The Library of Lost Tangents

RPG campaigns throw out a lot of loose ends and tangents. 

Recently, I was thinking about this while listening to an old podcast episode about The Book of the New Sun. In it, at one stage, one of the participants describes the series as characterised by many loose ends, which Gene Wolfe never ultimately ties off in the various sequels. Indeed, each of the sequel series, ostensibly written to clarify the first set of books, just tend to spawn yet more unanswered questions.

This reminded me of pretty much every D&D campaign I have ever run or played in. As the PCs go about their business, they are constantly unearthing knowledge, hearing rumours, passing by locations or interacting with NPCs, but I would say the majority of what they uncover tends to get forgotten about or remains mysterious. There is too much to do, and a lot of what in another context might be called 'side quests' are therefore cast aside. (I do not like the phrase 'side quest' in this context as it implies there is a preordained 'main quest', which there is not; I will leave that subject for another post, though.) 

The reason for this is that, in order to create the sense that the PCs inhabit a living, breathing fantasy world, it is necessary to give it texture. And this means that every NPCs they meet, every random encounter they...er...encounter, every journey they take, every place they visit, ought to have a lot to it if the PCs chose to sniff around. It should in other words be possible for the PCs, if they so choose, to find out who is the grandmother of the maiden who serves them in the tavern. It should be possible for them to just knock on the door of a house at random and expect there to be occupants. It should be possible for them to ask a non-hostile monster they come across in a random wilderness encounter whether he has heard any interesting news recently, and to be told some rumours in response. It should be possible to learn the back stories of each individual member of a group of captives the PCs rescue from a wizard's dungeon. It should be possible to question the local pub bores when newly arrived in a town about who is worth getting to know and who it is important to avoid. And so on. These things may not happen, but it should in principle be possible for them to. 

The DM may very well not have the relevant information to hand, pre-prepared, for the most part - he will either make it up on the spot or have ways of generating it with some dice rolls. He may have to fly by the seat of his pants a bit, although if he has a good knowledge of his own campaign world he should not have too much trouble coming up with good ideas that flesh out the setting. And if he is at all sensible he will note down everything he says of this type, so that it can be remembered and referred to as required. 

Thus, a random encounter with some non-hostile bugbears (say) who the PCs interact with may get jotted down in the DM's notebook as something like 'Random encounter with bugbears, led by Chagaraz the Blind; not aggressive, but at war with the local high king over disruption of sacred practices due to increase road traffic in their territory, which have commenced as a result of the high king starting construction of new gold mine'. The DM may have come up with all this on the hoof. And he may think to himself, immediately afterwards, 'I'll do something with that.' And the PC's may also make mental notes of it even while proceeding with whatever they happen to be doing at the time. Yet it may very well be the case that events move on and Chagaraz the Blind is never seen or heard from again. There are just a lot of other things going on.

What I wish I had done is to keep better, more lasting records of these things. It is an important aspect of DMing practice, not very frequently remarked upon, to keep notes as a session goes on, and to revise them between sessions. I am good at keeping up with that habit. But what I am not good at is preserving the notes for very long after a campaign is over. This means that a huge amount of accumulated loose threads and tangents are lost to posterity. I am sure I am not the only one.

And the result of that is that a great library of such lost tangents goes unconstructed and unfilled. One can imagine, can one not, going strolling through a vast vault lined with varnished oak shelves, carved into all manner of images - dragons, nymphs, devils, imps - and divided into small pigeonholes, each containing a rolled-up sheaf of parchment on which are written two dozen loose ends? And one can imagine that these are all spun-out from the rumour mills of campaigns which drifted in different directions and never quite found use for them - but which have been carefully written down and stored and made available for public consumption. This would be a permanent resource for the world's DMs, continually being added to, even while continuously parchments are withdrawn to plunder for ideas. Whenever a new rumour, or a new location on a hexmap, or a new NPC or villain was required, it would be 'Off to the Loose End Library!' for a fresh idea. Of course, it would be necessary to return anything once used. And it would only be honourable to donate fresh loose ends whenever visiting, so as to repopulate and regenerate the museum's stock. 

The Library of Lost Tangents would be its official name. All that you would need is a member's card and a recommendation from a friend and the entire archive would be yours. Need a rumour about an umber hulk? Need an origin story for a creepy haunted treehouse? Need a list of local eccentrics, heard about on the grapevine at a local tavern? Need a list of 'things a captive goblin, randomly encountered, comes out with after interrogation? Well, the Library of Lost Tangents is the place. Somebody, somewhere, will have dreamed something up. And all you need to do is collect and utilise it, free of charge.