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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9507627" data-attributes="member: 42582">Maps with proper names are very handy for coordinating the fiction. And they fit well with trope-y places on the map, so that we (ie the group playing the game) can put stuff down in places that make sense and we'll remember - eg mountains for Dwarves to come from, forests for Elves to live in, hills or hidden vales for wizards to have their towers, etc.And then some fairly loose backstory is good too, both to give some proper names (eg the Suel Empire) and to allow the tropes we want to be sourced (eg ancient liches, which are a standard REH-ish sort of thing, can be ancient Sueloise wizards).The sort of detail in the St Kargoth story tends to be something I can make up for myself if I need to, normally in response to the actual dynamics of play. Eg when in my Torchbearer game I wanted to use an undead creature in a crypt, I looked through the rulebook and found Barrow-wights. These could be Elves, and that fitted the situation I was working with (which involved a PC Elven Dreamwalker and an enemy NPC Elven Dreamwalker). I decided that the Barrow-wight was Celedhring, an Elf who had fallen in some fashion and had stolen a post from the Dreamhouse in Elf-home (Elven Dreamhouses, as the heart of the Elf-home, are a thing in the rules).More details about Celedhring, and his possible relationship to the Elven PC's mother and hence to the Elven PC, have come out in play. I don't really need a setting to give me that.Whereas having a map that we could start play on - including knowing that Elfhome is in the Fellreev forest - is pretty handy. Likewise having the Bandit Kingdoms nearby - that makes it easy for me to put bandits into play in the game, who make for good generic opposition - and the Troll Fens, which gave me somewhere to put Nulb and the Moathouse.When the PCs go to places, I pull out the map and we can all see where they're going. And between the names and the basic descriptions in the setting material, we know - at the trope-y level - what is likely to be going on there.</blockquote>

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