This thread is about writing "useless"/unimportant details for your campaign. 

I have always enjoyed a DM style where I focus more on building an environment and less on building adventures. Then the adventures take place in the environment and are often quite loosely written.  DnD is not the ideal system for this kind of an approach, but it works. 

I have always enjoyed a narrative/RP heavy focus to my games and my biggest strength as a DM is probably writing characters and social life, with my weakness being carefully constructed plot devices and dungeon design. 

I'm quite good at improvising and quite weak at planning, so this is a very natural approach to me. I like it when things make sense to me, that they are a part of something bigger. This makes spontaneous decision-making easier as the motives and ideas of NPCs are connected to a bigger picture. 

Ok let's get to the point: 

Do you like writing "useless" details for your games? What details of the past are particularly proud of?

A few examples. These have nothing to do with the quest itself. The quest could be practically anywhere. 

The Independent Barony of Grundenberg (a small independent country in the far north)

"Taxes in the barony are paid in resources and gold. People don’t pay taxes on food production such as fishing or hunting, but it is heavily frowned upon to hoard food. Instead they share their food with the community and provide food for the daily feasts. If food is scarce, the entire community suffers together and people found hoarding food or overeating during these times have even been known to be hanged. Children and elderly people are always fed well and first, followed by food providers and then the rest of the population. 

The Baron has a constitutional right to be well fed at all times, but so far all three Barons have shared their food with the people. This was probably a calculated decision by Baron Grundenberg I to build loyalty. He wrote the constitution himself, but never enforced this constitutional right. 

The life cycle of the people is very different compared to the south. In the morning they eat the leftovers of last night’s feast and drink a mixture of seal oil and local herbs or spread a thick layer of salted seal blubber on a slice of bread. This fatty breakfast will usually fuel them for many hours and they don’t tend to eat lunch. During the day they might eat a bit of dried meat or blubber with a cup of coffee or herbal tea. Then at around 6pm everyday, they feast together at one of the Longhouses."

The Alderman of Greenfell

The title of Alderman is not officially hereditary, but practically yes. The Heeltoes have been running Greenfell for three dwarf generations. Officially there should be a mayor in Greenfell, but according to ancient documents, the Mayor is appointed together by the Master of the Wizard Tower and the local priest. Unfortunately Master Arwankaiser has not been seen in centuries and nobody ever dared to go to the tower and ask. Therefore, a new mayor was never selected and nobody thought of changing the laws either. Or maybe they did, but couldn’t be bothered. Instead they always re-elected a Heeltoe to continue as the Alderman. 

[Alderman Brunak Heeltoe] Everyone in Brunak’s  long line of family has always had ridiculously tiny feet, despite being otherwise quite credible and well built. Someone once stated that “their feet are so tiny that it’s basically just a bunch of toes attached to the heel.” Someone else yelled “Heeltoes!” and the name stuck for generations. 

Half-orc/ half-tiefling warrior Ruknar Nasty-Eye.

The only warrior in the village. Ruknar looks intimidating, but he is really a nice fellow. He ended up in Greenfell by accident. He actually entered the valley from the cliffs, which is a remarkable feat of both strength and stupidity. 

After a while, he realized that there wasn’t a single guard in the village and took it up with the Alderman, who met him with a laugh, saying that the valley doesn’t need a guard. Then one day Alderman Brunak came to him after a bad trip of monstrous Madweed hallucinations and hired him on the spot with a ten year contract. Brunak’s wife Derna was furious, but what can you do? A contract is a contract.

---

So these are all designed to paint a picture. These are of course two different location, the Barony is a work in progress while Greenfell is a finished campaign. 

For example, despite being sort of irregular facts and details, the Alderman and Ruknar chapters paint a picture of how things are handled in Greenfell and what the place is all about. All of the characters and places come together to paint the full picture of a mysterious and strange, but surprisingly functional little community. The comical nature of the place ended up scaring the most recent players a lot. They were certain that they'd soon be sacrificed in some weird ritual. But soon they realized that the place and the people were genuinely nice. 

I love all the "useless" lore I come up with for my setting - mostly because it's not useless.

It's bits of random trivia that help me to better understand the shape of my setting and the stories that tell best in the space that shape (mental, figurative shape).

I tend to let myself indulge in the joy of creating - aided by ChatGPT these days - and then sifting the countless pages down into something that I can immediately use in the game with my friends. It excites me.

