A detailed, engrossing campaign setting has always been always important to me in Dungeons & Dragons. Immersion in a magical world seemed like the point of the game, or else the character classes would have names like 'Tank/Support Hybrid A' and 'Tank/Support Hybrid B' instead of 'Paladin,' and 'Druid.' The game offered a chance to sink into an all-encompassing fantasy world with its own culture and history, like stepping into the Holodeck on Star Trek, only with more dice-rolling and less chance to unleash a deadly AI. I wanted to throw myself into an epic struggle, and have my investment pay off in an emotional climax like a season finale of Critical Role. I wanted jaw-dropping revelations that hit harder because of the time I had devoted to understanding the world, like Jon Snow's discovery that Valyrian Steel can kill a White Walker.
A few years ago I had a chance to play in just such an immersive campaign. I couldn't wait. The kingdoms and legends of the Dungeon Master’s home-brewed world filled many notebooks. My fellow players had adopted accents, carefully drawn their characters' portraits, and written out complex back-stories linked to his creation. We were all in to plunge into this new world and find our fortune. Yet three minutes into the Dungeon Master's intricate treatise on the society, geography, and factions of his city-state, and his words began to fade like those of Charlie Brown's teacher. He had printed out maps and glyphs and holy symbols as visual aids and none of it mattered. I could see my fellow players' eyes wander to their phones and snacks and beer labels. They had checked out. The Dungeon Master's earnest attempt to draw us into his expansive world had done the opposite.
His words began to fade like those of Charlie Brown's teacher...
A half-hour went by before I found the immersion I sought. By that point our party was on a “missing person” case in a tavern, rolling Investigation and Persuasion checks, trying to find a Dwarf. In short, we were playing the game we came to play. All the background information presented before that moment was a waste of effort - a pre-game cut-scene we weren’t allowed to skip. Dungeon Masters – at no point during a game of Dungeons and Dragons should you find yourselves reciting facts about your setting. Your players already have plenty on their minds. The person they normally think of as Brian, for example, they are for the next three hours to think of as 'Lord Argon Havelock III.' The accent they settled on for their Gnome Ranger keeps coming out like Brad Pitt in Snatch, and they can't remember exactly what a Gloom Stalker does. A history lesson on top of all that is bound to be ignored. Having an NPC deliver the same lecture to the party “in character” isn't much better. Telling your players a story and telling them the same story in a Liam Neeson voice will achieve similar results.
Fortunately, with the wealth of resources on D&D Beyond, you can inject immersive mythology right into the game-play of a session of Dungeons & Dragons. Just introduce each element of lore in the form of an environment, object, or character your players' characters can directly interact with. Never tell your players about important events in your setting's history when an illusion spell or astral travel can give them a first-person glimpse. Need another way to bring the past to life? Tasha's Cauldron of Everything contains rules for Magic Item creation. Write up a Harry Potter-esque magical oil painting that depicts an event on a loop like a movie. Such paintings could be placed throughout your campaign world whenever past events needed to be witnessed. Several might hang in a single dungeon, revealing a larger story when viewed in sequence.
As Dungeon Master, you may give a magic item any property you like. A ring of protection might provide a vision of its last owner, or someone who died wielding it. Such a scene might flash into a player character's mind the first time they used it. Perhaps the item talks. The Dungeon Master's Guide has rules for sentient magic items that communicate through speech or telepathy. A sword can be an entertaining teacher as well as a way to inflict piercing damage. The gift of speech need not be reserved for Infinity Gauntlet-level artifacts either. There's no reason your first-level players' Rogue can't find a talking 'dagger plus one' that won't stop warning its wielder about the imminent threat of a returning ancient evil.
Keep your 'lessons' simple...
It helps when imbuing your world with a history that the past is closer to the present in a fantasy setting. If you want to teach your players about a significant battle, their characters can fight the re-animated skeletal remains of its combatants as easily as read a plaque about it. The Monster Manual and Volo's Guide to Monsters are full of undead stat blocks to provide in-game vessels for voices from the past. Ghosts and Specters give players an opportunity to encounter historical figures and fight either against them or at their side.
