When a GM presents their campaign setting for their new game, which of these is the worst option:

I'd personally have to say the bog standard. It offers very little of interest if they played it that safe. At least some of the others might have an original idea at the core.

I tried to write a thing that divorced a lot of the tropes that are jammed into most of the games I end up playing in. Not subvert, but divorce. There were no elves or dwarves. Not that they were "Oh these are our dwarves, they're different". There just weren't any. Luckily I realized that it was practically unfeasible to ever play the setting as I'd have to explain each working part to my players and shelved it to be used for something else. It could work fine as a book, where there's more opportunity to communicate the weird differences from our expectations and such. It just wasn't good for a tabletop roleplaying game, where concepts need to be packaged in ways that can be communicated quickly so to facilitate play.

All of them are bad, but then I've come to realize that most things are simply window dressing more or less and I'm sick of seeing the same drapes no matter how you try to jazz it up.

The self aware one or the avoid "generic fantasy" one. Both of these often have GMs trying super hard to prove how original their setting is and it just wears on me super fast.

So what are you looking for in a game, then? Something with no elves and dwarves at all, set in a non-medieval timeframe in a non-European pastiche?

I don't think I can give an honest answer to this, because I see value in every option and think "Why can't it all be woven together?", but...option 3 or 5 have the largest potential for abuse and That DMery of the list. I say those are the worst ones.

Not enough information given.

It depends on a few factors, like what the tastes of my group are. For example, I'd gladly play a wacky setting with one of my two groups, and for the other I'd probably prefer something else.
Then there's how good the setting actually is, how realised it is, and what we as players do in it. For example, one of the settings I currently play in is a pretty grim setting where most things are shit, but we're playing as the last bastion of ambiguously good guys that have adventures that we fill with black humour. If we were playing shitfarmers trying not to die in the very same setting, that would be a very different game.

If I had to choose, I'd probably say my least favourite in general is the "trope deconstruction", but only if it's some setting where deconstructing tropes is the primary goal. If you're avoiding tropes to try to create something interesting or to shake things up for the players, that CAN be good, while a setting where tropes are deconstructed merely for the point of deconstructing them is something I'd avoid, because that isn't really about the players.

All the others might be okay but "subversive" fantasy had no possibility of being redeemable

"Wacky." Always.

Im fairly positive you don't actually play rping games.

I have never actually seen someone who was currently in a game that complained. Not once. I recognize the possibility but I imagine you don't play and are more complaining about tropes you don't like.

>The GM's game setting is bog-standard medieval high-fantasy set in a faux Europe with woodland elves, orc hordes, wizard towers, and dwarf mines. Effectively indistingushable from Dragonlance or Forgotten Realms, save a bunch of new proper nouns to learn and a new map.
not so cool but ok
>The GM has set out to avoid "generic fantasy" as hard as possible, resulting in every imaginable convention being arbitrarily turned on its head. The setting has elves and dwarves, but THESE Elves all pilot magitek mechs, and THESE dwarves all live in floating airships. Setting may or may not have another genre layered on top of high fantasy, like "Post Apocalyptic" or "Gaslamp Fantasy," but the party will still go dungeon delving at the end of the day.
ok if good "written"
>The GM's setting is "self-aware." He'a set out to deconstruct all the "tropes" he can, often with some comment about "what if the implications of X in a fantasy setting were taken to their logical conclusion." People are probably assholes, but monsters are probably misunderstood.
the definition of cancer (this gm should be stoned to death with dices)
>The GM's game is set in a "dark fantasy" world. The peasants are all dying of plague, the nobility is all greedy and inbred, the elves are bloodthirsty cannibals, and the magic is vaguely Lovecraftian. Gods are either distant or dead. Paladins will definitely end dead too, given a few sessions.
i happen to like dark fantasy
>The GM's setting is 'WACKY!' He probably calls it "Gonzo." The gnomes ride two-headed cats and the wizards all have fairies living in the beards that give them magic and someone will probably make a Monty Python joke every session, because it's SUPPOSED to be silly, man!
sounds hillarious

Hey fuck you, wacky is great when it's done right.

