I have been told by someone that:>The best performing setting in these [online venues that pick apart and criticize fantasy RPG settings] will always be a bog-standard western european fantasy setting with exactly one quirk, but not TOO big a quirkI am inclined to consider this to be sound advice. From what I have seen, the great majority of players seem to want something familiar and instantly imaginable in their heads, hence the bog-standard Western European fantasy setting, but also want a single interesting twist to distinguish it. Not two, three, or a larger number of quirks, because that would be too much mental load; just a single quirk, and no more.With this in mind, if you were to create a homebrew, bog-standard Western European fantasy setting, but could give it only a single quirk to distinguish it (but not too big a quirk), what would that quirk be?Use your own personal definition of "too big." Is "no humans" too big? Is "everything has an animistic spirit, and those spirits play a major role in everyday life" too big? Is "everyone has modern-day firearms for some unexplained reason" too big? That is your call.
>>94417854You say you want a medevial european setting, but you dont even know how many oxgoads are in a vingrate. You'd probably pay four pennies for a gallon of ale and forget you owe a christmas goose to the lord of the fief, walking around in your single layer doublet and no hood. People want an intuative experience
>>94417854A thread died for this.
The real issue is that "best performing" in terms of "whiny internet fags complain about it least" is a completely worthless accolade at best.
>>94417883Well, I did not say, "medieval," now, did I?
>>94417854The most popular D&D setting for decades has been the Forgotten Realms, which has a billion and a half quirks.You are mistaken.
>>94417854I mean the game you posted proves you wrong because it's not western euro with a single quirk, it's a kitchen sink fantasy setting with a think layer of wuxia autismGenshin alone has>medieval Germany>ancient China>feudal Japan>India if they were white>steampunk France>tribal South America/Africa
>>94417907Ha! Fair enough, that one's on me. My quirk would be that its medevial then
>>94417922Lots of people complain about FR.
>>94417854Man, just know your audience. Both fanrasy California and mudcore are viable settings for a certain demographic. If you want something objectively good, the trick is always execution. Execution can elevate a bad idea. Good idea inly can sell bad execution through the false advertising.
>>94418328The irony is that despite californian types swallowing up the industry, I've yet to actually see a proper fantasy california, like a fantasy landscape where you've got multiple climates like the mountainous regions and the beachy shores in such relatively close proximity to one another.
>>94418359California's climate and landscape design is unrealistic.
>>94418359I think that's mostly because no one gives a shit about beaches if the sea isn't really relevant.
>>94417854Nigger.
>>94417854I couldn't do it.And no, this isn't a "I can't imagine how I'd feel if I'd eaten breakfast this morning" couldn't do it, it's a bit more complicated than that.Due to how I build worlds, and make games (to be more on-topic), there's no way I could just make a western-European inspired fantasy with just [one quirk] that's not "too big" within what I consider "too big". Having a quirk in a world makes the world account for it, that's already too big. Thus, having a quirk in a game makes its mechanics account for it, which is also too big. Then, having the game account for the world's quirk brings numerous little quirks to the surface to make sure it makes sense for that quirk to be present and to not also overshadow everything else about the world.The concept is inherently invalidated by my methods.In terms of my design preferences, it's actually more mental load on me to try to find a way to include just one quirk that doesn't cause a chain reaction of possibilities. I don't think it's good world or game design to have something that stands out only for that thing to not be properly accounted for in the world, whether its the monsters/vampires "behind the veil" in urban fantasy, the supers in cape comics, etc, because a world with those things would be radically different from our own, in terms of not just surface level traits, but also of culture, politics, economics, etc.But, maybe I could do it, and it's just not a mental exercise that interests me enough, or maybe the workload would be too much for what little return I'd get from it. I don't know.I like your topic, though. Got me to think more about how I do things, so I hope you get something out of it.
>>94418045But they still play in it, or an "original setting" so similar it makes no difference.
I cannot possibly fathom the reason for caring about what people online think about your setting.
>>94417854You're missing the forest for the trees. Same problem with your asian setting from before.The >one thingcan always be several things depending on how you focus. The change(s) have to be engaging and catchy but flexible. The background themes and imagery has to be familiar. Consider warhammer fanatsy. >Europe but not>Tolkien but grittier >Early modernism/renaissance >Law vs Chaos but mostly just chaos etc. Many quirks. Still recognizable and easy for players to engage with.Consider Forgotten Realms>hundreds of quirksStill recognizable and easy for players to engage with. Try >less is more with regards to detail. The players aren't going to approach the game like a GM, they're going to have ideas already and want that to fit into what you make. So the gaps or 'less' lets you and them fit their ideas in more easily if you're going to be running the standard character arc style gameplay. >Single Quirk >17th century Europe but weird magic Has been working well for a few years at this point. Lots of historical material to draw on, familiar but different to players, lots of scope to zoom in or out on, empire and adventure etc. Not running a character arc style game though so character creation is fairly fast and integrated into the setting easily. >is no humans too bigVery likely. Most humans have a hard time reliably getting other humans let alone when things get further away. If you're doing no humans, again, less is more. Have a limited choice rather than an abundance of things with minimal reference. Stuff like Mouseritter works because the no humans is still familiar. You're likely playing online so a bit more of a tightrope with anthropomorphism. >animistic spirit Too big if it requires reworking everyday life. Gloss over that like pokemon. Works if you just run with it and don't get world builder's disease. You got world builder's disease though. >modern guns All of these can work if you don't make it too detailed.
>>94419009He seeks constant attention and approval from others, especially those who themselves seek attention and approval.That, or he's just trying to drive down interest in the subject of western-euro fantasy or trying to make /tg/ look more active than it actually is.