No lore writing is useless, provided it does at least one of these things for you: You enjoy writing it (come to think of it, that's all that matters).

Even if the information is never used directly during a campaign or session, it still helps the DM feel more connected to the world the table is playing in. It may also com in handy one day,. Maybe another, more immediately useful, piece of lore will stem from the 'useless' stuff. Put enough lore together and, as long as it's all cohesive, you'll have established a great base for a storybook or novel.

Added quotation marks around "useless" in the name of the thread for clarification. 😄

I personally agree, although quite often time is finite in the life of a DM. That's when it quickly turns into a matter of priority. 

And writing these sort of details can be time consuming. They are technically useless or at least unnecessary in building an adventure. 

So I can see many DMs skipping this and prioritizing more critical parts of the campaign. 

But for me it's exactly like the two of you said: Helps me to understand the world and connect to it.

And to me, as DM, that is more important than carefully designed dungeons and statblocks or perfectly constructed plot hooks. 

I'm a story-heavy DM; that's my playing style as well. I get where you're coming from.

Yes time will always be a primary factor in deciding how to proceed. I agree that writing stuff in great detail is time consuming. Technically or mechanically useless, perhaps.

In my experience, plot hooks grow organically from thoughtful lore building and the PCs actions and dialogue. Dungeons and statblocks; I agree that those can be a pain. Speaking to the readership at large, those don't have to be built from scratch. Lots of good stuff out there to pull from if need be, and to adjust and re-flavor as necessary.

I know some players who have little to no interest in the story, and all that time spent creating the world that their playing in is lost to them. They interact with that world only as needed to obtain the next magic item on their list, or count up their points during other's role play; to announce to the table, "Just another 830 points, and I can get (that spell), and just walk through an encounter like this.". Their ideal DM  would focus heavily on stat blocks and the like and maybe leave the lore in the briefcase/backpack.

To the readership at large, I say that if building detailed lore makes you feel good, do it. Understand, however, that some players will not care about any of it, beyond what they need to reach their next personal goal, and be prepared to accept that.

Yes, i like writing the "useless" stuff for my campaigns. As it's not just "writing a campaign" but worldbuilding, and for me it's quite relaxing to let my mind wander and create details, that might or might not ever be relevant. Recently i inserted a location for a safe place to rest in a moor, called "Harmund's Hill" the name is pretty random, the place is just a 20 feet high rock, big enough to camp for a group without getting wet feet. The question came up later while reading again what i wrote down, who tf is Harmund?

Let's see, Harmund was a Wizard about 150 Years ago that was convinced that someone had put the rock where it is now, and tried to discover who and why. After living in a tent on top for 10 years, researching, he died of old age. That's why the people call it "Harmund's Hill" no relevance of any kind, just a piece of lore, IF someone asks "But why?" in one of the villages at the border of the moor.

Quote from Varek_Cellarbrew >>

Yes, i like writing the "useless" stuff for my campaigns. As it's not just "writing a campaign" but worldbuilding, and for me it's quite relaxing to let my mind wander and create details, that might or might not ever be relevant. Recently i inserted a location for a safe place to rest in a moor, called "Harmund's Hill" the name is pretty random, the place is just a 20 feet high rock, big enough to camp for a group without getting wet feet. The question came up later while reading again what i wrote down, who tf is Harmund?

Let's see, Harmund was a Wizard about 150 Years ago that was convinced that someone had put the rock where it is now, and tried to discover who and why. After living in a tent on top for 10 years, researching, he died of old age. That's why the people call it "Harmund's Hill" no relevance of any kind, just a piece of lore, IF someone asks "But why?" in one of the villages at the border of the moor.

I loved that piece of lore. My favorite answer to the "why" question: Some idiot or some drunken idiot. 😂 That's actually pretty historically accurate too. A lot of lore and naming is ridiculously simple, like the Horse Valley is probably a place where someone saw horses once. 

"Why is that place called the Great Grudden Hill and that other hill of similar size is just Grudden Hill? Because Rick Grudden was the first to build a house on that hill and it was named Grudden Hill after him. Then his brother built a house on that one and named it the Great Grudden Hill simply out of spite."

My world concept is young enough that I’m still focusing on the big things, but I do have a tidbit about the introductory region where a singer the party might encounter in the taverns is a maid of the lord’s castle. It could be made not useless if they ask her help to get in he castle, but mostly it’s a reference to something else.

