Which way are you rubbed by dramatic irony...

[Kesher]

Just wondering what people think about dramatic irony in games.  By this I mean the audience (players) having greater knowledge, up-front, about the immediate situation than the characters.

My intuition is that it would only work well with particular types of conflict resolution systems, necessarily involving some sort of metagame discussion about whether or not to even start a conflict in the first place, & that it wouldn't work at all well in any kind of Sim-oriented game where an Actor stance is actively cultivated.

[Alan]

Hi Kesher,

Welcome to the Forge!

Gaps between player and character knowledge shows has shown up often in every RPG session I can remember, regardless of rules or mechanic.  It's the nature of making a decision from a character's point of view - "Actor" stance.

You might be interested in learn more about Actor, Author, and Director Stance.  Read the Glossary in the Articles section http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/27/

[Lee Short]

I think this is an interesting question.  While, as Alan indicates, a certain amount of out-of-character knowledge is pretty much unavoidable, not everyone is happily reconciled to this fact  In most games, I'm a pretty hard-core Actor stance player.  As such, I would really rather not have out-of-character knowledge.  Once it has colored my thinking, it is really distracting to answer the question 'Is this what I would have had my character do anyway?'  I realize that this is much more of an issue for me than for most players, but it can be a big issue for me.  

There is another issue, a Social Contract one, that I have seen pop up time and again.  That is when some players subtly (or not-so-subtly) let out-of-character information color their actions, usually to their advantage.  To some of my friends, this is considered "cheating" (their choice of words, not mine).  But their hard-core players-play-Actor-stance Social Contract just wasn't accepted by the other players, who didn't see anything wrong with what they did.  

So I think the answer to the question is:  different people will have all kinds of different opinions.

[Kesher]

Hmm... looking back at my original post, I don't think I was very clear.  And, looking at the responses, their are a couple different ways to talk about it.

How 'bout this:

Gaps between player and character knowledge shows has shown up often in every RPG session I can remember, regardless of rules or mechanic. It's the nature of making a decision from a character's point of view - "Actor" stance.

Yeah, I agree with to a point, but you're looking at it in perhaps a broader sense than I had in mind.  Many groups (well, okay, in my experience) have a whole complex of issues going on that foster Illusional play and, to be fair, many "traditional" game texts more or less support it.  Like Lee points out, many gamers hate having their "character-think" polluted with dramatically ironical knowledge.  An example:

The erstwhile party is advancing across a field towards the forbidding front of the forest.  A band of bloodthirsty orcs is hiding within, waiting to attack.  In a game eschewing dramatic irony, the GM might say "The knee-high grass swishes as you stride through it.  In the eerie silence you hear only the creaking of your armor and the breathing of your companions.  A single crow  calls out to the setting sun", and leave it at that.  It's up to players (thinking as "the characters") to do whatever they think it's likely they'd do before watlzing into the greenwood.

Now, the shade of dramatic irony, Alan, that I think you're talking about is almost involuntary, i.e., the player, since he's a gamer, feels pretty damn sure that there's something threatening hanging out in the forest because, you know, there usually is.  However, if he's plugged into "acting his part", it may be that Snobwort the UberMage would be busy at this point deciding whether or not he paid too much for powdered Wolfsbane in the city they just left and so would need to ignore the frission of irony and keep ruminating on the rising cost of somatic components in a fragile adventuring economy.  It might even be made tougher for him by the fact that many GMs would have a hard time not adding something like "The forest looks very forbidding" to the end of their description.  Very distracting to "character-think" because the player now knows damn well that something lurks beneath the boughs.

There is another issue, a Social Contract one, that I have seen pop up time and again. That is when some players subtly (or not-so-subtly) let out-of-character information color their actions, usually to their advantage. To some of my friends, this is considered "cheating" (their choice of words, not mine). But their hard-core players-play-Actor-stance Social Contract just wasn't accepted by the other players, who didn't see anything wrong with what they did.

Exactly, now, things get harrier if the player of Jim the Elf decides that Jim would most likely scout ahead.  He scoots into the wold and succeeds at his "very woodsy" roll.  The hapless GM says outloud for all to hear, "You see the prints of hobnailed orc boots in the soft dirt and when you take a whiff, smell orc all around you."  Now the frission ratchets up, because everyone now Knows that orcs abound and yet, if actorbound, are still obligated to shuffle towards slaughter.  If Snobwort's player was in Lee's group in the example above, would he be able to resist the temptation to "notice Jim's strained posture at the wood's edge" and declare that he's running over the slippery runes for his fireball spell, y'know, just for practice.  More importantly, I suppose, is how would the group accept his statement if it was made.

