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Silus
2016-12-30, 05:18 AM
This is a thing that's been on my mind for a while, compounded recently after a playthrough of Sunless Sea. Also, nobody is around that I can bounce these kinda questions off of.

Specifically pertaining to homebrew settings and such, do things have to make sense, or even have an explanation?

Using Sunless Sea (a fantastic roguelike) as an example, on some maps, in the south, there is an unmarked location known as The Eye. It is literally a massive eye on the sea floor that opens and watches your ship should you draw near to it. Nothing else (aside from rapid terror increase), it just...watches you. It's never mentioned anywhere in any of the dialogue of the game, never brought up at all, and there is no explanation for WHY it's there or even WHAT it really is.

Now if this was in a Pathfinder game, should you, as the DM, have an explanation for what it is and why it's there? Or even if there is an explanation, do the characters (or even the players) need to know? If reality gets wonky the deeper underground you go, does there need to be a reason why? Should there be an explanation why the creatures in a given area are all born as living clockwork, or can it just be a mysterious thing people take at face value?

Sorry if the question is a bit wonky, it's like 4am here and I'm getting a little loopy.

Actana
2016-12-30, 06:05 AM
Explanations aren't always needed per se. In fact, I'd go as far to say that things don't require explanations if there is no need to explain them to the players. However, and this is a big however, what I feel is important is consistency and maintaining verisimilitude with various factors. And it is easiest to maintain them if you have some underlying basis to work with. Indirect explanations and hints are just as important here as straight on answers.

However, if something inexplicable somehow becomes a larger part of the game, its purpose needs to be expanded, otherwise it won't have any real way to be a part of anything. In tabletop games you can't really make any hard rules of "you can't be interested in this" (soft rules as well as mechanical limitations are of course a different issue), as players will find ways to surprise you. While you can make up everything on the spot, you run a great risk of haphazard and inconsistent answers that don't really have any narrative impact. If you're making something big and interesting, you might as well develop some basis for the whats and whys and hows of it, since it'll only benefit you in the long run, even if the players never find out the answers. This doesn't mean you need the entire full picture immediately, but simply nuggets of information - usually the very basic questions - which you can work on later if a particular thing becomes relevant.

Mysteries work mostly in two ways: not knowing the answer, but knowing there is an answer out there somewhere.

Mutazoia
2016-12-30, 07:12 AM
Explanations are required if

Said thing is now, or will at some point in time be, important to the game.
Said thing is vastly different from other settings/games or is unique to the one you are currently playing. Either condition must have a noted effect other than "fluff" that alters game play.
Will having an explanation aid or otherwise benefit the players in some marked way besides the "cool factor" from fluff. (Such as why Divine magic does not work in a specific area of the world, and that condition can be remedied by the players at some point, or the BBEG can be lured to that point for the final battle to weaken him.)


Short answer: If it's not going to be mechanically important at some point, don't bother. Fluff can be mysterious.

Professor Chimp
2016-12-30, 07:44 AM
If you're making something big and interesting, you might as well develop some basis for the whats and whys and hows of it, since it'll only benefit you in the long run, even if the players never find out the answers. This doesn't mean you need the entire full picture immediately, but simply nuggets of information - usually the very basic questions - which you can work on later if a particular thing becomes relevant.Agreed, as DM, you should have some form of explanation prepared in case the need for it arises, but that doesn't mean you need to hand it out.

After all, some things just work better if things aren't fully explained, it at all. For example, horror. Especially Lovecraftian stuff, where the knowledge that someone is just an insignifact speck in a universe full of thing beyond mortal ken is a main driving force behind the horror.

Or perhaps there is a good reason why there is no ingame explanation. Maybe the knowledge is simply lost to time, forgotten or destroyed in some calamity, and now only myths and superstitions remain that may contain a kernel of truth, but not the full scope. Or you could put a darker spin on it by having some powerful being purposefully suppress the truth, quietly eliminating anyone or anything that comes close to figuring it out. Perhaps Arthur C Clarke's third law is in effect, "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", and the current level of knowledge in your world is just not capable of explaining something (yet).

PersonMan
2016-12-30, 07:56 AM
I think it's generally a good idea to split explanations into two main types.

The first is the Correct one, that you know is definitely true, generally given by the GM / author / similar absolute authority figure. This explanation is true just like "the sky is blue" is true, so exceptions, inconsistencies and the like are both interesting (due to their being unusual) as well as a dangerous (but the GM said X was Y before...is this a mistake? That doesn't make any sense...). A lot of worldbuilding is done with Correct explanations, an easy example being DnD 3.5 with its planar setup. You know where Good/Evil/Lawful/Chaotic souls go, you know that planes XYZ exist, you know how planar travel works, because it's explained.

