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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Shadow64" data-source="post: 724594" data-attributes="member: 6868">Before you start a campaign how much information do you give your players?  I've done a few one shots that didn't need much backstory other then "your in town x and this is what you have to do.  converse among yourselves as you will and come up with characters of level x..."I've started two campaigns; the first went very well, the second - not so well.  The first campaign was all homebrew and the only information i gave the players was: make a third level character, whatever you want.  core rules + splatbooks + OA (i knew one player was going to be a monk).  No real information about the world because i was still making the it and had no idea yet were i was going to start and no idea about what kind of adventures i was going to run (ie - dungeon crawls, city adventures, etc).  I soon found myself facing a LE 1/2 Orc Fighter, a CW (Chaotic Weird) Mage and a LG Monk.  Hey - i told them to make whatever they wanted.  Anyway, Game Day arrives and I drop them into the game, they found out where they were (in a prison barge en route to prison), a generic where/what/why they were in their prediciment (which they all liked because i fitted what happend around their general character concepts and also around the players attitudes themselves), general information about the world, etc.  They loved it, they went with my "story" about what was happening to them and then when i passed the story telling stick to them they kept me on my toes.The second campaign was set in Rokugan. Once again, 3rd level characters, restrictions being that they had to take classes as allowed by Rokugan (which mainly took out Clerics and Wizards if i recall and replaced them with Shaman and Shugenja respectivly) with the option for 2 people in the party to play "western" style characters (so if they wanted to someone could play a cleric).  As before I didn't give out much information about what they would be doing adventure wise.  I figure most adventurers don't know what they are going to be doing the next day, let alone for the next few years.   Game Day arrives and I drop them into the game.   They already knew they were in rokugan, so no world issues there, i give them a breakdown of why they are all together (special enforcement squad for the city guard) and then tell them what their "assignment" is: go track some folks down and bring them back.  They start the adventure and as it progresses past "stop some people and bring them back" to the standard "BBEG has escaped 1000 years of being trapped, now you have to stop him."  BBEG happened to be something that could control dreams, cause nightmares, wreck havok on the whole kingdom, etc.  At this point they realize that the game is going to be a bit more then a hack-n-slash, but something more then that.  They will have to deal with non-standard monsters and other things. I get a few nods of: "that's cool.  let's do it." But, also get a comment of: "Why didn't you tell us were going to do something like this?  I built my character all wrong for this kind of stuff!"  Thankfully, it was only from one player.  Anway, to make a long story boring*:How much information should I give the players before starting what I hope to be a long running campaign?I figure at the least you want to give them a basic overview of the world, a bit more detailed description of where they are starting out and a little history.  But what else should you tell them?  I know that this is probably very group dependent, but any hints/tips would be helpful.Sorry for the rambling, i was thinking as i typed so i may be a bit long-winded.*quoted without permission from Gospog</blockquote>

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