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Message: <blockquote data-quote="swrushing" data-source="post: 2427596" data-attributes="member: 14140">Ok some various points...Rule 1: "People don't play to do work." Don't expect the PLAYERS to do effectively homework by doing a lot of "extra reading" outside the game session that doesn't directly impact their character play. 30 pages is WAY too much. you cannot teach people with that huge a chunk. I would say your safest bet is to assume nothing of use in the 30 page handout got thru and move along as if you never gave it to them.Rule 2: Old adage is true,  "show them, don't tell them." Picture your handouts as voice over narration in a movie. How much voice over narration do you like to see in a movie as opposed to seeing the stuff play out and come up as a matter of the plot on screen? Would STAR WARS have been a better film if we had a 20 minute monolog at the outset explaining who Luke's father was? Your handouts, while fun to you, are the non-action, non-scene voice overs of your game. If a fact is important enough to warrant a voice over/handout/homework from them, its ALSO worth you figuring out a scene in which it is introduced as part of the scene.Rule 3: "its about THEM, not your cool stuff." The stars of the show you are running are their PCs and the show should be about them. The show should not be about how cool the scenery around them is. You do realize that every NPC and history and nation and plant and archdemon you wrote 30 pages plus multiple books about are really just scenary, right? Stop seeing your campaign as all this wonderful stuff and sets you have put together and fretting over why the players aren't more involved in that scenery. Instead, start (or reinforce the efforts) working on how the scenery you chose will highlight the story their characters are about. if you give a player a page or two of "history stuff directly related to your character" he will likely read it, maybe even ask questions about it. More importantly, if this info starts out as small bits occuring in SCENES, setup to show him he NEEDS to know about it, you might find the characters going out and trying to find the info, which you can then provide them in small doses which they will pour over like a dehydrated man at an oasis. Make the info integral and relevent to THEIR CHARACTER and introduce a little of it in game and set it up so THEY pursue the info as if its treasure. Don't leave a book as treasure and hope they read it but have a need of theirs drive them to seek out that book.</blockquote>

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