Getting the players interested in the campaign setting.

[WHW4]

One thing I have noticed as I am DMing a very story-heavy campaign right now is if you can get even one of the players interested and engaging you about something in the gameworld (usually easier if it directly impacts his/her character) that enthusiasm is contageous as hell.

I began to do side-story type stuff for the players (running a super hero campaign) and really pinging off their characters backgrounds (which for some came easily, and for others I worked with them to get them to a place where they could have fun, and I could plot off of). The response I've gotten is tremendous. They email the crap out of me now wanting to know what's up with this or that side-story - they're actively asking "who what when where how" in-character.

I have to also say that we are a combat-loving group. A session with no fight is boring to us, and I do alot of this extra story-telling away from the table to accomodate our table-mood, which is "it's been a long week, let's wail on something." My experience is it gets them inside their character's head and then when we all get to the table they've got a ton of ideas of where they want to develop or go next with little wasted time. We hit the encounters I want them to hit, I advance their "issues" a bit, and they leave the table talking about the next session already.

We've experienced setting "blah" before as a group, so maybe your guys are similar enough to my guys for some of these ideas to work.

 

[Umbran]

However, I _also_ have gotten at least one comment saying "all we seem to do is fight".

We have made some progress though... at least the characters have names and we now know what gender they are (my last campaign had two characters that were female...for two months before anyone other than their player knew about it).

If you've stepped from tactical wargame, to having names and genders, my suggestion is to not push too hard too fast. Your next step shouldn't be "campaign world", it should be, "encourage some play focusing on social interaction". Put the characters in situations where the character's personalities help determine how things turn out.