Do your settings need to make sense / feel realistic?

[Digitalelf]

Irontruth wrote:

There's nothing to argue over.

There's no argument, just commenting on what appeared to be a very general statement about how "We" as gamers "often think they're relevant, but they really aren't." to which I simply stated that no, this is not true of "we" as gamers...

If you meant "we" solely as in you and your group, then I apologize for any confusion on my part, as I read your use of "we" as implying to gamers in general, and not to just you and your group. :-)

[Orthos]

Irontruth wrote:

The more important takeaway is that I recommend more handwaving and learning to stop focusing on details that are irrelevant. We often think they're relevant, but they really aren't.

.... then I misunderstood your point completely. And yeah I can't disagree more. Moving on then.

[Irontruth]

Digitalelf wrote:

Irontruth wrote:

There's nothing to argue over.

There's no argument, just commenting on what appeared to be a very general statement about how "We" as gamers "often think they're relevant, but they really aren't." to which I simply stated that no, this is not true of "we" as gamers...

If you meant "we" solely as in you and your group, then I apologize for any confusion on my part, as I read your use of "we" as implying to gamers in general, and not to just you and your group. :-)

Digitalelf, do you suppose that there might be one DM out there who has put hours of work into his campaign setting, only to have the players ignore it, not notice it AND not care?

Can you see how my advice might be helpful to them?

Not everything is about you.

[Hama]

Irontruth wrote:

Digitalelf wrote:

Irontruth wrote:

There's nothing to argue over.

There's no argument, just commenting on what appeared to be a very general statement about how "We" as gamers "often think they're relevant, but they really aren't." to which I simply stated that no, this is not true of "we" as gamers...

If you meant "we" solely as in you and your group, then I apologize for any confusion on my part, as I read your use of "we" as implying to gamers in general, and not to just you and your group. :-)

Digitalelf, do you suppose that there might be one DM out there who has put hours of work into his campaign setting, only to have the players ignore it, not notice it AND not care?

Can you see how my advice might be helpful to them?

Not everything is about you.

Well player's didn't care about those details, why would they have to care?

[Digitalelf]

Irontruth wrote:

Digitalelf, do you suppose that there might be one DM out there who has put hours of work into his campaign setting, only to have the players ignore it, not notice it AND not care?

Yes, of course your advice might be helpful to "some", or even "many", but don't imply that "we as gamers often think blah blah blah..." if/when you really mean to say that "some" or even "many gamers often think blah blah blah..." There IS a difference.

I'm not making this about me...

Saying things such as "we as gamers often", implies that "we gamers as a whole often..." Which is simply not true, as both me and now Orthos have both disagreed with your assertion that "we gamers often...".

Orthos wrote:

yeah I can't disagree more

[The Sword]

I think realism and verisimilitude should be fairly innocuous when done properly. But then stick out like a sore thumb when ignored. A good DM puts the effort into the how and why not because it will be necessary for the players to understand but because it adds a level of believability to everything else. It also allows for players to use logic and problem solving techniques as a tactic.

In a detailed and thoughtful world if a party opens a sealed and forgotten tomb and yet finds human tomb robbers inside, it stands to reason that they should be another method of entry which may be useful later. If however their DM regularly puts enemies into rooms without thought of how they got or survive there, or what their motivations might be then expect games to be far more combat based.

That's not to say there can't be fantastical reasons why something is a particular way. Neither must it be obvious at the time.

[Serghar Cromwell]

I constantly write details I never expect to come up in a game because writing them is fun.

[Irontruth]

Digitalelf wrote:

Irontruth wrote:

Digitalelf, do you suppose that there might be one DM out there who has put hours of work into his campaign setting, only to have the players ignore it, not notice it AND not care?

Yes, of course your advice might be helpful to "some", or even "many", but don't imply that "we as gamers often think blah blah blah..." if/when you really mean to say that "some" or even "many gamers often think blah blah blah..." There IS a difference.

I'm not making this about me...

Saying things such as "we as gamers often", implies that "we gamers as a whole often..." Which is simply not true, as both me and now Orthos have both disagreed with your assertion that "we gamers often...".

Orthos wrote:

yeah I can't disagree more

Whatever. Sorry I used generic language and you felt that it somehow encroached on you.

