How would you explain to a new DM that a setting document is for the benefit of the players not him? That I'm the one who needs to know what to expect, how to respond, what tools are available to me. That just because he can improv and make it up on the spot is not good enough.
Do you even agree with that sentiment?
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I think we need a bit more context. As opposed to what?
Not OP, but I'm guessing a way to show off his writing/worldbuilding and filling the players heads with irrelevant minutiae, which seems to be why most DMs in actuality write setting documents.
As opposed to being told almost nothing. He gave us two country names and said it was farmland.
Tell him you need to have some basic knowledge of the place you were born in. Setting has to have something it can call it's own, if it is just alternative history he still has to provide the nations and rulers relevant, it is the basic info,
>How would you explain to a new DM that a setting document is for the benefit of the players not him?
By saying that to them.
>just because he can improv and make it up on the spot is not good enough.
The GM is under no obligation to provide you with a setting document.
>Do you even agree with that sentiment?
That improv is not good enough? A little.
That the players need to know stuff about the setting before the GM pulls everything out of his ass? Yeah, but the GM can improv whatever he wants, whenever he wants.
That can also be completely legit, although it depends on the preferences of the group and the nature of the setting.
Sometimes I'll do that when I'm interested in doing communal setting creation. Lay out a few basics as a foundation, let players make things up themselves, along with using declarative knowledge checks to let us build up the world as we go.
Since when do players read the setting document?
Why haven't you just told him what you've typed here?
Fucking inadequate for creating a character with an actual personality and history.
You have shitty players.
What more are you looking for?
Are you actually interested in what civilization built that dungeon you're about to loot of all its priceless artifacts and sell on the black market, just so you can feel bad about no one really appreciating the historical value of the stuff you swiped?
I never had much of a setting document, we just kind of talk a bit about the setting beforehand enough to get the very basic idea and let players go from there. I created fantasy cajun swampland as my far traveller's backstory since we'd probably never go there and assumed we'd be dealing with generic fantasy stuff,which we were.
Some GMs like to start with a generic 'default' setting and expand on it through campaign play. We're not all aspiring novelists.
Does your GM have a fleshed-out world built that he could provide a setting document for?
Since never. Player setting handouts should be 2 pages, max, or their eyes glaze over.
>Cant handle surprises and DMing on the fly.
You're not cut out for rpgs; take up wargaming or something.
If you're not given a setting, there's nothing to do except ride the rails. There's no agency because you don't have a foundation for alternatives.
Unless the GM gives players agency to create parts of the world for themselves.
Making things up as you go works in my experience. In our current game we have defined just one kingdom and its most recent events to get the main adventure going. Each player gets to add something to the world through his characters background. Adding pages of lore for the lizard empire to the south adds no real value and wouldn't come up during the game anyway.
This, I've forgotten notes before.
I just showed up with a new notepad and my memory of the last session.
Still everything went alright, I gave my players the first move and improv'ed from there.
I like that newer D&D setting books have a few bullet points explaining how their world is different. That's all you need.
Expecting the players to buy and read through the Player's Guide to Eberron or search a full atlas of Faerun is too much work for too little gain.
Email them a few paragraphs, any game restrictions/additions, and a list of gods.
>Yeah, but the GM can improv whatever he wants, whenever he wants.
The more statements like these I read, the wiser my decision to avoid actually playing these games seems.
Do you not trust your GM at all?
If there's no setting, time to make your own. Everything you say about the setting is true unless the DM corrects you.
>same author who did mustard seeds
Knew it looked familiar!
Yes and no.
A setting primer for players is good, but setting notes can also be exclusively for the DM to keep track of various aspects of the setting and to later drip feed to the players to expand the world.
The DM might want to start to off in generic fantasy land, then build on and introduce more on the borders for you to explore. After all, your characters may well not know what happens in the car off lands they've never visited and so there's no reason for it to be in a setting primer.
Basically don't get prissy because the DM hides details of the setting from you. But by all means get prissy when your DM mentions shit your character really should have known like capital locations and food names.
not OP, but how do you actually write/format a setting document?
