Overexplaining
Wow, Imp Cleric! That is one conveniently-placed belly flab you’ve got there. I guess that’s the lower-planes version of the cherub’s fig leaf. O_O
On to business then. As longtime readers and Handbook of Heroes megafans, you guys are no doubt already familiar with the “NPC cutscene” technique. You can certainly stage today’s business in a similar fashion, making this little snippet of conversation into a handy intro or outro for the day’s session. While the PCs might not have an in-game way to get this info, the players will no doubt appreciate the dramatic irony as suspicions are confirmed and meta-knowledge casts light on current events.
That’s not necessarily what we’re seeing here though. In today’s comic, it’s more of this scenario that I’m imagining. I wonder how many of you have run into a something similar?
DRUID: I turn into a rat and dash into the Evil Vizier’s chambers.
GM: Make several Stealth checks.
DRUID: Passed!
GM: Now survive your inevitable run-in with the Evil Vizier’s Evil Cat.
DRUID: Survived!
GM: OK. So you’re safely hidden under the wardrobe when you see two pairs of feet wander into the room. You recognize the Evil Vizier’s voice, but the other is unfamiliar. You can almost place it, but the connection eludes you.
DRUID: Do they say anything suspicious?
GM: In fact they do. Ummm… uh…
And we’ll leave our poor GM there, stammering and befuddled and checking notes. And that’s because it is REALLY FRIGGIN’ HARD to write this kind of dialogue without sounding trite, much less improvise it. Go too hard and you wind up sounding like Marilith Wizard in today’s comic. Try to keep it vague and your players will inevitably three clue rule themselves and miss the important bits.
So for today’s discussion, why don’t we talk about the dos and don’ts of overheard exposition? When you need your PCs to get important background context from eavesdropping, how do you keep from trotting out Tom Exposition? Have you ever suffered a particularly egregious example of overexplaining? Tell us your tale of exposition gone awry down in the comments!
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Who says Imp Cleric has anything to hide? Imps are at the bottom rung, ‘fun bits’ could be reserved for higher strains of fiend. 😉
On another note – what the *bleep* is BBEG up to now? 0_0; He has chessmaster skills; he has Demon Queen’s realm and armies; I have concerns…!
Let’s just say patreon members are fully aware of what he has to hide.
“Chessmaster,” you say? It’s almost as if we’ve begun to…
https://gatherer.wizards.com/pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=460972
This is scarier than it was before I knew you and Laurel plan to end the Handbook one of these days and start something new…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lXdyD2Yzls
Didn’t know imps retained a Scottish/ Dwarven accent. Or outdated hats.
The hat is imaginary. You just aren’t picturing his character correctly.
Wait… Demon party (Fiend Team) are recurrent characters now?
An intrigging idea, thought now I wonder what souls formed demons (and an imp) that look so similar to the party, they might as well be tw… Wait… Are they the Evil Twins that fought the Party? You know, the ones with the weaves. Their wizard was male back then but I guess I shouldn’t assume the gender off a spawn of the Abyss, and it was revealed that Cleric never wore that baret but I guess Imp could be making their own fashion statement… There are a few holes in that teory.
About the discussion theme. If I want the players to overheard good information I just play one of the villains as extremely patronizing to the other:
“Just be sure that you ambush them at the Darkwater Inn, you know. The one down the street, next to the church.”
“Yes! I know where it is! You are never going to let me live down that time I got lost, are you?”
Maybe Wizard’s transition* caused Wizard’s Evil Twin to do some self-examination of their own?
Not sure about the hat… If Cleric never had a beret (and any memory we have of him wearing one is entirely due to flaws in our own thinking) then surely his Evil Twin would not have been wearing a beret back then either…
Unless Cleric’s Evil Twin also mis-perceived Cleric as wearing a beret, and wore one himself to try and cement the whole Evil Twins theme.
*In a fantasy setting would it be called a “transmutation”?
Oh man… Makes me wonder if there have been identical twin studies on trans folks?
Hmmm…
!
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-17749-0
I guess it’s maybe plausible. :/
There’s a reason there are so many, “Curse! Sex Change” cards in Munchkin. I suspect there are of my kind among you, posing as human males.
https://catherinedebcook.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/photo-31-07-13-3-18-02-pm-e1380444048166.jpg
😛
I do like this. It’s especially nice dynamic between an Evil Lieutenant and their underling.
One of the ways our DM would do a conversation where we are meant to learn information (or not) would be to just describe the conversation instead of giving the actual dialogue (the hardest part).
