tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2513019539869706574.post3506870757897338810..comments2024-03-29T20:04:30.755+08:00Comments on Monsters and Manuals: The Hidden Fortress and Bludgeoning Down the Fourth WallUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger24125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2513019539869706574.post-48122475957340599802019-08-16T20:51:50.641+08:002019-08-16T20:51:50.641+08:00If you're playing 3e/pf/5e, make your players ...If you're playing 3e/pf/5e, make your players roll Knowledge checks every time they see a bird, or a river, or a cloud. No metagaming at my table!Norn's Dominionhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01802928625469063307noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2513019539869706574.post-69013084735844682952019-02-14T23:43:01.191+08:002019-02-14T23:43:01.191+08:00You can cut it down though, just strip out all the...You can cut it down though, just strip out all the "as you knows", and you already get more of a focus on what the character cares about:<br /><br />‘Helm, seven degrees pitch to starboard! Number three’s misbehaving again. Deal with it.’<br />Lucian Gerrit, rogue trader, turned his back on Raldi, his helmsman and resumed his vigil at the bridge viewing port. His vessel, the heavy cruiser Oceanid, felt cold to him. The after-effect, of so long a voyage, to the very border of the Emperor’s domains.<br />A jarring shudder ran through the deck plate, felt in the bones more than heard.<br />‘If you can’t compensate for a grizzling plasma drive, Mister Raldi, I can always disconnect one of the waste ingestion servitors and see if it’s capable of making a better show of it than you appear to be. Do I make myself clear?’<br /><br />If the helmsman answered, Lucian wasn’t in the mood to hear. Though a ship to be proud of, the Oceanid was long past her prime. Her homeport, Ariadne Halo, had fallen in Lucian’s great, great grandfather’s time. All her sister ships were distant memories. She was the last of a long line. Much like Lucian himself, in fact.<br /><br />Where once a deck crew of dozens had attended to their stations in the crew pit, now half of Lucian’s crew were hard-wired servitors, each mumbling an impenetrable catechism of the Machine-God. Vacant-eyed and drooling. Though essential in many roles - for many tasks were beyond the abilities of a man to perform - the hideous machine-corpse custodians were no substitute when it came to obeying orders in a crisis. Each knew only its allotted purpose, and would remain tethered uncaring to its station even were it to burst into flames.<br /><br />Raldi's words finally broke through, one of the men of flesh and blood, rather than carrion and oil. ‘Sir, we’re beginning our run on the rendezvous point. Provided we don’t pick up any ionisation we should be within hailing range.’Josh Wnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2513019539869706574.post-40173921777573520582019-02-03T10:28:33.171+08:002019-02-03T10:28:33.171+08:00While I am not going to defend the passage itself ...While I am not going to defend the passage itself as it is rather banally written, let's say for the sake of the point I wish to make that we did indeed reduce it to a single line. Something like...<br /><br />"The starship had finally reached the rendezvous point."<br /><br />OK, cool. As a Science Fiction fan who has read many novels, seen many films and TV shows, and played dozens upon dozens of different SF RPGs I can picture this. Actually I can picture roughly ten thousand variations on this scene, many incompatible with each other.<br /><br />I could use some details. Enough to see what you'd like me to see. Enough to get a feel for the universe. Not an infodump but nor do I want no info at all.<br /><br />The author of a book doesn't have the benefit of a film's visuals. Of course you don't need to explain to me what the Jedi are or what the Clone Wars were. Obi-Wan Kenobi said he was one and he fought in those wars and there he is right in front of me with a sword made of blue light. <br /><br />To put it another way, if I picked up a WH 40K book, read the line I wrote above and assumed, "Well I know starships. I'll just have to assume this universe is the same as one of my favorite SF settings. Cool! It's like The Orville!", I am going to be in for an uncomfortable and rude awakening rather soon. Adam Dicksteinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04840144928096089178noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2513019539869706574.post-4837815671375162192019-02-01T18:13:39.935+08:002019-02-01T18:13:39.935+08:00Definitely - infodump works best if it is one char...Definitely - infodump works best if it is one character telling another stuff he clearly couldn't know. The genius of "The Shadow of the Past" is that Gandalf tells Frodo things he doesn't know but never lapses into "As you know, Frodo..." while also not revealing too much (who Strider is, etc.). It's perfectly pitched.noismshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09933436762608669966noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2513019539869706574.post-64248362277908459352019-02-01T18:11:14.781+08:002019-02-01T18:11:14.781+08:00Yeah. I guess in the hands of a great DM it can wo...Yeah. I guess in the hands of a great DM it can work. MAR Barker running Tekumel for example.noismshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09933436762608669966noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2513019539869706574.post-36170972836367624142019-02-01T18:10:09.230+08:002019-02-01T18:10:09.230+08:00Yes, you're right about that.Yes, you're right about that. noismshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09933436762608669966noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2513019539869706574.post-83287443757068441812019-02-01T18:09:31.497+08:002019-02-01T18:09:31.497+08:00Yeah, the prequels are kind of like 9 hours of inf...Yeah, the prequels are kind of like 9 hours of infodump for the original