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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Imaculata" data-source="post: 7399648" data-attributes="member: 6801286">First of all, thanks for providing some specific criticism.I don't think it is of concern to the players how the DM spends his time preparing his campaign. Nor do I think that you can make a reasonable case that the quality of the adventures suffers as a result of world building. I could come up with plenty of examples of ways in which the world building actually helps flesh out the finer details of an adventure, and improves storytelling, immersion and depth.I don't disagree here. But I think this is more of an inherent flaw with the way adventure modules are generally written. They overindulge in their own setting, while leaving out crucial information to run the adventure.I don't see a problem with the DM writing out a clearly defined history for his world. I don't think the players need to have any input on this part of the campaign.This will differ per DM. When I do world building for my campaign, all of what I've written will show up at some point. So I feel this is an unfair stereotype of world building.This seems more of a flaw with specific DM's, rather than world building in general. To restate what I said earlier, when I write lore for my world, it always affects the adventures I build as well. The adventures are usually the reason I do world building in the first place. I want to have a reason why certain characters/cultures feel the way they do. For example:When I started my pirate campaign, I wrote that the two countries of St. Valenz and Kturgia were at war. I didn't write why they were at war, nor did I write who the leaders of these countries were. It didn't matter at that point. But eventually the campaign reached a point where the players may have questions regarding who was running the country, and how the country decided who would be the next leader of a city. It was a direct consequence of the adventure the players were on. And so I came up with some names for the King of St. valenz and the Sultan of Kturgia. I also wrote that a bishop would be required to approve new local rulers, who would be an important npc that the players would have to deal with.Over the course of the campaign I would gradually flesh out the finer details of the history of these two countries. I wrote a new expendable bad guy into the plot, for the players to fight. I came up with a vicious Kturgian pirate captain, called Karagoz. I came up with the idea that at some point Karagoz had been captured, but as part of a peace treaty between the two countries, he was set free. He immediately resumed his crimes, and the peace was short lived.As the campaign progressed, the players eventually got into a big battle with Karagoz. I wanted to make the battle with him more interesting, so I came up with the idea of giving him a magic lamp with a genie. A genie was of the appropriate challenge, and made for a more interesting enemy, than more human pirates. Of course this meant that I had to think about how Karagoz came into the possession of the lamp. No doubt the players would ask the genie this question (and they did!), and I wanted to tie the backstory of the lamp to the history of the two countries.So I came up with a plot where the magic lamp was actually a wedding gift, to seal a marriage between the prince and princess of the two countries. This would have guaranteed a permanent peace between the two countries, which was deliberately sabotaged by other villains in my campaign. The prince of Kturgia was slain by Karagoz, and the princess was corrupted by the big bad, while both countries pointed fingers at each other. The players still have not decided what to do with her. Will they return her to her father, and thus meet with the king of St Valenz? Do they even trust her?</blockquote>

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