NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="nethervoid" data-source="post: 3560695" data-attributes="member: 35562">I think it's a mix of both types of preparation: before and after.Before the PCs tromp around in my homebrew, I will build a world with realistic geographic places, and on and on down to kingdom politics and how each regional group intertwines with the rest.  I'll add lots of flavor material to add granularity and fine resolution to regions and peoples.  Once I know the general plot points, I'll spend more time fleshing out the NPC personalities and places the PCs will have to eventually end up at some point in their journeys.Then after the PCs start to tromp around, I'll spend extra time fleshing out each place I think they are about to travel to, and any interesting NPCs I can think of.  Adding ticks, obvious personality twinges, some kind of speech pattern, and the like to all the NPCs I think the PCs will meet.  Also adding in interesting stuff that really doesn't even have anything to do with the plot, but gives you that feeling that 'I'm really walking around in a real place', the same way you might feel if you stopped in a crowded downtown scene, and just drank in all the people, smells, and sights to be seen.Another thing I really think makes a more complete, real-feeling setting is fleshing out not only the sight and the speech, but also the sounds, the smells, the specific weather conditions and how they feel 'sticky' or words like this.  Just like a novel, I try to add 'spicy', 'gritty' words that not only explain but also add some kind of primal emotion to what I'm trying to describe, so the player has as much information as possible to help them imagine this place in as many dimensions as possible.  I want my player to feel like they've actually been there in real life.One of the ways I do this is by playing a sound track in the background at all times, which depends on the setting the PCs are in.  If it's a tavern, I have several different types of tavern background loops like: small tavern, medium, large, rowdy, bar fight, etc.  And I think this helps players feel like they're just a group of people in a fully populated world.  That's the main thing I'm going for in my settings.Complexities, IMO, are what make a world feel deep.*edit - Actually now that I think about it, it really also depends on the type of game you're running.  I run my games as 'hollywood movies'.  Basically, a story is being told, and it's as real as I can make it.  The players are characters in that story.  I'm telling a story and the players are in and influence the plot in that story.  We aren't really 'playing a game'.</blockquote>

Verification