How is background history for a campaign setting done well?

[Yora]

One thing I've always struggled to understand about campaign settings is how they make history work well. Some really good settings like Planescape and Dark Sun didn't have any history or timeline in the original box set and it was great. Other settings are really interesting because of their history.
But then there's also a large number of settings that have really long background histories that either seem pretty much useless and even getting in the way. I've never been able to figure out what makes history work or not in a fantasy setting.

[Nifft]

One thing I've always struggled to understand about campaign settings is how they make history work well. Some really good settings like Planescape and Dark Sun didn't have any history or timeline in the original box set and it was great. Other settings are really interesting because of their history.
But then there's also a large number of settings that have really long background histories that either seem pretty much useless and even getting in the way. I've never been able to figure out what makes history work or not in a fantasy setting.

Usually, the question I ask is: Will this stuff be relevant to the PCs of my game?

What I saw of Midnight's history, for example, was very relevant to my PC.

Then there's settings like the Forgotten Realms, where the history reads like a journal of someone else's highschool campaign... and it probably was. Or it's a marketing event disguised as a historical event to justify a rules reboot. Neither of those are compelling IMHO, because neither of them is relevant to my game.

I don't recall the original Planescape box, but Planescape:Torment was just dripping in implied history, and that was such a good game that it basically became my headcanon for Planescape.

[Yora]

I think one approach to writing a setting history that might be worth exploring is to not make an account of the world, but pick specific major elements in the world, like unusual countries, ongoing conflicts, influential organizations and select NPCs and ask why they are how they are and what they want and why they want it. Because that seems the kind of things that players would be asking.

When a kingdom has a king, nobody is really going to ask how the kingdom got to have kings in the first place. Same thing if a city is ruled by a council of seven merchants. I think almost all players will automatically assume that there's nothing extraordinary to these stories and that the details will never be relevant to dealing with any problem they will be facing. They won't ask about it, and they don't care. And I think that means it shouldn't be included in the history and clutter up the important parts.

Instead of making a complete timeline for the setting, just make a collection of the answers to interesting questions people are likely to have?

[Nifft]

When a kingdom has a king, nobody is really going to ask how the kingdom got to have kings in the first place. Same thing if a city is ruled by a council of seven merchants. I think almost all players will automatically assume that there's nothing extraordinary to these stories and that the details will never be relevant to dealing with any problem they will be facing. They won't ask about it, and they don't care. And I think that means it shouldn't be included in the history and clutter up the important parts.

Yeah.

But if four of the council members are from families which have been feuding for two hundred years, that's relevant and interesting.

[Lord Raziere]

[/lemony narrator]
Creating history is more of an art than a science. there is no procedure for it, as history is a messy, complicated thing that is filled people doing that in hindsight Are Really Bad Ideas, but they didn't know it at the time so they did them because they did not know, did not care, or did not think they were bad ideas.

In fact one could say that all of history is nothing but a long list of bad ideas, with any good ideas only coming about after all the bad ideas have been tried to a sufficient degree that everyone is 100% sure that everything else a bad idea. Unfortunately there are many ideas of which we are still not sure are bad ideas or not since the dawn of time despite constant testing. Thus it is best to wait to see what disaster will come next from the latest bad idea then examine the wreckage for how bad of an idea it is, on top of course all the other wreckages of previous bad ideas.

Thus if you want to create good history, start with some bad ideas and figure out they all collide together to make a big complicated mess that no one is sure how to solve and is currently in the process of probably producing more bad ideas to create more disasters thus more history, every era always seeking to outdo is predecessors in how catastrophically bad it can make its ideas and thus its disasters, a process commonly known as "Progress". One that can be adequately described in a metaphor concerning a drunk person wielding a shotgun to fire a bullet a target only to miss and hit some dynamite instead that blows up and causes a domino effect ending in a building falling on his great great grandson.

