The mystery of the creature's head

[Andrew Martin]

What I'm struggling with is a technique to afford the mystery of what's in the critter's head. I see a lot of value in maintaining that Mystique, both when the gamemaster is the Speaker as well as when the player is.

Have you given any thought to how [a game] might prevent that kind of 'directorial invasion?'

Fang wrote the above in another thread. It's been of concern to me as well in my Star Odyssey game and my upcoming Nobilis game. The first is GM-less, the second requires a GM (but I'd like it make it GM-less as well).

In general, it's how a player can specify that a part of the game, either setting, character, tool, vehicle or so on, has secrets. Whether at the start of the game, as a mysterious character enters the scene (my character is possessed by a mad scientist's downloaded brain pattern) or the hidden capacity of a starship, ("she can make .4 past light!"), a cursed sword in a monster's lair, (the sword must slay an innocent to fuel it's powers).

Ideally, I'd like only the one player (not necessarily the GM) to know the secret to the item, perhaps the item's creator/player.

My initial thoughts are that the player spends a token to create a secret capacity for the item, character, vehicle or location. Or spend a token to get an advantage (a magic sword), then immediately claim a token to gain a disadvantage (makes wielder berserk in combat).

Any ideas?

[Le Joueur]

What I'm struggling with is a technique to afford the mystery of what's in the critter's head. I see a lot of value in maintaining that Mystique, both when the gamemaster is the Speaker as well as when the player is.

Have you given any thought to how [a game] might prevent that kind of 'directorial invasion?'

Fang wrote the above in another thread. It's been of concern to me as well in my Star Odyssey game and my upcoming Nobilis game. The first is GM-less, the second requires a GM (but I'd like it make it GM-less as well).

In general, it's how a player can specify that a part of the game, either setting, character, tool, vehicle or so on, has secrets. Whether at the start of the game, as a mysterious character enters the scene (my character is possessed by a mad scientist's downloaded brain pattern) or the hidden capacity of a starship, ("she can make .4 past light!"), a cursed sword in a monster's lair, (the sword must slay an innocent to fuel it's powers).

Ideally, I'd like only the one player (not necessarily the GM) to know the secret to the item, perhaps the item's creator/player.

My initial thoughts are that the player spends a token to create a secret capacity for the item, character, vehicle or location. Or spend a token to get an advantage (a magic sword), then immediately claim a token to gain a disadvantage (makes wielder berserk in combat).

I don't know about doing it with game currency, that seems like an invitation for 'plot device theatre' (an old favorite of mine from my University Gaming era).

What we're looking at has more to do with how it impacts the game.  I've seen two schools of thought on this issue (not that there aren't many more, I really haven't looked that long).  In the first, you have something like a few games have; I think DC Heroes offers 'unspecified gizmos' (that are 'spent' when brought into play and then specified), there's a spy game (or maybe Twilight 2000, I think) that lets you take 'unspecified contacts' (and then invoke them whenever you like under certain restrictions).  This school, to me, is characterized by letting players have Gamemasterful control of the narrative only through these kinds of tactics.  Needless to say, each carries mechanics to 'prevent abuse.'

I never liked that last part.  It never seemed to me that players would 'abuse' the narrative if they had consistent Gamemasterful sharing in the game.  (Or, the restriction is what leads to potential abuse.)

In the second, the gamemaster holds the secrets.  The point of play is how he 'entices' the players to solve them; pretty familiar stuff.  Except for Scattershot I had this idea that a player could have the same.  I mean, the gamemaster introduces the mysterious femme fatale; somehow he makes you curious.  The normal-language for this is creating a mystique about her.  What if players were allowed to do this as well?  Here the femme fatale is a player's character, not even the gamemaster knows all there is about her.  (It's a tough idea to describe, but I think a worthy one.)

