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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hong" data-source="post: 180382" data-attributes="member: 537">Well, the answers to these questions would have to be "it depends". <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=":)" />It's not like the DMG doesn't provide _any_ information at all on these things. It's just that it doesn't go into any more detail than is absolutely necessary.Also, the problem with providing lots of background detail is that it sometimes goes counter to the overall campaign tone that the DM wants to create. The Middle Ages weren't a particularly nice time in which to live, but you may not want to emphasise that. Instead, you may want to emphasise the great deeds that characters are capable of doing -- fighting off evil monsters, establishing your own realms, and so forth.I think that what's left out of a campaign world is just as important as what's included. The bits that you leave out are those that you purposefully want to de-emphasize, the better to convey the particular tone that you have in mind. Again, let's look at LOTR: nowhere in the books is the daily routine in Minas Tirith, or Gondor as a whole, described in detail. Tolkien could quite easily have included that, but I assume he didn't want to. That would have been because he didn't want readers getting bogged down in minutiae, as opposed to the dramatic sweep of the narrative. Interestingly, the reverse occurs in the chapters taking place in the Shire, where he purposefully describes in detail the gossip and other social interaction between the hobbits. This is because here, he _does_ want the reader to become immersed in detail. He wants us to identify with the hobbits, and the best way of doing that is to show how their daily lives are much the same as ours.And again, you can translate this to the gaming context. It's quite acceptable to gloss over mundane details, if they're not important to the direction of the campaign. It just depends on where you want to go.</blockquote>

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