So remember: if your history is boring or useless, it probably contains too many good ideas, reason and logic for it to be actual history. To fix this, add in enough foolishness, complete stupidity, ignorance and utter nonsense until your modern day characters look back upon it and can only see a story seemingly written by a madman on a unicycle always teetering on the edge of a cliff but always managing to top the next mountain no matter how he gets or how injured he becomes and resolve to try and fix the current mess they are in no matter what and in the process create an even bigger mess because of it.

[Yora]

I really like that. I hadn't been thinking about this before, but looking on the rough notes I have for a setting history, all the best items on that list seem to pretty much follow this idea. Someone did something to someone else that had disastrous effects and a lot of other people are asking "What were they thinking?!" And as a writer, you can create a reason that made the group act in the way it did and how "it seemed a good idea at the time". Which often can get you a very interesting setup to create complex and interesting longstanding conflicts that are not just black and white good versus evil.

[BWR]

Relevancy to PCs is only part of the story, and direct relevancy like "this ancient threat is rearing its head again and it's up to you brave heroes to stop it" is really the least interesting use of history in a setting. Far more interesting is showing how the current world came to be and how ancient history affects current culture, politics and (sometimes) geography. To use the example of Mystara (which, some of you may have gathered, is a setting I'm rather fond of), Blackmoor really does explain a lot of how the Known World came to be. Does it directly affect PCs? No. Even time travel doesn't let them interact with BM in a meaningful way, but the results of it set the stage for lots of the KW and later adventures, like the founding of Alfheim and that's country's impact on the local climate, the Broken Lands, the Radiance of Glantri, the Shadow Elves, some of the Hollow World cultures etc. Does this have any direct relevancy for the players in a way that just saying "this is how things are, nevermind the history lesson" wouldn't? Not really, it's just a cool thing to know.

And that brings about the second important aspect: is it written well? Presentation is everything and a good comedian could get laughs just by reading the phone book. Likewise, if the history of a setting is written with enough skill (and some briefly sketched memorable characters) it becomes fascinating and adds to the lore and richness of the setting in question. Another example is Rokugan. Over the course of its nearly 20 years, the 1200 year history of the setting has slowly become more detailed and expanded upon, from tall tales and inaccuracies of the founding of the Empire to decent timelines of the centuries, important events invented (because 1200 years of nothing between Important Events is boring and unlikely), some fictions, some ccg expansions, some RPG splatbooks detailing important historical events etc. These things work not only because L5R has a pretty dedicated fanbase but because the writers make a decent effort to make things interesting and fit the setting (granted, I gave up on L5R some years ago because I felt the story was headed in a direction that was flat out stupid and went against the spirit of the setting, and I disliked how lots of the AEG officials and semi-officials treated the setting and anyone who expressed disagreement with them, but that doesn't invalidate good work done previously).

[Yora]

Knowing how places came to be the way they are can be very relevan to players. Knowing the backstory allows you to predict how people of various groups will react to certain things and what you might find in a dungeon or castle or how it is structured. And being able to predict what's coming allows you to plan. To take initiative and be proactive you need to have a basic understanding of the relationship between groups and the current situation. Knowing the backstory of a conflict or place probably works better than anything else to give players this information.

But I think the vast majority of these cases are local history, not global history. While everything is (or should be) in some way connected, it's probably much more easier to handle to treat setting history as multiple local stories than a single continuous narrative that covers everything. As a writer you might have connections in mind, but in the presentation it should probably be done in small bites that just cover what the players need to know right now.

[Nifft]

[/lemony narrator]
Creating history is more of an art than a science. there is no procedure for it, as history is a messy, complicated thing that is filled people doing that in hindsight Are Really Bad Ideas, but they didn't know it at the time so they did them because they did not know, did not care, or did not think they were bad ideas.

In fact one could say that all of history is nothing but a long list of bad ideas, with any good ideas only coming about after all the bad ideas have been tried to a sufficient degree that everyone is 100% sure that everything else a bad idea. Unfortunately there are many ideas of which we are still not sure are bad ideas or not since the dawn of time despite constant testing. Thus it is best to wait to see what disaster will come next from the latest bad idea then examine the wreckage for how bad of an idea it is, on top of course all the other wreckages of previous bad ideas.

