3.2 Selecting a Setting

The setting is the backdrop for your story. It includes a core concept and lists some locations, NPCs, influential groups, special powers, the level of technology, different cultures, and so on. When the PCs act, they do so within the context of the setting. The setting often includes adversity for the PCs as well, though you should definitely add more personalized adversity based on the PCs’ links and seeds.

For example, the setting for Vampire Hunter D is the far future, in which vampires have enslaved humanity. We see only a snapshot of that world, however, a town and the nearby vampire and demon lairs, so the defined setting is pretty small, but you could easily make up fitting locations and people from the mood and the inspiration of what’s there. Vampires and their demonic minions are the built-in adversity here.

The setting for Avatar, on the other hand, is a completely different world with four element-based nations and lots of NPCs, cities, and legends of things past. These are introduced bit-by-bit throughout the show, which you can do with spontaneous setting development. The firebenders are the default adversity in this setting.

There are some premade settings provided in this game, as well as directions on creating your own. In Anima Prime, there are hundreds of worlds in which you can set your game. These worlds are filled with all sorts of cultures and creatures. You can create any one of those worlds on your own, or even just a snippet of one, and don’t have to worry about doing it “wrong.” Then you can develop it as you play, spontaneously. Take a look at the Final Fantasy series of video games, too, which almost always introduces a completely new setting with each iteration and develops it bit by bit as the story progresses.

Settings in Anima Prime are supposed to be evocative rather than canonical. That means there won’t be page after page of information that you’re supposed to memorize and then recall during your game. This is a spontaneous game, after all, and you should be able to play without that kind of work beforehand and with the ability to make up the details of the setting through your input during play. This is your fantasy, your story, your game. For that, I suggest making the setting yours, too.

When you select your setting, you should figure out how that interacts with the mood you picked. Some settings are more geared toward certain moods than others.

My group decides to develop the setting on our own. We’re going to start with a very rough sketch and just fill in the blanks as we play.

Our gritty game will be set in a post-apocalyptic world. There’s a lot of wasteland, full of ruins with valuable items from earlier ages. This means there’s still 20th-century technology around, but it’s rare.

There are demons in our setting. They are not just mutants, but something otherworldly that invaded and led to the apocalypse. Now they roam the wastes, and every survivor needs to either be able to fight them off or find others to protect them. Communities are small, outlaws abound, and so on. It’s a dangerous place with lots of opportunities for conflicts.

That’s all we need for now. This kind of setting allows us to get away without much detail up front, because it’s based on a common trope and has no overarching politics or societies to worry about.

Setting Story Seed

The setting story seed is listed in the premade settings or created by the GM. It is an occurrence in the setting that goes against the usual events. These can range from the blatantly obvious and aggressive (an invading force) to the subtle (the water from the river has started to taste metallic) to the weird and ominous (a black skyscraper just appeared in the middle of the city, and most people act as though it’s always been there).

Feel free to create more than one if you want to give players lots of choices of what to look into during the game, though that might make your game less focused. Just be aware that this is not a group seed—it cannot be something that directly and only affects the PCs like the other story seeds. It’s something that makes the whole setting dynamic and changing and allows the players to pick whether they want to help shape those changes.

The GM tells us that the story seed for our wasteland setting is as follows: Someone has started gathering demons and human followers in a large ruined city. No one knows why they group up or what they’re planning, but something’s about to happen.

Even the GM doesn’t know yet why this is happening. I’m sure there’ll be ways to tie it into our group seed and the events of our story later on. Until our PCs actively get involved, there’s no need to flesh it out any further than this. We may never get to that city and ignore the seed, or we may set out to walk right into the middle of it—that’s up to us.