DMs: What's a bit of world building on the micro-scale you're proud of?

[Ken Murikumo]

I'm running a future fantasy pathfinder game with a bunch of setting appropriate homebrew equipment. Recently the party got in contact with a shadow broker agent (think Mass Effect) to get info on their current enemy. The broker was paid for the info, but in this setting for extremely sensitive info, the broker usually needs the info buyer to prove they are worth selling to. The logic is that the info loses all value if sold to someone incompetent.

Anyways, the mission is to go to a nearby, uncolonized planet and look for a macguffin, Lytherium aka God's Blood. This stuff whole bag of feral cats on its own. Its super rare (naturally occuring), super weaponizable, & super dangerous. While planet side, the players run into a bad news merc group. A quick knowledge check tells them that this merc group is one of the scummiest know; human trafficking, mob hits, drug smuggling, the works. The party tracks them down by following a literal trail of blood and bodies only to find the team leader is torturing and killing natives to extract Agony (liquid pain from BoVD) because she's a sadist, masochist, & addict. The party gets ambushed despite stealthily tracking the mercs, fight ensues, one player tries to crash a drop ship onto the merc leader, the ship gets shot down by a distant sniper but still hits 2 mercs, players eventually come out on top by starting a forest fire with breath weapons and grenades, and other high collateral tactics... you know, the usual. Afterwards, the PC's get the macguffin and return to the broker to find the sniper there finishing his contract with the broker. He's clearly dressed like the other mercs, there were plenty of clues to indicate another merc they didn't encounter (tracking 6 people but the tent had 7 cots, they fought 6 people but never figured out it was an anti-material round that took out the drop ship). There was a brief exchange of veiled threats because now the PC's hate everything to do with that merc group, and they let him leave.

What the players didn't know and didn't realize, despite the endless amounts of context clues, was that the broker also hired the mercs to find the macguffin. The idea being that either way, the broker will end up with the material and if it's the PC's that retrieve it, they also get the info. More-so, the sniper was one of the bad mercs, but had a separate contract with the broker to watch and report on the PC's activity. The Merc leader had also told the sniper to watch the PC's and report to her (which is why they ambushed the PC's). The sniper would have fired at the players during that battle but didn't have any clear shots. I designated squares on the battle-mat that he could target, but they just happened to never step onto those specific squares (go figure); only until one came over with a drop ship, which was promptly shot down. The sniper didn't really like working for such a disreputable group, but money is money during hard times. His side contract with the broker was to get info about his missing daughter. If the players had questioned him, he would have reluctantly revealed this info, giving some insight into why some of the people are in the group. If they outright killed him, they would have found info about his daughter with the rest of his loot (and you BET i would have guilt tripped the PC's).

I'm a bit bummed that they missed on some bit of fluff and world building. I didn't agonize over the details but was kind of proud with how interwoven i had made everything. But in the end, players do what players do: everything you don't want them to... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[King of Nowhere]

I'm running a future fantasy pathfinder game with a bunch of setting appropriate homebrew equipment. Recently the party got in contact with a shadow broker agent (think Mass Effect) to get info on their current enemy. The broker was paid for the info, but in this setting for extremely sensitive info, the broker usually needs the info buyer to prove they are worth selling to. The logic is that the info loses all value if sold to someone incompetent.

Anyways, the mission is to go to a nearby, uncolonized planet and look for a macguffin, Lytherium aka God's Blood. This stuff whole bag of feral cats on its own. Its super rare (naturally occuring), super weaponizable, & super dangerous. While planet side, the players run into a bad news merc group. A quick knowledge check tells them that this merc group is one of the scummiest know; human trafficking, mob hits, drug smuggling, the works. The party tracks them down by following a literal trail of blood and bodies only to find the team leader is torturing and killing natives to extract Agony (liquid pain from BoVD) because she's a sadist, masochist, & addict. The party gets ambushed despite stealthily tracking the mercs, fight ensues, one player tries to crash a drop ship onto the merc leader, the ship gets shot down by a distant sniper but still hits 2 mercs, players eventually come out on top by starting a forest fire with breath weapons and grenades, and other high collateral tactics... you know, the usual. Afterwards, the PC's get the macguffin and return to the broker to find the sniper there finishing his contract with the broker. He's clearly dressed like the other mercs, there were plenty of clues to indicate another merc they didn't encounter (tracking 6 people but the tent had 7 cots, they fought 6 people but never figured out it was an anti-material round that took out the drop ship). There was a brief exchange of veiled threats because now the PC's hate everything to do with that merc group, and they let him leave.

What the players didn't know and didn't realize, despite the endless amounts of context clues, was that the broker also hired the mercs to find the macguffin. The idea being that either way, the broker will end up with the material and if it's the PC's that retrieve it, they also get the info. More-so, the sniper was one of the bad mercs, but had a separate contract with the broker to watch and report on the PC's activity. The Merc leader had also told the sniper to watch the PC's and report to her (which is why they ambushed the PC's). The sniper would have fired at the players during that battle but didn't have any clear shots. I designated squares on the battle-mat that he could target, but they just happened to never step onto those specific squares (go figure); only until one came over with a drop ship, which was promptly shot down. The sniper didn't really like working for such a disreputable group, but money is money during hard times. His side contract with the broker was to get info about his missing daughter. If the players had questioned him, he would have reluctantly revealed this info, giving some insight into why some of the people are in the group. If they outright killed him, they would have found info about his daughter with the rest of his loot (and you BET i would have guilt tripped the PC's).

