Fucking kill me

Try a civil war type setting perhaps?
Emperor vs the Religious leader?

What species did the villages consist of?

Two things.

>Knowing their objective

Is absolutely critical for a good game. Players crave clear objectives, whether they make them for themselves or the GM provides. Sounds like your players prefer the latter. It's not railroading. Railroading players means you take away their choice. Even if you provide a clear objective players can always say no.

>Players are key figures

Another mistake. Giving players too much power at the start of the game kills their urge to accomplish things. They need to earn that position and there should always be someone above their paygrade.

>>Pour all my creative efforts into a campaign and worldbuilding

Found your problem fucktard. Should've spent your energy making cool shit for the players to do.

hilariously enough they are approaching a civil war climax

>what species did the villages
it is a spepcial game engine/game that features a fuckton of races, thus the setting is more complicated than just "this is an elf village" or "this is the mountain of some dwarves"

so its okay if I tell them "you have to destroy that fucking city" rather than "there is a problem in this city that you need to take care of however you want"?
not rhetoric, actual legitimate questioning

>players are key figures
Good thing I actually exaggerated and while their decisions really have a lot of weight in the setting they are at the end of the day the lackeys of the king

at the end of the day, I don't know if I need to give them more or less freedom

>kill your fucking self
Case in point. You're wound up too tight.

Considering half this thread has been people baselessly attacking OP on a bunch of assumptions, I can't blame the guy desu.

What about cultures?

For instance a type of "Downtown is for the dwarves, Uptown is for the humans'?

Eight or eighty different species?

>The meanie internet trolls are hurting muh feeeeeeelings!

Where do you think you are?

Why not a middle ground, "there is a problem in this city, I want you to investigate to find the root of it, and then decide how to deal with it. There are options A and B, but if you find them unsatisfactory you may present your own, or go with option C in which the NPC's, You and I will nuke everything to the ground"

It's giving them freedom, but it's also giving them two important things. The first is direction, they now have goals, a starting point, and are not struggling for ideas should they not come up with one themselves. It also gives them someone who can guide them and feed them further direction if needed. Thus, they have freedom in how they go about doing things with a few goals, but aren't dumped into the deep end without having any idea what to do.

You sound like Sad Berry Picker.

the world is divided among 15 countries with very noticeable difference, each of them falling to an archetype or just blatant references (when I started I didn't really wanted to make it complicated and just resorted to copying stuff that we like, like a country made of techpriests, another that is "not wei" leaded by "not-cao-cao" ruled by giants, one ruled by fairies called blatantly gensokyo serving as the "not-japan" and so on.) as I said I didn't want anything complicated because I didn't want to drown the players with unnecessary exposition and need to comprehend the world more than "these people fucking hate these other people because culture differences/because they build flashlights different" but it just grew from there

At first I wanted to limit the number of races that would be included in the setting, but seeing how the players wanted to be able to play the most exotic ones I ended up not having to cut any, and its a fucking pain considering there are MORE THAN FORTY
Still, humans are the majority

that's a good idea, i'll keep that in mind

>trolling is fucking hilarious and should be encouraged instead of mature discussion
where do YOU think you are?

is over there

Not I'd hope.

There's a difference between bants and being an ass.

>Far eastern cultures.
I can't help you here user.
Good luck.

Because you did better than earlier doesn't mean you are a worse GM, regardless of how much effort went into either. Take it as a learning experience.

It could just be your group prefers that quick hectic, frenetic action of a slapped together campaign and/or the freedom to latch onto what ever catches their attention the most and make it the main focus of the game. Maybe you should run a few more of these and see if you can find a pattern in what interests them and incorporate elements of that into you bigger more planned out campaigns?

I think a good DM is one that provides context, not narrative.

I think it's cool to have interesting details about things like creatures, places, and major NPCs planned out, but nothing more than something for you to refer to if the players lead themselves there and desire to find out more whilst in-game.
Even then, a lot of players don't really care about that, they want a good time. If they want to immerse themselves in details, they'd read a book or play some solo RPG vidyagame. Your exhaustively planned and detailed campaign and setting is NOT a good time, it's a SUPPLEMENT to one.

Players like objectives and definitive goals, and the satisfaction of progressing towards them, and many love a clear endgame. Players like a good story as well, but they don't like massive exposition.
This doesn't mean you can't surprise them or present them with something unique. Like I said, you provide context, not narrative. Players don't really care about the centuries of racial conflict in your worldbuilding project.

e.g. what interesting twist on a fantasy trope did you make that your players can observe at a surface level?

