Lore Delivery Systems
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 23 ก.ย. 2024
- Your players will engage with your Lore IF you make it easy and fun.
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What im getting from this video is that Matt invented a ruby arm just so it could teach general relativity to his players.
Connections with Lore can have many *Forms*, like the one you now hold in your hand...
Prescience, seers, all the once diverse occults of history *sought* just this.
But once - in the mists of a primitive past century - it was governed by an *all seeing, evil, cult*.
The cult went by an *acronym* to hide itself, and its hidden, unspeakable name would have made the magic now in your hands as but a mere mute whisper of what you have now...
Their *acronym* was AT&T, their *secret name* American Telephone and Telegraph, but everyone knew them from what they were... *The Phone Company*.
Sorry about the rant, just rewatched "The President's Analyst" w/ James Coburn.
Something I forgot; the players DID try to use the Chronicle early on, they wanted to use it to learn about the politics of Capital. Which didn't work because the Chronicle doesn't know what's going on in the world NOW, only history and mostly ancient history.
When the players discovered the Chronicle was useless for like modern news, they basically gave up on it entirely.
I feel that so hard. "This doesn't fit our present use case and doesn't trivialize every issue we come across information-wise, so let's never use it."
*LISTEN HERE YOU MORONS. JUST BECAUSE IT'S OUTDATED DOESN'T MEAN IT CAN'T GIVE YOU LEADS IN THE PRESENT DAY.*
Sorry about that... just reminded me of an irritating thing.
@@braxbro6674 5:39
You wrote an absolutely amazing series of video on the relevance of History. You know damn well you can look back to look forward. I have nothing but confidence you can evolve the concept to suit that.
I'd delve into the chronicle as much as I could
@@myrimu9829 I know that, but at the same time, throwing away useful information just because it wasn't useful in one situation is kinda infuriating. That's all.
Someone once said, "A DM is often judged by the obscurity of their references..." And one obscure reference comes to light...
I had my players fight a Cyclops named Polybius, and only of them got the reference.
@@paulcoy9060 Did they really fight him though? Wink wink. Nudge nudge.
@@oz_jones If I was a better DM, I would have had that Cyclops wear a Ring Of Mind Control.
I've been doing "Fact of the day" before each session. This was loosely inspired by the loading screens in Bethesda games. It's just a few sentences, but it's given the players some inspiration on places they want to go, or things they want to see.
Stealing this idea.
Love the idea! I bet that the fact that it happens at the same time each session allows for the players to look forward to it and get excited (kinda like the fox in the little prince now that I think about it)
That sounds like a cool idea .. totally going to try that (as long as I remember for next game).
This is an excellent idea, thank you for sharing!
That is a classical amazing simple idea that makes you go: “why didn’t think about that!?”
For all you DMs out there thinking of using the glass hand but not sure how to flavor it here’s an idea, DnD already has a magical hand that a player can wake up to find mysteriously grafted to them
And a magical eye!
…and a head! Mustn’t forget the head of Vecna…
@@Ellebeeby honestly got so many ideas now, I think the hand and eye of Vecna are perfect for this, Vecna is a perfect vessel for lore, they can give players the incentive to “complete it” with more magical powers, but also the hand and eye have its own motives that might not align with the players, and the players might not know that.
Imagine the hand or eye aiding the party with information on how to defeat Orcus or Tiamat in exchange for “completing it” only to reveal it was still self serving as the players not only restored Vecna to full power, but also took care of his competition
If you got a Warlock, Paladin or Cleric on your party you already have a really good vessel for information. You just need to use It.
@@toribiogubert7729 "Oh dear, he's hearing voices again!"
Potentially the "glass hand" is an NPC that the players have with them, or that they visit, his being "incomplete" is because he's missing some sort of tome or something like that
I had a lore delivery system in my game with a sword that had dwarven runes on the pommel, that formed a dwarven pun (read one way, it was Lore Seeker, but amongst dwarven scholars read Citation Needed). It allowed the players to ask it questions, and if the answer was written down anywhere, it would show a relevant excerpt on the blade, and the source of the 'citation'. This allowed the party to seek out said book for more information, or suitable sages.
this is brilliant
I'm SO going to steal this, This is brilliant
This is genius
yoink
Double yoink
Dael Kingsmill's look during the reveal scene is everything, it's why we roleplay!
I live for that look on my players faces.😊
Yup. 100% best DM reward right there.
Around 6:00, you talk about people wanting to put blame on players and whatnot. As a side note, I think it's important to remember that you can have a good idea that is a bust and no one is "to blame". I'm in a D&D group of 5 and 4 of us like to DM. All of us have, at some point, had a good idea that just flopped. Sometimes it was someone's fault, but sometimes it was just a flop and no one really knew why.