If retention of setting lore is your goal, keep your 'lessons' simple. Pick one aspect of your world you'd like your players to understand peradventure and use everything you've got to drive it home. For example, in my Greyhawk (Ghosts of Saltmarsh, Tales From the Yawning Portal) campaign, I wanted to introduce the concept of The Great Kingdom, which once ruled most of the world but was now a decadent ruin. My players were hired to clear out an abandoned wizard's tower from the Kingdom's golden age guarded by animated suits of armor from the era. A series of magical paintings around the tower portrayed a young woman graduating from the Kingdom's magical university centuries ago. In the tower the players could find her graduation present, a sentient, talking pearl of power that boasts of the Kingdom that created it. I introduced the common magic items from Xanathar's Guide to Everything to my campaign as examples of the lost magic of the Great Kingdom's height. At the end of the adventure, the player characters could free the young wizard herself, magically frozen for two hundred years like Captain America, full of fresh memories of her homeland and desperate to return it to glory.
Don't spend preparation time on anything else...
No matter how many pages have been written about your setting, which, in the case of the Forgotten Realms, is millions, your players can only experience it in the form of objects and persons their characters can interact with. Don't spend preparation time on anything else. For example, faction membership can help embed player characters into the conflicts of your setting. Rather than draw up lists of operatives, ranks of command, or maps of their headquarters, think about how your players will encounter this faction. Most likely it will be in the form of a single non-player character representative. Spend your prep time making that character memorable. Give them an interesting set of challenges and opportunities for your players or they may not interact with them again no matter your plans. This character should embody everything the faction is intended to represent. If you want your players to understand that the Thieves' Guild of Greyhawk controls the city government, make sure the character you create to represent them does some city-controlling! Better yet, have them give your players' characters the means to do some themselves. Authors are told the first line from a character's mouth should show a reader all they need to know about them. Faction representatives should tell all there is to know about their faction by their actions.
Finally, when thinking about immersion, never forget that one of the core joys of Dungeons & Dragons is the rush of a series of high-stakes dice rolls. Their consequences for the character that the player identifies with make those dice rolls feel like life or death- and when connected directly to the lore you want to be communicated, will make it feel just as important, too. Those tense throws of multi-sided die are the heart of the game. If your players are to care about an aspect of your setting, it must affect the stakes of those rolls somehow. If you want it to matter that the wizards of the Circle of Eight wish to control magic in Greyhawk, make them the only source of a type of magic your players rely on. Reflect it in saves, advantages, and disadvantages. Want your players to understand that Mordenkainen from Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes is dedicated not to fighting evil but to maintaining balance? Just telling them won’t have much of an impact, nor would having Mordenkainen tell it, no matter how good your Ian McKellan impression is. Nor would reading it off worn parchment hot from the laser printer, even if you spent a few hours covering it in dirt and running it over with your car to age it. If you want that bit of lore to help foster the fantasy world immersion that is Dungeons and Dragons at its best, have Mordenkainen give your player's Paladin a quest that embodies his goals. Perhaps they must steal a powerful item from a Good-aligned castle full of elves and unicorns, lest it makes the elves too powerful, thus upsetting the balance. The Paladin's faith, of course, forbids them to kill anyone- so make sure it leads to plenty of difficult dice rolls with monumental consequences for everyone at the table. That's the kind of thing they just might remember forever.
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Great read!
This sounds like bait...but in case it isn't...
In my experience so far, I've never had any of the issues you mentioned above. So I don't know what to tell you there. If I were to follow the advice you offered to DMs, I don't think I'd be DMing for very long as
A) I wouldn't have a player base that respected me and my time and vice-versa, and
B) I would hate being a DM in general if that was the kind of outlook that was expected in order to become one.
I'm not saying your method and outlook of DMing is invalid. If that works for you and your players, awesome! Communication and understanding, setting up expectations, and working off of each other to create an immersive and memorable experience is key. If your players are having a good time, and so are you, then you're doing it right!
Thank you for posting your experience and insight!
Try this example.
As a human, if your interest lies in baseball, you know a fair amount about baseball. You’ve done reading, research, and attended games. If baseball is not your interest you may know basic information about it, if that. If your crush is into badminton you will learn about badminton to interact with them.
The same goes for the job of DM. This is your interest in the game. Be prepared as best you can, but don’t expect to use all of the things that you worked on. Not this time. Perhaps next time, or the time after that. Make your PC’s interested in the interaction with your world. Give them a reason. Get your players to crush on your game. Share the things that will be important to them. If they have interest they will ask questions. If not let them walk away and try it another way later.
