>Physically hand players printed setting guide >Link players

>>52775190
Because someone has to.

Our players are incapable of it.

>>52775190
Why would you write and send all that stuff, dude? To people who is clearly not interested, to make it worst.

Just mention what's relevant when it comes up.

>>52775238

Thats a fucked up way to say "Good job, and thanks"

I've come to the conclusion that dnd and pathfinder are knowledge games, and therefore people who aren't willing to put in the effort of remembering how to roll an attack and what their class does are not willing to pay attention to the story I'm crafting. Therefore, they don't deserve me as a gm.

In my opinion the GM shouldn't recap sessions, it is the players' job. Make them recap, and give them incentive to do by rewarding them with xp and/or metacurrency.

Another solution is to get players that give a damn, because I would love to have a gm who gave that much effort.

>>52775350
You need to be at least SOMEWHAT pragmatic and pay attention at what the group is actually using. There's no need to keep putting in a lot of extra work for a beer and pretzels group that clearly doesn't give a shit, much less so if you're doing it essentially out of spite after acknowledging it makes no difference to your players

>>52775190
Maybe your setting is shit and nobody wants to read it?

>>52775350

No, it's a suggestion from someone who's been in the same situation. Worldbuilding and DMing are related hobbies but they're not one and the same. The faster you understand this, the happier you'll be.

If this words sound too "fucked up" for you, think about it this way: Do you think someone would give a shit about the Star Wars Expanded Universe if there was no Last Hope movie? Do you think a significant number of people would read let alone buy the Silmarilion if there was no Lord of the Rings? Only a few can eat up a setting without a story to make them care about it, and we're the ones who always end up DMing anyways.

>>52775381

I forgot to mention that it is better to have players do the recap because then the GM will know what is important to them. This is a immensely helpful resource for prepping future sessions. Also the GM might accidentally spoil or overemphasize stuff.

>>52775468
This too is a good suggestion

You don't need to fucking tell me, OP.

Around September last year I commissioned a custom-made map for my new college group, printed it out on a big 22x28 poster sheet, framed it with dry-erase sheet, and hung it up on the wall in the games' clubs meeting room. I told everyone that they could use the map for marking important discoveries and keeping notes, so that they could keep track of everything they found interesting in the game.

It's almost the end of the year and the board hasn't been used once. Players still ask me where and what almost everything is, months after first encountering it.

It makes me want to cry. It's fucking drained me. I feel so unappreciated and I hate it so much.

>>52775537
Brohug, anon, that is a miserable sounding situation.
Take it down, use it for a personal group that appreciates it.
>>52775462
To wit, if the game was pointedly taking place in the EU and it's events were the group's problem, yes, I'd expect them to at least read up on the direct situation, if not enough to gain a grasp of the setting's situation.

>>52775586
So you did read the EU before watching the movie?

The point is that Universes are sub-products of stories, never the other way around. You can't make your players care about a Universe out of nothing. Give them the basics, give them a story and some time to get attached to their characters and maybe some NPCs and then gradually introduce more. This is not some kind of occult knowledge, literally everything works this way.

>>52775190
Because no one else will.

>>52775537
I'm so sorry

>>52775663
That's why I didn't say the entire EU, I said the tiny slice of it the players will be dealing with.
If your players can't be assed to read 1-3 pages that directly affect them concerning the setting, you have shit players.

While the people who say you shouldn't waste your time are right, I have to say that not reading the material is still shitty. It's not hard to read a few pages over a week.

>>52775711
Did you read a single line of the EU before watching the movie?

No, at most what you did was read the text with the cool music. Which is not 1-3 pages, it's the DM doing a 5-10 minute explanation while making the characters.

>>52775190
Masochism, mostly, and the complete lack of faith in the idea that anybody else would be capable of doing it.

>>52775190
>setting guide
>setting wiki
These two don't exist for the players, they exist for the GM. The players should never see them and any content you give them should be explicitly relevant to their current situation.

At most, give them a two page summary of the setting with facts relevant for character creation. You can't expect to hold anyone's attention for more than two pages, and even then that's pushing it.

>>52775757
Or, the GM can pass out a small packet online to the players saying "hey, this is the background info that concerns what you will be dealing with".
I don't particularly understand why you are defending the players' right to be lazy as fuck, except you must not GM and found yourself in the position of having to spoonfeed players rudimentary knowledge of the setting.
I've done exactly this in 40k rpgs, despite the books going into basic "you need to know this to not get shot" bulletins, and I still had to explain to half the group that actively proclaiming against the divinity of the Emperor was a literal death sentence, or to the techpriest that his desire to outfit himself with Eldar weaponry railed in the face of everything he is supposed to believe in.

>>52775190
Dude, they obviously don't care that much about your setting. Stop trying to force it.

>>52775190

Because if they don't read it, you're free to bullshit anything you want and fuck them over in the most satisfying way imaginable.

>>52775868
I like this. This feels right

>>52775826
>I don't particularly understand why you are defending the players' right to be lazy as fuck

Because people like you and OP confuses the origin of the problem and gets sad about it. I'm unironically helping you. You think that passing out a small packet online is a better option, but it simply isn't for most people, and I don't get what's so hard to understand about this.

Do you want to sell your story or do you want to rant about lazy people? Because honestly you can even do both, but it seems you don't care about the first. If it sells okay, but if not you're just gonna complain in 4chan? Honestly you're as lazy as your players even if you wrote 1, 3 or 100 pages. Just in a different way.

>>52775462
>Worldbuilding and DMing are related hobbies but they're not one and the same
This is good advice. Many people who worldbuild and then GM the world make the mistake of thinking that all the material they're making is for the players, but that's not how it works, that material is for the GM running the game (who only coincidentally happens to be you). If you look at all the setting manuals from established games (D&D, pathfinder, whatever), they're mostly written for the GMs and the player's handbook is pretty devoid of everything that doesn't have to do with making and playing a character.

The best advice I've heard to the effect is that when you do your worldbuilding, do it as if you weren't the one running it later.

