Players Don't Care About Your Setting

[Micah Sweet]

Sure the GM needs to have fun. But I'd argue that for an RPG, the GM should be having fun during play. If that's not the case, then something's wrong.

Outside of play, the GM can have whatever kind of fun they want. They can rob banks or chat with skunks or world build to their heart's content.

I really disagree. As long as you're not hurting anyone, what does it matter how you have fun with an RPG? You're basically saying that people like me should get out of the hobby, or at least that we're literally having "badwrong fun". Hard not to take that personally.

 

[RoughCoronet0]

I’m definitely one of those weird players that loves learning about the lore of any given setting. I enjoy leaning about the lore so much that I have formed a bit of an addictive habit of creating characters who have high intelligence and proficiency (and even expertise if I can get it) in things like Religion, History, Arcana, and investigation just to have an excuse to find all that sweet sweet lore as I play through a campaign.

 

[prabe]

They'll care, if the setting is relevant to their characters: If the setting is worth saving, if that's the situation; if there are NPCs their characters can have relationships with.

They'll care, if their characters are relevant to the setting: If there are things in the setting they can fix or otherwise change; if there are NPCs who want to have relationships with them, or at least want them to succeed and are willing to help them.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I don't think that's fair at all. This is very much a world building info dump it's just a very well thought out one as opposed to a strawman example of bad world building.

I think some of my point is getting lost here though. When I first made the comparison about info dumps, I had in mind the kind of info dumps GMs do, not something like the star wars crawl. Not saying that isn't brilliant at providing setting context, it is. It just isn't the kind of thing I think people have in mind when they complain about a GM setting information dump. Like I said before, star wars has lots of world building in it. Lucas is a notorious world builder. And the world building is evident in the movie in lots of ways. My only point was that is a much easier way to think about whether people like a GMs setting. I think people have been thinking largely of world building as the GM doing deep notes, information dumps or Tolkien level backstory. What I have been saying is every story requires world building on some level.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I really disagree. As long as you're not hurting anyone, what does it matter how you have fun with an RPG? You're basically saying that people like me should get out of the hobby, or at least that we're literally having "badwrong fun". Hard not to take that personally.

No, that's not what I'm saying at all. You're putting words in my mouth.

I'm saying that if a GM isn't having fun during play... during the actual hobby we're talking about... then that's a problem. I'm indifferent to the fun a GM has outside of play. If they like world building, and that's how they spend their time in between sessions, that's perfectly fine. If they don't world build at all, that's perfectly fine, too.

But as far as play... the group activity where participants get together to play the game... that should be fun for everyone. If a GM isn't having fun during play, that's a problem. If a player isn't having fun, that's a problem. I'd say the same thing about basketball or poker or any other group activity.

None of that has anything to do with badwrongfun. It's about the absence of fun.

If you enjoy worldbuilding and your players eat it up and everyone's having fun, then of course nothing's wrong. I've been talking about the potential problems with heavy setting lore. I think it often gets in the way of play... the GM's lonely fun supersedes the group's fun. As I said, it can be very self-indulgent.

If you don't think so, that's fine... that's not your experience. But as I said earlier, I include myself in this assessment. This kind of stuff used to be a big part of my game... I was very much a world builder GM and would spend days in between games working on material for the game. And in my case... in my personal experience... my game suffered for it. I didn't realize it at the time... the games weren't bad, necessarily, but they weren't as good as they could have been. They were not as player driven as they could have been, which is something that I've come to prioritize.

My games have improved a lot since I've shifted from this approach to play. I've stopped trying to make players care about the setting I've created and instead focused on play in a way that serves the group activity. It has things for them to connect with in the setting, and places for them to introduce their own ideas, and so on.

If it doesn't apply to you, that's fine. But don't assign motives to me that I don't have and don't deny that this is something that others may want to consider.