>DM
Try playing something that isn't DnD.
Speaking of communal setting creation, has anyone else built a setting using Microscope? My group did it awhile back and we've done a few campaigns in the setting since then, in different time periods. It feels like a good way to have enough detail to make the world feel real without nailing things down too hard.
In general, I'm of the opinion that most of the worldbuilding is for the benefit of the GM, in order to help him provide a consistent and engaging experience.
There's only so much you can improv and you will forget or mis-state things next go around.
The players don't really need to know a lot of details, but those details can be used by the GM to create stories or provide plot hooks. For example, players might not care about the taxes in the kingdom they're visiting, but the GM can use information about taxes to decide that the peasants are unhappy and at the verge of rebellion, but taxes might be high because of corrupt noblemen, or they might be high because there's a war on the horizon and the general populace wasn't informed. These all can be used to set off a plot for the players, but the players don't need to know any of these details ahead of time and can find out in game.
Usually what my players get is a basic description of the world and whatever else they need to know to get started character building, this usually amounts to one to three pages, depending on how much of the setting is generic. For information their character would know as a result of living in the world, I usually just answer questions as they come up, maybe requiring a roll if it's a complex question.
How the hell people wrote a setting document IC?
Yeah, the DM is free to be detail-light up until he expects you to know something he hasn't told you (like, if you came to him with a reasonable character concept and got told "those don't exist in this setting").
Campaign primer.
I agree 100%
Mine are specifically written to give the players useful info.
Not at all the same as my campaign notes.
Presumably he wants to know what his people value, what their way of life is like, and what the country they're in is like.
The stuff that makes the world make art least some sense to the players.
So the novel /wall of text, and break it up with white space and headers.
Use point form items wherever possible.
Then its not like studying a damned textbook.
He should be able to at least provide a couple pages of organized point form notes.
It doesn't need to be a damn novel
>Break things into categories with headers. use point form lists. Be succinct.
>Include major factions, major countries, major cultures, recent history (major events, past 15-20 years, in point form should be fine), and current political/cultural climate. Focus on the stuff where the players are playing, not the whole world.
>list any whitelisted or blacklisted options. Playable races, classes, subclasses, feats, spells.
>spell out any of your houserules in advance.
Done.
Easy to use, easy to reference.
And something that seemed so obvious I forgot to mention it:
>it's a document for the players. If it's not relevant to them, it doesn't belong in the document.
That's actually a big one. I see really often big lists of things in setting documents that are really historical or things that wouldn't matter to the average character, unless they were super high level and had maximum possible knowledge skills to know that actually the world was secretly a giant turtle or whatever
>Tfw 50 pages of setting doc
>15 gods, 6 countries, 3 factions per country
>Random bits and pieces here and there
I swear it's just what you'd need to make your character
If the gm makes the setting up on the fly, you're free to add parts as well. If he is an ass about that, he shouldn't pull the whole setting out of his ass.
If he made the setting up beforehand and doesn't give you details he's either unexperienced or there's a communication problem.
Solution, either way: Act like adults and talk about it.
If you require you players to read more than a single sheet front and back, then you're absolutely doing it wrong. I typically give mine half a page worth up front, to be read before session 0. Some more things are given out during character creation. Everything else comes out doing play.
>1 page front and back maximum.
Definitely Disagree.
It often takes longer than that to list which races, subrace, feats, classes, subclasses, and spells are not available. The campaign primer I'm working on has this section at 3 pages
And if you have anything specific to your setting or campaign that is being added, additional races, subclasses, backgrounds, whatever, you're gonna go way over 2 pages.
Then you may have like a page of houserules, or a page listing which optional subsystems are in use. Possibly a page outlining any changes to character creation. 2-4 pages
If you're only talking about world details, it's still too short. A page for the current region and relevant recent history, a page for relevant factions. A page for cultures, and a page for gods could also be warranted. So that's 4.
All of this is assuming one sided, btw.
