What's the appeal of backstory like in your setting world game?

>In good faith
Man, I wish that could be taken seriously.
But, as an act of charity, let's pretend you're making this thread in good faith anyway.

You haven't reach the point where everything blends together.

I've played thousands of hours. I've seen just about every configuration of your "basic" shit, along with the endless slew of rehashes, remixes, and regurgitation. At some point, you want your GM to at least be trying to push things in an unexpected direction, to try and make things memorable.

>And realistically, most players really aren't going to care what the national flower or tax policy of shitfucksville is or how they view the neighboring kingdom of Jeff, or the lineage of the last fifty kings.

That's right. That's why you need settings were a remote village uses lobotomized goblins for slave labor, or a king who's governmental policy includes exercising Prima Noctis, which is particularly important because a bitter father has deliberately infected his daughter with lycanthropy but his plan didn't turn out how he expected it would. Just because most setting details you encounter online are boring and dull and have no impact on anything the players care about doesn't mean every DM is performing a Stafford and listing out long-dead lineages of kings that did fuck all.

What your complaining about isn't settings and lore, but crummy settings and lore. And, like Sturgeon said, 90% of everything is crud. You just need to try and appreciate the 10% that makes the adventure actually worthwhile.

>>98032918
It's for terminally online faggots who can't find anyone to play with (or, more likely, are too afraid of social interaction to try) so instead they engage in endless, pointless daydreaming about the setting they would use if they weren't such useless faggots. The reason there are so many threads on it is because they know shouting into the void on /tg/ is the only way their wasted efforts will ever see the light of day.

>>98033012
>You haven't reach the point where everything blends together.
Sorry, maybe I've just played with shitty people but what does that even look like? Because yeah, a lot of times GMs I've played with have tried stirring together ingredients but it's come out like a cement mixer full of legos rather than a freshly blended smoothie, if you see what I mean - endless ripoffs from anime du jour thrown together with the latest video game they found interesting, and it all flows like a river of bricks.

>>98033015
I guess I just don't understand the appeal of daydreaming up all these pointless niche details of shit like "People in this village have toenails that grow twice as fast as average" or naming every dog in a five mile radius, or shit that's not at all conducive to ADVENTURE, but rather pointless busywork, usually in the name of "realism"

>>98032918

I don't think you want to know the appeal of settings and lore in general terms. I believe you just want us to ask you about your setting.

>>98033132
>I believe you just want us to ask you about your setting.
Genuinely I don't, the times I've GM'ed I've used pre-made settings or whole modules (LMOP, the Giant adventure in forgotten realms, Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica)

Given that you seem to generally spit on the idea of a setting that takes longer than a paragraph to describe, I doubt there’s any way to explain the appeal to you in a way you’d accept. But I’ll say for me that I enjoy history and mythology to an extent, so being able to make my own version of it for a tabletop game for my players to inevitably shit all over by way of playing adventurers making their mark in history is fun in a weird way. Like building a Lego play set and then giving it to your niece or nephew and watching them fuck around with it, pulling apart the buildings and vehicles you labored over while making their own stories out of it. Especially when the players tell you they actually find your setting interesting enough to want to find out information from the setting and slowly work out their own interpretations of it that get updated or change with every adventure in it. Then again, I don’t usually concern myself with naming every single possible rock formation or villager in my games. Most of it is just the stuff that the players might encounter, with other details being formed for when they inevitably ask questions on how something works.

>>98033333
I also never found an interest in History, though mythology was kind of fun growing up, don't know what to make of that, FWIW.

When I GM, I tend to build out stuff from an improvisatory angle, starting from whatever location the players are at, and adding in things to fill the blanks as necessary, no need to have a pre-defined notion of how many beehives are in the area and how that affects the local owlbear population

>>98032918
Well i can drop you in a vibes and nonsense setting, but unless you're playing high you'll probably start to wonder why x exists alongside y and what happens when they interact. For me, being told "its vibes stop thinking" is like a character in a film looking straight into the camera and telling the audience how much their ticket costs. If it IS all just bullshit then why am i processing it?
>just turn your brain off
That isnt FUN. If you dont want me to focus i can go on my phone, but if you do then i want to see the cogs.