Clearly everyone focuses on exactly the correct amount of detail in all things.

I'm so glad we have to argue about everything down to minute details on this board some time. So much fun.

[Steve Geddes]

Hama wrote:

Irontruth wrote:

Digitalelf wrote:

Irontruth wrote:

There's nothing to argue over.

There's no argument, just commenting on what appeared to be a very general statement about how "We" as gamers "often think they're relevant, but they really aren't." to which I simply stated that no, this is not true of "we" as gamers...

If you meant "we" solely as in you and your group, then I apologize for any confusion on my part, as I read your use of "we" as implying to gamers in general, and not to just you and your group. :-)

Digitalelf, do you suppose that there might be one DM out there who has put hours of work into his campaign setting, only to have the players ignore it, not notice it AND not care?

Can you see how my advice might be helpful to them?

Not everything is about you.

Well player's didn't care about those details, why would they have to care?

The trap I've found myself falling into is detailing things that the players won't care about and which I know my players won't care about - and consequently running out of time/energy/motivation to detail other things that they might get interested in.

There's also the problem of having twenty pages of notes to hunt through to find the stuff I know is going to matter. Lots of unused material translates to extra pages to flick through.

For me, if it was free, then lots of superfluous detail would have no downside. however there's a limit on pre-game resources, plus lots of unnecessary information makes it harder to find the important stuff during the game.

[Digitalelf]

Irontruth wrote:

Whatever. Sorry I used generic language and you felt that it somehow encroached on you.

I've been nothing but civil and polite to you, and I merely pointed out that you shouldn't be so all-inclusive when talking about aspects of the game from your personal anecdotal experiences, while you have shown nothing but sarcasm and snark.

[Scythia]

Serghar Cromwell wrote:

I constantly write details I never expect to come up in a game because writing them is fun.

I completely agree.

I write up entire histories for my settings, with full knowledge that my players will not ask or look into them. I don't do it for my players, I do it for me.

[Laurefindel]

While I can appreciate a DM who has sunk a lot of time and energy writing details and making sure the setting makes sense, I can also appreciate DMs who put their energy in other aspects of the games, finding props, building maquettes and models, drawing characters and locales, acting life-like NPCs, using their storytelling skills etc. to keep me immersed in their universe.

Writing connections and details is one way to keep your players immersed (and the one I usually go for myself). Even if the players don't seem to "care" it is something they notice, it allows them to get a good feel of the world and be part of a living, believable universe.

But other DMs have proven to me that it isn't the only way. Some have played the "rule of cool" well enough to make me forget about all the loose ends and far-fetched elements of a setting.

[EntrerisShadow]

Irontruth wrote:

Mark Hoover wrote:

How do you folks feel about a setting when you're a player?

Well, I long ago made my peace with campaign settings not making sense, due to a common trope that has a fundamental problem - the Underdark.

Seriously, nothing large lives that deep underground, it's not possible. The basic fundamentals for life are sunlight and water. While things do live miles below the surface of the Earth in the real world, they're all small. Mostly it's bacteria. If there's enough bacteria sometimes a few things exist to feed on it, but it rarely goes more than 2-3 rungs up the ladder. The largest are usually 3 inches long at most.

There's just not enough food for anything large and fast moving to live in areas without sunlight.

I may be mistaken, but isn't there in reality an enormous cave system in Southeast Asia with a fully grown forest and its own weather system? Is something that large underground really that far removed from reality?

And I'll add my voice to the "internally consistent" chorus. Realism is whatever, but don't introduce a rule about magic in your world and then discard it willy nilly because it suits you.

[thejeff]

EntrerisShadow wrote:

Irontruth wrote:

Mark Hoover wrote:

How do you folks feel about a setting when you're a player?

Well, I long ago made my peace with campaign settings not making sense, due to a common trope that has a fundamental problem - the Underdark.

Seriously, nothing large lives that deep underground, it's not possible. The basic fundamentals for life are sunlight and water. While things do live miles below the surface of the Earth in the real world, they're all small. Mostly it's bacteria. If there's enough bacteria sometimes a few things exist to feed on it, but it rarely goes more than 2-3 rungs up the ladder. The largest are usually 3 inches long at most.