>>52775928
>Do you want to sell your story or do you want to rant about lazy people?
I'm not here to sell a story, and it seems you decided to skip the last half of my post, where I talked about the implicit, lethal consequences of ignoring a common setting trope because players believe they do not need to read about the setting.
I could have gone like >>52775868 said, and literally had most of the group strung up almost immediately, given where they were, but you would have some manner of snark comment about me being a shit GM that didn't "explain it enough" to the players when the resources are right in front of them.
You have never GM'd, that much is clearly obvious, or your players have been the same kind of chucklefucks being talked about in this thread.

>>52775190
Just handing them shit won't work if you're just going to tell them when they ask. Asking is easier for them, they don't have to do any work.

Instead, next time they confusedly ask about what just happened or some location they've already been to, tell them that they should already know that and point to your data sources. Let them get it on their own. Wait patiently while they do so. You have to train them to research and eventually they will.

Alternatively, your writing could be shit, I don't know.

>>52776016
>Alternatively, your writing could be shit
Lazy players > all other reasons, anon.

>>52775995
>I'm not here to sell a story

Have YOU ever GM'd? Or is your whole "GMing" experience based around masturbatory tales and failed attempts to tell them to others?
Why GM if you don't give a single fuck about what your consumers (ie your players) think about your product (ie your campaign)?

Your last "half" of the post was just redundant shit coupled with the claim that you would rather kill a character than explain something yourself for the first time, which does make you a shit DM. No, the book is not there to make your job.

>>52775928
>You think that passing out a small packet online is a better option, but it simply isn't for most people
While it is true that you need a story to get people to care about the finer details of your setting (like the history or the magic system or the political figures), you have to remember that GMing and writing a story are two different things.

What you're suggesting is possible if you're running a game withing an established world that the players are familiar with. But if you're running a game within an entirely new setting you made up yourself (something I assume your players agree to) then you can't really avoid a minimum amount of material needed to get going.

You can't really expect players to be able to make characters and start a game with no information about the world. Like in your Star Wars example, if they have never heard of Star Wars before, you really can't get off the ground without introducing the basics of the world like the Force, the Jedi, the Lightsabers, etc.

If you were writing a book, then I'd agree with you, start off with a character and make the readers care about the story and slowly and organically introduce the world. But GMing is different, because the players aren't passive readers, they're expected to participate in the writing, so they need to know some things before starting.

Dumping 200 pages of material on the players is stupid, but expecting the players to read and know like 3 pages of the basics is pretty reasonable.

>>52776151
>your consumers
The mistake you're making is that you think this interaction is "GM tells a story to the players" when in reality it's "GM and the players write a story together" which in this particular case happens to be in a world of the GM's design.

>>52776181
>Like in your Star Wars example, if they have never heard of Star Wars before, you really can't get off the ground without introducing the basics of the world like the Force, the Jedi, the Lightsabers, etc.

Which you can explain face to face while you're making the characters. Is it seriously that hard? This is how I've been introduced to literally any setting, and how I've introduced my players to any setting either created by me or not.

It's not reasonable to expect them to read 3 pages not because it's hard for them, but because it's useless and unnecessary for you to write them. Are you seriously telling me that you cannot explain the basics of Star Wars to a friend so he can make a character without resorting to written material?

>>52776216
Your mistake is to assume that everyone wants to write a story with you.

>>52776258
Then why would they be playing a tabletop RPG? Because that's what tabletop RPGs are.

>>52776241
>Which you can explain face to face while you're making the characters.
>explain a lot of things, at once, that may or may not be retained by rote memory, rather than writing down the bulletin points so the players always have something to refresh upon
Your issue is your desire to partition things off, anon.
>>52776151
I pointedly did NOT kill them, even tho I had every right, as arbiter of how the setting approaches them to do so.
I did call them out on not reading even the basics of the lore as it applied to them, and you continue to out yourself as a forever player.

>>52775190
Life is suffering. Being a GM means you hold an entire universe' life inside your head. Being a GM is all the suffering.

One group I had was so bad at remembering things in Pathfinder that I toyed with the idea to make them start as level 1 commoners and keep them that way until they started to remember the basics of the game they played. For example, in order to become a commoner0/fighter1, they would have to remember how to make an attack, a full attack, a charge and combat manouvers, how much does it take to put on/off armour. Mages got to remember how to prepare spells and learn to read their description (especially components, for some reason). Clerics same as mages, plus when to pray for spells and what type of energy they channel, plus much of the same things as fighters, etc.
I soon scrapped it because it was a shitty idea born from desperation.

>>52775190
>Players not interested
>Bothering with them at all
This might shock you, but it's GMs, not players that are always in short supply.

Also
>Giving people some shit to read
>Rather than throwing on them exposition and trivia during gameplay
Now that's just lazy GMing

>>52776260
Okay, I wrote the sentence a bit hastily and didn't transmit the message I wanted it to transmit. Let me rephrase:

Your mistake is to assume that everyone wants to write any story with you, as opposed to a specific set of stories they're interested into writing with you. If you think that a person should be interested into writing a story with you, but he somehow isn't showing interest, maybe you should try to explain him why he should be interested. There's different ways to explain him that and some are better than others.

>>52776151
>>52776258

Not the other Anon, but you need a bare minimum of focus from your players.
If they are just chronically uninterested in everything not even simplified bite sized info will do, they will just immediately forget anyway. And they will never build an emotional connection to hook them when no info sticks with them.

>>52776241
The reality is that you should do both. Write it down and then reinforce it with explanation during character creation.

Look, not even popular games like D&D and the like expect players to start with 0 knowledge and for the DM to provide everything. The Player's Handbook is like 300 pages long and comes with rules of play, details of the basic setting and examples of characters and nobody gets their panties in a bunch.

Or are you seriously telling me you're okay with starting a session for a group of players that knows nothing of the game and explain to them what a fighter is, what a paladin is, what a cleric is, etc., how to make appropriate characters, how to do an attack, and everything else that comes with playing a game?

Remember that the GM is not the player's bitch and players can and should be expected to make at least some effort, even if that effort is just remembering some basic rules about their own character.

