Emaciated Settings and Missing Details [RPG Pet Peeve]

[Max_Killjoy]

This weekend, I stumbled on and bought a used copy of Nocturnals, a supplement for Mutants and Masterminds detailing characters and setting from the comic book series by the same name by Dan Brereton.

It seems like a very interesting setting, but... the book is a tease. Everything it details, it details about half as much as it should. Major foes (the Crim and the Skarrl) have hinted-at abilities that are never detailed. Some named NPCs are mentioned and never given much meat. Vampires are present, but their true nature is only barely touched on. The Skarrl can create zombies and harvest soul energy, but how and some of why is never detailed. Etc.

The book is like looking out a window, with only hints of a vast landscape visible.

And this isn't the only RPG book that does this. Settings routinely seem half-finished, or half-detailed, or only hinted at.

[oxybe]

This is the Forgotten Realms issue:

You have a setting with a lot of lore built up over time... how do you present it?

Do you split it up into many chunks and go into detail? Here is a book on Thay and all things Thay. Here is a book on the Underdark. Here is a book on Ed Greenwood Elminister's Waifus.

Do you create one book and do broad strokes for everything?

Do you just give information pertaining to some key parts "here are the places Drizz't has been" and broad stroke/ignore the rest?

The first caters to the fanboy.

The second caters to people looking for a setting they don't mind filling in the blanks.

The third caters to casual fans.

The second one will catch the most fish, unfortunately. Fanboys already have their knowledge of every tavern and side alley of Waterdeep to fill in the blanks. Casual fans too, to some extent, as they'll still just place the game in Waterdeep, hit all the important notes while filling in the blanks with whatever thematic thing they think fits best and ignore the rest and peeps looking for something slightly different don't know better so they'll just put whatever they want in there "Waterdeep is obviously run by fishpeople".

[GunDragon]

Sounds like you didn't quite get your money's worth there, Max. Sorry to hear it.
So it's more details that you want?
Can you think of any other examples of this happening?

[Max_Killjoy]

Sounds like you didn't quite get your money's worth there, Max. Sorry to hear it.
So it's more details that you want?
Can you think of any other examples of this happening?

I bought the book in a wonderful local used book store, and paid 1/3 cover price, and it's in good condition... so I think I got my money's worth from at least one point of view. Entirely separate from that, I did buy it purely for the setting material, as I don't use M&M. It did spend a lot of space on art, but given that the comic it's based on has gorgeous painted artwork, that's a plus. It's a hardcover book that could have used just another 10 pages or so dedicated mainly to setting.

As for other examples... let me think about that one. It happens often enough that I want to pick one that stands out.

[GunDragon]

Well at least you got something out of it.
Have you ever read the setting informational book about Golarion, a.k.a. Inner Sea? That's the one for Pathfinder. Been a while since I've read it. But it seemed...ok I guess

[PhoenixPhyre]

While I totally get the point, I do want to mention that there's a tension here.

On one hand you want to give answers to important questions about the setting. You want to show off how cool this place is and all this stuff you know.

On the other hand, if you fill in too many blanks you start edging out room for games to fill in their own blanks. It starts to be a good book setting, but a poor RPG setting.

I have the luxury of total control over my setting and being able to do progressive enhancement--as parties explore and express interest and meddle, the setting gets fleshed out to match. Their old characters become NPCs that kick around for new groups to interact with. This lets me leave huge holes in the map and to feed off of what the players decide to fill them with (or what they're interested in seeing there). Published settings don't have as much of this luxury. Combined with the fact that making new professional-level content is expensive (especially in art-work) and I can see the temptation to be more bare-boned from the get go.

There's no perfect option IMO. You have to make your decisions and make the best of it.

[Max_Killjoy]

While I totally get the point, I do want to mention that there's a tension here.

On one hand you want to give answers to important questions about the setting. You want to show off how cool this place is and all this stuff you know.

On the other hand, if you fill in too many blanks you start edging out room for games to fill in their own blanks. It starts to be a good book setting, but a poor RPG setting.

