How to Present Your World Without Lore Dumps | D&D | TTRPG | Web DM

A big part of a game master's job is presenting the world to their players in ways that make it inviting, engaging, and exciting. It's easy to drop a lore dump, aka a big chunk of info, on your players all at once, but that makes it too easy to overwhelm your players or set them up to miss detail. Here's how to present your lore WITHOUT the dump. Get Heroforge Custom minis: www.heroforge.com
WE'RE WRITING A BOOK! Sign up for our mailing list for more info: eepurl.com/gDXzGr
GET MORE WEB DM! We've got a bonus podcast on / webdm that you can get every single week where we go into way more topics, answer your questions, and have way more benefits too. Become a Web DMN today!
Time stamps:
0:00 intro
3:04 Convey information through Player Character Classes
8:36 Backgrounds and what they mean in your game
13:15 Consider equipment, how they’re created, and their significance
18:00 Monsters are an awesome way to reveal lore!
24:11 Encounters and how you create them shapes the players’ perceptions of the world
#dnd #dungeonsanddragons #ttrpg
Facebook - bit.ly/2oGKLOg
Twitter - / webdmshow
Instagram - web_dm
Written & Hosted by Jim Davis and Jonathan Pruitt
Produced and Directed by Emma Lambert
Edited by Brandon Fraley
Web DM was created by Travis Boles, Jonathan Pruitt, and Jim Davis
Art by Thomas Tanner www.thomastannerart.com
Music by John Branch -branchoutguitar.com
Web DM Theme by Kyle Newmaster - kylenewmaster.com

[@WebDM]

Thanks for watching! Get Heroforge Custom minis: www.heroforge.com OUR KICKSTARTER IS COMING UP SOON! Sign up for our KS Mailing list: eepurl.com/gDXzGr Get over 200 episodes of Web DM bonus podcast: www.patreon.com/webdm

[@wyliecapp]

That intro lmao.

[@MrRourk]

First try a game like Crimson Cutlass Script based games give you the lore in little pieces as they push the story forward.

[@JoaoVictor-nu7sz]

The "Show dont Tell" is my motto, but sometimes my players get really confused, so i have to explain some things out of the game.

[@WebDM]

Yep! Happens at the best of tables

[@Bluecho4]

Showing and Telling are not, in and of themselves, good or bad. They're tools in the storyteller's toolbox. What matters is how you use them, and under what circumstances or for what purpose they can be put. Showing something makes it more visceral, and gives the players the chance to think through the implications of what they're experiencing themselves (which can have an emotional weight that merely being told the answer does not). But Telling is necessary, when the something being conveyed is abstract, convoluted, or otherwise outside the bounds of demonstration. (You generally wouldn't want to see the doomsday device in action to understand the threat, if your job is to make sure it never gets activated in the first place). Moreover, some things are so elementary to the setting that the players should know about it from the outset, without it needing to be shown. And then there's the matter of brevity; sometimes, you just don't have time to show the players something, and need to tell them. Also, Telling has the same capacity for giving the players a chance to come to conclusions, based on what you tell them and what you elect to remain unstated.

[@randomusernameCallin]

Do be afraid if the show and then tell. I ran into too many players that act if not told then it was not shown.

[@JoaoVictor-nu7sz]

@@Bluecho4 Since my actual campaing is a new thing to me (full player driven open world), i am afraid to put to many info, or to many plot hooks on something and my players come to think "Oh, so that is the main quest lets do that.". For the most of the time i keep trowing some stuff into the story, and use a method of emulating foresights with improvisation, similar to the narrative created by Eiichiro Oda in One Piece. So its important to not expose to much.

[@KeacePeeper]

@@JoaoVictor-nu7sz I tried that but I failed a bit since my players felt they had no Idea what to do. Will try again tho.

[@TylerJMacDonald]

As someone with books filled with lore, this is going to be so helpful, thank you!

[@WebDM]

Thanks Tyler! Enjoy the video.

[@CelticCubby]

Pruitt's dump puns were an absolute joy.

[@NightWatchersPet]

Jim's face the entire opener was priceless

[@foghammer9767]

Are you kidding?! They stink! ;)

[@O4C209]

I wanted the end of that opening skit be Jim shaking his head and saying "sh**".