>the necromancer is an irate old man who uses corpses of adventurers off the roadside to use as personal butlers
>the Dwarves have concentration camps full of Gnomes
>the skeleton soldiers are chill dudes rather than generic undead mook
>players go on a trek to find the mythical centuries-old lost elves only to find that they've become hideously inbred

did I fuck up by making the main setting a culture based on chinese ming dinasty?
I did that because we already did a DnD campaign and we were fed up with european medieval fantasy

You could have tried a middle eastern campaign.

The birthplace of so many different things that reached the far east and west.

The beginning of culture itself.

>OP gets one negative post and assumes everything is against him
You've calmed down now, but don't be so defensive.

A big problem with making a really detailed setting is that it's harder for characters to play with. They may actually enjoy hearing about it, but what they really want are things they can interact with. The history of King Groxnovia IV and his dynasty isn't important unless the players can either do something about it (like topple/defend the dynasty) or use it (We're the kingsmen, give us food, lodging and gold so we can conduct our business). Lay off on introducing things that don't give options to the players or are relevant to what they're doing currently, unless it's a surprise to challenge the players

Not telling your players fully about the setting will make the introduction of new locations and peoples more interesting, since they'll be unknown. Like something in a mystery box they could be anything even a boat! They'll feel more like real explorers if they only (or just mainly) learn about your setting through roleplay

This user is also probably right. Some people just think different kinds of games are more fun

>Players don't really care about the centuries of racial conflict in your worldbuilding project.

except for that cunt who complained about the setting being too simplistic and not being fleshed out enough

but answering your question and to put an example:
>Group of paladins are a bunch of dictatorial fucks obsessed with forcing their unjust laws while the group of followers of chaos gods are actually the good guys who put above all the freedom of their people (lawful is not nice, chaotic is not evil)

Forgot to finish:

Do your worldbuilding, have fun with it, build a great setting. But it's reference material for you as the DM, and you're probably only going to show them a lot of it on a more superficial level for the sake of a fun well-paced game.

Try an intentionally stupid but funny setting.
Like so.
youtu.be/azOvRwrqz2M

Assuming you're not baiting. You need to calm down and take a step back. Did the player's have fun during the one-shot? Then you did a good job. Are they bored in your campaign? Then you're doing something wrong. You should ask them what is was specifically that made them prefer the one-shot over the campaign. If you take in their constructive criticism and with an open mind, it will lead to self-growth.

>but answering your question and to put an example:
>>Group of paladins are a bunch of dictatorial fucks obsessed with forcing their unjust laws while the group of followers of chaos gods are actually the good guys who put above all the freedom of their people (lawful is not nice, chaotic is not evil)

I think that's an okay example but whether or not these are truly good or evil will have to be down to the players, not the DM. However it also sounds like a twist that comes up way late into the campaign. Do you have something immediately recognisable that presents itself early?

Big overblown settings are of no particular value. Literally a single town, a dungeon, and the terrian between here and there is as good as a super detailed 5000 page deluxe campaign setting.

Languages, cultures, histories.. these things almost never add anything. The human mind can handle, perhaps, 150 or so different relationships in its head. Anything past that, we cannot effectively care about at all.

The PCs and a dozen or so NPCs is really all you should worry about, ever.

could have...
should have...
would have...

>not telling the players, let them learn by roleplaying
yep, you definitely made me realize a fatal flaw, you hit the nail completely. I was so focused on the plans I had for the campaign that I perhaps introduced too many elements and plotlines too eagerly and made the players so informed already that it ended up uninteresting

yeah

fuck that guy who keeps insisting on "you need to provide details down to the exact gravity of the planet you are in and the lunar cycles and blah blah" it just makes things too convoluted, if he wants to know he should make his own character show interest instead of forcing the responsibility on me and the other players

well yeah, its more complicated than what I've explained, but you got the idea.
>Do you have something immediately recognisable that presents itself early?
whatever do you mean?

>whatever do you mean?

Something simple, something unusual. Something that makes people go "Oh, this setting is gonna be good."

I prefer weird and lighthearted campaigns as you can tell from my examples, but I can do my campaign beginning with a simple run-in with some bad guys, or the players discover that the decorative flowers in their village are singing happily.

yeah

it seems the scope of my campaign was too fucking big right from the beginning

You can still keep using your big and detailed world, but think of it more like a toolkit to revisit every now and then.

>He's not accusing you of literally describing tax and census systems. He's implying your "maximum effort" campaign was overwhelming and uninteresting and your players liked the other campaign better because it was easy to follow and didn't involve inundating them with a bunch of arcane crap.

user who triggered OP here; this is exactly correct.

you were a fucking dick about it

Chill, dude.

Have you already talked to your players about their thoughts about the campaign? It might be useful to sound out what they engaged the most with the most, or not at all. If you want to have them drill deeper into the setting, figuring where they're bound to look is always a plus.