I have the luxury of total control over my setting and being able to do progressive enhancement--as parties explore and express interest and meddle, the setting gets fleshed out to match. Their old characters become NPCs that kick around for new groups to interact with. This lets me leave huge holes in the map and to feed off of what the players decide to fill them with (or what they're interested in seeing there). Published settings don't have as much of this luxury. Combined with the fact that making new professional-level content is expensive (especially in art-work) and I can see the temptation to be more bare-boned from the get go.

There's no perfect option IMO. You have to make your decisions and make the best of it.

The aforementioned Forgotten Realms, if taken in its fully fleshed out form, gets into that other territory IMO.

My problem is that it sounds like the Crim and Skerrl (enemy factions) are central to events in the setting, and yet each gets about as much info in the book as the Crim do in the Wikipedia article I linked in the first post.

And beyond the book I bought, there's very little information available online, so it's not like one of the big gaming settings where I can fill in missing info by hitting up Google.

[Max_Killjoy]

Well at least you got something out of it.
Have you ever read the setting informational book about Golarion, a.k.a. Inner Sea? That's the one for Pathfinder. Been a while since I've read it. But it seemed...ok I guess

I don't think I have read it.

( Just looked at a map of the Inner Sea, and I think it would be fair to say I've seen that general layout of landmasses before... )

[Lord Raziere]

Well I guess I don't like it when a book doesn't even do an emaciated setting.

Because there are some books which do this "here are possible options for setting you COULD build" without actually giving me any setting to play in and to "discuss it with your group" to figure out what your going to be doing and such and its like "man, I didn't get a book so that I have to worldbuild up a setting myself, I can already create any world I want, what I want is to be sold on the world your trying to give me with this." because even with an emaciated setting, I can still try to flesh it out and make it come alive, its when there is no setting at all and its just a bunch of options then I'm like "uuuuugh."

though Numenera honestly is an example of a setting that I find emaciated and I don't like it. like when I looked at it, the author clearly didn't plan any greater structure to the lore, it was just random and shallow with a bunch of ideas scattered about to make it all seem "mysterious" but I could tell that he had no actual idea of what the past of the setting was like or how anyone got there or how any of this works. it just did not do anything for me.

[Arbane]

Then there's the opposite problem, where you need to wade through fourty pages of backstory before you have any idea how to make a character.

(And beyond that there's RuneQuest's Glorantha setting, which is so huge and detailed I feel like I'd need a PhD in Glorathan Studies to do justice to it.)

[Max_Killjoy]

Then there's the opposite problem, where you need to wade through fourty pages of backstory before you have any idea how to make a character.

Maybe that can be resolved by giving a layered presentation of the setting, with the <10 page "what you need to know about this setting right away" section, and then a far more detailed section later on in the book.

(Of course, I'm the guy who reads that later section, and another sourcebook, and whatever else he can find, before creating a character, but I might have a a bit of a brain problem when it comes to worldbuilding and setting and character immersion...)

(And beyond that there's RuneQuest's Glorantha setting, which is so huge and detailed I feel like I'd need a PhD in Glorathan Studies to do justice to it.)

Well, it also doesn't help that "what happened in year X in the past" depends on what present-day year you're in, since the setting includes the ability to change history to some degree.

[Darth Ultron]

The book is like looking out a window, with only hints of a vast landscape visible.

And this isn't the only RPG book that does this. Settings routinely seem half-finished, or half-detailed, or only hinted at.

I'm sure the writers/creators/folks defense would be they are presenting the fluff of a setting and are leaving the mechanical details up to each individual DM.

The reasons are legion:

1.The writer is not an expert game rule expert. Even if they wanted to, they could not write a decent stat block.

2.Even if the writer had even a little game rule skill, the chances are that they would need pages of new and special rules. And, in most cases, they can't add so many pages to the book.

