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Fishy
2008-04-23, 08:13 AM
Lately, I've been having this problem with my characters, particularly villains.

When I come up with a really cool character, with a really cool backstory and really cool motivations, they usually end up just talking to the PCs in one big and fairly contrived info-dump. Which they usually have no reason to believe, anyway.

How can I get better at disseminating information? How can I suppress my exposition reflex?

(The one thing I have tried that's worked fairly well: I once came up with three interesting but mutually contradictory histories for one character, and just had her lie all the time. Good fun.)

Valairn
2008-04-23, 08:28 AM
While the characters are trying to track down the villain have them learn about the villains history, this guy knows such and such about the BBEG, but this other guy knows where the BBEG was born etc. etc.

Daisy chain the information, or if you like villains that give long speeches just keep it the way its going. Preferably be very melodramatic, about how the villain is totally justified in their bad behavior because of their life experiences :-D.

KillianHawkeye
2008-04-23, 08:31 AM
Well, chances are that there are some other people who just happen to be near the PCs who know something about your villains. And for rumors and such there is always Gather Information and Bardic Knowledge.

Of course, this is supposing that your players actually want to find out more about this villain. If they don't care, there isn't much you can do about it since they won't remember anyway.

When I DM I find it useful to know a lot of details about the major NPCs in the game, so that when the players want to know something or some detail becomes important to the plot, I can insert it into the game without it seeming too contrived.

Also, never allow your villains to monologue. It gives the heroes too much time to get ready, and it's so cliche.

Tsotha-lanti
2008-04-23, 08:39 AM
Best way: Make the background relevant. Maybe the PCs must travel back on the "road" the villain took. (See the Harry Potter books for a really clear, simple, and really fairly good example of this.) Maybe the villain's powers are strongly tied to his or her background. (See, I dunno, LotR, or anything else, really.)

Or just make pieces of the background part of the story, even if it's not powerful and significant. This bard drops something here, this person who knew the villain drops something there, this cleric prophecies something over yonder... if you're good enough at writing characters, your players might actually come to sympathize with the villain.

It's done all the time in literature, comics, and movies without resorting to silly villain monologues. Why would a villain monologue their life story to the PCs anyway? Why should they sit tight and listen? If the villain is dumb enough to try to talk to his mortal enemies, clearly it's the best opportunity to take the initiative and kill him. Even if you're not mortal enemies, there's rarely any way to have a person share their life story without sounding very contrived and clumsy.

kamikasei
2008-04-23, 08:57 AM
When I come up with a really cool character, with a really cool backstory and really cool motivations, they usually end up just talking to the PCs in one big and fairly contrived info-dump. Which they usually have no reason to believe, anyway.

You are suffering from a syndrome common to DMs, wherein ideas that you've come up with seem awesome to you because you know all about them, but you fail to consider how they seem to the players who don't have that inside access to information.

In this case, if a villain's backstory or motivations are not relevant to his actions towards the PCs, they likely won't care. They are not really cool, they are a waste of effort. The litmus test: if a villain needs to tell the players about himself in order to seem cool, you have a problem.

More important is for a villian to be cool in such a way that the PCs are impressed in their interactions with him - no requirement for lengthy exposition here! Maybe he's a serial killer with an unusal MO, and in order to catch him, they have to figure out enough about his motivations to anticipate his moves. Thus you can have someone with an extremely awesome history and personality who never has to say word one to the PCs about it - they seek it out from others and from the evidence he leaves behind.

That's the general formula to follow: make it advantageous for the players to find out about all this cool stuff you've devised for the villain themselves, and deliver it to them through NPCs, letters, records, forensics... If you can handle it (and it's tricky), it's better to let them figure out as much as possible for themselves, too. That way they don't come to the villain completely in the dark and get bored to tears by a monologue; instead they come to him with questions and he gets to simply confirm their guesses, ignore the question and frustrate them, or laugh at how mistaken they are (and again either correct them or frustrate them), none of which would take more than a couple of quips back and forth to achieve.

This has the advantages of keeping the BBEG encounter from being bogged down in conversation and also of building up tension and anticipation beforehand.

Fishy
2008-04-23, 09:44 AM
Ouch, Kamikase. But thanks for the advice, I do like the idea of CSI: Sharn.

Darrin
2008-04-23, 10:06 AM
How can I get better at disseminating information? How can I suppress my exposition reflex?


You want to avoid infodumps because it brings gameplay to a shuddering halt. You've got a group of players sitting at the table who spent a lot of time and energy giving their PCs Kewl Powerz, and they want to use them to put the smackdown on your villain. Infodumps requires them to sit there and listen, but even worse, they're not killing anything. As a DM, keeping the game moving so the players can get to the fun stuff is often a lot more important than making sure the game makes sense. Some tactics to avoid big infodumps or too much monologuing:

1) It's unlikely that the villain will feel like he needs to justify or explain his actions to the PCs. However, there may be someone else the villain needs to justify his behavior to. There may be someone higher up that he needs to impress. A mentor, a lover, a powerful but cruel demonic overlord. So the villain could be writing a diary, or letters to this person, justifying or explaining their actions. You can then break this backstory up into "trail of breadcrumbs" or "daisy chain" sized pieces. Sprinkle these incriminating documents around the lair or at crime scenes. PCs like handouts more than they like monologues. They can read them whenever they like, go back over them during down times, tease out clues/hints/weaknesses (or more often completely ignore them).

2) The PCs may not care about the villain's motivations, but someone else might. Create an NPC patron that is obsessed with taking down this villain, and pay the PCs to investigate pieces of the backstory: "I will pay you X gold if you find out why he's only assassinating one-legged dwarves."

