A whole new world....

[Lanefan]

Here's an example of a handout I've been working on for an upcoming campaign: View attachment 104828

There are only 2-3 paragraphs about the setting, and the rest is about the campaign (who are the PCs? what do they do? and what NPCs will they interact with most?). I deliberately haven't defined many specifics about the setting for this campaign. Instead I tried to lean heavily on pirate and sailing tropes to get players into the right frame of mind.

I think I'd have added in a paragraph or two about weather (frequency of storms and-or calms, prevailing wind direction, etc.), climate (tropical? sub-tropical? north atlantic?) and astronomy (give names to a few key stars or constellations; also how many moons? phases? etc., which would then by extension give rise to a calendar). All of these things would be very important to sailors and, in theory, well-known to all your PCs.

 

[Legatus Legionis]

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[Immortal Sun]

Very little.

The PCs learn as the adventure.

It is as simple as that.

They are not scholars, nor have they been raised by scholars to know the world.

Okay, so lets flip this on it's head, what if they are? (I mean, there are literally classes that specialize in knowledge skills)

 

[Legatus Legionis]

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[Hand of Evil]

This has a lot of answers and can be different for the type of game you are running.

First you have geological - I have found it best to handle it by distance, drawing a circles around my campaign area. A days travel will have a good bit of detail but the further out you go, the less knowledge is provided. That way I do not box myself in and can build details as my players explore the world.

Next is Cultural - What is the culture of the campaign area? Things like days of the week, holidays, gods, rulers, coinage, language, common laws, etc... Some of this is more common that others and you may want to rank what is more common than other things, like knowing all the children of the local king or every god.

Now comes Fringe - What things touch the campaign area and bleed over to it? This is hearsay, rumor, gossip that is based on the far reaches of the map.