“After listening for the full ten minutes of the Scry, you learn… a recipe for cookies that sounds like they just added cinnamon and were describing it as the greatest thing ever. Everyone knows cinnamon is great.”
“You hear them discussing a few things about their big plans, and one thing stands out as they talk about the next part of their plans and point out a key location where they will be in three days! If you had a map, you could probably find this location they described… ”
“They are just two soldiers having a typical soldier conversation.”
Describing the feel, the basic contents, the vibe of the conversation and not having to fiddle with the specifics of the dialogue (and sometimes even keeping the description vague enough to allow the DM time to search through notes to find that specific bit of info we technically overheard, but they can’t remember off the top of their head… but we learned it!).
And honestly, altho it can be fun to have arch-dialogue spoken in voiced accents by a DM playing all the parts, at the end of the day, we really only need the info anyway and sometimes it is just a good ‘moving on’ technique to… just move on.
GMs like me need to remember that this is an option. We always want to chew scenery and do funny voices, but sometimes that’s a disservice to the story.
While I do sometimes have to poke the players with a stick to encourage them to talk to important NPCs (the king who hired them, the shaman who can warn them) rather than blunder on by, they’re usually pretty good at seeking out the necessary exposition on their own. In terms of following clues, I’ll stage various scenes with vague clues that can be immediately seen and even more useful clues with a low Search DC. Putting them together, however, I typically leave to the players, with a range of appropriate skills or experiences as qualifications for puzzling it out.
Example:
a) Rocks were thrown through the window. None were saved. Search (Easy) find one the cleaning crew missed.
b) Dwarf, Druid, stonemason, etc. (no DC) notes the rock was not picked up on site, but is indigenous to the region. (This prompted a waste of a half hour to find where the rocks could be found, but didn’t derail the game.)
c) Sailor, Rope Use, etc. (no DC) recognizes the knot is a sailor’s knot. This is a land-locked kingdom, suggesting a foreigner.
d) Appraisal (low DC) can spot the twine is available in the marketplace and very common, suggesting it was –like the rock– acquired locally. The paper and ink, however are expensive and not commonly available.
e) A higher Perception roll or a character with Scent (or a very curious PC) will determine that the note bears traces of perfume.
Now, figuring out that a wealthy noblewoman wrote the notes, then hired a thug from outside the community to throw the note-bearing rocks through the window is a bit of a stretch, but in the context of the adventure (a wedding between an ocean-going kingdom and the land-locked kingdom), the PCs have always been able to figure out that *somebody* from the ocean-kingdom doesn’t want the wedding to happen and has hired help from home to help prevent it. –All without an extended, “unearned” exposition dump.
Well sure. There are always alternative ways to deliver information. And honestly you’re right: they may be better than “the eavesdropping trope” for the reasons you describe.
Still, when a player decides to tail the suspicious guy and manages to cobble together a successful stakeout, you want to reward them with the juicy bits, you know?
I keep having to be reminded that Improv is hard for some people (most people probably), as I’ve never found it difficult //in this circumstance//. That is, when it comes to gaming. Get me in an Improv class or theatre, and sure, I’ll have the same difficulties others do, because it’s //not my character//, but let me wax poetic ICly or as my NPCs and I’m fine.
As for the Three Clue Rule*, I try to toss out a few clues and then go from here, if the PCs are taking hard lefts to my needed rights, I’ll adapt to them or let them take a “fail”. By which I mean, whatever they needed to do or stop doesn’t happen or get stopped, so now something else needs to be done. I never paint the campaign into a “if you miss this clue it’s over” corner, but that’s because I can play loose and fly by the seat of my pants (and I usually do, i rarely have set plans for the campaign, goals, maybe a few “kewl” scenes planned, but I avoid hard plans like the plague).
* Also usually the PCs will pick up on things in completely different ways than I meant, if so I either adapt to their understanding (if it would be particularity cool to do so) or let them flounder or blunder into the plot. Sometimes Clouseau’ing their way forward can be fun to (or at least to me it is, even as a Player, Magoo’ing the party into doing what we’re supposed to be doing can be tricky, but it’s rewarding if well played)..
Heh. Cow on wall:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ne9hTr5jwB4
That last line seems to be incredibly well chosen!
OH SHIT!
HEY LAUREL! I GOT A T-SHIRT IDEA!
…
For serious though, if you’ve never seen “Murder by Death” it’s a freakin’ riot. Really smart comedy.