So assuming you're not using a published setting, we're looking at 4 pages of setting info, 3-4 pages listing what's available assuming you don't allow "everything" or stupidly just restrict by source, roughly a page listing which optional systems are in use, a page of chargen changes if you have any, and a page or two of houserules.
>4,3-4,1,0-1,1-2,X
Thats reasonably 9-12 pages, plus whatever extra content your setting adds.
5-8 pages if you're using a published setting.
I doubt many of your players will read that upfront. They may glance through it and read stuff like character options when doing character creation.
>It often takes longer than that to list which races, subrace, feats, classes, subclasses, and spells are not available.
>this is what 3.pf fags actually believe
Meanwhile, in actually good RPGs...
Format of writing a setting document? Give me a pdf
This is for 5e.
They only need to read the setting bit up front and skim the houserules. Everything else is "refer to this when it's relevant". That's the point.
Google docs is better.
>3 factions per country
What do you mean by that? How can it be a country if it isn't unified?
Fine, give me a google docs.
Countries have groups of people with different interests within them, and factions rarely refer to the government.
Faction examples might include the hell's angels, a group of human rights lobbyists, and a group of animal rights activists. For instance.
I find it frustrating when I need to drag every detail out of my GM. He's the kind of guy who's spent the better parts of 2 years writing a setting, filling it with like a hundred countries with different cultures, traditions and a setting that detours pretty heavily from ye old standard fantasy lande (even though it's based there). This makes it very hard for me to make a character that feels like it fits into the world, that has an appropriate name and background or hell, actually knows anything about the surrounding countries. Every session we learn new things about the setting that is common knowledge to people yet we weren't told it before starting so you have to make on the fly changes to your character all the time. It's a handful.
Maybe because there's a bunch of cunts constantly trying to intrigue, murder, or generally scheme all the time (see: HMA England).
Or maybe the dominant ethnic group has political mastery over other ethnic groups and they hate it, but are relegated to worse positions (see: Norman England).
Or maybe the social desires of the people have amalgamated themselves in the form of leaders who express those desires, and who constantly struggle for supremacy in government (see: Also England).
damn, England is a shithole
should have worked with all of you one on one in character creation
Oh. You're asking for an example now, not stating that your preference is pdf.
The only one I have at the moment is my messy work in progress campaign primer, but I'll share it.
No setting section yet though since it's gonna be forgotten realms out of the abyss, I'm only really gonna include the Oota specific stuff, and haven't gotten to that section yet.
Anybody have a completed one to share?
>should have worked with all of you one on one in character creation
That's pretty important. I'm currently starting a new campaign with a few friends, new to d20 games. It's a homebrew setting, so I intend to have a one-on-one with them.
i.e. yes you can still play Damien Shaft from the Call of Cthulhu campaign, but we're going to figure out together where he fits into the world goddamn it.
Because he's so bad at planning he said we were gonna do it, and then he just made characters with everyone one and one, without really connecting them to the world, more like cool concepts instead of actual characters.
>2 pages
sentences, 4 paragraphs at most: one paragraph to layout general world setting (i.e. medieval fantasy, elves and whatever, magic and tech levels etc...), another to lay out major local politics (i.e. what kingdoms are around and how they stand relative to each other), a third to layout major problems in the world that'll come up in the later parts of the campaign, and finally one to layout what the PCs are supposed to be doing at session start.
Ideally though that can be summarised in a sentence or two; "this world is dis, in it there is a kingdom wot is at war with dis other kingdom. Everyone has big problems from sentient panzer IIs who learned witchcraft and summon demonic tankettes that plague the countryside. Now you are all meeting in a tavern AND YOU WILL CONTINUE TO MEET IN TAVERNS UNTIL YOU LIKE IT, STEVE.
>Now you are all meeting in a tavern AND YOU WILL CONTINUE TO MEET IN TAVERNS UNTIL YOU LIKE IT, STEVE.
Fuck that my players meet in a pub
Here's the one I'm working on right now.
The content is very much a WIP, and will likely be quite a bit different, but you can at least see what the sections and layout will look like.
