Setting Design for 4E – Teerna (Part 1 – Theme)

Welcome to the first installment of what should be a multi-part series that shows how to take the core 4th edition Dungeons & Dragons material and pare it down to create a more coherent and tightly focused setting for a campaign.  Although the series will focus on 4E, much of this could be applied to other editions and RPGs as well.

Why pare anything down?

The biggest problem, in my opinion, with 4E’s notion of “everything is core” is that the game is rapidly becoming incredibly bloated in terms of races, classes, power sources, etc.  While it can be fun to simply throw everything in to a pot and see what happens, it also creates a very random and ultimately vanilla setting with no real theme or feel.  For example, the introduction of all the “core” races into the two published D&D settings (Eberron& Forgotten Realms) has taken what was once distinctly different settings and homogenized them – A continent of dragonborn suddenly appears, shifters start wander out of the woods of Cormyr and the result is something that makes both settings look a lot alike.

A better approach, again in my opinion, would be to mix and match the various elements of the game, to create much more flavorful, focused settings.  By selectively eliminating some of the choices (e.g., races, classes, limited magic items, etc.), you begin to make a more plausible and ultimately richer world because the differences between various elements become more distinct and interesting. The added bonus, for a DM, is that it cuts down one some of the sheer info processing you need to run the game – with fewer classes and races to worry about, for example, you have less powers and class features to remember.

Start with the Theme

The place to begin defining what your campaign setting will be about is with the theme – the unifying concept, subject and/or idea.  In terms of a campaign setting it includes the feel you’re going for (horror, gritty fantasy, man vs. nature, political intrigue, etc.), the scope of the campaign (short term, episodic adventure, epic quest, etc.), and the types of opposition the group will face (monsters, tricks & traps, scheming & treachery, etc.).  Settling on a theme lets you build your setting to highlight those elements you want to include and also makes cutting out non-thematic game elements fairly easy.

Keep in mind that the game system you choose has an impact on this – the 4E system really doesn’t support a purely social, political intrigue type game, for example.  Similarly, a game like Houses of the Blooded simply isn’t going to produce very satisfying dungeon delves.  Thus, when settling on thematic elements, play to your chosen system’s strengths rather than forcing a square peg in to a round hole.

The quickest way to come up with a theme is to brain storm out a list of things you want or don’t want to see in your campaign – sit down with a sheet of paper divided in to two columns and list the key elements you want to see in the left column (“Wants”) and those you want to avoid in the other (“Don’t Wants”).  Some of these might be thematic elements (e.g., a city run by the thieves’ guild) while others might be more specific, game elements (e.g., no elves!).   Save this list for later because it will come in handy during our next stage of development.

Once you have this list, see if you can come up with a setting pitch in two to three sentences that sums up the major thematic elements that are included on the list.  Look for a way to unify the themes in a meaningful way and try to write a pitch that would be appealing to others – ultimately this may become your pitch for the game group.

The Example – Teerna

If you’ve visited my blog lately you might have seen my posts about searching for new players and map-making.  All of this is prep for the start of a 3rd monthly game group, this one dedicated to playing 4th edition D&D (at least for the time being).  For this particular group I’m sharing the helm with another of our regular GMs – I will run a few sessions with him joining the group as a player, and then we’ll switch off and I’ll play and he’ll DM.  As a result, the two of us have been collaborating on creating our setting. Our goal is to create a small-scale, original setting as the basis of a sandbox, points-of-light style campaign.

After exchanging a flurry of emails, we each had generated a list of elements we wanted and didn’t want to see in the game.  It looked something like this:

Want: Alien fey (not cuddly, not part of ordinary life); horrific, powerful undead (no armies of zombies & skeletons); ancient ruins & lost empires; dragons are very rare and very powerful; lots of wilderness;  a compact setting with clearly defined “borders”; people trying to live in harmony with nature; ability to handle missing or drop-in players

Didn’t want: Orcs; deities that walk the earth or even influence daily life; too many races (no melting pot & no smorgasbord of choices); knights & castles; guys running around in platemail; no psionics!

With those in mind, we discussed the possibilities and settled on a basic premise and theme for our setting.  We decided to set the entire campaign on an archipelago located far out to sea.  The feel of the islands is more primitive that the default D&D setting, with a very Celtic feel to it.  The islands civilized inhabitants live in small villages and are much more clan-based rather than being ruled by nobility (so no feudalism) .  Perhaps the biggest decision was that there would be no deities – people either worship the forces of nature or worships gods who don’t exist in reality.  In other words, there is no divine power source and thus no clerics, paladins, etc.

Up Next

Next up in the series is a look at how we’ve shaped the 4E rules to capture the setting theme.