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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 8002145" data-attributes="member: 29398">In an ideal situation, this is fine.Problem is, until the puck's dropped and play's underway you don't have any way of knowing what's going to be needed - i.e. what the players are going to latch on to and ask about.Now if you're just running a hard-line AP and that's it for the campaign, that's different; you might not need much history (or much else!) at all.But if you're running something more open-ended, or any kind of sandbox, the framework becomes more essential.My own experience tells me different, and rather loudly. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Also, keep in mind that to me the retcon is the worst form of DMing evil.Either you have a far better memory than I have, or you're far more adept at taking notes during play (I'm awful at it), or you've been lucky so far. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />See, this is what I'll do almost anything to avoid: having to retcon or change something I've already told the players.Where as DM I'd want to know how all those deities related to each other, where they came from, where they are now, etc., and as player I'd probably be asking about all that.Why not be self-indulgent?  The campaign history is 95% for the DM's use behind the scenes* - it doesn't matter if most of it is never told to the players, provided it's there for you-as-DM to use and build on.  * - same as something like Lord of the Rings: Tolkein built a massive history of Middle Earth, and while elements of it show through in the books you never learn all of it - you just know it's there.  He-as-author, on the other hand, used that history to inform the story he wrote in LotR; then expanded on it later with things like The Silmarillion.Then, when some historical piece does become relevant, you-as-DM have it right to hand and aren't left floundering trying to make stuff up and hoping it meshes with everything else.An example from my current campaign: during my setting design I nailed down the local area's history pretty solid for maybe the last 1100 years (the now-decaying local Empire was founded out of historical events 1082 years ago [at campaign start], and I'd worked up the Empire's history in broad terms).Five years into the campaign I unexpectedly had a PC manage to blip himself 647 years back in time (long story...); as I already knew the general history etc. I was able to fairly seamlessly jump right into telling him what he saw and what was different; when he realized he'd jumped in time he thought to ask who the current Emperor was and I had the answer right there; that sort of thing.Having to make all that up on the fly - and take notes on it - would have made that session painful to DM and (probably) just as painful to play.</blockquote>

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