The second type is the In-World one, that is thought to be true, and makes sense in the world, but is given by a figure that is explicitly not an absolute authority on the setting. These explanations are a mix between true, inaccurate and outright wrong, often manipulated by those in the world to fit their own views or accomplish their goals. Maybe the souls of those who rebel against the strict hierarchy of society don't get thrown into the infinite Abyss to be torn apart by demons, but it's certainly what the priesthood of X teaches. These explanations serve as an in-game source of information that can give the world a more 'real' feel, especially when conflicting sources arise - after all, it's easier to have a conflict between belief systems when you don't know for sure that one of them is just wrong.

In my opinion, it's important to have In-World explanations for things, even if there's no Correct one available to the players. A giant eye in the ocean could be a mystery, but there's likely to at least be some crackpot theories and some level of tension between those who think it's a god and the ones who want to just ignore it. The beliefs of the world's inhabitants are shaped by their views and knowledge, making the explanation for the giant eye a window into their own worldview as well as a logical result of the eye's existence. You're likely to find an explanation for everything, even if it's likely to be wrong, a lie, or similarly useless from an actual information standpoint, and something having no In-World explanation (in my mind) makes it seem somewhat disconnected from everything else.

Yora
2016-12-30, 08:29 AM
There's not really any difference when it comes to homebrew or commercial material in this regard.

big difference between RPGs and videogames is that players can interact with everything in whatever way they like an do experiments to see what happens when they do various things to it. In videogames you usually can click the Use button to start something scripted or you can try to shot at things, and when nothing happens that's generally the end of possible interactions.
In an RPG players can try to touch it, try to speak to it, use various tools on it, try all kinds of magic spells, and so on. When they do you want something to happen in response. If strangr things turn out to be just weird looking sculptures that litter the landscape players are going to lose interest in them very quickly.

When you add something to an adventure that isn't part of the default background scenery you have to think in advance of at least some rules for what they do when interacted with. There doesn't have to be a discoverable reason for how it got there or what purpose it served for its creators. But when players start playing around with it it should do something that could potentially be useful. Even if it's just discovering what you should not do to these things if you run into more of them in the future to avoid harm.

Stealth Marmot
2016-12-30, 10:38 AM
There is always a question of explanation when it comes to things in a D&D or Pathfinder world, but I think the best thing to do here is compare your eye to another creation that has a lot of mystery to it.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-NO5QxcHtlNE/VaV5TAXNslI/AAAAAAAAEpM/u_ohwyMndSI/s1600/248lopditerlizzi.jpg

The Lady of Pain.

Why does the Lady of Pain do what she does? What is her purpose? Where did she come from? What is the limit of her power? What are her goals?

None of this is known. It is the subject of a lot of discussion, and theories, but none of this has ever been verified.

So why would she be included in a game? She sets the tone of the game. Sigil is mysterious, it has a lot of unexplained things about it. The world of Planescape is one that has a strange logic to it, but it is the twisted logic of an imagination rather than of a coherent world with physics.

If you have a giant eye on the bottom of the ocean, let me ask you this: Why did you add an element like that to your game? From a narrative standpoint, why would adding a giant eye looking at the people on the sea, yet not seeming to do anything for the world?

If your intent is to make your world not only mysterious, but paranoid inducing, then don't explain it. Don't have an explanation, or if you have one, never have it revealed. A giant eye screams that there are things going on beyond your control, and that your actions are being watched and potentially judged. Judged, mind you, by a being that is not likely to be benevolent.

If you are going to add the giant eye, don't stop there. Have other things in your game that are impossible to explain but give the idea that there are things going on that are beyond understanding or player control. Make it eerie.

If you don't WANT your world to be eerie, then give the eye some sort of explanation, or at least a legend behind it. You could make a legend that the eye watches the waves to make sure the tide is always flowing. this instead gives the feeling of the world as a living organism, constantly keeping itself in balance. It makes the players feel like the world is stable, but also that the world could be potentially dangerous should someone try to mess with the natural order.

These are two different ways of taking the same element and giving your world a different feel through it. Just make sure the rest of the world follows that consistent tone.