Thus if you want to create good history, start with some bad ideas and figure out they all collide together to make a big complicated mess that no one is sure how to solve and is currently in the process of probably producing more bad ideas to create more disasters thus more history, every era always seeking to outdo is predecessors in how catastrophically bad it can make its ideas and thus its disasters, a process commonly known as "Progress". One that can be adequately described in a metaphor concerning a drunk person wielding a shotgun to fire a bullet a target only to miss and hit some dynamite instead that blows up and causes a domino effect ending in a building falling on his great great grandson.

So remember: if your history is boring or useless, it probably contains too many good ideas, reason and logic for it to be actual history. To fix this, add in enough foolishness, complete stupidity, ignorance and utter nonsense until your modern day characters look back upon it and can only see a story seemingly written by a madman on a unicycle always teetering on the edge of a cliff but always managing to top the next mountain no matter how he gets or how injured he becomes and resolve to try and fix the current mess they are in no matter what and in the process create an even bigger mess because of it.

That's a really good point regarding writing plausible history.

If the history is both plausible and relevant, then that's the ideal.

It's like a lot of writing: you don't become a good writer simply by heaping more and more detail on a narrative, but rather by knowing what you can cut, what you can eliminate, in order to reward the reader's thought and attention with relevant information.

Knowing how places came to be the way they are can be very relevan to players. Knowing the backstory allows you to predict how people of various groups will react to certain things and what you might find in a dungeon or castle or how it is structured. And being able to predict what's coming allows you to plan. To take initiative and be proactive you need to have a basic understanding of the relationship between groups and the current situation. Knowing the backstory of a conflict or place probably works better than anything else to give players this information.

But I think the vast majority of these cases are local history, not global history. While everything is (or should be) in some way connected, it's probably much more easier to handle to treat setting history as multiple local stories than a single continuous narrative that covers everything. As a writer you might have connections in mind, but in the presentation it should probably be done in small bites that just cover what the players need to know right now.

Local and global often do connect.

For example, let's say the PCs are traveling through a region which was devastated by the recent war.

They come across a town. The town is unscathed, and has no war monument -- nobody from this down died in the war. The townsfolk act ashamed about the war, and refuse to discuss local history with the PCs. Obviously, something is up, and the PCs wouldn't know that there was anything wrong locally if they didn't know about the larger surrounding event.

[Reltzik]

Plausible, relevant, and full of bad ideas are all good advice. But I'd like to add two more pieces.

First, inspiration. It doesn't matter if the Great Relocation has no affect on your plot. It might still give your players ideas for character concepts and backstories.

Second, verisimilitude. By painting a rich environment with a rich history, you can draw the players into the setting and engage them. (Warning: Advanced level tactic, easy to backfire if you do it wrong. Possibly A Bad Idea.)

[Yora]

But what is "rich"? It certainly is not "much".

[Reltzik]

Richness, I'd say, is about intricacy and interconnection. It's about having twenty parallel intersecting narratives each with lots of details at work below the surface. You don't NEED to understand all of it... and probably can't. But if you want to open the watch to see how it works, the gears are there below the surface, and even if you don't want to, you can still hear it ticking.

In application, I'd say richness is what lets you use the history for random setting details. The war monument mentioned might be a good one. Saying that the questgiving king's castle has a significant blemish on the west wall where it was repaired after being breached during the Siege of Somethingsomething. That the dungeon you're heading into was originally the official port of entry to the Molemen Empire, but the deliberately collapsed much of it to quarantine themselves in the face of the surface-dwellers' Great Green Plague. This doesn't need to have anything to do with the plot, but it can help provide memorable features and help the DM with dungeon-design.

[hamlet]

Well, can't give you a concrete example of it "done well" since I think it's really almost always a personal thing. I like one version, you might hate it.

However, I can give you what I think is a concrete example of it done wrong. The new Troll Lords setting World of Airhde. The background of the setting spans several millenia in excrutiating detail, almost none of it relevant to a game. Seriously, over 80 pages of history. That mean little or nothing to the game on the table.

