Perception narration: Authorship & Honesty

[sirogit]

In TroS game, I've noticed myself accidently using the phrases "You see..." "You feel..." "You know..." etc. as a result of, say, an inspection of an object or a character looking someone over.

Now, personally, I see alot of things wrong with using such phrases, in that they take away from the player's control over his PC, and I take making my game "Force"-free very seriously.

I figured a good subsituite would be making appropiate statements about the object of inpsection as a matter of fact, saying in response "It's a ming dynasty vase tinted on the sides of the opening with a vicious red liquid." instead of "You can see...."

But, I wonder if this would be inappropiate to use dishonestly? To make a statement that isn't true but would appear to be a fact to the PC's perceptions, such as saying "There isn't anything hiding in the underbrush" When there's actually an invisable demon waiting to pounce there.

[Valamir]

Good topic.  First thing I would suggest however is segregating out the five senses from interpretations of the five senses.

Saying "you see nothing in the bushes" is quite different from saying "you feel safe here"

[Blankshield]

In TroS game, I've noticed myself accidently using the phrases "You see..." "You feel..." "You know..." etc. as a result of, say, an inspection of an object or a character looking someone over.

Now, personally, I see alot of things wrong with using such phrases, in that they take away from the player's control over his PC, and I take making my game "Force"-free very seriously.

I figured a good subsituite would be making appropiate statements about the object of inpsection as a matter of fact, saying in response "It's a ming dynasty vase tinted on the sides of the opening with a vicious red liquid." instead of "You can see...."

But, I wonder if this would be inappropiate to use dishonestly? To make a statement that isn't true but would appear to be a fact to the PC's perceptions, such as saying "There isn't anything hiding in the underbrush" When there's actually an invisable demon waiting to pounce there.

Encourage paranoia: "There doesn't appear to be anything in the underbrush." :)

On the broader topic, I don't have an issue with dictating actual perceptions (you see, you hear, it feels like), as long as it doesn't violate system.  "You see nothing" is valid if they don't have the "spot invisible demon" skill - or if you had them roll 'spot invisible demon' and it failed.

This seems like a pretty clear cut issue of "trust the guy with director stance", and you're concerned about abusing that trust.  I would say that the degree of trust is going to vary wildly from group to group, but that in general, as long as you stay "outside" the character you're OK.  Starting to get into "you feel" and "you think" is beginning to encroach on the players turf.  

$0.02
James

[clehrich]

One problem here is that if you use "you see" only intermittently, you're going to provoke paranoia where you may not want it.  So if you say, "You see nothing under the bush" but you usually just describe what they do see, they're going to assume that there is something under the bush.  If there isn't, they may be annoyed, or spend hours trying to figure out what is under the bush; if there is, they've been confirmed that "you see" is code for "look again."

Not that that helps, of course.  :)

Chris Lehrich

[W. Don]

Hi sirogit,

I'm not that familiar with TRoS since I've only scaned the free preview version. Plus, I don't know how you as the GM might feel about this suggestion, but how about:

"What do you see in the underbrush?"

Which might then go far to take Force out of it completely. It places the perception ball right in the player's court and you can't be more honest than that.

It'll depend on the group though, I'd think.

- W.

[Rich Forest]

Hi Sirogit,

Yeah, this is an interesting question. I think there are a bunch of things to parse out here, but one thing I suppose that's worth mentioning is that if you tell the players you're going to use "there is" to represent their senses, then it's no longer deception. I mean, just set it up, right up front, let them know that's how you're going to do it, and that you're doing it to avoid telling them how their characters feel, and then they'll know what you're doing and why you're doing it, and I think it's no longer deceptive. Of course, they'll have to help you out in the beginning, and you might have to tell them that, because your habits are going to have you saying things like, "you see" and "you feel" even after you've made a conscious choice to stop doing it. But if they know they can help you switch over, and you accept their reminders because you've told them to remind you, then it should work out.

I'm going to try to break some of these things down more, as Ralph has suggested, partly for fun and partly because I hope there's something to be gained from doing so. We'll see.

So let's start right there with what Ralph pointed out: there are the senses, and then there are the attitudes about them or interpretations of them. Let's take, "you see," "you hear," "you taste," "you smell," and "you feel." The first four of these are probably not the ones that jumped out at you as problematic, and there is a reason for that—when you're talking about them, it's more obvious that you're talking about physical senses, nothing more. It's the "you feel" that gets interesting because "feel" is used to cover the physical sense of touch, and then on a slightly higher level of abstraction, general sense of hot, cold, etc., and then here's where it starts to be noticeable, the internal "feeling" of an opinion or attitude toward a thing. That's where there's more likely to be a sense that as GM you're stepping across some line and taking control of the PC.

Think about the differences between these:

"You don't see anything under the bush."
"You don't notice anything under the bush."
"You can't see anything under the bush."
"You see nothing under the bush."
"There's nothing under the bush."
"You don't think there's anything under the bush."

Now sure, those are similar. You could even say they mean the same thing. But then, they're different too, and they imply different things. They make different claims about reality (in this case, the "reality" of the shared imaginative space). By asking yourself, "How would someone challenge this," you can sometimes get a clearer idea of what kind of claim is being made.

"You don't see anything under the bush."
"You don't notice anything under the bush."
"Oh yes, I do (see something/notice something)."

If the player challenges that, their stepping explicitly into director stance, unless their just acting up to cause trouble or to make a joke ("Yes, I do, I see dirt."). So that's unlikely to be something players will see as force, since this kind of director stance is typically the GMs realm, I think in a lot of TROS play as well.

"You can't see anything under the bush."
"Oh yes, I can (see something)."