Knaight
2016-12-30, 11:09 AM
You should generally have an explanation; "the world is full of bizarre stuff of uncertain origin" is an explanation. For some settings, that's the sort of thing you want to use. For others with a different emphasis you want a different explanation - if the setting is very focused on conspiracies, plots, and generally causal stuff there might be value in having the weirdness tie into that somehow (although juxtaposing it with the unexplained could also work). If the setting is hard science fiction then you might want an explanation that involves a fair amount of science that explains the unusual. Take your example: Sunless Sea is downright surreal, and it's explicitly about the mysterious and horrifying. Having unexplained stuff all over the setting works perfectly there, but there's still a reason it exists on a meta level and that at least is worth going into.

Nifft
2016-12-30, 12:12 PM
Internal consistency is needed, not explanations.

Having an explanation for yourself can help with this, by allowing you to make decisions which support the setting's internal consistency, but it's not actually necessary.

You can defer the explanation until you need to use it in-game -- which might very well be never, thus deferring the explanation forever.

The Lady of Pain (above) is a great example of this. She has consistent behavior:
- She wins fights.
- She hurts people.
- She never leaves her city.
- She dislikes gods in her city.

Done. Her behavior can be usefully predicted from this set of traits, and that makes her a useful setting element. The PCs don't know enough about her to rules-lawyer her against the DM, which is nice, but they also know that some behaviors will not be tolerated (i.e. try to ascend to godhood inside Sigil and you're gonna have a bad time).

Make an internally consistent setting.

Hide the explanations.

Silus
2016-12-30, 12:23 PM
Internal consistency is needed, not explanations.

Having an explanation for yourself can help with this, by allowing you to make decisions which support the setting's internal consistency, but it's not actually necessary.

You can defer the explanation until you need to use it in-game -- which might very well be never, thus deferring the explanation forever.

The Lady of Pain (above) is a great example of this. She has consistent behavior:
- She wins fights.
- She hurts people.
- She never leaves her city.
- She dislikes gods in her city.

Done. Her behavior can be usefully predicted from this set of traits, and that makes her a useful setting element. The PCs don't know enough about her to rules-lawyer her against the DM, which is nice, but they also know that some behaviors will not be tolerated (i.e. try to ascend to godhood inside Sigil and you're gonna have a bad time).

Make an internally consistent setting.

Hide the explanations.

Would internal consistency include things that are blatantly not consistent (or at least consistent in that they are not consistent)?

Like for example: Deep underground (the lowest level on the Underdark/Darklands) reality has begun breaking down due to overlap with the Dimension/Plane of Dreams and things are just mad chaotic down there, as everything starts running partially off dream logic. Time gets weird, physics are just a suggestion at best, the concepts of biological, chemical, and mechanical reactions only work as intended some of the time, etc..

Nifft
2016-12-30, 01:18 PM
Would internal consistency include things that are blatantly not consistent (or at least consistent in that they are not consistent)?

Like for example: Deep underground (the lowest level on the Underdark/Darklands) reality has begun breaking down due to overlap with the Dimension/Plane of Dreams and things are just mad chaotic down there, as everything starts running partially off dream logic. Time gets weird, physics are just a suggestion at best, the concepts of biological, chemical, and mechanical reactions only work as intended some of the time, etc..

That's not inconsistent.

I did something similar in one of my worlds, and here's how it worked:

In the deep, dark places of the world, where sunlight has never shone, the Plane of Shadows overlaps with the Material Plane.

Dwarves discovered this, and they built great stone ships to sail the dark seas between the worlds. This is why Dwarves are simultaneously a well-regarded mercantile trading race and also a strongly-fortified mountain-dwelling race. This is how there are Dwarven ruins in so many inaccessible mountain ranges. They don't walk overland.

Dwarven cities have a secret dark harbor at the base of every major city, and a "port cavern" in every outpost.

The players never discovered this fact. It still informed the design of every Dwarven settlement, and I think it added to the consistency of the setting as a whole.

Thrudd
2016-12-30, 02:42 PM
Explanations are only needed if the players start looking for answers. There should always be in-world knowledge that the characters possess. Which might often be "nobody knows what it is or where it came from". If the players decide the big eye, for example, is a mystery worth exploring, then you can start thinking of answers and how and where they might start looking for those answers.

