History of the Multiverse, Part 1

[HoneyBadger]

Why shouldn't we know who broke the seal? Knowledge of such a person or being leads, itself, to other questions, which in turn give the imagination more toys.

A better question to leave unanswered is the exact nature of what was *behind* the seals-3 gods, maybe. Maybe not.

It becomes speculation about the nature of the setting, not just a misplaced record. It's not the person who broke the seal that's necessarily of interest, unless the person or his reasons are of interest.

Not being able to know what, how, and why is a lot more fun than not being able to know who, where, or when.

[Endoperez]

We shouldn't know "who", because that changes from game to game. "It was God of Agartha, the Ancient Olm" isn't a good answer if you have a Dragon.

[HoneyBadger]

Was it your Pretender that broke the seal though? I always understood that either the gods broke out finally, by themselves, or that they were released by curious humans, either accidentally or intentionally.

If it was your Pretender, then it's a simple enough device to leave out the description of who did it, other than to say just that-that it was your Pretender.

[Endoperez]

HoneyBadger said:
Was it your Pretender that broke the seal though? I always understood that either the gods broke out finally, by themselves, or that they were released by curious humans, either accidentally or intentionally.

This is also a good reason not to detail the "who" part. There are so many possibilities to choose from, and writing out one of them would make one of them more real than the others. Not good.

[HoneyBadger]

But, if you don't write out some of them, or even most of them, then you end up without definition, any sort of consistency, or even a real setting, since everything's possible, but nothing has any meaning.

It's like one of those shows where you watch it for a whole season and then at the end, somebody wakes up from a dream and everything's completely different. Some mysteries are fine, and they add to the setting, but too many mysteries just make the setting shallow.

[Foodstamp]

Would you consider Hemmingway a bad writer? Story telling is about giving the reader 10% of the story but being aware as an author that the other 90% exists and writing your stories accordingly.

[HoneyBadger]

That goes without saying, but here, we've got about 0.0001%

Minimalism is only good to a point, and in the story of the Old Man and the Sea, we know there's an man, he's old, and he lives by the sea.