Campaign Setting Formats


While reviewing my backlog of PDFs, I was looking through a small campaign settings book (what and by who is irrelevant). As I'm looking through the Table of Contents, I see the same standard chapter - Races, History, Organizations, Religion, etc. On the one hand, this is a good, boilerplate approach to a setting and organized in such a way as to be easily digested by the reader. But on the other hand, I was thinking, is this the only way? We've been following the same basic template for presenting setting information since the late 70's. It's not bad (I certainly have done and am doing the same thing), but is there a better way?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Weights of Common Substances

Compiled by Andrew Roy The table below provides density figures for many common (and some not-so-common) substances. This information is useful for determining the weight (or volume) of objects and cargo. This table was pieced together from a wide variety of sources, listed in full at the bottom of the page. The inspiration for this comes from the old Dragon magazine article, "How Heavy is My Giant". These figures have not been rigorously checked. Do not rely on this as a scientific reference! Note on measures: Specific gravity is a measure of an object's density. A cubic centimeter of water at 4°C weighs 1 gram, and has a specific gravity of 1. The specific gravity numbers below can be read as "grams per cubic centimeter" (or kg/liter). A solid object with a specific gravity greater than 1 will sink in water. Weight in pounds per cubic inch and foot is also provided to save non-metric users some time on the calculator. Material Specific Gravity Pound
Read more

Very useful Caves of Chaos map

When it comes to dungeon maps, I favor utility over artistry. Maps with rendered furniture and torchlight shadows are nice, but if they’re only seen by the GM, they’re not very practical. I want maps that are clear and make layout with dungeon tiles easy. If they can convey additional information without being too busy, all the better. Given the above, I really like this map of the venerable “Caves of Chaos” I found on The RPG Cartography blog . Not only is it practical but it contains a lot of useful information without being overdone. The only thing it’s really lacking is a square grid, though that might have clashed too much with the other elements (maybe tick marks on the outside of the walls could have been substituted...?). I’m not sure how much use I’ll get out of this map, but it’ll definitely be a model for ones I make myself in the future. (Note: The first link is to a JPG of the map, but the PDF you can download from the second link is much higher quality).
Read more

OSE Players Companion

Image
For a variety of reasons, I've switched from 5E to Old School Essentials . To that end, I've created a PDF for using Mythosa with OSE, including house rules, what optional rules are used, and similar things. The PDF is available from the Downloads page.
Read more