"Collaborative" means that both sides are working for immersion.
I think I may have found a solution. I'm going to write certain large factions and organizations into the player characters backstories. So when members of that faction or organization come looking for, say, the rouge who left the guild because the assignment went against his personal code, they will get a first person experience with how that organization deals with people who leave their employ. Spoiler alert, they aren't thrilled.
Can someone help explain the difference between:
"Having an NPC deliver the same lecture to the party “in character” isn't much better. "
and
"Just introduce each element of lore in the form of an environment, object, or CHARACTER..."
?
Good points in the article and comments, thanks.
he means don't do monologues that are long winded...
just answer the players questions with small compactversion of your lore through your NPCs andthe likes.
Knowing what your players are wanting out of the experience is the key.
Some players are there to get into the roleplaying - they want to do accents, and really bring their character to life. Others are there, simply for the social aspect - their friends are there, and they want to hang out and sling some dice. Others are there, simply because they want to do the most damage possible and be the "best" character.
Every time I've DM'ed I've always had a mixed player base like this. And the key is balance - look at your players - find out what they want and balance each session to give each of your players the experience they're hoping to get out of the game. Create a moment for the players, who want to do heavy RP to get their chance - make the encounters fun, for those who are there to socially hang out, and make the combat tough (but not impossible!) for those who really want to roll the dice for damage (or heals, depending).
I've created my own custom world - because I've always found that it's much easier to change and adopt things based on my players. What my players do can and often will impact the world, town, or people around them.
To be honest I think it's as much about players as about DMs.
If the players don't want to immerse themselves in the world then what are you to do? And I think given nerd culture including D&D is often the home of the low confident, the introvert and even the anti-social, sometimes these players simply can't verbalise or even immerse in the DM's world.
I've been in RPGs where a player has actually had a major backstory plot reveal it's secrets and they've literally backed off and not role played it. In one case the player's goal was to find out who killed his family and when it turned out it was another party member, he simply retired the character without even confronting the killer. The killer also did nothing. They just sat there awkwardly not knowing what to do.
As a result far too often for many players role playing seems to be "I do X points of damage".
Indeed interactions go like this:
DM - "The half orc shouts out an insult as he swings wildly his axe in a fit of rage. However his focus is off and he misses you by an inch."
Player 1: "I hit and do X points of damage".
DM to player 1: "Your sword pierces the orcs leather armour and cuts a a long slash across his chest. He howls in pain but he now looks angrier"
DM to player 2: "You see the enraged half orc attacking player 1. Player 1 is holding his own for the timebeing but the half orc is clearly completely enraged. What do you do?"
Player 2: " I move into contact and attack. I hit and do X points of damage."
I think this hits the nail on the head. I'd say most players are there for social aspect with a largish minority of power gamers (though I haven't encountered). True RPGers are rare.
Quite right, though without any of us sounding elitist, and for pure exploration of concepts and terminology used, would you care to provide some insight into what do you consider a true RPGers to be?
I was referring to gamers who embrace the RPG element, flesh their characters out and actively interacts with the DM's world and narrative. Basically those who immerse themselves into the adventure!
Apologies if I sound elitist.
Sad, but true.
Sorry, but this article entirely misses the point of what immersion is. Immersion is not the same as "full of lore and worldbuilding" and "oh look, every shop has a name and everyone in this tavern has a unique accent" or even how you present you lore. Immersion means paying deep attention and engaging with something. Taking part, basically. If you want an immersive world or session or game, you need you players to be engaged with it. And its easy:
An engaging world promotes choice. The players should be able to choose how to act, what course of action to follow, how to deal with the wandering monster. As often as you can, give the players a choice. Do they take the dangerous shortcut, or go around, adding day's to their journey? Do they help the poor old street beggar? Do they side with the King or the Rebellion? Do they sneak, fight or attempt to parlay with the bandits? And they have to be real choices. None of this "No, the bandits cant be reasoned with and have super Perception so you cant sneak past, roll initiative." One course of action may be more easily followed or lead to better outcomes, but you have to let players choose for themselves.
