Best of the Web - Writing your Players Guide, Gatekeepers, and Encounters tables

Welsh Piper has an interesting post Writing your Players Guide, in which he talks about a setting primer. 

a written primer is exactly what you want to include in your gazetteer. You just need to make sure it includes the right content. Timelines and background are boring and usually irrelevant to new PCs. Allow me to let you in on an open secret: Players are notoriously uninterested in your brilliant ideas; when primers fail, it’s because they focus too much on the GM’s creativity, not the players’ needs. 

Your players’ guide needs to be all about the players. Every aspect should answer questions the players will ask when they’re rolling up characters. The goal here is engagement – players are interested in the setting when they’re interested in their characters – make the players’ guide about them, and they’ll be open to your everything else your setting has to offer.

This aligns with my own thinking, somewhat. The idea is to circumvent the more obvious questions before they are even asked. The primer should be a page, two pages max. It should include a short bit about the kingdom or realm, factions, and the gods. Maybe the history of the last decade or two to help the player visualize the world. 

Additional volumes can be created later if you want to add additional depth but certainly aren't necessary and if you fancy yourself a writer this is the place for the purple prose, not the actual adventures because you really don't want long stretches of boxed text to read and putting that sort of thing into a hand-out allows the players to study it during slower times.

Greyhawk Grognard has a post titled The OSR has no Gatekeepers. I always thought this idea was clear but lately not so much. The OSR is a movement like the renaissance. There are no leaders, just some folk with similar do it yourself attitudes some of whom get more notice than others. Some folks want to create an alternate version of the OSR with a new name because they don't like some of the members of the OSR and don't want to be lumped into the same box. That just seems silly to me. 

Scrap Princess at Monster Manual Sewn from Pants has some thoughts on Keystone Species Encounter Tables. The idea is that some beasts dominate their ecosystem and encounter tables can be created around that fact to make a unique environment. I really like the idea, except I'd add to Scrap Princess's example by including some large 'don't mess with me' herbivores. Not a Rhino, Elephant, or Triceratops but something that fits that same environmental niche. Something even the scariest predator probably wants to think twice before they engage.

Noisms at Monsters and Manuals has some ideas on Dynamic/Nested Encounter Tables that I can't stop thinking about. It's an old post but eye opening. I think if I ditch the idea might /replace some of my current subtables.