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<blockquote data-quote="SpiralBound" data-source="post: 3055753" data-attributes="member: 8396"><p>Perhaps in your player handout, you can organize info in terms of what opportunities for character creation and adventuring your setting/campaign offers, rather than listing what they can't do. Obviously, if you've banned Bards, Sorcerers, Gnomes, and flails for example, then you need to mention this somewhere, but focusing more on the "can"s than the "can not"s may make the players more receptive to your campaign concept.</p><p></p><p>As for a guideline for eyeballing how much setting background to give them. Trying reading it out loud to yourself in a monotone voice. When it starts to become boring, then that may be a good length to stop at! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue :p" data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /> Seriously though, a player handout for the beginning of a campaign should only give enough info to let players gain an overview feeling of the setting and campaign. If you find yourself explaining "specific setting aspect X" so that they'll fully understand "setting reference Y", then you're getting too deep into it and you need to back off a little and gloss over things a bit more. Save those details for when a player does a knowledge skills checks or for when you're planning out an adventure and want to make sure that various nations or npcs are properly behaving as per their motivations that you've set up in your reference writeups.</p><p></p><p>One thing I've learned in worldbuilding over the years is that no one is as interested in it as you are. As the creator of <strong>everything</strong>, nearly every detail of the setting, history, political or social dynamics, unusual customs, unique gods, etc are all very interesting to you - after all, most worldbuilders only create details for the bits they really find interesting. Not really a fan of creating flora and fauna ecologies? You'll likely gloss over that aspect of your world, instead saying "it's like earth's plants and animals, but with D&D monsters added". Meanwhile, if you're a history buff, you'll gleefully chart out numerous wars and treaties that fill your settings's history, plotting who hates whom and why, etc, etc. Chances are even another history buff won't be as intrigued in it as you would be cause they didn't create it. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> So only give players the bare minimum they need to know "what's different" about this setting as compared to any other. "Big picture" level info only.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="SpiralBound, post: 3055753, member: 8396"] Perhaps in your player handout, you can organize info in terms of what opportunities for character creation and adventuring your setting/campaign offers, rather than listing what they can't do. Obviously, if you've banned Bards, Sorcerers, Gnomes, and flails for example, then you need to mention this somewhere, but focusing more on the "can"s than the "can not"s may make the players more receptive to your campaign concept. As for a guideline for eyeballing how much setting background to give them. Trying reading it out loud to yourself in a monotone voice. When it starts to become boring, then that may be a good length to stop at! :p Seriously though, a player handout for the beginning of a campaign should only give enough info to let players gain an overview feeling of the setting and campaign. If you find yourself explaining "specific setting aspect X" so that they'll fully understand "setting reference Y", then you're getting too deep into it and you need to back off a little and gloss over things a bit more. Save those details for when a player does a knowledge skills checks or for when you're planning out an adventure and want to make sure that various nations or npcs are properly behaving as per their motivations that you've set up in your reference writeups. One thing I've learned in worldbuilding over the years is that no one is as interested in it as you are. As the creator of [b]everything[/b], nearly every detail of the setting, history, political or social dynamics, unusual customs, unique gods, etc are all very interesting to you - after all, most worldbuilders only create details for the bits they really find interesting. Not really a fan of creating flora and fauna ecologies? You'll likely gloss over that aspect of your world, instead saying "it's like earth's plants and animals, but with D&D monsters added". Meanwhile, if you're a history buff, you'll gleefully chart out numerous wars and treaties that fill your settings's history, plotting who hates whom and why, etc, etc. Chances are even another history buff won't be as intrigued in it as you would be cause they didn't create it. :) So only give players the bare minimum they need to know "what's different" about this setting as compared to any other. "Big picture" level info only. [/QUOTE]
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