[@connors7078]

I love the hags creating goblins thing. Reminded me of, in one of my settings, kobolds' must serve dragons. If there are kobolds there is a dragon neaby b/c they are compelled to find a dragon to serve. When their dragon dies they move to the next dragon. This often includes sprouting wings to fly to that dragon. Dragons on this world rule islands. And a kobold's scales slowly change (over months) to match the colour of the dragon they serve. :)

[@AlexanderBaird]

This gave me the idea of having the peacock style cockatrice that can also unfurl its feathers and cast hypnotic pattern! I’m sure I’m not the first but damn that’s a cool idea

[@willmendoza8498]

Awesome

[@laoxep]

@@willmendoza8498 Sounds cocky!

[@Vladdyboy]

This is awesome! I am thinking about incorporating it into my previous idea of birds having a crystalline beak, could turn its foes into crystal when petrified! ^_^

[@demonicdonut22]

Every WebDM I watch I need to rewind 10 times because I start applying things to my campaign as they are mentioned. So much good advice! You guys have truly made me a much better DM. Thank you for your amazing work.

[@adreabrooks11]

Glad I'm not the only one. XD

[@bryceaustin4995]

Pretty much every video they release I've got to stop like halfway through just so I can write down ideas.

[@michaelramon2411]

I will confess that I once started a campaign with a 10-minute out-of-character history lecture. In my defense, everything I said was common knowledge about the history, demographics and economy of the city that the entire campaign was about. So it went like "the city is a port in this climate, its region was like this until colonialism 300 years ago, the indigenous population is partially but not fully assimilated, the city's economy revolves around this export which also gives it international strategic importance, and 10 years ago the government was taken over by this charismatic indigenous strongman, leaving the city with a fragile balance of power between this couple of factions." It wasn't elegant, but I think it might have been the right thing to do. Yeah, all of that could theoretically have been revealed through NPC interactions, but I think it was worth it to just get it on the table without any wasted time. Especially because the players didn't need to memorize every detail of the lecture - as long as they got the basic broad strokes of the setting, they'd be fine. Infodumps aren't fun, but they are efficient (time-wise), and sometimes a little pain in the set-up will make the rest of the game more fun. (The campaign in question turned out great, by the way, so at a minimum the infodump didn't ruin it.)

[@richyhu2042]

Honestly sometimes you just have to do it like that and lore dumps get a bad rep. Bad lore dumps are when you just throw the Silmarillion are your party, lot of fancy stuff and worldbuilding that ultimately doesn't affect the party or their current situation in any real meaningful way. There's an anime called Log Horizon which actually does have flat out lore dumps at the start or even in the beginning of the episode but it never feels like a slog to go through it, partially because its interesting but also because there's usually a quick pay off or you're having a more knowledgeable character explain something to a more clueless one.

[@Th3M4k40n]

If it's presented well and engaging then I'm all for stuff like that. Too often I get confused or struggle to come up for reasons for why my character does this or that because I wasn't informed about how the world or local region actually worked.

[@ManifestNightmare]

I was literally just brainstorming exactly this in preparation for a new game in a few months! WebDM to the rescue again!

[@ismirdochegal4804]

Pruitt, may I remind you of a suggestion made by Charles Bronson? "In the Afterlive, everyone who has worked in or on a film must watch all the works again in their entirety." But it's nice to see, that Jim actually helps him compile these puns.

[@jacobsilva421]

I love how this looks like 2 guys sitting right next to each other who never actually look at each other.

[@sriramramesh5318]

The wonders of zoom :P

[@x64hitcombo]

This is a fantastic subject. My players don't engage much with my world but still say they love the seamlessness and themes of my world, so thanks for the tips!

[@x64hitcombo]

We had a 100% improvised filler session, and I used a lot of these tips in my to impart facts about my world as they explored a library! Thanks!

[@MonkeyJedi99]

I learned a long time ago that you can relay most overview information in 3-5 paragraphs. In my current campaign, I started with thirty or forty PAGES of background lore, but for me. The players got 3 or 4 paragraphs with information about where they were starting, a war being fought in the region twenty years ago, some VIP's, and that's pretty much it. For the first few levels of play, they had a bard NPC in the party who was their information source on more information about the general area. After that, they had a feel for my world, and as they found information I started sharing more and more of my background info on OneNote. - A secret they didn't know for nearly a year and a half is that the domains of the gods were something they shaped from my general one sentence lore like "GodName is the god of Nature" and they filled in all the details that became the religions.