I can only imagine that they were thinking people might want to set their particular campaign in history?

[goto124]

How do you write a setting with plausible conflict without the players suddenly saying 'why didn't X just do Y instead of Z? It'll solve everything instantly!'

[GorinichSerpant]

How do you write a setting with plausible conflict without the players suddenly saying 'why didn't X just do Y instead of Z? It'll solve everything instantly!'

As Lord Raziere stated, history consists of many bad ideas, and things that could be done better in hindsight.

[Steampunkette]

However, they were unaware of (circumstance)
Unfortunately, they didn't consider (additional information)
The Mad Queen's madness distracted them long enough for (event)

Essentially, look for a reason the obvious solution wasn't an option that ultimately comes from ignorance, apathy, and antagonism.

Someone didn't know, didn't care, or did it out of spite.

[LaserFace]

However, they were unaware of (circumstance)
Unfortunately, they didn't consider (additional information)
The Mad Queen's madness distracted them long enough for (event)

Essentially, look for a reason the obvious solution wasn't an option that ultimately comes from ignorance, apathy, and antagonism.

Someone didn't know, didn't care, or did it out of spite.

Expanding on this, if my players just happened to find a "duh" answer for some conflict I made, I'd probably improv other NPCs who likely also had the idea, but met opposition somewhere. Maybe the person to first suggest it is thought to be secretly undermining the faction in power, so everyone's afraid to listen to them. Or, maybe the only person who can execute the smarter plan isn't cooperating. This can steer adventures quite a bit.

[TheThan]

Yeah, one thing I’ve learned about DMing games is that if you make your descriptions, especially setting backstory information too long, players will check out or at least not read it. So I try not to text dump them. At most a full page typed is good. Something they can read in a few minutes and have a good idea of the setting. With this in mind I keep descriptions and back-story information short. When people show interest I’ll reveal more. But if they aren’t interested, then there’s no real reason to fill them in on what’s going on.

For example in one of my more recent games I wrote this:

Spoiler: campaign pitch

Show

The kingdom Gastonia was a vibrant, peaceful and beautiful place for many centuries. Then war broke out, the evil Queen Morgana, attacked Gastonia in a vicious sneak attack, destroying cities and laying waste to the country side. The King, Leo XIII responded in kind. The two nations battled for five long years. Ravaging each other in a desperate contest for survival and domination.

Losing the war, the king and his most trusted warriors lead a desperate attack against Morgana’s stronghold in a bid to assassinate the sorceress queen; it was a suicide attack and everyone knew it. The battle between the two titans was felt across the land. Leo was the victor and the war ended with Morgana dead at his feet. However Leo soon collapsed from his own wounds.

With Morgana dead, her support vanished in an instant; allied mercenaries, goblinoid tribes and retainers disappeared back to their hideouts. But the damage was done, both nations lay in ruins. The queen’s heir had disappeared in the conflict and was thought dead while king Leo died without an heir.

The power vacuum created by the Queen’s destruction has caused the land to fall into disorder, no-one is powerful enough to claim the throne, her heir is missing and presumed dead. Some Gastonian nobles along the former boarder are claiming lands, trying to expand their power base, the spoils of war they say. Orcs and goblin tribes move freely across the land, war lords have arisen and clash with others that seek power; the ragged remains of the Gastonian army barely holding them back. Rumor of plague spreads through the land.

King Leo's heirs died in the war; with no clear line of succession a Stewart has been elected to watch over the nation until the noble houses can settle their bickering and arguing over who has the most correct claim to the throne and even then, any choice to be made will likely lead to civil war. The nation itself is trying to rebuild, the war drained Gastonia’s coffers and heavy taxes has been levied to rebuild cites, forts and re-sow fields. After long years of war, the people are tired, struggling through war and poverty, and angry at the nation’s leadership. Rumors of Dark and sinister cults weed their way into the nation’s underbelly.

