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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 7104479" data-attributes="member: 29398">Of course it answers the question, for the DM; and that's the point.  The players don't know - they're playing to find out.On a broader scale, in order to present a coherent relevant game world (and game, for all that) to the players through the eyes of their characters the DM has to have knowledge of said game world that the players (and characters) don't.And while you say it's mere colour whether the characters turn east or west at a fork in the road, it's still very relevant to me as a player: I want to know where I am within the world.  If we already have a map - either pre-made by the DM or made by us on a previous visit to the area - I'll be looking at it to see where we are, where we might be going, and what might be waiting for us either on the way or when we get there based on geographical clues; and if we don't already have a map we will once I've drawn it as we go along.It's the stuff you call "colour" that gives the game world its depth and richness, and eventually makes it familiar to us both as characters and players once we've explored it a bit.  Instead of jumping from one dramatic encounter location to another, take 30 seconds or a minute or even more and describe what we see on the way - particularly if where we're travelling is new to us.  And if we want to stop at one of the nameless villages, let us.An example: quite early in my current campaign the various adventurers started using a town called Torcha as their home base, as it was the nearest decent-sized place to where the adventuring was.  About 110-ish miles (or 6 days' walk) to the south is the port town of Karnos.  The first time any PCs made this trip* I made a point of describing the countryside they were passing through, the types of people they were meeting on the road, the villages and waystations they'd see, and so forth...all in the name of immersion, depth, and giving them a sense of this place that I had a pretty good notion would become quite familiar to them over time.  Since then various PCs have made that trip probably a hundred times or more all in; but other than varying the weather I know the players** already have an idea in mind what it's going to look like thus I don't have to describe it all again: they can imagine it on their own based on that first description. (exception: if there's a new player I'll repeat the descriptions)* - in fact en route to some adventuring; they'd been recruited in Torcha to do some investigating in Karnos: this a prelude to what would become a variant on the Slavers' A-series.  Some would say I should have jumped straight to Karnos (where the action was) once they left Torcha and skipped everything in between; I think the game would have been lessened if I had.** - players, not characters this time; the Torcha-Karnos road is going to look pretty much the same no matter who's walking it, so in this case the descriptions are more for the players than the characters.Lan-"9 years later and they're still using Torcha as a home base"-efan</blockquote>

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