Of course you can avoid all of that by playing established settings (like Star Wars) with players who know about them.

>>explain a lot of things, at once, that may or may not be retained by rote memory, rather than writing down the bulletin points so the players always have something to refresh upon

Nice goalpost moving. We were talking about presenting a setting to the players, and now you talk about "refreshing"? If the first approach was good, players will ask for the written material in time. Refusing to explain it on person is not a good first approach.

>>52776345
>Your mistake is to assume that everyone wants to write any story with you, as opposed to a specific set of stories they're interested into writing with you
Now you're just putting words in my mouth that I never said. It's not "writing a story with me," it's "we write a story together," as in the GM and the players agree on what kind of story they want before hand, including the world it's going to be set in and the rules they're going to use to resolve conflict.

>>52776388
D&D is a terrible example since it's an extremely and anachronistically complex game.

More modern and narrative games are way shorter and simpler, and have systems that can easily be explained in 10 minutes without nobody except the DM reading the book.

>>52776471
If your players said "hey Anon, please direct us a game with this system and write a world for it as your are at it" then you have a point and they're massive cunts.

But it was probably the other way around and you were the one proposing everything except maybe your role as DM itself. You got no point, you're the active part in the first steps of building the story even if you're "together".

>>52776473
>D&D is a terrible example
Sure, but it's something everyone on /tg/ knows.

>More modern and narrative games are way shorter and simpler
You're implying that more modern games are automatically "narrative" and "shorter and simpler" and that's not necessarily true. Not everybody wants to play a system that can be explained in 10 minutes because that's usually a few steps from being freeform.

I'll be honest with you, I don't want to run a game for a group of players that don't want to put any effort at all into it. At the very least I expect my players to skim over the rules in their own time.

Pro tip: Providing 3 pages of setting info is not unreasonable...
...if the players are interested.

Expecting everyone to read more than a DVD cover's worth of info before they've even gotten into it, before they're really interested, is ambitious.
Think about how many people people try to start a board game, or assemble furniture, before reading the instructions.

Having the sheets is great.
Providing them ahead of time is good.
Expecting everyone to read them is setting yourself up for disappointment when they blow off their reading assignment.
Getting pissed over it makes you a douchenozzle.

The anon accused of defending lazy players is right.
And it's not about defending anyone, this is simply how things work.
Like how providing too many choices actually inhibits choice. It's not a defense of limiting choices, it's just how things are.

But once you've been playing a while and they still don't know shit you've already explained, repeatedly?
Then you start the fatal beatings.
Ignoring that one anon's map gets you two.

>>52776591
>Sure, but it's something everyone on /tg/ knows.

Precisely because everyone knows it by now, D&D can have the 300 pages and ask so much to his players. There's almost nothing to learn for most of the fanbase.

If dare you to try to play an equally or more complex game, see how many of the D&D players want to read a single page. People just doesn't work that way, you'll only find hooligans and people who was motivated into reading about the game after having it explained by a friend.

The tendency of modern games is certainly towards simplicity and focus on the narrative, by the way. You can like it or not, but it's what's "on" right now. Systems like D&D that aren't D&D are growing less popular, substituted by systems like FATE (a game that I don't particularly like but like D&D everyone in /tg/ knows). This is because they're better at making people interested on roleplaying.

>>52776640
Thanks, I was starting to think nobody would get my point.

I know it hurts when your hard work is ignored, but it's not about blaming or defending anyone. It's about preventing the hard work form being ignored.

>>52776561
>But it was probably the other way around and you were the one proposing everything except maybe your role as DM itself
You know that's not how it works. It's usually something like "Hey anon, we want to play a fantasy game that's gritty and down to earth" or "Hey anon, we want to play a cyberpunk espionage game" or "Hey anon, we want to have epic adventures where we slay dragons and rescue princesses."

Point is, a game never starts without at least a basic premise and basic expectations for the game. From there we can go on to pick a system and a world to play in, or if we don't find an adequate one then the GM has to provide one.

Even if the GM goes out of their way to suggest their own world, the players still agree to the game and know something about the world before session 0 (usually).

Maybe I'm old fashioned, but reading the material is basic etiquette for me.

I was introduced to 40k through Dark Heresy. I knew nothing about the setting save for it being Grim Dark. Our GM was the only one who knew the setting and had us use pre-generated characters for the first intro session and showed off all the common relevant rules to the setting, teaching mechanics, as well as leaving a hook. After finding interest in the setting, I bothered to start reading more about it. Before the next session we were given the chance to keep using the pre-generated characters or make our own.

You need to find a way to get your players hooked into the setting so they are willing to read the extra material. Your first session is your elevator speech of the setting. If you don't hook your characters, they won't care.

>>52776745
>>52776745
They agree to know something but not on the form they're learning it. Is it that hard to understand that some forms are simply better at granting a positive first impression?

Do you expect everyone to read the manual of every tabletop game you play? No, the one who already has read how to play teaches others. The manual is there for looking up things and to make the teaching easier.

>>52776825
>Do you expect everyone to read the manual of every tabletop game you play?
Yes I do. At the very least skim through it and read the first few pages that usually introduce the very basic mechanics of the game (for example, how roll resolution works).

The more complex details are then taught by the one who knows how to play on the fly.

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Maybe I'm just jaded, but as a forever-GM, I've come to expect my players to not give a shit about the setting at all, and be completely self-absorbed in their characters and own egos.

That sounds really negative, but I mean it more as an ambivalent fact. You're going to get some total bro players, but outnumbering them 2:1 are average players, and That Guys.

When I see a GM who wanks over their setting too much, it grinds my gears. I love worldbuilding, and incorporate it into all my games, but I don't want to shove it down my players throat, because I definitely don't want someone else's setting shoved down my throat.

How I usually convey the setting is by making a reference guide. Since I don't expect players to read it, I hand out essential information on a case-by-case basis. But those players who actually read it gain invaluable setting knowledge, which helps them become a lot more successful in-game.