[@matthewheimbecker9055]

This is truly great advice, because it gives real, actionable advice on how to be evocative of your game world. Too many GM advice shows talk about what would be best but they dont' say HOW to do those things. Keep it up, guys.

[@WebDM]

Thank you!

[@caosisaac]

My favorite lore dump ive done so far is a cirque du solei style performance using flight, minor illusion, thaumaturgy, pyrotechnics, and color spray spells in an opera the players decided to watch to describe the final battle between the draconic armies of tiamat and bahamut over the world tree yggdrasil 700 years ago and the immediate aftermath of the battle.

[@reallyangrygeese669]

Really appreciate the timestamps in the video length actually, super helpful to remember the info from the course of the video

[@nickwilliams8302]

One trick I like to use when explaining lore to my group is to point to players whose PCs would have that knowledge and attribute the little bit of exposition I'm about to deliver as, "[their PC] would know that [bit of lore]." It's really easy, and it involves the players more than just delivering a lecture. Players whose eyes might glaze over if you just dumped info on them, will sit up and take notice if you explain that it's _their_ character who knows some nugget of lore.

[@moogotony8579]

My nephew saw you guys on the screen, pointed at you and said "They're superheroes, I can tell.". When I asked him how he could, he said "Because I'm one too.". I couldn't disagree with him. Keep it up guys, you're an inspiration.

[@WebDM]

Omg

[@geoffdewitt6845]

That is freaking adorable, man.

[@Bluecho4]

I can't argue with that. Flawless logic.

[@adreabrooks11]

I looove trinkets! I always have characters detail where and how they acquired them (I took it from a fallen foe at the first battle of the regions current civil conflict. It was given to me by my mentor Liu Chao as a cryptic symbol of my graduation. It was bequeathed to me by my Great Uncle Festoon.) It always makes for a great plot hook, when the players hear something about the stuff they invented - and helps ensure the world's features are things they'll enjoy.

[@sicklesorcerer1242]

This is a big part of the exploration pillar that not only doesn't get talked about much, but that most dms (myself included) always wanted but never new how to do. Thank you so much! I'll be using this advice for my DMs guild adventure.

[@WebDM]

Awesome!! Let us know how it goes!

[@willmena96]

I had a new player on my (virtual) table yesterday and I couldn't stop thinking about this. I didn't want her to feel overwhelmed, but it was also important to explain the important bits of my world.

[@RyanDuddleson]

Look for chances to show the important bits. One example is Matt Colville's take on Dragonborn. In his world they are the special guards of the recently dead king. The Big Bad has a bounty on them because they are a reminder of what "was". Instead of explaining this Colville has wanted posters in taverns show a reward for information on the Dragonborn and has NPCs in unfriendly towns confront any PC Dragonborn to try to collect the bounty. You could explain this before you play, but it comes more naturally if you show it as you play.

[@Relfar2]

I need to take better notes so I can be more consistent with my world building when I have to make stuff up

[@timmymiracle5588]

I was actully just about to sit down and work on the exact subject of this vid.

[@blazingangel623]

Started the last arc of my game with a pretty big exposition dump, so glad for this video!

[@Spiceodog]

This is so helpful because I recently got a , idk i think it’s a 461 page third party setting book ( Midgard from kobald press)

[@geoffdewitt6845]

Jesus, Mr. Pruitt's pun game just keeps getting stronger. You might even say IT'S OVER 9,000!!!

[@surrog]

Currently working on my first Eberron campaign, this episode is super useful, thank you !

[@bohemianprince7944]

This is one of the best dnd videos I've seen. Thank you my dudes 🐸

[@RJ_Ehlert]

Invite your players to have backstories that let you cooperatively build parts of the world together.

[@andrewdiaz3529]

That trinket bit was great.

[@Neverfate]

Lately I've been jotting down ideas for an Eberron adventure with players who aren't very familiar with the setting and I actually spent last night brainstorming how to get the lore across without going overboard. It's kind of a delicate process to find the right balance of giving enough to get people into the world, but not lecturing them on the pretend history of a fantasy world.

[@WebDM]

Absolutely is an art that takes time to master!

