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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mercule" data-source="post: 6907676" data-attributes="member: 5100">IME, it's mostly the statistical information most folks gravitate towards, initially. Everyone wants the Dragonmarks and maybe the idea of belonging to a House/faction, but no one actually cares which house is the oldest or what the internal sub-factions are. The halfling wizard wants to cast cure wounds to back up the cleric, but doesn't care about the fluff around why Jorasco is so adamant that you must pay/charge for the service. Players think it's cool to be able to play pseudo-lycanthropes (shifters) and/or Paladins that favor long bows, but don't want to deal with the fluff around the distrust between the two groups.You generally get lucky with a few things. The whole table embraces that the Valenar warrior is scary, potentially untrustworthy, and driven by glory even if they don't particularly care about the ancestor worship or other historic aspects. The Phiarlan agent plays up his role as an artist who just happens to be resourceful -- and never actually admits to being a member of the house, let alone Dragonmarked.You also end up with folks bringing their own assumptions to the table. From the time of AD&D, the elves in my primary setting have always been more high elf than wood elf. I would occasionally get a player who could only envision wood-elf types, with one who saw elves as graceful barbarians and really, really wanted to play that sort of character. No matter how many times I explained that elves were deeply into magic and their lands incorporated natural things in the way ultra-modern cities do green zones, it never really stuck for those folks. I eventually added a group of wood elves into an existing, but unexplored forest. Likewise, I went with the original forest gnome woodsy illusionists. After Dragonlance came out, everyone wanted to play a tinker gnome (with varying degrees of competence). No matter how much I maintained that gnomes and tech were a campaign-specific thing to Krynn (later, that non-tech gnomes were campaign specific to my setting), it never stuck. Since I hated tinker gnomes, I just ended up with a metagame rule that says if a gnome ever tries to play with anything more mechanically advanced than thieves' tools, he will die to the "thumb of God", without regard for suspension of disbelief.Basically, players are unpredictable. At a micro level, I can often encourage certain behaviors, but not always. At a macro level, it becomes a lot harder. Even if I could, I wouldn't want to, in most cases. Part of the fun is seeing where they go. Sure, I like backstory, history, etc. But I can't tell you exactly what the players will latch onto. I don't have the time to detail everything out, so I watch the players and add depth where they seek it. For worldbuilding, this means painting with a broad brush, at first, and increasing resolution in only the areas that need it. I see this as the "start small" idea, even if it isn't literally a single village.</blockquote>

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