>>52776859
That's extremely ilogical and arbitrary and I cannot come with a single reason for you to expect that when you're gonna teach them a part of it anyways.

Except if what you're saying is that you don't want to be bothered to explain shit. But we're complaining about lazy people, so it wouldn't make sense.

>>52775190
You wrote an entire wiki? Holy shit, at this point I think you deserve the suffering for your ridiculously excessive preparations.

>>52776709
>I was starting to think nobody would get my point.
Everybody got you point. You're just not getting what everyone is complaining about. It's not about your hard work getting ignored or whatever. Nobody in their right mind, not even the OP, expects their players to read a bunch of setting material they're written up. That's just a fact of life.

Some people are just tired of GMing to the lowest common denominator. It's like herding cats sometimes.

>>52776709
>It's about preventing the hard work form being ignored.
Yeah, I got that.

>>52776358
>Not the other Anon, but you need a bare minimum of focus from your players.
>If they are just chronically uninterested in everything not even simplified bite sized info will do
This is also a factor, but takes a while to confirm.

>>52776748
>Maybe I'm old fashioned, but reading the material is basic etiquette for me.
Oh, it is. It definitely is.
Now, is your average gamer likely to stand on etiquette?

>>52775537
Man, you sound like an awesome gm.

>>52776953
I dislike hug boxes and those who cry instead of trying to find a solution. OP was wrong and his "suffering" doesn't change this.

>>52775190
LAST TIME, ON [NAME OF GAME]
then explain what happened last session

>>52776923
>I cannot come with a single reason for you to expect that
That's because you're misunderstanding the reasons I want everybody to read through the rules. It's not about the rules themselves, I really don't mind teaching my players how to play the game or correcting them when they're wrong.

It's about the effort and etiquette, as that other guy said. In my experience, players who come to session 0 completely unprepared and the worst kind of players, they flake, they don't roleplay, they don't cooperate with the group, they care little about the game, they name their characters stuff like Gandalf or Conan or whatever popular archetype they're aping this week.

I don't know about you, but when choosing the group I play with, I also like to factor in my own enjoyment, so I expect everyone to make an effort and have basic etiquette, and not just the GM.

Let me put it this way, if I invite someone over to hang out and they drink all my beer and leave trash all over my porch, for next time I can either buy more beer and prepare more garbage bags and clean after them because that's how people are, or I can not invite them next time if they're not willing to even clean up after themselves and bring some beer of their own to share.

>>52776994
>OP was wrong and his "suffering" doesn't change this.
OP is right, but his "suffering" doesn't change his players.

>I dislike hug boxes and those who cry instead of trying to find a solution.
I also dislike hug boxes, but there are other solutions besides "bend over backwards for my players." If the game you're running is not a good match for the group you're playing with, you have two choices, not one. Change the game or change the group (usually it's a combination of both). It's up to OP and everyone else to decide for themselves if they want to play with a group that's unwilling to put in effort.

You have to realize that improving or changing your tactics as a GM is not always a solution, some groups just don't mesh with some GMs and some players just refuse to give a fuck regardless of the situation, and even if changing his GMing ways could get the group more invested in the game, OP might find that he doesn't enjoy GMing as much with those changes.

Stop acting like there's only one right way to go about things.

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>>52775190
That's not that unusual. If it helps, I'd play in any game where the GM cares because I know what it's like.

I have 5 players currently. Two of them are super invested & interested, talk to me about the game outside of the game. One of them is also committed but is pretty quiet as a player. Two of them are clearly distracted and or miss sessions & information regularly.

Of course I want the people who are distracted to be more into it. Roleplaying games is one of those things where the more you put into it, the more you'll get out of it.

But trying to change one type of player into another is usually futile. The goal should instead be to get a group together which has a similar playing style and interest level. I believe there is a game group suitable for everyone, and it isn't automatically whoever you happen to be friends with. Keep looking.

>>52778117

> I believe there is a game group suitable for everyone, and it isn't automatically whoever you happen to be friends with. Keep looking.

Solid advice, right there.

>>52775190
I suggest Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, it will help teach you how to not act autistic and be less burdensome to your friends. Your words probably are not as clever as you think and you are likely to be making the autistic mistake of aping tropes you don't actually understand.

>>52778620
Bait

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>>52775190
What are you running, OP? I have a hardon for handouts...

Alternatively. Your players are perfectly normal and your games are just super boring and unengaging but nobody drops because nobody ever wants to drop their only game.

Either way, post some of this material.

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>>52775190
What you're learning the hard way is that players are not on the same level as GMs. They're subhuman filth, worthy only to be shuttled from one precreated cutscene to the next. Give them freedom and they stare at each other, unsure what to do. Give them a book and they stare at it, uncomprehending the meaning of these strange glyphs. Staright up explain to them everything about what's going on and they'll stare at you with their mouths slightly open.

I once was like you. I put efforts into my games once. But my players broke me, just as they're breaking you. You may think yourself stronger for your clearly superior intellect, but this is untrue; for a brick wall can overpower you in much the same way that players do. Aye, an unthinking brick wall is almost indistinguishable from your average player.

Why DO we GM anons? All my players think they're playing a video game, and just fuck around doing nothing until an NPC tells them what to do. That's why I'm planning to make them suffer. I've been running a campaign from level 1 for them. What none of them know is that once they hit 17th level, I'm going to run The Apocalypse Stone. I've integrated all the lore from it into the setting, and they trust all the major characters implicitly. I can't wait until the day that I can throw insurmountable battle after insurmountable battle at them, only to watch the expression on their faces as they slowly realize that, no, they're NOT going to survive this battle, and that the character they've spent so long building and playing is going to die here, another nameless victim of the tarrasque. Or perhaps they'll make it through the battles. Then they just get to watch as their 20th level "hero" get turned to dust with the rest of the universe.

Just 5 more levels until the dream becomes a reality.

Be creative OP. Turn your players ignorance against them. Punish them for their sins. Only you can bring justice to this world.

>>52779405
When you GM, you have two conditions of self: being content with your players and being cruel with them. The former is fleeting, the latter inevitable.

