Conveying Setting Information

[Baron Opal II]

I, too, try to go for a roughly two page reference doc. It mentions some common knowledge, deities, political power structure, wizard's guilds. I have a 20 page section of the rule book where the religions and deities are in more detail. I have a map for where things are, rivers and roads for travel, borders of kingdoms. On the map there are some minor points of note (3-story tall bronze brazier, giant skull, amethysts float here). There's usually someone who is really into the gods, another into maps, another into politics. And, of course, there's always "your character would know there is some friction between this guild and that temple". They can follow up if they care.

I try to limit infodumps to a paragraph at most. If it is more, then I try to express it as a story.

 

[Longspeak]

I run in Tal'Dorei from Critical Role. I have a blurb with my changes, but in game I use Bold Italics (which I can no longer seem to use here) for terms players should look up.

 

[aramis erak]

My general method is a 1-2 page overview, and if players want more, let them read the appropriate chapter(s).

My non-mechanical handouts for L5R are about 4 pages... 2 pages of overview of the clans, 1 of titles, behaviors, and protocols of the samurai. One on bushidô, Most of the players ask lore related questions during character gen, and during play.
The overview of the clans is mostly for Character Gen use. The bushido, sword postures, titles, and typical day pattern stuff is for in play. (My mechanical ones for in-play run 5 pages, char gen much more.)

OTOH, my players for L5R often would read sections of lore before game. Same group, in terms of lore for Deadlands, only started seeking big lore during play. Alien, they deep dove into the movies

Oh, I know! I wasn't saying that. It's just really hard for me to imagine it. But I would have the absolute bare minimum of lore. People can pick it up in play.

I think that for most (not all, but most) players, lore is not nearly as important as it is for the GM.

That varies quite widely.
I've been on the wrong side of the issue in both directions.
Traveller, many fans are fans due to lore... drop the lore, lose the players.
Most licensed games, ignore the lore at you peril.

D&D, there is a subset that are there for the lore. Especially Realms fans.

 

[clearstream]

This is especially oriented toward worlds that have unusual or novel settings (Like Roshar in the Stormlight Archives) and you can't simply rely on tropes and assumptions (aka "it's like Earth except where we say it isn't.")

(Emphasis mine.) Players perforce base their expectations upon pre-existing norms (i.e. "like Earth") as modified by game world specific assertions ("where we say it isn't"). What else could they do? Thus, is it right to understand the worry you're expressing is that the world specific modifications - such as to Roshar - might be so extensive, unexpected and material that it becomes essential players know them in advance? This is setting aside the question of whether one prefers modes in which extensive world detailing is not done prior to play, because it would apply equally to such arising through play.

From this worry proceeds other worries, such as forming coherent plans. To my reading the question has been answered in this thread through emphasising the combined strategies of a) a primer to cover whatever is likely most essential and b) means for players to query their world through play (including active disclosure and determining such fiction themselves.)

It seems that whenever a player relies upon a norm from real world experience that is to be modified in the game world in any way that matters, they must be able to learn about or establish that modification prior to acting. Cases where that isn't true would be foreseeably underming or unsettling... which could be explored for that very purpose.

 

[John Dallman]

Th... how we go about presenting setting information to players who have not, and probably won't, read the books or your primer or anything else.

My players will generally read a short primer. We're all in our fifties or older.

I do get irritated with players who won't make any effort to be able to role-play real things that their characters would know. An example is a player who will dig deeply into Egyptology or the KGB, but in a campaign that lasted twelve years, where he played a seventeenth-century naval officer, never saw any point in learning elementary sailing-ship terminology. I wasn't asking him to master the field, just to be able to hold basic conversations in character.

So, what do you do to present the world to the players? Do you infodump? Do you expect them to research? Do you provide a primer?

Since I generally run games in alternate histories, with a mission framework, the characters get briefings on the places they'll be going. The trick with those is to keep them short and interesting. A good way to do that is to find some piece of popular understanding about the setting which is wrong, and fit the actual truth into the scenario.

For example, in my WWII India game, there was a scenario about someone who stole the quarterly payments to the tribal areas near the border with Afghanistan. Before the British took over, the hill tribes made part of their living by institutionalised theft and raiding from the valleys. The British put a stop to that, before discovering that the hills are too barren to support their population. The valley peoples were from the same groups as the hill folk, and had accepted the raiding for centuries; the violence was quite restrained, and there was no destruction, just theft.

So the British ended up paying for the hill tribes to buy food from the valleys, which was called "payments for road maintenance and security," though everyone on the ground knew what it was for. The colonists tried to believe it was cheaper than keeping soldiers there to guard the valleys. Theft of these funds was a serious matter for everyone concerned!

And how does the players' lack of knowledge interact with the (assumed) knowledge of the PC?

I'll happily credit the characters with knowing about the basics of the setting, but I do prefer them to think about it a bit, and ask questions.

 

[Laurefindel]

So, what do you do to present the world to the players? Do you infodump? Do you expect them to research? Do you provide a primer? And how does the players' lack of knowledge interact with the (assumed) knowledge of the PC?

I usually create a short primer of sort, expecting that out our four or five players, only one, maybe two players will read it. It should include at least a map and a bunch of images or visual support.

Nevertheless, making a primer is a good exercise to do as a DM as it forces you to distil the setting to its essential, and focus on the areas that will come up in that particular campaign.

Then in session 0 we go over the primer together, and interact more with the setting from the perspective of the PCs.

 

[Micah Sweet]

There's also the "opposite" problem where you try and run a game in a media property and it turns out one or more players is REALLY into it and spends all session correcting you...

Never had that happen. I'm always the one who knows the most. It gets lonely, really.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I wasn't trying to "gotcha" I was just curious how folks might try and distill such a volume of (dumb, if we're being honest) lore.

Speak for yourself please. I love a lot of Star Wars lore, including from the Prequel Era. It is "dumb" to you at best.

 

[Micah Sweet]

When I'm a player, I'm in the minority. You could give me a 50 page document about your world and I'd read it, print it out and bring it with me to the game. I'd rather be immersed in the setting but as others have said most players aren't.

I think keeping it to a paragraph or two isn't enough though, depending on the setting. That might work for something reasonably generic like FR or GH, but if you were running post War of Souls Dragonlance or even something different like Eberron, I think players need to know a little more than that to understand the setting they are getting into.

The setting is as much of the game as the mechanics, so I'd expect players to take/want to take some interest in the setting they are playing.

Completely agree. I would and have read setting material all day. Always excited about it even as a player. Players who have no interest in the world their PCs adventure in make me very sad.

 

[Micah Sweet]

what difference does it actually make whether you search for lost Egyptian, Maya, or Khmer cities / treasure?

It changes the location you search in, but other than that…

Different civilizations are different. It certainly matters in the real world. Why wouldn't it in your setting?