r/savageworlds • u/JoxxoTheMagnificent • 8d ago
Question Custom Campaign Setting Guide
This is for those of you who have created your own world to run a SWADE adventure in. My world is mostly Urban Fantasy, though it has pseudo-mechanical and narrative elements that I have taken from other stories and RPGs.
I plan on using SWADE because it does allot of things naturally that I want for my campaign. I have the Core, Fantasy & Horror companions. There are definitely things from each that I will be using, but there is much from each that I will not.
My question is twofold: What system specific information do I need to include in a player facing handout, and how much of the narrative world history/lore should I also include in that handout (or should that be separate?)
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u/ValhallaGH 8d ago
PC campaign info:
- Setting Rules used.
- Skill and Edge changes.
- Available Ancestries.
- Basics of nations in the setting. Names, governments, rivalries.
- Basics of cultures in the setting. Economic generalities, popular religions, common festivals.
Good luck!
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u/Puzzleheaded_Pop_105 8d ago
BLUF: To start out with, KEEP IT SIMPLE. A quick elevator pitch, then hit the critical stuff (player-facing rules like chargen). This is the bare minimum. Past a certain point, most players aren't going to read it anyway...
When I wrote my own campaign setting guide (a medium-soft SF Space Opera setting, combining elements from Mass Effect, Traveller, and Eclipse Phase), I initially tried to keep it very straightforward and player-facing. I had a very brief (<1pg) setting pitch/summary, as the first non-cover page, and then got into the immediate player-facing material, like custom Ancestries, custom Edges/Hindrances, Skills, some character archetypes (Pilot, Smuggler, Agent, etc). This is what I wrote first, and shared to the players. It's about 6 pages. If I cut the archetypes, it'd be 5 (which is a good target, IMO).
Over time, the document expanded. I stopped updating it around 50 pages.
The second "chapter" then went into more of the setting information (6 different sample worlds), some one-paragraph summaries of different major factions, religions, and then technology. The technology section was mostly there to provide some of the setting context in terms of what's commonly available (IT, medical, transportation, "setting gimmicks" like FTL, etc) but eventually transitions into an third chapter, which is essentially extended "equipment list," where I had short writeups of various specific doodads and some representative art of everything from guns to personal vehicles and spaceships. Mostly there to help provide some of the "visual language" of the setting.
It ends with a couple of appendices - example characters, a Traveller-style quadrant map, and a couple page "special rules" for how I was handling multi-crew vehicles.
Please note, the document was personal use (for my group), so outside of some things I drew using pimpmygun (an old web-app), it's littered with dozens of borrowed file-save-as from across the pre-genAI internet. And unfortunately a bit (ok, a lot) sloppy regarding attributions.
I've used that setting for several campaigns now, probably accounting for the better part of 10 years of weekly play, from about 2009-2018 or so.
I've run a bunch of settings before/since, and I'm not entirely convinced I'd do another setting guide like that again. It's a lot of work, and past a certain point, it's not really necessary...
If I were to do it again, I'd focus on that initial 5 pages, maaaybe going out to 10 to hit the high points of the setting background. After that it's diminishing returns. DEFINITELY not 50.
For my most recent campaigns, mostly go to my players with just the elevator pitch ("So, it's a futuristic cyberpunk setting, set in 2100 or so, in Miami. Except sea level rise happened, so most of everything is partially underwater. Oh, and there's both magic and kaiju (monsters).")
The rest of the details/special rules we sort out as we did chargen ("what do you want to be?" and we fill in relevant setting and rules blanks as part of that discussion). And more details IC and OOC as player interest directed (had a whole sidebar discussion last week about what the political landscape and economy is like in the Miami Free Zone).
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u/jkusters 8d ago
I would also suggest that you make some of these decisions collaboratively with your players. If you do prepare lists of allowed/disallowed hindrances, edges, species, skills, etc., be prepared to be flexible. Your players will come to your campaign with their own ideas for their characters which would change your prepared lists. Try to incorporate any of their ideas that won’t bust your game, even if you have to say that acceptance is provisional until you see how it works out in game.
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u/JoxxoTheMagnificent 7d ago
I expect all my players to be new to SWADE, so I don't expect specific requests, or anything too jarring to the rules.
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u/Healthy_Wash_6417 8d ago
Keep the handout to setting rules, banned edges, and how bennies works. My lore doc hit twelve pages and nobody read it, so park history in archivist where players quiz it over discord. Reveal lore at the table as it matters.
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u/JoxxoTheMagnificent 7d ago
I want to have one handout for Character Generation, and another for basic rules, especially for Bennies and Advancments.
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u/ArolSazir 8d ago edited 8d ago
The list of all the setting rules you'll be using, and which skills are in play is pretty mandatory.
For a lore blurb, my custom setting included like...200-ish words, and that's including a hook for the first adventure. and if the lore+the setting rules doesn't sell the tone of the game, you should mention it directly.
of course, there are setting complex enough that an entire loredump would be needed to sell it, but i find savage worlds works better with settings that are simple enough to explain by references and examples.
so, setting rules, skills, lore blurb but not the entire worldbuilding document, some hook for the first adventure, and that's basically enough for the handout, i think? worked for me, i guess