Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Mercurius" data-source="post: 4569132" data-attributes="member: 59082">I don't entirely agree with this principle, or at least find that while it is true that you only &quot;have to&quot; design on a need-to-know basis, doing some of the &quot;meta&quot; background work really helps bring what is relevant to life. Or at least that is how it works with novels, and I think it is the same for RPGs.Take Tolkien, for example. Part of the reason the LotR is so evocative is the tremendous amount of backstory that propped it up--when a name was mentioned, while Tolkien might not say much about it, it had a kind of life to it, a sense of reality and depth. The Balrog is a great example--Tolkien's actual description was quite sparse, and it was only in the story for a few pages, but it remains one of the most iconic fantasy creatures ever. Now this doesn't mean that we, as DMs, should put that much work into our campaigns--it would be nice, but who has the time?--but that it helps to know why, to know the deeper story.So for me I'm trying to get a sense of, for example, how many epic-level characters exist in my world, or at least the local region? Who are they? How many paragon tier characters? What percent of the population are adventurers? And what are the level breakdowns? None of this would be exact, but more in the way of rough guidelines. And in that sense I am less asking for answers from you and more examples of your own process.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Mercurius, post: 4569132, member: 59082"] I don't entirely agree with this principle, or at least find that while it is true that you only "have to" design on a need-to-know basis, doing some of the "meta" background work really helps bring what is relevant to life. Or at least that is how it works with novels, and I think it is the same for RPGs. Take Tolkien, for example. Part of the reason the LotR is so evocative is the tremendous amount of backstory that propped it up--when a name was mentioned, while Tolkien might not say much about it, it had a kind of life to it, a sense of reality and depth. The Balrog is a great example--Tolkien's actual description was quite sparse, and it was only in the story for a few pages, but it remains one of the most iconic fantasy creatures ever. Now this doesn't mean that we, as DMs, should put that much work into our campaigns--it would be nice, but who has the time?--but that it helps to know why, to know the deeper story. So for me I'm trying to get a sense of, for example, how many epic-level characters exist in my world, or at least the local region? Who are they? How many paragon tier characters? What percent of the population are adventurers? And what are the level breakdowns? None of this would be exact, but more in the way of rough guidelines. And in that sense I am less asking for answers from you and more examples of your own process. [/QUOTE]

Verification