Into this setting our characters find themselves. There is opportunity here, but opportunity does not come without its own set of dangers.

It’s short enough that you can finish it in a few minutes, and gives you a good idea of what’s been happening recently, what’s going on currently and gives you a feeling for the nature of the game. I actually refer to these as campaign pitches, because you're trying to get people interested in your game, like a sales pitch.

[neonagash]

However, they were unaware of (circumstance)
Unfortunately, they didn't consider (additional information)
The Mad Queen's madness distracted them long enough for (event)

Essentially, look for a reason the obvious solution wasn't an option that ultimately comes from ignorance, apathy, and antagonism.

Someone didn't know, didn't care, or did it out of spite.

Add greed, lust for personal power, religious fanaticism and misguided savior complexes and you have it.

[LudicSavant]

A good history frames, informs, and enriches the present that the characters have to deal with. And gives the DM a powder keg full of opportunities to work with.

[Steampunkette]

Another thing you can do is release sections of history, initially, and based on player feedback expand it in future sections.

Like write up the history of a few groups of heroes and villains to give the players some idea of conflicts that have been going on, and a stepping on point for the kind of political turmoil they're walking into.

Then, as players get more involved with other groups, reveal information about people they didn't have, yet. So they know about the Harpers and the Zhentarim, but when they branch out to interact with the Uthgardt Barbarians make up a primer about them for handing out.

[Shadowsend]

The history is always far more relevant to the DM than to the players, because the DM has to make the world seem alive. The history relevant to the players is usually more fleshed out and tightly connected to certain regions. You only need details about the world if cosmic forces had a role in creating it that are also heavily involved in the game (IE one player is a cleric). That player is going to be more interested in what the gods did than any of the others. Most adventurers don't make it to all the places in the world, and I think its safe to say that very very few actually would try, or would have the means and the opportunity to do so. So as a DM, if I were to build a setting, I would definitely do a session Zero with the players and find out what sorts of information they would want to know about their hometown, its surroundings, etc. That way I don't waste a lot of time on things that aren't relevant.

[NRSASD]

Another thing that makes history work really well (in my opinion) is if it's incomplete. Even today we have tremendous gaps in our knowledge about our own history, with brief moments of high resolution surrounded by periods of swirling darkness. As a DM, I try to work that into my campaigns as much as I can. Even though I have a sprawling history that I've built for my own enjoyment, I only refer to it obliquely during the game. If the players want to spend skill checks learning it I'm happy to elaborate, but otherwise I stay quiet unless it's relevant to the scene.

One of the best uses for history in the game is to give your characters a sense of investment in the story. No one in any saga anywhere ever just finds a longsword +1 Orcbane. They find the gleaming blade of Captain Ostantes, who led the final charge of the 1st King's Horse and broke the back of the orc hordes during the Battle of Black Arrows in 536. Granted, this kind of detail should be used sparingly, but it can really give your players a sense that they are a part of something greater.

And I thoroughly agree with Lord Raziere. History, as a whole, would fail as a story due to all of the inconsistencies, plot holes, unbelievable characters, and sheer deus ex machina moments. People always try to make the best choice they can, but they have different motives than we do in the present and are operating with completely different sources of information.

[LaserFace]

Incomplete history is very useful, and I think pretty fair game in most D&D games. Most of the time, I only bring up history as it directly relates to current events; Who's tomb is this, Why are relations bad between these factions, How did this city get cursed. Sometimes, the answers are obvious, sometimes things need to be researched; whatever happens, I only flesh out the details that are necessary to drive the game forward.

The rest can be stewed-over for a while, and might return for later adventures. I also like contradicting historical lore with rare findings or obscure mystics who give evidence people don't actually know what happened so-many-years-ago. I think the best thing to do is just give vague imagery for lots of it, and let the players fill the rest in with their imagination.

[LudicSavant]

I find it helpful to not always provide players with historical information in the form of a detached, omniscient, perfectly reliable narrator. People in my worlds have diverse belief systems and worldviews, which may or may not be correct. And I'll tell the players all about those cultures, but I won't straight up tell you if their beliefs and histories are accurate... just evidence from which players can draw their conclusions.

