Friend is about to start running D&D 5e

That's a potential plot hook, friend. One of those mead companies might be having issues with monsters or sabotage at their bee farms, or pay you to sabotage someone else's bee farms, or you could steal a whole bunch of mead and sell it for silver on the gold, or...

That's too goddamn much.

If you have unlimited free time and complete commitment, I guess you can go as far down the rabbit hole as you want, but if you only have a few hours a week for GM prep, there are so many other things that will improve the game more than exhaustive lists of mundane minutiae.

She's gonna get pretty frustrated I bet... either she'll adjust her priorities, or quit.

Agreed. She should put as much her work into the game as her players are willing to put theirs.

Seeing someone else get really into something can make others want to get into it themselves.

I do this, not as extreme, but I do write every NPC in each town briefly with the help of random name generators. I also write tavern menus and draw detailed maps, and the PCs have yet to disappoint me, they love the maps since everything is clear about the location and in combat they know exactly what they can do, they can also have real conversations with the npcs since they have written lifes and personalities. I think I've written about 500+ npcs.
It hurts when they die.

>Has a page of history for each of the 8 major cities

Is good and where it should stop

REALLY emphasise to her that unless it is directly relevant to the players immediate needs, they won't give a fuck about any of it.

Also tell her that unless it's A) very important, or B) something she's already told them once, not to consult her notes if she can't remember a detail off the top fo her head. Nothing slows a session down like the DM diving into their notebook to remember the precise name of the easternmost Duke's nephew.

Come up with a new name for him on the spot.

His name is Tittymongler.

Write down 'Tittymongler' in your notes for the session, then update the campaign lore to say that 'Tittymongler' is his name.

Well shit, time to hand in my DM card...

I agree that the priorities are a little out of order. You can make as many hyperrealistic alcohol consumption rules as you want, but leave that stuff until after you've built a couple of rock solid encounters.

Absolutely do this. I always have a few spare names on hand to slap on unplanned NPCs, and now Tittymongler will be one of them.

A DM I know spend 6 hours drawing an entire shantytown on a 6' x 6' mat. It was a massive settlement covering the walls of a canyon- think Blighttown from Dark Souls, but full of living people. He had everything prepped: The thieves guild, the cultist conspiracy, dozens of NPCs and monsters prepped with minis picked out for each one from his extensive collection. This was meant to be done in a big weekend-long 48 hour campaign.

The players took one look at the rickety wooden slum overcrowded with shady characters and immediately decided to set it all on fire and walk away.

That poor poor DM.
But what sort of PC's just light a whole town on fire just because the place looks shady?

I don't believe that's true, but if it is, I would really only blame the DM. He clearly didn't know the group well enough to realize that would be a wasted effort

If your group is a bunch of idiots, don't treat them like intelligent gamers who want a well-crafted narrative and world.

>Game is now Ravenloft, the PC who set the fire is now a Darklord. Roll new characters.

They took down a guild of thieves and ended a conspiracy. Games should always be fluid.

>>Even has detailed blood alcohol content mechanics with mathematical formulas and shit
that there is too much

NE property moguls who will very soon be able to hire higher level adventurers to do their work for them.

Intentionally or otherwise, her players will likely end up burning large portions of her world to the ground, because murderhobo. Make sure she's aware of this and not too attached to her creation.

More for the DM to work with is as good as they want it to be. As long as the details that the party need to know are covered, everything else is gravy.

tell her the amount of dedication is admirable, but as other anons said, get the priorities in terms of world building right. get the overall encounters you want, then get the minute from there.

My DM started out with a pretty railroaded story, then he started giving us avenues to branch out. As a result, we totally failed to save a city from begin invaded.

did you not lift that straight from Skyrim ?

If that was true it would be sad.

Having detail is fine so long as you let her understand not to get attached to them, and as said, not to fret about details and just make something up if you can't remember, and adjust it later.

I draw the line at introducing new mechanics though - if it's not integral to the plot (like, say, a new form of magic is discovered by your party), then it's just needlessly complicating things.
Roll Con, fail and get drunk, succeed and get less drunk, no need for algorithms or whatever it is she had planned. There's probably rules for it somewhere.

A lot of people didnt even notice the female pronoun.

>Fucking handout menus for each tavern
>Even has detailed blood alcohol content mechanics with mathematical formulas and shit
>Entire thing is 25 pages long

These things are useless if the setting isn't a 100% traveling food critic theme and nothing else. The only time it will be brought up is when they visit taverns, someone will order a drink, and when her eyes light up that her mechanic will actually be brought up the players will either wut.jpg, barely ever drink alcohol anymore as it will bring up needlessly complicated homebrew mechanics, or just do a CON save instead as the whole group will mutiny against it.

The history for the cities and store inventories is immersive and sets in potential hardships since it won't be a simple Town A, B, C, etc. but to overlook NPCs in general seems unbelievable if they have already gone into this much detail.

So pretty much this. Planning is great and all but improv is a much better skill to have.

To be fair the fluff did occasionally refer to 'The King of X' or 'The Empress of Y', but it was usually just in passing or while explaining the political structures in place. I don't think any of them even got names.

Mostly it was geopolitics, past military engagements, local traditions, etc.

There are no original ideas. Everything has been done before and will be done again, it's about execution. More often than not companies are always looking to get a leg up on their competitors, and adventurers are good for more than just killing undead.