Players Don't Care About Your Setting

[Mistwell]

Honestly, this kind of reflects real life where most people don’t really care about the world except for those parts that they directly interact with or effects them.

The funny thing for me is I don't care about setting much as a player (I do very much as a DM) but in real life I am pretty focused on the world. We travel a lot, different places have very distinct meaning for me.

But D&D just doesn't mirror that experience, when I am playing it as a player.

 

[dragoner]

I like settings as a DM and for just enjoyment of reading settings. But as a player, which is what I am the past several years, yeah I don't care a lot and none of our group does either. We're in Waterdeep: Mad Mage in one campaign, and it could be any city above for all we'd care. We're in Tomb of Annihilation in the other, and we love Chult and the setting...but it could have been any jungle and any political background for that area and we wouldn't have cared much. The fact these are both Forgotten Realms is meaningless to us. The fact there are other continents and cities and such in this setting is meaningless to us. The environment matters but a lot of the larger setting does not.

On that level, I don't care about the setting, and I wrote it. What the setting does there is set the location, and provide some organic whole to ad lib off of. In Futurama's Godfellas the God nebula entity said it best is that when you do things right, people won't be sure you have done anything at all.

 

[bloodtide]

The Setting, really any fluff or detail beyond the game rules, is only for the GM and the few players that like that sort of thing. And really that is fine.

I'm making the setting for me, not the players.

For a lot of games, I look for a very specific player: The Player that cares about the setting greatly and wants to explore the setting as a character with zero player input or comments.

 

[tetrasodium]

The Setting, really any fluff or detail beyond the game rules, is only for the GM and the few players that like that sort of thing. And really that is fine.

I'm making the setting for me, not the players.

For a lot of games, I look for a very specific player: The Player that cares about the setting greatly and wants to explore the setting as a character with zero player input or comments.

No, the bar for Bob's lack of interest in this setting is much higher for it to not be a regular disruption having Bob trying to insert incomparable lore expecting "yes and..." instead of "NO!absolutely not!"

Take these two examples from eberron campaigns with a player I'll call Bob. Everyone but me and Bob was newer or completely new to ttrpgs but Alice has a PC with relevant skills to recognize the characters used in fallen giant empire writings even if nobody in the party knows giant... The fact that The Dragons pretty much uplifted the giants with disastrous results was an important detail for players to understand the adventure but before I could point out the link Bob is saying "no that's not right, what really happened is..." Before lore dumping fr(?) history about dwarves and giants complete with his dwarf PC channeling first person outrage about past wrongs to his people. Because Bob would have forced two different races and an extremely foundational set of historical elements in the timeline to be rewritten it forced "no that's not at all correct, this is a different setting [loredump]".

I'm another eberron campaign there was a newer player (maybe the same Alice even) who wanted to buy some better gear.. but they were in Droaam.... in charges Bob helpfully explaining how they should head to the nearby mountains and look for Dave's clan of dwarves because the dwarves are the best smiths and everyone knows that. Not only was that bonkers incorrect because dwarves are known for banker vault and economics type stuff, it was also would have rewritten the dragonmark house actually wearing that crown and sent the group on a Snape hunt far away from the city of greywall where house politics and limited supply would have unrolled new adventures that actually fit the setting.

 

[Staffan]

I'm one of those weirdos who does enjoy setting lore, even as a player. My main problem is that I can get carried away with it – in some cases, I know the lore better than the GM and/or better than my character would, so I'll have to bite my tongue when something either goes against proper lore or when I see something lore-relevant that my character wouldn't know.

But I'm well aware that I'm in a small minority on this issue.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I think part it is that the only way to experience the setting is the DM talking about it.

Not necessarily. I made a gazeteer for my setting and gave copies to each of my players. One of them read and appreciated it. Since that's one in four, I consider that a pretty good percentage.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I think the setting is a big part of DM fun and that’s all it has to be for me. If the players dig it, bonus!

Agreed. I enjoy worldbuilding (reading it and writing it) more than running or playing. I always really enjoy making and finding good mechanics to realistically model that world. That's where my fun in the hobby lies for the most part.

 

[TheAlkaizer]

My experience is that players don't care about the settings at the start, or at least most don't. But my experience also showed me that through play and time, you can reliable get them to care a lot about the setting.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I think it really depends.

Certain high level things probably matter, like genre and tone and things like that. So someone may like sword and sandal type stuff, and so they may be down with Dark Sun over some more generic D&D setting. But that doesn’t mean that they care at all about Hamanu’s back story and why there are no trolls on Athas.

What players care about, generally speaking, is what matters to play. So in addition to things like tone and genre, they likely care about what player characters tend to do. Things that shape the play experience rather than simply serving as encyclopedia style history like the Silmarillion.

Seriously… look at the Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings and look at what’s relevant to those stories. What actually matters to and affects the characters. Then look at The Silmarillion.

Players care about what’s in The Hobbit and the LOTR, not what’s in the Silmarillion.

The Silmarillion was admittedly hard to get through when I first read it at 15, but now it's probably my favorite of Tolkein's works after Fellowship (and I love 'em all, so it's a high bar). Turned out worldbuilding and creation stories are my jam.

I loved the Appendices at the end of RotK too, by the way.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I'm not going to join in on the oversimplified accusations of hypocrisy back and forth. I find that all misleading and unhelpful.



No. But, then, most real-world people aren't all that interested in, say, world political affairs either. They are interested in paying the rent, getting food on the table, and the things they can actually do about that. Or, like, a firefighter hopping on the engine in Connecticut isn't apt to care all that much about an organized crime boss in Nebraska, either.

Most folks are interested in information that is immediately relevant to their interests. Most setting material isn't, most of the time. If I am worrying about whether the moss-covered, three-handled family credenza in front of me is a mimic, the elven nation's oh-so-mysterious mysteries are probably not on the forefront of my mind.

Fully understandable. That's basically my wife's position for the most part. Makes it tough for me to find someone to talk history and politics with though.