Answer honestly, Veeky Forums:

I usually involve the players in the worldgen to an extent, by either collectively putting it together, or creating a setting with a lot of unfilled space they can use to create kingdoms and clans and background fluff. Means everyone's engaged with the setting from the get-go.

Currently writing up a 'proper' setting, I'll give the players a page-long setting introduction, a short paragraph on every race, and a short paragraph on every culture.

I farm in a rural area so spend alot of time bored out of my mind on a tractor. I will devour any materials for the games I'm in. I don't get to play very often and I need my fix. Although I also tend to make a dozen different potential characters anytime anyone suggests a game. And plan settings of my own out in detail despite knowing I'll never have time to run a game in them.

As a GM, I try to only world build in game. Very rarely do I hand anything out to my players to read.

I do have a primer of lore for my setting but its more so I keep my facts straight.

>tilted sideways Europe
Real original OP

A good storyteller is capable of building a world through narrative. Setting notes and a wiki should be purely for the DM. Then, if the players WANT extra fluff, give it - by letting them explore the world in character. They make their own notes if they want.

Work with your players more. If you give a player a blank sheet and say "Make a dude," you can't expect a setting-perfect character, regardless of how much they know. Why? Any number of reasons. Maybe they just want to play a game without being bogged down in 10 miles of fluff. Maybe they interpret the setting differently. Maybe they think the setting sucks, or could use a bit more something their character can offer.

A player's ideas and goals are going to be very different from the DM's. A DM has to accept that and work with the players to provide the most enjoyable experience possible for everyone.

It's Europe, Africa and Asia. Not tilted.

I still don't get what trope the City of Shrines stand for.

Don't think too hard about it. It's just a parody of the map of Golarion.

>1776

I have this one buddy who moved away recently for military reasons and I miss his DMing terribly. He always went all out on worldbuilding down to city populations and lore/legends/history for pretty much every major area/landmark in the setting. Shit was the absolute fucking best. Dude lives in Colorado or some shit now.

A lot. I read everything and I use it for my background and how my character thinks. I also pick a deity that I like or a pantheon and worship it or spit on it if I don't like anything.

If it's bad I try to give some tips if it's alright, and if it's good I try to give some tips too to make it even better. Mainly about laws, societal structure and government since this is what I studied.

I don't want fucking FR, and I don't want nothing
Moderation

I see. Bizzarre tough, all the others ARE tropes.

Japanese shrinemaiden stuff maybe?

We discuss it for a few minutes.

Golarion is a hideously bland setting, so you're not wrong for thinking that.

Pretty nordic. Also, you have ninjaland already.

Tough a city only with mikos sounds so stupid that I could see it.

>mfw it's Urarara Meichourou

Tiger-Headed Opium Nightmare sounds like a pretty cool place

I like dis picture

>Real original OP
That's the fucking point.

...Really? I go through them like mad when GMs provide them. Granted, most of the time they are pointless ramblings, but the good ones are fun to read.

On the flipside, I've never had players that actually read anything in my worldbuilding and then when something from the notes happens, they act shocked.

I'm a Forever GM and in my experience, players tend to dislike memorizing names but they like to know more about the world their playing in, particularly if it's related in any way to their character.

If I was to play as player I would certainly read everything the GM cared to write about the setting. It would increase immersion and make the game more interesting to me. That's what good players do. Only really, really shit players don't give a fuck about the setting they're playing in.

Does your handler know you're on the Internet unsupervised?

I give it a glance. If I like what I see, I eat through it like no tomorrow and ask for more. And then use it in play for my advantage.

If not, I mess with the GM. Intentionally mispronounce name. Refer to locations as "that shithole with X" and people as "that Y faggot/whore". Pretend that I didn't hear some proper name and make the GM repeat it several times, slowly. Sometimes even spell it so I can write it down. Constantly mix things up. Ask about holes and inconsistencies. And during play, subtly do everything in my power to fuck up the established order.

you're probably the worst That Guy who ever lived. Seriously, you deserve to be punched.