This is similar to the first two, but it has a slightly different emphasis—it gets more into what the character can or cannot do, but it's still perception, so it's still probably "safe" and non-forceful. (Note that I'm assuming force to have to do with unacceptable force, that is, force that is beyond what the social contract would allow.)

Now Chris points out an interesting example from James' post: "You see nothing under the bush." Which is awfully hard to contradict, actually— "Oh yes, I do (see nothing, uh, no I mean, see something, or no I don't see nothing, I see something... ??)" . It's going to draw attention because it's not a typical way to express this kind of thing, so it calls more attention to itself, which I think Chris rightfully points out may be communicating something more like, "Check this out, this is important." Some of the other phrases like "you don't see" could have the same effect, or communicate the same thing, if you use them rarely. Notice that James' recommendation very clearly takes advantage of the ways you can use ambiguous language to basically say, "Pay Attention To This!" And it works even if you are using it for misdirection, even if there's nothing there worth paying attention to, from the GMs standpoint (which of course is based on the assumption that the GM has a definite plan for the "this" in question).

Now to move on with the examples:

"There's nothing under the bush."
"Yes, there is (something there)."

Now with this one, again, the player's can't challenge it without stepping right into director stance. You're presenting it as part of the world, as what is "real" in the shared imaginative space. That's why you probably don't feel awkward using it. It's safely within the realm of "GM's power" for a lot of games. It seems to be a statement about what exists rather than what is perceived, so it seems to take the characters right out of the equation. Of course, it's still a statement about what the characters perceive, I suppose, if you approach it that way, and I think if you tell the players you're doing it, it can be useful without being deceptive.

"You don't think there's anything under the bush."
"Yes, I do (think there's something)."

I'm going to guess that this one would be right out for you, and probably for some or all of your players as well, because it bases its argument on what the character thinks. The thing is, your intention might not be to use it that way, and that's why it might pop up unexpected and suddenly cause you a problem. Because if the subject were "I," then the "I think" takes on a different effect. "I don't think there's anything under the bush" uses the phrase "I think" as a lead in that actually gives more power to the person you're talking to. It's nice. It's a way of saying that you're not too committed to what you're stating, that you're leaving room for someone to disagree with you. Usually in regular conversation we're not likely to use "You see, you think, etc." the way we do in roleplaying, so it's not an issue. But when you start roleplaying, and you're GM, you might use "You think" or "You feel" to add that sense of uncertainty to the claim. Problem is, by switching from "I" to "you," you've gotten yourself into trouble. You've suddenly made a statement about what the character thinks or feels, which is usually considered to be use of force by the GM. Instead of getting across uncertainty about whether there is or isn't something there, it takes the power of deciding with certainty what is felt or thought by the character, and that's much more likely to be a cause of contention.

I had more to say on this, actually, but I think I'll stop before this post gets any more bloated. I guess my point is that you may be accidentally taking control in some instances and then asking yourself "What the hell was I thinking," and in fact you may not have been trying to take control. Switching to statements about what is or what exists ("There is," "It is," etc.) is one way to work around this, but it might not be necessary. It reduces the chance that you accidentally take power, but it also reduces your options for presenting things. Either way, it might be worth talking about what you're trying out and why, to see what the players think about it, especially if you're worried about it being deceptive.

Rich

[W. Don]

Hi folks,

Nice summation, Rich. Made me think about my own not so thought-through suggestion.

"What do you see in the underbrush?"

Which might then go far to take Force out of it completely. It places the perception ball right in the player's court and you can't be more honest than that.

This seeks a solution to the Force via preception issue by giving the player Director Stance. Which won't necessarily solve the problem. It just gives the GM hat to someone other than the usual person for a short span of time. And that person himself can be faced with the same Force issue.

No wonder I felt like I was off-tangent about sirogit's original question. My apologies.

- W.

[M. J. Young]

Most of what I thought to say yesterday was said by Rich this morning, so he saved me a great deal of time typing; thank you, Rich.

I will say that I have no problem describing things from a sensory perspective--what the character sees, hears, smells, tastes, and feels (tactile). I will sometimes use statements of fact (there is X in front of you) instead of statements of perception (you see X in front of you), but not with enough consistency that the perceptual usage is a clue; also, when players ask for sensory information, I always reply in the perceptive mode ("We look under the bush" "You don't see anything unusual there").

The problem arises, though, with feel (emotive). You feel a chill run through your body--does that mean you're standing in a draft, or does it mean that there's something weird going on here that causes you to shiver? Does it say there's a ghost present, or that the place is spooky and you're imagining the presence of something supernatural? I have no problem telling what a character feels if there's reason to believe that a feeling would be externally caused (e.g., the ghost sends chills up your spine, the girl is so incredibly beautiful that your failed save means you are feeling a bit irrational at the moment). I also don't mind doing it if the player specifically asks for whether he "feels" anything unusual.

There's also an entire layer of intuitive stuff. I go into this in some detail in an old article on RPGnet, http://www.rpg.net/news+reviews/columns/mjyoung99.html">Intuition and Surprise, but the short form is that sometimes in play it's useful to have the sort of situation in which the player "knows something is wrong" without knowing why he knows--the Spidey sense is tingling, as it were. If the game supports that kind of thing, the referee should be permitted to communicate that these feelings exist within the character as a way of activating the concept in play.

So I think that you may be unduly worried. To a degree, in traditional play the characters only see what you describe, and that doesn't always have to be what's really there. I would be more worried about saying "there's a wall in front of you" when in fact it's an illusion--saying "you see a wall in front of you" is more honest, and if you say that whether or not the wall is real, it won't suggest illusion when it is.

--M. J. Young