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Message: <blockquote data-quote="rounser" data-source="post: 226611" data-attributes="member: 1106">A pet peeve of mine with many published modules is that they come up with a background story to set the adventure up, and then never reveal what that background was to the players even when they've finished the adventure.   From the perspective of everyone playing who's not the DM, the entire excursion seems just as arbitrary as if there was no back story at all.  It's a fairly consistent problem with adventures from Dungeon magazine in particular - great background story and justification for setup, but no way to share it with the PCs, so from the player's perspective, the details of this romp seem just as arbitrary and fabricated as the last.It's a subtle form of poor design because I don't think many people recognise it, and it seems especially prevalent among adventures with complex background stories.  An adventure that "makes sense" because it reveals it's background somehow to the PCs, or at least gives them a realistic opportunity to do so, is considerably superior in terms of cohesion to one that doesn't bother and just justifies itself to the DM, IMO.Not every adventure should make sense from the PC's perspective, but I think that most should.  There's a reason why Scooby Doo had an exposition at the end to explain the happenings of each episode - and although I'm not suggesting that approach in particular, it's there for good reason.</blockquote>