>>52775537
I will I could draw a heart on your map, anon-kun

>>52775537
>>52781176
Right? One of the few times I want to be the little spoon for someone; that shit sounds agonizing.

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>>52775190
>Spend countless hours making a setting
>Make sure thing kinda make sense, including geography, trade routes, and history of the many countries
>Throw in interesting plot-hook and recent events that could lead to character creation like rampaging warbands or evil dragons
>Spend all this time
>Players sit down
>Spend like 20 minutes making their characters
>Ask them where their character is from
>"Ooh you know, wherever."

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>>52775928

Or maybe we're not selling a story and want players to find a way to immerse and even add to that world that we're all creating together. I've done that in the past and sometimes a player will want to play a race from some other splatbook I hadn't even considered, and next thing you know, hey I've worked Genasi into the setting and added some plot hooks for now and in the future. If someone is averse to taking the five or ten minutes to read a brief overview of a setting, then fuck 'em, players are a dime a dozen and good luck finding another GM.

>>52775190
Easily fixed. Dont carry their shit.

Send something at their lazy asses that they'd know how to deal with if they'd bothered to show some interest in the setting (bonus if its something you've used/explained before) and when they ask for the info, tell them to do the reading.

A few player kills and the problem will sort itself, one way or another.

>>52781310
spoiler]my life[/spoiler]

>>52775350
Honestly it's the best situation. Only the best players will want to know more about your setting anyway.

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>>52775381
It depends on how often your games aye, I think. One of the DM's one played with is awful about scheduling so we may only have one game every six months or so. It's pretty hard to remember what happened after that long.

Although to be fair, he's an awful writer so it's not like the story matters anyways. (He's also a railroader, and presents the story in a manner which makes no sense.)

>>52775190
I have something similar.
>Running Rogue Trader
>Players anywhere from 1/4 to 1/2 of each session shopping for better gear instead of actually playing the fucking game
>Download an excel file which contains the name, availability, and description of EVERY item in the game that can possibly be acquired
>Individually Email to all of them, plus upload a copy to our facebook chat
>Tell them to read the fucking thing so they know what they want to buy before they even show up so they can stop wasting time searching for shit in the books, a process which can an hour to get through when you've got one book and one ipad with the PDF's to share between 4 PC's
>Start of next session
>"Hey, GM, can we borrow the book, we want to look for things to buy"
>I snap: "No. I sent you a list of every item in the game. If you can't be bothered to spend five minutes writing a list of things you want before hand then I'm not giving you the book"
>"Stop being so unfair, GM."

>>52775190
I'm having a blast mate.

>>52775381
>Make them recap, and give them incentive to do by rewarding them with xp and/or metacurrency.

I could see the fun in that.

"You only get to keep XP if you remember what you learned"

>tfw GM gave us one map with CRYPTIC AS FUCK notes written on it
>tfw us players had a collaborative mind map/chart so we could keep details and associations straight
>tfw most of the banter that we had between sessions was theorizing what things alluded to meant
That was an amazing campaign.

>>52779405
And here we see That GM, who has decided to play against his players to right a perceived slight and revel in the fleeting pleasure of revenge.

>>52781310
>Pitch the campaign to the players as "You'll be X and you'd start off Y."
>"You'll be pirates and you start off in the middle of a boarding action."
>"You'll be thieves and you're planning a heist."
>"You'll be bounty hunters about to kick in the door of a serial killer."
>Spend a few hours tops fleshing out the area immediately surrounding the players and the initial session or two, leave the rest of the setting as a vague couple of notes and names jotted down in case they ask stuff or the plot moves us outside of wherever we are
>Game starts, action immediately, players know exactly who they are and what they're doing, campaign flows easily from there

I honestly think a lot of the reason GMing is so hard is because people overthink it. If you want to put a bajillion hours into building a setting, do it because you personally enjoy it. Don't do it expecting the players to share your enthusiasm for accurate geography and sensible economics.

This is a good rule of thumb, I'd say: If you're world-building for a campaign, ask yourself "Would I consider this time wasted if I never played this campaign?"

If the answer's yes, stop. If you're actually enjoying the act of world-building, by all means, make the most kickass setting ever. But it's not necessary to run a game, and chances are nobody else at the table is going to enjoy it (or even really ever know as much about it) as you do.

>>52782202
>Facebook
There's where it went wrong.

I just dial back the detail. When it comes to rules they can never remember/learn it's fine since I'll just tell em what to do when they want to do something. It can be annoying but overall it's less work than keeping things open ended enough for more adventurous players.

As for recaps, I only do brief ones at the starts of sessions to help get them out of that mind fog. If they can't remember shit, too bad. Not my fault they forgot the evil wizard is still at large.

>>52781310
This works though. Just get a general idea of where the character was from "Port city, ran with gang of thieves" or something and throw them in where it fits. You know the setting better than they do.

Otherwise they are from "lands far away" and you can build on it as need be.

>>52775190
welcome to being a dm

>>52776879
This anon gets it. After six campaigns and roughly the same base group of five players (there's been more but they never stay consistently), I've had one player who really got invested in the setting. So now all the related 'lore' and whatever sit in the backlog if I need to bring it up. Otherwise I just do whatever, and nobody knows or cares enough to call me out, and I frankly I think that's better anyways.

>>52775190
I was going to say that here we are not shitty players in here but then i remembered that a guy we invited decided to be a fucking asshole causing a chain of events that killed my favorite character and killing everybody else in the radius of 100 meters

>>52776304
>>52776879
>>52782934
Those guys get it, one way or another.

If you want to just dump lore on your players and/or expect to get people invested into game first, setting later, then you are bound to fail.
The ONLY time when people are invested into lore/setting is when the lore/setting is the very reason why they wanted to play AND that was something more than "man, I wish we could play Caribbean piracy game!".
If you are expecting from players to read through something, you are in a world of trouble.
If you expect your players prepare for games, you are in a world of trouble.
If you think most of your players bothered long enough to read even the game rules, you are in a world of trouble.