There's just not enough food for anything large and fast moving to live in areas without sunlight.

I may be mistaken, but isn't there in reality an enormous cave system in Southeast Asia with a fully grown forest and its own weather system? Is something that large underground really that far removed from reality?

Not actually in cave. Such things tend to be at large entrances, possibly partly roofed over, but still getting sunlight.

[LazarX]

Mark Hoover wrote:

So... should I care? Do any of you? Does your setting need to make sense or have at least SOME kind of realistic feel to it for you to enjoy it or do you just handwave such details?

The answer is yes. I try to keep details I CARE ABOUT internally consistent. On the other hand, I am less than interested in keeping track where everyone goes to potty.

[lucky7]

I'm a very details-oriented person, so I inevitably create volumes more than I need. The big thing to realize is that your players won't see a good chunk of it. Still, it's better to have it and not need it, than need it and not have it.

[Set]

lucky7 wrote:

I'm a very details-oriented person, so I inevitably create volumes more than I need. The big thing to realize is that your players won't see a good chunk of it. Still, it's better to have it and not need it, than need it and not have it.

I do the same, and it really doesn't matter much to me if the players don't get into that level of detail, since I'm mostly doing it for me anyway. It doesn't matter to me if the players don't care if the setting I'm working in doesn't make sense, it matters to me, as a writer. Just because I can write nonsense, doesn't mean I want to, or feel that it's a useful writing skill to develop or encourage. :)

I do the same as a player, often writing a two page backstory for my character with supporting NPCs, etc. that never get read or used by the GM. It's for me anyway. I like a character with some depth.

I do remember one game in college where the GM drew a neat map, and a river just sort of ended in the middle of a plains area, prompting us to joking for over a year that we were going to travel to that area and 'find out where the water went.' Sometimes players fixate on the strangest details!

[thejeff]

Set wrote:

lucky7 wrote:

I'm a very details-oriented person, so I inevitably create volumes more than I need. The big thing to realize is that your players won't see a good chunk of it. Still, it's better to have it and not need it, than need it and not have it.

I do the same, and it really doesn't matter much to me if the players don't get into that level of detail, since I'm mostly doing it for me anyway. It doesn't matter to me if the players don't care if the setting I'm working in doesn't make sense, it matters to me, as a writer. Just because I can write nonsense, doesn't mean I want to, or feel that it's a useful writing skill to develop or encourage. :)

I do the same as a player, often writing a two page backstory for my character with supporting NPCs, etc. that never get read or used by the GM. It's for me anyway. I like a character with some depth.

I do remember one game in college where the GM drew a neat map, and a river just sort of ended in the middle of a plains area, prompting us to joking for over a year that we were going to travel to that area and 'find out where the water went.' Sometimes players fixate on the strangest details!

Big cave system, obviously. Probably an entrance to the Darklands.

[Rennaivx]

Set wrote:

I do the same as a player, often writing a two page backstory for my character with supporting NPCs, etc. that never get read or used by the GM. It's for me anyway. I like a character with some depth.

Yeah...my character backstories are two pages...*shifty eyes* *tries desperately to hide extra one-five pages on every single character*

I'll put in another vote for enjoying internal consistency, although I can put the need aside if it makes the game more fun for the group. I won't necessarily nitpick every single tiny detail of how a subterranean culture evolved, for example, but if someone else has figured it out and written about it, I'll devour the information.

[Terquem]

I think it is important to remember that the little details are always vastly important, you know, unless, they aren't.

[EldonG]

thejeff wrote:

EntrerisShadow wrote:

Irontruth wrote:

Mark Hoover wrote:

How do you folks feel about a setting when you're a player?

Well, I long ago made my peace with campaign settings not making sense, due to a common trope that has a fundamental problem - the Underdark.

Seriously, nothing large lives that deep underground, it's not possible. The basic fundamentals for life are sunlight and water. While things do live miles below the surface of the Earth in the real world, they're all small. Mostly it's bacteria. If there's enough bacteria sometimes a few things exist to feed on it, but it rarely goes more than 2-3 rungs up the ladder. The largest are usually 3 inches long at most.

There's just not enough food for anything large and fast moving to live in areas without sunlight.