I also like contradicting historical lore with rare findings or obscure mystics who give evidence people don't actually know what happened so-many-years-ago. I think the best thing to do is just give vague imagery for lots of it, and let the players fill the rest in with their imagination.

Definitely. One good way to hint that the world may have more depth than the players first assume is to drop some sources that contradict the commonly accepted worldview, such as, say, finding the records of an ancient drow tribe referring to Araushnee, Megwandir, and Lolth as separate beings (which could imply all sorts of things, such as that perhaps some syncretism has been going on).

[Milodiah]

My setting's history is based primarily on the desire for me as a writer to have an explanation of why things are so. As I work on the present, I detail the past, and as I work on the past, I detail the present. Kobolds and other reptilian races are discriminated against due to an ugly cold war / the ugly cold war led to reptilian discrimination.

I also made it so that there's not the often-present feeling that the setting sprung into existence with the PCs, and therefore is lacking the inertia of a storied, persistent world. In my setting there's a war brewing between two nations; the war was brewing before the game started, kept brewing during the early levels, and is about to boil over now.


I have not given my players the true/full history of the world. I prepared a document for them at the beginning of the game broken down into "what you know as a citizen of the nation, citizen of the city, and member of the city watch".

[Razanir]

I'm not bothering with a history for mine, because the world is young. I'm setting the campaign in ancient times, when evil was first being sealed away in a can.

[GungHo]

I find it helpful to not always provide players with historical information in the form of a detached, omniscient, perfectly reliable narrator. People in my worlds have diverse belief systems and worldviews, which may or may not be correct. And I'll tell the players all about those cultures, but I won't straight up tell you if their beliefs and histories are accurate... just evidence from which players can draw their conclusions.

I take this a little farther and pretty much assure people that histories are rarely accurate and solely written by victors, to the point of having some groups actively destroy archeology or subvert sages to ensure that certain truths are never known, for either their promotion or for "the greater good".

[Yora]

It's a major problem when it comes to religion. In many, and probably most fantasy settings, gods are just very powerful people with magic abilities who you can easily call and ask questions. When there is no uncertainty, there is nothing to debate and personal oppinion irrelevant. Which instantly makes a vast amount of possible conflicts and storylines superflous. And all my experience with history in university have me convinced that history is not a science, but almost completely pure ideology based on a few events that did happen, but it's really unclear how exactly they happened and what anyone involved was thinking.
I hate it when setting books are written as fictional corespondence (kills every setting instantly for me), but I think everything that's in the book should be information as the people of the world know it. If you really have to you could include a short section in the very end of the book that elaborates a bit more for GMs, but if people in the world don't know for sure, don't present it to the reader as such. If you want to be highly artistic, you can include some passages that maintain to tell the only real truth, but then it should be clearly contradicted by other parts of the book.

I've been browsing on some information on the Tekumel setting, and apparently it really is a different planet that was settled by humans very long ago but then all knowledge has been lost and the recorded history goes back "only" 25,000 years. Which is still about three times as much as we have recorded history on Earth. Say about Numenera what you want, but if all knowledge about distant past ages has been lost, don't put it in the book. Numenera did the right thing to start what little history it has only at the founding of the only institution that is keeping any kind of historical record now.

[Telok]

Keep in mind your players. Some of them probably don't care and never will, even a single page is too much to read and anything they can't kill and loot is unimportant. They will be shocked and apalled when taking a job from Baron B makes Count C attack them even though you mentioned the feud, war, and raids in every paragraph of your history and talked about it in game.

If you don't have any of those people then you're lucky.

If you want to read a well written history about how people and politics played out and made history the first section of Celebrated Crimes by Alexander Dumas (yes, the guy who wrote Three Musketeers) is about the Borgias. In fact Dumas wrote a lot of embellished history stories that are good reads and can be used as setting history and adventure seeds. I'm currently stealing from the Borgia episode for part of a setting I'm currently working on.