Do you have any lore or in-universe explanations that model the world which are just... wrong? Not completely useless, but inadequate for anything beyond the superficial? Like past concepts of medicine or astronomy which seem quaint by modern standards but were THE basis of knowledge for hundreds, sometimes even thousands, of years. I ask because I'm putting together some prop books that are the journals and research papers of a discredited alchemist, which will hide some actual clue in them but I want to hide the useful details among some nonsense. Stuff like him having "disproven" the heliocentric model of the universe containing some very real information about plot important astrological phenomenon, or a treatise on supernatural parasites that the players already know to exist being stuck in the context of a bonkers misunderstanding of how diseases work.
>>98249208In my setting people believe that water is the essence of all material creation, and the reason oceans exist is because the god(s) of the setting have yet to decide what they're going to create in all that space. That's also why it's salty and you can't drink it. The heavens already provide you with the safe water you need to live and grow in the form of rain, don't go drinking the ocean water like termites infesting the wood of an unbuilt house.
>>98249208Diseases are believed to be the result of parasites, which they understand to exist because they find them in stuff like raw fish. Little animals that get inside you and make you sick. They likewise think that flies and other insects spread disease as parasites because of maggots found in corpses, so any time you get sick its blamed on you having been bitten by a bug or eaten something with a worm in it. All of their 'medicines' are for 'killing or otherwise repelling the parasites that have taken root in you'. While the supposed reason why they work is wrong, that doesn't mean the medicines are ineffective.
>>98249208There is a belief that the duality of men and women exists because at some point in the past, an evil force split the aspects of a godly race of proto-humans onto two in an attempt to pit them against eachother, and only by overcoming these differences and coming together do they regain the divine power of creation (creating new life). The conclusion is not necessarily wrong, in regards to what it takes to make a baby. The story behind it is completely made up bullshit though.Pic unrelated.
>>98249376>coming togetherhuehuehue
>>98249208>Do you have any lore or in-universe explanations that model the world which are just... wrong?Most of them. Its a 1600ish wars of religion based fantastical europe. There are various competing models trying to explain a fractured reality and renaissance like reformulations of ancient philosophies. None of them are correct. >inadequate for anything beyond the superficial?Fortunately that's about as much as we need to play. I can describe Penderghast the Chirurgeon's bell jars with limbs in them and their notes on how long it takes maggots to from, mixed with theories about propagation based on the faithfulness of the different limbs. This may very well be true given there's magic and demons and time is out of joint. Its a fun throw in line that adds a bit to the game world but I'm not going to draw out the true reality or some such thing. It being discombobulated lets me add in more strange but based on real world stuff without requiring it to be a universal model or ontologically encompassing theory. >putting together some prop books Very cool. I primarily run adventure focused games but it might work better if you're less subtle with the hidden clues than you want to be, the chances of your players figuring out what is nonsense and what is useful is low unless its short and to the point. Little bits like that add a lot to the player experience and helping them get into the game world for sure, but I've found they work better if they're attention grabbing and punchy rather than a journal about the game world. That's fun to make but I don't think many players get much more out of it than they would a few scraps of the notebook that have drawings and notes on them.
>>98249490OP here. Thankfully, I can trust that my players will engage with the material because I've done this before. This is a sequel campaign to a short one that I ran a few years ago. For that one I wrote up 24 notes and a handful of booklets that the players would receive physical copies of as they discovered them. That one was a campaign about a handful of scientists and occultists getting brought in by a real estate developer who found what sure as hell looked like an old demonic summoning circle in a hidden basement under the hotel he bought, with a pillar of smoke and a floating skull in the middle of it. Their job was to figure out what the hell this all was, whether or not it was dangerous, and if magic is REAL then how do exploit it to become obscenely rich. The notes and books were left behind by the secret society that tried to do magic here before and 'failed', meaning that the real premise of the campaign was to reverse-engineer how magic works from the available materials to become wizards. Which then spun out into some other related magical adventures as they learned what the daemon did, how to use it, and eventually attracting the attention of another party who already has magic and wanted the daemon for themselves. In theory the game was run in Fate accellerated, but we only ever rolled dice a handful of times across months of play. The vast majority of the game was investigation, magical experimentation, and arguing amongst themselves about what the various documents they had found meant while I did my best to maintain a pokerface. There was a funny recurring bit where one of the characters re-enacted the ritual to become a member of the secret society, which involving lighting a candle, and when the candle changed color to a pale and ghostly light he became convinced that if the candle ever went out he might die. So he spend the rest of the game carrying around this candle and being very paranoid about what happened to it.