My god, that Ruby arm voice was so good. I felt like my heart was sinking into my shoes while I stood in a black box with a sourceless light above
Kinda reminded of Harry Dresden's friend Bob the Skull. A spirit of intellect that knows a lot and lives in a skull, but he cuts off pieces of himself when he learns something he doesn't want to know.
A literal talking head. Love Butcher
And a complete sex pest to boot.
Matt is truly a river to his people!
A river of steel and blood❤️☠️😎
@@ballelort87 A Metal river! So metal!!
I've heard this expression 4 or 5 times now, what does it mean?
In my Curse Of Strahd campaign my players found a spirit board and they contact spirits when they have questions to ask or the spirits contact them if I want to nudge them in a direction or dump some lore etc.
I’ve magnetised it too and I control the planchette from underneath the table. The looks on my players faces as the planchette glides around the board and spells out words is tense and priceless.
When they ask something I don’t have the answer too or I don’t want to reveal just yet I move it back to the centre of the board and remain stationary, which they think is the spirits way of saying ‘I don’t know’.
Like a ouija board? That‘s an awesome idea!
@@yannickleu2854 Yeah, exactly that!
@@deadwoodlake4718 Late comment but this is so cool dude
Your idea is about to get a new lease on life in my campaign, thank you so much for sharing!
I did a glass hand type thing in one of my campaigns. There was no party wizard and the highest intelligence in the party was a 14, so I inserted a powerful wizard npc who was the leader of a big mage's guild. I made this guy the definition of "kooky old wizard" and he was pretty bored with running a mage's guild, pushing papers and dealing with people whom he felt took everything way too seriously. So when the party arrived, he saw his opportunity. He faked his death and transferred his soul into the body of a frog, and then joined the party as their pet. He wasn't able to do a whole lot of magic, but he was an excellent source of information and lore for the party. And whenever the party asked a question I didn't want them to have (or just didn't know), I would have frog wizard go into a giant metaphor filled monolog that made no sense whatsoever until the party gave up. The whole campaign had a very zany tone so the entire thing went over great with my players
Love this.
My dude, I am stealing this frog!
Sensei has posted, it's a good day
A blessed Friday indeed XD
Bones day for sure
Indeed. Evil matt has returned. /s
HAI
I think the misconception that information should be hard to get comes from a misunderstanding of how stories with lots of secrets and esoteric knowledge work. People love obscure knowledge, but absorbing that information is often the simplest part. Finding it should be an adventure, not necessarily an obtuse problem. A fun aspect of lore, and something that I think can definitely help players and DMs struggling to find where the esoteric knowledge is, is that the more important something is, the more likely the same information will inevitably exist in different forms and in very different levels of detail depending on where you're getting it from and what their perspective is. I think games like Cultist Simulator do this exceedingly well!
Yes, it helps when getting the information feels rewarding, earned.
Perfectly put. Especially in the Information Age, where the "journey" to get to the info is so short (just a Google search away) the difficult part is not knowing where to go, but what to look for. Contradictory tales, multiple accounts of the same event, and depending on the setting, magical erasure or changing of information are all fair game in this aswell, and make figuring out the truth even more fun and challenging.
How many scrolls did Gandalf go through before he found "it is .. precious to me"? That was the adventure.
Also came down to the comments to recommend, Cultist Simulator is definitely how it's done
I think Curse of Strahd does a good job at providing relevance to the lore of the story. If you want to beat Strahd you will have to find his weaknesses, travel the land look for allies and unearth forgotten relics that can aid you in that.
OMG YES!
I have a campaign like this, where one of the players has a skull that talks to them that I ripped off from this very episode. Over time, they find the teeth to make it more complete. Eventually, it's attitude changes slightly. It wants to be whole above all else. And it becomes more powerful when it's tongue is found. There is but one piece left, the eye...
I'll NEVER forget one player caught on to what was going on, but not enough... and reasoned "This is Vecna, we're putting Vecna back together." and armed with the "complete head of Vecna" well... He lost his head in his quest for power.
The look on his face when I told him we needed to roll a new character...
He was super happy to fight a newly empowered Vecna later on, it's head atop his last character's body.
That's awesome, way to take what was a joke item, and make it cool!
Is that a muthafuckin' JOJO REFERENCE!?!?
That is so cool. I have to steal that for a future game.
Please keep these videos coming. They are my life blood as a GM/DM.
same, saw his entire playlist in my first months as DM
Yes. Not just a wealth of knowledge and experience but a deep well of inspiration and encouragement.
