A working definition: the least amount of prep I would need before running the first session of a campaign. Not just a single session, mind you — a whole campaign. For a campaign, one needs a setting with a sufficient amount of hooks and things going on to keep the PCs embedded for at least a few months of in-game time. It's really easy to get bogged down in endless prep with a scope this big — so what's the absolute minimum?
It could come in a variety of packages — I could imagine maybe a paragraph or page of prose that describes the part of the world where the PCs begin. That might work for some people. Me, I like tables. I also really like the hazard die (aka overloaded encounter die), and a while back over on the NSR Cauldron there was a discussion about the possibilities in expanding the die into a d66 table — each of the six results would drill down to a further six sub-results for some more detail. Could this be the key to a Minimum Viable Setting? I'm willing to give it a try.
