Jester David
Hero
I mentioned this point in the "Seriously, why no setting support?" thread, but felt it could deserve it's own discussion rather than being lost in the other arguments and discussion points.
Are settings well served by a big hardcover book?
Is that the best way of presenting the information?
I love books in general and have a soft spot for my big hardcover campaign setting books. And a softer spot for big boxed sets.
Buuut... they're not easy to use.
Flipping through a book in the middle of a game session is slow for rules, which are typically under logical headings and often have their own dedicated paragraph or bullet point. But it's so much worse when looking through a page for world information, rumors, the head of a city, etc. Important lore can be buried in a page.
And books are tricky because fantasy worlds are sprawling an interconnected. Characters relate to cities, cities related with neighboring cities and nations, nations interact, race information overlaps with nation information. But you can't easily fit that into a book. Instead, the elf entry says "x" while the elf nation information says "y". Neither can say both, because that's redundant, despite it being necessary in both places.
For example, let's go with Lord Neverember from the Forgotten Realms. He's an important figure to both Neverwinter and Waterdeep. So a book on the Realms should mention him in both places, since details on that character might be needed for games that take place around either city. But printing that information twice comes at the cost of other information, so you prioritize and put it in one location, requiring people looking at the other entry to flip pages. More of the book needs to be consumed for usability.
The *only* campaign setting I've seen work around that level of interconnectivity worth a damn was Ptolus. That relied on sidebars and sidenotes to refer people to different sections of the book and colour coded sections (and the sidebars) to make it easier to find out the whole picture.
But that kind of product requires a heck of a lot more work, since you need to write the book then read it a few times to figure out where sidenotes and references are necessary. And it still necessitates a lot of flipping.
I'd argue digital tools (a wiki, Epic Words, or something like Lone Wolf's Realm Works) is likely a far superior way of conveying that information than a book. An app would also be interesting, functioning like an offline wiki or digital encyclopedia. But that's a very specialized product...
Are settings well served by a big hardcover book?
Is that the best way of presenting the information?
I love books in general and have a soft spot for my big hardcover campaign setting books. And a softer spot for big boxed sets.
Buuut... they're not easy to use.
Flipping through a book in the middle of a game session is slow for rules, which are typically under logical headings and often have their own dedicated paragraph or bullet point. But it's so much worse when looking through a page for world information, rumors, the head of a city, etc. Important lore can be buried in a page.
And books are tricky because fantasy worlds are sprawling an interconnected. Characters relate to cities, cities related with neighboring cities and nations, nations interact, race information overlaps with nation information. But you can't easily fit that into a book. Instead, the elf entry says "x" while the elf nation information says "y". Neither can say both, because that's redundant, despite it being necessary in both places.
For example, let's go with Lord Neverember from the Forgotten Realms. He's an important figure to both Neverwinter and Waterdeep. So a book on the Realms should mention him in both places, since details on that character might be needed for games that take place around either city. But printing that information twice comes at the cost of other information, so you prioritize and put it in one location, requiring people looking at the other entry to flip pages. More of the book needs to be consumed for usability.
The *only* campaign setting I've seen work around that level of interconnectivity worth a damn was Ptolus. That relied on sidebars and sidenotes to refer people to different sections of the book and colour coded sections (and the sidebars) to make it easier to find out the whole picture.
But that kind of product requires a heck of a lot more work, since you need to write the book then read it a few times to figure out where sidenotes and references are necessary. And it still necessitates a lot of flipping.
I'd argue digital tools (a wiki, Epic Words, or something like Lone Wolf's Realm Works) is likely a far superior way of conveying that information than a book. An app would also be interesting, functioning like an offline wiki or digital encyclopedia. But that's a very specialized product...
