New to DMing

So I am fairly new despite my hours on account. My main question is for adventures. What information upfront do you give your players? Are all the introductions simply just to get you (the DM) ready for the basic foundation of the adventure? What do some of you guys read in say session 0 to get them prepared for whats to come? Running DoIP now and its going well but alot of the info I feel like they never get or hear. Is it up to them to pull out the story from npcs?

It is a good idea to keep the backstory brief. Consider the average attention span and reduce by 90%. Try to build the opening so they arrive as an encounter begins. "You ride along the _______ road, as you round the bend you see the _______ being ______ by _______. Upon defeating the [easy encounter]. The [rescued NPC] gratefully fills them in on the [major story line / Opposition du Jour] and points them to the next NPC on the chain." If you can spice it up; find good portraits of the NPCs, if you can do distinct voices or accents, if you do music [low volume], you can give major NPCs / Opponents a leitmotif, whenever they appear. An old trick is to decide on a person from a TV show, movie or book and associate them with an NPC, you know exactly how Innkeeper Olaf is going to react because he is Cartmann from Southpark, or Friday from Dragnet. The first 20 or so years are the hardest part of GMing...

al e. said: It is a good idea to keep the backstory brief. Consider the average attention span and reduce by 90%. I'm not sure if I am a horrible human being for laughing about that statement or not. Nicholas, the problem with answering questions like this when dealing with a role-playing game is that players are different.  Some players just want to roll dice, kill things, and take their stuff.  All that fussy backstory, conversation, and any other blah, blah, blah from the DM is just holding up the show of rolling dice, killing things, and taking their stuff.  Any of that "story" stuff should be kept to a minimum with the sole intent of just setting up the next slaughter. Some players will read anything you give them, will listen (and take copious notes) to anything an npc says that seems to shed any light on the world and whatever events are going on around the PCs.  What is going on in the world, both local and larger, is of great interest.  All this story "stuff" is the main thing and combat should only happen when/if it actually has a place in moving the story or environment forward. A lot of players are probably somewhere between those 2 examples.  I'm not trying to say those are  really the 2 ends of the player spectrum either, since they are just attitudes I have encountered within the groups in which I play and DM on Roll20. The real question is: Do your players seem to be looking for more info in-game?   If so, give it to them somehow (as al e. mentioned above).  If they are having fun without it and/or just don't seem interested when you offer setting info, then maybe you have a group that just doesn't care.  One thing you can do is make handouts available with any info you thing they might find helpful.  This is especially good for things that might be "common knowledge" to anyone familiar with the area.  Players that are interested will read it and will likely bring that info into how their characters interact with the world on their own.  The ones who aren't interested will likely continue to be uninterested, but may take some cues from those who are. Basically, get to know your players.  That will let you know how much info they are interested in dealing with.

Nicholas C. said: So I am fairly new despite my hours on account. My main question is for adventures. What information upfront do you give your players? Are all the introductions simply just to get you (the DM) ready for the basic foundation of the adventure? What do some of you guys read in say session 0 to get them prepared for whats to come? For me, session 0 is for building characters, laying out the world basics, tying the character's backstories to that world, and lay out expectations for the game about to be played. Since you're running a published module, make sure the players know they're expected to play that module, and use session 0 to build characters that fit those parameters.  Nicholas C. said: Running DoIP now and its going well but alot of the info I feel like they never get or hear. Is it up to them to pull out the story from npcs? Some of that info isn't for them; it's for you to better understand the setting. Remember, your players don't know what you miss or forget or get wrong; as long as the story is progressing & all are having fun you're doing it correctly.  The story isn't what is in the book, the Story is happening on the tabletop... that book is just there for your benefit. All you gotta do is give em enough to chase the boar & dragon, if they're doing that don't sweat the rest. 

* Standard Attention Span is about the length of a half column of a newspaper, or 500 words. In radio we used a standard of 50 words for news stories, this is about the limit for a verbal info dump. You should rewrite the important stuff for two reasons, a. You will know what the author meant. & b. You will not stumble over the words or phrasing. Try writing a small scene roughly balanced to one from the material you are using. Run both scenes, notice how much better the one you wrote runs.