Background Text - What do you do with it?

[catsclaw227]

I am starting the Age of Worms adventure path and our group is one session into game - we play session two this afternoon.

There is some really cool background text about the Whispering Cairn, going back to ancient history and adding other cool background events in the past 60 and 30 years ago respectively. Most of it has no bearing on the adventure whatsoever, but it is really interesting and makes up about a full page of text.

What do you do with this kind of information as a DM? When you read a prepublished adventure and there is 2-3 pages of background text about the region and the adventure and all the stuff that led up to WHY the dungeon/adventure exists, what do you do with it?

In truth, it's a lot of space taken up, and even though it contextualizes things for the GM, the other 80% of the gaming group don't get to participate in it's coolness.

Do you feed them little bits of information during the first session of the adventure, as part of the information gathering stuff - even though it's not in the "Gather Information" sidebar?

I like to let the players learn this through bardic knowledge checks or talking to their patron or whatever. Interestingly, it VERY few adventures does it mention what to actually DO with this information, instead it sits there like adventure prequel fiction.

How do you use this Adventure Background information in-game?

 

[Crothian]

I find a way for it to be useful either in the adventure or in the campaign. If I can't do that then it is wasted space.

 

[blargney the second]

If they don't find out about it during the adventure, I usually find some way to give it to them as a reward for finishing the adventure. (unless there's ongoing stuff, natch)
-blarg

 

[ST]

Well, among other things, that background information's intended for the GM to more easily get a handle on how he'll portray what's going on in the region.

There's lots of ways to do this, of course. Nobody needs to know what recent evil events have happened in a Ravenloft setting in order to be able to set the appropriate tone of dread. But since most adventures involve things like "This area is like X, usually. Now, because of Y, it's different in these ways..."

Whether or not the players know this stuff (and personally, I just tell em ahead of time if I'm going for a particular premise), the GM needs to have it presented to them. I don't consider that wasted space any more than the other non-mechanical advice on how to run the scenario.