As I find myself running 2 campaigns in the Forgotten Realms I've realized I need a better grasp of this setting, or at least of the Sword Coast. This was not the case when I just ran The Lost Mine of Phandelver or The Forge of Fury. But as I link these adventures together and the party wishes to return to Phandalin to keep a promise before proceeding to Undermountain in Waterdeep, the transition from loosely connected adventures into ongoing campaign demands it. Simultaneously I have a party ready to move beyond Greenest and up the Trade Way in pursuit of the Hoard of the Dragon Queen, the threshold over which a single adventure turns into a campaign. It's here I find that to provide any flavorful transition, or to convey any of the uniqueness of this realm, I need more experience with it. This leads me to a few conclusions.
First, obviously it is easier to improvise in a world of your own making without conflicting with established lore. Second, unless you've done significant adventuring in a world yourself, and even then it would be colored by the portrayal of your GM, you must do a significant amount of reading regarding the chosen universe to hope to weave convincing opportunities therein. Both of which raise the questions: Just how much does a GM need to understand a setting to run an adventure in it? What is the rate of return on time invested consuming or creating setting material in terms of how much it enhances the adventure and the campaign?
While I can only speculate at this stage in my GMing career, having only completed two campaigns over 3 years in a world of my own making prior to the situation I outlined at the beginning, I will hazard to guess that a single, smaller adventure will generally be self-sustaining in the setting knowledge required to run it. It's as one attempts to link adventures in different locales of the same world, or runs a larger campaign spanning multiple areas, that one must have a stronger grasp of the surrounding area in order to give it any more than the thinnest descriptive color. At which point the GM may be better off skipping any pretense of descriptive color because should the PCs' imaginations be captured enough to attempt interaction with it, the GM may quickly find themselves throwing up construction zones, clumsily redirecting the PCs, or desperately improvising on top of what little idea they had regarding the contents of the area.
This is is precisely the weakness of published modules. They must necessarily be modular, making few demands of the game world and foisting no additional world-spanning assumptions upon it, leaning entirely on the GM to smooth any discrepancies with its established lore and provide the connective tissue between denizens or adventures held therein. While the PCs are often the single unifying thread, short of hopping from universe to universe with each adventure safe in the assumptions of its own ecosystem, some effort must be put forth on the part of the GM should anyone deign to give even a passing glance to the world fabric between adventuring locations.
I pose many questions and offer few answers save truisms: the more experienced a GM is with a given setting, whether published or of their own design, the more capable they will be of running a rich, meaningful, and flavorful campaign that truly conveys the open-ended magic menagerie of choices offered uniquely to players of tabletop RPGs.
I will also point out it will be difficult to afford the wonder and respect due a GM and the adventuring world should any player at the table sufficiently exceed the GM in knowledge of that world. This is true of setting lore, as well as rules and any implications in between. This is perhaps the greatest argument in favor of GMs creating their own worlds. Knowledge of that world should primarily be gained through play within it, and the mystery maintained by the one holding mastery over it, eschewing any outside source that would intentionally or mistakenly subvert it.
Finally it occurs to me that as with fine intoxicants, novelty is often a detriment to the reliable, multi-faceted experience of age. The characters that necessarily develop over a long-running campaign will always be more memorable and more personal than shiny new abilities and personalities. The world that grows and persists with the passage of these characters, the years that pass in a universe shared by a consistent group of players even as their characters retire or die, and they start anew with fresh characters and adventures both, offer a far more satisfying RPG experience than weekend trysts or summer romances. The GMs that have invested decades into their craft, whether across many worlds or just a few, are treasures that cannot be underestimated.
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