It really does depend, as Lee points out, on the group's tacit understanding of their own Social Contract issues.  This seems to dovetail with my initial instinct about how dramatic irony, whether intentional or not, works in Sim/Actor Stance focused games, especially when not everyone's on the same page about things.  

But the issue comes up in the first place, I think, due to a certain type of resolution system relying, as far as I can tell, on task-resolution; it's a symptom of system.  The only reason irony raised its naked head was because Jim the Elf "made" his "very woodsy" check.  If he hadn't, he (and therefore all the other players, let alone their characters), would still be ignorant.  No irony because no knowledge.

So maybe the second part of my instinctive guess requires a more focused question or two:

1. Do you think dramatic irony only becomes a problem with groups who are using a system which employs a binary, "you made it / you didn't make it" task resolution system; does a system like this imply (since if you didn't make your roll, you don't have the knowledge) that some knowledge needs to be kept secret if not "properly" acquired?  (Whether or not such systems gave rise to an Actor Stance viewpoint in the first place, while an interesting question, would I imagine be better left for the GNS forum...)

2. Traditionally, the keeper of the "knowledge" mentioned above is the GM.  Keeping knowledge sharply defines him in relation to players, who are constantly trying to acquire knowledge.  So, how do some of the newer games which play with that boundary, even if they keep a more-or-less binary success mechanic (I'm thinking in particular of Donjon and The Pool), deal with dramatic irony?  I've not played either Donjon or The Pool, though I've read them both, but it seems to me that in Donjon, given the example above, that the GM could give the same example and Jim the Elf could say "I look for hidden orcs" and, if he succeeds, by gum, there they are for all to see.  The creation of knowledge for their characters by the players makes for a whole new dynamic.  Again, in Donjon, which has an implicit competitive thing going on between GM and players, it would actually be to the GMs advantage to say "A troop of bloodthirsty orcs is lurking in the woods ahead of you; what do you do".  If Jim the Elf then replies "I look for orc spoor" (a good name for a band...) and then FAILS his check, well, the GM then gets to put the smackdown on the characters.

Sigh.  I fear I've wandered.  Lee, how would you feel about such a game?  Do you think it would dash your Actor preferences, and would you be alright with that?

[Callan S.]

He scoots into the wold and succeeds at his "very woodsy" roll. The hapless GM says outloud for all to hear, "You see the prints of hobnailed orc boots in the soft dirt and when you take a whiff, smell orc all around you." Now the frission ratchets up, because everyone now Knows that orcs abound and yet, if actorbound, are still obligated to shuffle towards slaughter.

I'd think of it in terms of desires and how much each player wants them on a scale of 1 to 10. Here are some example values.

* Desire to have the reward of keeping in character and keep to character knowledge: 7
* Current desire to avoid a current potential penalty, like PC wounds or death: 2

And that second one keeps going up as you become more and more definate about there being danger. Indeed, once it equals or exceeds the former, you get people breaking character in the way you described.

I think it may be a bit of a mistake to blame the woodsey roll for the break in character. Clearly it would up the avoidance desire, but I think that's it'll throw out the wrong thing.

One trick is to add rewards for ignoring the danger information (or to be more precise, for not switching to defensive modes or changing course). Ie, the desire for this reward will tag team with the desire to keep in character. You'll end up with players actively arguing that in no way could they see Jim's posture and thus could not even guess what he's found (so as to defend their reward).

Basically I think pruning away anything that increases the second desire is a mistake, since this can easily rise purely by player paranoia anyway. Best to counter it with system rather than only solve half the problem by removing any system assistance to it increasing.

[Snowden]

One way to deal with this might be to give the characters a "disconnect" attribute that sometimes increased when they did things that were nonsensical from a strictly-IC point of view.  The idea would be not to punish players for using OOC knowledge, but to integrate their choice to do so into the SIS: Snobwort preps his fireball before entering an innocuous forest because he's hearing voices, or because he's eccentric, or because he's thumbing his nose at Fate.  The higher the disconnect, the more concrete and prominent Snobwort's quirks become; eventually his voices might become more demanding, or he might become a pariah from his community (albeit a lucky pariah), or the gods might take note of his hubris...