>>98033415
>you'll probably start to wonder why x exists alongside y and what happens when they interact.
Your average "In YOUR SETTIIIIIINNNNG" threadshitter really does not consider these things, they just want to hear validation and justification for their various vibes nonsense kitchen sink ideas, or culture war bullshit dressed up in setting clothes, or similar.
But also, a setting shouldn't have to come with a primer so thick you can beat goats to death with it

>>98033371
For what it’s worth, the main reason I started writing settings and stopped doing pure improv is that I spent far more time having to keep track of the shit I made up on the spot overall, and I just got plain tired of trying to remember if King Bumblefuck ruled the East or West kingdom considering that I mentioned this ten sessions ago. Consulting my notes for the more common questions my players might ask make things go a lot smoother for the game overall. You do you, but that’s one advantage of writing a setting for me, with just a bit of pre-game investment I spend more time Gming and gaming overall during the actual sessions.

>>98033449
oh yeah, but that's because someone pays for a 4chan pass to bypass the captcha so they can run a bot spamming those threads every 40 minutes or so, mostly reposts from the archive. you cant take them as representative of the hobby, its not even a human making them

>>98033563
wait really? fucking why

>>98032918
>I don't like this pre-written setting
>Nor do I like this assumed generic setting the game has
>Or said generic setting isn't communicated well
>...so I made my own

That's it, really. You play games because they're interactive: if you didn't care for interactivity, you would do something else with your time. However, the players on the other side of the screen aren't the only people there; turns out the guy behind the screen is a person too. If you just take a module or setting as is, then the GM is somewhat removed from the equation, building around the pre-written/assumed world features rather than constructing something whole-cloth.

First, having a custom setting can accommodate certain playstyles/characters/adventures better than a pre-written setting. Second, having a custom setting can allow for features in the game where the generic assumed setting would flounder around with its complete lack of specificity. Third, as >>98033535
mentions, an entirely improvised setting has a tendency to become inconsistent over time, which means you're just hoping your players don't actually pick up on how you've screwed up.

>>98032918
It's a form of artistic expression at the intersection of many of my interests: history, mythology, economics, political theory, geography, just about every humanities/social science field you can think of. I'd do it anyway. That roleplaying games exist to breathe life into my world through the agency of my players is just a bonus.

Why do you think Tolkien put so much work into Middle Earth?

>>98032918
Because I enjoy detail. The more detail I have to bounce off of the better stuff works for me

>>98033573
>Why do you think Tolkien put so much work into Middle Earth?
Autism

>>98033577
Well, yes, me too. Unironically. Ditto for any number of creatives. We're literally wired to be extremely passionate about certain things. So the question is, can you exercise your empathy to the point of imagining what that might be like?

>>98033605
No, in the same way I can't inhabit the mind of a footfag or train autist

>>98033628
You're not extremely passionate or driven by anything for its own sake? There isn't anything that brings you joy just from the doing of it?

>>98033641
Maybe I'm too depressed (in the apathy sense not the boo hoo I'm sad sense)

>>98033652
What about when you were a child? The innate joy of playing? It's the same feeling.

>>98033063
You're supposed to think up details that are purposeful and affect the narrative, anon. It's a difficult task, but them's the breaks. That this clan of people have been in a low grade war with that clan of people for generations mattered a lot to Romeo and Juliet.

>>98033573
>history, mythology, economics, political theory, geography, just about every humanities/social science field
>And yea verily in the year squintillius the lord Xin Bingus succeeded the throne after having laid low Jin Bingus, thus quenching the shimapan rebellion
>Guys what if - what if - what if we had a sun deity, and a death deity, and a forge deity
>Waow a 15% marginal tax rate
>Guys it's not fascism it's totalitarian monarchism with Stirnerian characteristics
>Um ackchully river deltas don't work that way
>This region's culture revolves entirely around square dancing

>>98033674
yes_gigachad.webp

>>98033628
That sounds, unironically, but I also guess kind of ironically, like actual autism.

