PDA

View Full Version : exposition



olthar
2011-06-07, 06:32 PM
Question: What are effective ways to deliver important DM exposition while keeping the players interested?

I ask because I'm wondering what sort of advice to give to a first-time DM I'm playing with right now.

background for the questions:
Last night the DM gave us a long series of mailman (delivery whatever) type quests to get some information.

First we went to the king. He told us that he knows 'a' information and that he heard that dude 'x' knows more.

So we go to dude x and he told us that he knew 'b' information and that persons 'y' and 'z' knew more.

So we go to persons 'y' and 'z' and they tell us that they knew 'c' and 'd' information and that the church knows more.

So we go to the church and they tell us some more information and it is the end of the chain.

But wait, there is also another chain of stuff where we must go talk to people and these people, completely independently of the other chain, also have information about the first chain. So we talk to two groups on this chain and get some more information.

Finally after all of that we have the information for our quest and we leave. It felt very much like I was playing a mmo or a console rpg where you must talk to every person in the town to get the information you want.

Each step in the process took between 30 mins to an hour. After the first person in the first chain all of the players were between bored and annoyed. The only reason we got through it was because I was willing to push the party through his exposition because he'd previously asked me to help him in his game (I too would have much rather ignored it all).


As an aside, for some reason none of the npcs wanted to tell us anything. In fact, they all kind of hated us. So one of the pieces of advice I'll be giving are "npcs don't automatically hate pcs."

erikun
2011-06-07, 06:38 PM
This should help a bit. (http://www.thealexandrian.net/creations/misc/players-caring.html) #1-#3, especially, seem relevant in this situation.

theguineapigguy
2011-06-07, 07:15 PM
I'm not totally sure about your specific situation, but i do have some ideas. Any exposition the charicters get should generally be their choice because having someone tell you somthing you don't care about would be really boring.

For your paticular situation I would have just rolled a gather information check or whatever that skill is called, thats what the skill is for, so you don't have to rollplay asking everyone in town. In this paticular situation the task seems so easy and boring that the players should just say "I ask around town to see if anyone knows anything", and the DM says "person A knows this, B knows this, and C knows this" Or if the paticular people aren't important you could just say "You learn A, B, C, D, and F from various people in town"

tribble
2011-06-07, 07:27 PM
This should help a bit. (http://www.thealexandrian.net/creations/misc/players-caring.html) #1-#3, especially, seem relevant in this situation.

saving that link with the force of a thunderbolt.

Jay R
2011-06-07, 07:39 PM
Question: What are effective ways to deliver important DM exposition while keeping the players interested?

I ask because I'm wondering what sort of advice to give to a first-time DM I'm playing with right now.
I would be all too tempted to give him advice in the following form: "Guys, I'm gonna take a nap now. Wake me up when we're done playing clue ping-pong and can play D&D again."

I hope I wouldn't actually do it, but I would certainly be tempted.

tribble
2011-06-07, 07:49 PM
I would be all too tempted to give him advice in the following form: "Guys, I'm gonna take a nap now. Wake me up when we're done playing clue ping-pong and can play D&D again."

I hope I wouldn't actually do it, but I would certainly be tempted.

Way to be a passive-aggressive jerk to someone breaking the DM-cherry. I really want to haul off a rant about elitist jerks and snobs right now, but I'm not going to because this thread doesn't deserve to be derailed by my rage for people who are mean to people who are trying to learn something new for no reason other than being new. So, let me just say this:
:furious:

Analytica
2011-06-07, 08:30 PM
In this case, one way to do it could be to say that the group splits up and follows separate chains. Don't play it out, instead each player gets the info in written form. Read for five minutes while the DM lights the candles, pours the watered-out wine into the goblets, then role-play the scene at the tavern where everyone - in character - tells what they learned, how they learned it, and then schemes over what do do with the information.

erikun
2011-06-07, 08:50 PM
The problem here is that we aren't really given an idea of what information was provided to the players, so it's hard to determine what would have been a preferred course of action. Sure, it's clear that the way the DM handled it was not very positive (I really can't say more without knowing the situation), but beyond "we got a quest" I don't know what happened.

If the whole fiasco was just to go kill some goblins for some treasure, then the simplest solution would be for the king to tell the party to go kill some goblins for some treasure. There isn't much sense in talking to 10 people just to learn where to go and what to plunder.