3.Worse, even if they do add a whole chapter of new and special rules, they would have to do a very good job. In most cases, new rules are not overly thought out and are often very incomplete. Too often they just slap together a couple new rules to do what they need, but not much else.

4.Even if the new rules are sound rule wise, they will very often not match the fluff. A great many writers can't combine fluff and rules. They want to make a ''scary vampire" and the best they can do is ''er, they get a +2 to causing fear".

5.The power level is always a problem for RPG folks, as they can't seem to ever get it right. They just about always go for ''super weak" and somehow think that is ''demi god like".

The vast majority of DMs would much rather that the book not waste space with silly rules. The vast majority of DMs that buy a ''setting book" want all the setting fluff. That is what they are buying: fluff they can't make themselves. Even the most average DM can make a half way decent ''vampire lord" using existing rules or making homebrew ones (and even better the DM can ask for help too).

[Xuc Xac]

If it's a licensed setting from a movie, novel, or comic book, the license might not allow them to add anything that wasn't in the original story. If the original story only detailed things that the main characters interacted with or encountered in passing, the RPG sourcebook can only compile those few surface details but can't fill in any background details.

[Max_Killjoy]

If it's a licensed setting from a movie, novel, or comic book, the license might not allow them to add anything that wasn't in the original story. If the original story only detailed things that the main characters interacted with or encountered in passing, the RPG sourcebook can only compile those few surface details but can't fill in any background details.

True.

But in this particular case, it seems more like information that was in the comics the setting book is based on, was left out. AND, the author (and creator, and artist) of the comics is credited as one of the writers of the RPG supplement.

For example, there's an ancient "lost species" that can create zombies out of humans by stealing "soul energy", which is also used to power a beacon for nefarious purposes. NONE of this is detailed beyond "it happened". There's an illustration with the caption below it stating that it's one of these creatures stalking too potential victims for its "soul bottle", and that's the only mention hinting at how they accomplish this evil deed.

I have copies of the compilations of the comic series on order because it sounds like a fun read, so once I get those in a week or two I'll know more about what was left out versus what just didn't exist.

[Mordar]

This is the Forgotten Realms issue:

Do you split it up into many chunks and go into detail? Here is a book on Thay and all things Thay.

Do you create one book and do broad strokes for everything?

Do you just give information pertaining to some key parts "here are the places Drizz't has been" and broad stroke/ignore the rest?

The first caters to the fanboy. The second caters to people looking for a setting they don't mind filling in the blanks. The third caters to casual fans.

The second one will catch the most fish, unfortunately. Fanboys already have their knowledge of every tavern and side alley of Waterdeep to fill in the blanks. Casual fans too, to some extent, as they'll still just place the game in Waterdeep, hit all the important notes while filling in the blanks with whatever thematic thing they think fits best and ignore the rest and peeps looking for something slightly different don't know better so they'll just put whatever they want in there "Waterdeep is obviously run by fishpeople".

I'm not sure about that. If, as a casual fan, I really wanted to play/run a game in Thay (because a mageocracy sounds like a neat idea) with no real intention to expand the campaign to the wider Realms, I'd really like a deep, detailed book on that region alone.

If it's a licensed setting from a movie, novel, or comic book, the license might not allow them to add anything that wasn't in the original story. If the original story only detailed things that the main characters interacted with or encountered in passing, the RPG sourcebook can only compile those few surface details but can't fill in any background details.

This was my first thought - if it is a "port" of a setting for comics, books or whatever, is there any chance they were trying to avoid "spoilers", particularly of things not yet fully disclosed in the original media? For instance, it would be quite an oops if the RPG book for Snowbound were to reveal that the Big Hairy Yeti were to reveal that the Yeti were actually constructs created by the Moustazor (space mice) to scare humans away from their ship crash site...when the Snowbound novels hadn't even got that far. So the RPG book would have to tease that there was something behind the Yeti...but not spell out the detail.

More to the OP: I remember a couple games from the late 80s/early 90s that really made me want more info and detail...but then the game (or the line) folded and I got nothing more. Dark Space was one such example.

