Quick & Dirty Guide to Creating Published Settings

As I mentioned in my previous post about Using Published settings Publish settings have a few problems. I could be wrong but I don't feel this is unique to me. They give the impression that you are using someone elses setting, which of course is true. But in the spirit of DIY gaming the GM needs to get over that and make the thing their own. There is no reason the setting can't use and work with this assumption.

Back in the late 80s there was a book called A Quick & Dirty Guide to War. The authors James F. Dunnigan and Austin Bay went over all of the political flashpoints of the day (late 80s) and listed out the problems, the factions, and gave a number of likely outcomes (80% chance Iran attacks Iraq, 10% chance Israel bombs and diffuses the conflict, 5% status quo continues, etc). They gave a lot more detail on each one. The interesting thing is you could tell a lot about the factions by the possible outcomes.

Poetic Kaldor, map
used without permission

Now I imagine the same thing with a Published Setting. I'll use Hârn again. Instead of just saying it is 720 and go for it (which was sort of revolutionary in the day) they could have said:

Kaldor Possible Outcomes

• 60% by 725 increasing by 10% every year after.  Succession Crisis. The old King dies and the Earl of Pendath grabs for the throne. Having prepared for years his loyalists quickly take Tashal and Gardiren. The remaining nobles side against him. Mercenaris from all around flood into the Kingdom.
• 30% by 725 that Gargun raids (Hârnic Orcs) unit the nation behind the Earl of Olakane and the old King makes the Earl his heir prior to passing a few years later.
• 2% by 730 War with Dwarves of Azadmere. In order to fix national finances, and assuming the Dwarves would never leave their holes, the Royal Treasurer announces all debt to the Dwarves are nullified. The Dwarves do not take this well and march on Getha. 10% chance the Elves get involved on the side of the Dwarves.

Anyway, I'm not up on my Hârn stuff right now so the Earl might be conquering his own property in my example but hopefully you get the point. By providing jumping off points the Published setting would make it easier for a GM to make the setting their own, as well as provide lots of scenario ideas. Say the GM decides for the succession crisis, they could put the game right before it starts and play it out, or have it take place a decade later with a lot of new history that players wouldn't be able to Google.

This also gives an outlet for that little bit of novel writing that exists in every Publisher so that hopefully they can avoid putting that sort of garbage into their adventures.

Using Published Settings

Not long ago I'd considered starting up a campaign in the Hârn Setting. I was a huge fan of Hârn in the day. I even played HârnMaster for awhile before returning to my HouseRuled RuneQuest 2. I had everything published including the Ivínia and Shôrkýnè Regional modules. I never used those module and I may have only gotten the map of Shôrkýnè without any kind of Hârndex on the thing. My gaming ended about that time.

Poetic Players map
Used without Permission

So years later I got interested in gaming again and looked at the pile of Hârn stuff as a good place to jump in again. The place had beautiful maps of the environment, the kingdoms, every major city and a number of castles so it would save a lot of time staring there. 

But the vast amount of data to re-absorb was daunting. It wasn't so bad initially as it was provided in books that appeared all too seldom but now it was all there in one giant pile. A pile I was vaguely aware of but felt compelled to re-read to run Hârn right, but...

First I thought, although I wanted to run it right I kept thinking why? Hârn is like Anglo-Saxon England with no plate mail. Back in the day this was appealing, now I liked the idea of plate armor. They have plate on the mainland if I remember correctly but the Wizards in Melderyn wouldn't allow it on Hârn for some reason. But what is running it right? It's my game. I bought the stuff, I'd be the one running the game. I can do what I want.

Second I thought, players have access to all the info as well. This has benefits and negatives. It can take away surprises but also they can learn the background of the world using Google without my doling it out bite by bite. They don't even need to buy the thing. 

This is a problem that is not unique to Hârn. In fact it's thousands of times worse for some settings that have novels and far more backstory. Some even had cataclysm to temporarily fix the problem and get folks to buy everything again. And that's the fix I was looking for but the idea of a cataclysm? Well that wasn't right.

Why not just advance the timeline? Everything published for Hârn takes place in the year 720. After that the world is owned by the GM, so why not bump up the timeline to 820 or 1520 and invent some of my own history. Don't like the Elves, well they left. Yes they were there but now are myth. Want plate? Without the Elves the pressure to keep plate off the island disappeared and it came in naturally through trading and spread of knowledge. And the wars? Oh the wars. Western Hârn is a balance of three powers, that can be mixed up any which way. Don't like the Roman Republic aspect of Tharda, write a change into the new timeline.

I guess the point is the Publish setting is the GMs, so why not truly make it yours, including outright creating some additional history on top to ensure the place retains secrets and to cement the idea that it is yours now.

The funny thing is when I first got the Hârn setting I was far less slavish about following things. I imported characters from Greyhawk and used Gods from some Dragon Magazine article and ignored the plate restriction. It was only as I got a bit older that I got wound up in the purity of the location which became a straight jacket later.