So You Wanna Play Some DND (Part 5, Genre and Setting)

Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide Cover - Wizards of the Coast (Press Kit)

.So far we’ve talked the basics of TTRPGs, popular actual plays and how to find a group. This week we’re continuing in our conversation on Session 0 by talking about themes, genre and setting for your D&D game. These can sound like 3 ways of saying the same thing but they are actually very helpful categories for figuring out exactly what kind of game you want to join.

Genre is the same as any other context. It’s the big aesthetics, structure and style that the game will draw from. There is horror themed D&D (like the famous Curse of Strahd adventure). There is whimsical fantasy and fairy tales (like Wild Beyond the Witchlight). There’s also Weird West, High Fantasy, Low Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Post-Apocalypse and Comedy and more (and any number of those thrown in a blender together). A lot of games go with a sort of Tolkienesque European inspired medieval fantasy but its not the whole range by any means. In fact a lot of popular actual plays delve into all sorts of strange genres even though they still use D&D.

Genre is the big picture stuff. As a player it is a big heads up on the kinds of challenges your characters will face and even some big hints on the kinds of characters who will really plug in and engage well with the world.  In a straight up Horror game you probably wouldn’t want to bring a silly comedic character like a knight from Monty Python’s Holy Grail (although in a mash up Comedy-Horror that would be so much fun). 

In a Weird West game you are probably going to want to lean into Western, Horror and Steampunk tropes. Grizzled gunslingers, wanderers with mysterious pasts, snake oil salesmen with twirling mustaches who get chased out of town. And you know to expect things like desert travel, livestock rustling, shoot outs and tense confrontations in saloons over poker games. The genre helps imply these sorts of details.

Themes can be more specific ideas that run through the world. Critical Role Campaign 2 notably emphasized a kind of political and institutional moral ambiguity that stretched across national lines as a central theme. In my own modern fantasy game we engage with themes of cross-cultural issues and complex national histories that influence the present day, all played out through the interactions of humans and the fey. 

These themes help zero in a bit on the kind of story the group is trying to tell together. They’re smaller chunks of story framing than genre but give you similar hints. If a theme in a campaign is debate or even violent opposition to arcane magic (Like Dragon Age), being a Wizard means you get to be right in the center of that theme. But if you play a Fighter you might not be able to engage as much with it.

Setting gets very specific about how all these ideas fit together into a cohesive package. In D&D terms setting usually refers to the whole world. All the locations and NPC’s and themes and genre etc. There are two big branches when it comes to settings.

First there are official published settings. These are settings created by Wizards of the Coast and updated through various books and adventures (and often accompanying fiction or other media). I’m gonna give a brief rundown of some of the current ones:

Official Settings

Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide Cover - Wizards of the Coast (Press Kit)

Forgotten Realms is the current primary world of D&D (in the published materials). It’s where most of the official adventures take place and it is the lore usually referenced in the books (but they are getting a bit more flexible about that). FR is sort of the archetypal Tolkienesque D&D fantasy. Dungeons, Dragons. Elves, Orcs. Magic and Swords, Adventuring etc. There is a bit of a mishmash of stories here but generally this is a world of big adventure and epic quests where the heroes are super-heroic and save whole kingdoms or even worlds at higher levels.

Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft Cover - Wizards of the Coast (Press Kit)

Ravenloft is a horror themed setting that exists sort of adjacent to Forgotten Realms. Some stories happen there in their entirety and some can include characters crossing over. But thematically, Ravenloft is built on Horror tropes. It’s a whole interconnected setting of bubbles of Horror trope worlds. A classic gothic horror Dracula world called Boravia, a world of Lovecraftian mind and body horror called Bluetspur, a zombie apocalypse world called Falkovnia and many more. Characters here are usually particularly flawed, haunted and broken or their adventures will quickly make them so. Often the PCs here are hardly heroes at all and they are helpless to some of the larger evils of the world.

