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Because of X, You Know Y

by Mike on 30 March 2026

Connect characters to the fiction with second-person narration:

"Because of X, you know Y."

"Because of X, you know Y" is a simple model to connect characters to the fiction of your RPGs. In this model "X" is a characteristic of the character such as their class, background, culture, ability, or skill. "X" can be anything about their character that means they know something. "Y" is the thing they know or learn, such as a secret or clue.

Because you're a hunter, you know an unnatural corruption grows in the Magna Woods characterized by a strange violet hue.

Because you're a knight, you know that the dragon emperor Eledain defeated the demon Sathmog with a sword empowered with part of his own soul.

Because you're trained in Arcana, you know that the glyphs on this stone can be manipulated to enhance magical spells.

Breaking Away from Context-less Lore Dumps

GMs often have a bad habit of dumping lore on players without much context. There's all sorts of history we want to impart on the characters. We have all kinds of world knowledge we want our players to absorb.

But such lore is often disconnected from their characters. We just spew out the lore and we're done with it.

Instead, we can make the spewing of such lore an active connection to the character. It's not us spewing lore, it's their own characters recalling it. The characters know this stuff because of choices their players made in who they are. They're learning stuff because of the skills they chose, the backgrounds they picked up, the cultures their character came from, and so on.

The character is an active participant in the spewing of lore because it's a part of them.

Step One of the Eight Steps

We have many options when reviewing the characters in step 1 of the eight steps of lazy GM Prep such as reviewing:

Their names (can you remember them all off the top of your head?)
Their classes, backgrounds, species and other details.
What powers they have that the players like.
What monsters might act as good lightning rods for them.
What magic items they have and what they might want in the future.
What stories came up during their campfire tales.
The stars and wishes of their players.

and other related things.

We can also think about what their characters know based on who they are and how that might manifest during the game. These days, I focus on connecting characters to the game through character-driven secrets when prepping my games. What might the characters know about what's happening in this next session?

Connecting Characters to the Fiction

Changing how we dump lore – moving it from a passive description from GM to players to something their characters know and pass to one another – can have a profound effect on the game. Instead of sitting back, mouths slightly open as you describe the five inner rings of the sinister network of the Aurum, your players can get excited about the information they know because of the choices they made. A passive lore dump becomes knowledge that connects their characters directly to the fiction of the game.

Because of X, you know Y.

More Sly Flourish Stuff

Each week I record an episode of the Lazy RPG Talk Show (also available as a podcast) in which I talk about all things in tabletop RPGs.

Last Week's Lazy RPG Talk Show Topics

Here are last week's topics with time stamped links to the YouTube video.

Patreon Questions and Answers

Also on the Talk Show, I answer questions from Sly Flourish Patrons. Here are last week's questions and answers.

Talk Show Links

Here are links to the sites I referenced during the talk show.

Last week I also posted a Dragonbane Review on Youtube.

RPG Tips

Each week I think about what I learned in my last RPG session and write them up as RPG tips. Here are this week's tips:

Let NPCs evolve based on events and conversations. Don’t presume their arc.
Clarify when the players can trust an NPC to avoid pushing the story into deep tangents.
Let downed villains offer vital information to save their lives.
Set things up so the story at the table can surprise you.
Complicate battles with waves of monsters.
Reward powerful single use magic items.
Show players the evolution of the world from the actions and reputations of their characters.

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This work includes material taken from SlyFlourish.com by Michael E. Shea available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International license.

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