Keeping (lore) secrets

[Albions_Angel]

Hi all,

I have written myself into a bit of a corner. Built a world, and a particular region, with a... false history?

Essentially, nearly all the people believe that 4000 years ago, their ancestors turned up, seeking refuge from a great disaster. They got it from some evil aligned Ice Mages. Turns out, the Ice Mages wanted to use them for a ritual involving the sacrifice of thousands. The 9 greatest heroes of the age found out, waged war, won, killed most of the Ice Mages, banished the rest, changed the local climate, and ascended as gods.

Thing is, its all false. Well, nearly. There were no evil aligned Ice Mages, and this polar region wasnt gripped by ice and snow. Instead, a circle of Neutral Druids granted the refugees a place to stay, in their nice, climate controlled, temperate wildlife sanctuary. The 9 "heroes" wanted a bit more freedom, and started a war the Druids wernt expecting. It was hard fought, but eventually the 9 leaders won, and the druids were wiped out (nearly. One still lives. Just one. "modern day" druids are unrelated, and still revere the 9 ascended heroes). Only, without the druids, the land started to revert back to snow and ice. So the heroes had to ascend just to keep a handle on things, creating some archfey to look after the seasons and so now its just cold, wet, miserable and snowy for a good half the year.

I have dealt with the memory of long lived races the same way I dealt with races remembering a time before the great disaster (they dont). Whatever the disaster was, it was global, catastrophic, and as part of it, it erased the memory of anyone that lived through it. It sort of lingered for a few hundred years after (which encompasses the time it takes for my refugees to turn up in druid land), and things are hazy for anyone old enough to remember. Even the gods other gods dont know what happened (by other gods, I mean ones that arnt my 9. The gods of other countries. Pelor, Bahamut, Set, etc). Hell, the disaster actually wiped an entire pantheon out and prevented other pantheons from influencing the region they used to control (I promise I didnt get this from recent chapters of OotS! Ive had it written for years!). This region is now very hard to travel to, has no divine casters, and very few arcane magic users, and is the only place people are born with an inerrant psionic ability.

Now, there are clues that things arnt quite what the 9 say they are. Standing stones with carved animals, old lost writings, ruins from the time of the great war, etc. But... honestly, I dont want every party to know about it, and certainly not at low level. They would want to investigate, and it would quickly bring them into conflict with powers far greater than themselves. I want any campaign around the truth to be very high level, and very rare. So what do I do? Do I even give them rolls for finding this stuff out? I feel like not doing so. Let them put any pieces together themselves, and actually not give any thought to what I tell them. Dont try and drop hints, dont make it a thing. Or should I give them rolls but with stupidly high DCs? And advice, particularly if you have done this before.

[Hackulator]

You spread out the info. Perhaps there is a tale of what truly happened, but it is written across many different standing stones or other artifacts that dot the land and are either actively guarded or just in dangerous places. Individually, the pieces don't say much, or possibly can't even be translated. However, if gathered together, they tell the whole story or enough of it to have some idea of the truth. Getting 1 or twp pieces might give you a hint that there's something going on beyond what they've been taught, but not enough to really have any idea of the what really happened.

Any low level party would have to travel to many of the locations to piece together enough of the story to know what happened, and by the time they did that they wouldn't be low level anymore. Some of the important pieces might be in areas too dangerous for anyone low level to even attempt to retrieve.

[AlanBruce]

Now, there are clues that things arnt quite what the 9 say they are. Standing stones with carved animals, old lost writings, ruins from the time of the great war, etc. But... honestly, I dont want every party to know about it, and certainly not at low level. They would want to investigate, and it would quickly bring them into conflict with powers far greater than themselves. I want any campaign around the truth to be very high level, and very rare. So what do I do? Do I even give them rolls for finding this stuff out? I feel like not doing so. Let them put any pieces together themselves, and actually not give any thought to what I tell them. Dont try and drop hints, dont make it a thing. Or should I give them rolls but with stupidly high DCs? And advice, particularly if you have done this before.

I am running a similar campaign where things are happening that my high level party, despite having arcane and divine resources, cannot find a concrete answer to.

Something I have learned over the years is that some players (in fact, the majority at my table), want everything chewed out and carefully digested, piece by piece. They expect files and diaries and all too eager exposition happy NPCs.

Some groups like that, especially when spells are thrown in the mix or they feel entitled by class choice. This doesn’t mean their tools should be useless, just that they don’t shield as much information as they’d like... and usually with unclear and misleading descriptions.

