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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Barastrondo" data-source="post: 5423156" data-attributes="member: 3820">The first thing you want to get across is what players are going to be doing. Start with a snapshot of what's exciting. For instance, when doing a writeup of Dark Sun you'd want to open with the idea of the blasted wasteland, the post-apocalyptic fantasy, of cruel sorcerer-kings and gladiator battles in sandy arenas. Put many of your best ideas in that paragraph, and then make it relatively clear where you can go to find them. While it's good to have a foundational sense of history that enables you to run a setting, history is most relevant and interesting to read about when it answers questions people have about how things got to the current state. It's more engaging to hear about what the Realm of the Kraken is doing right now, and then digress into about where it came from later on, in an optional section. Go for idea density. If you're writing an overview, embed that sucker with ideas that could lead to character concepts, adventure hooks, things that make the reader want to get involved. If a section gives you information about the world but it's mostly about things that don't concern the PCs on any more than a scholarly level, consider dropping it or rewriting it to fill it with things that are relevant to the average adventurer. If you spend time on the creation story of the dwarves, for instance, think about what ramifications are going to make things interesting for dwarven PCs or PCs who deal with dwarves. Is slavery an abomination in dwarven culture thanks to their past? Do dwarven abolitionists make strikes against other nations who practice slavery or indentured servants? Or are dwarves slavers themselves, capturing humans and tallying each captive, until one human has served for every dwarf that fought under a human commander? Everything that you want someone else to read should have hooks. Bait that sucker up.Check out Ben Robbins' "<a href="http://arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/99/treasure-tells-a-story/" target="_blank">Treasure Tells a Story</a>." It's a clever take on how to take two separate things -- treasure rewards, and exposition about the world -- and make them both more interesting by combining them. It's advice that stems beyond treasure. Show a snapshot of something interesting happening, like the Kraken cultists doing their thing, and in the process hint at why they do it and where they came from.The best way to make a campaign world come to life, I think, is to show it living and in motion. Show what's happening, but also tease what's about to happen or what could happen -- those are the things that convey vibrancy and get readers thinking of the world as a moving machine.</blockquote>

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