An engaging world has consequences. Choices have to have consequences. If the party do X, Y will happen. The world will respond and react and change as a result of the parties choices. If the party attempt to sneak past, those bandits are still going to be a problem for the party on the way out, but if they fight, they might signal for back up. Consequences can be indirect, too. Say the party chose to pick up the sack of gems hidden under a cobblestone. Great, add 500gp to your inventory. But what about the owner or recipient of those gems? Maybe next time the party comes to town, they find someone dead in the streets and overhear townspeople saying "I heard he stole a bag of gems from The Super Evil Faction of BBEGs!" The world responded to the choice the party made. Got a party of murderhobos who burn down the orphanage? Ok great, roll initiative against the entire towns garrison, or let some bounty hunters ambush them after they've just finished a marathon dungeon crawl and are low on spells. Players choose what to do in response to the world around them. Consequence is you the DM choosing what to do in response to the players' choices. Wash, rinse, repeat, back and forth.
An engaging world is consistent. The players can decide to do anything they want, any time. Teabag the sleeping dragon? Sure. But your world only makes the decision once, the first time that choice is made. After that, every time the same choice is made under the same circumstances, the party should expect the same consequences. That dragon is gonna spoil their day. Good, immersive worlds are consistent. They behave the same way under the same stimulus. Assault a guard? Jail. Assault another guard a different town under the same monarch? Jail. That NPC's voice has to be the same each time they speak to them. That town is always three days travel away at a fast pace. Kobolds always flee at 1/4 health. Whatever. Consistency helps players learn the boundaries of their choices, and keep the players immersed (!!) in what's happening because everything makes sense and nothing is breaking them out of that deep attention and engagement.
Consistency also helps players make choices. Say the fire wizard is fighting underwater and casts Firebolt. Now, you make a call and say, "Yeah, magic fire work underwater". Now, the wizard knows he can fight underwater, so every time after that, you have to let magic fire work underwater. If you say no, the wizard is certainly going to make new plans to assault the underwater fortress of the sea-devils. If one day fire works underwater and the next it doesnt, it's going to pull players out of their immersion to ask "Wait, I thought you said fire works underwater". Once the world makes a choice, it sticks to it.
Worldbuilding, lore, pantheons, factions, its all flavour. It's window-dressing that has nothing to do with immersion and getting player's invested. Its nice little details and bits of trivia that might interest some people, but its not the secret to immersion. Players (all people, really) get invested in something when they see that their actions (choices) have or will have an impact (consequence).
Also, worldbuilders, remember: Nothing exists until your players encounter it for the first time. That piece of lore isn't a part of the world's history until the player's read about it, then it always happened. The dragon's lair doesn't exist until the players get directions to it. Everything is flexible and malleable until the party observes it. Then it becomes fixed in place.
Good point, adding onto this, if you want to present something to your players, don't just say something early on, for example, perhaps you want a swashbuckling, action-packed world where the secrets of black powder and firearms have been discovered, don't just rattle of at session 0 "Flintlock firearms are a thing in this world", although this also necessary, but have gunslinging Elves, cannon-carrying Dwarves, and other firearm-toting NPCs, I can't stress this enough, show, don't tell.
im not going to lie as a new dm I've found being a player for a few years now the best way to grasp people is to make the people the story & fit it all around them, I don't ever ask for much from my players other than a short description of who they are & where their from, more is great and I then look to mould the world around them from the wizard to the paladin, I love world-building and lore but! I have found it hard to deliver said lore at times in a meaningful way but! this article has helps and the past few months the article from dnd have been a nice fresh look & have been good to read its nice to see a variation on the page keep it up, guys
Unfortunately, by my 30 year experience.
thats not even true by itself.
many a player are true RPGer but do not show it, until it is "THEIR TURN". thats the biggest problem with RPGs and tabletop in generals. hence why people like to play video game RPG better. yes they are linear mostly, but at least you get to experience the story first hand and at all times. while in TTRPGs you have to wait for each other players to get their spotlight. while listening to that is reward enough for many, it is still not them playing, its them just listening. Most of the times, they want character development and if its not their character playing, they don't care. because its not their story.
the major problem in all of that is that mostly as a DM you end up having more then one story at all time going on and thats 1 per player. other times you are playing a module and you end up having none of the player character stories. in the end both ends up with you losing player interest in the world around them. the best solution one can have, is to have only about 2 or 3 storyline maximum. even if you have 8 players... just try to bring the storyline of your players into one of your 2 or 3 main ones. this way, you get the attention of all players because their backgrounds are now inter twinned together.