[@micahbarror842]

Required reading,

[@markuswelander8551]

Every bathroom break is a campaign, thanks for being my lore dump while I waited for gravity's turn in the initiative order.

[@tentavision5019]

Not the puns i was expecting, but definitely the ones I needed

[@flysteel288]

Lol too late for me. Luckily my players really enjoyed it and I'm glad they have a good idea of things anyone in the setting would probably know off the top of their head. Session 3 is this Sunday and I couldn't be more pumped! Thanks always, Jim and Pruitt, for being helpful and inspirational

[@christianadams211]

Finally an old school pun filled intro! U guys were slacking on the intros but this is a strong one! I kid u guys are a major inspiration!

[@TaberIV]

The one time I tried to lore dump on players one of them rolled to see if they fell asleep. It was fair, I don't do that anymore lol.

[@jgig1329]

This is a great topic thanks for the discussion! Intro hilarious as always.

[@SavantApostle]

In 1000 years Jim will start to make more videos and we'll learn he is actually an ancient dragon...legend goes.

[@rickc-arelsii6276]

*On the next episode of Dungeball* "Flying rodent, I choose you!" *....oh Emma* XD

[@killfear]

21:35 - I LOVE this. I will absolutely do something around that. Gem of the video.

[@micahbarror842]

I liked the points at 15:15 and 16:28 dealing with customizing equipment options/even venacular specific rather than generic, by Jim With latter point about filling in our building lore around trinkets is clever

[@ROD2o]

Another technique is to add non solicited lore information, when someone makes a history/nature/knowledge check. You find a way to tell them something new about the world, that is related to the piece of information they were trying to recall

[@loki.odinson]

Thanks guys! Excellent video.

[@WisdomThumbs]

I just went with Go Big or Go Home. Every game in my homebrew setting comes across the remains of a multi-dimensional hyper society. Sometimes it was the Axe of Thunderbolts. One time players were sent to ask a unicorn to come home, and they witnessed the last death of Arvandor before it teleported them back home and was killed by Maglubiyet’s Atropic Zombie form. Moradin’s Bane and Shadows of the Wall were both mini-campaigns that ran quick and ended super climactically with the reveal of Moradin’s and Tharizdun’s imprisonments. Oh yeah, and nobody’s seen any dragons since the apocalypse that killed or imprisoned most of the gods, and severely weakened the survivors. Well, except that a few players helped save a city from a Bronze Colossus that came hunting its creator, the steel dragon Severong. Severong then killed one faction of allies and thanked the rest for saving him, and the players were left with a lore reminder: the dragonborn oppose the return of dragons and gods, and were recently at war with the human Potion King who just turned into a steel dragon. (other players later stole from the Potion King’s granddaughter’s “Looming Vault,” where attack rugs grappled to cast trap spells, and the party stole the Lace of the Eternal Redoubt, which holds inside it a heist oneshot) And more recently, the world conquering Telqan arrived to chase the players down. The Four Winds failed to escape. Now, Telqan, supposedly the last Baatazu, surrounds the Four Winds with its Bloodpact horde of worgs, hobgoblins, and wereforms and many ogres and trolls and weretrolls. And Telqan wants the Four Winds to work for it, the Biggest Baddest Wolf, and perhaps accept the veinplate “power armors” it’s made out of Post-Blood War demon flesh (gotta rival treants and dwarven stoneplate somehow).

[@shripnidley101]

Basically, less is more. It's hard to distill a book of lore into a single sentence, but I have found players are infinitely more engaged with a rumor like "a black rainbow was seen over the horizon" versus "THOUSANDS OF YEARS AGO THE GREAT DEMIDRACOLICH DID A THING, AND NOW THAT THING IS ANOTHER THING!"

[@GaiusLeafe]

This is something we kinda talked about on our own podcast (DM ShowerThoughts): inferential Worldbuilding, and letting your Players explore the world for you. It’s cool to see some of the same ideas from a channel like WebDM!

[@zencow]

Thanks for providing some great food-for-thought with some very insightful ideas. I especially loved all the "new ideas" (to me) regarding Monsters.

[@ChristopherM.8]

This may be the best intro yet.

