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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Haltherrion" data-source="post: 5390479" data-attributes="member: 18253">Sounds like it works for you but your view is at odds with my own <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />. I'm also a hardcore worldbuilder. Often my worlds are unusual in some way in how they treat divine sources of power, magic, or various other things that can affect a player's enjoyment of a particular class or race. I find a hand out can be a nice way to convery that information. Moreoever, "crunchy" game mechanic aspects aside, while a PC is developed through play, the initial character placement and concept is important to our group. Development during play is like sprouting a seed and growing it to maturity. It's where all the fun is. But planting that seed shouldn't be ignored. Put it in infertile ground, or maybe more appropriate to the topic at hand, plant a cactus in a mangrove swamp, and it won't flourish. I use handouts to help players select the right seeds for the campaign or position their character concepts in way that gives them a better chance at an enjoyable experience. I don't require anyone to read the handouts but they are there and I think players will have a more enjoyable experience if they use them. While I've never had such a setting, were I to do one where arcane magic was illegal and someone took a wizard without reading the setting notes, I wouldn't have much sympathy for any grousing about wizards (I'm sure it would have been mentioned in discussion as well). There are similar things not so extreme but of note in my settings but players are free to find them out in game as well. I just don't think it is fair to them to make in-game, after PC creation the only way to find some things out that would be well-known to any teenager in the setting. For my games, the typical approach is I make setting handouts, sometimes a paragraph, sometimes several pages, rarely much more. Players read the notes, propose a background in an email, I make any suggestions about how that might work in the setting and off they go. Current setting was a bit more extreme with a big wiki for the setting but it is also intended to be a multi-campaign setting. Even then, there's a recommended reading list for the players to help them pick out the interesting bits for them. The rest of it is more for me and my co-ref. With that prep and my 4 starting players, I had one read the entire wiki (I was honestly surprised; he took a bard, which fits with the investment of his time), two dabbled through the wiki and one I'm pretty sure didn't read anything. It's all fine with me but the one who didn't read any of it isn't known for deep roleplaying and the others all have backgrounds that have given them some direction in how they play their PCs (one very much so) and given me as a ref opportunities to pull in bits of their backgrounds into relevant parts of the campaign. I certainly wouldn't knock setting notes. They can be useful. I certainly try to make mine readable but with all the out-of-session work I put into ref'ing, it isn't really asking much for me to have someone read a page of stuff, even if it isn't all that well written.</blockquote>

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