>>98033569
Various reasons. Next time you see a meltdown in one of those threads look carefully, the guy responsible is easy to spot when you know what to look for. He basically wants people to post in those threads to entertain him because he likes reading the posts. He doesnt understand that we dont want to be used like chatgpt just vomiting stories with no payoff, or that we want game-oriented things useful for our hobbies. So he thinks if noone replies he just needs to spam more and hope that will attract people who will write for him.

Obviously we can see the pattern and ignore it in various ways like just avoiding the threads or preferring generals dedicated to game discussion. This is why he blames "generals" for the board dying, because there are fewer non-general threads making his spam easier to spot

But tldr, if it's a pointless single-sentence non-topic of a thread designed to farm replies... well. Its him.

There's always the chance it's a more sophisticated attack trying to kill /tg/ outright, but im not sure why anyone would care enough to do that aside from mental illness, and mental illness much more cleanly explains our mutual friend's autism

>>98033652
For a lot of people, there is admittedly a kind of joy in being able to say “I made this”. For some it’s something as big as a career or having kids. For some it’s as small as a shitty drawing they did by hand for the first time or a background setting for their ttrpg group. Either way, the act of creation can be nice for its own sake.

>>98032918
1- worldbuilding is fun
2- having a setting doesn't mean going full turbo retard on ultra-realism and having explanations for the pointless shit imaginable and dumping it on your players for 4 hours straight, that's just a failed author holding an audience hostage and you should get out of there
3- I value internal consistency, and knowing how things are supposed to work on a basic level helps me improv and make shit up on the fly
4- someone writing a novel's worth of backstory doesn't affect my setting, since I'll just reject it if it doesn't fit with the rest of the game
5- putting effort into something you want to do will make it better and more rewarding for everyone, that goes for everything in life, not just games

>>98032918
Generally speaking all of these, when done properly, will create a better experience for people who want to experience some type of narrative in the game they're playing. It's by no means essential, but when used correctly these are all tools a player or GM can use to create a tabletop experience that flows better.

You're absolutely describing the extreme end of badly utilized tools. Player backstories to help explain why they're here and why they care about what's going on are good. Player backstories doing insane shit that'll never be relevant are bad.

World building and having notes about locations your party may visit helps direct your improv as a GM. While needless minutae does end up being pointless there's a genuine reason to engage with it if you don't have a predetermined setting to work with. Lore is very similar in a "I now have something to point to to explain things here." and helps create depth to the world beyond just a place where things happen, which can help with immersion for the game. But when handled badly this can end up just being a text dump that you're expected to memorize.

With all things you have to find the level that works for you, and some GMs aren't good at handling this sort of thing the same way some GMs are bad at balancing encounters or rewards.

>>98032918
Those are just off-topic threads spammed daily. Just hide them.

>>98032918
To explain this to you is to cast pearls before the swine. Like the swine, you cannot comprehend WHY these things are important because you lack the capacity to understand why these things are important. You might as well as "What's the big deal about the Mona Lisa, it's just a painting."

>>98034089
t. can't explain why his precious storyfaggotry is important

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>>98032918
it's hard to take your "good faith" argument seriously when your examples of writing are over-written.

>>98034124
I was just trying to lay out stuff in as much clarified detail as I could so as to give the best basis to discuss from, and may have come off as a bit spergy I guess, but at least it's not some fucking one-line "what happens here?" or "What did they mean by this?" or "You DO do X in your setting, right?"

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>>98034136
i meant they're examples of over-writting. my mistake

>>98032918
>worldbuilding/in-your-setting threads on this board
Those are spam. Not actually players of RPGs looking for advice or inspiration on how to run better games or create better fictional worlds.

Everything else you've said isn't really objectionable or even wrong, either. There's a limit to what can be meaningfully explored and implemented at a table. Backstories don't need to be complicated and settings don't need to be exhaustive.

>>98033012
everything in your post is dull

>>98033132
what do you mean "your setting"? a setting is just something you invent for a particular game and discard when it's no longer needed, nobody has a single setting they use for everything

>>98032918
Before I write a bunch of paragraphs, what are you looking for in this thread exactly?
As in, what does
>Someone please help me fucking understand.
mean/ Do you want to be convinced/read arguments in favor of, just hear other people's point of view, maybe anecdotes of some sort?