If there was some background information that would be important, then we'd need to know what that is to tell how it could have been incorporated better. Just a few random examples:

Example 1: My wayward Duke has encountered trouble with briggans again, go forth and secure the treasure that they have stolen. In return, I shall grant you a part of the total wealth taken.
Reason: We've established that the Duke has bandit troubles. The king doesn't seem pleased with the Duke. The PCs can probably talk to other people in the castle, who will tell that the king hasn't liked how the Duke has been managing things, and that the Duke has constant problems. The players will likely pay attention to grabbing and returning the stolen goods, given that they are getting a portion of them. (although it may encourage party thieves)

Example 2: Go forth and find the royal treasury stolen three nights ago! Much talk about it has happened in the seedier parts of town, but none are willing to talk to servants of the crown.
Random Drunk: You looking for the royal jewels? Sure, I can hook you up with someone who might know where they are.
Thieves' Guild: Sure, we can help you out. Just don't mention our involvement to the king, as he'll throw you in the dungeon if he finds out. We will be getting a 10% cut of the reward, though.
Reasons: We've established that the king doesn't like the thieves, and the thieves don't like the king. Bring along a member of the thieves' guild to show the party where it is at, along with reminding them not to mention the thieves' guild to the king. The players get some interesting options - run off with the jewels, talk of the thieves' guild to the king, get the reward and run - giving them some good RP options.

There was a "chain" in this case, but it is much shorter and didn't involve listening to people talk all the time. Just a small talk from the king, and another one from the thieves' guild, and both directly related to the quest (and the reward afterwards).

olthar
2011-06-07, 10:09 PM
This should help a bit. (http://www.thealexandrian.net/creations/misc/players-caring.html) #1-#3, especially, seem relevant in this situation.

Amazing site.


The problem here is that we aren't really given an idea of what information was provided to the players, so it's hard to determine what would have been a preferred course of action. Sure, it's clear that the way the DM handled it was not very positive (I really can't say more without knowing the situation), but beyond "we got a quest" I don't know what happened.

If the whole fiasco was just to go kill some goblins for some treasure, then the simplest solution would be for the king to tell the party to go kill some goblins for some treasure. There isn't much sense in talking to 10 people just to learn where to go and what to plunder.

If there was some background information that would be important, then we'd need to know what that is to tell how it could have been incorporated better.

Honestly, the information was almost exactly as I described it even though I used amazingly vague terms.
Started with 2 pieces of information. 1: talk to some guy at a bar about quest path 1. 2: Talk with some druids about quest path 2.

The guy at the bar said he heard two people talking about the thing the king told us to investigate and gave us their names.

We then went and talked to the two people. One of them gave us the name of the location for a quest item, a moniker that the bbeg goes by, and told us the other knew more. The other's "more" was the name of the macguffin and that she didn't know the language of the macguffin and to talk to some clerics.

The clerics told us that the language that the macguffin is in is dead and only the bbeg knows it, and that collecting all of the macguffin pieces is instawin.

Quest 2: The guy we're looking for is at his house which is outside of town.

Go outside of town: The guy you're looking for is not here. He's looking for macguffin. Btw, the language macguffin is written in is (some weird language).

Get to where guy is looking for macguffin: BBEG is trying to put together macguffin and kill everyone.

Referring to the Alexandrian links, everything learned was backstory and almost none of it was actually plot relevant.

Gamer Girl
2011-06-08, 01:41 AM
Watching plays, movies and TV shows give great writing examples of this.

1.NPC's in general, should be very talkative. Regular chatter mouths, in fact. Having a shy or quiet NPC is a bit pointless. They all should be talking up a storm. They don't need to be social butterflies, just talk a lot.

2.NPC's should always speak in 'radio' style, that is overly telegraph their actions with huge amounts of exposition. Listen to a couple radio dramas and see how the characters speak to let you know what is going on as you can't see it. For example, a NPC won't just say 'hello', they will say 'hello, good afternoon to you, the apples are on sale as we have extra from the gnome caravan and the street fire has burnt all the nutbread..but we can take special rush orders if you need some and can pay the coin'. Gee that NPC sure loaded a bunch of information in to 'hello'....

3.Hand outs are a good idea. Anything you can write down on paper. Maps, ads, posted signs and such. Where you can give lots of subtle information.

Mastikator
2011-06-08, 04:12 AM
The thing is that players don't care about background story. Usually not even their own characters get a thought out background story.

Get the players involved in the story first and put things they care about at stake, THEN and only then will they listen to background story. But you'll still need to deliver it slowly like explained in erikun's amazing link.

erikun
2011-06-09, 06:51 PM
Honestly, the information was almost exactly as I described it even though I used amazingly vague terms.
Step 1: The king tells you to go find Person A, who lives on the outskirts of town.

Step 2: Person A is not home, and his house is a mess, as if he had to grab his stuff and quickly leave. On his table is a map to the nearby plot dungeon, with the name of the MacGuffin scribbled on the side.

You may want to include a few townsfolk who saw him run off to the PlotCave, perhaps with rumors that MacGuffin was found in that area.

Step 3: Players arrive to find BigBad trying to take the MacGuffin.


I really can't say how it could have been presented better without knowing exactly what was presented and what was important. If the language was important, then the MacGuffin name on the map would probably be in both Common and the language in question. People in town would be calling it "some elven artifact" rather than its translated name.

In short: too many steps with too much irrelevant information. Make it either related to the king, to Person A, or to the BigBad, and cut out the rest.