This would probably make issues of dramatic irony and player stance a focus of the game, but might be a fun way to allow actor- and author-stance players to coexist without feeling like they're playing with different rules.

[Lee Short]

But the issue comes up in the first place, I think, due to a certain type of resolution system relying, as far as I can tell, on task-resolution; it's a symptom of system.  The only reason irony raised its naked head was because Jim the Elf "made" his "very woodsy" check.  If he hadn't, he (and therefore all the other players, let alone their characters), would still be ignorant.  No irony because no knowledge.

I think the reason that a lot of systems have task resolution is because they want their choices, at the task level, to affect their chances of success.  Now I think that many times they are simply caught in a rut by their habits -- they don't really want to roll once to find traps, once to disarm the trap and once to open the lock (when a single "thief skills" roll would do just as well) -- but they do it out of habit.  

So maybe the second part of my instinctive guess requires a more focused question or two:

1. Do you think dramatic irony only becomes a problem with groups who are using a system which employs a binary, "you made it / you didn't make it" task resolution system; does a system like this imply (since if you didn't make your roll, you don't have the knowledge) that some knowledge needs to be kept secret if not "properly" acquired?  (Whether or not such systems gave rise to an Actor Stance viewpoint in the first place, while an interesting question, would I imagine be better left for the GNS forum...)

Nope.  I've seen it in Amber DRPG, which is functionally freeform as used in the group I'm thinking of.  

2. Traditionally, the keeper of the "knowledge" mentioned above is the GM. Keeping knowledge sharply defines him in relation to players, who are constantly trying to acquire knowledge. So, how do some of the newer games which play with that boundary, [snip]

Sigh.  I fear I've wandered.  Lee, how would you feel about such a game?  Do you think it would dash your Actor preferences, and would you be alright with that?

Well, hard-core-Actor is my preferred playing mode and I have to make a conscious decision to step out of it -- but I can do that and still enjoy the game. I've done that many, many times.  I also tend to GM more than play, and as a GM I'm switching modes constantly -- so I'm very used to using other modes.  I've never tried any of those games (but I am interested in doing so), but I think I would have no problem with them once I put myself in the right mindset.  In fact, I am working on a takeoff of Shadows in the Fog that wouldn't work very well in Actor mode.  

I have other friends who also tend to play in hard-core-Actor mode and haven't examined their gaming habits as much as I have.  I don't really know how they would react to games like that.  I hope to find out, though.

[Kesher]

Yeesh, time can fly...

I think it may be a bit of a mistake to blame the woodsey roll for the break in character. Clearly it would up the avoidance desire, but I think that's it'll throw out the wrong thing.

I wasn't so much blaming the roll, but the system that implies certain decisions are made because of what sort of authority the roll seems to support.  Which I think dovetails with your ideas about fixing it on the system level in the first place.  I like your scale example, too; a very clear way to visualize the event.

One way to deal with this might be to give the characters a "disconnect" attribute that sometimes increased when they did things that were nonsensical from a strictly-IC point of view. The idea would be not to punish players for using OOC knowledge, but to integrate their choice to do so into the SIS: Snobwort preps his fireball before entering an innocuous forest because he's hearing voices, or because he's eccentric, or because he's thumbing his nose at Fate. The higher the disconnect, the more concrete and prominent Snobwort's quirks become; eventually his voices might become more demanding, or he might become a pariah from his community (albeit a lucky pariah), or the gods might take note of his hubris...

I think this is a really inspired idea!  Seems like it could have strong applications in Gamist-inspired design, if tightly built into the system.  Tactical delusions?  :)

In fact, I am working on a takeoff of Shadows in the Fog that wouldn't work very well in Actor mode.

Weeel, after playing SitF with you (though I don't think it was your takeoff, right?), I have to say that that game's all about dramatic irony.  Several levels of it.  Not only did all of the players have more knowledge than all of the characters, it was part of what made the game enjoyable!  Not to mention the fact (and this was just how we ended up playing it, of course) that you, as the Host, had no idea what our Abysses (dark secrets) were.  I, as a player, knew more about the actions of my character than you, as the Host, did.  Is that, then, reverse dramatic irony??

I think I'm getting a headache...  (but, y'know, a good one)