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Message: <blockquote data-quote="D+1" data-source="post: 1564527" data-attributes="member: 13654">Cartography.  The map is the #1 thing that can hook my interest.  If the world as I, the DM, will be constantly looking at it from my god-eye view looks interesting I'll be more willing to give the setting a deeper look.  If the maps look terrible, I'll be much less inclined to look any further at it simply because you're already losing my interest in the physical "look" of the world.Something different is good, but the further out it pushes the envelope the less inclined I am to pursue it.  I'm gonna have to sell my players on participating in this campaign world and that means *I* have to pitch it to them, not give them a book to read.  If it's going to take a whole session to explain all the differences from Core Rules and lay out the basic tableau of the setting then I might buy it - but it'll just go right to my shelf after reading and stay there.  I need to be able to explain it to my players in a few minutes and have them say "Cool!" or I'm not gonna bash my head against the wall for the next umpteen months trying to get them to feel what I did when I read it.History is bound to be rewritten so don't give me entire chapters starting with the dawn of recorded time.  Give me the world as it exists now and the basics of how it got to be this way.  If you want to lay out history for the world in serious depth then put it in a supplement.  If I'm not going to be interested in that information as part of a supplement then I'm probably not interested in it at ALL.Related to the cartography - a world will need good countries, evil countries, a few smaller, a few larger - and then have wilderness that the PC's will generally be the first to explore (should they choose to do so or should I choose to move the campaign in that direction).  I need to be able to run an ENTIRE campaign based in a single city in this world, in a small part of a kingdom, and on up to world-spanning and world-altering epics.The world has to have things wrong with it.  The peaceful and good kingdom of Warmenfuzzy has to have a ruler with black and dangerous ulterior motives, or is beset on all sides by enemies, or something.  I need to be able to take the "snapshot" view of the world that the material gives me and move the world forward without having to dream up a direction to take it and a motivation for doing so.  And it DOESN'T have to involve the entire world in a single over-reaching story arc.  If such an arc exists that's fine, but it shouldn't be the raison detre for the setting.  It shouldn't proceed on the assumption that playing out that single grand arc is what everyone who runs the setting will do with it or that it should color everything else about the setting.There is also still the contradictory point that the LESS I need to explain or hand out to the players to get them up to speed on the world the better.  A setting should NOT require a complete Handbook for the players.</blockquote>

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