>>98033641
you sound cringe desu

>>98032918
there is no appeal. I'm being paid to make the board unusable by the FBI.

>>98034501
I guess I'm just a naïve autist who has problems with theory of mind + I take botted shitpost threads and bait at face value, but also there are seemingly enough posters willing to fill up entire threads with this stuff when someone goes "How do nuns work in your setting" or whatever, and it feels like I'm missing out on something others have no trouble enjoying, same as with sportsball or headache-inducingly loud music in nightclubs - I just plain don't *get it* and it makes me feel like an alien

>>98034512
why

>>98034523
>I just plain don't *get it* and it makes me feel like an alien
I mean, that's fine. Nobody "gets" everything.
As for the spam and shitpost/bot threads, that's if I were to give those the benefit of the doubt (assume it's not ALL bots and shitposting), it's just anons stretching their creative muscles. Like a creative improv exercise. It's not really about setting or lore building or the like, at least not directly.
Anyhow, as far as enjoying having settings and lore and such from the perspective of being a player, for some people it's the feeling of having something concrete. A world that already exists and is knowable if you were to look for it. For these big commercial settings there's also a collective aspect to it. It's why stuff like living greyhawk worked so well back in the day.
Writing a setting and the associated background lore is a creative exercise that many people enjoy. Sometimes the act of just making something is enjoyable by itself, then having seeing how the world become a living breathing thing by way of the players interacting with it is another layer of satisfaction, probably. Also, some game masters need a substrate to work off, so having a setting with existing places, peoples, history, and struggles you can then se as a trampoline or hooks is easier than fully coming up with something on the spot.
There's a lot more that could be written on the topic, but basically, it's a bunch of different reasons that are mostly internal but can also be somewhat social, I think.

>>98034523
Have you ever tried taking the GM seat and/or writing up a setting, OP? Or are you just basing what you know of the practice from troll threads on /tg/?

>>98034697

Yeah, I've GM'ed a bit, see also >>98033143

>>98034523
if your familiar with programming this might help, what mostly get's discussed in those threads is back-end stuff, not front end stuff

>>98034802
I'm not familiar with programming, so I don't get it

>>98034812
a more dodgy way to explain it is this then.
think of a campaign like a shop, you've got a large space where your customers/players walk around and do their thing, but you've also got a lot of room where customers/players just aren't allowed, usually the back-end of the store. there's still a lot the happens in the back-end specifically for the customer/players but the customer/player doesn't need to interact with it directly
same is true for the flavor text in your ttrpg. if you've got two factions fighting each other, giving them history and letting said history influence the way they interact can add a lot of flavor to said conflict compared if they just called each other gay for the entire game. your players don't need to open a history book and read the magic wikipedia page about the conflict to get any benefits from this.

>>98034754
Totally fair. And in regards to writing your own setting to use in a game? Do you not enjoy doing it, or have you never tried it and just not understand the appeal?

>>98035161
I never saw the appeal, so I never tried, because why would i? If that makes sense

>>98032918
>Explain the appeal of settings and lore
Okay, I'll try, but it's hard to describe what amounts to "feelings" in my head. When I learn something interesting about certain topics, I get a sort of "tingle" in my head, it's a nice sensation, so I try to read more because it feels good to do so. Among those topics are things like folklore, mythology, settings, world-building, and lore discussions. I also get a lot of enjoyment in branching out from one particular aspect someone might mention, and I can go off on my own creative direction with it afterwards. It's sort of like reading a book but in your head, you get the prompts from someone else but let your brain do all the work fleshing it out after.

>>98035243
Well, don’t knock it till you try it then

Lore about named characters is essentially celebrity gossip for friendless nerds

>>98034092
>oink oink
ftfy

>>98032918

>That shit is all there purely for masturbatory reasons, it seems to me, self-gratification for worldbuilders, but like foot fetishism, I get nothing out of it.