Why doesn't the Hellfire Imperium crosses the Hillfolk and conquer the tiny bickering kingdoms?

I haven't had a game where the DM made their own setting since 1987. there was some blobs on a piece of paper, but the setting was memorable and cool.

I'll at least read the basics and whatever is relevant to my character. Sorry OP, we're not all plebby millenials with a 2-minute attention span like you are.

Oh i do! I love to know as much as possible about settings. I try to imagine how living in such place would be like. I always ask or search for information necessary to form an educated opinion about rulers, different groups and organisations.

Today i played "The Laundry" - setting is basically a mix of Bond movies / MI5 Spooks mixed with Call of Cthulhu with a dash of Dr. Who.

I know it's a contemporary urban fantasy in the UK territory, but i know close to nothing about British political system, intelligence agencies and such. Our GM was awesome. He basically made us go through the whole vetting process, signing non-disclosure agreement and we had a seminar on how magic works. Btw. magic is very interesting in the setting and i can recommend trying out the game even beause of it alone.

He also said that there will be some ingame perks/disadvantages for not completing a paperwork he will send us later.

Anyhow... good world building is a lifeblood for me. If the GM gives me any material to read through (briefing/debriefing, raport on some cult or individual in current example). I do. Because im THAT interested in the games i try to roleplay.

A lot! I love to interrogate my DM about the setting and get comfy in the lore, even if it's hit because I try to roleplay well.

Good thing my last GM did lore well. I can't imagine what it's like to have a nondescript setting, or worse, stupid.

World building is there to help myself out, not required reading for the players. If a more out there setting, I should be able to cover the bare necessities in 5-10 minutes, just enough so the players don't have to stumble around like JRPG amnesiacs. Everything else can be either handwaved away as their characters not being learned or worldly, explained when needed if it's something they'd reasonably know or handled with Lore/History checks.

yuck

Worldbuilding is good for some flavor and character hooks. When I'm a GM I don't write more than 5 pages of primer, though, because when I'm playing I'm unlikely to read more than that. The rest I like to learn as I play.

I really enjoy reading over whatever fluff my GMs have crafted but that might be due to my interest in seeing what insights I can get into them as a person in addition to just enjoying people's settings.

I think it helps that within my group the GMs tend to make worlds that are kinda Schrodinger's Cat-esque in that player suggestions/contributions to a setting are, with some frequency, incorporated into said setting to flesh out the world.

Assume the Tiny Bickering Fiefdoms region is a fleshed out area about the size of Greece, which the players will spend their first several adventures in. The areas immediately around it are somewhat less detailed because the players will be competent at overland travel by the time they go there, and can cut to the interesting parts.

By the time you get any further, people have airships or teleportation and nobody cares about geography anymore.

Damnit OP, I was about to use this image for a post.

Right after the players read rules...

I enjoy good ideas, if the DM has a short document about the setting I will read it, I like hearing about people's settings, as long as they don't bog me down with 50 pages of text.

>Generic D&D/Pathfinder Fantasy, Modern Post-Apocalyptic, Solar Systems that are too similar to ours or have like 6 habitable worlds.
Absolutely not. I absolutely hate the fact that it's always "Star map of Major Cities" or "Nukes" or "Zombies" or some other shit.

>Fantasy/Futuristic Post Apocalyptic, Derelict Space Stations, Egyptian/Arabic and Underwater campaigns
Please, I would suck a dick if it guaranteed more support of these

How about post apocalyptic egyptian/arabic? Neat idea, I ought to write something down.

I do not like my GM's world, he has no sense of scale. His 'continent' is the size of a small island and can be circumnavigated in a few days, but is somehow home to millions of people.

>The gods had enough of some pharaohs fucking with their major plan and brought hell upon the Earth because of it

I'd totally play that.

Because in Golarion, everything lives in its own little box.

I'd unironically want to adventure in that land.

I demand setting detail from my DMs before I make a character and fuss to make sure I have the perfect character for it.

>the pharaoh didn't let his people go
>god got biblical on Egypt
Might work

>How much of a shit do you ACTUALLY give about your GM's world-building?