I've actually made both of these example places for a very a very blank world. Greenfell was the only place in the entire world. I've lately taken this approach of building from the inside out and not even thinking about big things in the world. I make everything as I go. 

I used to do it the opposite way and ended up writing a ton of lore for gods and creation etc. Then I had a huge desire to dump it all out. 😅

Now if I need a god, I create a god. If a need a religion, I make a religion. The world seems coherent enough. We actually have a rotation of 3 DMs and we all run the same grand campaign. We each create what we need and the world gets built in the process. We're all enjoying it a lot and we all get to be players and DMs and the workload is quite light when you only have to make every third adventure. 😁 I'm going off track, so I'll shut up now. 

To me writing lore for my campaign is all about potential, potential of backstory, adventure, richer background, element of past history and at design stage, it always has a prupose and thus never is useless at base but wether or not it end up getting use during play is another question. But to me such world building has its place, wether its fleshing out places, people, items, legends, rumors  its all potential to serve the story somehow.

Writing this sort of stuff gives me the information I need to react to unexpected directions the party may turn.  Without it, if they turned off the path I had prepared for, I would just begin throwing crazy stuff at them that didn't fit together.  And if they asked, how could a such-and-such monster live here, Id have to reply, "Magic."  That's very unsatisfying for them and me.

Knowing that there is an important trading community two days travel away allows me to describe indications that that community influences this community.  Then if the party travels in that direction I can dial that up even more.  It give the party the reward that if they pay attention, they will see clues about what's ahead.  And this is very satisfying.

MY Group's PCs will leave the moor trail at "Peatham" (Population: 52) a generic hamlet, where they'll probably just take a long rest in the hostel, walking past a shrine of a local deity of nature, before continuing their voyage towards the capital.

I turned the hamlet into an other short exercise for writing "useless stuff". The name "Peatham" obviously states that most people use cut and dried peat from the moor to light their fireplaces, so the whole place is pretty smelly, but what else might be found in a place like this?

• Peat can be turned in to peat charcoal, which is a better fuel source. So there will be multiple smoking charcoal kilns running at all times.
• In some regions, the malting barley for whiskey was smoked above dried peat fires. So there might be at least a small whisky distillery.
• And the barley is grown on a farm, or three (yeah, farms are pretty standard, not really worth mentioning them except for the barley).
• Most of my Hamlets have a cobbler that can manufacture and repair items made of leather.
• As the moor has some interesting creatures to hunt for hides and furs there will be a group of hunters, who provide/sell the meat. They could also tan hides and cure pelts, but lets make them also partially responsible for the safety of the hamlet,
• so we need an extra tanner, who will use the bark of the willow and birch trees that grow in this region for tanning.
• A General Store/Trade Post doesn't sound like a bad idea, trading/selling goods that aren't or can't be manufactured in the hamlet. (Cloth, Salt, Oil, Pots & Pans, Rope, Seeds, Flour etc.) It also buys/trades for local products that can be sold with profit at the next larger town (like pelts).
• In an other game i came across bog iron ore (CDDA) and google says, that's a real thing. So, the hamlet also gets a small smeltery with primitive kilns
• and a small forge

That's where it became a little more interesting, as i had an idea, bog iron ore seems to be not very common, so what if... refined, it has the same properties as cold iron (only d&d 3.5 kids will know...) and every villager has tools, knifes, forks, shears, axes etc. and even nails made of cold iron made by the hamlets smiths, who sometimes just sell the excess as ingots to the trade post, but no one is really aware of it - except the fey creatures, that dwell in the moor, but stay tf away from the hamlet because of it, causing no trouble. The idea of a "Garden Hoe of Fey Slaying" is somewhat hilarious.

Last but not least, as an oddity, i added a gnomish alchemist that experiments with swamp gas.

Also they know about the rumours regarding the ghost of Harmund. (see previous post)

I have some more notes on some of the people living there but those are still to rudimentary to present them here and now.

If none of the player's PC's look around, nothing of this is relevant to their current mission, but i had fun putting it together.

I'm going to be the oddball and say no.

I'm not the greatest writer, mostly because I easily get wrapped up in editing. So much so I never go back to writing further into my story.

I prefer to write a framework of what I expect a series of events to be, and then drape the setting and everything else over it. 

I don't mind creating worlds either, but it's usually just the concept and window dressing to make the concept come alive and little more. 

