Afterlife - when to break the game's secrets?

[Eve]

Hi,

A wile ago I GMed a game I'd call "Afterlife", though it had never been writen down and named properly. Not everything went well, but I really like the concept, so I'd like to do it again some time. This is where your advise would be very welcome.

Concept
The framework is rather simple actually. The characters are dead, however they don't know - yet. They are in some kind of inbetween-world. This is the place where all dead can stay some time to easily find out they are dead and get familiar with the idea, before disappearing from the earth completely. All they know to start with, are their current goals in the world of the living.

This inbetween-world looks very similar to the world the know and the place where they died. There are some peculiarities however. First, no living beings reside here. Think of going to Moscow, where the streets are empty except for a very few junkies (frozen to death probably). There are other things, like they don't feel pain or cold and of course they won't die again. However, not all PC note this. Depending on how strongly they think everything is and should be normal, the brain fills in for the strange things it's missing. This can go as far as suggesting a "real" death and then die away from this strange world.

Things get even stranger though. Closely tied with this world is a thoughtworld. This is the world of thinking over your life, redoing the things that should have gone different, trying to answer important questions. This world asks questions of it's own (from a prepared list by the GM) or places them in important scenes that happened before in their lives - now is your second chance. At first after entering the world is quite empty, but quickly comes up with something.
Movements made in the thoughtworld also implied some movement in the inbetween-world, which meant finding yourself at a somewhat different place after walking around there. This is not really nececcary and perhaps not even a good thing, I never spent much thought on this.

Switching between the two worlds happens by some symbolic object the characters carry around (only since they arived in the inbetween-word probably). I used an amulet, that by taking of placed them in the thoughtworld. Putting it on again brought them back. This allowed them to freely switch between the two worlds. As play progressed, the amulet started to fade away, intermingling both worlds a bit. Or, more symbolicly: loosing touch with the world of the living.

The different worlds can be used for different things:
- The inbetween world for realising you're dead.(or continue trying to persue your goals)
- The thoughtworld for thinking over your life etc.
This brings two requirements on the characters before play: they must both have an aim in the real world and some idea on their past.

My game
Three people (and a whole lot of others) were travelling by train to Moscow. As play commences, they kind of wake up in the train, seeing each other, some chaos and one other person. This last person happens to be wearing an amulet, discoveres it and takes it off. He walks through the door (without opening it), at the same time fading away. All three turn out to wear the same kind of amulet.

As play continues, they start finding out what is going on etc, more or less according to the above concepts (at a certain moment two players exchanged their amulets - I put them in the thoughtworld together, being together in all consecutive scenes.
One player however, never really found out what was going on. And this is where the dilemma comes in. I did not tell them before what was going to happen (just make a character that..), as I thought it would be a nice part of the discovery to let the players puzzle with the world as well as their characters. Stating explicitly what was going on would blow this - and I'd hate that. However, it might not have been the worst thing to do. Perhaps there had been other possibilities, yet nothing I tried worked as I hoped. Fact is, that at a certain moment I thought he long knew what was going on, but had made an active choice to keep persuing this one goal: a suicide attack at the Kremlin, actively ignoring all strange things, simply because of this strong focus. (a legal possibility, but not his favorite)

Question
Now, this brings me to the final question: when should you break the "secret", to lead a player to a place in the game world where he would want to be? Or do you think the answer is "never"; i.e. always use different tricks and hints for it.

-Eva

[Alan]

Hi Eva,

Are you asking: "when should the players learn this secret?" or "when should their character's learn the secret?"

If your question is about players - learning the secret might be a big deal for a player who enjoys simulationist play.  However, the drawback is that same player will never be able to reproduce the experience - there's no replay value.

[Victor Gijsbers]

Well - one thing that really works, I guess, is telling your players in advance that they have to find out how the game world works, and why that is the case. As was apparent in our Actual Play experience, the fact that I was constantly working towards a narrative driven by the issues of my character hindered me in taking the "let me experience what is happening, and find out what the GM wishes to tell me"-stance that would be required to enjoy this kind of gaming experience. So my advice would be to make sure that everybode know what is going on in GNS-like terms. "Find the secret"-simulationist play? Fine! (Well - as long as it's only once in a while.) But it's not fine if one of the players believes that the group is playing a narrativist game.