3) You can also just "hang a lampshade" on the monologue. This means you just acknowledge that it's silly and unreasonable for the villain to do so, but you're going to do it anyway because it's part of the genre you want to evoke. If you're running a "spy caper" style campaign, yes it's cliche but it's now expected as a given. To get the players to go along with it, provide some homebrew mechanics to encourage them to ham it up with the villain, such as:

Diplomacy or Bluff check to get the villain to spend his entire turn monologuing. For each consecutive round, apply a cumulative -1 to AC, Sense Motive, and Spot checks for the villain. Clever PCs can then use this so their spellcasters can prepare buffs, the bard can start his "interpretive mime" routine, rogues can move into position for sneak attacks, etc.

Trog
2008-04-23, 10:54 AM
Well, as they say on TV, knowing that you have a problem indicates that you are really not that bad off.

Now really it depends on the character's role in the adventure.

Innkeeper or other brief encounter NPC? Keep it all on the surface. Behaviors or catch-phrases. Make a brief note on how they act. I had one merchant always be eating when the PC's visited him. It's small consistencies like this that build a believable world.

For a main NPC that the PC's will have multiple interactions with you still need that surface detail but giving them a motivation that they strive for. A short history about why they are like this is useful to you in the event he is required to justify his motivation (A dwarf who hates gnomes because his brother was killed by one, for example) explains why he lies to your party gnome, gives different answers to different party members, is a jerk, etc. Backstory is hand for keeping you as a DM on track when freeform roleplaying.

Now for Villains you still need all of the above but since the person is so disruptive to his environment he certainly leaves a lot of info on him in his wake. So you can take all you have learned before and turn it into something more. Add a little spice. Like a dwarven merchant who is always eating, hates gnomes because his brother was killed by them and they stole his family's food. In retaliation he killed gnomes and ate them. Now he has a taste for their flesh and has been running arms to goblins who are attacking a nearby gnome community that has been asking for the PC's help. Guess what he was eating when you were buying that new armor?

Littering the adventure with hints of missing gnomes, goblin raids, weapon smuggling, a cannabilistic merchant cult, then tracking down the cult HQ and leader only to have an encounter in a room upholstered in gnome skin against the very same merchant the PC's equipped from at the beginning of the adventure who makes bite attacks against your PCs, especially your party gnome. I mean after that... who needs the villain to do any talking at all.

Ascension
2008-04-23, 11:43 AM
While I'll agree that spilling your whole life story is rather silly, I'd like to come to the defense of monologues.

I absolutely LOVE monologues. Monologuing villains, heroic monologues, Shakespearean monologues, all shapes and sizes and colors and flavors of monologues. I can't get enough of 'em. I'd say keep 'em short, but don't eliminate them entirely (Unless your players complain about them. Then, for the good of the group, wave goodbye to the speechifying of the past.). If your players ask for you to justify this mechanically, make sure that the villain gets a surprise round. And remember, talking is a free action. :smallwink: Also, if they give you too much grief about your monologues, you could start penalizing them for talking during combat until they agree to tolerate your unrealistic communication in exchange for you tolerating their unrealistic communication.

I really think a good RPG runs like a good Shakespearean tragedy. OOC comments take the place of asides, while the tone is generally serious, comic relief is sprinkled throughout, neither hero nor villain is afraid of monologuing, and everyone dies in the end.

RukiTanuki
2008-04-23, 01:32 PM
Take a cue from cRPGs: Sprinkle notes around, from the BBEG to the henchmen that just got de-henched. Leave clues in the things he has his minions collect for him. If you can't monologue to the PCs, monologue to a terrified and helpless NPC, who survives to recant to the PCs that they only remember something about a seventh seal and a heart of jade.

If you have your motivations well-thought-out, it's usually pretty easy to shake them hard and watch all the stuff fall out of their pockets. :) In other words, think of what the BBEG does to fulfill those plans, and think of the evidence they leave behind.

hamishspence
2008-04-23, 02:46 PM
Who is this Darth Exposition and is he going to appear in a Star Wars book? :smallbiggrin:

That said, keeping it fairly short helps. Or find plausible resons for a NPC to provide the exposition.

Jothki
2008-04-23, 04:02 PM
Monologuing isn't entirely unrealistic. Some villains desperately want respect, and telling your life story to a captive audience is one of the easiest ways to attempt to get it.

GammaPaladin
2008-04-23, 04:18 PM
If your players aren't totally hopeless at figuring out puzzles... Just craft the adventure in such a way that they have to figure out the villain's background and goals in order to find him/his base/whatever in the first place.

Person_Man
2008-04-23, 04:32 PM
It's been my personal experience in many roleplaying games that PCs don't care about detailed back stories, and their eyes glaze over if you read to them from a piece of paper for more then 3 sentences.

So if you want to work in more exposition, you should do so by linking it directly to game mechanics and/or rewards. Give out helpful clues and/or treasure and/or xp when a PC uses Skills. Link exposition directly to these benefits, and PCs will seek them both out.

For example, you could have Darth Exposition monologue about his troubled childhood. Or you could tell a PC who uses Gather Information that Darth Exposition's uncle still works as a moisture farmer in this area. If they go to Uncle Owen's farm and use Diplomacy/Bluff/Intimidate successfully, you tell them that Darth Exposition had a lousy childhood in slavery and that his mom was killed by sand people, and then give them some xp and/or a hint on how to defeat him by whining incessantly during combat. Do all of this in character as a set of questions and responses, and not just as a Skill check followed by you reading from your notes.

The Sandman
2008-04-23, 04:42 PM
Alternatively, have Darth Exposition monologue while secretly motioning for Lieutenant Genre Savvy to finish positioning backup around the throne room and prepare the escape route.