And worst of them all is the assumption players bothered to familiarise themselves with historical setting and those based on specific work of fiction. They will shrug even more than usually, assuming they already have all the needed knowledge.

My advice - always adjust the amount of details and data for the group you have. First run a "generic" scenario/campaign as a starter, then see how people reacted. If they want to know something about the setting, then provide, but not some sort of info-dump, just what they've asked about. If they don't give two squats about such basic things like a map of the area - don't fucking bother. And if they don't care about the setting and the game wasn't fun for you to run - just change group.

>>52775190
Show, don't tell.

>>52775190
>Why do we GM, /tg/? Only to suffer?

Jokes on you, I never wrote any of those things to begin with.

>>52775190
>Doing all the work for players
>Surprised they don't care
Please tell me you are not a parent too, as you are rising the laziest cunt imaginable as your kid.

>>52775462

^^This guy knows what's up

>>52775190
>Physically hand players printed setting guide
But is the setting interesting? Is it even worth reading? Is it organised like a tourist guide? Is the guide short? It it well-formatted?
>Link players setting wiki
Nobody cares about this shit, unless you specify which passage is important or explain why the link is important at all
>Email players recaps on things they've encountered every session, every week
DON'T! For fucks sake, why the hell you are keeping notes for them?! If they don't keep their own notes, you are the very last person who should provide them. Use it instead for your advantage - after all, they have no way of checking other than memory.
>Keep asking me to clarify what everything is anyway
So apparently the guide was shit and you've linked them the main page of a wikia.

It's not them being bad. It's you being god-awful on selling the setting.

>>52775537
>Around September last year I commissioned a custom-made map for my new college group

1) That sucks harsh for you man

2) However, here's how it reads: "Last september I spent a lot of money on something for people who did not think it was necessary to spend a lot of money on it, and now they don't appreciate it.

The knitting community has a name for this: The "sweater curse. Viz: You knit a sweater for your boyfriend, and next year you'll have broken up.

This happens because you spent a lot of money on yarn and a lot of time on knitting, so you gave a really excellent gift to your boyfriend.

Meanwhile, your boyfriend received a sweater, so he got a gift you could have bought in 5 minutes for $20 in Walmart.

You think he doesn't appreciate your or your time, he thinks your gifts are kind of whatever, the relationship ends.

>>52776388
>Or are you seriously telling me you're okay with starting a session for a group of players that knows nothing of the game and explain to them what a fighter is, what a paladin is, what a cleric is, etc., how to make appropriate characters, how to do an attack, and everything else that comes with playing a game?

if they had never played before yes, because I'm an easygoing person

>>52776388
>Look, not even popular games like D&D and the like expect players to start with 0 knowledge and for the DM to provide everything.

That's how I've DMed for the last two decades, it works fine (and I don't get sad players don't read my material, I don't expect them to in the first place.)

>>52783764

I have not heard of this term before but I rather like it. But it made me think right then, if you're knitting this sweater for your boyfriend and he just doesn't care, perhaps you shouldn't knit that sweater, and perhaps you should break up. You clearly don't have similar priorities.

With all the left and right "advice" in this thread either way calling world building posters idiots for suggesting that anyone would pay attention to their bullshit, I think a huge step is often missing from the conversation about how relationships are maintained.

It strikes me of relationship advice that suggests you learn the "hard reality of things" but skip the severing of social relationships. Bitch doesn't want to fuck? Yeah, don't whine about it, but don't fucking put up with it either. Drop her like a hot sack.

Players not interested in your collaborative storytelling? Kick them to the curb. No roleplaying is better than bad roleplaying, at least one is not currently wasting your fucking time. Nobody is forcing you to GM, and much like they do not owe you their attention, you don't owe them yours. Either collaborate or stop wasting each others time. Clearly there are a lot of forever GM's Worldbuilders that ought to be getting together to game instead of wasting their time with their zero effort normie friends.

>>52775190
>Provide what's needed for the scenario and nothing else
Players don't having clear picture of things? They will ask for details themselves. They didn't? Not a problem then.

>NEVER, under any circumstances, give them anything to read as a "you need to read this, this will make our game better!"
They won't even touch the thing, unless it's one-page long. Not because they are bad people or lazy, but because you expect from them to put a genuine effort for something they improvise on spot and just roll with it.

>People play those games to have fun
And in most cases "fun" means "I don't need to work/study, what a relief". Not sure what age are your players, but I know for sure expecting from people in my "main" group to read something longer than a page of text is not an option - they simply won't have time for that between shifts, family stuff and just plain physiology

>Using premade settings is bad
It's just a general rule. Unless you are playing with big fans of X, using X as a setting is a mistake. Moderate fans will give you strange looks about retarded details you expect from them to know, newfags will don't know anything aside broad idea, non-fans will consider you shit GM using premade stuff. It works better to even improvise the setting on the go, rather than picking something already made by others. And if you do, then keep it a big secret of yours, rather than trying to make anyone care you are using setting X.
Nobody does. Not even people who could get invested in the game world.

I still want to see OP's setting

Not out of some desire to be "ha ha u sux" if it doesn't meet unattainable standards of what a setting should be

But to see if the wiki is actually a good way of raising interest and communicating info. Because there's every chance it is dull as fuck despite the setting being interesting.

>>52783957
I'm betting a fiver he's running D&D game and expects from players to bother with the setting.

>>52775190
Thanks for reminding me, OP, I need to read the latest setting handout from my GM and level up my character before the upcoming session. You did a good thing!

>>52783921
>And in most cases "fun" means "I don't need to work/study, what a relief". Not sure what age are your players, but I know for sure expecting from people in my "main" group to read something longer than a page of text is not an option - they simply won't have time for that between shifts, family stuff and just plain physiology
These are the same kind of players I expect to not have read the book enough to know how to do basic actions, or to constantly be reminded how bonuses/maluses work, or even to have a basic character prepared because "loltoobusy".
A game, yes, has work, for everyone involved. The player's work is the initial buy-in to learn the system and what important setting ideals are in play.
For the piles of notGMs in this thread, it's a bad idea to repeatedly hold up the game, ie fun times, to explain to someone who can't be assed to do their part of the work of playing a game shit that is basic business, and the running insistence that the GM should do this is grating.

