[Glass and Steel] Concealing core spoilers?

[FLEB]

The background: There's this game I'd been in the initial stages of developing a few months ago, Glass and Steel. I'd run into some snags as far as character and player motivation, and had back-burnered it for another project-- I was almost ready to write it off under the "first ___ games you make will probably be crap" axiom, but I've recently learned that there's much more interest among fellow players than I'd suspected, and with a few flashes of inspiration and a kick in the rear, I'm back trying to iron things out and move it ahead.

Oh, right... the background on the concept: Glass and Steel takes place in an office tower, right around early afternoon. Everything seems to be going normally, until an explosion rocks the building. The characters try to escape, save lives, whatever their character concept would dictate. However, after a set number of turns, everything fades to black and the characters awaken... in the office tower, right about early afternoon...

The idea is that this is a re-playing of the actual event, and one of the players is fated to die in the attack, and until they do-- be it by natural cause or by murder-- the scenario keeps repeating itself. There are some details with fate cards, sticky NPCs, and such, but you can look into the original post for that. I've revised the idea a bit since then, and I'm overhauling it at the moment, but you can get the storyline there, at least.

...

My big problem is in working with the existence of Fatedness, the mystery that's not so much a mystery because it's a selling point of the pitch to the game. (While players would not know who is Fated, they would still know of that general goal.) While a character would not necessarily know the whole fatedness issue that clearly (they are provided with supernatural insight, but only in bits and pieces), the player, by virtue that fatedness is a large part of the initial pitch-- would know of the mechanic. Now, I understand that it's not really feasible to throw all my conflict into that one plot point, and this was a large part of the deficiency of the initial game idea. I'm working on some sort of system for secondary conflicts, character goals, and rewards that can be defined on a case-by-case basis, and can therefore be hidden from players by the GM. I think that if it's implemented correctly, a personal-goals system could add enough possibility to the game to make it more than just a one-campaign machine. (I'm being vague in this regard, but it's that or ramble on about the four pages of tentative half-baked ideas I'm still working on.)

The question at hand, though-- I'm unsure as to what degree-- or how-- I should attempt to obfuscate the primary matter of Fatedness to the players, in order to give players the realistic ignorance that the character would have. That, or work in specific play guidelines that assist in playing under the incongruity. Or should I write that piece of realism off as a loss, and reserve myself to the fact that players will have that meta-game knowledge.

I'd been thinking of opening up the "fatedness" goal to something other than just "fated to die", but that doesn't really taste right. It would dilute the core concept of the game, and would peg the challenge right over to being too complicated, as the players would have to discern a completely unknown primary goal, along with executing it. I could see having under "alternate rules", perhaps, and perhaps I'll give it a go during play-test, but I don't imagine it running as smoothly as the core idea.

[Willow]

I'm not quite sure about how to (and if one should) keep a central premise of a game away from potential players, but in the classic time-warp fiction, Groundhog Day, the Fated's goal is to find true love.

How do you determine who is Fated?  Do the events of play have any impact on it?

Perhaps each character could have a goal that they select during character creation- but only the Fated's will break the cycle.

[dindenver]

Fleb,
  I think that there are really two ways to do this:
1) GM determines (randomly, based on char concept, whatever) and keeps it secret until its done. The advantage of this is that is creates a real mystery. The disadvantage of this is that it may evoke unexpected/unwelcome behavior from the players after the first iteration, you know?
2) Let the players decide, use an InSpectres inspired mechanic and let the players decide. The advantage of this is that the game ends when the death is AWESOME. The disadvantage of this is the game can become all metagame.
  I don't know your design goals, or design background, so I don't know which option works best for you, but I hope these ideas help you hone in on your ideal game, good luck!

[FLEB]

dindenver-- I suppose I was a bit unclear.

The Fated person is randomly chosen. The current mechanic is: There are decks of 10 cards (or some number of cards) with short snippets of memories written on them. Each of the memories gives a bit of insight into the Fatedness (or not) of that character (with, perhaps, a dash of red herring thrown in to taste). It goes from rather meaningless information in the "1" card to a gimmee for the "10". At the start of the game, each character chooses their deck at random, and thus the Fated character is chosen. At the end of each cycle, players roll a die to take a card, and find out a bit more about their character's destiny. The snippet is presented as a flashback, so the characters can choose to reveal or conceal their findings.

So, the fact of who is Fated will remain a mystery. The thing that's right out in the open, though, is the "someone has to die" goal in the game. Reflecting upon it again, I suppose it's not that much of a deal-killer that players know of that bit. It's the kind someone could just RP around.

I think you hit on my big worry with the idea, though-- that it might end up being either just a metagaming race to the finish, or ends up with too little conflict.

Willow--

Actually, I really like that idea, of making the character's personal goal the central idea, and picking one person's to actually matter. (Kind of a forehead-slapper, in hindsight.) My previous problem with the idea as I was thinking of it was that it was one central-- and hidden-- goal to achieve, which would involve a delicate walk between no one having any information and everyone having too much. Having it be on a per-person basis, though, the fact that everyone had their goals to achieve would make it so that it wouldn't wrap up the game so much more rapidly if I handed out more information as to what the goals were. I'm still thinking the obscured goals are a good idea, with the card mechanism, but adding a final, heroic goal to the past "you died" idea (perhaps making it that it was heroic and you did die doing it) really adds some variation to it.

[jag]

The Fated person is randomly chosen. The current mechanic is: There are decks of 10 cards (or some number of cards) with short snippets of memories written on them. Each of the memories gives a bit of insight into the Fatedness (or not) of that character (with, perhaps, a dash of red herring thrown in to taste). It goes from rather meaningless information in the "1" card to a gimmee for the "10". At the start of the game, each character chooses their deck at random, and thus the Fated character is chosen. At the end of each cycle, players roll a die to take a card, and find out a bit more about their character's destiny. The snippet is presented as a flashback, so the characters can choose to reveal or conceal their findings.

This is worrisome because there might be a significant difficulty with this method.  Are there already-set decks of 10 cards, one of which has the fated character?  If so, that might work fine for the first game, but for the second game people will know as soon as the first card is flipped ("Oh, your snippet is 'I woke up this morning with a headache.', you're the fated character.").  If instead the contents of the deck are random, so that the #10 fated card can go with any set of initial cards, then the decks don't in fact give you any information until #10.

I also think Willow's suggestion is a good one to pursue.  Currently, what's the goal for the characters?  To find the fated character and kill him?  This seems easy -- kill as many of the characters per round as possible, and soon you'll get to the fated one.  Or is the goal something along the lines of understanding something about the characters before they all die?  Considering very carefully what's supposed to motivate the players would be helpful here.

James

[Vulpinoid]

At the start of the game, each character chooses their deck at random, and thus the Fated character is chosen. At the end of each cycle, players roll a die to take a card, and find out a bit more about their character's destiny. The snippet is presented as a flashback, so the characters can choose to reveal or conceal their findings.

So, the fact of who is Fated will remain a mystery. The thing that's right out in the open, though, is the "someone has to die" goal in the game. Reflecting upon it again, I suppose it's not that much of a deal-killer that players know of that bit. It's the kind someone could just RP around.

This sounds a whole lot like the "How to Host a Murder" series of parlour games.

Where after each course of a meal, or after each predetermined time period, an act finishes and then everyone reads the next page of their character booklet to reveal a bit more about the back-story of the situation.

The difference here is that one of the characters will die at the end while in 'How to Host a Murder", the murderer is eventually revealed.

Might be worth having a look at...

V