I may be mistaken, but isn't there in reality an enormous cave system in Southeast Asia with a fully grown forest and its own weather system? Is something that large underground really that far removed from reality?

Not actually in cave. Such things tend to be at large entrances, possibly partly roofed over, but still getting sunlight.

The roof collapsed, in one famous case - the largest cave in the world. It's miles in, and several hundred feet down, and actually has some uniquely evolved life in it.

[Mark Hoover]

As a player I don't mind the "It's MAGIC!" handwaving so much so long as the basics are there. Someone magically placed a permanent Sunlight spell in certain underground chambers, tied them to the phases of the real sun, then added some gardens grown with water seep? Ok, I buy that. 2000 drow living in a city devoid of all sunlight, subsisting on fungi and monster flesh because magic? That seems off to my brain.

But then, that's me.

Some folks are like "this is a world were a single human soldier can get so good with a sword that in SIX seconds they can run 10', jump into the middle of an ongoing melee, kill 5 child-sized fantasy creatures (goblins) and then leap away ANOTHER 15' and you're saying there COULDN'T be life underground?" That's another point of view and I respect that.

My hope as a GM is to strike a good balance for my players. Like a lot of folks on this thread I like writing immersive background details. 90% of the time its just for me; every once in a while a player surprises me and asks though, so I feel good being prepared.

But then I like doing the other stuff too that 'Findel mentions upthread. I enjoy acting out NPCs; recently I spent over an hour giving info to the PCs through the malformed lips of an aberrant 10 year old girl. I lisped and pretended to drool (actually drooled once) and chose words I could imagine my own 11 year old using.

I also like making dungeon tiles. I'm crap for drawing but I've made a few maps lately (they resemble pictures my kids did in kindergarten, but whatevs). The one thing I don't do at all is handouts but I think that's probably just laziness on my part.

Anyway, I try to make it immersive. The only thing I ask is that my players engage with me. I think that's where I get burned out a lot as a GM.

Many of my current players wouldn't notice at all if I went from "You enter a small room cluttered with the detritus of age; dust, cobwebs and a pair of broken axe handles in one corner. On one wall is a tapestry, tattered and rotted but seeming to depict some battle" to "You find a 10 x 10 room. There's a tapestry."

Worse yet, I can point to 2 guys in the current 8 I game with who'd reply "Oh, there's no monsters? We move on." not even bothering to poke around for the details. There might have been treasure, or a secret door or SOMETHING behind that tapestry, but now they don't know. Later on when they come out of the dungeon with very little loot and complain I'll mention the tapestry at which point one of these guys will inevitably gripe "my guy's Perception just taking a 10 is a 23 and the dwarf has a 21 Appraise when taking 10. We should just KNOW if there's something in the room!"

I've had these guys actually make similar complaints.

I want the setting to be interactive, and not just in the form of skill checks = success. If I'm going to add a detail to a room or a wilderness area or an NPC my hope is that my players will engage with it, get involved. Move the tapestry; ask hook-hand guy questions; scrape up some of the glowing mold under the rock. In this manner the players engage with me personally.

But even I have to acknowledge that some players just want a board game. They want monster fights, tactical encounters, and loot. Even said loot need not have any detail; just be worth enough to buy the right gear to have at next level.

There is nothing wrong with that kind of play; it's just not my cup of tea is all.

So I like adding detail and will continue to do so. Hopefully my players will enjoy it.

[TriOmegaZero]

Mark Hoover wrote:

So... should I care? Do any of you? Does your setting need to make sense or have at least SOME kind of realistic feel to it for you to enjoy it or do you just handwave such details?

Depends on the group. If I know my players are in it for the immersion and will be looking for consistency, I do my best to use a coherent setting. If all they are looking for is a platform to make jokes and kill monsters, I don't pay any attention to the world beyond what they interact with.

[Mark Hoover]

I'm sort of along the same lines T-ro, in that if my players are just getting their tactics on I'll refrain from too much background. I'll still give them cheesy detail on rooms/scenes just cuz me, but I won't bore them with the 10,000 year old justification on WHY that detail is there.

I still like making it up though for myself, so I've probably got it written down somewhere. What they hey? If someone asks, I'm ready and I get to pretend I'm like a real life writer or something.

