The worst thing you can do to a setting is over-explaining

I sketch out a rough approximation of each area's background in my head, keeping a few notes if need be, along with some guiding principles. Everything else is left up in the air until the PCs ask about it, at which point I improvise something that seems like it would fit based off those guiding principles.

Deep Lore is shit and only makes your game world that much harder to get into.

If you must go with deep lore, as much as it pains me to say this, go the Skyrim route and have it all in the background where it doesn't really affect the main campaign much.

>Deep Lore is shit
Is this a joke? The most talked about and celebrated settings all have very deep and interesting lore.

From what I can tell, If you're going for souls style DEEPEST LORE then what you do is only ever directly tell pieces of it, and let your players connect them

>Not everything has to make sense.
>Contradictions are completely natural.
Everything is true but these. Immersion is the main goal of roleplay. Id the gm says "because i said so" or "because magic" that breaks immersion and if player immersion breaks you failed as a dm.

I think he meant "make sense" in the strictly empirical sense. As in, it probably looks ok at face value but doesnt hold up to closer scrutiny

>Wojak's brain becomes the cosmos
>Not that "shining brain that is one with the cosmos" thing
So close...

I think a lot of people will agree, that real-life folklore is a great source of inspiration. However, folklore of almost every ethnicity is somewhat inconsistent and has contradictory statements. Even putting oral tradition aside, there are remains of prior cultures which purpose and origin are only a matter of speculations. Therefore, if there is something unknown or mystical, it's only natural for it to have different representations, if any at all. And that leads to something not making any sense or being contradictory.

That kind of work is useful for the worldbuilder, it gives you the sense of proportion. Far too many scifi and fantasy writers just pull numbers out of their arsehole.

I've written out everything from creation of the universe to why dwarves fart less than other races. I just kind of want everything mapped out so I can see what players perceive of the setting. it's nice to know everything but letting others perceive in glimpses of a whole instead of creating the illusion of a whole picture and filling the holes with bullshit when necessary.

I may be autistic enough to create in my mind a coherent and thought out universe but at least I don't lore/exposition dump people if they aren't interested. It's more for me you know

>blah blah nothing matters
Okay.

Yeah, this is why I port a lot of basic rules and concepts from one setting to the next. My Elves always work the same, for instance.

Conversely, it's also why I prefer making my own pantheons. If I use the gods in the system, I simply don't know anything about them and can't represent them properly. And they all sort of meld together into the same vaguely Catholic, boring bullshit.

What are the most cliché elves that try their hardest not to be cliché?

I agree. So many world builders are so entrenched in their masturbatory deep lore that they refuse to allow pcs to make any meaningful difference in their worlds.

Folklore can get away with it as it's just stories. If you're actually having to interact with it the inconsistencies are much more of a problem.

This is clear in works like Lord of the Rings (being an example of what to do) as opposed to later, (lesser) fantasy. A lecturer called it the "Treatise of Tedium"; how the chapters after establishing the exciting basis for the setting are devoted to explaining virtually every other aspect of the fictional universe.

Good lesson, OP, and one that I have already learned.
Problem is that I start a campaign without having developed shit, then I get lazy in-between sessions and never develop anything more.
So now I know what to worldbuild.

I think both are important. If you want to go to hyper-autism levels of detail go nuts, I do it too, but where a lot of GM's get hung up is making it required reading.

Like, if one of my players wants to know the tax rates for the city they're in for some ungodly reason, I got that shit in there somewhere, but I don't expect them to know street details and shit, and I don't quiz them on world details unless it's brought up organically during play. If one of them wants to bring up something from my textbook of lore, that's cool.

Ya feel me?

I don't think establishing a lot of rules for the universe is bad on its own. It's exposing the players to it without them wanting to explore it that's the real sin here.

Just look at Tolkien; Lord of the Rings contained many broken references that only the characters, not the reader, could really know (sweet irony). They -were- real references though, as they had all been established as real things within the setting by Tolkien in his own extensive notes.