I just want a setting that the dm actually tells us about the world before we step in.

I have been dropped into so many settings with all this lore and history they want to shove down our throats but I just do not care. Many times i have been given half a page of long forgotten history, been thrown in at peasant level and then been drug into meta plot.

I can not give a shit when the folks a town down are all wiped out because I never knew they were there until that moment. What I do know, that I can not bring up in character, is that the gods went to war with one another, fought demon snake people and then blew up not!england twice.

Things like work schedules and having to move to new places have always prevented me from playing nearly as many campaigns as I would like. So maybe it's just because I haven't played enough for it to happen, but I've never gotten bored or had any problem with super generic pseudo-medieval fantasy settings. I actually like the classic style and tropes.

>>The GM's setting is "self-aware." He'a set out to deconstruct all the "tropes" he can, often with some comment about "what if the implications of X in a fantasy setting were taken to their logical conclusion." People are probably assholes, but monsters are probably misunderstood.

Definitely this one.

I bet you have white bread and milk for breakfast.

Faux Europe doesn't seem bad, the list then git bad and progressively worse the more I read, with the exception of that "dark fantasy" world. That actually seems like a good campaign. I don't even like horror.

These are all examples of the lowest forms of worldbuilding.

Wacky.

Wacky is always the worst, because it's the first sign of incoming lolsrandom.

I haven't seen Wacky or Gonzo stuff done right for... well, I guess I've never seen it done right.

>I play mature games of fantasy pretend for mature people like myself.

>I must share the same board with these disgusting plebeians

Gotta say the "self-aware" one. cause I can see having a fun time in generic, "not"-generic, silly or grimderp worlds if I know what I am getting into by joining his game.
But if the GM is going to be a dick to us by having the baby monsters cry about their dead mommy, then we will be a dick and find a way to kidnap the monsters and sell them into the monster sex slave trade.
Basically the worst games are the ones where the players and GM are just pissing each other off for no good reason.

>>The GM's setting is "self-aware." He'a set out to deconstruct all the "tropes" he can, often with some comment about "what if the implications of X in a fantasy setting were taken to their logical conclusion." People are probably assholes, but monsters are probably misunderstood.

This person is usually completely unaware of why those tropes are effective in the first place, and is probably a habitual contrarian.

>The GM setting is a fantasty setting, but actually has none of the standard races in it. No one cares because who wants to learn about a dozen races the GM made up over two months?

2>1>4>5>3

in order of least shit to most.

At least with 5 you can do whatever the fuck you want because it's not like anyone else gives a shit

with 3 it's just time to hit the liquor.

I'm playing a Catholic magical girl maid in a Halloween Maid two-shot right now. It's pretty fun.

>>The GM has set out to avoid "generic fantasy" as hard as possible, resulting in every imaginable convention being arbitrarily turned on its head. The setting has elves and dwarves, but THESE Elves all pilot magitek mechs, and THESE dwarves all live in floating airships. Setting may or may not have another genre layered on top of high fantasy, like "Post Apocalyptic" or "Gaslamp Fantasy," but the party will still go dungeon delving at the end of the day.
Because it usually ends up being even harder to remember what's what than your generic fantasy with different names (not only do you have to deal with remembering a new piece of information, you now have to dissociate it form its previous implications before you can do that.
and
>The GM's game is set in a "dark fantasy" world. The peasants are all dying of plague, the nobility is all greedy and inbred, the elves are bloodthirsty cannibals, and the magic is vaguely Lovecraftian. Gods are either distant or dead. Paladins will definitely end dead too, given a few sessions.
Because not only the GM probably running the same thematically moribund game that they would be running in any of the other settings mentioned, but now they're patting themselves on the back for doing it in a way that's "better" because it "doesn't have any of that stupid moralfag shit" and is probably meant to have some kind of moral about how awful power is and we'd all be better off in some kind of anarchist commune.

