If you start playing as a player in a homebrew world that I built. How little information would you feel needed to be able read before you can build a character in it?

I mean, nothing. I’ll just assume standard fantasy tropes exist somewhere, keep my pitch brief and anywhere I need proper names you’ll get or whatever.

It’s not ideal but I’ve done it plenty of times.

Not to mention would you as a player like reference to other mediums so you could quickly know what to expect or would you rather have a in game view of it?

Comparisons with other media can be a powerful shorthand, but reference the wrong things and it can be extremely off-putting. Over the years I’ve learned that DMs referencing some media, even things I like, can be a massive red flag. Nothing triggers my flight instinct from a game quicker than seeing the advert reference anime.

For my homebrew world, I wrote a two page document covering:

• Geography: the rough layout of their starting city (the main districts and well-known landmarks), the main species that can be seen around the city (they’re not limited to playing these, but I think it’s helpful if you’re going to play a dragonborn to know whether you’re an outsider in this city or not), and a high-level sentence each on the handful of main locations that can be easily travelled to from the city - i.e. the stuff that any resident should know.

• Magic and religion: the pantheon of major gods and their domains, and a line noting there are other religious/magical traditions but most residents of the city would be unfamiliar with them.

• Politics: how the city is governed, who the noble houses are, and what reputation is widely known about each of them (not all of these are deserved…)

• History: some very high-level history of the city and world (at the level that an average resident would know - the equivalent of the name of this world’s Roman Empire who founded the city, and what happened to them).

I figured that two pages is short enough for anyone to read and get some sense of the world I’m dropping them in, without going into so much detail that it takes away their ability to explore the world (which is dramatically bigger than the city).

There’s also no real cost to people not remembering what’s in the two-pager - people can get away with assuming it’s a fairly generic fantasy world at first and I can easily resupply key info while DMing - but I figure most players like to know a bit about the game world before they start.

Give them no more than a page. However, you should also be able to boil your setting down to a sentence. “It’s kinda somewhere between Mass Effect’s story and the world of Dragon Age, but more low-tech” was my elevator pitch to my players.

You need enough lore to explain where the PCs fit into the world, both for their races/backgrounds and for their current adventure. Some of this can be plenty vague: you don’t need to know everything about the elven city states yet, just that they exist and one of your PCs grew up there. You don’t need an entire pantheon, just the gods your PCs worship. The details that are most important are for the local area: what might the PCs need to know, and what would they want to see? Who runs the town? Where are the rat catchers going? And what will hook them on their next adventure?

Generally I start with a vibe, usually generic fantasy land since that’s what people are most familiar with.

Then I plan out the local town and the countryside around it: Portland Court used to be an ancient tiefling city-state but that was so long ago the only real reminders of that era are the large basalt bricks people still recycle for building and the occasional weird bones folks still find in the nearby fields. Now it’s mostly just humans doing what humans do, scratching out a living using whatever they can. The name court refers to the central open market and the successful merchants who are the defacto leaders of the community.

Then I work with the PCs for a little background. There’s a dwarf in my party and she hails from the nearby Iron Mountains. A cleric worships Sol and Luna, twin gods who embody the sun and moon. There’s also a halfling who grew up south of the Court, in the Roving Prairies.

Finally I try to fit everything together: the local merchants need guards for a caravan going to the next town over because the demon-worshipping cultists who want to revive the dead empire keep knocking over wagons and stealing goods. This is good tension even if it’s not very original. Plus it gives the party opportunities to continue adventuring and, if they choose, learn more about the ancient history most people would rather keep forgotten. The merchants will need more help, and the cultists will keep escalating until someone does something about it once and for all.

Hope that makes sense. I like to start small and build up as the party adventures and the stakes get higher, with just enough thought out that I can give the worldbuilding direction when I go back to it.

I’d say I need to know enough to play a character that grew up in that world. Which means I need to understand the things that a person who grew up in the world would know. That includes things like:

• The biome and general weather conditions of the region I grew up in.
• Any particularly notable features of my region and its society.
• The local laws, structure of government, how much respect or obedience I must pay to my betters.
• General history of the last 25-45 years that affected my region of the world (increase timespan by 50 to 100 years if I am an elf or other long-lived race). This need only be the highlights and things that directly affected my people, not all minutiae.
• What gods are worshipped, and how are they worshipped. For example, does an average farmer pray exclusively to the god of farming, or do they pray to whichever God is appropriate for the situation they’re praying about?
• Who are the most famous people in the world and why are they famous?
• Who are the most powerful known people in my region and how powerful are they?
• What kind of creatures are considered common annoyances, and what kinds are considered serious threats, to villages, towns, and cities respectively?
• Demographics of my region - what percentage of the population is demihuman, what percentage is of the monstrous humanoid races, etc.
• What races are considered normal in my region, and which are tolerated, which are reviled, which are kill-on-sight: basically, who are the people of my region racist against?

However, there are things people commonly write in homebrew world documents that I do not need to know. These include:

• Creation of the world and its gods.
• History of godly struggles.
• History of kingdoms and empires that existed more than a couple elven lifetimes ago.
• Geography of regions not immediately adjacent to my home region.
• Lineage of Queens and nobles, etc.
• Cosmology of the planes.

Some of these may be needed for specific characters, but most characters don’t need this information because they would not know it.

