Getting those campaign details out of your head and into your players'

[CharlesRyan]

Your campaign world is filled with exotic lands, well-developed societies, massive cities, factions and nations and allies and foes, and a veritable army of NPCs. All living happily in your imagination or a notebook full of notes.

Problem is, how do you transfer all that detail and life and color and drama and atmosphere of your new setting from your imagination (or old boxed set that none of your friends own) to that of your players? You could write a 100-page campaign sourcebook, but face it: You're no Ed Greenwood, and half of your players would never bother to read it anyway.

In my most recent campaign I started using a different technique. (This method, incidentally, owes something to Eberron; I was inspired to it by, I think, the Eberron Player’s Guide. Or perhaps Five Nations. Sorry I can’t confirm the exact title; my game collection is currently somewhere on the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.) As you prep for a game session, pick a topic. Perhaps something immediately relevant—a town or event or NPC that’s figuring significantly in the current adventure (or even session). Or perhaps something broader. Perhaps even something utterly unrelated, just an element of color for the setting.

Then come up with five bullet points. Something like this:

Five Things Everybody Knows about Hunting:

• Only the lord of the land has the right to hunt it; other than small game and birds, commoners only hunt if they’re the lord’s huntsmen or (sometimes) archers in need of practice when the lord needs more meat than he chooses to hunt
• Hunting requires hounds—to sniff out prey, pursue it, bring it to bay, and sometimes bring it down; rich hunters have different dogs for each task
• The pike (and sometimes sword) are used for the kill; bows are peasant weapons
• Hunting is often a social pastime; women even take part on occasion
• Bears, boars, and even stags can kill (as can accidents and, well, “accidents”), and hunting has taken many lives

When I used this one in my campaign, a hunting trip was in the cards for that game session. It was mostly color, but there were a few elements that were relevant to how events might unfold. But this technique is great for filling the players in on important campaign drivers (factions, locations, events, etc.). It’s particularly good for breathing life into NPCs.

Read your five things to your players at the beginning of the session.

By sticking to bullet points you will force yourself to focus on the most relevant or interesting bits of information. Even more to the point, you won’t bore your players by reading out a long passage of exposition (bullet points encourage you to speak to your players, instead of read at them).

The process takes maybe ten minutes of prep time and five minutes at the beginning of the session. And it really enriches the campaign: One topic doesn’t seem like much, but ten sessions into the campaign you’ve hit on ten topics, and thirty session in you’ve hit on thirty. And the details will really stick with your players!

(I've fleshed this out a bit more, with some additional examples, at my web site (The Fascinating World of Charles Ryan).)

Thoughts?

 

[kitsune9]

You're onto something here Charles.

A relevant set of bullets for an adventure at hand is helpful for players instead of the 100 page book.

My own ideas:

1. Keep the names of places/people simple easy to remember. Your players will easily remember the dwarven king Grim Eye instead of Grimalden of the 99 Fire Axes, Son of Duthornrex. Even exotic locations should have names that easy to remember such as the Rotting Wastes, the Hall of Shadows, Despair Castle, and the city-state of Riverhold.
2. Small handouts that contain information for your players to go back to is helpful. The bullet points you created can go on a handout for your players to keep referring to them.
3. For specialized ceremonies or things that you want your players to perform while roleplaying create an exercise that will enforce the point and provide a reward / incentive for players who successfully perform. For example, you want your players to be able to go to the Temple of Healing and respectfully ask for healing or other things. To address the priestess of the small temple, one must respect her station called the Mother of the Nine Winds. The PC's can say, "Mother of the Nine Winds Allara" or address her as, "Wind Mother Allara". To emphasize this point, you craft a handout as the PC's head to the temple because this will be common knowledge and then put in a note of a reward for correctly addressing her by her title when talking to her. Also indicate that there's a penalty for any disrespect to her station as well.
4. Loop situations and scenes back to the information you've given your players. For example, you want to keep the roleplaying experience going, keep using the same NPCs and locations for a variety of purposes. For example, one merchant can be all that the PC's need to get all their mundane and magical shopping done. So, detailing that merchant along with the customs of bargaining and so on, the PC's will get to do it each time they are back in town. Do avoid tedious or complex social expections. For example, if there is a ceremony that one must perform before entering the house of a friend, your players are likely to rebel from having to do that, so adding flavorful social situations can be interesting, make it rare or simple.

 

[Morrus]

That's pretty good. Combined with spreading the info out during the adventure (being told it by NPCs, seeing a sign, remembering something with a History check, etc.) it would work a lot better than a single info dump.

 

[CharlesRyan]

Yeah, I'm all about the phasing of information, both in terms of creation and dissemination. Paint the big picture in broad strokes, then layer on the detail as needed. Keeps me sane as a GM, and keeps it digestible for the players.

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

It's like the standard "Twenty-five things every PC knows" at the beginning of the campaign, but even more digestible and immediately relevant/useful. I suspect it also focuses the GM when he needs to improv during that session on that particular theme. Really good idea!

 

[Morrus]

One other thing I've done with great effect in the past is to write out a load of facts on cards and lay them out face down on the table at the beginning of the adventure. Either have the players choose them at random (giving them the same number of cards each), or assign DCs and skills (History, Nature... knowledge skills) to each card and have them roll to take one.

Each of them then has a few snippets of info which they can tell the other players if it becomes relevant. I've found they tend to remember it all that way, and they find it fun.