Depends on the GM and the setting. I rarely (if ever) have a GM that's made his own setting from scratch, so it becomes a bit of a moot point, but for the content that he makes, I read everything and try to contribute to the best of my ability, and I love world-building myself, so yeah.

As a GM, I used to spend way too much time world-building, just to end up with unpronounceable names and disinterested players.
Now I base my settings off real-world examples and even use direct rips of actual countries. Most people have no idea how long it actually takes to cross a barony/county/kingdom on horseback (let alone, on foot) so real local maps are rarely recognized. If I'm playing with North Americans, I use maps of Scandinavia. If Europeans, I use local maps from British Columbia and the Canadian Shield. No one, so far, has been the wiser. Though I have had a few "criticisms" about how unrealistic my river systems were (literal Niagara Falls) or how my NotRenaissanceNorway should be using Jarls instead of a Duke...

Vatican, you fool!

Because the players stand in their way.

I want to worldbuild but fucking hell I'm bad at it. I'll just use Eberron and stop torturing myself.

I'm GM for life, so hard to say what I expect from my GM - I had less than 20 games in past decade as a player. But I can tell how I handle this shit myself - I always provide my players only with what's necessary and not a word more.
I'm running the same homebrew setting since 2004 with different groups, so it kind of grown naturally into pretty HUGE thing over the years. Providing new players with more than needed or more than they've asked would be just mind-numbing experience for them, while I have all the data for myself and often refer to old shit that happend with earlier groups, so the setting has the feeling of being creative bullshit, while it's just a retelling of old adventures. The legends or stories I've prepared for old groups can be reused. The characters already present in current/past history of the setting can be used. The maps get more and more complex, but at least I can place semi-random locations on them and keep things consistent for over a decade.

But I will repeat for the third time - I only provide what's needed and I will add more only on player(s) demand. So if nobody asks for more - I don't say more nor handle notes for more.
Then again, in my current group I've got a bard and a scholar, so the demand for setting's trivia is pretty big and I can just handle them snippets or actual full text about/from lore. It's kind of fun when they make lore checks and I've got prepared text for crit success and regular roll, with marker at hand to "censor" specific fragments depending on how bad the regular roll went or just provide them with trivia day before the game, so they will read few bulletpoints that might or might not turn out useful for the game next day.

Personally I love reading about a GM's worldbuilding, as long as it's interesting.

I read whatever the DM gives me or says to read. It may come in handy, might not. But I'm also the fag taking notes of npcs I have a hunch may be useful or shit they say I think is relevant, and marking down places and shit.

It's in not-Asia so it's probably some awful generic buddhashintoyingyanghindu stuff that doesn't make sense.

I'm more confused by what Clockwork Tsars are supposed to be since clockwork/steampunk fantasy is traditionally very British centric.

>A good storyteller is capable of building a world through narrative. Setting notes and a wiki should be purely for the DM. Then, if the players WANT extra fluff, give it - by letting them explore the world in character. They make their own notes if they want.

This a thousand times. I've been GMing a game for roughly six months and I've made a big, sprawling setting for it, but I never gave the players anything more than a short document about the setting's history. Everything else has been picked up as the game progresses. In the past few weeks, the players have made their OWN wiki to keep notes about the game and setting. Being a ForeverGM has never felt so good.

If it's longer than a full page or two of pire texts I'm probably going to miss some of it.

>Though I have had a few "criticisms" about how unrealistic my river systems were (literal Niagara Falls) or how my NotRenaissanceNorway should be using Jarls instead of a Duke...
T O P
K
E
K

>Clockwork Tsars
So like Clockwork Russians?
That's fucking awesome.
I'm stealing that.

What about Clockwork Soviets?

Not overly interested in reading the GM's /fiction. Best game-worlds I've played in were made by the group with a game for that after talking about themes and genres (Microscope, The Quiet Year) then played in or with one built into the game (Beyond The Wall).

Most GMs I've played with did fairly little world building or made only a bit of info available.
When I'm gming, I generally make a shit load of stuff and portion out as needed, or when people ask.