Dear Mr. Hussar,
And in 2033 the evil druid mage Levistus was finally hunted down by the few remaining humans.
It's my experience that the players aren't particularly interested in settings*. Worldbuilding is largely something DMs do to amuse themselves; it has little effect on the point of contact between players and the DM.
Yeah, I've largely come to that realization too. I tried to run Ghosts of Saltmarsh, so, I had a nice little primer for Keoland, only a few pages of history, plus a primer for the town of Saltmarsh itself. The players could not give the slightest foetid dingo's kidneys about it. They made characters that in no way touched on Greyhawk as a setting, had zero connection whatsoever to the town of Saltmarsh and didn't even bother to read the primer material.
I do it because worldbuilding is the most fun part for me, and because my players want everyone to have fun, not just themselves, they indulge me and even appreciate the effort I put in.
That's largely been my experience as well. A few of my players are an execption, I have one that will devour setting material like crazy if it interests her, but for the most part, my players aren't going to dig too deeply into a setting they aren't already interested in. Whenever I get nostalgic about all the splat books available for various games during the 1990s, I realize how little a lot of that material made it into my games. They were fun to read though.
There are many positives to having a detailed setting. As a DM, a little detail can be good fodder for adventure ideas or help me add a touch of atmosphere to the game. While I favor a more utilitarian approach to world design, I certainly see the appeal of world building for the sake of world building.
Completely- why else have a world? I strive to make the setting coherent, you're not going to find an arctic culture in the tropics. You might find culturally arctic merchants in a tropical port, however. Aspects are determined ahead of time; who lives where, Ophir has the gold, the Equon penninsula is reminescent of India, &c. But if someone has a real interest in Ioun stones and wants to find some, I know where they are. If someone is a third child of a noble, here's a list of possible parentage.
i agree there is some amount of coherent sense that must be made, but just a flat 'no orcs' that has no why doesn't pass that to me
So, you dislike arbitrary removals from the "default" without reason? I can see that might ruffle a feather or two.
I'm sorry, I don't quite understand what you mean. "cba"?
kind of...
can't
Okay, sounds reasonable.
To put more concrete labels on it. by way of example, you're not going to find Inuit culture in Sri Lanka. That would make no sense; they are a culture adapted to a completely different climate and their survival strategies would fail. If you are looking for them you need to go to the Yukon, a part of Nunangat. They exist, just way over there. That said, there could be some Inuit people who, through opportunity and circumstance, traveled to Sri Lanka and are making a home there. They won't be wearing traditional dress, caribou parkas being lethal in 100 degree heat, but probably wearing local dress with traditional accents. Depending how long they have been there, if you could come up with some traditional treat that they can't source in the tropics, that would give you an advantage in making friendships.
What about, "no elves", or, "no warforged", or, "no tieflings", or, "no drow", or, "no loxo"? Is it just orcs? Or does every world have to include everything unless their reasoning to do otherwise passes your personal muster?
yes everything... but not all at once. If you have a reason to say no that's fine, but you have 3-6 players on average, even if everyone of them wants something you said no to (a sign you really need to go back to drawing board) that is 6ish races.
I don't allow my players to dictate to me what game I run for them. I start with an idea, and I accept session 0 input and will compromise to an extent, but I'm still the DM. You don't just get to tell me what I'm going to run.
I play/run with a table of DMs if one of us cant orwont give therest of usjust tell them to sit as a player awhile... since we have no lack of DMs as an option we are in the (I guess rare) situation where we all have equal say in what WE run