@@leandrochavez6480 I mainlined all of Running the Game in like a week and a half
Couldn't agree more
@@matthewshroba1511 I usually watch one of his videos before I DM a game. I have watched them all before, some several times but I find it gets me into DM mode.
Yes to making your lore easy to discover. I held the belief that lore should be difficult to discover until I read the "Secrets and Clues" chapter of the Lazy DM Guide by Michael Shea/Sly Flourish. I then just started "handing out" 10 secrets per game from whoever the PCs were speaking with that session. Game changer!!
one of my players is my roommate so he gets a bunch of lore dumps whether he wants it or not
I've been doing this for 12 years.
Premise of my campaign, groundhog day. Except for it repeats every 13,000 years and nobody ever remembers except for one person who wants it to stop but can't make it stop. So he finds the people who are most likely to succeed who happened to be the players, that keep forgetting what they did last time. And this McGuffin person has lived so many lives and has gone through so many iterations that he just cannot remember exactly the details just right. Except for the very very very important ones, like don't die whatever you do don't die.
I love this!
I think another way to hand out lore can be inspired by disco elysium. While describing something or someone in the world, you can roll against the players passive intelligence or wisdom skills. If at least one persons intelligence is higher, their character just inherently knows about this and you can point that out. Otherwise no one knows about it and it stays a mystery. DM gets to give lore, everyone gets to know more about the world in small increments, and one or a few players get to feel special because it feels like their characters are already established and knowledgeable about the world. Of course for more unknown or hard to find facts the ruby arm is great and I may include a version of it in my games as well but this way players don't have to ask about everything they may want to know.
I feel so privleged to have a player in my game who is a scholar, who loves learning lore. It started with researching an answer to an ongoing conflict in the game. Now, they do research on everything, because the more they know, the more prepared for future arcs they are. They once researched all the history of chromatic dragons in my world because I foreshadowed it once, and 40 sessions later, they were fighting a dragon who they knew everything about because of that research. It takes the burden off the other players to research and gives me someone to loredump on.
The Planescape setting had a concept like this built into it, in the form of the readily available 'Mimir' items. These were floating objects, skulls were popular, enchanted with a variety of knowledge so they could answer questions for the PCs - the higher quality, and more expensive or exclusive, the Mimir, the more it would know. An easy and convenient source for knowledge in somewhere so vast as the planes.
Matt is our older brother we never had, but always wanted.
Reply if you too are the oldest sibling
Yes. Oldest here, just slightly younger then Matt.
Eldest brother
@@WhatsUpGazpacho Yup, older sister here. I have one younger brother and no other siblings. He's pretty cool, though. :)
Don't get me wrong, I'm able to give myself kudos for good writing, adventure design, and plot hooks.... But it is very satisfying when Matt comes out with a super helpful DM video talking about something I already do in my games. Thanks for all the years of help Matt!
I’m incredibly lucky and I have several players who actively seek out my lore. There’s something really gratifying about being able to just drop the smallest breadcrumbs and watching a particular player of mine’s eyes go wide. She doesn’t play low int characters specifically so she can make checks that get her deep knowledge.
I didn't realize how long it has been. I love this channel and listening to Matt share about his passions. Thank you for all you do for the hobby and sharing with us!
See, when you describe it, I keep thinking of it as a PBTA move - "When you check the Chronicle of the Chain, roll with…" That's how those games indicate that looking for lore is something that a) the players can do and b) the game is listening for.
Matt, you are a prophet of the gaming community. A rare voice in the wilderness, guiding nerds on their messy journeys into the stars. A beacon of narrative bliss.
12:32 the best part of this bit, besides the excellently written answer and audio effect, is watching Dael lose her mind more and more as you keep going
One of two Harlan Ellison written episodes of Outer Limits. The best. Also part of his civil suit against James Cameron for “borrowing” elements from this and his other episode for the Terminator.
I prefer the classic episodes "Behold, Matt!" and "The MCDM Misfits"
I watched this video again, and literally teared up listening to Remainer's first answer. Something so inspiring and and deeply impactful about seeing Dael's face realizing how in over her head she was and how many of her preconceived notions were true or not.
This is great stuff ! The idea that came to me was a glass skull. It could talk and have a fun personnality. Each teeth could add more to its knowledge, progressively restoring the skull's well of memory. Then, when the skull is fully restored, the lich would come back to full power !
Brilliant idea! You could have the personality change slightly as your players find more and more teeth until it’s almost *desperate* to get them to find the last few - an early warning for them that not all is as it seems (and thus not a deus ex machina). Then you lock something INCREDIBLY important to one or more of the players behind the last tooth, and watch them wrestle over whether to give the skull what it so clearly craves…
@@Ellebeeby Okay! Now I'm stealing this!