>>94419009They're using it as a sounding board for ideas. I don't think they care in the sense of >ohno strangers don't like my anime they're just trying to figure out why a thing they obviously like and pour a lot of effort into doesn't catch other people the same way. One of the nice things about 4chan is you can just ask shit and people will tell you. There's no pretense or whatever about who someone is, you can just read, comment and that's it. There's no loss. Same way you decided to post about what you can't fathom, although that seems mixed with some snark and superiority sort of stuff.
>>94419264>trying to make /tg/ look more active than it actually is.That seems more like the lack of moderation about the various /pol/ fallout post american election. There's likely a notable downturn in add revenue in the last 2 weeks and various weird things about bots.
>>94418359Shrek 2 is set in fantasy california.
>>94418359Sword Coast in FR is analogous to California. About 200 miles of extra coast line but that because scale in dnd is all kinds of wack. Has a fog shrouded port city. Oregon aka too fucking cold for californians to the north. Warm stuff in the south with very successful merchant empire aka LA.Mountain range with a desert and werdos to the east, Nevada. Even looks the same.
>>94418532what's the point? the other thread is all about calling OP a retarded faggot because he is, this thread at least includes some topic of discussion
>>94417854The Western European region is being colonized by a more advanced Africa. (With the African magic/technology advantage being more inspired by African mythology/religion/history than just "and they invented the spinning jenny and steam engine in 1200".) Powers inspired by the Dahomey, Baganda, Kongo, Merina, Mali, Imbangala, and Zulu compete to establish dominance over various feudal kingdoms. You're the colonized guys getting fucked over.
>>94420045this is one of the funniest posts I've seen this year
this board is fucking dead
>>94423415Oh baby muffin booboo lost their entertainment? Oh noesewosies baby muffin boo boo! Better cry and pout till someone makes it allllllll better for babbbbyyyyy. Just kidding, go kill yourself.
>>94421139>You're the colonized guys getting fucked over.Carthaginians, romans, sassanids, huns, pechenegs, arabs & berbers happened. Op will use vikings, knight orders but not arabs or turks.
>>94417922Forgotten Realms has zero quirks. It's bog-standard pseudo-European fantasy.
>>94423494I think you know that there is a substantial qualitative difference between Romans conquering Gaul and Germans conquering Namibia, and are just posting this out of some kind of bizarre rightoid reflex, so I'm not going to waste both our times explaining to you the difference.
>>94421139I play fantasy games to escape reality, anon. Why would I want to play that when I can just go into any "culturally diverse" city centre?
>>94417883>being this arrogant and this ignorantly retarded at the same time It's him...THE Dunning Krueger...
>>94418889>or an "original setting" so similar it makes no difference.Exceot if the difference is cutting out those half a billion quirks you just finished preening about
>>94417854>With this in mind, if you were to create a homebrew, bog-standard Western European fantasy setting, but could give it only a single quirk to distinguish it (but not too big a quirk), what would that quirk be?I consider this a failed premise, because I'm pretty sure that if you take 5 different anons on this board and ask them to picture a 'bog standard' western fantasy setting, you'll get 5 different ideas of what that means. Some will picture Forgotten Realms and some will picture Game of Thrones and some will just picture LOTR. What they consider the baseline will be dramatically influenced by whatever fantasy media they internalized.And that is the real trick: points of reference. The reason why trying to make a totally original fantasy setting in a TTRPG is so failure prone is because that world only exists in the GMs head so the players are required to be extremely active and invested in questioning the GM at every moment of play to know what the hell is going on, otherwise they don't have any idea what to expect. It requires a higher level of skill, and investment of time and effort, from both the GM and the players in order to work. This is why established genres and established settings are so crucial to TTRPGs, because your players need to have a baseline level of expectation in order to imagine a world with enough clarity that they can interact with it. "You are in a fantasy setting" is about as useful at the macro level as telling a player "you are in a room" is on the scene to scene level. What kind of room? Is there anything in it? Because the moment the player starts making assumptions what they are picturing and what the GM has prepared will diverge basically immediately. You can apply your one big quirk rule to this framework as well. "Like Game of Thrones, BUT...". But you still need a common point of reference with your players. And that is at the end of the day always going to come down to media, not concept.
>>94423940>Forgotten Realms has zero quirks. It's bog-standard pseudo-European fantasy.I mean I guess it depends on what you think of as a "quirk", but just off the top of my head: - Multiple vast underground civilizations - A giant, expanding desert to the east created by the fall of an ancient empire - Guns, but using magical smokepowder rather than gunpowder - Magical airships - Magical spaceships and space colonies - Countless races with countless subraces for each race - No one dominant religion. The overwhelmingly most powerful divinity in the setting is also expressly the one with the fewest worshippersNone of these scream "standard pseudo-European fantasy", which I'd expect to more resemble Middle-earth.
>>94421139>Scramble for Europe
>>94424524Aka, the "Migrant" Crisis
>>94423940Everyone has to lick a god's boots or be part of a wall for all eternity, that's its quirk.
>>94417854What do you mean, "performing"? Who are you competing with?
>>94420045Heh
>>94417854Anyone who says stuff like "BOG STANDARD" or "GENERIC" medieval western fantasy doesn't know shit about medieval western fantasy. Those are meaningless statements. It's not even a setting. The real medieval Europe was a pretty broad chunk of land and time so right out the gate you're not really saying anything specific. Further different media will have very different ideas of what that even entails. It sounds like whomever said this shit is just trying to be dismissive and thinks he's clever despite not actually experiencing or reading all that much.
>>94421139So it's just a modern day setting?
>>94423947No, there's no difference at all. Cope harder.
>>94423947Yes, the difference is that when Roman conquered Gaul, they were conquering humans.
>>94423466I hope your mom gets cancer you annoying fucking faggot
>>94428659nou
