A glorious and inspiring post at:
https://harbingergames.blogspot.com/2020/04/if-your-torches-burn-for-only-one-hour.html
talked about how a DM can prepare a glorious AD&D campaign that will really engage any player who cares about logistics or military science.
Quote:
> So if you enforce encumbrance, food, time, distance, etc. rules the characters have to be prepared and the players have to plan. This is a perfect excuse to make them interact with the world you’re building and toss in tons of details they will get no other way.
> The players will need to find sources for food and equipment, like torches or oil. This makes everyone think - where does the oil or resin come from? Can I get more/a better price if I go to the source? Are there limits? What food is available? In what season? How much? Where? etc.
> In the end the increased demand opened up trade and diplomacy between Seaward and Banath for the first time in a generation, all because the party was feeding 25 people and 20 horses in a remote area for a year as well as stocking up a mountain hidey-hole for future expeditions.
>I'd also like to note that the party did fun stuff like replacing or repairing a number of strategic doors and putting locks on them; hiding huge stashes of food, water, torches, lamp oil, candles, rope, spikes, etc. in several places; and conducting regular patrols in the upper levels. they effectively added treasure and random encounters to my dungeon.
> The party also hired factors (merchants that buy and sell for you) in 5 towns and cities, bought an inn within Esber as a base and storehouse; met with the local Baron and Bishop to smooth things over with them, and; gave generously to the poor affected by the lack of food.
> They also then had to use the mule train to get the loot from the Briars and the Mountain down to Esber, then sell everything off (taking a loss) before feeding the mules wiped out their treasure.
Golly, I wish my players were skilled enough to run in such a campaign. Just getting through that probably required years of experience in AD&D, and I can't find any players with that much experience.
The post is worth reading in full even if you hate AD&D. Its advice is very AD&D-specific, but the general principle holds even for radically different systems. If you want Vampire players to care about a Vampire chronicle, you need to flesh out your Vampire setting just as deeply as that blogger fleshed out his AD&D setting.
The problem, IMHO, is that this is a difficult art. The blogger is highly experienced and has highly compatible players. Most of us have had the experience of fleshing out a campaign that our players found utterly uninteresting. So, yes, by all means, enforce the setting rules, and flesh out your campaign to allow those rules to create emergent gameplay -- but also know your audience.