Basics on describing a new setting

[Pinjata]

Hey guys,

I'd like to ask some very basic questions. What boxes should I check off when describing a brand new setting to my players? How should I approach this? What would you want to know? What would piss you off if not described in advance?

thanks :)

[Frozen_Feet]

Depends a lot on the type of setting and the type of game that's going to be run in it.

One of the most important factors is: how much is my character supposed to know? If I'm going to play ignorant dirt farmer, knowing what lies within day's travel and the color of the sky may be enough. If I'm going to play a rich aristocrat, I need to know the place I live in and all the important people in it. If I'm going to play a starship captain, well know I need to know what kind of planet I'm on and what other planets my ship could reach.

Not everything needs to be frontloaded. Indeed, if you don't have a ready-made setting resource such as a booklet or a wiki to throw at your players, frontloading is probably a bad thing. Instead, you need a solid framework for gradually revealing information on need-to-know basis.

[Lapak]

For me the answer to that is greatly dependent on what style of game you intended to play; an OD&D megadungeon crawl needs different background detail than a game wrapped up in political maneuvering, but even then it depends on what the group agrees upon for party creation. A group of villagers who have never been more than 5 miles away from home needs less groundwork laid than a multicultural, multiracial party of shadowrunners, say.

Almost the only non-negotiable element for me is the overall tone of the setting: is it a points-of-light fantasy setting? A gothic horror world of shadows? A farcical sendup of post-apocalypse?

In almost all games I want more than that, but that’s the starting point.

[Yora]

The most important questions are what kind of people the PCs will be and what kind of things they will be doing. The geography and culture of the world are secondary, and I think can usually be described sufficiently in two or three sentences.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

I'd say there are three main factors to consider:

1 What's different here than in the real world or the settings they're used to? If you usually play games where everybody knows about dragons, they're very common, players could reasonably assume that is the case here. If in your game dragons aren't even a thing of myth, there's just no word for the concept (and for some reason this was important enough to put in the setting in the first place) that might be worth mentioning.

2 What is important to know? You don't have to frontload everything, but if the adventure is supposed to be kicked of by worries of an impending war with the orcs, make sure they get this. Don't have a single NPC make an offhand comment about it 10 minutes in, just describe how the village has been bustling with rumors. Subtlety is overrated.

3 What would the characters reasonably know? If this is a world with some sort of seasons (that have an impact on the adventure), most people would probably know those seasons. Tell the players "It's currently early autumn. Autumn is long, takes up nearly half of the 12 month year, and it's followed by a short but harsh and unpredictable winter."

If you have a bit of a complex setting odds are there are still too many things that tick of one of these boxes. In that case you should probably start with anything that ticks at least two of them. It's important to the story and it deviates from what the players will assume (this one can be an edge case if you're planning a reveal, don't reveal your reveals), it is important to the story and the characters would definitely know about it or the characters would know about it and it's different from the players' expectations.