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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jedi_Solo" data-source="post: 3992462" data-attributes="member: 40245">I will answer this as a player.  I have DMed in the past but for the vast, vast majority I have been a player.My first move in this situation would be to ask everyone what they liked bast about the last X sessions and what they liked worst.  This could be public at the start/end of a session or you ask them to write it down.Maybe she's like me.  I like the tactile aspect and I love the story aspect but it would be hard for me to care less about the setting.Her tendancy to ask NPCs if they have heard about her character tells me that she cares a little about her character.  There are some in my current gaming group that would care if their PC didn't have a name or a background.Ask my DM about our last campaign.  I was very into the overall story.  I made Journal entries for (almost) every session and turned them in (no extra XP that I am aware of).  This helped the DM know what I cared about in game.  Sometimes I worked very hard for my character to avoid situations and sometime I, as a player, ran my character headfirst into brickwalls because I thought that situation would be fun.On the other hand, the campaign took place in a little known setting called the Forgotten Realms (with a lot of Eberron thown in - but still).  I've read one FR book.  I know only a handful of the gods and know that The Sword Coast is by water.  That may be an exaggeration - but that about covers it.I don't know how much historical data you give out in descriptions or the level of detail you tend to give.  For purposes of example I will go into the extreme.  Maybe you aren't this bad, maybe you're at the level I like...  I don't know.  That said:I constantly joke about how The Lord of the Rings spends three pages describing a chair or a square inch of Aragorn's beard.Fair warning to anyone that gets me as a player...  I don't care.  If you want to describe a chair saying "the chair is beautifully crafted with incredably intricate gold inlay depicting dragons and lions" that is fine.  Anything more than that and I begin to tune out.  If a DM wants to give me a sense of awe and wonder fancy words aren't going to cut it.What's the point of incredable vistas and the deep background of a setting if 98% of it won't actually come up in the story?  What's the point of spending three pages on a chair if the scene the chair appears in takes one page.  What's the point of giving me the last 1000 years of histoy of a forest if five minutes after we're told about it we never come across the forest again?Give me something to do.  Give me an incredable visual in an action set piece where I can Bull Rush an enemy into the lava pit.  A wargorged factory?  Set up something like the droid factory in Star Wars Episode 2.  On the other hand, give me an intricate political plot deisgned to take over the kingdom that will span a half-dozen sessions - I eat that stuff up.  I'm a part of that, I'm not a part a distant mountain or a chair.  I want to interact with my environment - either by stopping/solving an assassination or riding a convayer belt - not watch it pass me by with only seeing the mountain or the chair.Hmmm....  I wrote a lot for basically saying "keep it short".</blockquote>

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