 

[OptionalRule]

It pains me to say this, but I don't think most players care about game settings all that much. It pains me to admit this because I'm someone who really loves settings, and who chooses what games to run primarily based on how much I like the setting (I'm not looking at you Shadowrun). Most players are primarily focused on the adventures or scenarios. What are the player characters going to be doing? Do the scenarios sound like fun? Tangently this is related to the setting of course, in Cyberpunk Red your character is an edgerunner, a class of criminal that exists because of social, political, and economic change and uncertainty. Obviously there are exceptions. There are some players who fall in the love with a game's setting and really, really want to play it. A lot of Vampire the Masquerade players in the 1990s were absolutely wild about the setting. Even some of my players are really enthusiastic about the setting for every game I run.

This isn't to say that settings are a waste of time. I think people who run games are more invested in the setting that most other participants. And a good setting provides plenty of fodder for scenario ideas. But if you want people to play a game you're going to have to sell it on the fun adventures you can have rather than the setting itself.

The natural state of anyone on anything new is not to care. They don't come into a game because of your world, they come in because of the character they imagine in whatever vague notion of a fantasy world they have. Like any story, they have to have a reason to care and find something interesting.

It would be nice if they were curious by default, but most people aren't. They don't own you, their curiosity, you have to earn it.

 

[MichaelSomething]

I don't think that's fair at all. This is very much a world building info dump it's just a very well thought out one as opposed to a strawman example of bad world building.



The opening crawl truly begins with a fairy tale introduction, but with a well-conceived twist. This isn't merely far far away - this is in a galaxy far far away. That tells the audience what sort of genre to expect and consciously and unconsciously asks them to suspend their disbelief. This is a fantasy story, but dressed in the trappings of space opera.

Then we're told it is a period of Civil War, and the rebels are the good guys. And here we are not only told that explicitly, but to an American audience this rebellion against Empire aligns with the national myth. And we're drawing on swords and sandals here by aligning the Empire with Rome - which is going to get reinforced in just a few scene with mention of a disbanded Senate. So already we are drawing upon a massive amount of cultural myth.

The we are told that we are going to begin In Media Res. There was just a battle of some sort, and regardless of whatever other results, the Rebels achieved the main objective - stealing the plans to a super weapon that ... WOW... can destroy a whole planet.

Then we are introduced to the first main character whose rescue is going to be the object of the first act of the movie - Princess Leia. Again, reinforcing the fairy tale theme. And that's it. We've been told very little, but it has enough mythic resonance that the whole audience can reasonably fill in the blanks. By the time we see Storm Troopers wiping the good guys out, officers wearing knock off Nazi uniforms, and this iconic black armored knight, we know everything we need to know that we didn't pick up on earlier.

Oh, I thought the lesson was that you should play John Williams music during your setting info dump.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Do you, real life you, care about your real-world setting? It all depends on your interaction and investment in it and that applies to the game setting too. The players have to have some form of connection to the setting, it is up to you as the GM to create that. For every action there is a re-action, think about how it may impact your player characters?

 

[tetrasodium]

Do you, real life you, care about your real-world setting? It all depends on your interaction and investment in it and that applies to the game setting too. The players have to have some form of connection to the setting, it is up to you as the GM to create that. For every action there is a re-action, think about how it may impact your player characters?

I most certainly do when someone other than a little kid starts talking about people places things and life events that are clearly fictional as if they were things that the person has actual experience and real concerns about without demonstrating that they are aware they are speaking about fiction

 

[R_J_K75]

I generally default to the Forgotten Realms if I'm running fantasy. Its familiar and more accessible to most players more than other settings. Otherwise, I've taken more towards running modern games set on Earth. I can say that in all the years I've been playing, and another DM has run their homebrew campaign setting, I never found them very fun. It always seemed that they were always trying to tell their story, and we were just along for the ride, and nothing ever struck me as being all that unique. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I'm this great DM or that I could create my own setting better than someone else, trust me I'm not, and that's exactly why I don't bother.

At this point, campaign settings don't even interest me anymore regardless of if it's a homebrew, WotC or 3PP. I just prefer a good adventure now. Every time I see a Kickstarter or a 3PP releasing a new setting, I think to myself that sounds pretty cool, until I regain my senses after 10 seconds and realize why waste my money when I know I'll never read let alone play it. I wish WotC had given the Nentir Vale the due it deserved; I really liked the "Points of Light" concept. I liked that it was pretty stripped down but I always thought that some short supplements detailing areas that weren't adventures would have been nice to see.