Why the hell do so many Pathfinder published adventures give exposition only to the GM, with no way for the players to ever find out?
For instance, in Crown of the Kobold King, there is this little piece of info: "The refuse on the eastern shelf conceals two potions of owl’s wisdom, stashed here by a kobold thief after a successful raid and then forgotten when the thief was cap- tured by the forge spurned in area 19."
Ok. Now I, the GM, know that this happened. How in the hell will any of the players ever know?
This wouldn't be such a big deal if the adventures weren't crammed full of stuff like this. Little fun facts about the world that the players will never ever find out about in any way imaginable!
>>46825791
maybe you should use your imagination to give them this information
>>46826049
Sure, but it gets tricky for some of the information, when there are very few methods for the PCs to come across it.
It's just an extra annoying thing for me to worry about as GM and would ultimately require a lot of work just because the writers of the modules got lazy.
>>46826049
Actually, now that I think about it, coming up with the ways that I could give the PCs the information would have to be done in advance, and hence would increase prep-time.
Like if I had them enter that potion room without foreshadowing the missing potions in advance, and then had to somehow come up with a way to give the information to them on the fly, well I don't think there really is one.
It could work if I foreshadowed that during a previous kobold raid, two potions of owls wisdom went missing, but it would be too late if I hadn't done that by the time they get to the room.
And like I said earlier, this isn't just this one scenario. They do this like over a dozen times per adventure. Don't just give me the exposition! Describe to me how the players can find all of this out! I actually pay for these!
>>46826436
>So you find two potions hidden under the refuse on the eastern shelf.
"Good. I'll cast identi... wait a second, why would potions be buried under that crap? What do they look like?"
> The dark-blue bottles are finely crafted, blown in the shape of two small owls. You've seen similar glasswork at the factory in Sandpoint. The yellow wax looks like the same kind used by the University Alchemists.
"Did someone just drop them here?"
>They were wrapped in some rough green-dyed linen and placed carefully in a niche, but the debris seems a bit moldy, and hasn't been disturbed in some time.
"Green like the loincloths the kobolds around here wear?"
>Could be.
"Are you reading this all out of the published adventure"
>No, that would be stupid. I'm improvising.
This pops up in more than just Pathfinder stuff. It's like some weird little tradition of the adventure writing genre. The writers must do it to amuse themselves after writing long lists of low level loot and describing yet another stone brick chamber.
>>46825791
You give them the potions when they search through the location, add some trinkets to show that it is a thief's stash. Or they find the kobold still alive and he tells them about the potions if they free him.
>Crimson Throne
>So, there's this assassin.
Okay.
>She was horribly abused by her mother.
Okay.
>She's emotionally dead inside.
Okay.
>But I just spent a ten-sentence paragraph explaining it in detail instead of summing it up in two sentences.
Ah, so it comes up in the adventure?
>Uh, no, when she shows up, the NPC barbarian roars and charges her.
Really?
>Specifically.
Huh.
>Then there's this ranger.
Alright.
>He lost his whole town in a not-Indian raid.
Harsh.
>He's been a hunter, tracker, and slayer of not-Indians ever since.
Kay.
>He's been hired by the assassins as a guide.
Reasonable.
>But he can be bribed.
Oh, really? Well, in that case, we may-
>But when he shows up, you'll be off-camera in a tent; the only person there will be the barbarian, who will-
Lemme guess; roar and charge?
>Indeed.
You know, even if this particular adventure wasn't just three pointless fetch quests in sequence, this would still feel like a colossal waste of time.
>Gotta pad these out somehow.
>>46827268
You're making a lot of assumptions there, pal. My players would simply take the potions and not ask me any questions.
>>46827534
It seems like it, only it is some of the most interesting stuff in the adventures. Especially the backstories of characters.
>>46829106
I guess I could've picked a more complicated scenario as an example of this. There are some more difficult ones to explain.
>>46830110
This guy gets it. I wish they wrote these in some ways like a movie or a tv-series, where this exposition always gets delivered to the main characters in some way. Possibly by some other NPC who knew the character with the interesting backstory beforehand, I don't know, but it should be their job to write in a way to convey it all to the players. After all, what I know, as GM, doesn't matter as much as what the players know. Their experience is the actual story. Mine is just behind-the-scenes prep-work. If it's never told to the players during the adventure, then it never becomes canon in their minds.
>>46831770
>You're making a lot of assumptions there, pal. My players would simply take the potions and not ask me any questions.
Yes. Exactly.