trilogy.noismshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09933436762608669966noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2513019539869706574.post-31177686705633792442019-02-01T18:08:27.486+08:002019-02-01T18:08:27.486+08:00I think that is basically right. It's the diff...I think that is basically right. It's the difference between learning a language because you live/work immersed in it, and learning one from books in a classroom.noismshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09933436762608669966noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2513019539869706574.post-20801011594138822082019-02-01T04:29:26.951+08:002019-02-01T04:29:26.951+08:00This might be a bit like pretentious fluff, but I ...This might be a bit like pretentious fluff, but I think that works because it's how we're introduced to the world we live in. When we are children we learn to navigate the world gradually, picking up words and bits of context as we go along. Learning about the world through infodumps doesn't work particularity well without an interactive element. Classes that have you doing something are better than those where you are just lectured at.Gorinichhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17232977766320497127noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2513019539869706574.post-36254809639379867862019-02-01T00:48:19.447+08:002019-02-01T00:48:19.447+08:00This is something that used to instantly make me t...This is something that used to instantly make me think of William Gibson. He did such a good job of presenting a believable world by avoiding these infodumps and having the characters use slang - puzzling out the meaning from context was half the fun, I thought.HDAhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13506175636615989219noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2513019539869706574.post-54566698817605633272019-01-31T22:48:27.470+08:002019-01-31T22:48:27.470+08:00The first ten minutes of Star Wars set the gold st...The first ten minutes of Star Wars set the gold standard for worldbuilding and exposition. When I write or introduce players to a new campaign, I always think "How would this have been done in Star Wars."Yorahttp://spriggans-den.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2513019539869706574.post-9943200200172714542019-01-31T20:13:13.537+08:002019-01-31T20:13:13.537+08:00And that's the most instructive Star Wars less...And that's the most instructive Star Wars lesson of all. Don't colonise your empire of imagination.Melanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07165894144553629675noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2513019539869706574.post-48589221504839704382019-01-31T18:49:00.007+08:002019-01-31T18:49:00.007+08:00See also Craig Raine's A Martian Sends a Postc...See also Craig Raine's A Martian Sends a Postcard Home.JChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17964744140140515737noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2513019539869706574.post-50632039083041730932019-01-31T16:26:38.642+08:002019-01-31T16:26:38.642+08:00You could argue that James Joyce did this.You could argue that James Joyce did this.thekelvingreenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01928260185408072124noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2513019539869706574.post-86273283482560965992019-01-31T13:30:16.418+08:002019-01-31T13:30:16.418+08:00Coincidentally I've been watching "The Hi...Coincidentally I've been watching "The Hidden Fortress" the past few days with my daily treadmill walk. The Criterion version I own actually has a commentary extra with George Lucas talking about how Kurosawa influenced him. <br /><br />All I'll say otherwise is a GM could do worse than to emulate the two peasants (who inspired R2D2 and C3PO) in characterizing any hirelings the player characters might bring along. Such hilarious, endearing, unreliable little scumbags. BigFellahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03052419088140204154noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2513019539869706574.post-16439732362615310402019-01-31T13:20:30.542+08:002019-01-31T13:20:30.542+08:00I think he not only forgot it, but completely work...I think he not only forgot it, but completely worked against it because all the allusions made in the original series that made it seem so deep and alive he had to go back and depict in exhaustive, and often disappointing detail in the later films. "The Clone Wars" for example, was a lot more evocative as a reference to the past than it ever was when it got shown in detail on screen. Feh. BigFellahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03052419088140204154noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2513019539869706574.post-80801717962208205312019-01-31T13:09:59.329+08:002019-01-31T13:09:59.329+08:00I suspect Lucas forgot that lesson when making the...I suspect Lucas forgot that lesson when making the prequels because he'd never truly embraced it. I think early drafts of what became "Episode IV" were full of infodumps, and the opening crawl was particularly turgid. The finished product owed a great deal to its various editors (including Lucas's wife, Marsha), as well as contributions by friends of Lucas such as Francis Ford Coppola and Brian DePalma (I think DePalma in particular got the opening crawl under control).<br /><br />It was a lack of creative collaborators that made the prequels what they were.Umbrielhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07634806106155908828noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2513019539869706574.post-77942371687288793792019-01-31T12:30:53.595+08:002019-01-31T12:30:53.595+08:00Sci-fi is probably the hardest genre for me to GM ...Sci-fi is probably the hardest genre for me to GM since there's generally such a massive gap in knowledge between what PCs know and what players know and this gap can be hard to bridge. I know I've been tripped up before by not knowing basic stuff my old idiot in the setting should know.