How Much Info is Too Much Info?

[SovelsAtaask]

I may or may not be planning on creating my own fantasy world, and unlike my previous scrapped projects, I plan on not giving up on this thing. However, I have a bit of a problem. I'm not quite sure how much I actually need to write, or how much info players need to have to start with. If left to my own devices, I'll likely end up with long rambling essays for everything that don't even make that much sense.

[BootStrapTommy]

Ask yourself this: will the player's care?

No need to flesh out ideas which the player's will neither care for nor need.

Geography, population, culture, history, cosmology. Those are what you need.

[Mechalich]

Rule-of-thumb regarding home much information that players need: the higher the level of the characters, the more information they need. Particularly, characters who can teleport need a lot more information than characters that don't, simply because they operate at an exponentially greater geographic scale. Characters who can cross into other planes or travel to other planets, likewise.

To crib off the FR campaign setting book (which is a well-crafted setting book, whatever your opinions of FR) you need:
- How the various races and classes function in the setting
- How magic functions in the setting
- What daily life looks like
- The geography of the setting
- The gods/supernatural forces governing the setting and the cosmology
- the history of the setting
- major organizations in the setting aside from just nation states and churches
- and specialized setting rules and how the impact the setting
- some idea of how monsters function in the setting

These don't have to be especially involved and depending on how much change you want from basic assumptions many of the subquestions can be answered 'by D&D standard' or 'Pathfinder standard' or similar common projects.

Detail level can vary quite widely. For example, if the gods are mostly distant cosmological forces that just sort of embody the standard alignment you don't need a lot of detail about them. If the gods are meddlesome Greek or Norse style deities, you need a lot.

Also, if you are building your own magic system or significantly modifying an existing one, I'd suggest doing that first, since that's going to have all kinds of cascading effects to just about everything else.

[B9anders]

The conan rule is good to have in mind: Would Conan care about these things? If not, neither should you.

I have another: Focus on the knowable. Not to say that all you create must be knowable, but it should have a noticeable impact on the world known to the players.

Also: Brevity is king. Look at the greyhawk folio and how much info on a world was crammed into so few pages. Whenever I write for my own folio, I re-visit every paragraph to see if I can make it shorter.

Finally: Whether it is too much or too little, it should be engaging. Here's a little passage I wrote the other day:


Daels Keep (pop. 2000): This fortified outpost of the Nydecian Empire was built 8 years ago as part of the empire's attempt to re-colonise the Wild Lands, though they have made little ingress beyond the coastline.


This was after I had cut it down. Nice and slim description. But really it is just a description. So I added a bit extra:


Daels Keep (pop. 2000): This fortified outpost of the Nydecian Empire was built 8 years ago as part of the empire's attempt to re-colonise the Wild Lands.
Though they have made little ingress beyond the coastline, they are determined to expand. Explorers who can help them chart the interior of the Wild Lands are paid handsomely. Few go and fewer still return. Those who do often return with a kind of madness and tales too bizarre to be believed.

Suddenly, Conan has a reason to go there.

[Thrawn4]

Write it like a mini skirt: Short enough to keep the interest, long enough to cover the essentials.
In this case: What is the background and the feeling you want to develop in the setting? What are possible plot hooks? What is interesting besides the plot hooks (flavour stuff)?

[LudicSavant]

Give info that the players have a reason to care about. Don't give info that they don't have a reason to care about.

There's no such thing as too much info as long as it's sufficiently interesting. You can put people to sleep with a paragraph about inane names and dates or make them fall in love with a veritable book of setting lore dripping with compelling hooks and dramatic questions and wasting few words. That said, less tends to be more. Be efficient with your descriptions and be brutal with your cuts.

[B9anders]

There's no such thing as too much info as long as it's sufficiently interesting. You can put people to sleep with a paragraph about inane names and dates or make them fall in love with a veritable book of setting lore dripping with compelling hooks and dramatic questions and wasting few words. That said, less tends to be more. Be efficient with your descriptions and be brutal with your cuts.

There absolutely is, depending on what kind of setting you want to make. You can write a bunch of interesting material, and yet end up violating the sense of mystery that helps bring many settings to life.

Hinting is a very powerful method for making evocative descriptions. Also saves page space. It is often good to resist the temptation to write and nail down facts (even to yourself) in favour of tales, rumours and myths.

