How to "show" instead of "tell" this aspect of my fantasy world?

[ClearDragon]

So my fantasy world is in a slow apocalypse. The laws of physics are breaking down, there's "patches" of the world where stuff just doesn't work right. For instance there's a place where no matter how hard you try, you just can't ignite a fire. Combustion just doesn't happen there, flammability literally doesn't exist anymore in a few square miles. Then there's another place where the freezing point of water has been tripled and there's hot snow!
The entire world is littered with these "patches".
Instead of having my characters explaining something they should already know, should I have the characters struggling with something that should be super simple but its just not working? Is that a good way to show the concept?

Next because the people are at dark ages to medieval level, they would have no concept of vacuum decay, how would I imply that's end result of the breakdown without using a modern style explanation?

 

[pmmg]

Well...the way I would approach this is just show it with the same lack of understanding as the characters. They go to light a fire, and it just does not happen. They dont know why. They may make wild guesses, but cannot explain. Maybe later in the story, they will get clued in, but if they dont know, they dont know.

I would use such scenes to reveal the characters and not try to explain the world. I would hope it would seem more immersive that way.

World building is overrated. Give me characters instead.

 

[ClearDragon]

Well...the way I would approach this is just show it with the same lack of understanding as the characters. They go to light a fire, and it just does not happen. They dont know why. They may make wild guesses, but cannot explain. Maybe later in the story, they will get clued in, but if they dont know, they dont know.

I would use such scenes to reveal the characters and not try to explain the world. I would hope it would seem more immersive that way.

World building is overrated. Give me characters instead.

Interesting idea. I might just do that, although I do like world building.
I was going for the "epic" theme where they know the world will end but there is a small chance they actually can do something about it.
Like they wouldn't specifically know the laws of physics are breaking down, but they would be aware that the world was decaying in an unnatural way.

 

[Mad Swede]

I think I'd ask you about other aspects of your world building, starting with trade and travel. If people travel for trade or other reasons then they will eventually build up a sort of verbal (maybe even written) guide to the roads, including areas where you can't light a fire or where the snow is warm. They might not know why this is so, but they would know to avoid some places or time their journey through the area so that they weren't troubled by whatever the problem was. There might be inns or hostels either side of areas like that, to provide support, hot food etc. Here your characters might learn or hear more. Maybe there are people investigating these areas who can provide some explanation (which need not be correct) to your characters?

 

[Naruzeldamaster]

Well...the way I would approach this is just show it with the same lack of understanding as the characters. They go to light a fire, and it just does not happen. They dont know why. They may make wild guesses, but cannot explain. Maybe later in the story, they will get clued in, but if they dont know, they dont know.

I would use such scenes to reveal the characters and not try to explain the world. I would hope it would seem more immersive that way.

World building is overrated. Give me characters instead.

World Building works best when it's balanced out with good characters (who also fall well into the world building) I personally feel like you can't have one without some amount of the other. World Building/lore is useless without a good amount of good characters to fill it.

There's a plot twist in Xenoblade Chronicles that doesn't happen until the last act, but there's foreshadowed barely 10% into the game. (A game that's a little over 100 hours long if you do everything)

That's all chalked up to good world building and character building.