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Message: <blockquote data-quote="robconley" data-source="post: 3895336" data-attributes="member: 5636">This is a hallmark of my personal DM Style. High level play in my game revolves around the impact of the characters on campaign world rather than going plane tripping or finding bigger and badder monsters to slay.I don't think you see this often because you really have to be detail oriented history fanatic as a DM to make this work. Your kingdom, cultures, and religion can't be window dressing on the way to the dungeon because now those elements are the focus of the adventure itself.And a lot of people don't enjoy sitting down and making king's lists, culture customs by the dozen, religous ritual by the bushels. Figuring out that Lord Able hate Lord Baker because their grandfathers got into it during the 4th Salic conflict a hundred years ago. Then you have to take that mass of detail and distill it for your players in a fun and engaging way. Some will argue why you need that detail. It is needed because in the type of play you are thinking about it is about people. Human beings in all their complexity. People just don't do things for no reason. The detail is needed to give the NPCs reasons for their actions and more importantly generate CONFLICT. The more stuff you have going on your background the more conflicts you will be able to find and conflicts means adventure in a people centric setting. For example if you just had say Set versus Mitra for your religions then all you have are two sides. But throw in the Druids and their Ranger allies, maybe a bunch of mages and priest worshiping Thoth the god of knowledge, and the Merchants who split three ways between Set, Mitra, and the goddess of wealth. Throw all these in you will have at lot more points of conflicts.But piling detail upon detail is hard to go and pull off at the table for most people. And without the detail you most often feel like you dealing with sterotypes and npcs with cardboard personalities. So while the style you are talking is a lot of fun it is a lot of work. So people go with other types of plot that are easier to do for the fun they have.</blockquote>

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