Page count is not necessarily an evil, but what you describe in those pages can be. Describing locales and people too much takes away room for adventure, room for new heroes and the sense of mystery.

[VoxRationis]

There absolutely is, depending on what kind of setting you want to make. You can write a bunch of interesting material, and yet end up violating the sense of mystery that helps bring many settings to life.

Hinting is a very powerful method for making evocative descriptions. Also saves page space. It is often good to resist the temptation to write and nail down facts (even to yourself) in favour of tales, rumours and myths.

Page count is not necessarily an evil, but what you describe in those pages can be. Describing locales and people too much takes away room for adventure, room for new heroes and the sense of mystery.

I agree in some ways, but not others. There is such a thing as too much information given to the players—a little mystery about an enemy goes a long way in making them both intriguing and intimidating. But creating that information and reserving it for the DM's benefit helps make NPC actions consistent, rational, and realistic, and helps flesh out the world properly.

[Yora]

If you write for publication, those GMs have to read all the material and be able to identify which parts are of interest to them. If you manage to perform a mircale, you could present the information in a way that GMs can quickly get an overview of the general things and then read up on the details about those areas they are interested in included in their campaign. But I havn't ever seen anyone pulling that off.

[BootStrapTommy]

I agree in some ways, but not others. There is such a thing as too much information given to the players—a little mystery about an enemy goes a long way in making them both intriguing and intimidating. But creating that information and reserving it for the DM's benefit helps make NPC actions consistent, rational, and realistic, and helps flesh out the world properly. That's fine when building a world for personal use, but when you craft a world for use by multiply people, leaving some questions unanwsered is important. That way different DMs can come to different conclusions and craft a myriad of possible adventures from one legend.

For example, in my campaign setting there exist two historical figures who share a striking resemblance to two of the dieties. But I intentionally left the connection vague. Did those historical figures ascend to godhood? Or maybe they're the gods' offspring? Imitators? Or just coincidence?

[VoxRationis]

That's fine when building a world for personal use, but when you craft a world for use by multiply people, leaving some questions unanwsered is important. That way different DMs can come to different conclusions and craft a myriad of possible adventures from one legend.

For example, in my campaign setting there exist two historical figures who share a striking resemblance to two of the dieties. But I intentionally left the connection vague. Did those historical figures ascend to godhood? Or maybe they're the gods' offspring? Imitators? Or just coincidence?

If they wanted creative license, they should have bothered to make their own worlds. When you develop a world for others, you do the whole thing. You wouldn't write half of a book, or sell just the chassis of a car so someone else could fill in the rest (at least, not to a private consumer).

[BootStrapTommy]

You wouldn't write half of a book, or sell just the chassis of a car so someone else could fill in the rest (at least, not to a private consumer). Actually authors often leave important points vague and unspecified so the reader can personalize their literary experience. What a reader creates for themself is as important as what the author creates.
See: every good horror novel ever written.

And kit cars are quit popular among automotive enthusiasts.

And as a final counterpoint, see every commercial campaign setting ever made. All of which speak of various whispers, legends, and conspiracies, which are left purposely vague for DMs to flesh out for themselves.

[Mechalich]

There are some things that can be left deliberately vague because they ultimately won't effect the setting much however a given GM decides to resolve them. Most of these are effectively adventure hooks or story hooks for small-scale/low-level campaigns. Including that sort of thing is very useful.

There are some things that can be left vague with multiple possible explanations that are great importance, but those should be further elucidated with GM sidebars that say something to the effect of: 'If you choose A explanation it implies B, if you choose X explanation it implies Y.' Whether or not this is a good idea depends on the specific circumstances.

There are some things that absolutely cannot be left vague without seriously compromising setting coherency. Mortals can either ascend to godhood (however unlikely the circumstances might be) or they can't, but the choice has vast implications. Leaving it open is a bad idea.

In general, design needs to be the most ironclad with the big stuff: how does magic work, how do the gods interact with the world, how many moons does the planet have, what races are present, what kinds of powerful monsters, etc. The closer you zoom in thereafter, the more progressively vague you can be.

