Well, I certainly didn't tell everyone it was the, or even a, great secret. I seeded it as the sort of potent artifact that players (myself included) generally try to hunt down and acquire for the power of it.  

In D&D in ages past, giving a magic sword a name and saying that everyone wants it because it was awesome was generally enough to get people adventuring for it. The fact that no one knows where it is was usually just part and parcel of the mystique... because if everyone knew where it was then why didn't someone else already have it?

So when I put out that there is an artifact of the gods laying aroung that everyone wants but no one knows anything about I sort of expect players to go 'Yeah, stealing divine power is right up my alley!' and go hunting clues for it...

Heck, the BIG campaign of the two (or three? I may be forgetting a smaller one in there...) that I ran, the one that really did touch on all of those themes and more had one player who's entire motivation was basically 'Man's freedom from divine influence', to the point where at the end of the game when the Gods were granting him Apotheosis his character tried to destroy himself just to deny them....

You'd think THAT character would want to get his hands on teh God's very own Great Engine if only to turn its power against them. Somehow... nope.

Quote from: CRKrueger;972418What was the Big Secret?

The Fro Yo has sodium benzoate. That's bad! And it's also cursed.

Quote from: CRKrueger;972418What was the Big Secret?

Based on what little I know of Tekumel I'm going to guess that its the fact that this fantastic fantasy setting is actually some fifty thousand years in the future on a lost colony world of a great star empire (or maybe, since I'm vague on the details... the former capital world of said star empire, trapped in a pocket dimension by some sort of FTL/dimensional anomaly that permits magic and extradimensional beings that couldn't exist in teh real universe...).

Of course, as an outside all of that could have been pretty damn upfront from the beginning, and the Great Secret went unrevealed to the masses.



I also know the Truth of SLA Industries, if you'd like. And the identity of the man on the grassy knoll (kidding! maybe!) and a host of other secrets.

Eh, don't feel too bad. I tried seeding basic treasure and hooks I thought would be delightful and filled with rewards only to see players beeline towards mindless mayhem and certain death. I think that might be the wisdom of Stable of PCs campaigns: to watch the madness of impulsive living impassively and celebrate the lives of PCs' own personal victories in their own light.

Quote from: Spike;972273Some time ago, on this very site, I spent hundreds of pages in Word (or equivalent) in building up a grand Fantasy Setting.  Was it good? Eh, results were mixed. Some people liked it, others were of the opinion that it literally offered nothing new to the worlds of Fantasy and had no reason to exist but that I was bored.

But enough with the back story.

One of the features of this setting was something called the Great Engine.  I meant it to be a sort of Holy Grail, or for less cultured types, the RIFTS Phase World's Cosmic Forge, something players could sink their teeth into searching out for answers, a divine McGubbin (or, for you snobs, a MacGuffin, which isn't exactly what I meant, but I know you'll want to correct my McGubbins...).  

The twist was that the Great Engine was essentially just a fancy way of describing The Meaning Of Life, so to speak.  Living sentient beings were the Great Engine, created by the Gods to work magics and so forth to keep Reality from dissolving into the Great Sea of Chaos, and to quest for it was... well... a chance to get into some great stuff (or so I thought) with the Gods, the underpinning metaphysics of the world itself and so forth.

I mean I had it all worked out, the immortality of the soul and what the dead got up to in the Afterlife, why the Gods kept granting Apotheosis to heroic mortals, why they kept giving Magic back to the world despite the number of times it had led to divine level disasters (twice in living history, presumably more in the long span before History) and all of that...  

And over five or six years and two campaigns a lot of that great stuff got used.

What didn't get used, not one fucking time, was the Great Engine concept. No one ever bit, no one cared about questing for the Grail and my players more or less gave the entire thing a big, fat Meh.

The same players that leapt at teh chance to explore the Lands of the Dead, and fought the Gods over their right to disbelieve in them and a bunch of other cool things that the Great Engine was supposed to lead to.

