Blackadder said:
Do you have any other examples of good and bad? You tended to pick two very shabby settings as your examples. Wizardry setting is merely a slight motivator, and not meant to give a giant tour de force backstory.
Wizardry (so long as you like the gameplay type) = all about the game.
Torment (so long as you actually like the story) = all about the story.
If you go into either of these games without enjoying the element, or catch, of each game, you might as well not bother. ie: Don't play Wizardry for the story/setting. Don't play Torment for the gameplay.
Hang on, FR has Kobolds, Gnolls, Werewolves, etc. Were you having a go at Dog People a moment ago?....why yes, you were! Care to elaborate?
Nnnnnnnnecro Reply!
Blandness can be an asset in an RPG setting, because by and large video game designers are quite bad at designing RPG settings, which is understandable as it is hard.
If you take your medieval fantasy RPG and set it in a bland part of the Forgotten Realms, the setting won't hold many surprises, sure.
But it's also not going to be offensively bad, and since we're so familiar with the generic fantasy elements and races, these bland concepts are unlikely to come off as wrong, out of place, or overly cheesy, and "take us out of the game". The setting won't be a strength of the game, but it won't be a weakness either, the game will have to stand or fall on it's other merits.
Orcs and elves are certainly bland, but they still come out far ahead of Cat People (Avernum), Dog People and Wookies (Wizardry 8) in terms of avoiding avoiding a cheesy or silly feel.
Avoiding silly PC races is much more important than avoiding silly monsters as with hundreds of monsters some level of silliness is inevitable, but there are only a few PC races and you see them a lot more, and may have to bring one along.
Avoiding the cheesy/silly feel is essential to help the player to "buy into" the fantasy world.
The worst settings tend to be the ones invented by video game developers trying to be original.
Let's take a little retrospective through
non action, Sword and Sorcery CRPGs, set outside of the FR, but still having non human playable races (so Darklands gets left out):
Arguably better than FR
Planescape: Torment - This setting is noteworthy because they managed to design some interesting new player races (tiefling, aasimar, giths, bariur ) that don't come off as silly. The standard fantasy races are also heavily present.
Of course, this is a licensed setting from Pen and Paper and one of the top settings they produced in terms of originality
Dark Sun 1,2 - Still has elves, dwarves, (cannibal) halfings, etc but introduces some decent new races (muls, half giants, thri-kreen), as well as psionics, and overall puts a very nice spin on things to keep it from being your standard fantasy world.
Of course, licensed from a pen and paper setting
Betrayal at Krondor - Elves, Dwarves, Humans. Probably slightly less cheesy than FR, but that is primarily due to cutting out races and showing the non human ones they have less. Anything is going to come off as less cheesy when you are fighting mostly humans. Most importantly though,
licensed from a novel, not homebrewed by a video game developer
Arcanum - personally, I am so over the whole steampunk thing, but I'll grant you this was a quite high quality setting, considering it was made up by videogame developers. But of course, it keeps the orcs, elves, hobbits, ogres etc.
Ultima - The lack of cheese is based on addition by subtraction, almost everyone is a human, when they do encounter another race it's a big deal etc. If the game was trying to make for diverse character builds it wouldn't work, but since combat is a joke after the early series, races aren't so necessary. Might actually be able to be excluded, I forget if you ever get a non human in your party.
About the same as FR:
Realms of Arkania 1, 2, 3 : Solid but generic fantasy world with orcs, elves, etc. Possibly a slight bonus for extra emphasis on human cultures. Essentially the same as FR.
Also a licensed setting from pen and paper RPGs.
Temple of Elemental Evil - Set in Greyhawk, which is the exact same shit as FR but more generic. Orcs, Elves, etc
Also a licensed setting from pen and paper RPGs.
Dragonlance - again, same generic fantasy stuff with minor twists. Less generic than Greyhawk/FR but also probably a bit more cheesy than FR in most cases due to the book tie ins and over use of dragons, but not significantly so. The games didn't seem cheesy at all if you hadn't read the books.
licensed
Ravenloft - It's horror D&D, with dwarves and elves etc, but the videogames were probably not the best way to judge the setting as a whole. Cheese level likely highly variable,
a licensed setting from pen and paper RPGs.
Worse/more cheesy than FR:
Avernum - Cat people, lizardmen and generic humans. Strictly worse than FR in terms of races; Sillier due to Cat people, but also less interesting in terms of character building as you have 3 races to pick from, but humans are worthless and lizards are only good as pole fighters so you end up running 4 Cat people or 3 Cat people and a Lizard. Being in a cave was interesting although poorly used.
Might and Magic - just a slightly dumber version of the Forgotten realms, with a poorly done Sci Fi twist at the end of each game and a tiny fraction of the backstory. Orcs, Elves etc, although in the poorly regarded Day of the Destroyer, they introduce PC races which are from generic fantasy, but usually NPC only, like trolls and dragons and vampires and dark elves. Inoffensive, but just lacking any real development due to being made up for a videogame.
Wizardry - All the classic fantasy races, plus Cat people, dog people, lizard people, dragon people and wookies (fucking wookies man). Essentially the nightmare scenario.
Wizards and Warriors - Elephant people, Lizardmen, Ratmen, Tigermen, complete with ridiculous names. Fuck you D.W. Bradley, fuck you. Elephant people!!?!!??!?!?!?!?!?!?!? fuck
Spelljammer - I can't say I gave it a fair shake, but it seems to me this is a case of being too original.
Septerra Core - JRPG world designed to cash in on FF7. Only on here for completion's sake, although the setting wasn't as bad as the Wizardies or anything.
Not sure
Dragon Age Origins - did not play, have heard it is pretty much a generic dwarves and elves setting with some renaming and low quality "modern" twists like using fantasy races as stand ins for real life human groups
Geneforge - did not play, found real time outside of combat concept upsetting, as well as finding setting offensive
Entomorph - ???
Magic Candle - elves, dwarves, goblins, lizardmen, amazon, wizards as a race
Bards Tale - by three we have all the standard races, plus gnomes and half orcs
Conclusion
1) Video game developers are not original enough to come up with anything besides
a) all humans
b) generic fantasy races... possibly with a minor twist on some of them
c) some sort of ridiculous animal people
2) FR may be bland, but what does that make the huge numbers of CRPGs set in inferior clone settings (or homebrew clone settings like Might and Magic with no where near the backstory to draw from)?
3) We are kind of fucked. Since D&D is dead, and by far the best settings were licensed from D&D products.
4) Arcanum is really unique in having a good setting yet not being licensed. Too bad they didn't make the gameplay better.
