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Message: <blockquote data-quote="M_Natas" data-source="post: 8820187" data-attributes="member: 7025918">It depends. In the end, what matters is what is happening at the table.But for the things that happen at the table to be good, there need to be some things to be good.And Setting is one of them.A good setting needs to feel real in order for the players to immerse themselves into the game. If it doesn't feel real, it the DM doesn't put work in to create an illusion of a lived in real-world, the players will have less or even no investment in the world.In order for a setting to feel real, it needs to be consistent (so not in one Session the Halflings are dwarflike creatures and the next session they suddenly turn into giants) and it needs to feel like things are happening even if the PCs are no there to witness them. There must be the feel that there is a past and a future.and the main word here is feel. Some DMs can totally wing that and don't need to prepare things in advance, others need to prepare a lot of stuff in order to get the feel of the world right.Every DM has different strategies to accomplish the goal of a world that feels real.I do it now on two levels: First level:On a conceptual level: I have a metaplot for the campaign and the adventure the players are currently in. What does that mean? That means I plan out what will happen if the players do nothing. At the moment the PCs are in the feywild and were able to beat the BBEG. But the archfey died and made his lover, who was under the control of the BBEG his successor. The other powerful fey will be pissed about that.If my PCs decide they have enough of the feywild and just leave, they feywild wild descent into a civil war between the new archfey and the powerful fey who wanted to be the ruler of the domain. That civil war leads to a devastation of the feywild which the new ruler will win, but she will rule over ruins. It will make her so depressed and desperate, that the campaign BBEG can sweep in and take over by offering her help.So I know on an adventure level what will happen and on a campaign level what will japlen if the Players decide to do nothing. With that knowledge I can now adjucate the decisions the player make to interfere with that metaplot, because I know the motives and the strategies of the important NPCs in the World, It is easy for me to adjust what they will do based on what the Players are doing.Bur for that to work, I need to know a lot more now the world than the players are interacting with right now. The second level is small stuff:When the PCs go into a shop, the NPCs are not just eagerly waiting to sell  the PCs something, they are already in a Disccusion with another Patron (and maybe giving some Adventure hooks, but not necessarily).When the PCs leave, the Shopkeeper continue the discussion with the other Patron. There must be a past and a future. It must feel like the shopkeeper didn't just spring into existence when the players needed a Shop. It must feel like it continues to exist, when the leave. Here continuity is important (when they return to the shop) and small details, that can be improvised at the table, but also can be preplanned.I do both. Little details, like the Shopkeeper complaining about Bandits raiding caravans, that's why he have to raise prizes for some foreign goods, not the PCs but to somebody else makes the world feel more real. And the players than can decide if they want to interact with that bit of information. But the small detail stuff doesn't need to be preplanned.The big metaplot stuff needs to be.And both inform the setting and what I as a DM need to prepare to reach the right level of "this is a real world feel".And every DM has probably different strategies to make the world feel real.</blockquote>

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