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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5567760" data-attributes="member: 54877">I like to write 10 pages or so, and then put it away for a few days.  Then I put on my nasty editor hat, and go through it.  I'll select the best bits that fit into no more than 2 pages (and could be less).  That's what the players get. But it isn't a bad idea to take 4 or 5 bullet points out of the material, either.  I've essentially done that before, making the bullet points the first part of the 2 page document, with the rest merely elaborating on what came before.  And when I did that, not every player read beyond the bullet points right away, but most of them did eventually read the whole thing as a particular bullet caught their interest.  Really, it was somehow more gratifyng that they dug out the document mid-session and quickly read, because of a half-remembered bullet. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f60e.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":cool:" title="Cool    :cool:"  data-smilie="6"data-shortname=":cool:" /> But if you give them 5 pages, I can practically guarantee that more than half of it won't be worth their time to read, unless you heavily outlined and/or wrote five times as much material beforehand--and probably not even then.   Also, when I say go with the best material, I mean best.  Don't get it in your head, for example, that they need to know background about the neighboring kingdom.  If you've got something good enough on that kingdom, consider giving it to them.  If you don't, let stuff about that kingdom arise in play.   Finally, it is not as if the leftover material was a waste of time.  I mined it for later inclusion, comments by NPCs, general flow of the world in play, etc.  It was useful to me running the game--merely not very compelling for a background handout.  Not every good background idea you'll have makes good background text.</blockquote>

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