Looking back on that odd failure (and realizing that I haven't made a decent Gaming related post in months, if not years...) I am left to wonder if I... well... the title of the thread says it all.


And I wonder: Should I have just slapped the table said: "Holy Grail, motherfuckers. You should quest after it."?

From the way you describe it, it sounds like the Great Engine was supposed to be some kind of twist, where the players are led to believe that it's a physical object, but turns out to be a concept. Maybe it's best that it was a seed for the campaign, and not something that was front-and-center.

Plus, it reminds me of this comic.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;972297The Great Engine is real all right. And it's huge. It'll have to be hauled, similar to how Gulliver was hauled from the beach in the Hal Roach cartoon. It's furnaces run hot. Steam pressure galore. Lots of whipping of slaves to pull it through the mangroves, and across the ocean desert floor. The Mad Iq will learn its functions, its powers, its mystrees.

And with it comes the End Times. See Trashcan Man's haul, from The Stand.

Does it transform into a giant robot? Because if the PC's have to fight the meaning of life, and it turns out to be a divine technomagical mash-up of Galvatron and the Tarrasque, that is made of win.

(Also: Planescape-as-fuck.)

If players are going to quest for something, its either gotta be the Big Bad or the Tool to Save the Day or the Gizmo that Makes Me Kewler.

If finding the Great Engine granted godhood, then PCs would chase it.

Quote from: Barghest;972438Does it transform into a giant robot? Because if the PC's have to fight the meaning of life, and it turns out to be a divine technomagical mash-up of Galvatron and the Tarrasque, that is made of win.

(Also: Planescape-as-fuck.)

PCs and NPCs would each get a chance at describing what each sees when looking at or touching it. The Mad Iq has to discover its secrets. Maybe flip the switch on it that is clouding those with unwise minds. The wise priest in the tribe has an insane IQ level. Thus they're called the Mad Iq by everyone. The PCs might figure this out during the game. And if the priest is a man, woman, or mech under those robes.

Quote from: Spinachcat;972440If players are going to quest for something, its either gotta be the Big Bad or the Tool to Save the Day or the Gizmo that Makes Me Kewler.

If finding the Great Engine granted godhood, then PCs would chase it.

What's wrong with chasing 0-calorie-but-still-tastes-good ice cream sundaes?

I'd say something witty and clever (too clever by half, in all probability), but I'm too busy madly scribbling down the ideas being tossed out upthread.


And I was really hoping my next group would have someone else GMing...

If you left out the bait and your players never bit, just file the unused parts away for future use. You've done nothing wrong.

When you do worldbuilding AND are allowing the players to do what they will in that world... Then you have to accept that they may never ever never everrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr interact with some aspects.

The reasons can be everything from just plain ol disinterest. Some OTHER aspect being more interesting despite being more mundane, or because of it. Not realizing the thing was even important. Believing the thing was too powerful to achieve yet and working on other goals first. And so on.

Sounds like things went overall as expected. Players did their own thing and played around in the world, forging their own paths for good or ill.

Oh, I'd guess that 90% of my world building arguably went to waste from the perspective of 'player interaction'. I'm a total 'sandbox' GM, and I made one hell of a big sandbox... too big in a way ( had to reduce the legendary scale of the world to something a bit more 'eurasia sized' to keep travel plausible)...  but most of it was still pretty useful as... call it horizons...

I think this one thing bugs me more than teh rest... maybe because I've got a giant ego, and when I do something clever I want to show it off, even if I'm the only one who thinks its clever.

Generally, the only good way to get a PC party to discover a Great Campaign Secret is organically. Otherwise, it's more for the GM's pleasure than the player.

Quote from: RPGPundit;973406Generally, the only good way to get a PC party to discover a Great Campaign Secret is organically. Otherwise, it's more for the GM's pleasure than the player.

Probably the truest thing you've ever said.