- M

[Kaptin Keen]

I'm pretty sure the point is to leave GM's and players room to fill in their own details. Creative freedom > exhaustively detailed fluff.

[Glorthindel]

One thing I dislike is "unexplained setting mystery" (for example, the Tyrant Star in Dark Heresy).

I get why they do it - they are both leaving it up to the DM to decide his own answer, and making it impossible for immoral players to go googling to find out the answers to the mysteries. But it still annoys me. As a DM, I am free to ignore and change the explanation if I don't like the originally presented one, so I see no reason why I should be denied the explanation the original author had in mind. If the author wants to keep it non-canon for their own reasons, that is fine, just provide a selection of possible explanations to obfuscate it (hell, more tools and choices for the DM is even better). And as for the danger of players spoiling the mystery for themselves, well that has always existed with published modules, and you just have to trust your players (and over time remove those who can't be trusted), and it really doesn't hold as a reason to just never explain mysteries.

This gets even more annoying if they then proceed to dance around the mystery in later supplements and adventures which restrict what the "true" answer might be without helping in any way to show how these events point towards a real answer (Going back to the Tyrant Star in Dark Heresy, the Haarlock Legacy campaign was particularly guilty of this)

[Knaight]

One thing I dislike is "unexplained setting mystery" (for example, the Tyrant Star in Dark Heresy).

I get why they do it - they are both leaving it up to the DM to decide his own answer, and making it impossible for immoral players to go googling to find out the answers to the mysteries. But it still annoys me. As a DM, I am free to ignore and change the explanation if I don't like the originally presented one, so I see no reason why I should be denied the explanation the original author had in mind. If the author wants to keep it non-canon for their own reasons, that is fine, just provide a selection of possible explanations to obfuscate it (hell, more tools and choices for the DM is even better).

Sometimes that author doesn't have an explanation, and the existence of a hard explanation at all would detract from the setting. There's no answer to how the islands moved to a different planet in Warbirds that isn't going to be a pile of technobabble, so "they did, nobody knows how" works fine. There's no answer for how the zombies in Red Market came to be (or more specifically, the Blight that animates said zombies and does various other things), because any answer is going to be ridiculous pseudoscience, so a brief highlight of what people in the setting think might be the case and why they all think the other theories are ridiculous holds up pretty well. So on and so forth.

This isn't advisable for anything that isn't largely beside the actual focus of the setting, but it works just fine for background elements.

[Max_Killjoy]

There's a minimum level of detail needed just to make an element of the fluff usable in the game, and I'm talking about books that are missing even that.

If the details in the book are the bones, and what the GM fleshes out in his particular campaign is the meat attached to those bones, then these are books missing some of the bones that the GM needs to build from.

If some ancient species of creature from the hidden depths of the earth is a major threat in the setting, and they have all these evil abilities, and you just hint around it all in one NPC's background section and some of the artwork captions, leaving the GM scratching his head as to where to even begin... you've probably left out the bones the GM needs to flesh out his version of the setting around.

[Kaptin Keen]

There's a minimum level of detail needed just to make an element of the fluff usable in the game, and I'm talking about books that are missing even that.

Such books certainly exist - and are annoying to the point that I feel they actually hurt sales and overall business viability for the companies in question. I've not bought an RPG accessory in years, but back when I did, the number of pointless low-quality TSR books is the very reason I stopped.

[Beleriphon]

True.

But in this particular case, it seems more like information that was in the comics the setting book is based on, was left out. AND, the author (and creator, and artist) of the comics is credited as one of the writers of the RPG supplement.

For example, there's an ancient "lost species" that can create zombies out of humans by stealing "soul energy", which is also used to power a beacon for nefarious purposes. NONE of this is detailed beyond "it happened". There's an illustration with the caption below it stating that it's one of these creatures stalking too potential victims for its "soul bottle", and that's the only mention hinting at how they accomplish this evil deed.

