What Type of Details Do People Want in the Description/Book of a Campaign Setting?

[RedMage125]

Interesting you actually choose those two as examples of things not relevant to character creation. In my personal experience most players' first question on a campaign setting regard the prevalence of magic, which would effect whether they would play a caster or not, and up close to the second most asked questions are on the relations between countries, so that they know not to pick PC races that would conflict with each other if included in a party. May I ask why you find these details irrelevant, because that certainly seem to be a deviant, but not necessarily wrong, opinion on the matter?

If the prevalence of magic is significant of a difference from most standard D&D settings, then yes, that is one of those "relevant to character creation" type of details. But a lot of players who like playing spellcasters have a class or two that they prefer to play, regardless.

And relations between countries might be something I'd bring up on a case-by-case basis if it's going to be relevant. Example: if the Wood Elves and Forest Gnomes don't get along, and one of your players makes a Forest Gnome, then only bring it up if a player says they'd like to play a Wood Elf.

I don't have any plans for publishing the campaign setting as in selling it persay, but I was going to post it over a couple of forums that anyone who wishes to could use it. In all honesty though, I have my doubts that anyone except for me will actually use it. Who knows though, maybe a player of mine might get inspired to DM their own campaign in it ? Regardless, the book would be much more written for my own benefit than anything else.

Then it's a lot like my campaign world binder. My handouts to players are fairly short, and focus largely on what's different from Core assumptions, or to highlight special case scenarios. Races, for example. I classify all races in the game as Green Light, Yellow Light, or Red Light. Green Light is allowable with no special considerations, even if there may be some more detail about how that race fits in to my world (Dragonborn are a great example. I have a whole continent filled with them, and ruled over by dragons, and has a very "Oriental Adventures" kind of theme. But many dragonborn families emigrated to the main continent a few generations ago, and some abandoned their old culture, some did not. That just gives the player some detail about how his dragonborn can fit into my world). Yellow Light is allowable, but there is some kind of restriction, usually a background issue (My favorite example here is drow. I detest the "drizzt clone" archetype, to include all "rebels from the Underdark" themes. There are, however, 2 settlements of drow living on the surface in my world. A small town made up of a lot of drow who are-or are descended from-Underdark refugees, and a single large city that-for reasons that would take too long to go into-is accepting of surface drow. Point is, drow PCs were born and lived their entire life on the surface, and have never even met a cleric of Lolth). Red Light is made up of those races that my default answer is "no". Now story trumps any other kind of restriction for me, however. So I may not have a lot of detail as to what lizardfolk society is like, other than primitive swamp-dwellers, and lizardfolk outside those tribes are SUPER rare, but if a player impresses me with a VERY detailed characterization and background for a lizardfolk character...I may relent and allow it.

So I just gave a lot of detail there, but for the most part, I hand out a single sheet of paper with an itemized list under "Green/Yellow/Red Light", and the aforementioned table with brief table for deities relevant to player characters. Back when I did it in 4e, some classes were Green/Yellow/Red light as well. I haven't run a game in awhile, so I have not yet examined some of the post-PHB subclasses for how they may fit into my world. If a player was interested in a drow, for example, they will ask "why is drow 'Yellow Light'? What's the restriction there?", and then I will give those details.

I have introduced exactly six new races to the campaign setting, and there is a possibility for more of them to be added, but I doubt it. Why do you ask?

I ask because it was relevant to your question about what to include for races. Do Elves, Dwarves, Gnomes, and Halflings conform to PHB norms? If yes, then there's very little to say about them, and I certainly wouldn't include anything like physical description or anything else redundant with the PHB.

If you have 6 whole new races, I would create a second "races handout", to show to players. The reason I mentioned using the 3e Eberron Campaign Setting as an example, is because the Race section of that book introduced 4 new races. Each race got a fairly detailed writeup about their physical description, culture, place in the world, followed by the crunchy bits of their actual racial stats. And then what followed was a short section on each of the PHB races, and how the were different in Eberron. Elves, for example, gave a short description about the Aerenai Elves, the Valenar Elves, and the rest of Khorvarian Elves. Halflings section talked a bit about the Talenta Halfling culture, and so on.

I would, however, preface this handout with a brief list and description. Example: The Nemo: A race of fish-like humanoids who can travel on land if need be (+2DEX/+1CON, abilties related to water). Followed by another short one-line description for each of the other races.

Look, the bottom line is that you don't want to bore your players who are just there to play a game. Yes, you may be fortunate to be blessed with some in-depth role players who really want to immerse themselves in the world before they even make a character. But you may not. And your handouts to players should provide useful information while not alienating or boring the crap out of the less invested players (who will, hopefully, get drawn in to the world once the story starts more). Provide more detail as it is requested from the ones who want it.

Above all, and I am assuming here that most of your players have played D&D before and know the basics, your handouts to your players should emphasize what's different about YOUR world. If there are no kenku or tabaxi in your world, say so. If paladins are only trained by formal knightly orders, say so. Have a brief synopsis for all them to read, with more details available upon request. I would make any handout that I'm giving to all my players no longer than a single sheet. Printed double-sided if you just REALLY can't shorten it any more.