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Can you ever have too much? Or would you prefer to have as much as possible from which you can pick and choose what you want?
Not talking about demographics or stats for every citizen of a country, but rather details about the culture of the setting, ranging from broad strokes concerning mindset, law, religion, and government to finer details on holidays, local clothing styles, food, etc.
More is better. I'll take what works and leave out what does not.
Campaign material I agree more is better. Any reason why you are asking this question?
More is not better. One of the perennial problems with 3rd party material is the lack of good editing, and someone to say "you know, this really isn't up to snuff with the rest of the book" or "this is fascinating, but it doesn't really fit." The more you limit yourself to the utmost quality material, the better a read that the book will be. Now, if everything's super, by all means include it, but you should think long and hard about trusting you instincts on that call. Besides, you know most Referees will rewrite half of everything anyway.
Actually, as to your unwritten question, I prefer the more concrete details over the more vague ones, unless those vague ones are really necessary. Describing the sort of fish curry that's served for every lunch is a great sort of on-the-ground fact that works easily into a game and gives tons of character to a place. It's the sort of thing players remember. Unless the culture contains "untranslatable" concepts, cultural views that are extremely distinct and non-traditional, that practically require new language to describe with any ease, that sort of thing can get glossed over.
Also, do not underestimate the value of gray areas for GMs to fit in their own ideas. If every minute in the history of Kingdom X has been diligently recorded by the scribes of X, there's no room to tell a new story without disrupting canon.
Good luck!
The more described the culture the better. I love reading about nuances of fantasy culture with minor customs, rites, beliefs, etc. And if I don't like some elements I can scrape them. I prefer to have things to throw away than not having them enough.
As much as is good, useful, and interesting.
"Good" meaning that it is logically consistent within the campaign setting, and that its implications have been thought out forward and backward. If there's a tiny little island nation founded by the survivors of an ancient shipwreck, and it has no trade with anyone and its technology level never advanced past the Stone Age, I'm going to be really dubious about material that purports to detail the amazing pearl-set goldwork to be found there. Sure, there might be pearls in the seas nearby... but there sure won't be any gold, much less the technology to work it or the culture to support elaborate frivolity.
(I'm exaggerating, but not by a lot. Fabulous jewels are such a staple of fantasy RPGs, and game writers frequently have so little familiarity with actual jewelry, that you see some craaaazy stuff out there. In Golarion, thankfully, it's mostly been limited to gems of the wrong colors and in one case a pearl wedding ring, which made me go :/ inside my head but is hardly a game breaker.)
"Useful" meaning that it actually illustrates something novel about the culture and/or offers a hook to the GM in building a story or the PCs in creating characters. If a sourcebook noted that local cuisine in Geb's towns is mostly limited to boiled turnips and barley gruel, then that says something about the culture (namely that they have plenty of food, thanks to tireless zombie farmers and a relatively low population of actual living people, but most of those living people are chattels and nobody cares what they eat as long as they stay alive, while the remainder don't have enough liberty/concentrated numbers to spur the development of an interesting regional cuisine, let alone professional chefs). So, to me, that'd be a useful detail to throw out to the PCs to remind them of just how unfriendly and literally inhuman this particular nation is.
"Interesting" is going to be entirely dependent on the individual, but what I'm trying to get at with that point is that the information should always be written and organized with an eye toward its eventual use in a game. Details for the sake of details aren't much use. (Exhibit A: Wheel of Time, books 8-10. Was it really worthwhile to spend all that time on the lace and embroidery favored by particular nations where that detail never came into play for anything ever? Really? REALLY?)
Exactly where the line is depends on the individual involved, though, and you can seldom predict what's going to set off someone else's imagination, so this is unfortunately a real long post to say: I dunno! It's subjective!
But generally I'd say you want to aim for inspiring creativity rather than trammeling it. To me, that means including lots of concrete ground-level details but no high-level proclamations of What It All Means, i.e., cuisine and clothing are good, prescriptive statements and value judgments (which is a big trap in describing religion/politics/government) are not so good. Tell people what they would see on the street, but let them apply their own interpretations of what it means. It's especially hard to avoid that in a setting where alignment is real and detectable, but I think it's a worthy effort to make.
(I suspect, based on your other posts, that exactly nothing in this post is going to be a new idea... but what the hell, I wrote all this crap, might as well post it.)
More is not better. One of the perennial problems with 3rd party material is the lack of good editing, and someone to say "you know, this really isn't up to snuff with the rest of the book" or "this is fascinating, but it doesn't really fit." The more you limit yourself to the utmost quality material, the better a read that the book will be. Now, if everything's super, by all means include it, but you should think long and hard about trusting you instincts on that call. Besides, you know most Referees will rewrite half of everything anyway.
+1
Quality over quantity.
Personally, I like to have enough cultural details to grasp the society and work within known political/governmental frame, but not to the point of requiring a degree in "[enter setting] anthropology or geopolitics" in order to run the game.
Its the details that easily empower you to create more details that I find the most useful. Too much info and the world becomes rigid and bloated. that being said, I don't think a single person can come up to a level of details that I would find oppressive, but a collective of authors can. Its perhaps my biggest gripe with late 3e Forgotten Realms, which otherwise remains my favourite setting to date. I don't like the 4e nuke, but I can understand it - to a certain extent.
But generally I'd say you want to aim for inspiring creativity rather than trammeling it.
basically what Liane said
'findel
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Thanks all. I'm definitely going to be looking back over all your suggestions periodically to refresh my focus. :)
(I suspect, based on your other posts, that exactly nothing in this post is going to be a new idea... but what the hell, I wrote all this crap, might as well post it.)
It still helps to keep it all in mind, especially renewing the focus on "show, don't tell" which is something I should really be shooting for. Again, thanks all!
Personaly...I like some....but I also like to have room to bring in my own ideas.
Can you ever have too much? Or would you prefer to have as much as possible from which you can pick and choose what you want?
Not talking about demographics or stats for every citizen of a country, but rather details about the culture of the setting, ranging from broad strokes concerning mindset, law, religion, and government to finer details on holidays, local clothing styles, food, etc.
Well, one can always modify or ignore these things.
In published, commercial products I prefer broad strokes with touches of finer detail. I'm a big fan of the level of detail we have in the GCS, for example.
Now, my expectations in regards to a fan-made expansion on a published setting are different. Go ahead and pour on the details. Because I won't be paying for page count, if I only use a small portion of what you've written, I'll still be happy.
If I could only use half or less of a Paizo product, I probably wouldn't bother buying it.