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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Yaarel" data-source="post: 8716417" data-attributes="member: 58172">Defining the "average" − what is typical − relates to setting the themes and mood of the setting. It is important. When you decide it, you need to make sure it is characteristics that your players actually care about and want to engage. In other words, the setting needs to expand on the themes of the character concepts that the players create. Like any solid story, the setting themes can contrast and challenge the heroes, or corroborate and support the heroes. The themes include repetitions and variations to show up in different ways.The players play heroes. (Evil player characters dont normally happen in my campaigns.) The DM plays the setting.Ideally, if the players are less interested in part of the setting, then dont go there. Create and develop something that does interest them. Record the parts that players like, and the setting grows and develops from there.The setting will materialize around the players interests.As the DM, you are the canon. Someone elses canon doesnt matter. Something might be true in a movie or a book, but not true at your table. Conversely, something might be canon for your table, that doesnt exist in a movie or a book.It is your world. You decide how it works. You decide what happens. You decide what does what. Why. And when.As DM, it is your world.You play the world.If a Star Wars movie or book happens to be what interests your players. And interests you! Great.But it is still your world. Your choice to follow canon closely is your choice. A player might follow a certain archetypal hero closely for the hero that they are playing. A DM might follow a setting closely for the setting that they are playing. Or either might get casual or experimental.Doing something that interests both the DM and the players is an important part of the ongoing dialogue between the setting and the heroes.In D&D, it is a literally true claim: the "setting" is a "character".There is actually a person who is this setting in the story. A reallife person who is roleplaying a setting!</blockquote>

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