[thejeff]

Mark Hoover wrote:

I'm sort of along the same lines T-ro, in that if my players are just getting their tactics on I'll refrain from too much background. I'll still give them cheesy detail on rooms/scenes just cuz me, but I won't bore them with the 10,000 year old justification on WHY that detail is there.

I still like making it up though for myself, so I've probably got it written down somewhere. What they hey? If someone asks, I'm ready and I get to pretend I'm like a real life writer or something.

And honestly, even if it never gets communicated directly to the players, it still has an effect on the game. Done well, it guides your setting and adventure development and provides depth, even if only a few bits of it are actually seen by the players.

Any good sf/fantasy author (any good author really) will have tons of background setting and character detail that never makes it into print, but still contributes to how the setting fits together and why the characters behave as they do.

[Trekkie90909]

I like running improvisational settings myself; they give the players a lot of input, and require no prep time from myself. As such they tend to have absolutely no realism outside of what the game system provides and how closely I feel like enforcing the rules.

That said, on the rare occasions when I feel like sitting down and writing out a long convoluted plot, I like realism; it gives me a sound starting point, a basis for rules adjudication, and inspiration for when the party inevitably jumps track and I need to flesh something out spur of the moment.

That said, I never stick too much to either category; usually I just go with what I feel at the time will result in smooth, fun gameplay.

[bulbaquil]

Scythia wrote:

In regards to ecology or economics, not at all. In regards to sociology though, yes.

I don't need to know how it is that Goblins haven't been driven extinct despite relentless hunting for centuries. I don't care about whether the discovery of a rich silver mine will affect the market. I do want societies that behave in a somewhat believable way though.

It should go without saying that I don't require strict adherence to physics either. :P

Just my preference.

I agree almost entirely with what Scythia said, except that I do care a bit about economics (at the very least, you won't be able to buy a set of, say, scale mail for exactly 50 gp anywhere and everywhere just because "that's the price in the book").

But I don't care one bit about why there is this massive subterranean cave system that gets no sunlight yet still seems to be teeming with life. What bugs me is not so much "how can there be all these drow here where there's no sunlight for photosynthesis," but rather "where does Menzoberranzan get new noble houses from if every so often one of them annihilates another, and the punishment for incomplete annihilation is for the instigating house to be itself annihilated?"

Mark Hoover wrote:

I'm also modifying settlement of the area saying that the "empty plains" of the interior to the west are open steppe, moors, and grasslands as well as tiny forests so small as to not be recorded on the overland map. This area then is sparsely inhabited by settlements no larger than a Small Town under the protectorate of Endholme.

I do this too with maps. If I'm showing you an entire continent - say, North America - it'll be in broader strokes: Desert in the southwest, forests in the northwest, mountains east of that, then plains and prairie in the Midwest and Great Lakes region, then forest again in the northeast and southeast U.S. (add patches of swamp in parts of the southeast), all surrounding a swath of smaller mountains/large hills, jungle in the Yucatan and Central America. As for rivers, at continent-level you're likely getting the Mississippi, Missouri, St. Lawrence, and Ohio - that's it. Smaller "anomaly" features like the Ozark Mountains in Missouri/Arkansas, the Black Hills Forest in western South Dakota, and all the smaller rivers are subscale and don't show up on the full continent map.

[RDM42]

bulbaquil wrote:

Scythia wrote:

In regards to ecology or economics, not at all. In regards to sociology though, yes.

I don't need to know how it is that Goblins haven't been driven extinct despite relentless hunting for centuries. I don't care about whether the discovery of a rich silver mine will affect the market. I do want societies that behave in a somewhat believable way though.

It should go without saying that I don't require strict adherence to physics either. :P

Just my preference.

I agree almost entirely with what Scythia said, except that I do care a bit about economics (at the very least, you won't be able to buy a set of, say, scale mail for exactly 50 gp anywhere and everywhere just because "that's the price in the book").

But I don't care one bit about why there is this massive subterranean cave system that gets no sunlight yet still seems to be teeming with life. What bugs me is not so much "how can there be all these drow here where there's no sunlight for photosynthesis," but rather "where does Menzoberranzan get new noble houses from if every so often one of them annihilates another, and the punishment for incomplete annihilation is for the instigating house to be itself annihilated?"

