Players Don't Care About Your Setting

payn said:

Yes. I think a lot of players just want to play but don’t care about the particulars.

Click to expand...

Bingo. And that's okay. We might all agree Game X is great but love it for different reasons. I may be super enthusiastic about all the setting information in Delta Green, but it's perfectly fine if a player doesn't give a damn so long as they're invested in the scenario we're playing. Mostly. Ideally I'd prefer it if the players were just a teeny, tiny bit invested in the setting, but I'll count my blessings where I find them.

So like I'm making some pregenerated characters, or NPC's for an adventure (these are like a starship crew):

Now I'm making some more NPC's, this time, a dealer, bar owner, mercenary, and programmer. Someone asked what one needs for an adventure, I said NPC's and a map, then the players will make an adventure. Though I have had people say just this week my setting is fantastic, and has phenomenal world building, so in fact people are using it.

I think it really depends.

Certain high level things probably matter, like genre and tone and things like that. So someone may like sword and sandal type stuff, and so they may be down with Dark Sun over some more generic D&D setting. But that doesn’t mean that they care at all about Hamanu’s back story and why there are no trolls on Athas.

What players care about, generally speaking, is what matters to play. So in addition to things like tone and genre, they likely care about what player characters tend to do. Things that shape the play experience rather than simply serving as encyclopedia style history like the Silmarillion.

Seriously… look at the Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings and look at what’s relevant to those stories. What actually matters to and affects the characters. Then look at The Silmarillion.

Players care about what’s in The Hobbit and the LOTR, not what’s in the Silmarillion.

I'm not going to join in on the oversimplified accusations of hypocrisy back and forth. I find that all misleading and unhelpful.

MGibster said:

It pains me to say this, but I don't think most players care about game settings all that much.

Click to expand...

No. But, then, most real-world people aren't all that interested in, say, world political affairs either. They are interested in paying the rent, getting food on the table, and the things they can actually do about that. Or, like, a firefighter hopping on the engine in Connecticut isn't apt to care all that much about an organized crime boss in Nebraska, either.

Most folks are interested in information that is immediately relevant to their interests. Most setting material isn't, most of the time. If I am worrying about whether the moss-covered, three-handled family credenza in front of me is a mimic, the elven nation's oh-so-mysterious mysteries are probably not on the forefront of my mind.

I love creating settings, pitch several for each new campaign (which run 3-7 years), and the plots and arcs I run leverage that and are ones that wouldn't work as well (or at all) in generic settings. I welcome player input and give them authorial control with veto power, both before the start and also fleshing out around their character and their background. I design at high level in broad strokes to only detail as needed, leaving plenty of blank spaces on the "map" to be filled in as demanded by what the characters do and what the players are interested in.

Sorry, I respectfully disagree: my players do care about my setting.

If they don't care about yours, how are you engaging them in it specifically, and in a way that wouldn't work with other settings.

I like settings as a DM and for just enjoyment of reading settings. But as a player, which is what I am the past several years, yeah I don't care a lot and none of our group does either. We're in Waterdeep: Mad Mage in one campaign, and it could be any city above for all we'd care. We're in Tomb of Annihilation in the other, and we love Chult and the setting...but it could have been any jungle and any political background for that area and we wouldn't have cared much. The fact these are both Forgotten Realms is meaningless to us. The fact there are other continents and cities and such in this setting is meaningless to us. The environment matters but a lot of the larger setting does not.

MichaelSomething said:

But I'm on Enworld? Gotta argue about who's playing D&D wrong!

Click to expand...

That's kind of my point. Having a place where game-related conversation can happen does a lot. It's a bit of interaction out of the game.

Odds are two people will make 90% of posts (the gm and the most prolific player) but the others will chip in from time to time. And if it includes the loot lists and such, even the least focused player will be motivated to look at it at least a few minutes between sessions.

MGibster said:

It pains me to say this, but I don't think most players care about game settings all that much.

Click to expand...

My current 11 players have 9 for whom setting matters a lot. I've only 2 who don't have strong setting emotional responses.

In a way, it makes me lucky... in another, well, I have to be consistent.

Mistwell said:

I like settings as a DM and for just enjoyment of reading settings. But as a player, which is what I am the past several years, yeah I don't care a lot and none of our group does either. We're in Waterdeep: Mad Mage in one campaign, and it could be any city above for all we'd care. We're in Tomb of Annihilation in the other, and we love Chult and the setting...but it could have been any jungle and any political background for that area and we wouldn't have cared much. The fact these are both Forgotten Realms is meaningless to us. The fact there are other continents and cities and such in this setting is meaningless to us. The environment matters but a lot of the larger setting does not.

Click to expand...

I arrived at a similar conclusion and hence this thread. My sneaking suspicion is that a significant percentage of us who post here really love published settings or love creating their own. I know I certainly do. Pretty much every game I own was purchase because there was somthing about the setting I liked. I certainly won't run a game unless I like the setting.

Mistwell said:

I like settings as a DM and for just enjoyment of reading settings. But as a player, which is what I am the past several years, yeah I don't care a lot and none of our group does either. We're in Waterdeep: Mad Mage in one campaign, and it could be any city above for all we'd care. We're in Tomb of Annihilation in the other, and we love Chult and the setting...but it could have been any jungle and any political background for that area and we wouldn't have cared much. The fact these are both Forgotten Realms is meaningless to us. The fact there are other continents and cities and such in this setting is meaningless to us. The environment matters but a lot of the larger setting does not.

Click to expand...

FR is old hat, but what if the setting was new to you?
Would you still not be interested?