[@whitemansucks]

I was able to use Decent to Avernus as a level 0 funnel adventure as a lore dump for 12 players. I did this using 36 group skill checks while using the wolfheartfps narrative. The total of all 36 group skill checks equated to the xp the players started the campaign at. Now all the characters have a united backstory.

[@Vladdyboy]

19:20 great protips when worldbuilding. Trolls in D&D do not steal children and replace them with changelings (from Norwegian folklore) but in my campaign I changed trolls to do that! The changeling is incredibly beautiful but has a cow's tail which they have disguise self spell as an innate spell (once per day) to hide it.

[@DaDunge]

The thing is if I am limiting races I need to be able to tell the players which races are in my world. Same with classes and subclasses. So what I did is I created a document with a small blurb on each class subclass, race and subrace. Saying things like "high elves could represent an elven noble or an elf from one of the magocracies on the east coast of the continent." Or "Dwarves and elves in their own kingdoms in this setting tend more towards druidic and bardic magic and less towards clerics and wizard"

[@stroberry4660]

THANK YOU I WAS JUST WORRYING ABOUT THIS AAAAAAAA

[@iratevagabond204]

TL;DR: I'm an advocate of pregame lore dumps, and expect players to know the world, and how their character fits into it. For a longtime my role-play itch was satisfied by playing role-play enforced Ultima Online free "shards". In order to play, you had to submit a character application which required a background, description, motivations, etc. These shards operated on donations and had staff that fulfilled different roles, with some serving as mappers, coders, asset artists, lore writers, and those running quests by playing NPCs. The websites were huge lore dumps that you needed to read in order to submit an application for a new character. It was necessary to ensure the character you were making actually fit into the world. I loved it. I feel that having a character that is built into the world is better than simply having a character built for the system. It has always seemed like the ultimate laziness to oppose understanding the world you're character is living in. The world is far more important than the PCs, as it dictates everything about the PCs. I got around this by the default mode of character generation in my system being random rolls on tables. Starts out with continent, then geographic region, then province, then locale, then village/city. Each time you roll, you flip to another "page" (I have a website I host on my at home gaming server, which is mostly used for Ark: Survival Evolved) for the next table, which also has a summary of that area, with hyperlinks to the full lore page. Random char generation solves a lot of issues, as long as you have players that are capable and willing to assume any role.

[@nicolaezenoaga9756]

Thanks. Nice intro!

[@ismirdochegal4804]

[18:00] "Monster are an awesome way to reveal the lore." And so easy too. Just give your players some monsters to fight. It will fill most of the session and if the players ask for more information, you can deliver.

[@DaDunge]

3:25 Nope I created a lexicon of sorts where I did a little this is what this clas and subclass could represent in this setting thing. I am not going to limit them to it of course but it gives them an idea. To use my example from earlier of they want to play a wizard from the eleven courts I'm not going to say no but they will likely be seen as eccentric by their fellow elves. The point is they don't have to read through it all they just look up the race subrace class subclass and background they are intrested in and read the blurbs there.

[@landonmackey1091]

I love the advice to pick a palette of monsters to characterize the setting and I wish I heard it years ago. I've always sidelined my monsters and chosen them in a panic an hour before my sessions. Mistakes!

[@meamamigit]

One of your best yet!

[@gabeskinner9027]

I was literally just trying to figure out how to offer my 2020-fueled homebrew ramblings to my players. Thanks for the video!

[@WebDM]

Happy to help!

[@valasafantastic1055]

Useful and fun stuff, thanks!

[@Lycaon1765]

God damn it, you made me laugh at a poop joke because of Jim's reaction. >:v! How dare

[@solsystem1342]

Sweet I needed this for my summer campaign

[@trajanfidelis1532]

Thanks for the video guys

[@couch_philosoph3325]

My players literally went into a bookstore to buy a book about politics and history of the city they were in... and then just wanted me to keep going on about the lore and wrote it all down with enthusiasm. That was such a great moment. But then again, i center my canpaign around them as players and have interwoven their backstories and make npcs they care about. I never explicitly say no, i use the yes, and or the no, but rule. I guess this approach makes them really want to be invested in the lore if it's not too much

[@storyspren]

Holding it in is really a super apt metaphor :D

[@jasonhudson7697]

Great inspiration for a keep on the borderlands campaign I am working on

[@canadianjeff223]

this audio tuning on Jim ever since they switched to the green screen set is so grating

[@MoonlitMongrel]

Can I just say I miss Pruitt for those awesome intros. But hope he is mentally better since taking the break. Still watch the videos regularly and rewatch them

[@geoffdewitt6845]

Also, the timestamps are a *huge* help!!!