That's why the DM is given enough exposition to come up with improvisational details, but not pages on pages "describing to me how the players can find all this out."
Get it now?
>>46830110
I actually agree with this example much more than OP's. Adventure Paths tend to give the villains rather convoluted backstories and motivations, but usually there's no opportunity for it to be revealed.
If the demon priestess is rebelling against the village because her boyfriend abused that's all good to know, but some clues or rumor tables would give the players something concrete to investigate.
>>46832786
But in your example the players are actively asking questions.
If it was you who replied to me, that is.
Also, see>>46830110 for an even better description of the problem I'm talking about. I am not a proud man, and will admit that I did a pretty shitty job explaining the problem I was having. It goes beyond just unexplained potions on a shelf.
Even his examples could be solved with prep-time, but not necessarily with improvisation. The thing about improvisation is that you don't always come up with something. Nobody is perfect at improvisation.
>>46832915
Yup. He explained it way better than I did. It is the same problem, though.
>>46832915
Well, the GM should tailor the adventure path to the characters the players are running. It shouldn't be hard to come up with reasons for the players to become interested in the demon priestess's motives.
>>46832948
That is a tradition that carries over from OD&D. Back then there were no Spot checks or anything, so the players had to describe to the GM how their characters searched a room, and the GM had to decide whether they would find the hidden loot or not based on that.
>>46832977
OP here. What we prefer to do, is to tailor the characters to the adventure instead. That way we know that clearing the adventure is going to be their character motivation. We feel it makes for a better story that way.
Anyway, one good example of having no way to figure out what the hell is going on, is in Rise of the Runelords. There is an encounter where ghosts attack the players, and the story behind that was some betrayal story were all the participants are long dead, and all the evidence has been chucked into a ravine like a hundred years ago. I'm not sure if that's exactly how it went, but I do remember that the adventure made a point out of telling the GM that no one ever found out what transpired. It has nothing to do with the plot either, so it's not like it would even make sense for the players to start investigating it, seeing as they have more pressing matters to attend to. Like the plot, for instance. So at the end of the day, the players will just remember that a bunch of ghosts attacked them on a bridge, and it came completely out of nowhere, and went completely nowhere as well.
>>46825791
Its to give the GM something entertaining to read. Thats literally it, otherwise canned adventures are just a chore to run.
That said, I never use pre written shit. Its for autists who are incapable of putting two ideas together and making shit work on their own.
>>46833324
Yeah, that particular example is pretty shitty writing, but I think the general idea of providing background for the villains and events is that the GM has something to fall back to if the players suddenly start asking not plot related questions.
Personally I like my campaigns (and NPCs) to feel like they exist beyond the actions of the PCs, and when you're running a pre written adventure these weird little details are a pretty easy way to do that. Goblins throwing a bag of pickles out a window in rise of the runelords comes to mind.
>>46833922
I had a group decide to non-lethally capture almost every enemy in the first book of shattered star. Pre-existing background helps interrogations not be awful.
>>46832977
It adds prep-time to a system that already requires more prep time than most other systems available nowadays.
I mean, is it that hard to add an optional NPC who can deliver hints and shit if the PCs bother investigating without pouring most of the leg work onto me?
>>46837158
OP here:
Yeah, I mean we do pay for these things! The reason I run published adventures is that I'm already running three completely self-written campaigns, one of which has been ongoing for 84 sessions. For us, published adventures are for when we have extra time to roleplay, but when we've already used up all of our ideas for our own campaigns. So the less prep-time, the better. All that time could be spent making our own campaigns better. We'd rather have these be so they can be played straight out of the box.
>>46839409
But, uh, you can? It's not like the NPC motivations matter to the plot, or to even most players. Telling them 'go kill these dudes' is sufficient 90% of the time.
>>46839487
My players don't play murderhobos, though. I did mention earlier that they wouldn't start looking into why a potion is on a shelf, but they do enjoy fleshed-out villains. In my games they're used to having the villain be properly introduced and explained near the beginning of the story, so that they can get invested in trying to take them down. My favorite thing is writing villains after all. The problem here is, they have written the villain, but they're not really giving me a way to hype up the confrontation with them before it's actually happening, and oftentimes not even then. In my opinion, a final battle is always cooler once everybody knows precisely what's at stake for everyone involved. Wouldn't you agree? Every cool final battle in fiction has both the characters know precisely where the other guy is coming from, and then have them put their strongest beliefs on the line for an epic final confrontation against each other.
