Forcing Myself to Write- Day 4

Favorite Game World?

I used to buy campaign settings. This was back when I was a terrible GM and need professionals to build good scenery for me. I have held on to exactly two- Kingdoms of Kalamar and Gaia: Beyond the Dreams. Gaia is the last setting I picked up, Kalamar was the first. I'm better at world building now, even if I still have yet to publish anything to verify this, but these two settings have influenced how I approach it.

Kalamar is a mediocre campaign setting as is, because it is a more politically and culturally diverse version of the Forgotten Realms type setting- long lists of canonized details of lands with mention of monsters and treasure and shit, but no encounter tables and a few new feats and items scattered about for players. But one thing it did right was the notable NPCs. After hundreds of pages of dry description and charts, collected in the back of the setting book is everyone mentioned in a table with what level and class they are, as well as where they are found. No stats in the text, no possessions or equipment that is lugged around for the day they go to adventure, just class, level, and the implication that you know your group better than they do.

But Gaia is where it is at. At first just painted in broad strokes in the Anima core book, Gaia is a world that actually adds to the game. Notables are just given a class and level in parenthesis after their name. Locations were given no more than a paragraph unless they related directly to an adventure. And at the end of each country was given some region-specific generic NPCs, some stat bonuses player from here could take as a trait, and a random starting equipment/social status table for PCs from the area, clearly designed to replace the generic one in the core book. Couple this with the adventure ideas and the plots that were designed to be aided or foiled by players, and you have an amazing setting for many campaigns. It also helps that the world is clearly breakable- Gaia assume the player begin about six months after an empire has shattered due to some world shaking artifact being used in the capitol. I got the impression that you could do anything from that point, be it stealing and traveling without a care, trying to reunify the empire, or hunt down and kill the child empress.