[@UncleTrog]

I need this advice in my life!

[@micahbarror842]

A play by play of the day, 😆 The story of my life, that's all I have to say about that. And then i took a bath

[@m34nb34n]

you guys r awesome to listen to . even just for people who like to create stories and dont play this is a great channel. i patreoned you lol (only a small amount im not rich lol YET...maybe)

[@WebDM]

Thank you so much!

[@Lectical]

God this makes me want to work on my homebrew setting

[@EdwardTHead1776]

I've been informing my players pre campaign as to knowledge of general history or how certain things would work to their knowledge. We have a lot of dudes from very different places and they have cool backgrounds they've come up with. I've tailored things to their PCs. I let my elf blood hunter pick the name of the tribe he was from. I let my cleric pick the name of his deity and made it the primary religion of the province he hails from.

[@MonkeyJedi99]

I have a strange recurring encounter in the campaign I run. Every night of a full moon, a white owl is spotted by at least one character as it swoops down and nabs a small prey animal then flies out of sight. They have no idea what is going on with the owl and it is never seen on any night without a full moon. The funny thing is I don't know what the significance of the owl is. I'm actually waiting for a character to make a guess that sounds good to me.

[@uphillwalrus5164]

I try to keep meta knowledge to a minimum and only divulge lore from the npcs' perspectives. Primarily only having access to anecdotal information makes a more interesting and varied setting and gives extra information to the players about the characters and locations without having to explain it

[@michaelmitchell8410]

A cool idea for none lore dump is players wake from cryogenic sleep and have to see new world

[@WebDM]

That is a good one! Jim and Emma are currently playing a game that started with a similar premise and it's been great

[@williamozier918]

All in all it's much more interesting when players have to piece together THE LORE. Naming is a huge trick to use for this! Place names, castle names, also royal titles, NPC family names, and names of items such as swords, and magic wands and the like can go a long way towards allowing your players to piece together your lore. Also whenever a PC asks like, "The Bridge of Conan's Folly, what's that?" You the DM don't tell them, their character has to go ask an NPC...and that NPC will give an answer based on their perspective, not based on the actual facts.

[@RiotKurhein]

My proudest effort was taking the lore of several planes of existence from Magic the Gathering and combining them into one world and then making it my own. I took flavor text and design documents and added even more depth. For example: the cities of Innistrad are generalized but had snippets of detail. Like the province of Nephalia not having any trees because a very hands off ruling vampire noble inspired his citizens to be master carpenters, so that they depleted their region of living wood that could be converted into stakes. Also that rather than treat their subjects as prey to be hunted the same vampire lord treated them as Kobe Beef cattle. Granting the most delicious blooded humans the taste of opulence and so willingly gave their blood. But on topic I created whom I called the 'Moguls' who ran the province of Nephalia in the vampire lord's stead. As I moved the setting's colonial era into early industrial period and so the Moguls were scions of business and progress. The party sought to involve themselves for their varied reasons. One character a (Samurai Jack-like) time displaced elf cursed by the Archfey whom were his warlock patron tasked him with performing a ritual during a dinner party with the leaders of the city they were in. The cleric was an ambassador of sorts on behalf of an occupying crusader church. The crusade being the original impetus for adventurers to enter the land of Innistrad as it was a territory to be reclaimed in the Empire they hailed from perspective. He was to meet with the Moguls to discuss matters of the church as the province was a staging ground. He had also run afoul of one of the Moguls as one of his pet giant crocodile's (long story) broke free and devoured the Mogul's son; admittedly after the son had purchased it from the cleric. Never let a good reason to litigate go to waste especially when you're a robber baron. Sigh. It was one of my favorite games I ran. The players were thoroughly involved in the world.

[@micahbarror842]

The dIsplaced elf warlock seemed to hamper the storyline for me from a digesting perspective. The crusader cleric palatble, you pulled it off, kudos, i might try a streamlined approach sans archefey, For me i relate ti webdm in that morasses can create a bog of catcheism

[@nicolassagrillo1442]

Yall gotta do a new episode on fighters/warriors and talk about berserk. RIP Miura!

