Edit sorry I was way to vague and bad explained question. But great explanation everyone.
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 have been planing to start looking for players soon but I struggling as I don’t want to give them a whole novel of mostly boring lore dump but sending them like two sentients feels just silly.
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?
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 :)