Mark Hoover wrote:

I'm also modifying settlement of the area saying that the "empty plains" of the interior to the west are open steppe, moors, and grasslands as well as tiny forests so small as to not be recorded on the overland map. This area then is sparsely inhabited by settlements no larger than a Small Town under the protectorate of Endholme.

I do this too with maps. If I'm showing you an entire continent - say, North America - it'll be in broader strokes: Desert in the southwest, forests in the northwest, mountains east of that, then plains and prairie in the Midwest and Great Lakes region, then forest again in the northeast and southeast U.S. (add patches of swamp in parts of the southeast), all surrounding a swath of smaller mountains/large hills, jungle in the...

[Scythia]

RDM, did you accidentally your reply?

[Matthew Downie]

Scythia wrote:

RDM, did you accidentally your reply?

Did you accidentally a word?

I've been thinking about this subject lately because I'm designing an 'underdark'. My plan is for there to be mysterious giant tree roots penetrating everywhere. If the roots are injured, they leak large amounts of nutritious sap from which enormous edible fungi grow. I'm hoping this will be just enough to add a veneer of plausibility to a vast cavern network full of random monsters.

[TOZ]

Matthew Downie wrote:

Scythia wrote:

RDM, did you accidentally your reply?

Did you accidentally a word?

I accidentally a link.

[Terquem]

And then there is the opposite effect, for me anyway, when a designer goes too far in trying to making something "seem" real, and instead, for me, throws the whole situation under the bus, as it were.

Take for instance the first module of the Iron Gods adventure path (I've just picked it up and will start running it here for the first time in the coming weeks, it is my first Pathfinder AP, am I am normally a DM who runs only home setting adventures).

In this first part of the Iron Gods Adventure Path, there is this minor plot point that comes up a few times in the description of the current setting that deals with the towns "garbage" problem, and how now that the Torch has gone out, the city is fast building up with garbage that they cannot get rid of.

And I ask myself

What the hell are they talking about? I get that in our modern society (with a tremendous amount of pre packaged goods coming into our homes every week) and if the trash truck didn't come by every week and magically make my trash cans empty again regularly, I would have a serious problem, real soon, okay, I understand that.

But a "medieval-fantasy-esque" town of a population of no more than a thousand people, with absolutely no industrialized packaging of any kind...

has a garbage problem after just one week of not being able to haul away...what exactly?

What kind of garbage is being generated in this town? I don't get it, and it throws off my believability in the whole town, so I have no choice but to drop the point from any of the details I am giving my players, because every time I try to reconcile exactly what this problem is supposed to be about, I just cross my eyes and get confused.

[Scythia]

Terquem wrote:

And then there is the opposite effect, for me anyway, when a designer goes too far in trying to making something "seem" real, and instead, for me, throws the whole situation under the bus, as it were.

Take for instance the first module of the Iron Gods adventure path (I've just picked it up and will start running it here for the first time in the coming weeks, it is my first Pathfinder AP, am I am normally a DM who runs only home setting adventures).

In this first part of the Iron Gods Adventure Path, there is this minor plot point that comes up a few times in the description of the current setting that deals with the towns "garbage" problem, and how now that the Torch has gone out, the city is fast building up with garbage that they cannot get rid of.

And I ask myself

What the hell are they talking about? I get that in our modern society (with a tremendous amount of pre packaged goods coming into our homes every week) and if the trash truck didn't come by every week and magically make my trash cans empty again regularly, I would have a serious problem, real soon, okay, I understand that.

But a "medieval-fantasy-esque" town of a population of no more than a thousand people, with absolutely no industrialized packaging of any kind...

has a garbage problem after just one week of not being able to haul away...what exactly?

What kind of garbage is being generated in this town? I don't get it, and it throws off my believability in the whole town, so I have no choice but to drop the point from any of the details I am giving my players, because every time I try to reconcile exactly what this problem is supposed to be about, I just cross my eyes and get confused.

Chamber pots.

Offal.

Tannery waste.

Paper making by product.

So many wonderful scents to discover.

[RDM42]

Scythia wrote:

RDM, did you accidentally your reply?

I guess I must have accidentally replied, I don't remember doing it at all or have the foggiest what I was going to say.