@@MrInternetHermit Wish you well to use it! I’d tell you how it’s going to turn out, but that part of my foresight is locked. Perhaps if you found another one of my teeth…
Babe, wake up. There's a new Matt Colville video
I had forgotten how astonished she was in that moment, it was to close to when she met the Celestial in the Ruby Citadel and heard Them speak the first time.
When Matt mentioned that the lore delivery divice could be a character and alive to give answers, I imedeately thought of Tim Riddle's Journal in Harry Potter.
This video could not have come at a more perfect time! Thank you!
You're so welcome!
I think the key to getting the model of information being hard to get to really work well is the tension created by the understanding of how dangerous acting on incomplete/incorrect information is.
This implies a shift from heroic/action storytelling structure to _horror_ storytelling structure where the anxiety of how strongly mismatched the PCs are to the challenges they're up against is a large part of the appeal.
This is a very different kind of fun than the standard D&D game (and arguably system) is built around where the fight begins in the planning, information gathering, and preparation stage and initiative being rolled is the beginning of the climax, not the beginning of the fight.
I'd often use this method on devices and weapons in my game.
If you didn't ask or look about for *just what* that red button on the bottom of your new magic gun *was*... well enough said.
The instructions and reason for what things do would be expressed in partly cryptic European roadsign-ish iconics.
Sorta like seeing the wrist computer 'countdown' on the alien in predator.
The weapons and devices in my game were so often just as deadly to the environment, team mates - and firer; they'd start to realise that maybe it couldn't be something they could use.
Thus, they were more useful to let an enemy get hold of from them instead!
Perfect time, I have a huge lore dump coming in the next two sessions so this is super helpful.
For 40 years, I've been meaning to get around to watching this episode of Outer limits, so now I've seen it, and it's quite good, highly recommended
If you're interested, it's "Demon with a Glass Hand," it's by the late, great Harlan Ellison (who also wrote "City on the Edge of Forever"), and it's available to stream on Pluto TV (select season 2; it's like the 5th ep. down)
As for this video, thanks as always for the great ideas, Matt. Had noticed the lack of sages in modern D&D, and plan on using them if I ever DM again, but I love the idea of giving the party a portable sage, wherther it be a glass hand, a skull like in Harry Dresden, or a talking book like the Hitchhiker's Guide, or... or... so many possibilities
My entire home group thanks you, Mr. Colville, for being a river to your people.
Six years ago, Your first five videos convinced me to purchase the box set "Lost mines of Phlapen-doodle", and make the switch from 3.5 to 5e. (I was stubborn and skipped 4e).
Matt, you set an amazing thing into motion, at my table. I had decades of experience running the game, so the transition was a breeze. I found, however that I am incapable of just running a module as written. What could have been done in six sessions became a six month campaign, played every week, with no less than eight players consistently. None of them had ever played the game before. Some times things could slow to a crawl because of the number of players. This became a problem. So, I decided that rather than limiting the number of players, I could create a new experience. Over the years, I have had very few players ever show interest in becoming a DM. I took your advice and created the opportunity to change that. Periodically there would be the option of splitting up the party. This is normally considered taboo, however, I encouraged it by presenting half of the players the opportunity to run the monsters. I know how crazy that sounds, but before anyone goes off, consider the fact that I am telling you how successful this was. Doing this allowed their characters to have the most epic of combats. Letting one of the players track initiative, and allowing a few others to run the monsters against their companion players was a beautifully wild success. It opened their eyes to what happens behind the screen, and gave them the confidence to attempt their first session as DM.
Six years later, every one of my eight players are now amazing DMs in their own right.
To show our gratitude, one year ago, myself and four of those original players, started hosting free weekly public games, at our local game-store. We run DnD every Wednesday, for a regular crowd of 24 to 30 players. Single parents with their kids, local teens, and people from all walks of life, sit at our tables and have the most epic of adventures, all because you choose to be a river to your people.
It only took five videos to make you a hero.
Everything else just makes you a legend.
Thanks again.
Kirk Brown, you are AMAZING. Thank you for sharing this!
I closed a different video and was about to close my entire laptop and go eat... And at the last moment I saw this video, and said aloud "oh damn new Matt Colville" and legit sat back down to watch the entire thing.
IMO "Lunch can wait this is gonna be good" is about the biggest endorsement I can think of for a content creator from me. Keep 'em coming, Matt!