[@worstcat8489]

An enlightening conversation, but I think one best suited to larger than life worlds where there is so much established content that it is easy to get lost in. It has been my experience that original/ derivative worlds do not have an over-abundance of information - quite the opposite. In home-made worlds the pillars that do hold up the particular 'idiom' the DM wants to create are/ tend to be more important because there are just less of them to provide the experience intended. I don't tend to see this as much of a challenge as opposed to the older game worlds. I find playing in the Forgotten Realms to be daunting IF you want to provide an experience that conforms to the game world calendar, and reverberates with the events that transpire in different book series, etc. Not 'lore dumping' all of the backstory to get the players to understand the significance of events they might be hearing rumors of before they happen becomes a lot taller of an order to fill in a world with decades of addon content, fleshing out, and so on (let alone sheer size). I find the best solution is getting your characters to start asking a lot of questions 'In Character.' Interacting with the world in memorable ways - getting chased out of a wizard's hut, thrown out of bars - tussling in street fights, getting locked up by the city guard...finding genuine (or predatory) romantic interests...are just some of the things that happen when your players actively engage with their environment. They should enjoy - and fear - the possibilities they are surrounded with. Fun enough to relish doing again, but afraid enough to know they are nowhere near the baddest gang on the block and should approach things intentionally - with curiosity and caution.

[@micahbarror842]

Can we say running a campaign with decades of addendum and lore that a lore dump/tome bequethment would be intrinsic?

[@worstcat8489]

@@micahbarror842 Not really man - my point was that it shouldn't happen. Not only does it completely take the importance of those 'lore dumped' events and flatten them to negligible importance - players don't remember them anyway. Plus if you're the GM is can be hard enough to wrap your own mind around all the book series and expansions and edition updates. The stuff that you do put to memory is best shown to your players through how they interact with the world. They get cussed out by a barkeep and he makes a cultural reference to a person or event they don't understand...then they get to find out just how terrible of a comparison he was making by understanding the totality of those events referenced...and why they matter to the people in that area. Boom - your players have a memorable, meaningful way to remember world lore.

[@Lurklen]

Haha, I totally agree, but also wrote a 117 page document of world lore before a recent campaign. (It was not required reading, except the first 3 pages which were the pre-session disclaimers/buy-in survey, and encouragement to look over unique player features they could get. The rest was literally labelled "Self Indulgent Dm Lore" and honestly was more an excuse to get all the crap in my head down so I had a reference for things lol...it's still not finished.)

[@micahbarror842]

I think that is a great approach. Sounds like a great amount of work. 177 pages. Removing dross, streamlining, polishing by iterations, pitching the gametime to potentials sounds like a winner approach. Having fun is alot of work.

[@Lurklen]

@@micahbarror842 Lol thanks, sometimes it is. I'd really like to work on my presentation, the document is not pretty to look at, and I do think for shorter, less culturally alien settings, you can go way lighter on lore. 1-5 pages should be all you need if you aren't doing a whole world book. I think next time I work on something like that I'm going to make sure the layout is nicer, and there's more pictures for visual interest. Also that it's more divided into sections I can pull out for various groups. Like if I just want a primer for a specific region, I don't need to send them the entire document, just the section relevant to that group. But yeah, it's a lot of extra work (of dubious necessity).

[@donniejefferson9554]

I always tell players during session 0 that I'm not going to dump lore unprovoked but that there is lots of lore available the I'm happy to dump if they ask. Very easy way of avoiding lore dumps that the players don't care about

[@georgewashington7083]

I badly needed this video

[@csb8336]

just a thought, in keeping with the illusion that you're both in the same room, it may be helpful to place a ball on a tripod so that you guys can have a seemingly natural eyeline to each other. my 2c

[@williamlee7482]