Others relish the idea of being kept in the dark and finding what little information they can- cryptic as it may be- and reach their own conclusions, whether these are right or wrong.

As an example the PS4 game Bloodborne does that very well. The protagonist has no idea of what’s going in and while traversing through the game, merely glimpses at very scant clues, leaving him or her to make up their own theories as to what happened in the world.

[Segev]

Query: does the one remaining druid remember, or is he one of those whose memory was wiped?


The truth, as a whole, is lost. No rolls for it, barring very powerful magics such as legend lore, and even that should give only snippets or notions of where to go to find out more unless they already have a lot of pieces and just need them stitched together.

The truth is mostly held in distorted, broken, and outright-wrong (but differently than the official story) beliefs of heretical cults, evil races, and darkly inverted in various fairy tales. Races that are now quite evil once weren't, but were driven to it by hate, bitterness, and desperation because they would not give up their claims to the old beliefs. Unfortunately, their own beliefs have become distorted with time and justifying their anger, so some will have elements of the truth, but large amounts of falsehoods, as well.

Use trappings that usually surround "Things Man Was Not Meant To Know" to cloak any research or the like that could point towards the truth. Don't make it obvious "The Church says that's heresy!" stuff that is overused now to demonstrate that the truth is there and the wicked Church is hiding it. Instead, make it things that everybody knows are taboo. And the Nine have sprinkled genuine Far Realms and Fiendish material that looks similar, even binding a few Fiends to the task of attempting to tempt people into learning (distorted) elements of the truth. Tempt them and have full permission to bargain for service in return.

In this way, you should play on most players' (wrong) genre savvy so they figure this is Cthulian Horror plot stuff that they should investigate only at high level and then with an 11-foot pole and great care not to be fooled by the lies of the Things that are telling it.

Having there be legitimate lies mixed with truths mixed with horrible rituals that are likely to get the investigator killed will make any stumbling upon real truths seem like part of that same taboo set of falsehoods and reality-ending cultist heresy.

The way to let high-end, rare investigators eventually start to pick out the truth would be to have investigation into the taboo topics slowly reveal that some of what's tied to them are falsehoods...insofar as the "eldrich horror" element goes. No, there is no Summer God who even the Ice Lords weren't as bad as, whom they banished before the Nine rose to overthrow their own tyranny. No, the Black Goat of the Woods is not related to those pillars with animals carved on them. No, the Queen in the White Masque isn't real, and doesn't curse the land by walking it half the year to weaken the power of the Nine Protectors.

Note that the Nine would deny the Queen's existence, too; research into her would turn up a lot of falsehood, mixed with hints towards the Ice Mages being actually druids who held "her" back, except, no, "she" isn't real, either: the wintery nature is the natural order and it was druids who held it back until they were overthrown.


But it will take a lot of work to properly design all the myriad clues so that the whole can be put together from the parts, while keeping it spooky and wrong-genre protected by the notion that exploring it really is a path to dark power that will get you killed or drive you mad.


Note: this also means those who know the most about it are going to be genuinely evil people who sought dark power for the reasons evi men always do. This will further taint the knowledge of the truth.

[Telonius]

I'd ask a couple of other questions first: does it matter if the team knows this or not? Would it tie in to any challenges you have planned for them at higher level? If a plot hook drops in the forest and nobody picks it up, is it really worth any XP? If it's not something the players are going to care about (one way or another), then it's not something you need to worry about.

If for whatever reason the players do get kind of suspicious about it, then they've picked up the plot hook. I'd ask myself if anybody besides the gods in question know about it at all. Vecna or Boccob might be good candidates there; ancient loonies or modern conspiracy theorists would be another. Possibly one of the 9 who's had a change of heart and regrets his actions could be sabotaging the "official" version of history. Maybe even Asmodeus (as Lord of Lies) could have some insight. I'd say that if there is any evidence, then at least some other party is going to know it besides the main players. That other NPC is not going to want to draw attention to themselves because (unlike the typical adventuring party) he has some amount of common sense. If their investigations would draw attention, have the NPC corral them and give them a stern talking-to. The trick is it's got to be somebody the players trust and will listen to.

[Albions_Angel]

The druid does know about the war. Divine and semi-divine beings regained control of their memories faster than mortals and ascended beings. The 9 know EXACTLY what happened during the war, for example. The druids wernt divine though. Instead. this druid remembers because of something else, something related to older, less well defined gods...