This is like my setting's Codex system! I accidentally stumbled into this idea during pre-session 0 prep I was doing for a murder mystery campaign. I was thinking "Damn, I really need a way for them to test this blood without leaving the crime scene," and so from that I gave the investigative agency they were contracted from a wrist-mounted item that can analyze samples then give and receive basic requests to Central Command. In that narrow scope, it was kind of like a mobile crime-lab that can also query a database. I didn't know what it could do yet, so neither did my players, and it's evolved over time into a stable presence in my setting as a high value, hard to come by, Faction-locked, context-sensitive information device.
Thankfully it also comes built in with that same Missing Digits concept you mentioned, because things can be "erased from the database" or the players might not "have the Security Clearance to make that request". Being Faction-locked also means they aren't everywhere, and they aren't omniscient. Don't be afraid to take risks designing items that you don't fully understand at the outset!
I had this same idea a while back. I was thinking about having a Deckard Cain like NPC and I immediately thought why not just give the players his book instead. Whatever lore information they want or need is in the book. ...and then I said why not have the book be intelligent and BE the Deckard Cain like NPC? That way I can lore dump AND flex my B- Deckard Cain imitation!
I’ve done this before with a “Bottled Sage” his memory incomplete and damaged from being stored and diluted of the years. Players could refine, duplicate, or collect more of the fluid to help the Sage regain memory and sanity.
I should note; The item was called “Bottled Sage,” but I frequently used a movie surfer dude voice to roleplay him and when you gave him fresh fluid it was like a new dr*g for him. *u
@@pitviper6652 I appreciate the putting the censored characters at the end of the message, that always gets me, but why did you censor the word drug?
That’s brilliant!
My campaigns often have a tome known as "Grimoire of Liborious". Embedded in the cover is a skull (oftentimes incorrectly named Liborious by my players) who helps them use the book. By playing the book as a foul mouthed sarcastic jerk I have so far gotten them to allow most of the lore I needed to.
😂 I love this!
Suddenly I want to run something in a fantasy setting with a lore delivery npc that to the characters will seem to be a magical automaton but to the players will obviously be a mundane but sophisticated robot from the future with damaged memory circuits. I know that's not astoundingly original but I think it could be fun. Especially if one of the kinds of information the robot gains over time by "repairing its memory circuits" is stuff about the future setting that is clearly the result of things the pcs did. (I love the concept of players having tangible proof of their impact on their characters' environment.)
Moving the information from a “boring” item to an interesting NPC could work. Thinking of Ivy from the Dresden Files. Especially leaning into the power she has, after all, knowledge is power.
Got a session I'm DMing in less than an hour, thought I should get a quick bit of knowledge beforehand
I once ran a campaign based on "I saw this cool scene in a movie, or read it in a book, I want to do that" so that's what I did. I took the Illrigger, made 3 characters with each subclass, they were my bad guys, The Painkiller lead the down trodden veterans of a great war, the Shadowmaster was a childhood best friend to one of the original PCs, as well as working under a mysterious man who had saved the PC and Shadowmaster as children, and The Architect of Ruin was the ultimate leader of the 3, he had worked his way into the employment of King Neverember and was running a government funded Neverwinter CIA essentially. What it really was was The House of Questions ripped straight out of The First Law. Through this, each 3 had their own methods of sowing discourse across the entirety of The Sword Coast. It was epic.
I took the plot of The Tomorrow War and made it a side story that was potentially world ending, on top of my world ending plot, I made magical IEDs and used them against the party, I had The Painkiller orchestrate a terror attack on Waterdeep using magical scrolls of delayed blast fireball to bomb City Watch outposts all across the city. God it was epic.
I'm currently DMing Tomb of Annihilation, and my Lore Delivery System is *dreams*.
Makes sense tonally (with Dendar and all), gives me control, but I also make the dreams interactive (so that the players can react, roll dice, etc.). It's been really fun *and* impactful!
Have you ever considered releasing the audio from this series of videos on podcasting platforms? As much as I enjoy seeing you, occasionally I would like to re-listen to these videos while at work, or in situations where I would have limited bandwidth and wouldn't actually be watching the video portion anyway.
In my Arabian/desert themed campaign I gave my players a Lamp of Grumpy Vizier - a cat looking Jinn, who was eager to trade information for information, as long as it interests him. All of player characters were foreigners, so they really were eager to search for some lore to exchange it for another lore with the Grumpy Vizier
I was in the middle of figuring out how to do this when I got this notification. Truly a river to your people!
I just realized how much my players’ regular prophetic dreams fit this idea of lore delivery systems. Not that it was a perfect solution but I did it unknowingly, and it worked out alright for me.