Marcloure
2016-12-31, 01:01 AM
No, they are not. But for something don't have an explanation, you need to make sure it has sense don't having one. One way to do this is building your setting in a way that those things don't need a real mean, where an Eye in the sea looks right being there, even if nothing is said about it.
The boardgame Eldritch Horror is a very great exemple of this. In the game, players go to places where cats tell alien advices to you, brains in jars sings then a phone calls and a door opens to the bright void, where you are jailled under the sea and a group of bandits steals your purse. While playing the game, questioning why or how to all these things don't even come through my head, that because the setting and atmosphere of the Eldritch Horror let this kind of weird stuff happen as if could happen.
In a world I have builded, the moment the frist firearm was ever shoot, the sun rose from the ground and scorched the land. None of my players asked why, because all the world is full of stuff like that and the wrinting, how I've put the words, made the exclamation "it was this way because yes". Another exemples, in the game Bastion, why the stones pops in the Kid's way? In Child of Light, why Aurora gains wings when she takes the Star? Why all that chaos is ignored by the people, in Kekkai Sensen? I don't know, and I don't care. It just seems right there, these things fits the ambience.

So, building the setting and making things cohesive is very important if you want to put things that people won't question why. If you ensure that an eye in the sea is something that seems right to be there, even if the cause is unknown, then you are in a good place. If the players look at that and think "what the heck is this? Certainly shouldn't be here without some special reason", then you'll need explanations.

Darth Ultron
2016-12-31, 01:24 AM
No, an explanation is not always needed. Things can be left mysterious and unknown.

A lot of the time in the game the characters (and players) won't get an explanation even if there is one. Unless your stopping the game to explain every detail and get approval from the players.

Vitruviansquid
2016-12-31, 02:51 AM
Explanations are not always needed, nor even always desirable.

It can often be a better idea to preserve the mystery, even if you should actually have an explanation available.

Thrudd
2016-12-31, 03:53 AM
Only tell the players what their characters would know. It's ok for characters to not know things, just like real people don't know a lot of things (especially in a world without google). If the players want to find out answers to things their characters don't know, they can pursue that knowledge in game and in character.

It is up to you if you want to think of explanations and answers for everything in your world while you are creating it, or wait until something catches your players' interest before you bother thinking about it. Whichever way you do it, try to stay consistent and avoid contradicting established facts about your world.

Slipperychicken
2017-01-01, 07:10 PM
I think that it's healthy to have unexplained phenomena along with some in-setting speculation, or peoples's guesses as to what it is. But you have to make it clear that these aren't the objective perfect truth.

Gnoman
2017-01-01, 08:23 PM
I never put anything in my games unless I know the entire history, purpose, and function of that thing. The players might investigate it and learn that nobody, not even the gods themselves, in-universe has a clue. But *I* know, because otherwise I leave too many cracks and run the risk that the verisimilitude of the setting starts to fall apart.

dps
2017-01-01, 11:17 PM
Only tell the players what their characters would know. It's ok for characters to not know things, just like real people don't know a lot of things (especially in a world without google). If the players want to find out answers to things their characters don't know, they can pursue that knowledge in game and in character.

It is up to you if you want to think of explanations and answers for everything in your world while you are creating it, or wait until something catches your players' interest before you bother thinking about it. Whichever way you do it, try to stay consistent and avoid contradicting established facts about your world.

Yep, or as Professor Chimp said, you need to have an explanation prepared for it, but you don't have to hand it out. How detailed an explanation you need to have prepared for it depends on how comfortable you are with filling in the details on the fly.

There are 2 things working at cross-purposes. The more detail you prepare ahead of time, the less likely you are to throw things in by accident that aren't consistent with the rest of your setting, but OTOH, the more detail you prepare ahead of time, the more likely it is that it won't ever come up in your campaign and make the time you spent on it a waste.

GungHo
2017-01-03, 04:00 PM
No, but you do need to realize there are people who MUST KNOW EVERYTHING BEHIND EVERYTHING AND THEY WILL NOT STOP UNTIL THEY ARE TOLD EVERYTHING EVEN IF ITS ABSOLUTELY CLEAR THAT WHAT THEY ARE SEEING IS ENTIRELY INCONSEQUENTIAL BECAUSE THEY SPENT THEIR TIME DAMMIT AND THEY DESERVE TO KNOW (caps lock intended). These are the people who drove White Wolf into receivership, and they're trying to get Paizo to go that way.

There are also people who MUST NOT BE TOLD ANYTHING BECAUSE IF YOU TELL THEM ELMO WILL RUIN THEIR CHILDHOOD.

There are sane people in the middle who will let you reveal what you want to reveal and even allow you to sometimes make stuff up on the spot. However, these people can rapidly approach either camp if they are fed snacks after midnight.