[BootStrapTommy]

There are some things that absolutely cannot be left vague without seriously compromising setting coherency. Mortals can either ascend to godhood (however unlikely the circumstances might be) or they can't, but the choice has vast implications. Leaving it open is a bad idea. It's not whether ascension to godhood was left vague. My setting makes that possibility clear, given the explicit ascension of another historical figure. What's vague is whether two other particular historical figures ascended to godhood.

[JBPuffin]

It's not whether ascension to godhood was left vague. My setting makes that possibility clear, given the explicit ascension of another historical figure. What's vague is whether two other particular historical figures ascended to godhood.

I'm not entirely sure the comment was aimed at your idea in particular. It is a handy thing to know, after all.

[Mechalich]

It's not whether ascension to godhood was left vague. My setting makes that possibility clear, given the explicit ascension of another historical figure. What's vague is whether two other particular historical figures ascended to godhood.

It wasn't clear from the original comment which way you had set it up, and I was just taking that point to make a more general one. I probably could have structured that post better.

Whether gods (assuming one has gods) are eternal unchanging cosmic forces or essentially super-mortals with some kind of special mandate is a major point of setting design, and one that is sometimes presented in an unclear fashion (FR hasn't been very consistent on that front for one).

[B9anders]

If they wanted creative license, they should have bothered to make their own worlds. When you develop a world for others, you do the whole thing. You wouldn't write half of a book, or sell just the chassis of a car so someone else could fill in the rest (at least, not to a private consumer).

This doesn't reflect the approach of many of the best setting books out there.

It's not just the job of a setting book to explain. It also needs to evoke the imagination. Here hinting and mystery, the deliberate 'gaps' in the setting, are often pivotal.

Conversely, it is quite possible to kill the flavour of the setting by laying out all the cards on the table.

[VoxRationis]

This doesn't reflect the approach of many of the best setting books out there.

It's not just the job of a setting book to explain. It also needs to evoke the imagination. Here hinting and mystery, the deliberate 'gaps' in the setting, are often pivotal.

Conversely, it is quite possible to kill the flavour of the setting by laying out all the cards on the table.

That's why you divide the information up by section, with a section at the back having all the mystery-solving information.

[BootStrapTommy]

That's why you divide the information up by section, with a section at the back having all the mystery-solving information. Or you could let the GMs do their job and decide for themselves what the answers to those mysteries are. Which is a bit easier.

[Mechalich]

This doesn't reflect the approach of many of the best setting books out there.

It's not just the job of a setting book to explain. It also needs to evoke the imagination. Here hinting and mystery, the deliberate 'gaps' in the setting, are often pivotal.

Conversely, it is quite possible to kill the flavour of the setting by laying out all the cards on the table.

It depends on what kind of game your setting is trying to run. In D&D the most popular setting is the least mysterious. FR absolutely lays out all the cards on the table. However, it is running an extremely trope-oriented classic high fantasy setup, most mysteries map to a fairly well understand set of known options no matter what.

Something like Eclipse Phase, which is based in speculative science fiction, horror, and conspiracy theory, leaves in a ton of mystery. It also has a big section at the back of the book offering a series of 'most-likely' explanations (sometimes more than one) for major mysteries, in part to give the GM a basic understanding of what the characters NPC superiors would happen to know in order to get a better idea of likely reactions and so forth.

As far as mysteries go, I think out of the box there needs to be enough information for a GM to realistically simulate the reactions of the most powerful NPC who is likely to appear in the most powerful gaming-level the rules are intended to simulate. For FR, that's really easy, it's "What would Elminster know?" For Ravenloft it would be 'What would Strahd know?.

Strahd von Zarovich, or any of the other domain rulers of Ravenloft, know a heck of a lot less about the inner workings of Ravenloft than Elminster (who has a Greater Deity on the metaphysical equivalent of speeddial) knows about the Forgotten Realms. And that's a good thing.

The ability to invoke the mysterious otherworldly horror and foreboding is essential to Ravenloft - too much information is a problem. The ability to invoke a vibrant, detailed, interconnected world with effective simulated geopolitical consequences is very important to FR - it's hard to have too much information there.

[BootStrapTommy]

I kinda giggled at that, because every specific example of a campaign setting mystery I've thought up during this conversation has been Forgotten Realms.

Worth noting that there have been five separate campaign guides for FR with a sixth on the way. The original was not nearly as extensive as the most recent. But nearly 30 years of publication history (and nearly 20 years of prepublication history) have done a lot to fill the voids.