Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 7406063" data-attributes="member: 22779">Fair enough.&nbsp; And, yes, you ARE going to have to develop the setting in order to run a campaign.&nbsp; Of course you are.&nbsp; Whether you do that purely through the DM beforehand, or by the players during play or some combination of both, by the end of the campaign, you're going to have a considerable amount of setting.Which is fine and dandy.&nbsp; It's in the service to the game.&nbsp; There's a dragon turtle hanging around one of the bays, cool, great.&nbsp; That's, as [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] calls it, a situation to be dealt with.&nbsp; But, and this is where the but comes as you probably knew it would, if I go out and detail the history of that dragon turtle, and that history has little or nothing to do with the campaign at hand, THAT'S what I'm calling world building.&nbsp; It's not necessary, probably won't come up in game, and is largely self indulgent.&nbsp; I use this example, because that's precisely what Paizo did when it remade the Isle of Dread for 3e with the Savage Tide AP.&nbsp; In &quot;The Lightless Depths&quot;, Dungeon 144, there's a four PAGE writeup of background notes, 8 point, three column, before you even get to the encounter with Emraag.&nbsp; We're talking about somewhere in the neighbourhood of two THOUSAND words detailing background that will most likely take about ten seconds to talk about at the table.For example, the Adventure Background (for an adventure that mostly revolves around bribing a Dragon Turtle to allow ships to pass), starts with:It goes on this way for about three quarters of the page, at an estimate, about 500 words long.&nbsp; All completely superfluous information that the players will almost certainly never learn and most likely never give the slightest toss about.&nbsp; THAT'S what I'm talking about when I say world building is a&nbsp; self indulgent waste of time.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Hussar, post: 7406063, member: 22779"] Fair enough. And, yes, you ARE going to have to develop the setting in order to run a campaign. Of course you are. Whether you do that purely through the DM beforehand, or by the players during play or some combination of both, by the end of the campaign, you're going to have a considerable amount of setting. Which is fine and dandy. It's in the service to the game. There's a dragon turtle hanging around one of the bays, cool, great. That's, as [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] calls it, a situation to be dealt with. But, and this is where the but comes as you probably knew it would, if I go out and detail the history of that dragon turtle, and that history has little or nothing to do with the campaign at hand, THAT'S what I'm calling world building. It's not necessary, probably won't come up in game, and is largely self indulgent. I use this example, because that's precisely what Paizo did when it remade the Isle of Dread for 3e with the Savage Tide AP. In "The Lightless Depths", Dungeon 144, there's a four PAGE writeup of background notes, 8 point, three column, before you even get to the encounter with Emraag. We're talking about somewhere in the neighbourhood of two THOUSAND words detailing background that will most likely take about ten seconds to talk about at the table. For example, the Adventure Background (for an adventure that mostly revolves around bribing a Dragon Turtle to allow ships to pass), starts with: It goes on this way for about three quarters of the page, at an estimate, about 500 words long. All completely superfluous information that the players will almost certainly never learn and most likely never give the slightest toss about. THAT'S what I'm talking about when I say world building is a self indulgent waste of time. [/QUOTE]

Verification