The most common mistake you make is to identify a RPG where you see a tab of your character with many attractive statistics. Sure, the character sheet is an important aspect, but it is not the only one. What is important in an RPG is to play a definite role, a figure parallel, our alter ego in the game, which will have its own moral goals, things that he likes and dislikes. These elements are ends in themselves but if there is no real comparison with the world around us. Our choices and our way of thinking are closely related places, people and situations that we have to know and meet, in life as well in the game.
For this reason, the setting in an RPG is the most important because without it the character would be a simple data sheet devoid of spirit. My character in a given game may be a vampire with a number of peculiarities dictated by the regulation, but this is something of no value if it takes on specific characteristics related to the environment. Playing a vampire in D & D or Vampire, or do so in a precise historical period rather than another, or in a more or less characterized by magic, completely changes the way we see and interpret, that vampire.
We can compare the setting to a kind of stage setting, an RPG is often compared to acting, because in fact we recite the part of our character, by the more mundane to the most complex. The setting is the background on which we recite the part, and you must report it.
Structuring setting, of course, is complicated and complex thing. According to the adventures that the master plan and will play, it is good to make a variety of issues, the space within which the characters are going to move, the main PNG of history, the thoroughness and detail in describing environments that may be useful or create unexpected inconsistencies with the story you have in mind. For this always comes in handy, in my view, to rely on reference environment already created by others. Most of the time an RPG has already given the basic building blocks for the environment (a game like Vampire has several basic elements as the story where the vampires are born, the 13 clans, guilds like the Camarilla, but allows be in different places and eras with PNG are always different, all of which must be decided and assembled by the Master), or it may refer in part to past events and historical periods by automatically providing a considerable background (take for example Lex Arcana, that although there is also the magic of the way, refers to the period and places of Ancient Rome). Finally, there are games that have a detailed regulation and that, although presenting a setting of the basic regulation that is completely detached from it and can adapt to several of them (such as D & D, which present numerous locations, to which fits the basic Regulation).
The elements which make up the environment are different and often unrelated. You can imagine it as a sort of history book, because in it converge all the typical elements that characterize a society through the ages. Elements such as history, geography, trade, the characters and their history, the various nations, the presence of various creatures that inhabit that world, the relationship that exists between these creatures, the moral behind this world .. . each element is useful for characterizing that world. As it happens, not infrequently, that game players do not set a priori elements emerge from the environment, the knowledge of all is a key to fall in with inconsistencies.
Through the bond that is created with the setting, characters can bring out, bring out the character and desires of your character, and at the same time have the elements to do their alter ego with logic and consistency. Returning to our initial knowledge of being a vampire in itself means nothing, but the game set in a world where vampires have very secret societies evolved and branched out with several goals (good or bad they are) or a world where vampires are just lonely abominations that link only to kill, it completely changes the way you play, even if you have the same card and the same character with the same fears and desires.
If the player is able to empathize with the best in given that background, it should do the interpretation itself, and the Master is able to bring out the best that character, making him evolve accordingly. In the same way as in a symbiotic relationship, the same environment will evolve according to the choices and actions of the character. Indeed, it is almost an indispensable, because species do not have anything more serious than setting static and devoid of development. We just sort of faded photograph that eventually will end up forgotten.
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