What makes a good setting?

[Kalzazz]

As setting is clearly important, what makes a good one?

[skeloric]

1. Diversity.
The game has to appeal to as wide a range of people as possible without losing its theme.
Look at the games that could seemingly take place on "Earth":
1. conspiracies
2. Ghost/Vampire/Cryptid/"general monster" hunters.
3. crime/justice
4. "secret agents"
5. secret alien invasions or Cthulhuesque incursions.
In just those 5 alone I've covered a lot of RPG and Modern Day Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Occult fiction.

2. Evocative of the previous mentioned fiction.
Characters such as a BATF agent known "Wolf" Clay, who in his daily role keeps an eye out for "weird stuff" to the annoyance and amusement of fellow BATF agent Lindsey Cookman.
Very X-Files, wouldn't you say?

3. Ease of immersion.
If it takes 6 months of intense reading just to get a sense of the way that the world works, most people have probably not kept at it.
The surface should be easy to accept and to describe.
One should have to go really deeply into the setting before it gets difficult to grasp.

4. Fits/fulfills the public's declared and (hopefully) undeclared needs/desires.
If all the previous 3 have been aimed for and attained, this last one clinches the deal.
The greatest book in the world about roleplaying a small and very obscure group of people who once lived in ancient Bangledesh around 499AD, probably has a audience of about a dozen people outside that immediate region.
Imperial Rome or Victorian England -- however -- seems ready made for success and eager customers.

[Havard]

Skel makes some good points. I like systems that are designed to support the uniqueness of a setting. Perhaps the opposite is also true: If you want to make a setting for D6 or one of the other WEG systems, it should be a setting which plays upon the strength of that ruleset, rather than one which leads you to look for systems to convert the setting to. I would still love to see Septimus for that reason.

Havard

[SDF_II]

As setting is clearly important, what makes a good one?

Well I'd say a setting that is in the midst of change, or ripe ready for it. History is a must. *ponder* Oh, and stereotypes that people can relate. Nothing worse than playing an edienos and not knowing exactly how.

*shrug* more later if I get time.

SDF II

[The Game Guy]

For me it needs to be a rich setting, but one that doesn't have so much Meta story that you are limited to what you can do.

I don't mind some Meta Story, but when it really limits what you can do I usually don't last playing the game.