Players Don't Care About Your Setting

[Wolfram stout]

Sure, they may be fun to read for pleasure. I personally find the Silmarillion pretty boring overall. But opinions on that will vary by taste. And, reading is (almost always) a solo activity. If someone is reading something and they decide they don’t like it, there’s no harm in simply not reading any further.

But… think of it as a game. If LotR was an RPG, almost none of the Silmarillion is needed for play. None of it actually matters. The “players” never actually interact with any of it.

It’s the kind of self indulgence that I think is among the worst traits a GM can have (and trust me, I include myself in that).

The GM has to have fun too. They don't work for the players, after all, and their fun doesn't become bad/wrong when it isn't all about serving their needs.

So, I think that the Tolkien = GM, Readers = Players, and Silmarillion is a workable analogy.

That said, the Silmarillion didn't make it into play. For original readers, they didn't get that world lore until decades after the "campaign" ended.

So in a sense Silmarillion was the GM having his fun, and only a few players having much interest in "all that lore stuff". And that's all good.

With my players (not that we ever play anymore grrr) the Star Wars crawl is about all they digest for either fantasy or sci-fi campaigns.

 

[Micah Sweet]

So, I think that the Tolkien = GM, Readers = Players, and Silmarillion is a workable analogy.

That said, the Silmarillion didn't make it into play. For original readers, they didn't get that world lore until decades after the "campaign" ended.

So in a sense Silmarillion was the GM having his fun, and only a few players having much interest in "all that lore stuff". And that's all good.

With my players (not that we ever play anymore grrr) the Star Wars crawl is about all they digest for either fantasy or sci-fi campaigns.

To continue your analogy, Tolkien started with and demonstrated many times in his correspondence that the world lore ( The Silmarillion) was his highest priority personally, and he always wanted to get it published. His first adventure, The Hobbit, was a children's story he made up for fun and containing elements of the backstory he had been working on for decades, and his second, longer adventure, The Lord of the Rings, was a sequel to it requested by his publisher. At one point he was forced to go back to his first publisher because an offer to publish his setting lore fell through, and getting the adventure out was a lot better than nothing. So it didn't exactly go the way the DM wanted.

 

[Voadam]

I find a lot of setting and world lore in the Lord of the Rings. The Shire, Bree, Rivendale, Rohan, Gondor, Mordor. Aragorn's lineage and lost Numenor. The wizards. Sauron's history. Orcish factions and Saruman's Uruk Hai stuff.

You don't need the Silmarillion to be into the Middle Earth setting.

 

[Committed Hero]

Could you run a game about revealing a setting's secrets? I suppose a mystery does this on a small scale. Or you could take the Supernatural route, adding a tiny bit of connective tissue at the end of each session.

 

[tetrasodium]

Could you run a game about revealing a setting's secrets? I suppose a mystery does this on a small scale. Or you could take the Supernatural route, adding a tiny bit of connective tissue at the end of each session.

Yes but it's very vulnerable to 13th warrior players

 

[prabe]

Yes but it's very vulnerable to 13th warrior players

Presume that what I know about that movie is that it exists, and explain what you mean, here, please.

 

[tetrasodium]

Presume that what I know about that movie is that it exists, and explain what you mean, here, please.

The movie is about a shipwrecked Persian scholar with a race horse that jumps who joins up with a bunch of vikings in a viking village going to hunt grendel. Any "lore" such a character introduces is going to be incredibly inappropriate and likely disruptive in ways that confuse everyone about the settings secrets to the point that it all just becomes gibberish to ignore.

Back in post 64 I gave a couple examples of the kinds of lore disruptions and their fallout from actual things that happened at the table. Coincidentally the first one was literally a campaign intended to reveal the setting's important historical elements by having the party fix a broken timeline. Unsurprisingly it blew up because the experienced player kept trying to force fr tropes and lore while the new and newer players say back not feeling comfortable or knowledgeable enough to grab the reigns while telling him to cut the .