If you're going over what people are doing for their own enjoyment in worldbuilding threads and such, fair enough. I share the same vibe of your opinions regarding writing and the value of vibes-based worldbuilding.

For me, back when I read heaps of TTRPG books, backstory and setting basically gives template and examples for expected tone/flavour/scope of events, and gives inspiration for what players and GM can and should do to fit the tone of the game. For example, I voraciously read Exalted 2E books for their lore, and they inspired heaps of characters, locations, and a common set of genre expectations between players of the game. Most players had the same basic idea of what to expect from our characters and our interaction with the setting, and we could assume many things due to the depth of the setting. Maybe not enough things relevant to day-to-day operations in the setting, since so much of what we read was backstory, but them's the breaks.

The day to day operations of the setting are wandering monster rolls and random encounter checks.

>>98035994
In what setting do unexplainable magical dice just summon monsters out of nowhere to cause mischief for the locals?

>>98036057
My setting

Retard's so predictable and boring lol

The few /tg/ posters I played DCC and D&D 3rd edition with since 2019 also didn't give out deep backstory and lore about their characters.

The long winded backstory lore for RPG seems to be exclusively made by Critical role fans and women.

>>98032918
>Backstory
It establishes your character's place in the world before they were adventuring. It gives the GM not only new plot hooks, but NPCs to use in the actual game while humanizing your player character and giving the player a reason to play their character instead of an emotionless stat brick. The 140-page novel shit is a meme that doesn't happen outside of the rare newfag who doesn't know what he's doing or an arrogant asshat who's self-inserting (which is cringe) anyway. As for the goblin thing, well yeah sure if you're playing some boring meat grinder where your character doesn't matter and you're just going through samey dungeons for loot like it's Borderlands I guess, but that's a D&D problem. And no, not just 5e, every edition, even TSR.
>Setting
A setting gives context to the players. It frames the mechanical options - species/races, classes or powers, what weapons are available or not - as well as provides context so the players can better get into character. Unlike a book like Harry Potter, TTRPGs are games. The setting is framing for the mechanics. Furthermore, it sets expectations for the tone of the game. A game in a world described as "souls-like" will require a very different character from one described as "noble-bright". You don't bring John Goodman to the grimdark game and you don't bring Keith Backpiercer to the noblebright game about heroes fighting cartoonishly evil villains.
>Lore
You might personally not care about the lore, but other people might, and furthermore as above it adds to the character creation process and gives explanations as to how the mechanics play within the setting. You should care about the mushroom dwarves and the bird elves, because if you bring a normal knife-ear or short angry ginger human the GM is going to tell you to fuck off, as he should for you being a lazy faggot.

If you can't understand, sorry, f you can't engage with the RP and G then the hobby isn't for you.

>>98032918
>explain the appeal of settings and lore
>all the examples are the most boring possible elements of settings and lore, in the most boring possible way
Do you understand how dumb you sound? It's like asking about the appeal of characters and all your examples are 100 page backstories about them jerking off and sleeping in between eating and milking cows and personality traits that include "is heterosexual" and "enjoys being alive."

Every actually appealing bit of setting/lore is something that is a) distinct and b) matters. The Last War in Eberron, the cannibal/slaving giants in Planegea who live in the four cardinal directions where the elemental planes are still forming and separating, etc.

This guy also wrote a couple articles about the value of setting: https://mailanka.blogspot.com/2016/12/who-gives-st-meditation-on-setting.html

>>98033063
That's because you're too small-minded to grasp the bigger picture.

Why DOES every dog have a name in a five-mile radius of that village? Why DO their toenails grow twice as fast as average? Those are both excellent questions that are hooks for adventure. Maybe the village worships some sort of dog-god and it's tradition for them to name every single dog that passes through the village without a name. Maybe their toenails are growing faster because of some sort of minor curse or magic leaking from a nearby dungeon and the party has to go stop the errant magic in the dungeon.

See? That's why you have those little strange details. They're not pointless. The GM mentioned them because they're plot hooks, and if you're too socially inept to pick up on subtle nudges towards adventure and can only understand "HERE IS GENERIC DUNGEON, GO KILL MONSTERS, DISARM TRAPS, AND STEAL LOOT" then you're too stupid for the hobby.