Yeah. Anything that's common knowledge, that you should know, that's important, should be given to you upfront; not kept a mystery.
Hell, he could just tell you the stuff as it becomes relevant because it's common knowledge and your character should already know it.
DOI. forgot the fucking link.
docs.google.com
I thought you were trolling me or something kek
How did you make double columns?
Recent feature they finally added, under format
This is how our GM is doing it in one game I'm in right now. He gave us information about our characters' home village and country at the start, and is expanding on the world as we explore it. We'll also sometimes just ask random information about the world, which he'll also then tell us whether it's actually common knowledge in-universe or not.
We talked about it since Microscope is our back-up game but ultimately decided against it because the group would rather spend their main game exploring the setting. I would personally rather do the opposite, but that's probably a lot of why I'm a happily perma-DM.
>AndNothingOfValueWasLost.jpg
I'd still say you'd need 1 page tops for houserules and 2 pages tops for setting info
The players don't need to waste time reading a sentance explaining that Bigby's Grasping Hand isn't available in your game because Bigby doesn't exist and nobody has ever been named that. Putting it in a list with any others is fine.
>The GM is under no obligation to provide you with a setting document.
>the GM can improv whatever he wants, whenever he wants.
If the players are without any details about how the fuck the setting works in advance, it only makes sense if they're being dropped in from another world and therefore know fuck all in-character, too.
The important things that the character would know, the players should know too.
Otherwise, as one user mentioned upthread, there's nothing to do but cluelessly ride the rails.
It would just go in a list. Nobody is suggesting a paragraph explaining why each of the unavailable options are unavailable. That's a strawman.
Theres still a lot of different subjects to cover.
A page for houserules is fine.
Setting info could easily need more than 2 pages, in point form, with headers.
So all that stuff you just said... maybe say that?
You mean, the stuff they should have talked about during Character Creation?
You say: Please give me a setting document with the basic information my character knows about the world around them so that I can play my character well.
>Lazy/bad GM's are exclusive to dnd.
I read the setting documents. I like role-playing and getting into my character and the setting. I like being immersed in the world. To me, not reading the setting document is like skipping all the dialogue and cut scenes in a video game RPG when that's the good stuff.
Overwhelmingly moreso than with other games, yes.
>ask DM for information about the homebrew setting
>get basically nothing
>"whatever"
>make character anyway
>half a session in I realise there's absolutely no reason for me to be where we are or doing what the plot wants me to
no, run the game or shut up. back seat dms are the worst.
...
Depends on context.
Like, for Eberron or Golarion, largeestablished universes? Sure, I'll readh through some setting fluff.
For a homebrew game? Just tell me what I need to know to make a character that fits, fucking hell man.
I'm not going to read your novel because we're literally never going to leave the country we start in, because that ends up being the only one that actually gets fleshed out.
I often find a way to start players out with no IC knowledge of the world if it's a new setting. They just stepped off a boat from Distant Lands, or they wake up from cryosleep. The campaign I'm due to start will kick off with their memories being wiped by slavers.
Not entirely. If you're in a town you can still say you look something up in the local library or you ask for rumors. You can still roll knowledge checks and ask party members to do so as well to get information about locations. That's why you got the skill in the first place.
I have a setting document that I encourage players to read before character creation. If they choose not to, we can discuss it when they arrive to build characters, but it helps when everyone is already on the same page when you start.
I do this, to a point. I make the nations, and the major cities, but if a player wants to be from some town I didn't make, that's fine, but it's on them to make it. I like it when they do that, but usually they just lick the biggest city in the world and all decide to be from there...
I wish I had players like you.
My players only want a barebones, generic as shit campaign and it's crushing my soul to just drone on and on, using every shitty trope because "it's most familiar" to them.
My dossier has, for any given nation or region, its government, its religious and cultural practices, a little hit about its geography and economy, and a map. I usually also include a few names from that region, just so players have a general naming convention if they wanna get that into it. I don't see much need for anything else.