>Bog-standard medieval high-fantasy
Tolerable to good, pretty much depends on how well the GM can make it all evocative.
>Anti-fantasy.
Tolerable to fuck-off depending on how obvious it is that the GM is just being contrary for the sake of it.
>Self-aware deconstruction
Guilty as shit of this and I don't care, I will die on this hill.
>Dark Fantasy
Fuck-off, will be willing to do this again in about five years when ASoIaF stops being popular.
>Gonzo.
Absolutely the goddamn worst.

The self aware one, because as long as I'm given a heads up I can swing the others, but "self-aware" tends to just be self-gratifying pretentiousness. Like when people claim to listen to music ironically to not have to admit they actually like the artist/song.

>but deconstructionalism is always a prelude to moralizing
What moralizing does Madoka do?

You sure sound like a faggot, tbqh.

I'll live with the pain of your judgment.

>Speak in context of a p&p game
>Some fag starts talking about anime
>"Wow this thing you said makes no sense in this totally different context!"

Consider suicide.

Its pretty great if you pull it off right
Ie not all the time and actually thought out

None of those are bad if you have a good GM. I'd play all of them

No it isn't, because your conception of "doing it right" is likely just another example of why it's awful.

This. I've been in plenty of deconstruction games and they were universally terrible, and every single fucking time, the GM revealed himself to be a shithead trying to "teach us a lesson" about something or other, usually using highschool-level philosophy or some concept he learned from anime, read a wikipedia article about, and declared himself an expert about.

Preach it brother!

Deconstruction is possible but you can't over do it. You never completely deconstruct the setting. And often leads to poor execution

And selling a game on wacky is can lead to laziness and poor execution. Comedy is more difficult than people give it credit

These threads make me incredibly self-conscious about worldbuilding. It feels like the only way to avoid all of these trappings is to make something set entirely outside of fantasy europe with none of the standard fantasy races, and run things in fantasy India or fantasy Arabia or something

I got over that by prioritizing these two things when world-building: I look at what I wrote, and then think
>Okay, but is it fun?
and
>Okay, but is it cool?
If it's not fun or cool, I re-examine it and try to make it fun and/or cool.

That being said, everyone has a different idea of what's fun or cool, so you're not going to please everybody, but you don't have to do that, so stop worrying about that, too.

Don't listen to these faggots, a setting might have different cultural background and still be shit. Fantasy Europe is great if done right. Don't focus on trying to be "unique" and "different", focus on doing something interesting and fun

Who hurt you

4. 4 is cancer, while all the other settings you suggested are benign under a competant DM.

Madoka is not a complete deconstruction by virtue that for something like it to have been considered, the conventional world military would have literally fought to the death before allowing the little girls that they swore to defend to take arms. Madoka should have a living father.

Should not have*

5. I don't like wacky settings.

I'd go with #3, tentatively, like a lot of other people here

but anything on that list could range from abysmal to great depending on the GM. good storytelling, descriptions, etc. go a long way, but a GM who wants their world to be the star of the show and assumes everyone's fascinated with it could annoy you with pretty much any setting. a GM who's done some fleshing out of the setting but mostly uses it as a flexible backdrop for plot hooks etc. could probably make a good game out of any of these

Shit GMs who kept telling themselves they were the ones doing poor ideas correctly.

>>The GM's game setting is bog-standard medieval high-fantasy set in a faux Europe with woodland elves, orc hordes, wizard towers, and dwarf mines.
This is the best option. However...
>Effectively indistingushable from Dragonlance or Forgotten Realms, save a bunch of new proper nouns to learn and a new map.
...if you think that the pastiche that is FR closely resembles a mythical europe, you must be an ameritard.

Furthermore, none of these options are worst, it all depends on what you're in the mood for at a given time, OP. I suspect that the replies in this thread also merely reflect an user's current mood.

That is always annoying when the DM's attempt at a primer for the setting has a bunch of info irrelevant to the pcs and is missing out on key facts.

While knowing a common legend about how the world was made is fine, I would expect them to know about as much about the names of surrounding towns and any major local authority figures.

