How much detail should I put into the world in a setting? Should I have a name for every NPC in every town...

How much detail should I put into the world in a setting? Should I have a name for every NPC in every town, or have a vague idea of each town and make it up as I go along?

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The first if you're autistic and have nothing better to do. Or if you're somehow being paid by the hour or letter or something and have no deadline.

The later if you're a normal human being.

That doesn't really help since I am autistic and I never have anything better to do, but I also want to know how much time I have to make stuff.

I make most things up as I go along. Doesn't mean there's even a single NPC that doesn't have a name; it just means I don't know it yet.

you need as much info as you can write down
every last bit helps, trust me

having a campaign's story pre-written around the second/third session is a bonus if you can pull it off

Be honest. Are you really ever going to run a game?

I'm going to run one this weekend unless the players bail. I've got all the world and such set up, but I don't have some minor things like outlying farms and town things incorporated yet, just major places and characters.

In that case, you're ready for your session already, since you have major places and characters and presumably plot hooks and events. Feel free to be as exhaustively detailed as you want to be once you're prepared for running a session. Once you've prepped for your session, all extra world building is for fun.

>but I also want to know how much time I have to make stuff.
well shit, you're an adult right? you tell us; how much free time do you have that you're willing to put towards this kind of thing?

Say, 5-6 hours a day

shit, that's damn near an average of 40 hours a week. if you enjoy world building, go fucking ham man. put in as many details as you want. get lost in it.

Alright. I've already got about 20 towns with main characters, hooks, and town layouts

have fun user.

I want to kiss this girl too

I don't know whether to laugh or feel pity for the OP. It's kind'a sad when anons encourage a person's autistic tenancies like this, especially when they clearly know they'll get him nowhere.

Your time is probably better used coming up with the general: This town's got an X and a Y, it mainly produces Z, the local feature or festival is about this or that.

NPC names, you can just keep a short list around if you need to pull one out of your ass. Maybe have a short list of personalities or histories or whatever if the players decide to strike up serious conversations with random NPCs.

user here's what you want to do: you want to design 3 types of things:
>flavor
>interaction bits
>plot hooks
Number one, is shit like "the city streets are made from a bluish cobblestone mined from the hills nearby that is because the hill is made of a dead primal earth elemental", that sort of background shit. Keep it short keep it simple and keep it relevant to the players. Describe scenery. If you've traveled and seen different biomes IRL it can help to describe soil color, sparseness of vegetation. There's one section of my world I always describe as being similar to Craters of the Moon: black soil, sparse pines, plenty of sharp rock formations.
>interaction bits
This is what your players will actually interact with: the tavern in town, the gem cutter, etc.. One way to differentiate towns is to not have a weapons shop or gem shop in every town: the players might have to go to another town to sell their gems. Check out www222.pair.com/sjohn/blueroom/demog.htm and specifically the support values by town. Give each of them a little quirk, like a dwarf weapons smith who gives higher prices to half-orcs.
>plot hooks
These are just little things the characters might do. Make plenty and keep them vague because you don't know what level the characters will be when they get to them nor do you know how much they'll care so it's wise to not make up 200 adventures beforehand.

I would suggest 3 or 4 paragraphs per town, a starting town, a port city maybe, a few breadbasket villages, a big city, a trade hub town, a military town, and a few frontier villages. That's a decent kingdom to start off. Also if you really wanna get into detailed worldbuilding I'd say build it as a hex map, makes things easier.

You should come up with enough detail to fill out the world, but only if it's either common to the player characters or relevant to the events that happen during that particular session.

Also, be prepared for the players to suddenly fall in love with random NPC's who you gave a random name for on a whim and to sidestep your campaign in some way that you wouldn't have expected.

How do these looks for basic notes

Town A: An X town, the peoples are like Y, the encounters are A,B,C

some of the towns have more detailed NPCs

Oh, and I've got notes like that for about 30 towns, some detailed NPCs for about a dozen towns, and I've designed the town layout for all the nearest towns to the beginning of the game.

Have a skeleton framework that's defined, and leave the rest in a quantum wave state to be collapsed when it becomes relevant.

In my life I've only known ONE GM with the autism+obsessiveness+EideticMemory+OCD+LiteralSuperGeniusIQ to make the first one actually work for gameplay. I'm guessing you're not him.

The overwhelming majority f experienced DM/GM's out there do the second, but make sure that their vague idea is defined enough, and with enough "already defined" easter eggs strewn throughout, so that the players still feel like their decisions matter.