I love expanding on things. As such, I will write lots of stuff lightly and then expand on them as the party proceeds across the world. This keeps me from burning out from writing, and makes the map look fleshed out for my party.

It also leads to brilliant moments, like when I had fleshed out an inn I found on my map which I had forgotten adding, which was built into an ancient stone totem pole from a giant age.

It broke me and the table when I said aloud "It's called the Pylon Inn". Thanks past me, you got me good.

"Useless" is such a nebulous term. If you mean lore that the players are never going to encounter (Example: Strahd's Diary in the first Ravenloft adventure), then I don't tend to introduce a lot of that. I do introduce a lot of lore that players may not encounter, but there's a chance that they will (Example: The elven blacksmith specializes in making mithral armor). I also like to introduce lore that players are very likely to encounter that gives the region a particular flavor, but isn't necessarily going to impact the primary adventure (Example: This city on the Astral Plane is a genius loci that has enslaved a mercane. Because of their psychic bond, the genius loci has developed an interest in extraplanar trade and has shaped itself into a planar metropolis to explore that interest. Virtually anything you would want to purchase can be found in the city and creatures from across the multiverse come here to trade. While the city has a thriving black market, the problem of theft is virtually nonexistent, since the genius loci monitors all activities and personally punishes anyone who interferes with commerce.)

I have 300 pages of lore like that, before one even gets to the races and the realms and the classes, lol, all of which have their own additions that often tie back to other stuff.

I am actually upset with myself because I haven't put in enough folkways, and I don't really have the time to explore adding more with all the other work I still have to finish before the end of the year.

I am upset because I really need to do a better job of showing the different wealthy classes styles and fashions, and I need more stuff for alphabets. I want to provide more rules and additional events for the Grand Games.

I need to work more on maritime trade stuff, since it is the principal form of trade. for the main seven realms surrounding the huge inland sea (the sea itself is the size of the US, lol).

I want to add in more history stuff -- my "brief history" is still 25 pages long.

All of this lore is what grounds the Body, Heritage, Character, Background, Homeland, and Profession of each PC in the world they live in, and justifies the special abilities or peculiar talents of each.

Do my players all read and memorize all of it? Hell no. Half the time they don't even read the stuff they asked for, lol. But you know what happens 18 months in to a 36 month campaign?  They are immersed as hell in it all. Sometimes way more than I am, and they will call me on stuff because it matters to them *at that time*.

That kind of thing has saved a life or three many times, and in past settings those little tidbits of stuff have led to unplanned adventures or wild goose chases or snipe hunts that were just as much fun as the main line quests.

It may be "useless", but it is important.

I like having secrets in my world. The players need never know about them, but if they catch an interest and start digging, they may find them. Like the temple of Sargassus, the Ocean God (he's actually much more elaborately titled, God of the Waves and the Deep, Lord of the Court Pelagic and Keeper of Sunken Secrets. It's a spire in the ocean, and land lubbers can only get there at low tide. What isn't widely known is that the temple is much larger beneath the waves than above, and the majority of the congregation are sahuagin. 

Another religion, The Nine, is a secret religion. Or, it's the state religion of the ruling empire, but the names of the nine gods are secret, it has a few large - but largely empty - cathedrals, and no real worshippers. It does, however, have a couple of mandatory holidays on which all citizens are required to pray and make sacrifice. There's a bunch of secrets there, why and how that works, who the nine are. And so on.

Then there's the imperial family, hundreds strong, a diverse bunch, forever locked in intrigue and struggle - not necessarily for the throne, but for position and power none the less. 

And there's the underdark, which is just as full of secrets as the sea. 

I have a bunch of races no one but me has ever heard about. Like the Harn, large, shaggy knuckle-walkers. The harn show fairly limited interest in intelligence - they're not stupid, but they can't be bothered to make most things, seeing how they're basically immune to climate. Instead, they have deep spiritual beliefs, a certain percentage of their number are naturally psionic - and of course, they're so strong they can squeeze water from rocks. Not literally, there's no water in rocks. They travel along their herds of huge, tusked grophen, and make most of what they need from the hides, bones and tusks of their companion creatures. 

Something else that's propably useless is the guilds. Like the Blessed Union of Stevedores, Quaysiders and Porters - a dockworkers guild, but also the place you go to hire muscle willing to operate outside the strict confines of the law. They sit firmly on (seaborne) smuggling, and run every dockside tavern, brothel and khef house.