I have copies of the compilations of the comic series on order because it sounds like a fun read, so once I get those in a week or two I'll know more about what was left out versus what just didn't exist.

I think the problem is that mechanically in M&M the answer "is it happened and the points don't matter" not the specific mechanics of how a creature did such a thing since the players can't do it, it doesn't need specific rules to represent this. A substantial part of the rule set runs on GM Fiat by giving the character affected a Hero Point in exchange for doing something that is contrary to the dice result (ie. the Joker gets away when he should be knocked out), or the GM decides that Mr Mxyzptlk turns the Daily Planet building into the sentient Super Plant Building and all it wants to do is help Superman. You don't need rules for the later (although it is possible in M&M to use them if you really want) so stuff like that is included in a stat block that basically says "Do what you want GM, this character has no really limits that the rules need to work about".

In a lot of ways this how M&M as a game works. The GM can build badguys using the same rules as the players have to use, but there isn't any reason.

[Max_Killjoy]

I think the problem is that mechanically in M&M the answer "is it happened and the points don't matter" not the specific mechanics of how a creature did such a thing since the players can't do it, it doesn't need specific rules to represent this. A substantial part of the rule set runs on GM Fiat by giving the character affected a Hero Point in exchange for doing something that is contrary to the dice result (ie. the Joker gets away when he should be knocked out), or the GM decides that Mr Mxyzptlk turns the Daily Planet building into the sentient Super Plant Building and all it wants to do is help Superman. You don't need rules for the later (although it is possible in M&M to use them if you really want) so stuff like that is included in a stat block that basically says "Do what you want GM, this character has no really limits that the rules need to work about".

In a lot of ways this how M&M as a game works. The GM can build badguys using the same rules as the players have to use, but there isn't any reason.

OK. But I'm not talking about mechanical / system stuff -- this is just plain missing setting information. So in this case, there's no mechanics AND insufficient "fluff".

The "it happened and the points don't matter" approach still requires sufficient explanation of "what happened".

To use the example I was using earlier, the Skerrl evidently use "jars" to steal souls (to power their beacon and turn humans into zombies), but unless I'm forgetting another reference the only reason someone reading the sourcebook would know this is because it's mentioned in the caption of one image in the middle of the book.

[Darth Ultron]

There's a minimum level of detail needed just to make an element of the fluff usable in the game, and I'm talking about books that are missing even that.

The problem here might be more of the Setting Book Problem. The Book is meant to just give broad strokes of the setting, so there is little focus on any one thing.

And it gets worse when the setting book does this poorly. The Forgotten Realms has this huge problem often. The ''modern" books pick like three evil groups and make them out to be massive world wide powers. Realms lore has like a hundred evil groups, but the books only focus on a couple.

It is also possible the publisher wishes to release a later book all about the subject. This is the bane of a lot of publishers. They might have a two page write up of ''soul stealing jars", but then That Guy says something like ''Oh the book must be 95 pages or we will go over budget" or "Lets save that stuff for our next book" or something like that. And, maybe that book never gets made.

[Slipperychicken]

This happens in shadowrun 5e. Yes there is lore out there, somewhere, on the internet, in a blogpost, scattered between books from decades ago, etc but you're hard-pressed to explain 90% of the setting with just the rulebooks of the most recent edition. They constantly name-drop setting elements which would be familiar to players of prior versions, but leave new readers completely in the dark. Even showing us what half the gear looks like seems beyond shadowrun's uncompensated illustration. It's gotten to the point where the setting seems to be hedged out of actual games in favor of a sort of collective near-future head-canon.

[Cosi]

On one hand you want to give answers to important questions about the setting. You want to show off how cool this place is and all this stuff you know.

On the other hand, if you fill in too many blanks you start edging out room for games to fill in their own blanks. It starts to be a good book setting, but a poor RPG setting.