I'm a bit bummed that they missed on some bit of fluff and world building. I didn't agonize over the details but was kind of proud with how interwoven i had made everything. But in the end, players do what players do: everything you don't want them to... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

if you have some cool background you want to show off with the player, make sure you have a reliable way to drop the information. i always make sure to have an npc doing exposition if i need to. while i make sure that no npc knows the information if i want to keep it hidden.

[Pleh]

Speaking of Gnolls, I don't mind them being demon spawn, though I treat that status as being like what most people believe Tieflings to be and that the apple doesn't fall far from the nine planes. This is to say I don't rule them as necessarily evil, just that they actually DO experience an external, cosmic force pushing their minds and hearts towards evil. Enduring this influence when it afflicts you throughout your impressionable childhood yields some 99% corruption rate.

The fun thing for me is that this means any "good gnoll" essentially has to undergo a paladin level Atonement and probably a Break Curse spell to restore their mind to a state free from demonic influence like other races. I see it like how Barbarians in 3.5 had illiteracy. It can be fun to make backstories about how and why your demon spawn character chose to reject their heritage and rebel against the darkness consuming their whole race.

Addressing anthropological issues of primitivism, for one thing, this is fantasy. I wouldn't call fiendish Gnolls a culture or society as much as a symptom of the nine hells being part of your cosmic structure. Their culture definitively isn't stable and if they were just hyena people, they would have to adapt or collapse. But since we have demons eternally spewing hell energy into the material plane any time they can, Gnolls are sustained even as they are constantly collapsing whenever they lack hell's support. In essence, they're actually monsters, not people, which makes anthropology irrelevent.

Finally, one of my favorite twists on Gnolls is to make them seafaring pirates. The ocean is the world's largest desert (if your world is anything like Earth) and a Gnoll raid on a ship leaves the victims with nowhere to run.

In fact, last time I did this was in 5e. I noticed that at low level, these common humanoid raider type monsters had relatively similar stats and one or two special abilities that made them stand out as a special kind of threat. Goblins, for example, could more easily attack heroes then move to hide to avoid counter attacks. Gnolls in 5e basically get cleave, where if they take someone down, they get a free attack.

I asked myself how to demonstrate this terrifying ability to my players without snowball TPKing my party. The answer was obvious. Escort mission. They are passengers on a ship that is raided by pirates at night. The Gnolls know they are outnumbered, so their strategy is blitz. They carefully time their attack so as many of them as possible reach the deck simultaneously, sneaking up in rowboats under the cover of darkness. Once on deck, they ignore the heroes unless attacked.

I statted the ship's crew as Commoners. The Gnolls easily deal enough damage on average to drop a commoner in a single strike if they hit. This speeds up combat as each gnoll only needs to roll to see if they hit and every time they do, that's another character I don't need to roll for. Gnolls will seek out large groups of sailors, hoping to quickly capitalize on their bonus attacks. Heroes get ranked based on how many sailors they manage to save. If too many sailors die, the journey takes longer as there is no longer enough crew to man the ship. If they do really well and few to no sailors die, the captain pays them well to compensate them.

[Ken Murikumo]

if you have some cool background you want to show off with the player, make sure you have a reliable way to drop the information. i always make sure to have an npc doing exposition if i need to. while i make sure that no npc knows the information if i want to keep it hidden.

Well that goes without saying, but my players are generally pretty sharp and pick up on the clues i leave. This happened to be an errant case, but it does happen. I personally don't like having NPCs dump exposition and prefer to use a lot of show-don't-tell in my story telling. I will have NPCs give needed exposition if i feel it's critically important or cannot/should not be done otherwise, though. My earlier (primitive) games/story telling used tons of NPC exposition & monologue; so much so, that i had one player shout, "no talk time; FIGHT TIME!!", then proceed to have his barbarian attack the BBEG. I get now that there is a balance for when it's appropriate and how much.

But what's done is done. There's no point in forcing the info on the players; It was not plot critical and contributes almost nothing to the greater plot, so i'll just let it go. Maybe i'll have a random encounter where they see the sniper in civilian clothing at a restaurant or something, having lunch with his daughter just to see if they make good on their threat to kill him next time they see him.

[Grek]

In my Urban Fantasy/Magic School setting, Dean Koschei takes a one week vacation every year around the time that the engineering students are scheduled to cover equidimensional equations.

(Equidimensional Equations are an actual math thing, more commonly known as 'Cauchy-Euler Equations'. Which is unexpectedly pronounced 'Koschei Oiler' because the French have a tremendous gift for vowels. The Dean is of the firm belief that he is already sufficiently lubricated and does not require assistance from student punsters.)

[Pleh]

the French have a tremendous gift for vowels.

Minor correction. Cauchy was french, but Euler was actually swiss.

I mention it because I thought he was german, but google reminded me it was the Eigen functions/values/etc that were german.

[LibraryOgre]

In my Urban Fantasy/Magic School setting, Dean Koschei takes a one week vacation every year around the time that the engineering students are scheduled to cover equidimensional equations.

(Equidimensional Equations are an actual math thing, more commonly known as 'Cauchy-Euler Equations'. Which is unexpectedly pronounced 'Koschei Oiler' because the French have a tremendous gift for vowels. The Dean is of the firm belief that he is already sufficiently lubricated and does not require assistance from student punsters.)

Minor correction. Cauchy was french, but Euler was actually swiss.

I mention it because I thought he was german, but google reminded me it was the Eigen functions/values/etc that were german.

Related: I had a DM who named all evil wizards after Mathematicians, and all good wizards after Engineers.