Edit:Seth skorkowsky has a pretty good video on those types of PCs too

 

[prabe]

The movie is about a shipwrecked Persian scholar with a race horse that jumps who joins up with a bunch of vikings in a viking village going to hunt grendel. Any "lore" such a character introduces is going to be incredibly inappropriate and likely disruptive in ways that confuse everyone about the settings secrets to the point that it all just becomes gibberish to ignore.

Back in post 64 I gave a couple examples of the kinds of lore disruptions and their fallout from actual things that happened at the table. Coincidentally the first one was literally a campaign intended to reveal the setting's important historical elements by having the party fix a broken timeline. Unsurprisingly it blew up because the experienced player kept trying to force fr tropes and lore while the new and newer players say back not feeling comfortable or knowledgeable enough to grab the reigns while telling him to cut the .

Edit:Seth skorkowsky has a pretty good video on those types of PCs too

Thanks for the explanation. I suspect it's not a problem I've run into A) because I have pretty cool players at the tables I run and B) I mostly expect and allow theme to emerge from play.

 

[Voadam]

No, the bar for Bob's lack of interest in this setting is much higher for it to not be a regular disruption having Bob trying to insert incomparable lore expecting "yes and..." instead of "NO!absolutely not!"

Take these two examples from eberron campaigns with a player I'll call Bob. Everyone but me and Bob was newer or completely new to ttrpgs but Alice has a PC with relevant skills to recognize the characters used in fallen giant empire writings even if nobody in the party knows giant... The fact that The Dragons pretty much uplifted the giants with disastrous results was an important detail for players to understand the adventure but before I could point out the link Bob is saying "no that's not right, what really happened is..." Before lore dumping fr(?) history about dwarves and giants complete with his dwarf PC channeling first person outrage about past wrongs to his people. Because Bob would have forced two different races and an extremely foundational set of historical elements in the timeline to be rewritten it forced "no that's not at all correct, this is a different setting [loredump]".

I'm another eberron campaign there was a newer player (maybe the same Alice even) who wanted to buy some better gear.. but they were in Droaam.... in charges Bob helpfully explaining how they should head to the nearby mountains and look for Dave's clan of dwarves because the dwarves are the best smiths and everyone knows that. Not only was that bonkers incorrect because dwarves are known for banker vault and economics type stuff, it was also would have rewritten the dragonmark house actually wearing that crown and sent the group on a Snape hunt far away from the city of greywall where house politics and limited supply would have unrolled new adventures that actually fit the setting.

This is a case of a player just not buying into playing in an existing setting, they want to cooperatively develop the setting as they go and have things said by players be the setting.

 

[tetrasodium]

This is a case of a player just not buying into playing in an existing setting, they want to cooperatively develop the setting as they go and have things said by players be the setting.

No there was nothing "cooperative" about it. That bold bit is not an option or role available to players at that level and there are two reasons why. What you are describing is more the kind of thing that results in a family of npc farmers (or whatever) in the world because the player says his PC grew up on a farm or whatever. Rewriting high level§ setting lore is something else entirely.

Firstly is the easy and obvious problem with the simple fact where it was established as an eberron game from the start as part of the initial pitch before any characters were made with both campaigns mentioned. That right there puts a limit on what the players can bring to the table or introduce because the high level§ details of the setting is literally defined.

Secondly is the fact that the player was introducing stuff far beyond and many steps removed from his character while the character itself had absolutely zero relevant skills.

If a player agrees to join a campaign set in a specific setting and is unhappy about those types of limitations the best way of dealing with that is to talk to the gm on the side with their desires or bow out of the game. Attempting to steamroll some other setting in while or before the gm can answer a second player's question/resolve the second player's skill check is not at all justifiable behavior.

§big picture/40,000 foot overview style high level overview not level ## is reached at XXX experience and faces yyy cr monsters "level"