This is very true, and it's something you have to balance at multiple levels to produce a functional setting. You need some things that are completely defined to the point that a DM can just start a game (incidentally, this is generally something that is massively under-provided on almost every axis by almost every game). You need some things that are defined well enough for a DM to adapt in their own exploration of a provided hook. You need some things that just provide a hint that can be built off of in a variety of ways. And you need some things that are basically completely blank so that DMs can add whatever random content to your setting. And, in many cases, these things serve players as well by supporting character concepts the main setting doesn't provide a slot for.

But Max is also correct that you need to make sure your blank spots are placed effectively. You shouldn't have core setting elements yield "???" when interacted with in ways that people will predictably interact with them. Even if you want to do Eberron-style "there is no official answer" things, you need to have something for the DMs that don't want to think up something on their own.

This happens in shadowrun 5e. Yes there is lore out there, somewhere, on the internet, in a blogpost, scattered between books from decades ago, etc but you're hard-pressed to explain 90% of the setting with just the rulebooks of the most recent edition. They constantly name-drop setting elements which would be familiar to players of prior versions, but leave new readers completely in the dark. Even showing us what half the gear looks like seems beyond shadowrun's uncompensated illustration. It's gotten to the point where the setting seems to be hedged out of actual games in favor of a sort of collective near-future head-canon.

I read a review that described it as basically assuming you were already a hardcore Shadowrun fan, and therefore forgetting to mention things that the authors assumed you already knew. Like it mentions a "Crash 2.0", which implies a Crash 1.0, but that event isn't actually mentioned at all.

[Max_Killjoy]

I wonder if that was the case with the book that got me to post this thread.

[Beleriphon]

But Max is also correct that you need to make sure your blank spots are placed effectively. You shouldn't have core setting elements yield "???" when interacted with in ways that people will predictably interact with them. Even if you want to do Eberron-style "there is no official answer" things, you need to have something for the DMs that don't want to think up something on their own.

A setting book taking Eberron's core book approach is a good idea in a lot of ways. There are blank areas that are effectively "Here be monsters" so if you want monsters go there. The GM decides what kinds of monsters. Even a massive setting element like the Mourning, or what warforged are exactly, are left to GM fiat. There are plenty of suggestions throughout the book that hint one way or another, but never actually define the details beyond it happened and here's the results.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I wonder if that was the case with the book that got me to post this thread.

That's a big problem with mixed-media or otherwise pre-existing settings. It's easy to preach to your dedicated fans and leave everyone else wondering what in the world is going on here. If you provide all the information, the hardcore fans get turned off since they already know all that. If you don't...

[Max_Killjoy]

A setting book taking Eberron's core book approach is a good idea in a lot of ways. There are blank areas that are effectively "Here be monsters" so if you want monsters go there. The GM decides what kinds of monsters. Even a massive setting element like the Mourning, or what warforged are exactly, are left to GM fiat. There are plenty of suggestions throughout the book that hint one way or another, but never actually define the details beyond it happened and here's the results.

I have a used copy of the Eberron setting book, and frankly, a lot of those holes just leave me frustrated.

The elements in question are historical -- something happened, it already happened, it was very important to how the setting got to where it is "at present", it might help inform other ideas and concepts... but playing coy with what it was to "leave room" is aggravating, not helpful.

[Beleriphon]

I have a used copy of the Eberron setting book, and frankly, a lot of those wholes just leave me frustrated.

The elements in question are historical -- something happened, it already happened, it was very important to how the setting got to where it is "at present", it might help inform other ideas and concepts... but playing coy with what it was to "leave room" is aggravating, not helpful.

The biggest Eberron mystery is the Mourning, everything else is basically just blank space to fill as needed. Want a weird dungeon of your own design, put it over there stuff. The Mourning was left entirely up to the GM to decide how it happened and why. The effects are pretty clearly laid out in the books, but a lot of effort was put into making it mysterious. Even Keith Baker has said there was never really a discussion about what caused the Mourning other than it was magical, and a disaster on an incredible scale. That one mystery is very much intentional, although a number of books have hints about what it might have been and none of them are the same.