The fey variant.

Dude, like, "original folklore" faery folk is totally hardcore. *inserts mental illnesses just read about on wikipedia*

Oppressed ghetto elves.

Absolutely resent them.

Like they weren't the best part of DA:O.

But those Deep Lore settings don't frontload the reader with all that shit. It's discovered and hinted at organically.

I don't think anyone would appreciate the Elder Scrolls if every game began with a 15 minute long cinematic explaining what CHIM is.

Not him, but DA: O is the prime example of "cliché trying its hardest not to be cliché". It's one of the most unimaginative Fantasy worlds I've ever seen. Worst of all, if had these lore dumps in its encyclopedia, and its ancient world legit sounded far more interesting than what was going on in the present.

Frankly, I couldn't bring myself to finish it. I wouldn't say it's one of the worst games I've ever played, but it's definitely one of the most boring ones.

Fey elves are only overused because they’re the only interesting non Tolkien elf variant so it’s acceptable

Nah, it was fine.

DA:O had alot of things going for it. Take into consideration I first played it when I was 15 so it has some nostalgic value so you may disregard what I say of you please.

>The elves were Gods then Slaves then Tribals and Second class citizens.
I liked this aspect and elves are only second class citizens in fereldan, arguably still a main chunk of gameplay takes place there but still. It had a feeling of "We Wuz Kangs n shieet"/"We Wuz Gods n Shieeet". But to be honest I just really liked the roaming tribes with their close and congegrated community which Is paralleled by the ghetto elves who are also close and congregated but forced to remain in the same place. The elves weren't stronger(shorter and skinnier)or smarter(arrogant) they just had a richer history and powerful artefacts that responded to them. Sure they did some world changing bullshit but this was depth of knowledge not a higher limit of power type deal.

>Dwarves
Drunken second class Citizens to themselves who fear the surface and work in a Indian esque cast system dominated by nobles. I really liked the dwarves for not just having the best origin story(noble)but also having the most interesting history.

When I roam around the deep roads it gives me a feeling of surrealism as you can speculate that the dwarves had once holo'd out most of the planet to build and shape their empire. Then the darkspawn happened and now innumerable amounts of their empire is abandoned or overrun.
The dwarves have their own world below the surface but it's a hellish world like Zion in The Matrix.

>Quanari
I Liked it better when they were mysterious sexist "noble savage clichés" in a hellish jungle before they got retconned into not!Islam that tolerates anybody. Sten is quite interesting as a character who cares not for life and is guilty of murder and was ready to be punished for his crimes.

I can't speak for the rest of dragon age but origins was good. A solid 8/10 as a world for me.

Convenient how the one thing you think ruins a setting is also the thing that lets you do the least work, huh?

Fucking savage

Sadly, time spent on something doesn't automatically equate to a quality of the product. Overdoing it and not giving a care are both bad extremes, but there is always a middle road. And while using this middle road it's important to understand that negative space does as much as filled space.

You can do without session 0 if the players already know what characters the other players are gonna be making, and all agree on the tone of the game you want to run.

>Not everything has to make sense.
>Contradictions are completely natural.
Wrong you fucking brainlet simpleton, wrong.

That's how real world works, user. Care to explain your reasoning?

>Not everything has to make sense.
>Contradictions are completely natural.
Not him but first I'd like you to explain how this is in the real world?

If you think not in terms of physical reality but cultures and societies, internal contradictions are par of the course

Yes but that's to do with hypocrisy and free will of the individual. In other words a Republic that focuses on democracy could be entirely corrupt but that wouldn't a contradiction. Merely sapients sapiening.

From what OP said it read like he was trying to say "Sure there was a castle there last session but this session there's a lake." like as in physical contradictions.

Ofcourse in societal terms people will be hypocrites and contradicts themselves but that's in every setting. But I like coherent world's.

