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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/9507
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

If you can do it in the story, and the story will not lose on it, do it. If this would hurt the story, do it in prologue.

There are a few reasonable tipping points:

- BORING. If the elements of the world would not add to the story. It would be lengthy and tedious. Do a quick info dump and be done with it as painlessly as possible.
- No room for good cabbagehead. It's a team of experts, or a pair of elder gods. There is simply no room for a rookie or apprentice to learn along the way, no good excuse to deliver the lectures. Or opposite - the characters are all cabbageheads and there's nobody competent to explain what is going on, but the reader needs to know the essence. Stories too alien to introduce a reasonable cabbagehead will fall under this too.
- No TIME for cabbagehead. The story starts with action depending on the setting too much that the reader would be completely lost without some kind of intro.
- Perfect room for a prologue. Opposite of the necessities above. You have a great, bite-sized piece of history that is completely disconnected from the main tale, but introduces the concepts and simultaneously captivates the reader.
- Optional. You're writing a sequel/expansion which ties in with backstory of the original. These who read the original would find recaps in the main story tedious. These who didn't, would feel lost. So, "in last episode..."
- Hanging some chekov guns. You have no good opportunity to do that from the main story, but there are things you simply must foreshadow early on.

This list is not complete, by any means, nor ultimate - e.g. quite often you can do an interesting and captivating recap of past events in a sequel without need for an intro.

Original score: 13