Honestly, it doesnt matter if they know or not. Its a vanity thing. I am proud of the work I have put into the world (built from the ground up). In particular, I have done a LOT of work on the pre-Cataclism era, and the era that just followed it. Its the explanation for 5 separate areas, and for the various pantheons, some of which are published, some are homebrew. In particular, the area with the 9 hero gods is my favorite, and I love the lore around the war that I created. So on the one hand I want to share it. On the other... well... sigh. If I mention it too forcefully, I just know some of my players will latch on and pursue it to no end. I tend to play with very inexperienced players and they just have this very keen aura and they keep overlaying what they THINK they know for video games and movies when I have done my utmost to break those tropes where I can, while still including references to books, movies, games that I like.

Im still searching for a group I can actually play with for more than 2 sessions. I was rather spoiled when I started playing properly 5 years ago, with a group that met once a week for 8 hour sessions where we all wanted to play D&D and the edition was 3.5e. Well I finished my undergrad and had to move cities and I have... struggled. I cant get on with online play. After >10 attempts, both as a player and as a DM, I cannot stand 5th ed. No one knows how to run 3.5 any more. And so far, every attempt to run it ends up with people who want to have silly games and rule of cool and turn up to chat while I make the game run in the background, and it doesnt seem to matter if I have a session 0 and we discuss the game type, or if I put it in the initial post on meetup, or what I do.

I turned my energies into building this world, and I love it, really, truly, love it. I tried creative writing with it, but I dont want to write characters. I want to run games, and eventually, have someone run one for me.

Sorry, got a little off topic. Im just upset. Recently ended a game where the initial post said "serious game" and "game is the focus", and where at session zero, I repeated this, asked people to not make fun of in game things in an out of game way (like laughing at NPC names, or city names, or repeated monty python references), and if the game could be dry or close to it (no more than 1 pint / small glass of wine per session), had everyone agree this was sensible and what they wanted, then session 1 saw half of them get very drunk, and the other half stop mid game to discuss brexit. Session 2 wasnt much better and led to an IRL argument between 2 players with "history", and one of those players departing the game. That gave me all the excuse I needed to terminate any further sessions. I wasnt happy. Now I have asked some close, quiet friends if they would like a close, quite, gritty, "as real as dragons and magic gets" game, where the game is the focus, and they all want to, except we havnt even had session 0 yet and already I have one who wants to play a "very naive character that doesnt understand stealth, because that would be funny". Maybe once, Liz. Maybe once. Twice its just stupid, and more than that is actively harmful.

Its annoying. My girlfriend and her friends are all really into serious D&D, but dont like 3rd. Ive tried. They are the perfect group, but I cant enjoy their system and they cant enjoy mine.

[Segev]

With your GF and her friends, you might try a different system entirely, one that neither of you are wedded to and is new to both of you. I recommend Exalted, for the semi-familiar fantasy elements and just how over-the-top it can get. But if you like "gritty," you'd probably be happier with something like Starfinder (sci-fi Pathfinder, uses PF core rules, but is definitely different enough that it's neither 3.5 nor 5e directly) or even GURPS (which I don't like, but definitely is nitty-gritty and designed for grittier games).

There's also Deadlands, which can be serious and has a unique mechanical system.


Condolences on your troubles finding groups. I play online most of the time, and via IRC, and we keep our OOC comments isolated to an OOC channel. The RL gaming I do is with a group I know well, and we tolerate each others' foibles. Few of us drink during game, and the GM and her husband (most likely to have a drink) usually keep it to 1-2. I've never seen them tipsy during game. I do sympathize, though; one game I did get up and leave was one where several college student peers of mine were treating the session as an excuse to get drunk, and it was just plain unpleasant.

If you want to try to pitch your 3.5 game, I can give you an IRC channel or two where you can give it a try. No promises; people's gaming schedules are often full. But if you make it available long enough, you'll probably get bites. (This group does include people who'll try hard to push GURPS; they're in the minority, but they adore the system. As a warning.)

Glad you love your game setting, though! My own "Big" D&D setting has similarly semi-irrelevant but cool-to-me backstory, so I understand where you're coming from.

Given that, though, the answer is mainly to simply have the information be in isolated places, and only people who really would be interested in what would lead them to it have clues. Don't hand out quests that hook into it unless you're ready for the PCs to potentially start being interested. And feel free to have dead-ends on it. Learn some, and then have nothing more they can find; it's just history stuff anyway. Keep the duplicity of the Nine as your most closely-guarded secret. I assume the PCs are suppsoed to venerate them as good and noble icons of worship; learning they're evil monsters should be something that only happens very late-game, if ever. I'd also suggest having genuinely good people involved, and maybe even some of the NIne be repentant, but that's your world to build, not mine to advise on.