Common knowledge in fantasy

[Roaram]

I gotta chime in and say I love glossary info. I agree its not good when they are used as a crutch, but I like it when I can use them to get up to speed on info I forget. I read too much to keep straight the small details, and a cheat sheet is great. for example, I read wheel of time books, and completley forgot that the main characters village was callled two rivers.

[comprex]

I think I read about 9 of those and the only thing I kept forgetting was the loose ends.

[Suilan]

Well, that is guaranteed to make me not buy your book, because it says you can't be bothered to make the text work well enough on its own ground and you need to prop it up.  I hate that almost as much as I do maps.

I love maps. They show at a glance what the author might describe in dozens of paragraphs without the reader being able to picture or remember as much as which country was north, east, west.

But maps are dangerous in that they reveal the author's worldbuilding at a glance. Some maps / imagined worlds just look so silly I would never buy the book. Say, one single country at the tip of a continent, and a circular reef around it to cut it off from the rest of the ocean, and a wall to the north. Wow. What about the rest of the world. Anyone out there? No. I suppose the country has been created in a vacuum.

I don't mind glossaries either, though I am usually good at picking up details. I also love a cast list at the beginning, especially in big volumes with loads of characters -- for the Tolstoys among the fantasy authors.

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

But maps are dangerous in that they reveal the author's worldbuilding at a glance. Some maps / imagined worlds just look so silly I would never buy the book. Say, one single country at the tip of a continent, and a circular reef around it to cut it off from the rest of the ocean, and a wall to the north. Wow. What about the rest of the world. Anyone out there? No. I suppose the country has been created in a vacuum.

The thing about maps is, they very very rarely aren't spoilers.  Maybe for the fantasy equivalent of Harry Flashman sitting down over dinner arguing about a campaign he fought in thirty years ago and telling how all th generals got it wrong it's approrpriate to illustrate the details with a map, but for your standard quest-fantasy shape of the prince-raised-a-swineherd in a little village going out into a world he does not know and having exciting adventures while discovering it, it breaks the pacing of discovery for the reader to be able to go "ah, yes, heading west out of Hanser's Reach he's got a forest full of gamme dragons to cross next".

I also love a cast list at the beginning, especially in big volumes with loads of characters -- for the Tolstoys among the fantasy authors.

I hate these with even more hate, actually. If you can't remember to tell the characters apart, that means the author is failing at making them adequately memorable.

[comprex]

The thing about maps is, they very very rarely aren't spoilers.  Maybe for the fantasy equivalent of Harry Flashman sitting down over dinner arguing about a campaign he fought in thirty years ago and telling how all th generals got it wrong it's approrpriate to illustrate the details with a map, but for your standard quest-fantasy shape of the prince-raised-a-swineherd in a little village going out into a world he does not know and having exciting adventures while discovering it, it breaks the pacing of discovery for the reader to be able to go "ah, yes, heading west out of Hanser's Reach he's got a forest full of gamme dragons to cross next".

Sure, it is a spoiler for the cooked-down scenarios of villains and NPC being bound to geography. 

I will provide the classic counter-example of the Emyn Muil on a map certainly not spoiling the interaction between Frodo and Gimli.

I hate these with even more hate, actually. If you can't remember to tell the characters apart, that means the author is failing at making them adequately memorable.

Always thought those were overwrought stylistic conventions, and justifiable only for highly dialogued writing where not all characters could be relied on to use the handle most familiar to the reader.

[sunburst]

I hate these with even more hate, actually. If you can't remember to tell the characters apart, that means the author is failing at making them adequately memorable.

I like them--I'm always getting names mixed up, especially if they start with the same letter/are made-up names, or worse, when the character is referred to by two different names (the Denerains like that had me flipping like crazy  ).  I can separate the personalities; I just can't place them with a name.  Maps I never look at until I'm finished with the book.  I will get annoyed if there are multiple maps, however.  It seems excessive.
Anyway, one of my favorite series of books simply listed the names of the months and weeks in the front, and left everything else to be explained by the characters.  I think money was introduced by a market scene, which was very helpful.

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

I like them--I'm always getting names mixed up, especially if they start with the same letter/are made-up names, or worse, when the character is referred to by two different names (the Denerains like that had me flipping like crazy  ).  I can separate the personalities; I just can't place them with a name.

There's at least one set of Alexandre Dumas historicals where the characters are various members of noble families with titles by seniority, such that when a senior person kicks the bucket several other people move up a notch so that the same set of titles now refer to different characters, and about 75% of them have the personal name "Henri" anyway.  Dumas writes well enough that this is not in the least confusing.

[sunburst]

I've read some of Dumas' works, and while I love them, I do get the names consistently confused, and the titles are worse.  But then, I'm horrible with names of real people too.  For me, at least, it doesn't have much to do with the quality of writing, but more to do with the way I process information.