Only the bare minimum to run the narrative arc. I don’t need to know how many gods created your world, or how many cities with unpronounceable names there are out there. Keep that info handy in case it comes up (for example, the pantheon may come up if we seek refuge in a church, or there’s religious tension in the country or whatever), but don’t spend 30 minutes telling me the minute details of your world, because I’ll probably forget by the time we play together again next week.

I only need to know what my character knows

For most people/characters, that’s a fairly minor amount that has be be “preloaded”. While we, as real people, have a pretty good idea of the history of the world, the basics of how that world works, and major social facts, we don’t know a ton of detail about most things. More importantly, if we had players, they wouldn’t need most of that to get started.

You go into play knowing you don’t know everything. But you know that your character knows things you don’t know. But you won’t need to know the details of that until the character needs to use that knowledge.

It’s really a lot like reading the first book in a series for the first time. You may have heard a little about things, but you go into it hoping/trusting that the author/DM is going to provide enough world as you go to be immersive.

You don’t need anything more than the blurb on the back of a book to get started.

The prices of rolling up a character provides the first steps of that. Ideally, that’s followed by session 0, which lets the player know what kind of things the character knows, and gives them that hook to get them into the game/story.

That’s it. As long as I have reason to believe that the GM/DM has the intent to take me on a good ride, I’m ready before I pick up the dice to make a character.

Shit, 9/10 the fact that someone has put enough thought into things to ask me to join in would be good enough to make a character. Not that anyone does, I’m forever DM, but I would lol. It’s been twenty-odd years since the last time I got to play as a player. Wasn’t great tbh.

But, like, if you came up to me irl, and asked this, that would be enough to make me willing to try. Well, after I freaked out that a stranger on the internet was there, then threatened them a few times lol. Bad jokes aside, if someone knows me well enough to ask me this kind of question, that’s enough for me. It means they’ve got a plan.

Now, I would hope that the prospective GM had their shit together. A concept, the basic history of what led to where the characters will start, any deviations from any established systems they drew from, and a decent idea of what kind of future the world holds.

I’ve played and DMed enough to be willing to trust a good bit. I’d rather know the bare minimum to get started and discover the rest on the way :)

Personally I would always ask the DM how my desired race fits into their world. If I’m playing a religious character I’d also ask them to explain the how religion works in their world.

I would do this in various level of details in a document. Start with with an elevator pitch blurb that is a a short paragraph. This will give details like dnd fantasy but .

Then get into details about what the starting city and maybe the main enemy or theme if it’s known. Then plan on having a proper session 0 where you place people in your world together. Make sure to end with a practice combat or short adventure to get the sea legs on the new characters

As long as they can ask then I feel a paragraph or two should be enough. Depends on how alien it is I guess.

I’m a player in such a world. Granted it uses the faerun pantheon but that’s it.

I think having a little area that has some history, interesting characters and “ongoings” is pretty good. It doesn’t have to be deep, but if you have a bit planned out it can easily seem that the players can find “lore” everywhere they look.

Then as time goes on, and they explore and ask more questions, you can start filling in the gaps in-between sessions or improvise them on the fly (based on things you already worked on for example).

Have your characters be from Somewhere Else and and make being in a strange place part of the story and any “lack of info” becomes a feature instead of a bug.

Have premade lists of random names for people, places, etc. and cross off stuff as you use it.

Don’t be afraid to let the players do some work to fill in lore: Character 1:“GM, which town has the best smithy?” GM: “Character 2, you said your father was a smith. Which town did he always talk about?” GM: “Character 3, why is Character 2’s dad mistaken?”

Lastly ChatGPT can help with this a LOT. Feed it a few prompts about a place or thing and ask it to generate a few points of interest.

I haven’t seen this mentioned yet, but I feel like a world map is important. It doesn’t have to be a work of art, even a rough sketch of a continent shape with a couple landmarks and a You Are Here sign will do. For me, being able to visualize a map of the world and my character’s position on it helps me place my character in the context of the world. This is doubly true if your campaign has a lot of travel, as many do.

Have much more written than you initially tell the players. Not because you’re trying to keep a lot of it secret, but because as you said you don’t want to loredump. That said, if players start poking around with reasonable questions, you should have some answers prepared. If they don’t ask, then they don’t ask.

I’d say your players and you should both agree on all the lore relevant to their backstory. If you’ve got a dwarf, you don’t need all the lore on all things dwarvish but you should both agree how their home clan or town or whatever works.

If all the players are coming from somewhere else and meeting in a place that none of their characters have been in before, this will be a good excuse to put in hooks. Example: All the players traveled by boat to a city, for various individual reasons. In the city you can have statues of your homebrew gods around. Hey if the players stop and ask, or read the plaque, they get some info. If they don’t they don’t. Same deal with the rest.

You should know in broad terms what the gods are like, what magic is like, what the major cities/states are like (you don’t need micro detail just enough to flesh in later), and then more detail on what the immediate location is like. If you have a gimmick, introduce it early.

Highly advise you have a notebook ready so that when you make something up on the spot during a session you also write it down and add it to your worldbible so that you don’t contradict yourself in front of players later.

For my game, I did the pantheon, which I think is very important, because you’re likely to have players that want to be involved with some god(s) in some way. From there, I wrote a creation myth that involved the explanation of the geography of the starting zone, which fed into blurbs on the cultures of the main countries, and the politics of their relationships with each other. Then, the most important part, the reason that the players will be embarking on an adventure. Not the specifics, as those should be left to the players, just an idea of what they’ll be doing, and some examples of why characters from different places in the world might decide to become adventurers.