>really fuck you, I came expecting constructive criticism instead of pretentious smugness of fucktards who know how the fuck I do my games
I came here to laugh at you.

>and you're probably only going to show them a lot of it on a more superficial level for the sake of a fun well-paced game.

...And once you've fully removed your head from your ass, you might just realise that hey, if the players are only ever going to see a tiny sliver of what you create anyway, why bother making up all the unseen bullshit at all? Why not just get good at improvising, and make shit up as and when it's necessary? Then you'll be saving mountains of time and effort, which you can instead invest in the shit that actually matters to the game!

nah, they are too nice about it

>"oh, the campaign is okay"
>"There is no need to change what you have put so much effort into"
>"Its true that we liked this other game more but that's just me"
>"Well there are a couple of things but you shouldn't be bothered about them"

they are too scared of my depressive tendencies to actually criticize clearly and be honest about it for fear of hurting me

AHAHAHAHAHAHA!!
Thanks, user, this was good

user that just read the thread.

No man, you're reaction was way over the top. You're going to get some feedback that isn't well formed or is poorly presented to you. You can't let two sentences (relatively benign ones at that) let this transform into 'sheer anger' like this .

Even if it sounded a bit smug, there is criticism in there that you now admit might be part of the problem. I hope you don't respond like this to people you interact with in real life or your players very often, because I imagine their patience will be even thinner than the anons of Veeky Forums.

You also gotta cut down on this idea that you're somehow too smart for the 'polite lies' of friends. If for no other reason that they are still willing to spend copious amounts of time with you playing through your campaign, you should take your players desire at more-or-less face value.

Talk with them. Pick up on how they respond when playing. Actually listen when they do give feedback. But don't believe for a moment that there's a cabal around you trying to insulate you from the truth. At best its inconsequential; at worst its wholly unproductive.

you are one fucking smartass, aren't you?

>I hope you respong like this to people you interact with in real life

right back at you

>user tells me that I should stop taking what people close to me says because it isn't objective criticism due to the personal relation

>other user tells me I should take what they say at face value

I'll remit to the subject of the thread and say that just fucking kill me then

Hahaha oh man.

For OP's sake, I really hope you're a different user who's just trolling.

Because if you're not, hoo boy...

>He can't even quote correctly.

why the fuck do you think it is correct to be giving classes on ethics like if you were a flawless expert on the subject?

it is hypocrisy at its worse, to talk down to someone you know know nothing about criticizing him of talking down to others

Different strokes for different folks. If the point is figuring out what kind of campaign your friends want though, it seems sensible enough to me to talk to them directly. If you don't want to directly broach the campaign proper, you can still get feedback from them about preferences and expectations.

You're not evening aiming your anger at the right user anymore. I wasn't giving 'classes on ethics,' I was telling you how your actions reflect on yourself. And I earnestly meant what I said; I hope the person you are showing us here is not at all the person that you really are.

So why did DnD bother with lore and an extensive monster bestiary?

To provide ideas for the GM.

Because they knew chumps like you would buy it.

OP, you clearly had your feelings hurt by this event, and you don't want to hear us out here. You should go talk with your players about this instead.

>I can't fix it unless a complete shutdown and restart
Yeah you can. Just fucking trash any plans for the future and play it off the cuff from this point on.

DnD guys make big books of lore because that's their fucking business. And because some people are autistic and want to have everything explained and set out for them like turds in Tupperware.

Most of those books are just to get bits and pieces from or to run included adventure modules. But I'll remind you that official adventure modules never go into much that isn't directly relevant to the actions of players.

Regardless, you can make up and create as much shit as you want so long as
1. It doesn't get in the way
2. You don't shove it in their face all the time
3. You don't get bogged down in it.

effort expended doesn't always equate to fun, maybe you just wrote a lot of bland shit and hoped it'd take traction. from your viewpoint there was a lot of complexity I'd bet

but not everyone wants to play in Senate Rollcall: The Game

>Veeky Forums is one of the boards where better discussion can be found
Maybe once, but shit like
>kill your fucking self
killed it.

>"There is no need to change what you have put so much effort into"

Maybe they're walking on eggshells because you're conspicuously touchy about people who don't humor your ideas. I would believe that, given how you acted in this thread.