>From what OP said it read like he was trying to say "Sure there was a castle there last session but this session there's a lake." like as in physical contradictions.
OP here. You're reading it wrong. It's more like and are saying. You're describing a simple neglect and bad GMing.
I think Stonehenge will be a nice real-world example of what I was trying to say. Some things about it are pretty contradictory and don't make a lot of sense, like "Why would someone bring a huge amount of rocks from one part of the island to another?" or "What was its purpose?". Not everything has to have a tight logical reasoning or pages of background material to exists. Some things are simply there.

Take the morrowind approach: Sketch out a rough metaphysics of your setting, a creation story and all that.

Then sketch out some religions and philosophies and sciences that can accurately explain one or two aspects of your "true metaphysics" but not all aspects of it. Realize that all the faiths are true, if incomplete, interpretations of the "true metaphysics".

Invent some words and sprinkle them lightly (don't go fucking overboard like kirkbride did post morrowind) in academic papers about the metaphysics and faiths.

I get what you're saying leave it up to the imagination so that people can have a sense of bewilderment and not everything is logically categorised.

Some people like to have everything locally thought out and then release things in small doses to their players.

Earnest Hemmingwway said you can leave anything out and still have a good story as long as you know what you left out. That's true for worldbuilding too. It's okay to leave plenty of blank space for the heroes to discover, but you should at least have an idea what's in that space.

It's true for any creative pursuit. If you're doing something because you think it'll make your job easier, it won't and it's a bad idea.

>run sci fi campaign
>"WHAT HAPPENED TO DONALD TRUMP IS DANNY DEVITO DEAD WHAT ABOUT OTHER CELEBRITY WHAT ABOUT CURRENT EVENT HUH WHAT HAPPENS NEXT YEAR FROM TODAY"

I try to work from a "what is relevant to the players?" perspective with my worldbuilding but sometimes it doesn't work

>run sci fi campaign
>"WHAT HAPPENED TO DONALD TRUMP IS DANNY DEVITO DEAD WHAT ABOUT OTHER CELEBRITY WHAT ABOUT CURRENT EVENT HUH WHAT HAPPENS NEXT YEAR FROM TODAY"
Donald Trump's skin changed from Orange to Red during the re-election campaign allowing him to safely Identify as a red skinned Indian swooping in the minority support pity votes and wipe his slate clean.

Danny Devito is not dead as he was technically a Penguin human hybrid so when it came that people started to suspect his longevity he merely walked to the nearest body of water and dove below the surface never to be seen againUntil Twins 3:Triplets In Trouble began casting

After humanity developed rockets built for space travel at a cost effective level, it was quickly bought out by Emirates and the price of space travel rose exponentially. Emirates laughing at their space time monopoly built a luxurious space station get away for the rich and fabulous. They sent out tickets to all of Hollywood. 2 days after the grand opening of the Emirates International Space Station, too many Hollywood starlets blew their rape whistles at the Same time combining to create a super frequency which broke the safety glass killing all of Tinsel Town in mere seconds.

In the Ashes of the Red Carpet did the Brown rug come into the scene as Bollywood rose in popularity.
Bollywood was then bought out by Chinese businessmen due to a lack of Jewish lawyers as without liberal properganda and a newly powerful Donald Trump America nuked the middle east accidently including their greatest ally in the strike Zone.

Oil prices rose rapidly and then flopped as Solar Power took the market by storm. Nuclear power was dropped as Russia was too busy enjoying Chinese Bollywood Classics like Jackie Chan and The Temple Of Doom.

With Full control on the media scene China pulls out of its plans for world domination as superhero movies like "Gigantic Gandhi and Big Buddha" are easy and profitable.

>It's true for any creative pursuit. If you're doing something because you think it'll make your job easier, it won't and it's a bad idea.
Ironically Bill Gates said it's the opposite for any practical/logical work.