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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6714016" data-attributes="member: 4937">Rather than fudge my setting desires to match modern sensibilities, what I tend to do is simply allow PC's to be unusual members of their community.  After all, almost by definition the PC's are unusual members of their community.  What's a little more weirdness? I call cases of this, "Kraag Wurlds", with the homebrew campaign of Nitro Ferguson from Knights of the Dinner Table being the Trope Namer.   Kraag Wurlds are defined by two things.  First, a deliberately alien environment, often being alien and strange even for a fantasy world where tropes common to consensus fantasy are deliberately overturned.  And secondly, a reluctance of the DM to communicate any information to the players about the setting except through discovery during play.  You learn that orcs are always good and honorable beings, when your paladin tries to smites one and losing paladin-hood because he misunderstood the orcs ritual salute of respect (drawing a sword, beating it on their shield and shouting a ritual battle cry means, "Hello and well met.) and murdered a good creature.  You learn that elves are always cannibals when you approach them peacefully and they start shooting you with poisoned arrows.  And so forth.  None of this information which would be readily available to the people living in the setting is available to the PC's until the stumble upon it.   The quasi-legitimate justification for a Kraag Wurld is the DM has created a bunch of really cool, creative, imaginative content and he wants to surprise the player with this content in the same way a novelist surprises a reader with new content presented in the story.  Of course the difference in the media means that unlike in the novel, the DM is also surprising the character with the new content.  The intent of the DM to have twists in the story and to inspire awe or interest in the player is correct, but he's improperly applying technique.   The less legitimate desire that is usually behind a Kraag Wurld is precisely the desire to have the player's actions be marked with embarrassment and failure, so as to keep the player's beaten down and the DM firmly in control of the game.  Certainly this is not a small part of the motivation of Nitro Ferguson.</blockquote>

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