In Favour of Repetition

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It bears repeating.

One of the cheapest ways to build depth in a TTRPG setting is to reuse things. Need to introduce a NPC? It was the one that the PCs ran into a few sessions ago. Need a temple? Use the one that they went to get healing from before. Want to reinforce a theme of some kind, say oppressiveness? Have them get stopped by the guards. Again.

That is it, really. The rest of this post is some examples and expanded thoughts, because I can not leave well enough alone, and so I need to over-beat the egg with more words.

NPCs

If you have gone to the trouble of introducing an NPC, look for opportunities to reuse them, where it makes sense. Sure, there might be whole bunch of student wizards at the university, but when you roll up on campus to find someone mostly reliable who can help you out, it is going to be ol’ Jenny Waggons, a junior don at Merryweather College who shows up.

The advantages of meeting the same NPC again and again are multitudinous, but they all stem from the simple fact that the PCs can build a relationship with them over time. Eventually they will know that if they really want Jenny’s attention for something urgent, then they will need to bring some fancy pastries from Jacques’ shop on the corner of Low Street and Cresk Street. They will know that she is reliable about theory stuff, but still a little fuzzy on some of the practical, down-to-Earth realities of some weird wizard doing weird magic in a random secret library. They can compensate for this once they know about it, which is not something that they will already know when they meet a new helpful wizard every time they go to the university.

Locations

The same sort of thing holds for locations. Visiting locations before and after major evants can be a good way to show that the world is alive.

If the PCs know that the local stadium is rundown and near collapse because they have been there before, then when their supervillain nemesis, the Mask, proposes it as a meeting point, they will know that the stadium has numerous escape routes and so on and can make plans for how to handle things.

Showing changes does not need to be massively intrusive either. After the ensuing meeting with the Mask goes wrong and the northern half of the stadium collapses, later on if their route passes by it can be mentioned. Or some folks can start pushing for a new (less dangerous and destroyed) stadium in the background.

Of course, in many cases you will not need to reuse specific locations, but reusing regions does the same thing. If in one adventure the PCs head down towards the district near the railyard to investigate Paul Walthurm’s apartment, then next time you need a slightly lower-income neighbourhood, make it the one near the railyard again: you can re-use the scene-setting of the slightly shattered pavements, the cheap, dented and rusty cars, the noise every hour as the train rolls past, the smell from the mill that is loading product onto the cargo trains….

Revisiting an area also lets the PCs know what to expect for a given area: if they know the Cavalcanti family control the docks because they ran into them last time they wombled on down there, they will know that going to speak to Tino Cavalcanti before barging in is a good idea. Or maybe they can use the fact that the Cavalcantis are dealing with a turf war with the Morrellos as a distraction or as additional leverage, or something else. The point here is just that knowing about the area, even without mechanics, feeds into a more satisfyingly interactive world.

Themes

The same sort of thing holds for themes. If one of the things you want to drive home is oppression, then you need to keep oppressing the PCs: having them stopped by authorities while doing nothing major, having them needing to pass security checkpoints to get anywhere, having people being watched on the streets. If a theme is the power of hope then small acts of hope achieving big things should be something that happens often.

In general then, repetition of the things that you want the game to be centred around is good, although it can be overdone if everything is theme-related.

General Worldbuilding

Not mentioned above (so this is a bonus for those who want to handle additional waffle): if you are working with an unfamiliar setting, then reusing small details can build up a tapestry of realness. Advertising of particular food products, off-hand mention of specific companies by NPCs (or in item descriptions), certain saints being invoked for consistent problems (who would ask St Hilda for help on a journey? – that is St Christopher’s remit), mentions of important NPCs well before the PCs are expected to interact with them (if they ever do)….

It all makes a world feel lived in. Players might respond more to some of these than others, but they will all help, especially with consistent play in the same setting.