>>52784890
>I'm a student and I don't know how hard it is to organise games for group of people in their late 30s, with job and family
Enjoy till it last. But don't be a dick while doing so.

>>52784890
>Game should be more important than anything else
Spotted a NEET virgin

>>52784890
>A game, yes, has work, for everyone involved

My game has zero work for anybody. Not me the DM and hopefully not for my players either.

>>52775190

>Been playing 5e with mostly the same group for 2-3 years
>One player still doesn't understand what to add to her attack rolls/damage rolls, even after I wrote it in on her character sheet

I mean, it's one thing to have to look up spells, but when you're playing a swashbuckler rogue, there's really no excuse for not knowing what you're doing by now

>>52776879

Out of curiosity, what kind of stuff do you put in your reference guide? Basic info on nations/locations/gods/etc?

>>52785534
>>52784941
>>52785495
You expect your players to have read the rules for the game, right? You make them make their own characters, and understand the rules of character creation. You make them remember their own spells? Of course you do. If that's not work, then reading your GM's worldbuilding isn't either.

>>52787566
My players learned the general rules when we were still in high school. That was 20 years ago and is the very reason every time we want to play something "new", we use GURPS or FATE instead, since they just need to do quick rehersal for the rules we learned back in the uni, rather than learning completely new ruleset. I myself don't have time to do that and I'm GMing.
And I don't want to think what would happen if I didn't bring everyone to learn generics those years ago, since I hardly see the joy of running CP2020 and Call of Cthulhu for so many years and no other game.

Seriously, how old are you that you still don't have issues with basic time management for the entire group? Because the very moment we were working on out Masters, time shrink so bad it was great we could have a game once per week and nothing cancelled it in last minute. Now I'm glad if we manage to maintain a bi-weekly games on regular basis.

>>52787671
*our Masters

>>52775190
You know, I was recently in a similar situation, OP.

At the business I run, we had a sign in the front window advertising various services we offer. I noticed that customers were consistently walking past the sign and coming in to ask me if we did (thing that the sign clearly says we do).

A few weeks ago, I took down the old sign and put up some bright new signs with the same content, but in a more eye-catching form. Since then, I've had a steady stream of customers coming in telling me "I never knew you did (thing on the sign)".

My point is, your players are not going to parse through your boring-ass setting documents, so it's up to you to deliver the information you want them to receive in a format that is palatable to them.

>>52787566
The longer I'm reading this and your previous post, the more I'm reassured you never actually played TTRPG in your life.

>>52787730
No, because I've been too busy running them. The more I read your responses, the more I'm reaffirmed that you've never GMed - and never RESPECTED your GM - in YOUR life.

>>52787671
>We're busy adults with busy adult lives which means we immediately stop thinking about the game the moment it ends and definitely don't have any time during the week to think about it at all

You're allegedly a GM, which ostensibly means you're obviously finding the time to plan and prep your games during your downtime. The fact that you don't expect your players to have similar time to read a few pages of writing or learn a ruleset tells me neither you nor your players actually care so much about the game and you've managed to trick yourself into getting taken advantage of by lazy players for literal decades.

Kinda sad desu senpai

>>52783916
>No roleplaying is better than bad roleplaying

i do not agree but i respect your opinion

>>52779405
And then your players drop the game. Leaving you eternally blue balled.

>>52787566
>You expect your players to have read the rules for the game, right?

No

>>52787862
>You're allegedly a GM, which ostensibly means you're obviously finding the time to plan and prep your games during your downtime.

1) Ah yes, "prep." We have dismissed that claim

2) But even back when I prepped a lot, I did it because I enjoyed it. Of course it's easy for you to find time in the day for something you enjoy. Your players clearly don't enjoy reading about your world. Of course it's hard for them to find time in the day for something they don't enjoy.

If anything about your game sounds more like "chore" than "fun," it's a bad part of your game and you should cut it out.

>>52787993
It is never players that are in short supply, anon.

>>52787862
Original anon you were replying to here. I've got following ideas for you to ponder
1) Stop being condescending dick that people don't treat GAME played for ENTERTAINMENT as "serious business"
2) Stop being butthurt about other people having fun other way than you do.
3) Which part of "main group" you didn't get the first time around to blindly assume that's the only group I'm playing with?
4) I never spend more than 30 minutes on preparing a game. I'm a "GM for life" since 2002. If your prep takes more than that - you are doing it wrong, because you are literally wasting time.
5) My players do what they please. The main group please to meet each other bi-weekly to play together for 5-7 hours. Usually using for it the only free-free day in the week, Saturday.
6) I never prepared for my players anything going beyond something that can be quickly said during the game without breaking a flow. I'm doing rehersals with my wife when we prepare the room for the game or get ready with picnic (because if you are sitting inside a building to play games when it's good weather, you are doing it wrong) and if the monologue gets unnaturally long, it needs to be cut, as simple as that. Which cuts down the amount of data you can cram into it

And riddle me this:
Why exactly should anyone read anything for the game as a default stance? Assuming the game is based entirely on GM fiat, that means all the important data will be provided during this or any previous/future game. The breadcrump trail storytelling, you know? If it's not GM fiat, you've tricked yourself into playing other people's setting and probably even paying them money for that.
And if we assume that one or more of the players should know this or that piece of setting's trivia, you can just tell them what they need to know, instead dumping on them 10-pages long text to read.

>>52784941
Maybe you should quit pretending you're roleplaying if you're not roleplaying. Maybe you should get an adult hobby if you're concerned about "shit adults have time for."