Also, let me point out that character creation for something like "Afterlife" should not consist of writing down, in a few sentences, why you are going to Moscow. That information is not important for the rest of the game, and may actually be misleading as the players will believe that this is somehow important. You may wish, instead, to have them write something that will come up in the game.

[Mike Holmes]

I think her question might be "If I need to get a player to plot point X, but to do so I have to break the secret to him, should I break the secret to him?"

Is that it, Eva?

If so, I think that you should never break the secret. That is, if learning the secret is one of the joys of the game, then it should come out as part of play, not by the GM giving it away. There are loads of ways to do this.

Mike

[Zoilus]

I think her question might be "If I need to get a player to plot point X, but to do so I have to break the secret to him, should I break the secret to him?"

Is that it, Eva?

If so, I think that you should never break the secret. That is, if learning the secret is one of the joys of the game, then it should come out as part of play, not by the GM giving it away. There are loads of ways to do this.

Mike

I agree with Mike on this one.  I find it sometimes helpful to think of what a high school English teacher told me (warning: cliché lame advice ahead).  She said "don't tell me, show me."  Perhaps instead of divulging the secret to your players, you could show it to them.  Show them several times if they don't get.  Try one encounter where the truth is so obscured by metaphor and symbolism that it doesn't make sense.  Show them the meaning of a symbol then show them the same nonsensical hidden masked truth.  If someone grasps on, imagine the power they will have gained over another player and over the workings of the world.  Perhaps (to add my own preference for the bizarre, weird, and terrifying) a character who makes such a discovery not only gains a certain amount of power, but slowly begins to fade.  Even more frightening would be if perhaps the knowledge doesn't succeed in sending them to the true after-life that awaits them.  Perhaps the powers-that-be in the inbetweenworld take notice of this enlightened individual who has not yet left and seek to forcibly remove them.  I'm sort of picturing something along the lines of Jacob's Ladder here.
 If them doesn't work, give them one or a few or all of the pieces of the metaphor and how it breaks down.  Then show them the same truth again.  I would think a good player would be able to take some notes and notice that every time the color red showed up it meant death was nearby (did anybody see The Sixth Sense?).
 If that doesn't do it then you've probably spent a long game already, so I would say at this point to give them a fairly literal truth.  I'm picturing a particularly dastardly final scene between Robert DeNiro and Mickey Rourke in Angel Heart in which the protagonist discovers the truth about himself.  Great movie, by the way, same punchline as Jacob's Ladder and Sixth Sense, hence the multiple movie references.

 Also, I'd just like to say that I really like your inbetweenworld being linked with, yet different from, the thought world.  I may have to steal that concept, since I've been trying to write a Call of Cthulhu storyline in which the PC's have "died" and are unaware of this.  I was thinking of borrowing thematic elements from the movies I mentioned before, as well as Ursula K LeGuin's The Lathe of Heaven and possibly other stories/movies with similar punchlines.

[Callan S.]

I think her question might be "If I need to get a player to plot point X, but to do so I have to break the secret to him, should I break the secret to him?"

Is that it, Eva?

If so, I think that you should never break the secret. That is, if learning the secret is one of the joys of the game, then it should come out as part of play, not by the GM giving it away. There are loads of ways to do this.

Mike

Actually I think it a concrete design choice rather than a 'what's best to do' choice. If a player needs certain knowledge to play a game the way you deem is correct, then they need that knowledge. No question about it.

If they don't need that knowledge to play correctly, then no worries. 'Correctly' needs to encapsulate whatever they do with that knowledge absent.

