Imagine you are watching Criminal Minds, the police procedural focusing on the psychology of serial killers. You’ve watched the show for years, loving some characters, liking others, wishing some who had left had stayed, wishing some that are still there had left. However, on this episode, they do a crossover with another CBS show, Big Bang Theory. How angry would you be?

This can happen even with somewhat small deviations. Last weekend, the E3 conference featured game announcements from almost many developers, both big and small. One company that held a huge show was Bethesda Softworks. One of the games they announced was Fallout 76, which is an online, multiplayer game set in the Fallout universe. Up to this point, the Fallout games have been single player. The first two were isometric, turn-based strategy games. Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas, and Fallout 4 were first person roleplaying games with a lot of action and shooting. Go online and look at how fans of the Fallout universe have reacted to the news that this will be only on-line, there are no NPC’s, and the focus will be on survival, player vs. environment, and the only character interaction will be with other players. The level of hatred for a game people have seen two trailers for is frankly unbelievable.

When you are designing your world, consider what expectations your players or readers will have when they see it. If your setting includes interactions with centaurs, nymphs, satyrs, and staples of Greek and Roman myth, make sure your characters and plots fit that setting. The worst thing you can do would be to betray your audience expectations by putting in a cyborg, no matter how interesting the character is. If you’re writing hard urban fantasy, don’t suddenly turn your series into sweet romance.

But remember to know what your players or readers are expecting from you. I’ve been writing mysteries in a fantasy setting. I don’t have thousands of raving fans, at the moment, but if I switched to an epic fantasy series like The Song of Ice and Fire by George RR Martin or The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson, there is a risk that I’d be alienating my readers. If I run a Pathfinder or Dungeons and Dragons game, people have an expectation about what that means, which is why my fantasy world doesn’t work very well using those systems, in my opinion.

When creating your settings, make sure they set the expectations for your audience (players for roleplaying games, readers for your writing). If you create a sweeping epic world with a cast of thousands, you should deliver the sweeping epic story that fits within it. If you’re looking for something smaller and more intimate, the setting needs to be the same.

Thanks for reading. I’ll see you next Sunday!