My own thoughts on "Homework" in RPGs.

An interesting topic came up over on The Nine and Thirty Kingdoms blog earlier in the week, concerning "homework" that players would have to do to be able to participate in an RPG. The thought started over on Necropraxis, and also spawned a reply at Chicagowiz's Games blog and a followup post on Nine and Thirty.

Now I know I'm sort of riding coat tails here, but I felt it a bit topical as I enjoy a good open sandbox of a game and linear-ish adventures equally. I mean, my white whale is running the complete (ish again) Dragonlance modules, so I can't say I'm total on board for minimal background knowledge on the players part. To run that, you would have to know more then a handful of bullet points as they suggested. Though Chicagowiz has a two step system -a quick page for handing out at games/conventions and a full on wiki- for his campaign world. Which seems to strike a good balance between the two. I would highly encourage you to read what they said, not just because their interesting reads, but their also better writers then I.

My own addition to the conversation goes to both sides: an even more minimal approach, that I used once, simply focuses on the game's overall tone. Conversely, there is a minimum amount of background that would be required to actually be ready for a Dragonlance Classic campaign.

For minimal I present my short lived FATE Starship Troopers game, the set of power point slides I whipped up to show my players, that pretty much summed up my thoughts on the various version of SSTs. 

Using the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly motif, I laid out my thoughts on the game's tone. Keeping their -player's characters- tone in line with the novel or the better adaptions that were the animated movie (Traitor of Mars wasn't around yet) and show, would be okay. Dipping into the movies would cause a nudge from me, and uttering the phrase -after we started; I let them get it out of their systems up front- "Would you like to know more?" would incur a painfully stiff penalty.* Thankfully I never had to use the penalty. The game started well, and if our schedules hadn't caused the game to disintegrate, our group might have had more adventures.

My approach was fairly similar to the keep it simple approaches used in the above posts. My homebrew setting details also only filled the front of a page because FATE is a very off the cuff system to begin with. The emphasis was on enjoyment and playing the game, not being overly detailed.

On the other end of things, the minimum background needed for the Dragonlance Classics modules is a bit more involved. In no particular order, players would have to know about:

• The Cataclysm 
• The Pantheon of gods and their absence
• Various races - Three major races of Dwarves; three races of Elves; dozens of races of Humans; the walking aggravations that are Gnomes and Kender; and the "Goblinoid" races. And thats just what characters might know, otherwise that list is huge. 
• Each races internal "pecking order", and how much all the races distrust/hate each other. Not to mention the various feuds that includes.
• Magic, its three schools/moons, and the rules system that goes with them
• Steel is more important than gold.
• No clerical magic (thus no healing spells) and possible persecution for those that find it  (to start) 

And thats if your not using the Innfellows (characters of the books) for characters and their back stories. Because it is a set of modules, you can't just off the cuff run things, particularly with the fact that many of its pieces are tied to specific locations in the world.**

A final thought, if you were to run a game set in the Star Wars or Star Trek universes, what would you expect the players to know? Just the movies/TV shows? Both in the case of Star Trek? If everyone is mostly familiar with the setting, would homework even be necessary?

---

*As you might guess, I really don't like the live action movies, nor Traitor of Mars. The tone is completely opposite of the book's and as much as I like Robocop, Verhoeven blew it when he made the movie. Imagine the shit storm that would have happened if the guys who made the Dungeons and Dragons movie, slapped a layer of Lord of the Rings over it. The second animated movie had the same writer as the three live action movies and it shows.

**I know DLC catches flak for railroading, but it is set in a series of novels, so its kinda of implied. The fact that it pretty much caused all following modules to be railroads is a very valid point, and I don't try to fight it.