Eberron: Rising From The Last War Cover - Wizards of the Coast (Press Kit)

Eberron is a high magic world that borders on the technological. Robot-like humanoids called Warforged are somewhat common and there are some magical versions of modern conveniences like trains and planes. The world is marked by political intrigue between major powers and the lingering scars of massive wars that were fought with unbelievably powerful magical tech. This setting lends itself to magical steampunk adventures, fighting on magic trains and engaging with wild new technologies, as well as complex noir and intrigue stories in the massive bustling cityscapes.

Explorer's Guide to Wildemount Cover - Wizards of the Coast (Press Kit)

Wildemount/Exandria is a relative newcomer and based on the setting of the popular Critical Role actual play. The world is relatively sprawling with huge regions that can accommodate an entire campaign. Wildemount specifically contains a politically fraught world with a handful of major powers in tense cold war-like standoffs with one another. PCs can adventure and go on epic quests in this world but expect the regional politics and powerful institutions to help, hinder or work out their own motivations.

Strixhaven: Curriculum of Chaos Cover - Wizards of the Coast (Press Kit)

Magic the Gathering also has several cross over properties that serve as settings. Theros is a Greek inspired world full of powerful and fickle deities that pushes players with challenges of faith and mythical monsters. Ravnica takes place in a planet covering city that is the battleground (literal and metaphorical) between 10 great guilds. The stories there are largely urban and full of intrigue and factional maneuvering. Strixhaven is a magic school themed setting where PCs play as students, undertaking their magical education in a college-esque atmosphere. Stories there follow a semester and year format and place great emphasis on developing relationships with NPCs over many interactions. It is well suited for coming of age stories and certainly lends itself to characters with at least some magical abilities (though it doesn’t require it).

This should at least give you an idea of the official settings out there. But keep in mind that these can play very differently at the table. A few tweaks can turn Ravenloft and its vampire master Strahd into Twilight, Buffy or What We Do In the Shadows. A shift in tone can make the Forgotten Realms a gritty crime story or a post-apocalypse. Most DMs and tables will make small tweaks to the lore and vibe so don’t always assume that a certain setting means it will look and feel exactly like the books.

Homebrew Settings

There are also homebrew settings. This is when a DM (and often the players) participate in the challenging but rewarding task of building a new world to play in. These settings can get totally off the wall and cover ground that the official books don’t. My own library of homebrew settings includes everything from a modern urban fantasy (streaming every Monday) to a surprisingly dark world populated entirely by muppets. These worlds can open up new types of stories and let players customize the world to the sorts of things they want to explore.

If you’re looking at joining a homebrew game, be extra thoughtful with some of the Session 0 questions we talked about in the last entry. The trade off for the extra creative freedom is that when things go off the rails there are even less boundaries built into the world to stop things from getting out of hand. If you’re looking at joining a homebrew game, ask lots of questions about themes, tone and setting so you can be sure it’s something you want to join (and so that once you’ve joined you can make a character that fits well).

Why It Matters

So things to remember. These big campaign questions of setting, themes and genre will help you see what kind of story you’re jumping into. They can give you tools to identify potentially problematic or exciting elements of the game for you personally. They can also help you see what sorts of characters will be interesting to play in these worlds. 

There are also sometimes mechanical/rule differences to be aware of. Some settings might not allow certain races, classes, items or spells. A low magic world might not have full casters or no healing magic. Many worlds won’t allow firearms or Artificers. And sometimes there are rules that help enforce the tone. Most games won’t worry too much about PCs eating/drinking/carrying/traveling in great detail. Certainly most don’t worry about non-magical ammo. But if you’re going to play a gritty survival oriented game suddenly that could change. Sometimes a thing might be allowed but only in a way that fits the lore. In my modern fantasy world (up to this point) almost all the non-humans are various flavors of Fey and related creatures. Certain worlds might only have humans or have no humans at all.

These are important topics that will help you know if a world is right for you and how best to be a part of it. And we’ll be back next week to say a bit more about these sorts of rules and close out our Session 0 talk with House Rules.

​If you've played some D&D what has been your favorite setting, homebrew or otherwise? New players, what setting or genre are you most excited to play in? Let us know in the comments!

See y’all next week!​​