exemple:
one of the player exploded in his village when he was 5 year old. his power showed incredible force. so she now is a wizard evoker thanks to it. her father end up being an efreet in search of his own child (the player) who was hidding with her mother. now another playerinthe group ended up writting me that his village was attacked by elementals. he left because he wanted to be strong enough to defeat them. cue both story together, the elementals was the efreet seeking the first player. he wrecked village after village. so now both have the same enemy. thats two characters brought together into one same goal. different beginnings, but same goal. problem solved, now they both have interest when its not their turn, even if just to know whats up about that one.
it all boils down to interest...
if you spark their interest, it will work...
they easily lose interest if it doesn't concern them. so make them concerned, bring them into your story, all of them !
Beg to disagree.
I've both played in campaigns and DMd where some players have no interest even if you bring them into the story or as I mentioned before even if you're playing the story that's meant to be a key part of their background (eg the story of the player whose background was that he wanted to find the killer of his family, does so and then DOES NOTHING except looked awkward and he pretty much retired the character there and then).
These types of player are common enough - they're there to roll dice and hang with mates. You can't force them to play or immerse (and I've tried and so have other DMs in campaigns I've been a player in). They are there to roll a dice and say "I hit and do X points of damage" and then have a chat and a laugh or in some cases sit quietly until it's their turn.
And to be honest their combat encounter "hit and do X points of damage" ends up being their sole interaction. In non-combat RPG encounters they deliberately slink into the background and leave the playing to the more role playing types. Pushing/pulling them into role playing makes them uncomfortable.
It ends up in an interesting dynamic where their characters become glorified extras whilst the players who do immerse themselves in the game end up becoming lead roles who dominate the game simply because they're doing things.
I respect a sort of “Beer and Peanuts”, hang out with your buddies, eat pizza and kill goblins playstyle, but a great deal of people like to play differently, some like to wargame and strategize, some prefer to roleplay and interact, there are a lot of playstyles out there and they’re all very valid ways to play, just thinking out Loud :).
The beer and peanuts does set it's own challenges for DMs though:
1. Limitations on narratives especially if most players are of the beer and pretzel variety. - the beer and peanuts player's ideal is a dungeon crawl without much or any role play. Think the video game Doom. Very limiting in terms of narrative, character building and story telling (and I've played in campaigns run by beer & peanut DMs - very boring).
Literally there's no point playing anything involving much interaction with NPCs etc because the players are simply not involved or interested.
2. In a mixed group, it becomes more difficult to create scenarios that appeal to all players. The beer and peanuts player will zone out of non-combat encounters. This can also create interruptive behaviour whereby the disengaged players start chatting between themselves and require DM to hush them.
I once spent eight months putting together a campaign world. I had every detail painstakingly documented. I had a 238-page book on religion. I had created a region for a home base for the party with a storyline, plot hooks, villain, and archenemies. . . a place where they could have played for years, starting with defeating the trio of goblins that had been harassing the villagers and ending with an epic battle against a mighty red dragon.
I was careful not to reveal all that detail overtly or without reason. When the fighter needed to know something on background, I was perfectly happy saying “…When you were just a youngster in the city watch, your Sargant got drunk one night and told you the tale of . . .”.
The only time I got “intrusive” with pushing my story on the characters was an hour long one-on-one with the priest to immerse him in the religion. In the end, all he had to say was “I still can cast Spiritual Hammer, right?”.
We played two games in and around the village of Burke and then the party decided they wanted to be pirates and took off for the coast. Once they’d stolen a ship there was no going back. And the village of Burke was left to the evil machinations of Sladious the Satanic Apothecary (the archvillain of my story). Oh, well.
However, I was able to improvise. I repurposed, reskinned, reworked, whatever elements from my master creation I could.
In the end, I was sad that my story had not been told, however, the depth of detail that I had in my head, ready to be unleashed at a moments notice, was incredibly useful. With all that background, I was able to turn “my” story into “their” story.
Don’t give up on world building, just know that the players aren’t interested in history lessons . . . let them discover your creation organically. It’s going to happen one way or the other.