The Culture: Your Modules Suck (Part 1)

The Professor talks modules.

I'll talk about why modules were a mistake in another post.

What the Professor describes here is what happens when commercial incentives overtake what players actually need (and want, as Revealed Preferences show consistently over 50 years), and he admits that this is what happened because he reported first-hand experience with it.

The reality is this: no one gives a fuck about your lore unless and until it directly and immediately solves player problems at the table.

In other words, Lore Utility Follows Horror Logic because that's how players actually approach the matter- much like people in real life do.

You want players to give a fuck about this or that? Make it apply to their current situation. Why is there this anachronistic item? Might have to do with the NPC rumored to be around that talks funny, dresses weird, and has coinage with faces and words no one recognizes that's also rumored to have the widget their after.

Want them to pay attention to their surroundings? Start giving them signs of danger in the environments they encounter; don't just say "You find a long-dead corpse", but describe how it appears to indicate its death by (X). Use faded frescos, decayed tapestries, and scuffed stained glass windows to throw out information on what else is here (and how it works).

The reason that modules slather on the lore like an aging whore slathers on the makeup is due to commercial publishers catering to CONSOOMERS who buy and (maybe) read but never use over actual gamers; the modules, at best, are really Setting Bibles (at best) for media adaptations to prose, comic, Vidya, or film/TV and not to be used as presented or as pretended.

The reality is that a competently-designed game doesn't need modules at all.