I play AD&D 1st & 2nd mixed and the world setting I'm using right now is based on hundreds of islands surrounded by a large magical storm in the very center of all the islands . The sizes of the islands rage from a few miles long and wide to hundreds of miles wide and long . Most of the islands are no further apart then 50 to 100 miles and as close as a few miles from each other . It was because of the gods war spilling over into the prime material plain with one of the gods of chaos throwing one of the world's small moons onto the land causing many areas to sink below waters . This happened over 70 years ago and the societies are still rebuilding . Because the world is based upon islands it has a maritime feel because the major settlements are built near or on the water . I've included a mariner class that most races can take and have included new races like Minotaurs and a few other non character races like goblins . I took the Tinker class and the knight classes from Dragonlance and the trader class from Dark Sun and I use the classes from ad&d unearthed arcana 1st edition among the classes character can be . I did modify how cleric magic works . The way clerics gain spells is the same but it's now based on how many worshipers the deities have . So if a deitie has a small number of followers in the area they are considered demi gods for the granting of spells because their power comes from the worshipers and the more worshipers they have the more powerful they become in that area . So player clerics will go out and try to get others to follow and worship their god to be granted higher level spells in the areas with lower numbers of followers if their god . It gives them actual incentive to play their cleric as a cleric instead of a fighting healer

[@micahbarror842]

The addition of 5E's college of bards inspiration dynamic would adapt to your clerics' class. Though i am foggy on the conversion loyalty/ , Continuity, with affirmation quality time in fellowship. Converts could and should have a shared witness tie In to help with new one member' population. A wisdom proficency check incorperating random encounter's table. P.s. i do like the cypher xp usage if i am grasping your description correctly. Coming from never having played that system

[@williamlee7482]

@@micahbarror842 The cleric trying to convert the local population is based on charisma with the cleric making the check grants 10 × his level plus 10 × his charisma bonus which makes charisma a secondary stat for clerics in my game . So a 3rd level cleric with a 17 charisma can on successful charisma check can convert up to 30 + 20 for a total of 50 converts a month . Once a temple to his God is built he will attract automatically 10 converts on top of the ones he converts through preaching . A cleric can have up to 2 plus his charisma modifier in temples within a 100 mile radius which are ran by his priest followers once he reaches 10th level before then he can only have 1 temple built and has to pay any clerics he hires to lead the converts up to 100 gold a month

[@geoffdewitt6845]

Y'all are awesome! Thanks and keep that shit up!!!

[@CitanulsPumpkin]

I tie lore in with high Intelligence checks. I also homebrew the game so that everyone gets one free Intelligence "knowledge" skill, xp is run the way it is in Cypher system so that high social and knowledge checks give out as much xp as small fights, and if a player rolls a Cleric I hand them the 5 to 6 page creation myth for my world and say they've heard the whole thing 500 times but it's up to them how much their character retained and if they proselytize to their party. I also use piety and renown points because you can never have too many "gold stars" to hand out and reign in the children on the other side of the dm screen.

[@Eaglefield_]

it feels like you could have an entire episode on just the backgrounds of 5e.. OH WAIT

[@louissanchez4073]

Love y’all 🤘🏽🤓

[@FlaminTubbyToast]

I have a question for y’all that I think Jim would really enjoy. What do armies look like when they aren’t human. Specifically I have a game where there aren’t any humans. 10 foot Dragonborn and huge centaurs dot the land. Do you have any suggestions regarding their tactics. Is this a topic you’d be willing to delve into?

[@talscorner3696]

All the infomotion!

[@jasonbritnell42]

My trick is not once saying a single written word from the module I'm running (excluding NPCs & Items) I read the old whole thing myself, then prep three possible paths I think my players will most likely take over and over until the campaign is done.. my players usually go for something unprepared regardless lol.

[@simmonslucas]

This one is interesting. Queuing up for ride home!

[@WebDM]

Drive safe!

[@dodge2362]

Giving the like just for the intro.

[@jmcneil3723]

PRUIT, YOU ON FIRE HOMEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[@WeShallLoveOn]

Yeah I'm slowly inching towards having custom versions of every background/ancestry/culture that are more specific to my setting.

[@WebDM]

nice!

[@caseyheald5810]

Missed opportunity at the end of the intro. Pruitt could've gone with Web "BM" =D

[@WebDM]

Ahhh you're right

[@DaDunge]

18:00 Oh but monsters are easy if I want them in my world I put them in my world and if I don't thrn I dont put them in my world. The worst thing that can happen is that someone's backstop may have their family killed by orcs instead of goblins.

[@keithulhu]

Jim could be an announcer on NPR with his voice 🙂

[@TheCaptKankles]

Is Pruitt playing in a Hidden Fortress style campaign? That would be rad