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>>52791639
>Here, grab some random insults, maybe some of them will hit you, so I might feel superior even a bit due to being a NEET
Not him, but I think you should open a cinema wWith projecting skills like those

>>52781310

>Gather players for a game, give them two options with a little written spiel for each game's option. Email it out to everyone.
>No replies. "I don't use email", "I've been
busy", "I prefer to just tell you what I want"
>Feel like shit. If the players won't even reply to email one, how can I ever expect them to enjoy a cerebral and demanding game?
>Fuck it
>Invite everyone to the session, drop a pregen character in front of them, tell them setting is "England, 1639. You're all adventuring because you like money and trade's fucked nowadays"
>Never teach them the rules. Just tell them when to roll dice
>Players get to come and have fun with zero homework
>I get to watch them squirm, see the wacky ways they work around problems, create drama and pacing while bringing NPCs to life
>They're talking about their plans for "next time we play"
>Everything turned out better than expected just by turning down the autism dial

>>52775190

I do with people that respect me and so of course people that read shit (not unreasonably long).

It seems that as usual OP is being a faggot, and has to blame only himself for the shit around him.

>>52776258
Not everyone anon. Just the players who sit at my table.

>>52787566

It's supposed to be fun.

Fucking autistic spergs.

>NO. EVERYTHING MUST BE LABORIOUS. ITS NOT FUN UNLESS YOU DO HOURS OF OTHER BULLSHIT.

How about everyone just chill and fuckin role play for a bit. Fudge the rules, joke around, and enjoy it. What's the point if you're not?

>>52775190
You got a copy or link for your setting?

>>52787566
>You expect your players to have read the rules for the game, right?
I used to, but no longer.

>You make them make their own characters, and understand the rules of character creation.
No, they show up to the first session with a blank character sheet and then ask to look at the rulebook.

>You make them remember their own spells? Of course you do.
No I don't, it's just not my problem if they aren't going to keep track of spells.

>>52793737

You're there to play an RPG. Most certainly, your game doesn't involve writing shit, aside perhaps form taking notes now and then.

>>52793893
>Stop having fun wrong
No.

An easy way to convey what is unique about the setting to the players is by putting it in the character creation options. I'll use D&D as an example but it can be done with any system.

>List of classes - don't be afraid to remove or reskin classes to give your world a stronger identity
>List of races - again changing up the races helps define the world, and in 5e it's easy to reskin races or design new ones
>List of the gods a character can worship, with their domains and a 1-2 sentence description of each
>Weapons and armor list - is that weapon called a longsword, a katana, or a lightsaber? Do guns exist? Plate or ankylosaur armor?

>>52793935

What? He's not having fun. Neither are his players.

My argument is exactly that they SHOULD have fun playing, not being supposed to write or read something.

>Gonna be DMing my first campaign in a couple weeks
>Building up the world, only have a very small pool of NPCs, and a handful of plothooks
>Think the city concept is dope, players will probably get in a fight with the city watch right out the gate
>No idea how to craft enemy encounters
>Dreading being the Worst DM Who Ever Lived™
We'll see how this goes I guess. At least my players are also excited, though there's only two so far.

>>52776879
>I expect players to not give a shit about setting at all
>says this in a negative light
>follows up with "i dont care about other peoples settings"

>>52787993
Why would I care if they drop a campaign that I ended?

>>52794436
Something I learned is that early on, what should be a decent challenge based on CR can nearly wreck a party hard to where you need to RP intervene to avoid player deaths on the onset, or can be comically easy.

I was pretty shit, but I helped mitigate things by having encounters where they fought things that were out of their league, but had neutral knights helping them. It doesn't help I had one guy playing a rogue who meta'd the shit out of his character.

>Have realistic expectations that nobody actually cares about my setting
>Still want to use it because it's there
>Know I'm the kind of person who is kind of unclear about things they describe
>Nobody will read what I write even if I just give them three fucking lines and pester them until they confirm they received it
>IMPORTANT information will always be missed no matter how much emphasis I put on certain words
>Even now I expect someone to unironically tell me I'm a faggot for crying over people glossing over minor details.
>Extremely minor shit gets people upset and then it's my fault apparently

>>52775190
DMing isn't worldbuilding DMing is talking to your players and presenting them with things relevant to their characters.

Don't ask your players to do homework for your game. If you want them to know about Lord Fancypants the Third maybe bring him up in game events, like somebody mentions the name and then players see him get out of his gay-ass carriage and then maybe they talk to him face-to-face and everyone learns about his shit-tastic backstory through interaction.

If you remember that your players are like a movie audience then GMing is fucking wonderful. Give it a try.

>>52794436
If you're concerned about how your players experience your game, you are immediately not at risk of being the worst DM ever.

The worst DM ever thinks the game is His Story that he literally plans to make a novel and the players are lucky enough to witness it firsthand. And maybe he'll "borrow" their ideas when he "writes" his "book" about it.

Just try to do what you think people will find fun. If you fuck up, whatever, just try to roll with it and find ways to balance it back the other way. Encounter too hard and heroes gonna die? Maybe friends jump in. Or maybe the heroes become prisoners and the game proceeds from there. Just do cool shit. Every weird fuckup can potentially turn into something awesome.

>>52775190
Because you gave your players homework.

Actually, you gave them a full-on summer reading list.

>>52775449
I find this highly likely, as the only person I've played with in the past who did shit like OP and bothered setting up wikis and sending out setting guides to people also made the absolutely most boring settings I've ever seen. I think the worst part was how he didn't even bother trying to come up with names to anything and instead all these walls of texts we were given were filled with references to "the Empire", "the Culture", "the Religion" and so on, and then tried to justify it by having no aslternatives. The entire world would literally be a single empire, unified by a single culture, with one single religion with one single interpretation, and so on.

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>>52775537
I know that feel bro. I can only recommend you one thing:

Know who cares about you and what you do, and never exceed your engagement threshold with those that don't value you. It ust isn't worth it, and it's not fair for them either. You can't force someone to be engaged, there are people who give a shit and those who don't.

Simply tone it down and play more casually if you still find it fun that way or find people that are more akin to you and appreciate the things you do.

Remember: NEVER STRAIN YOURSELF ON PEOPLE WHO WILL NEVER APPRECIATE IT/YOU

>>52775368
Psssshhhh how often do you gm? Never?