>>98249370There are unironically serveral pseudo-cults that believe it in real life. Just ask /fit/ and /sci/. Or rather see them occasionally crop up there.
>>98249673I mean, its not entirely wrong. We just draw a distinction between germs and parasites due to taxonomy, but one could argue that harmful bacteria are technically parasitic in nature.
>>98249587>For that one I wrote up 24 notes and a handful of booklets that the players would receive physical copies of as they discovered them.That's amazing and sounds like you have a great group for investigation games and a strong emphasis on RP. I do not have that group, so we're doing gestural world building with sepia paper and tea stains. If Its more than 1 page its not likely they're going to retain much of it. I do have a hope of running an old vampire the masquerade game with a party of new/thin bloods who get to read through a copy of the Book of Nod as their main navigational piece in the world but might take a bit to get them there.
>>98249208>I want to hide the useful details among some nonsenseYou do realise that the players will decide that nonsense is the useful information while the "details" you intend to be true will be glossed over, don't you?
>>98249834Thats the fun part!
>>98249208I don't focus on that stuff because I like to play games.
>>98249874Sounds like videogames would be more your speed.
>>98249886Sometimes I do feel like playing video games, and when I want to I play them, but when I want to play tabletop RPGs, video games don't scratch that same itch.
>>98249856>>98249587Ok, since this is a has-games thread, I'll put actual thought to my reply.>Do you have any lore or in-universe explanations that model the world which are just... wrong?Not in the scope comparable to yours, but I do have one thing.The McGuffin is a particle detector and the reason why the factions are fighting for the access for it is because they think it detects lucrative mineral deposits, but that's wrong. The mineral detection is a lie made up by a group of scientists to fool their corporate overlords into keeping the experiment running because the results invalidate all mainstream quantum mechanics interpretations while giving solid evidence for a 110-year-old crack theory from the XXI century.I plan to make the reveal after we're halfway through the campaign, from the PCs' perspective nothing really changes but it implies the consequences in the long future. Kind of like medieval people discovering that epicycles aren't real which doesn't matter now, but will matter when the modern period comes.>the players won't care!I do realise it's self-indulgent, but McGuffins can be just that.
>>98249208Ask the worldbuilding general.
>>98249208Traditional games?
>>98250154>>98250216
>>98250529What game?
>>98250662
>>98250775No game mentioned in op.
That doesn't matter for my games, so I don't think about it.
>>98249208Yeah, how did the theory in picture related stick around for so long when the evidence was clearly against it?
>>98251018Scholasticism. The work of "masters" that got in on the ground floor of the study of medicine was taken as gospel and arguing that maybe they were wrong was just a more secular version of trying to argue against the bible. Also, human dissection of corpses was banned for religious reasons in most places meaning that medical advancements were rare. A lot of medical advancements in the middle ages actually came from Arabia and India, simply because they had different perspectives on the study of medicine more conducive to learning new things rather than just taking for granted that what some greek dude wrote down 1000 years ago was the end of the conversation.
>>98251045Scholasticism as a method was developed in the 11th-12th centuries and already incorporated eastern scholarship, which itself heavily relied on Aristotle and Humorism anyway.
Worldbuilding is incorrect.Play games instead.
>>98249208Its seems easier to come up with fake medical ideas than astronomy ideas. There's more ambiguity as to how health and disease works because we can't see most of whats happening. but with space, anyone with telescope can just look up and see stuff moving around, and after that its just a question of geometry to explain the patterns. Its like how flat earthers can't actually explain even basic astronomical phenomenon, so they just don't and get made if you try to ask them to. You can't change the fundamental model there without quickly running into observable contradictions, unless your premise is "what we can see is fake".
>>98249208every in-universe explanation of how things work is wrong. the "correct" version only exists in my head
