The True Mystery of Crimson Rock
Consider, for a moment, Chris McDowall's Mythic Bastionland myths.
Besides being a wonderful game on its own, that was The One part of it that resonated for me as a GM.
That is because I suck at foreshadowing long storybeats.
The myth structure allowed me to see perfectly into the future of the game and its events. I know, with The Tree myth for example, how the realm will evolve from it long before those events come; I even know how to foreshadow it with the escalation of omens.
But Myths work because they are a menu of options (or, more usually, a table to roll). They allow the player to use the many answers to make their own realm. The realm itself is, after all, still individual.
The rulers, holdings, terrains and politics are not told, by the rules, how to be beyond their organization and the names of the people on them. There is no big table of answers for holdings, for relationships between them.
But what if the world of Crimson Rock had a "Myth"? What if the humans leaving, the existence of droids, the burrows all had an answer?
Would that cheapen the game?
This mystery could, for example, inform on the descriptive rules and lore, a deep subtext to the reader. Create a hint of a question, and allow them to make of that what they prefer.
Or it could be an easy Myth structure. Here are 20 clues and foreshadowings, that culminate in the Big Answer permeating the entire game and all droids.
Or even, a vague table of Amazing Information Loot. Different events without the intent of being Answers, but provocations. Is that Amazing Information enough?
Is it overstepping to try and say "Here's all the answers on the wild things of Crimson Rock that explains all the lore"? Do I take my dull concrete solutions to the grave, as I let each GM come up with their own answer alwhile using this secret knowledge to simply suggest and hint and feed the lore?
The more I reflect on it, the more I feel it should be vague storytelling like Into the Odd's Oddities and weirdness. It wouldn't be as cool if the book said "this is exactly what happened to this world for the players to uncover slowly through clues", albeit it definitely could do that.
For a reason I expected Evocative Narrative Rules to not have a concrete motivation from the writer. Does Chris actually knows what happened to the Into the Odd's world?
What a weird feeling; subtracting rules is clear to me, but subtracting lore was not an expectation.