All I need is a map
While I’m running a 5e campaign with only a few home rules inserted, the setting is mine. I enjoy reviewing game settings, but seldom have I found one that I would use without extensive overhauling.
Too may settings, and D&D in particular, simply create a plethora of creatures and non-Human races, pack in Human nations based on brief descriptions or straight rip-offs of medieval Europe, pack it all into a metaphorical cannon, and fire it at the map.
I hate that. I run longish campaigns, usually 50+ weekly game sessions, and to make that work you need continuity, politics, and a sense of a living world. The PCs should hear news and rumors from day one, and as the game years go by and the PCs become more wealthy and powerful (usually), their interest in such matters should sharpen.
Nature abhors a vacuum, and political systems are equally intolerant. There should be those struggling up the structure, those on top fighting to hold their position, and others losing ground but fighting to hold or retake ground; plus those looking to destroy the entire edifice. In this regard the daily news is a great assets: the same struggle is being played out locally, regionally, nationally, and globally every single day, some politically, and some via violence.
Where I run into difficulty is the fact that I have the visual arts skills of a color-blind beetle. I have to take an existing map to make things work, and in the fantasy genre few maps measure up to my standards.
For my current campaign I am using Faerun because there are a staggering number of maps available in a wide variety of scales. Then I took the base concept from Shadow of the Demon Lord, seasoned with a hefty dose of War Hammer Fantasy extract, added a pinch of a Middle Earth in the midst of a protracted war against Sauron, and stirred well. I gathered the evil races into four major and two minor factions (tossing in the Skaven because frankly, the Skaven are the bacon of fantasy setting cooking), each with their own goals, plan, and tactics, and set them loose.
Happy fantasy settings don’t make for good gaming; you need war, hardship, economic ruin, and looming disaster (basically, base it on Detroit). You need the players to feel outnumbered, out-gunned, and hunted from the start, because down deep players want to be heroes and bad-asses, and to be those you have to face, and defeat, long odds and terrible risks.
Anyway, that’s my view of creating a gaming setting.