I just introduced a 3000 year old space wizard to my campaign as a lore repository this past Friday, and this video makes me feel so much better about that decision 😅
some pretty awesome stuff! I do like the example of the glass hand and I have found that my players are more engaged with lore when the source of information is someone or something they can ask. One way that I've seen a ton of success with is making the primary sources of lore in my setting NPCs that each have an agenda and are in conflict with each other. These NPCs basically waged information warfare to bring the PCs to their side of the conflict, simultaneously willing to dredge up uncomfortable truths about the other factions while painting theirs in the most generous light and promising to fill in any missing info gaps when they feel comfortable that the PCs are sufficiently loyal enough to not wield the information in ways that would harm their ultimate goals.
Since my players love the social roleplay aspect of the game they had a lot of fun scoping out each of these NPCs, being given startling revelations that shook up their faction loyalties, and building themselves up to become major players in the conflict. it's the sort of thing I'd recommend for very social focused tables
Honestly im thinking of giving cards with every magic item or rare object so the players have a physical object to go with their cool game object and the object gets flavor and lore text on the card. They might even reference other cards or objects they dont have, so they want to go down the rabbit hole and collect more knowledge.
My Lore Delivery System is based on the "Second Best Story in Gaming" video. Cortana, the Blade of Memory, is a sentient shortsword (I have an elf bladesinger in my party) that can identify the history and makeup of anything it touches. It grants some bonuses in combat, as whenever it makes contact with an enemy it learns a little more about them and how they fight, giving a stacking +1 bonus to hit and damage.
Similar to 'The Man With The Glass Hand' was the part of the movie 'Zardoz' where Zed (Sean Connery) speaks to the AI 'Tabernacle' via a hologram projecting ring.
The source of basic news i do is thru local Bards, who act as a media exchange with each other, but nondirect communications sometimes suffer, a little, (hilariously) from 'The Telephone Game' syndrome.
This can be inserted for any segmented lore communications method in your world, like for Traveller games.
I'm amazed you did not bring up The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a classic parody of genre exposition and a great example of how to deliver lore in a fun and interesting way. Granted, Douglass Adams' excellent comedic writing is a huge part of why The Guide is a classic. The "Don't Panic!" cover is an obligatory reference.
Always remember to bring a towel.
Might I mention another prime example in the Aletheiometer (Golden compas) from the His Dark Materials? An instrument that can be read to answer any/most any question but most cannot read it.
how does the MCDM crew always know exactly what video i need
One of my favorite 'lore delivery systems' are probably undead servants. Be it a zombie librarian who cares about books but is only able to speak in grunts and basic facial expressions trying to express so much. Or blackened skulls of sacrificed victims with red glowing eyes of hate (also a useful light source) that know what they saw when they were alive in the dungeon and wish vengeance. They can only speak with clattering of teeth.
Demon with a Glass Hand was one of their best episodes. Bill Culp was great.
I did this by accident, my group has a talking shield named Crankiron, who used to be a knight for the previous kingdom that was cursed to be a shield 300 years ago.
Whenever I need them to know info on the old kingdom, Crankiron can just tell them in a grumpy way and they will listen because he’s goofy
My players are really interested in the concepts of gods and religion, so I keep this in mind during lore dumps. 80% of them are Warlock multiclasses, and two of them are trying to become gods. A few months back, they were in a temple and I established that there were 6 stained glass windows. They investigated all 6 windows, and asked the high priest about them. Through that they learned a bit about the history of the world, and got information on the particular religion of the temple.
Just recently in a dungeon they found a group of Yaun-ti in a chapel praying to a god of the hunt. They learned that Yaun-ti were once one with humans and had a vast empire, but they fell ages ago. Now this group of Yaun-ti are hunting (searching for) others of their kind. I had a fun role play moment with my players, they learned something about the world, and the Fighter received a blessing from the Yaun-ti priestess
Find what works for your players, and tailor your lore dumps to fit that. If you are playing with a group of musicians, maybe it's the skalds of the world that exposist to them. Depending on your own abilities, you could write songs that tell stories about the past.
I am forever blessed that I have players who constantly ask me lore questions.
I know my setting lore is working because my friend Jared sometimes beats me to answering questions about my own lore on our discord.