>>98033449
>But also, a setting shouldn't have to come with a primer so thick you can beat goats to death with it
Back in the day, old setting books came with pages upon pages upon pages of information that GMs could use to run games within that setting. Now? Now you get a couple of shitty paragraphs. If you're running premades, the players will want to know shit so you as the GM will need answers. Those things are for the GM.

Player-facing primers should give them the basic information they need to make a character that fits the setting and campaign, and then you as the GM should keep your own notes on the setting and if the players say "Hey I want to know more about X to make a better character" you give them just enough info to do what they want.

Of course, if you can't sit down and read a few pages of information, this probably isn't the hobby for you. There's a lot of rules, and a lot of thick rulebooks. There are exceptions (Most PBTA systems) but even those are around 100 pages of info if you want the most out of them.

>>98033628
If you lack emotional intelligence and empathy, then TTRPGs are not the hobby for you. Most /tg/ stuff isn't for you, but TTRPGs are a cooperative social storytelling game. You need to have at least some social skills to play them.
>BUT NERDS DIDN'T-
Yes they did back in the day, they were just ostracized for having fringe interests. Y'know, like TTRPGs or war games or vidya or anime. They were plenty capable of socializing, but they quickly learned most people are stupid assholes who will take advantage of you, and finding people who aren't means finding people who are like-minded to you.

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>>98032918
Because people have fun making them? Legitimately do you need a better explanation?

>>98035243
Then give it a try. It doesn't have to be some epic, massive, world-spanning setting. Start Small. You don't need tax policy or any of that shit. Make a village. Give it one unique "quirk" - something like "they worship an unpopular deity" or "It's built within a few miles of a megadungeon" or something. Think of one weird quirk that makes sense to you. Then, you run a short game in that little area and use that quirk as a plot hook for the players to latch onto. Shit you could drop it into a premade setting to start if you want, if that's easier for you. This one town is weird because [reason], that's a huge call to adventure.

>>98036057
NTA but in the setting for my modern fantasy RPG, the reason cities are built where they are is that they're on top of magical leylines and draw power from them. This not only keeps the lights on with clean, infinite energy, but it also prevents Dungeons from spawning.

When enough mana builds up in the world's crust, a hole opens up full of not only magic crystal - crystalized mana used for much of the setting's tech but also for enchanting weapons and armor - but also monsters, magical creatures that form based on the environment and its history.

In universe, there was a case where there was a run-down part of town, abandoned and without power infrastructure, and after a while a dungeon opened up there and nearby adventurers had to be called in to deal with a horde of undead monsters.

Now, while I don't prefer random encounters in my games, the system itself supports the concept of random encounters with some guides on how to set up a table with a range of difficulties for your players, and "some creatures wandered away from their dungeon" is not only good to explain random encounters, it is a plot hook in and of itself, a very lucrative one since the party would be the ones to discover it and would have first dibs on clearing it out for a huge payout and a small share of the crystal inside to craft their own gear with or sell for money.

>>98036539
And stuff like that is why setting is important instead of reducing the game to just monster rolls and random encounter checks

>>98034505
Why does that matter? Cringing is cringe. Passion and joy are what make life worth living. If my embrace of them make you uncomfortable, that's just something you're doing to yourself. Stop disliking that I'm happy and find what brings you joy instead.

>>98036523
Most pedagogically sound response in the thread desu

>>98032918
People mistake hardline realism for verisimilitude, and obnoxious levels of completely unnecessary detail for (the good kind) of complexity (when it is actually the bad kind).
Don't start with King Flatulus the 3rd, start with a place, the people who live there, and the immediate surroundings, maybe a neighboring place or two. Add in one or two initial interesting NPCs, even if it's just someone with a funny manner of speaking, or strong opinions on matters (even something as simple as "dwarves are too stubborn for my tastes") and just...take things to their logical conclusions

>>98036946
Nah, I'll just kill you

>>98032918
It's fun for me. I don't care ic my players don't see 99% of it because I do it for my own enjoyment.