I'll be a little provocative though. If someone doesn't know this information, and this lack of knowledge doesn't effect the game adversely or even positively, then the whole point of your game has been removed from that game. While 'being dead and not knowing it' doesn't spoil the game nor enhances it, it's completely unimportant to play. Edit: I think I'm saying the same thing Ron has said about secret meta-plot. It shouldn't be secret.

The same goes for any 'you don't know/now you discover it' games, in that if knowing or not knowing doesn't effect your game, then the discovery itself is completely not the focus of the game.

Don't confuse this with defined abscences of knowledge, like not knowing what's around each bend of a dungeon tunnel. It's been defined that something is there...so this abscence of knowledge has a game effect. But a player absence of knowledge of what the PC also doesn't know, leads to no in game effect.

In the spirit of defined abscences, you could tell the players that their PC is either alive (and in a revivable coma) or dead, and no one knows which (it will be determined latter with dice), but their PC doesn't know this.

Now the players will not be sure how they should guide their PC to finding out what this situation is, as they may actually be alive and should not head off to the next world (which would mean dieing in their coma). The defined abscence of knowledge is going to have a big effect on play.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Another way of putting what Callan (Noon) is saying is that I can play my character's ignorance of X far more richly and far more enjoyably, for everyone, if I know what X is. Or if X is "unknowable," then I can play accordingly too if I know that.

Now, if "finding out X" is the point of play, then what I'm saying is nonsensical.

But if it's not, then what I'm saying holds very well.  

When a given preparator of a game session or series of sessions is confused about this point, he or she is forced into a weird mode of interaction where the point is to find out about X, but yet the players cannot find out about X, because that would mean stopping play. Sort of a Gilligan's Island freeze-state kicks in ("if they ever get off the island, the show's over"), mainly characterized by frustration on all parts.

The valid choices seem to be:

1. The point for me as a player (or us as a group) is to find out about X, and therefore I (a player) do not know X yet. However, acquiring knowledge of X is not blocked during play.

2. The point is any of a million other possiblities, and ignorance of X is part of my character's situation. In this case, it's perfectly OK for me (the player) to learn X or figure it out or even simply be given X at the start, independently of my character's knowledge.

So the entire concept of keeping something secret, as a GM tactic, is perilous. I'm not saying it's totally dysfunctional or absurd, because pacing may be involved to modify either 1 or 2 above, or a few other possible reasons to delay knowledge (I call this and similar delays "Bobbing" in Sex & Sorcery). But I am saying that it's a terrible default assumption.

Eva, does any of this make sense? To clarify for your purposes, I think you are asking your whole question backwards. It's not a matter of "should a GM reveal secrets." It's a matter of knowing what your desired point of play is. Then what you recommend a GM do with the secrets falls out easily and enjoyably from that.

Best,
Ron

[Eve]

Hi guys,

Thanks for your reactions. To explain my late reply: some exam...

I think you are right the game can be played in two different modes, one on finding out what is going on, one in which this finding out is not an issue. The latter was more what I had in mind, as the cool thing about the game is thinking over your life, getting a second chance before you really die. In this case players should know what is going on (or not really, as in Callan's suggestion). The reason I did start without this knowledge, was that I liked the idea of starting in total bewilderment. Of course, this should only have been something at the very beginning.

I also made some mistakes with character creation, however, having a goal in the present (why to go to Moscow in this case) is very important. It functions as a starting point for the character's search.

The whole thing made me think:
I believe Victor implicitly connected the two options with two different types of play: finding out what's going on as simulationist and wondering about your life (and crimes etc) as a narrativist thing. What I had in mind was perhaps a sim/nar hybrid. I wonder: can sim/nar(/game) hybrids work, or are they doomed to fail?

[Callan S.]

I wonder: can sim/nar(/game) hybrids work, or are they doomed to fail?

From what I've read, people often slip from sim play to nar play, but are very adamant it was just sim 'I was just doing what my character would do' sort of thing. Except that they decided at that point what their character would do, rather than at say character creation (err, I think the destinction is that they inject their own moral input at that moment, rather than just robotically following some code of conduct they previously designed. I think, anyway).

