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?
Personally I would always ask the DM how my desired race fits into their world. If I’m playing a religious character I’d also ask them to explain the how religion works in their world.
Dose it need a written form so you can look over in peace and quite. Or could it be like three sentences more getting sense of it and if you have further question you could ask the DM?
This would be a conversation I’d have with my DM during character creation. And the level of detail depends on the DM. If the DM says “they’re like regular elves but blue”, then that’s easy. But if the DM says “they’re nothing like regular elves, you need to read this 3-page short story in order to understand elves in my setting” then I probably just wouldn’t play an elf.
In my experience as a DM, players don’t like the information overload of a handout that covers things they don’t need to know about.