Khef, of course, is a drug. It's psionically active, and unless you kill the plant, smoking the seeds will bring you under mind control of the plant. Sort of. The plant isn't intelligent, but it will influence creatures to protect it. It's considered extraordinarily bad form to feed addicts khef from a live plant, thus basically making them your slaves - so long as you control the plant. Very bad form, highly frowned upon.

And so on. Many secrets. I get ideas I feel are cool - but whether they'll ever come up in actual play is anyone's guess =D

A few more odd thoughts on this...

Seven of my regular players are folks who have been playing D&D with me as DM since 1981 at least (earlier in two cases). While all of us have had to take breaks from the game at different times fand for different lengths, we all come back to it. There is a lot of history there, a lot of in jokes and asides and stories.

Most of the kids they have, and a few of the grand kids, these days, lol, are also playing, and they have heard a lot of this stuff, and over the last years have added their own and established more stuff (like the time mom and son saved everyone while arguing because their characters were polar opposites). We have been through a lot, and some of that real life stuff has entered the game, and one thing all of us do is invite input into what we do from the others.

then you add in the fact we are all movie people in the sense that we all love movies. Several us are big on pop culture, and others are sports nuts and it is a really interesting mix of people. So about 90% of my lore is an in joke or a reference or a joke or a hint or ode to some mythology or past game. I am famous among us for taking movies we all love and turning them into strange adventures (and as an example, I mean things like "Weekend at Bernie's" and "The African Queen" becoming entire adventures). -- all as part of a larger adventure.

I mentioned that they may not ever read all the lore I write in my prior comment. THe reason is because I do things for some settings like create a 300 page book of nothing but lore. House rules are always separate. For other settings the lore book is only like 25 pages for them. For me it was 220.

And none of that is counting the lore we create as we play, which always goes into the whole thing. A side reference made in an encounter with a PC that comes off the top of my head or some backstory thing they imagine in the spur of the moment. They go in there. 

If I had written the kind of lore I have been the last few setting back when I was just starting, we might never have stopped playing in those worlds -- because all of that stuff adds to the depth of the world, the feel of the game, the richness of the experience, the joy of the moment. I think all of us still remember the moment in my last campaign where they stumbled into a "hall of Heroes" in a dungeon that sat sat at a nexus of worlds, and one of the kids found a statue of a character. I had held onto stuff from long before, and so had pictures of each statue.

The room was a "break room", a safe zone, and had nothing remarkable nor did it add to the combat or promote the adventure as a whole.

The statue was of the second (and favorite) character by that player, who had long ago been tucked away. As I showed the picture, the blush, the hands over the mouth, the tiny squeak of happy surprise...

... that's what the lore is for. That moment, right there. That emotional connection or sense of foreboding or bit of time that gives it all that much more depth.

Ok, yeah, their character climbed up and stole the gemstone eyes, but, I mean, come on, they needed the cash, lol.

Quote from SerLoxy >>

The Independent Barony of Grundenberg (a small independent country in the far north)

"Taxes in the barony are paid in resources and gold. People don’t pay taxes on food production such as fishing or hunting, but it is heavily frowned upon to hoard food. Instead they share their food with the community and provide food for the daily feasts. If food is scarce, the entire community suffers together and people found hoarding food or overeating during these times have even been known to be hanged. Children and elderly people are always fed well and first, followed by food providers and then the rest of the population. 

The Baron has a constitutional right to be well fed at all times, but so far all three Barons have shared their food with the people. This was probably a calculated decision by Baron Grundenberg I to build loyalty. He wrote the constitution himself, but never enforced this constitutional right. 

The life cycle of the people is very different compared to the south. In the morning they eat the leftovers of last night’s feast and drink a mixture of seal oil and local herbs or spread a thick layer of salted seal blubber on a slice of bread. This fatty breakfast will usually fuel them for many hours and they don’t tend to eat lunch. During the day they might eat a bit of dried meat or blubber with a cup of coffee or herbal tea. Then at around 6pm everyday, they feast together at one of the Longhouses." 

 If you don't mind, I'm absolutely stealing this for my world. A fairly large "nation" on the main continent of my world consists of independent city-states that form a very loose confederation, and I haven't yet worked at all on any of them. This, with slight modifications, will be the first. Thank you!