So it's actually pretty hard for sim not to slip to narrativism sometimes, if your that way inclined. It's just that sometimes the sim goal of everyone else means they'll try and decide for a player, the PC's choice. Everyone elses sim dream will be bent if the PC acts outside the structure, while the narrativist will be really pissed if someone else makes his decision for him. But once you look at the problem, you probably already start to see ways of getting people to shift mental gears for that nar moment.

[Eve]

> Callan:
Using some of your own moral judgement, is that always nar? Isn't your own personality always part of a character, to a certain extend of course? I mean, I think I'd really have a hard time playing someone truly evil - if I can do it at all (I'm not sure). Is sim just a mere "robot", once the rules of behaviour are created, or is a certain part of the physical player also alowed (perhaps as an implicit part of the character)?

[John Burdick]

Eva,

Remember that agenda doesn't apply to transient moments of behavior. When I "play my character" in gamist play, I'm not switching into Sim. I recently played a game with random creation, and rolled a Vile of 6. That's a very high score. I played my character as being Vile. No Sim involved. The reward was when I hit the stasis box with a dragon as a hammer. Even making the dragon mad enough to smash into objects fit with being Vile. I met the challenge in a manner I consider creative. I used exploration to Step On Up.

Certainly the player is never completely neutral. The key for sim play is not drawing attention to things like that. If you ignore an ugly option because it displeases you and then forget the question ever came up, everything is fine. The clash comes when a player is excited by the tension and seeks to highlight the point of stress.

On the topic of secrets, I'm experimenting on playing Paranoia without secrets between players.

John

[Eric Minton]

On the topic of secrets, I'm experimenting on playing Paranoia without secrets between players.

John

Please, please, please post the Actual Play for that.

- Eric

[Callan S.]

> Callan:
Using some of your own moral judgement, is that always nar? Isn't your own personality always part of a character, to a certain extend of course? I mean, I think I'd really have a hard time playing someone truly evil - if I can do it at all (I'm not sure). Is sim just a mere "robot", once the rules of behaviour are created, or is a certain part of the physical player also alowed (perhaps as an implicit part of the character)?

It mostly stems from what's important to the everybody playing. For example:

"My guy is good. Good people on this world do X, Y and Z. That's how good people on this world act, so he does that of course. It makes sense!"

"My guy is good. He just wouldn't do this thing. He just couldn't, or otherwise he couldn't think of himself as good. Even though this is a hard decision, this is what my character has decided!"

You can sort of see how in the first example, it was important to say it in terms of how the game world worked, and in relation to that, how that game worlds people work. In the latter, it's important to say it in terms of how the characters mind works, regardless of the rest of the game world and how it works.

Which is important to your group? Assuming others here at the forge think my example is okay, you might want to even read out the two and ask them what they think of both. That'll help you formulate what to do.

[Mike Holmes]

OK, it sounds like you want the players to know what's going on, for the most part. What I'd do is make it clear to the players after a few scenes at most what's going on.

Now, a tougher question, do you want the characters to know what's going on.

Most people assume here that a unity between player and character knowledge is what you want. But that's just not so. Take Paranioa. If you've played it even once, you know that the other player characters are your character's competition, and you're out to do them in. But your character doesn't neccessarily know that. He doesn't know that he's a character in an RPG, and has to behave accordingly to what he knows. Yes, the player is expected to manipulate the situation such that things turn out like he wants, but he's never allowed to break plausibility. The "skill" in Paranoia is in making your attempt to off the other characters seem plausible.

Similarly in this proposed game, you could inform the players that their chracters are dead, and have the characters remain blissfully ignorant. Or, they, too could discover this information at some time in the game much later on. So there are two considerations here - when does the player find out? And when does the character.

How can the player find out and not the character? Well, there are many ways, the most obvious one of which is to tell the player, "Mike, your character, unbeknownst to himself, is dead." But there are other more subtle and potentially interesting ways to do it.

That's not to say that you can't do the unity thing. Just that there's an alternative.

Mike