I love an adventure for that coin idea where the date the coin was printed is the index of their knowledge. New coins haven't been around as long, so they know less. Other currencies only express when speaking their languages. I.E. dwarvish coin only responds when asking a question in dwarf. The end of the campaign the party will have a pretty dope coin collection, from economical systems from all around the realm
You could make the chronicles a portal to a demiplane that relives events like scenarios... to learn the lore themselves
Ripping off Harlan Ellison has always been one of my favorite DM techniques, too 😆😆😆
I did this in a Numenera campaign. They got this "magic cat" that adopted the party. It was *actually* an ancient A.I. from a previous era that was not based on humans. It was super advanced but simply did not experience existence in the same way, so it struggled to communicate with the party. It was a lot like the coin idea with different expressions, but filtered through mostly normal cat behavior. The party loved it, and the favorite reaction is whenever someone was trying to do something truly bonehead they would ask the cat, and the cat would look disapproving and bat them on the nose before walking away. It was a great way to help players who were stuck on really unproductive plans, because nobody got mad when the cat was like "get a grip, bro".
My party is officially going to discover one of the Chronicles of the Chain now. It'll be a great way to Introduce strong NPCs and see what they do with that. And the Lore of The Chain.
I called it! I knew when you described the chronicle the solution would be "make the chronicle a character"! I had The Archivist, the party's Jewish grandpa they could "call" with a bowl of fresh water reflecting the full moon; he was functionally immortal, but his memory was fractured, so he had to pursue memories, for which he had a limited capacity. The party LOVED him.
In my campaign, all the characters were summoned from other worlds, so one of the items they received at the beginning was a Driftglobe that has a fairly large archive of knowledge. Not as annoying as Navi, but it gets the job done.
It's always so great seeing Dael absorbing and being astonished! :)
Matt's idea may be to get the player to do a little 'phone digging'.
Finding some article that Matt used to base things on is like finding an easter egg or geocache.
Querying '7.73 tensor manifold' may give you clues as to what's going on, and that feels like real sleuthing, fun!
Or, maybe Matt's tailored these terms to what the player may have some exposure to, inferencing things by anology.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy ;-P a literal enceclopedia that can tell you everything...maybe not perfect and accurate but a fun way to give players in a scyfi setting lore.
Unreliable narrators can be such a fun tool with lore.
I recently started a West Marches campaign and I've had tremendous success in my having my players explicitly seeking out lore from session to session, but as always you have given me a tremendous amount of inspiration on how to delivery this lore at the very moment that I needed it! Greatly appreciated!
Love Dael's reaction to Matt. Priceless
I think it’s more important for the lore to be relevant to the PCs’ adventures than it is for the lore to be delivered in a creative way. There are all kinds of reasons the idea didn’t work the first time but did the second time. Like you say, it might have worked if you had kept up the campaign, once you adjusted the approach. DMing is alchemy, not science.
Every time I watch one of these videos I remember why I love being a DM. Great job Matt, this series is a treasure.
Right now I'm making a RPG (in the computers, not the tabletop) where you're investigating *why* this city is under attack by the undead, and my delivery system is the ability to perceive the past by touching specific objects and places in the world relevant to that past. Seeing the "glass hand" solution for the same effect, maybe bending time and space was a little extra...
Excellent stuff Matt, as always.
In our campaign relatively early the party found a staff, which has no damage dealing spells, but does have the Legend Lore spell. Maybe it is just my group, but the fact that they got an item which can cast a 5th lvl spell when they can only cast 3rd themselves provides some sore of allure that the item is strong and overpowered - and thus should be used. it was about a 90% certainty that it would end up in the person who was likely to ask lore questions too, so it basically ended up being just like the hand - but could only be used once ever 1-3 days depending on how many charges recharged. Legend Lore is such an open ended spell for DM's giving it to players early - and making it "free" to use I found really helped get some lore out there to the party. Fully agree with the "Easy and fun" components. great video
One of my players loves to study and discover lore about the world, so getting him interested is usually enough to deliver that information to the players. That said, I've been looking for other ways to get my other players equally invested in the lore of the world as well, because all of the answers to their problems and dilemmas can, in fact, be found there as history tends to repeat itself.
This video was a huge help towards coming up with ways that can make the lore not only interesting and fun, but a part of each and every character in their own unique way. The rogue could have a lucky 'augury coin' that they consult in times of uncertainty, while the wizard may discover an ancient tome that they can decipher to learn the solutions to ancient traps and puzzles, and all characters can receive dreams while they sleep.
Rather than having one incomplete "glass hand", my players have access to many "glass hands" with varying levels of completeness. The cleric has access to an aetherial pocket that the goddess of magic and knowledge tends to project into, where She can be asked any number of questions - the catch is that She only knows what is known by mortals, so history that's missing or knowledge that's forbidden isn't usually something She can help with. The druid's backstory characters, his tribe, have access to many abandoned jungle temples that document large strokes of undocumented history during a time after ruin struck the world - its imperfect, but it's the best they've got. The bard has the soul of a prehistoric storyteller hitchhiking inside her who's able to provide her with information from a time long before any sort of history was written - but the account is a single, biased source who's known to spice stories up for the sake of making them more exciting. The main BBEG, a time travelling oracle, even travels with the party, often choosing to help them out of sticky situations and telling them what will happen in the futures that he sees - but he's the BBEG, he's a conniving individual who doesn't lie but can never be fully trusted. For me, the difficulty of lore delivery isn't "how can I make this interesting" or "how can I make players want to engage with this", its "how do I get the player characters from one lore delivery system to the next?" because it's a fairly big world and its not all in the palm of their hands.