<br /><br />Star Wars does just a wonderful job of bridging that gap by very very efficiently telling us everything that we absolutely need to know without bogging us down with a bunch of exposition. IIRC a lot of this is due to Marcia Lucas being an absolute genius at editing and cutting out a bunch of crap to make it really sing.<br /><br />What also helped was that Star Wars was stitched together out of a lot of familiar things so that people could understand the context of what people were talking about even if they were using unfamiliar sci-fi terminology that's never explained. Star Wars is basically a Flash Gordon story about Samurai riding hot rods fighting Nazis in a Wild West Casablanca (plus a bunch of other stuff) how he made all of those fit together so seamlessly was incredible in that it made it easy to extrapolate everything since it seemed familiar while still having the whole setting feel fresh since it was a new combination of elements. Some of the best world building ever done for its sheer efficiency.Boshhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06908715118408289864noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2513019539869706574.post-74722904476879058552019-01-31T08:42:42.790+08:002019-01-31T08:42:42.790+08:00I have this a silly idea of writing a book set in ...I have this a silly idea of writing a book set in the modern world, but giving exposition on completely mundane things and information everyone the audience should know. As well as writing about human anatomy and psychology as unusual, and describing things elements of our world as if they were fantastical and improbable. All to imply that the book is written by some alien perspective. I wonder if a book with that gimmick already exists.Gorinichhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17232977766320497127noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2513019539869706574.post-34108663408886746112019-01-31T06:12:21.074+08:002019-01-31T06:12:21.074+08:00In my experience I've found that settings whic...In my experience I've found that settings which are too overly detailed on backstory/lore are the hardest and worst settings to run unless the players are well enough versed into it.<br /><br />That, however, bring the problem of continuity which is a whole other problem which I call the 'Star Destroyer Toilet problem'which I'm sure has many other names but I chose to name it as such due to the joke that I'd never be able to run Star Wars without someone going "UM, ACKSHUALLY, THERE ARE NO TOILETS ON THE 4TH DECK OF AN IMPERIAL STAR DESTROYER *Mouth Breathe*". An exaggeration of reality and fandom, sure, but a real problem nonetheless.<br /><br />There is a very delicate balance to strike between having no setting explained (or even planned out) and even the GM having to check their notes and having to bash their own skull with infodump. I've found that explaining things organically in dialogue or when needed is good especially if the players aren't expected to know everything anyway.Bob Somethinghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13638406211956979341noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2513019539869706574.post-50921499475523789442019-01-31T05:53:43.261+08:002019-01-31T05:53:43.261+08:00Terrific post! I always get the impression that Ku...Terrific post! I always get the impression that Kurosawa's earlier films are 'lightly placed' historically (unlike, say, Kagemusha, which deals with actual battles), in the same way that the Westerns that inspired them were. And I think they're all the better for that: "a time of chaos" or "the Wild West" are terrific settings because we don't need any explanation for why there are bandits, rival gangs or competing armies. The clue's in the name. <br /><br />The "As you know, Dave" trope seems to be as old as generic sci-fi itself. I gather that Kim Stanley Robinson has made a few rather eloquent defences of the infodump, though I haven't read them or his books. I suppose it can be artfully done occasionally. <br /><br />The gaming point here, I think, is that player *discovery* is always better than "pre-loading" the players. They always forget that stuff anyway, unless they've been fed one-line rumours (preferably written down) - or at least that's what I find. And of course, they need never know that their discoveries didn't exist until they stumbled upon them.<br /><br />My favourite example of a *successful* infodump is "The Shadow of the Past in LotR". When I was a child, it was one of several chapters that I reread regularly, along with "The Uruk-hai", "The Tower of Cirith Ungol" and "The Bridge of Khazad-dum".JChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17964744140140515737noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2513019539869706574.post-38957555607992943672019-01-31T05:14:28.495+08:002019-01-31T05:14:28.495+08:00A similar point can be made in the video game worl...A similar point can be made in the video game world regarding lengthy intro cinematics or tutorial segments. The fragmented worldbuilding of Dark Souls is a popular topic of analysis, for example.Slick S.https://www.blogger.com/profile/07061439646397481013noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2513019539869706574.post-19456520332380287282019-01-31T05:05:04.914+08:002019-01-31T05:05:04.914+08:00Yeah. I felt like I have blathered on about that p...Yeah. I felt like I have blathered on about that point enough times, but it is definitely true. noismshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09933436762608669966noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2513019539869706574.post-61726947543974677402019-01-31T03:57:59.558+08:002019-01-31T03:57:59.558+08:00I assumed you were going to bring it back around t...I assumed you were going to bring it back around to rpgs, but that didn't happen, perhaps because its too obvious a point to make.<br /><br />It seems to me that old-school gaming does this, or at least OSR stuff does, by presenting settings through hints and references in random tables and monster descriptions, rather than lengthy chapters of backstory.thekelvingreenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01928260185408072124noreply@blogger.com