>safe/10
Uninspired but you know what you're going to get and will most likely work out.

>donutsteel/10
Could be fun, could be utterly ridiculous. Will probably only last a few sessions as a few players will leave for a more stable or more familiar setting.

>dindunuffin/10
Literally everything becomes a stupid as fuck moral quandary. Players are treated like shit because they kicked a rock, which made a wagon wheel break, which made the merchant behind schedule and need to fix his wheel, but a poor misunderstood goblin that was only trying to get food for his fellow evil goblin family decided to take his chance on the broken wagon and stole (enter some valuable here), forcing players to retrieve it, but this will make the oh-so-innocent goblin family starve, and when they come back the merchant is pissed because they started it all in the first place leaving nothing but a bad taste in every ones mouth. WORST of the lot. We have a winner.

>CRAWWWW/10
Filled with That Guys.

>will-be-used-as-fuckoff-sessions/10
No one will take it seriously, and that's how it is meant to be. Will never have consecutive sessions and will only be used when Forever DM needs extra time to setup for the next session or is feeling DM fatigue and everyone wants to unwind.

1 > 2 = 4 = 5 > ketchup on steak > walk a mile with a single LEGO piece in your shoe >>>> owing money to the cartels >>>>>>> 3

I think the main thing to keep in mind with subversion and sex instructions is that they shouldn't be done just for the sake of it. Your elves shouldn't breathe fire just because you need them to be different. If you happen to have a world where elves breathing fire fits perfectly into place though, why not?

None of them, gotta take what I can get.

>literally everything you said about Madoka

Bummer

Yeah, you need to be able to answer the question of "why am I still calling these creatures Elves" with a more satisfying answer than "so I can feel smug about how different they are from all the other Elves."

So long as you can do that, you're good.

>tfw you live in Suckmarsh

Give an example.

>>The GM's game setting is bog-standard medieval high-fantasy
Nah that's fine. Unimaginative, but it'll get the job done.

>>The GM has set out to avoid "generic fantasy" as hard as possible
That can get on my tits something fierce, but it depends on the execution.

>>The GM's setting is "self-aware." People are probably assholes, but monsters are probably misunderstood.
Ugh. I'm fine with deconstruction, but monsters should remain monstrous.

>>The GM's game is set in a "dark fantasy" world.
^^This is the second-place contender for terribleness. Most people are not skilled enough to pull it off.

>>The GM's setting is 'WACKY!' He probably calls it "Gonzo."
^^And this one takes first place. Not that silly isn't OK in your game, but it's definitely not OK in my game. I am too god damn terrible at handling silliness.

All of these subject to DM skill, of course.

I kinda like that map actually...

In fact...I think I'll use it to do some drawfagging.

>I don't think I can give an honest answer to this, because I see value in every option
Agreed, although I'd say 4 has the most potential for having problematic results

What the FUCK does "Gonzo D&D" actually mean anyway

Your DM is this guy.

Been working on a sci-fi setting where the players are a bunch of low level punks on a Mars colony, punching above their weight. Public intoxication, grand theft mecha, vandalism, etc. Protect your turf from other gangs, but don't forget that crime is supposed to be fun.

In Shadowrun you're a bunch of professionals taking on jobs to infiltrate giant corporations; in this game you're a bunch of assholes out to paint the red planet red.

Is this a good idea?

Probably 2 and 5 would bug me most out of those.

I like generic tropes with a specific theme, tone, or twist tying them together.

Mine for example is a sort of pre-gaming generic that leans more heavily on folkloric and pseudohistorical sensibilities. Not in a "akshually vampires were initially x" sense but in the sense of trying to bring some of the old tropes and story structures in. That and I'm more about the amoral rogues finding their next bed, meal, etc. rather than the knights in shining armor vs Saturday morning cartoon villains thing.

I'd go for the total opposite of my thing if somebody else was running and they made an effort to keep that tone up for the duration though.

It's a good map. Everything you could want in an adventure is laid out somewhere on that map.