[Moritz]

The thing about maps is, they very very rarely aren't spoilers.  Maybe for the fantasy equivalent of Harry Flashman sitting down over dinner arguing about a campaign he fought in thirty years ago and telling how all th generals got it wrong it's approrpriate to illustrate the details with a map, but for your standard quest-fantasy shape of the prince-raised-a-swineherd in a little village going out into a world he does not know and having exciting adventures while discovering it, it breaks the pacing of discovery for the reader to be able to go "ah, yes, heading west out of Hanser's Reach he's got a forest full of gamme dragons to cross next".

yeah, like that damned atlas I have. all those places I have never been to where something bad will happen soon. 
(OTOH, my school atlas is from 1989 and not really that spoilery...)

No, actually I'm with meg-evonne on this. Having to cross reference some index all the time blocks the reading flow. That's why I prefer urban fantasy and alternate history over fantasy, cause I usually know the places from a real map and can relate to the measurements they use.

[DrygonDM]

hamiltond Just put a glossary in the back of the book. It worked for Jordan and Herbert.

Well, that is guaranteed to make me not buy your book, because it says you can't be bothered to make the text work well enough on its own ground and you need to prop it up. 
I hate that almost as much as I do maps.

I tend to agree that having random sayings and measurements is annoying.
Having explainations worked into the story is great - But, I also like to have a Glossary (Indexed when possible) so that I don't have to try and find a single thing that I am interested in the books, since I don't want to get caught up in trying to re-read the entire book/series for it.
Makes me forget what I was looking for, and why.

As for maps, I love them. But then I love making and building my own Worlds as a DM.
While reading the books this is mostly because if the Writer tells us in one place that the Character or Party is near “Randomville” and then the Writer turns around and has the Person/Group being chased across the Planes - and the map says Randomville is in the middle of a large “Forested Hills” region, this peeves me off!!!

As for measurements, so long as there is some consistency to what the Writer is doing, I'm ok.
I mean what exactly did “3 hours as the crow flies” mean?
What, did someone (a scientist) watch a crow flying from one place to the next and time it – and then get someone else (another scientist) to do the same with a crow in another area – and they both came up with the same amount of time?
- Or, did this mean that it would take that long to walk/ride there if you could go over the terrain like a bird?

Even in “Urban/Modern settings”, if the Writer is using Imperial instead of Standard – or God Help Me the Writer switches back and forth – it can throw me off.
I tend to end up rounding things off in US Standard. Thinks like Meters = Yards, even though I know that a meter is 3'3” and a bit; and it takes about 3 Kilometers to make a Mile.
I mean, why is a US Mile 5,280 feet? Why not stop at 5,000, which would work for your everyday average person?
That way, when someone says "It's a quarter mile over that way." The person can quickly think "That's 1,250 feet."
Although to this day, I can see a Sign that says "Next Mile 3/4 miles away" and not try to figure out how many feet that is (3,960). while I'm driving!!!

So long as it's consistant - Close Enough works for me.

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

I tend to agree that having random sayings and measurements is annoying.
Even in “Urban/Modern settings”, if the Writer is using Imperial instead of Standard – or God Help Me the Writer switches back and forth – it can throw me off.

There is an ongoing loony theory among readers of Rosemary Kirstein's Steerswoman books that she's saying things about ethnic orgins of different cultures in her future by who uses imperial and who metric, so there are specific clever things that that can be clues towards.

[DrygonDM]

There is an ongoing loony theory among readers of Rosemary Kirstein's Steerswoman books that she's saying things about ethnic orgins of different cultures in her future by who uses imperial and who metric, so there are specific clever things that that can be clues towards.

Then this would not bother me, since she is being consistant with the using of who is using what, and placing it in the writings.
Also, if each side knows about the other's measuments, there can be some fun RP between two Merchants talking to each other, and each trying to figure out how far the other is talking about, while they are trying to throw each other off!!

New books added to the To Be Read List. Cool.

[Franzeska]

As for measurements, so long as there is some consistency to what the Writer is doing, I'm ok.
I mean what exactly did “3 hours as the crow flies” mean?
What, did someone (a scientist) watch a crow flying from one place to the next and time it – and then get someone else (another scientist) to do the same with a crow in another area – and they both came up with the same amount of time?
- Or, did this mean that it would take that long to walk/ride there if you could go over the terrain like a bird?

"As the crow flies" means "in a straight line".  That's it.  It shows up more commonly with absolute expressions of distance like "three miles as the crow flies" (as opposed to three hours).  That means that it's three miles from here if you go in a straight line, which naturally you can't.  I'm fine with people using this one since it's just a normal idiom in English and not some made-up fantasy novel thing.

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

Then this would not bother me, since she is being consistant with the using of who is using what, and placing it in the writings.

Yes, but my point, I think, is that sometimes what looks like random can just be subtle consistency.

New books added to the To Be Read List. Cool.

They are excellent books on many levels, though taking some time to come out.

[comprex]

They are excellent books on many levels, though taking some time to come out.

(Note to self: Stop posting to underwear threads, or live with a chronically polluted brain.)