Dusk is AMAZING!!! Dael is friggin' awesome.
In one of my games, one of my players made a pact with an Archfey, and they an item of their choosing. They got a crystal ball that they can ask a question, and the ball either shows them the answer or shows them where they can find the answer to the question. It works really well!
The Silmarillion has some of the greatest drama I've ever read. I reject the notion that it is exclusively lore!
Glad to see I'm not alone. Absolutely flabbergasted by the Silmarillion being handwaved as 'just lore'.
Old video, but another fun way to discover information is the Stygian Library. For those who don't know the Stygian Library is a procedurally generated module of a planar library accessible from any mundane library. It can contain any book you need it to contain and, because the dungeon is procedurally generated, finding the information you're looking for doesn't need to retread old ground.
I just checked this channel like 2 hours ago hoping to find some new Colville videos in the vein of his OG stuff. Happy to see a new "Running The Game" style video!
I actually had a good one of these a while back. An ancient order of paladins were resurfacing, and one of their tools were these guardian spirits, which took the form of some sort of jewelry - a ring, a bracelet, a brooch, a necklace, etcetera. The spirits could grant many powers to their masters, including letting them know anything the spirit knew about the lord of the setting. And all the player character had to do was agree to be bound by contract, which allowed the spirit to devour one day from their master’s lifespan for every month they were together.
That's a handy gimmick!
Two methods I've found useful for delivering lore, are: 1) personifying institutions and organisations with NPCs - they have particular goals, behave in a particular way, and if you really want the party to know about it, they can get right in their face.
2) Inferior poetry - it started as a way of getting my own back on a GM for using an npc that spoke in rhyme - in my viking themed campaign the PCs met a skald who spoke in rhyming couplets, dealing out info on the place they were at and commenting on their own deeds. I even had a bunch of insults ready for Vicious Mockery for when he double-crossed them, but he had second thoughts after one of the PCs chastised one of their own followers in a rather gruesome fashion... However now the players expect a few rhyming couplets whenever they visit a new tavern.
Magitech is a big thing in my setting, so I gave my players Magitech smartphones with access to the guild library’s database. As they played, they got contact info for major NPCs for easy access to information that wasn’t in the library. There were also apps like a magic item catalogue, which I gave them as a spreadsheet that I would update whenever I gave them a new item.
Can we just appreciate my mans writing skill? He is such an excellent communicator. He gets right to the stuff, scoops all the fluff. Can't wait until the next ep already, haha 😁.
'It's not the DM's role to tell the players how to have fun'. That's basically the most important thing to internalize as a DM imo, everything flows from this idea.
Dael's mind = 🤯
Blown.
Sufficiently, and rightfully.
One of my main lore delivery systems is an NPC that my group met. He's a historian, the party of players convinced him to travel along with them to chronicle their journey and explore the world. He's a historian that specializes in the occult, so he knows a lot of random facts about arcana and shady dealings of the past. But he's also a conspiracist. .. So the reason for the fall of a certain kingdom might be due to "The mindflayers that live below the sewers and control the monarchy with psionics." Or some such. And if the players ask me something that I don't know the answer to, I can just tell them that "Armnyd Jones doesn't have the answer to that question".
Think about DMing like Doom: Eternal. That the most optimal way to play should be the most fun. You won't have Id Software's Q&A department, but it's a useful tool. "Is this thing I am trying to get my players to do, the most fun thing they can do? Is it obvious that it is the most fun? Do I have the right idea about what is fun?"
One approach i like to lore delivery is how the souls games do it. Through item descriptions, set pieces and placement of items and objects. while its not easy to do all of those the idea can still be used for TTRPG's. I used this idea with a set of paintings in one of my games. i wrote down like a one sentence description of each painting and gave each one a title (the Title was important for a puzzle). but ultimately the 5 paintings showed a meteor that fell and a temple was built on top of it (the temple they were in) and the titles basically said that some kind of entity was in the meteor which is why they worshiped it. It was quick to deliver, it made the world feel interactive, and it gave hits clues and foreshadow them finding the alien meteor under the temple.