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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ShinHakkaider" data-source="post: 3437738" data-attributes="member: 9213">In my specific case I told my players I'm running this adventure path from Dungeon Magazine so there's a certain expectation that they'll follow the adventure hooks that have been laid out for them. My job at this point is making those hooks matter to their characters. Also fortunately, the AP has suppliments that give an idea of how to answer those questions that you posed so that's not really much of an issue.  True I can see how that would be useful and I do give a general idea of that, but only a general idea. I don't hit them with information that would be compeletly irrelavant to thier characters. Which is why I give my PC 's information that thier characters would generally know, but only when requested if they want more detail then I'll put something together in more detail.  As I said upthread I run slightly modified pre-written adventures and I let my players know this before hand. So they understand this before they even sit at the table and create characters. I dont tell them the name of the adventure or the expected levels or who wrote it or where it's from. The idea is to actually JUST PLAY, instead of talking about playing. I let them know, if youre looking for some free form game that let's you go and do whatever you want at any given time, that they need to look elsewhere. It's not that I can't run that type of game or never have run that type of game. I just don't like running that type of game and I find that it takes too much energy for too little reward as a DM. Also I typically have a busy week. It's better for me to just be able to read up on and make notes about the adventure that I'm going to be running on the train to and on the way from work. That's one adventure as opposed to memorizing the details of an entire setting or city. That's maybe 2 or 3 hooks to get them involved in one adventure that's fully fleshed out and statted and detailed as opposed to a bunch of hooks that may lead to a few fully stated or half setup possible adventures.  True. I do think setting design is important too. It's just that we differ on when the bulk of the design should come: before the game even starts or once the game gets rolling and catering to the players specific interests. This in itself has a lot of x factors to take into consideration pending on your players. For instance, if youre running a FR game and your players know alot about the FR setting then that's a case of preprep that you as a DM and your players are comfortable with and there's really nothing wrong with that.On the other hand I don't think that there's anything wrong with running a pre-written adventure that only details the adventure site and another location (like a town or a city)and eventually building a setting around that as the need arises. They both use settings to some effect, in the first the DM is comfortable with the established and the players are happy to be usung an established setting and the second the DM is comfortable with allowing the PC's interests to flesh things out abit. I dont know whether I'm not being clear or youre simply not understanding what I'm saying. I'll just leave it at this: Site based adventures work better for me as a starting point for a possible campaign. I've tried the fleshing out before hand route which just resulted in me coming up with a lot of things that the players just ignored to go follow some throwaway detail that I mentioned at some point. So unless you've prepared for every possible tangent that your players can think of to go off on, your method is really no better than mine. You don't see how that works that's fine. But I'm telling you it's been my experience, that for me, doing a bunch of setting prep before hand has been a waste of my time.</blockquote>

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