Quote:
Originally Posted by Rev. Pee Kitty
I'm fairly certain I never said that, because if I had, I'd be lying. There are most definitely not "two settings" in MH.
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I'm not certain how anyone got the misimpressions that they did, but I'm concerned that it may be my fault. So I'd like to be completely clear here:
First, understand that different people mean different things by "setting." For some people, a setting is as simple as "medieval Europe" or "a terraformed Mars." For others, a setting can't be called a setting until it has a campaign theme, a purpose, and broad sketches of a few key movers and shakers that will affect the plot of the game. And for some, a setting isn't a setting until the GM knows all of the important NPCs and organizations -- and has motivations for each and plots already in place which take their actions into account.
I'll refer to these settings as "rough settings," "detailed settings," and "complete settings," respectively.
It's worth noting that two games could have the exact same rough setting, while having totally different detailed settings (e.g., "a game on modern Earth where you'll be fighting wars" vs. "a game on modern Earth where you're all teachers at a high school"). The same holds for a single detailed setting supporting multiple complete settings (e.g., I could run a game where you're all teachers at a high school, but give one an urban city feel with NPCs and plots lifted from a police drama, while the other has an anime feel with lighthearted humor and romance).
And here's the two great parts:
1. When I say "setting," a third of you think of a rough setting, a third think of a detailed setting, and a third think of a complete setting. And everyone starts talking under that assumption, but continuing to simply use the term "setting."
2. For
everything I just said above, you can substitute the word "campaign" for the word "setting," and it all holds true to almost the same extent. One man's "campaign" is another man's "setting" -- I hear the two used to mean the same thing (by different people)
all the time. And frankly, I'm not saying this is wrong.
But I digress.
So, let's look at the various "genre series," or whatever you'd like to call them.
Dungeon Fantasy
DF has one rough setting: a pseudo-video-gamey, tongue-in-cheek (but not necessarily silly!) take on medieval Europe.
It had zero detailed settings until DF10 came out. Arguably, the various taverns (and the towns they're in) could be used to run an entire campaign; there's no reason any of those cities couldn't be "the Town." But I'd respect the opinion of anyone who felt that these inns and towns don't count as "settings."
DF has no complete settings.
Action
Action has one rough setting: modern-day Earth (where "modern day" can swing up to a few decades back in time if desired). Since the real world is kind of boring, Action 2 includes a lot of advice on making it feel more cinematic and over-the-top than modern Earth usually does.
Action has no detailed settings. It does have nine "campaign types," however, each of which offers
some of the info one would expect in a detailed setting. (This makes sense, since the assumption is that you're out to emulate a particular kind of action movie; thus, Action focuses more on giving you advice and tools for emulating a particular setting
instead of offering up a lot of specific, fixed settings to begin with.)
Action has no complete settings.
Monster Hunters
Monster Hunters has one rough setting: modern-day Earth. Our world. ("But there are no monsters in our world," you say? That's what the people in
this setting think, too!) For this rough setting, MH2 includes a
lot of advice on turning it into a supernatural game with dark conspiracies, properly evil bad guys, and so on.
MH2 has six sample detailed settings. All are relatively brief, but are definitely enough to get the GM and players started.
MH has no complete settings.