As this blog can attest to, I am a big fan of subtle environmental storytelling in games. After watching the Shadow of the Erdtree trailer earlier today, I watched a few videos on YouTube about deep Zelda lore, and while I never really appreciated it when I started playing these games at 12 years old, there's honestly a lot of subtle implication in entries from my childhood like Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask.
FromSoft's approach I think borders on (if not fully planting its feet within) having tons of lore and little story, whereas Zelda's games, even the recent free-form, open-world ones, still have a pretty clear narrative to play through.
My recent obsession with the games from Remedy Entertainment, specifically the Alan Wake games and Control, is partially born out of my love for the subtly hinted plots - for example the entirety of the looming threat of the "Blessed Organization," which-
*Grabs the camera and points it to my cork board covered in yarn* Alice didn't get her memories back by getting help from the FBC! With Trench running things and maybe already infected by the Hiss, he'd never allow the Bureau to do such experimental stuff to help a civilian! She made contact with the Blessed Organization through Barry Wheeler, and they figured out how to do it!
Ahem.
The point is, I love the style of storytelling.
But can you do it in D&D?
To be fair, I think the question concerns two different levels of storytelling.
I've said multiple times that I think Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft is the best sourcebook they've come out with in 5th Edition. Not only does it talk philosophically about the different kinds of horror and how to run a horror game, nor does it only conceive the classic setting in a far more imaginative manner than the original sourcebook (holy crap do I hate the idea of "The Core" as just a big continent,) but it also has some subtle mysteries that you can uncover through reading it.
Old school Ravenloft veterans will not be at all surprised to discover the true identity of Firan Zal'Honan, as it's a straightforward part of the lore in the original setting book. But in Van Richten's, there's proof of who he really is if you can just remember things like the name of his imp familiar and intuit why he might not be interested in going to Darkon (though I'll note that there's no obvious explanation for why Firan is a living human once again - just a disguise bolstered by Nystul's Magic Aura? Or has something far more notable happened here. Or perhaps there's a far weirder explanation.)
But what about running the game yourself?
See, I think that's difficult. Unless you have a confidante that isn't in your campaign (my problem is that nearly all my D&D-playing friends are in the one I'm running) you sort of want to get the secrets out. What use are they if they're only for you?
Something like a video game exists as a persistent document - something people can turn over and revisit over and over, and even datamine if they're so inclined. There can be a vast online community that's into digging up all the possible lore and secrets of the game.
FromSoft basically builds their games on the premise that half the game is going to be about going online and speculating about it (and also finding out who has made builds that actually make the game beatable - Fextralife's Pyromancer build for Elden Ring, incidentally, is absurdly good. Makes me wonder why people were complaining about Faith builds being weak.)
But when your game is basically being shared by only a handful of other people, you don't get the benefit of that vast internet hive mind to pick up on all your subtle clues. Likewise, as a largely improvised narrative that you tell over a long period of times, it's hard to keep every tiny detail in mind.
Right now, in the Ravnica campaign I'm running, I've got a period in which I want to make sure that some character-specific beats are handled - we have a Gruul sorcerer who wants to challenge Borborygmos for leadership of the guild, we've got our formerly Orzhov cleric planning to marry our Izzet artificer, we've got our Rakdos bard trying to enter Agryem to find his exploitative parents so he can resurrect them and then kill them again. But I've also had the party discover that their memory was wiped a year ago and that everyone on Ravnica has forgotten about the existence of House Dimir.
There have been some giant lore bombs - for one, that House Dimir is both aware of and has some connection to the D&D multiverse (xenoplanar regions, as their necrosages call them). But the big twist that I'm building to is...
Well, couple things: first, if you're in the campaign, stop reading. Second, the party is currently in Agryem, both following the bard's plotline but also under suspicion that the hidden guild hall of the Dimir, Duskmantle, is in Agryem, or at least the way into it is.
I have concocted a sort of secondary hall for the Dimir that is in the Ghost Quarter, but what they'll find there is just the long-dead spirit of Szadek, who remains as a spirit here purely to advise his successor, Lazav. But Szadek has, in the afterlife, taken up poetry. I'll confess this is basically just because of my obsession with Tom Zane in Alan Wake II, but it's a great way to hint at things subtly.
What Szadek knows, and what Lazav knows, and what basically no one else knows, is that there's another demiplane like Agryem (note that this is my original lore). Essentially, if Agryem is Ravnica's Shadowfell, this quarter is its Feywild (sort of).
I figure one of the coolest "gigantic secrets" that House Dimir could hold is that there's a whole layer of Ravnica known only to them. But it gets better.
The Feywild is often associated with the natural world, but in Magic the Gathering terms, Fairies (I think often spelled as Faeries) are often Blue, the color of more cerebral magic but also trickery. Fairies find themselves in House Dimir, actually - I think some can be found in the Izzet League as well, but not so much in the Simic or Azorius. So, the idea I've had is that this is the Mirror Quarter.
I've made poetic references to Dim Mirrors - which of course sounds like Dimir. And so, for a building that doesn't exist in a space with no room, where better than to house it in a reflection?
Here's the next cool thing: they've been to this realm before.
Way, way back years ago when they were in tier 2, they were in a district original to my version of Ravnica, and for one reason or another had to go into a big library. The library was actually in the middle of a giant circular pool in a canal-heavy part of the city, but the library only actually existed in the reflection of this pool. To access it, one needed to step into the water and come around to the other side. (Also the library was a giant living being that required anyone who entered to give up a secret and thus forget that secret once they told it in order to enter.)
So, there's precedent!
But here's the best part:
One of the characters, the artificer, is a Changeling.
Changelings, of course, in Monsters of the Multiverse, were changed to the Fey creature type. It makes sense, of course. Ironically, despite living pretending to be a human, the artificer overall really dislikes secrets and lies.
Fey are... somewhat like people. They're the most common creature type other than humanoid for playable races/species (though Spelljammer gave us an Ooze, Construct, and Monstrosity - I wonder if they'll ever reprint Warforged as constructs). But on a certain level, fey creatures can be very weird, and I think sort of occupy a place in the fantasy where they can be things that look and talk like people but might play something of a different role in the magical world.
If our Feywild is a mirror realm, what part might Changelings originally have played?
Why, they're the ones you see when you look in a mirror!
Like, any mirror.
It kind of makes sense, doesn't it? They can shift their appearance to look like anyone they've seen, so as you step up to the mirror, they become your mirror.
That's also why I've decided that Changelings in this version of my Ravnica have their hearts on the other side. (There's a real condition called Situs Invertus, so this is true for some humans - about 1 in 10,000.)
Now, our artificer grew up in the primary part of the Ravnican plane, and was never one of these mirror people themselves. But it strikes me as just a perfect reveal that is fitting so well with the themes of House Dimir (who have spied on the artificer in an effort to see if they can recruit them) and this mirror-world that no one has ever heard of.
And the best part? The artificer's primary specialty is glass blowing. They're a glazier.
But, getting back to my point:
Given the nature of D&D, I expect every one of these points to come out in the running of the game and the telling of the story. There's no real opportunity to simply hint at it and let the players discover it only after careful and close contemplation.
It's true that I could just leave this up for some people to get but to allow them not to get it if they can't.
But I guess I want them to get all of this stuff!
That, I think, is maybe the biggest challenge: do you, as the worldbuilder, have the restraint to let these mysteries remain unsolved? Are you willing to put the effort into setting something like this up and being ok with it going unnoticed and forgotten?
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