In short: yes. Also, changes of pace are often really, really nice for everyone.

fucking lol. let's be clear here bigots. you are the one who are outdated. you are the ones who don't belong in the hobby. you are the ones whose view is tolerated less and less every day so fuck you and your outdated ideas of what is normal and ok.

i don't need you judging me and i reject your ability to do so. but i will fucking judge you - you fucking hateful bigots. the hobby will be better off when people like you are finally driven away and the rest of us can be free to be who we are instead of playing shut up for you.

every day is one day closer to you being driven away. every day your fucking view is less tolerated for the hateful shit that it is. and you got nothing to say in response to any of this other than to just insult me and say hateful shit like "you're conspicuously touchy".

i got none of that for you pal. not one fucking bit. because i want you alive and well to see the day you no longer have a place in this hobby and you are the ones stuck looking from the outside in as everyone else has a good time.

you know what? i was feeling pretty down in my first post. but i'm feeling pretty good right now. fuck you bigots, you are the ones that are wrong and outdated. not me.

Is this pasta?

Catalog-lurking passerby here, clicked on thread to trade advice (because I love adding in the small pieces of a world more than most prospective players) but found... whatever this is instead.

It's okay to like your work, but don't get so attached to the time/effort spent making it, and definitely don't use it in place of any actual merits (like accessibility, ability to capture others' interest, etc.)

>Catalog-lurking passerby here, clicked on thread to trade advice (because I love adding in the small pieces of a world more than most prospective players) but found... whatever this is instead.
Literally this.
I gotta come back to this in a few.
Just... wow.

Your attitude is a zit on the assignment of history created by a specific social strain caused by a monopolar and prosperous world.

But the prosperity is going to come to an end under the weight of the industrializingredients world demanding the standard of living that the first world achieved by dint of consuming 60% of the world's resources to feed the prosperity of 20% of the world's population for a mere two generations.

And just like prosperity has been doomed by the excesses of the past, the banality of the present era will ensure the death of the unipolar political situation, releiving future generations of the "stresses" that have shaped you.

It doesn't mean you're a shitty GM, it DOES mean, however, that players like your ad-lib more than your preparation.

Also, if angry posts in this thread are you, jesus fuck, clam down, man. We're all faggots here, you included. Wear it with pride, instead of screeching like a pterodactyl.

>Is this pasta?
Yep.
Posted back on June 20th, 2016.

This too, probably. I can't find it, but it seems nonsensical and unrelated enough.

Glad to see you kinda calmed down OP andyou seemed to have already learned most of what I had to say.
Definitely glad I read the thread first.
I'll type up and post a little more advice in moment or two.

First, two possibilities regarding your players preferring your slapdash game to Your Campaign, that I don't think have been addressed yet:
1. After an extended campaign, especially one with open ended scenarios and unearned power (like pointed out), a one shot with simple objectives can be a great, liberating change of pace.
2. There may have been other elements, completely unrelated to your standing campaign, that they enjoyed in the change, like the vampires, the system, simplistic morality, or whatever.

>>user tells me that I should stop taking what people close to me says because it isn't objective criticism due to the personal relation
>>other user tells me I should take what they say at face value
>I'll remit to the subject of the thread and say that just fucking kill me then
Take both with pic related

Second,

>fuck you
You should've stopped there.
I would've gone with "Fuck you too."
Then responded to his understandable, if crudely expressed, position.
By responding overly emotionally, you stopped the discussion, he did not.
This is Veeky Forums, we do not hold hands here.
If he had been wrong, instead of just an ass, we would have torn him a new one instead of laughing at you.

>Coming to Veeky Forums expecting constructive criticism devoid of pretentious smugness of fucktards making assumptions about a game you did not provide details about is laughable
This.
Expecting constructive criticism is good.
But you’re also going to be called a dick sucking faggot and informed that your waifu is, in fact, a shit.
Expect it.

>Veeky Forums is one of the boards where better discussion can be found
Truth. But we are a crucible, not a hugbox.
That user had a point. Sometimes, even here, you will get responses that are just caustic insults with no content.
Responding emotionally doesn't help.

>you were a fucking dick about it
He was a bit

>No man, you're reaction was way over the top
It was, by more than a bit.

>you are one fucking smartass, aren't you?
Okay, now this seems like you are excessively nursing a grudge or not the same user.

>For OP's sake, I really hope you're a different user who's just trolling.
Like I said.

He wasn’t chiding you for talking down to someone.
>I hope you don't respond like this to people you interact with in real life or your players very often
This is actually good advice, both for this site and irl.
You seem very sensitive to criticism.
You are worried your friends that are enjoying your game aren't enjoying it enough.
You convince yourself that they are "too nice" and their mild comments are "polite lies" like said.
One comment from a stranger on the internet, on Veeky Forums of all places, is enough to reduce you to "sheer anger".

tldr; Calm down.

This sounds suspiciously similar to advice about sexual intercourse for the first time.

He's right tho.
Don't plan out every detail and nosehair of an npc. Let the players play the world not read a maybe interactive book.

Well that's certainly one way to do it. Usually people let it kinda slip in, but I guess going full-frontal assault works too.