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Message: <blockquote data-quote="flametitan" data-source="post: 6915629" data-attributes="member: 6822731">My counterpoint is probably cliche, but: Star Wars. Without the expanded universe, we know next to nothing about Tarkin or the Emperor, and yet they're still interesting to watch. They don't have complex goals, but I like watching them interact, and consider their performances memorable. To me, that's more important than the actual "fleshing out" of character motivations. And that's what I mean. Heaps of background is all for naught if all you do is roll your eyes and groan when the character is on stage.Having background is nice. Curse of Strahd has background. Background, however, isn't always good. Background is space that could be used to have more events in the book. Background also needs to be relevant to the plot, or in some way accessible to players. If it isn't, then it's utterly irrelevant wasted space.Princes of the Apocalypse, as much as I like the premise, has that problem. The first chapter of the book is dedicated to the background of the adventure, but the characters have no means of accessing, or even learning about the "Elemental Eye," making his presence utterly wasted space. And as far as I can tell, the only actual way to learn about the creation of the weapons is to backtrack out of the megadungeon (Which a number of DMs have had trouble motivating their parties to do), go on a side quest, and then ask the right questions, probably not knowing that the NPC can answer questions about the history of the elemental cults. Really, the adventure would do fine with a simple "Cultists are harnessing the elements for evil. Go stop them." If you need a bit more backstory, the prophets already have their own. It's very easy to strip out the Eye and Vizeran DeVir and not change the plot.I don't know how Pathfinder is with making sure the background lore is actually useful and relevant to the plot.I'm not talking about wasted space in a quantitative way. I'm talking in a qualitative way. Going back to our analogy of the tunnel to Cormyr, it could also be a plot hook. The problem is: What is there to do in Cormyr? If the rest of the book never goes into doing things at Cormyr, then it's a plot hook that doesn't go anywhere, and should be exorcised from the book. Does that mean we're exorcising the Forgotten Realms out of OotA for not Cormyr exists? No, it's simply not relevant.The same goes for the rest of the Demiplane of Dread. It's simply not relevant. The story is about Strahd, and Barovia. The only time the other Realms are a factor is that Van Richten hails from Darkon. None of the other Lords are involved, none of them have any secrets to destroying Strahd, nothing. And it actually takes away/ from the story, as you're now focusing less on the effects Strahd had on his corner of the world, the whole premise of the adventure.And it's not the same as the "what comes next?" sections, as Curse of Strahd is relatively self contained. The "What comes next?" sections are about ways to continue on the story you're already going on, based on what's already happened. Curse of Strahd doesn't have that avenue to continue the story onwards with. Sure, I guess you could go on fighting the other Dread Lords, but why? In what way would the story be expanded upon to face another dread lord? If anything, it just takes away from the central element of the story, the glimmer of hope, by saying "Ha, joke's on you, there's an entire continent full of these guys, and no, you can't go home."And no, I'm not really a big fan of the "Strahd comes back anyway and everything you've done is pointless" part of the ending in the current book.I remember hearing that, as well, but the closest I've ever found to confirming that was how Tracy was spiteful enough for somebody else making Lord Soth be involved in Ravenloft that he did what he could to contradict the two timelines.</blockquote>

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