Once my players were hiding in a treasure vault they had snuck into, they used magic to listen in on the guards outside of it, to figure out where they were and plan their escape from it.
I took a lot of delight having the two guards talk about how nervous they were guarding a vault filled to the brim with mimics.
But for the question, I generally either do a small, and to me funny, conversation (Mainly if they listen in on random guards). Give them fragments of conversation, slipping in different topics, with hopefully at least one relevant one. Or I just give them a general sense of the conversation, which I mainly use if they listen in on something actually important. Something along the lines of:
“They spent some time talking about whatever or not they have found the missing child, before switching to talking about the importance of the ritual. They don´t discuss it in detail, but it appears the child is important for it and that it has to be done before the full moon”.
Holy shit that’s good. XD
I am incredibly fond of the concept of coin and gem mimics, and I must admit it takes a lot of self-control to not include them constantly, as that would lead to them losing their luster and to my players becoming annoyingly paranoid…
Well, more annoyingly paranoid than they already are.
I suck at this. I would much rather use scattered, quite obvious, notes than do verbal exposition. If I have to I’ll describe the conversation without actually roleplaying the conversation.
No everyone is Matt Mercer. And that’s OK. 🙂
I have, at many times when the players get confused, been tempted to repeat an infamous scene from the VeggieTales Lord of the Beans film.
I’ll quote a review of the scene that sarcastically imagines the writer’s room:
“Okay, here me out, instead of properly explaining the plot, let’s have a man come down the street on a unicycle with an umbrella, singing Irish tunes, and then drop the ENTIRE plot and then walk away!”
The plot summary of the scene from the wiki (remember, this is in a LotR inspired fantasy setting, and the non-Frodo cast is lost in their attempt to enter the Land of Woe [Mordor]):
Just as luck would have it, the group then hears a gravely-sounding voice singing from off in the distance, before a crazy-looking guy on a unicycle with an umbrella (played by Charlie Pincher) is singing about how he’s a lucky fella because he got a new umbrella, which is his pride and joy. After this guy finishes singing, he asks the Fellowship what they’re doing, before Leg-o-Lamb answers that they were just trying to get in. The umbrella guy then tells them that all they need to do is go down a couple of miles to the Red Gate because it’s wide open. Randalf then states that he heard about the Red Gate, but he thought that it was just a myth, before the umbrella guy tells him that he just came from there, further telling the group that “You’ll know it when you see an angry murderous band of sporks heading through to find a small Flobbit and a bean with instructions to bring him back dead or alive.” After that, the umbrella guy then asks the group if they like his umbrella before he rides off on his unicycle again, once again singing about his umbrella.
Yeah. Just how Tolkien wrote it.
Tom Bombadil is a merry old fellow!
His umberella is blue,
And his unicycle is yellow!
Here’s the link to the comic when these demons came to town: https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/side-session
They made an appearance on the Handbook of Erotic Fantasy side as well. 😀
If you need to convey information to players that realistically the people they’re spying on should already know, you can always give the side of evil a New Guy who needs everything explained to them. Not only does it give an excuse for exposition, but it also generates an NPC that the players are likely to get attached to and want to redeem.
Solid point.
Tell me about the time you pulled this off. What was your “lovable new guy” like?
Since we are talking exposition, would you kindly explain why the demon party still got no Roll Call on the Cast section? 🙂
I will politely but firmly decline.
What’s springs to mind for me was a bit of a gag moment. The party was finishing clearing out an orc stronghold. Of note was that the dwarven paladin’s half-orc tailor (noble background) had gone missing earlier. The party came to a heavily built door. On the other side, they could make out orc voices, but higher pitched than the orc warriors they had been fighting.
The wizard cast comprehend languages, so I presented him the following dialogue:
1: “-oh yes, this feels sooooo wonderful!”
2: “Ooh, ooh! Me next!!”
3: “No, it’s my turn next!”
2: “No, you had your turn with him already, he’s mine now!”
1: “He hasn’t finished with me yet, keep your hands off him!”
After the red-faced wizard filled in the rest of the party, they opened the door to discover the half-orc tailor making silk dresses for the (former) orc king’s harem.
Heh, I could see that as a comic. Maybe a bunch of sexy ladies are enamored with Commoner’s cooking while Fighter seethes in anger.
Love it. If the sexual innuendo is gonna attach itself to everything anyway, you might as well have some fun:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/pizza
You say “marilith” and I expect a 6 armed snake lady. Color me disappointed :p