an unknown group who could prove to be a valuable ally or deadly foe, or continue on with our original goal to visit a magical place that holds important knowledge.

We have a well defined setting in this former city, now abandoned and overgrown to the point that only a few cobblestones remain. We know that our original goal is a few days walk. We know that a potential ally or enemy is nearby who will not be easily swayed to our side. But, that potential ally would be a massive strategic advantage. Our small setting, the abandoned city and it's proximity to our first goal is well defined within the context of the larger setting. The potential allies or enemies play into our larger setting goal of carving out a land for ourselves within this continent and the risk they represent is also well defined. So we have well defined narrative structures at both the large and small scale that let us engage in productive debate and interaction. We don't have a clue how they will react to us. We're not even sure we can communicate with them. Large unknowns, but we have enough defined structure to debate our unknowns.

A large well defined planet with a great history but poorly defined immediate narrative structures can, in my opinion, leave the players with too many unknowns (like the market scene) and then we all falter.

Hopefully, I didn't just hijack your thread.

[cailano]

Not at all, I appreciate the specific examples.

I do think campaigns with a tight scope and good momentum are less likely to suffer from high player churn. It hasn't been much of a problem in my games over the last year. I've had one player drop due to not enjoying the game and another ghosted when their PC seemed about to die (but did not, ironically.)

I think it might have to do with a sense of progress. In a "short" game with a clear goal, the players can see the goal getting closer.

But it could be unrelated. That Jade Regent game I referred to above had the same four players for five years. I could just be very lucky.

[cailano]

@Powderhorn and thank you for your specific examples, as well. I like hearing from fellow active GMs. Always good to hear the voice of experience.

[Actana]

An interesting topic. I'm not sure I entirely agree, but I'm not sure I entirely disagree either. Of course there's the standard caveats of "depends on the game" and all that, but I want to take it in a different direction:

It's not about the scale of the setting, it's about the scope of the story itself. A setting can be expansive and full of things but still work because the story's focal points are more intimate and immediately approachable. This can be a real problem with a lot of setting books that just present you with a lot of information without any real interest in telling you about what to do in the setting. Most games don't care about vast swathes of history that happened ten thousand years ago, and even when they do they care about one or two specific things.

Jade Regent, while I've never played it and can't comment on how it does things in practice, feels like a solid case of this example. The whole caravan trip should be the focus here, to nurture the narratives inside it as the bonds of travel grow stronger, and then use the changing setting and scenery to highlight the characters and stories that are happening within the caravan, instead of going from one place to another to look at the pretty set dressing in the setting and get infodumped about this or that place. I don't know how it handles this, of course, but the idea isn't bad at all, just harder to do well.

Making a more intimate setting might be easier in a smaller scale setting, but I don't think it's that much better per se. Just different. There are a lot of emotions to be had in grand sweeping vistas and the idea of boundless possibilities over the horizon and a world that exists "out there". One just has to find a way to hone in on what is important and what the setting is bringing to the game. Making the world feel large within the story of the game is an entirely different thing to telling about how large the setting is, and also a lot harder too. Setting books are very bad at the former, though there are some exceptions too.

[yxanthymir]

17 hours ago, cailano said:

I'm confused on the narrative RPG thing. Are they just rules-lite systems like FATE?

Already answered. Yes, FATE is a good example.

And just to clarify a smaller game is not necessarily the same of a smaller setting. The setting itself can be huge, but it can affect the outcome of the experience since you will probably see less of that huge setting. Essentially making it appear smaller.

 

[cailano]

 

20 minutes ago, yxanthymir said:

Already answered. Yes, FATE is a good example.

And just to clarify a smaller game is not necessarily the same of a smaller setting. The setting itself can be huge, but it can affect the outcome of the experience since you will probably see less of that huge setting. Essentially making it appear smaller.

 

As in you select smaller region of the setting to focus on?

[yxanthymir]

Not necessarily, maybe small fragments of different places.