The only wrinkle is that breadth vs. depth implies that novels taking the former approach lack the latter, which isn’t really accurate. (Ditto with campaign settings.)

David Drake’s “Hammer’s Slammers” series is very deep in regards to futuristic warfare, without going into transport, trade, culture, etc. The Dune books are very full of details of all kinds of things, from economics to warfare to politics to cultures…

Am I closer this time?

Telas

What I don’t mean by expansive is that everything is fantastic, or otherwise varies from the norm for that genre/era/whatever. And both expansive and focused books can be quite detailed.

The big difference that I’m getting at is that whereas an expansive book is filled with oodles of details, many lightly-sketched (but tantalzing, and offering much potential for expansion), a focused one takes a few details — usually dramatic changes from the norm — and drills down to explore every aspect of those details.

So while an expansive sci-fi novel might include references to FTL travel, body swapping and true AI in passing, it wouldn’t go any deeper than that. Those details are really just color.

A focused sci-fi novel, on the other hand, might revolve around body swapping — and that topic would be explored in great detail, including all the ramifications body swapping would have on society, etc.

The quick version: Expansive novels are broad and shallow when it comes to color, focused ones are narrow and deep, making what could be color the focus.

Does that make any sense?

Take FR. This is more of a GM Lantern concept, because everything is different from our own world. Between the races, money, and magic, everything is different from our own world. Everything in a 360 degree arc is illuminated, because everything has been changed.

But with Vampire (or Harry Potter), the world is largely the same except for that one small detail that turns the game world on it’s head, and it’s this idea that becomes illuminated (GM Flashlight) and thus the lynchpin for the world. Bloodsucking leeches for Vampire and a hidden, magical society in Harry Potter. The rest of the world is the same, so there’s no need to really illuminate it. The interesting stuff (vampires and magic) is what the game is about, so why light up the room when you just need to shine the light on one thing?

Song of Ice and Fire/Vampire seems to relate well to start small, where you detail a small region– only what you’re sure will come up.

Expansive implies a setting that would be very hard to thumbnail for your players, much as thumbnailing the Forgotten Realms as a whole is much trickier than thumbnailing one region in one era. It could still be built on the fly, I think– like Jonathan Tweet’s Taxi example.

Do you mean “World A has everything fantastical” – absolutely everything is somehow different from how one would expect it to be? Compare to “except for X, World B is normal” (and X inevitably becomes the focus of the books). The Harry Potter books are a good example of the latter.

If so, I find the former to be too “out there”; there’s no frame of reference when everything is alien. Some of the later Dune books felt like that.

By this definition, I think focused is best described as the classic “what if?” of fantastic fiction.

For example, in “Clifford, the Big Red Dog,” the world is normal, except how it relates to a world with a 20-foot red dog (except for the giant doo-doo).

Do you accept the conceit that there is a giant red dog? If so, then the world around that premise is slowly accepted.

The new TV show “Heroes” applies the same thinking. The world on the show is outwardly the one we know, except for the superpowered individuals. Of the other high-concept shows out there right now, I’d have to say that “Jericho” is another that takes one fantastic element, and see what ripples it creates.

I’m still not sold on the definition of expansive. I’m not sure there really is a difference, except that in an expansive setting the conceit is so widely-accepted and fleshed out that there is no exploration of the conceit takes place.

Taking Forgotten Realms as an example, and a good one, I think, requires us to examine it first as a focused setting. The original Realms, as Ed Greenwood detailed it for his players, must certainly have been focused in its origins. Here the simple conceits of D&D (magic, fantastic creatures, a magificent dungeon beneath the city-state of Waterdeep) were initially focused, because those concepts were new ones that had yet to be applied to the whole world.

But that hardcover book you spent $40 on that details a entire continent, from economics, politics to magic, is clearly expansive. We — as consumers and players — are generally familiar with the conceits of the setting. What was once new and interesting to Greenwood’s original gaming table, has since been detailed in supplements and novels to such a degree that adventures no longer focus on the effects of those conceits — rather the adventures are the more generic type that simple interact with the setting.

Probably not. Unless you can explain, how to do well in each category, or if you can cite reasonible advantages and disadvantages of each category.

I don’t particularly see a distinction between the two categories you’re attempting to create. At most it seems like a difference between [lowbrow and highbrow] tastes. For example, I get excited when I see an author paying attention to etymology or historical behavior (and sensible deviations from there). I’m sure there are plenty of people who skip anything like that to get to the fireballs. The difference here is that some people need the flashy stuff to get excited about, whereas a perfectionist like myself gets excited when the little details are in place.

I had considered depth of field, but figured lens was more accessible.