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Message: <blockquote data-quote="nopantsyet" data-source="post: 1281406" data-attributes="member: 3109">My personal and bound to incite flames opinion is that you should ignore the ones who said to reveal information gradually.  Withholding information as a strategy will result in frustrated players.  They will care less because they will feel like no matter how brilliant they are, they will never learn anything faster they your caprice dictates.  The point I think many people miss when they run a nonstandard homebrew is that you have to provide a working system.  You can't just arbitrarily change things and then force-feed that to the players.  Again--the road to frustration.  I'm running a homebrew with a very convoluted government.  It's a cross between a parliamentary republic and a socialist protectorate based on aspects of several renaissance governments as well as enlightenment political philosophy.  As pointed out by many people, I could provide a ten-page handout explaining the government that, if it was read in entirety, would likely be forgetten in equal entirety.  Or I could reveal it gradually, as recommended by others.  And bit by bit, over months of play, the players would finally come to understand what the government is and how it works.  But they would not remember everything, most likely forgetting the important things and only remembering the peculiar things.Instead, you have to present information in a manner that justifies its significance and has in-game meaning to the players.  In this case, the players decided they wanted to find out about ships expected in port.  So they were advised to inquire at the Ministerial, the main government building.  Once there, they were compelled to wade through a maze of bureaucracy which gave them a glimpse into how things actually work within the government, how it views its citizens and interests, etc.  In fifteen minutes of roleplaying, they understood more about the government than they would have gotten from any other means.  But more importantly, they had a reason to care.  They learned that there are vast resources within the government, however it is not an efficient organization, and its interests are not necessarily aligned with yours.  An added benefit was that they got more of a sense of the feel of the homebrew world than any amount of flavor text could ever provide.What I'm driving at is what many people seem to be missing.  Context.  For any information to be learned, there has to be a reason to learn it, a reason for it to be available, and a price to be paid for the learning.  If you are missing any of those things, you're just dangling a carrot in front of your players and calling them mule.  But if there is sense to your system, if there are explanations for the existence and availability of information, if there is meaning behind the information itself, your players will learn more, and more importantly, they will value and retain what they've learned.Plus, learning by experience allows them to make their own value judgements of the world, which will get them involved and, in many cases, interested in changing or participating in it.</blockquote>

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