I know, in the past, I've seen this suggested where the player 'shares all' with the gamemaster (suggesting that the gamemaster must approve everything, not always a healthy mix).  But it occured to me that didn't have to be the case.  I wrote about it a month ago or so.  Since then I have been trying to clarify a Mystique Technique for handling things like this.

I don't know if it really requires Gamemasterful play (every player being able to act as unilaterally as a gamemaster might) since a Mystique might be strictly about the player's own persona in the game and nothing more.

From the example, you might also see them also using the 'specify on the spot' stuff; I'm not sure I need to make that cost anything if it is a part of the character's Sine Qua Non (meaning they've already 'paid for it').  I haven't decided whether it is 'significant interruption of the narrative' (thus requiring an Experience Dice expenditure) or simply the 'activation of aspects of character' (with no cost, expect how it impacts Speakership issues).

I guess it really comes down to how your practice of gaming works.  If you want to make 'highjacking the narrative' cost then 'overt narrative control' becomes the goal of play.  If you want these secrets to 'fire up' the players, then the secrets themselves have to be the important part; instead of 'paying for them,' you 'invoke them' (meaning each is a fan for the fire of play).  In the latter case, introducing currency will destroy the subtlies of the seduction of a Mystique.  (More simply; my advice: 'overt narrative control' is the prize = use currency, solving the mystery is the prize = avoid currency.)

A side issue you might want to consider is 'design in play.'  Some players prefer to leave much of the 'little details' of their character to be figured out on the fly when they 'get a feel for them.'  If you use currency, you can formalize this process.  One player might 'finish' their character before play 'spending' everything (including setting the limitations of their 'gizmos'); another might 'hold some back,' spending the currency to define their character as the go.  Either approach is valid, but it helps to know which is being practiced by an individual player.

The reason I bring all this up is because the "mad scientist's downloaded brain pattern" sounds very much like a Mystique (and I don't know how well currency would work in that situation), whereas "the hidden capacity of a starship" scores far into the 'yet to specify' currency thing (even if you have the information in a sealed envelope to be revealed when needed, it still looks the same to the other players, as if you made it up on the spot, perhaps with more continuity).  The "cursed sword" comes down to either; as a Mystique, you struggle to figure out 'how it works,' in currency, this 'feature' is played at the appropriate moment.

Of course some people will believe this is entirely a trust/abuse issue, but I think the above applications are distinct and should be kept thus.

Fang Langford

[Walt Freitag]

The problem appears to be that for something to be secret, it must become established as in-game-world fact without any other participant knowing about it -- which appears to bypass any editorial say that the other participants would normally have over the establishment of an in-game-world fact.

The answer is that nothing that's known, believed, or anticipated by only one participant is ever considered established as in-game-world fact. Facts are only established through the process and mechanisms of play. The secret you have in mind for something, but which is not yet revealed, could be contradicted by another participant's narration (if you have less than exclusive proprietorship over the thing), or could fail or be overruled at the point where you try to introduce its effects into the story (if the system provides for such occurrences).

There's an important difference between establishing that something has a secret, and establishing what the secret is. Influencing the story by "revealing" (that is, establishing) a heretofore secret property of a longstanding story element, without any prior clue that such a secret even existed, often comes across as deus ex machina, even if the player who does so had that secret in mind all along. Usually you'd indicate well in advance (as a fully established and if necessary paid-for fact) that the secret exists. The space ship's owner says "She's might not look like much, but she's got it where it counts." The mysterious character who enters the scene is, well, mysterious. The cursed sword has an inscription that no one can read.

If tokens or points are involved, the object can be given an actual characteristic like "got it where it counts 4," "mysterious 2," or "unknown powers 1." Through play that reveals the secrets, these characteristics could change (perhaps requiring additional expenditure in the process) into whatever the secret actually entails, such as "really fast 2, hidden laser cannons 1, concealed smuggling storage bins 1" or "mad scientist knowledge 3, mad -1" or "magic might 4, requires sacrifice of innocent to activate -3." If the existence of the secret wasn't established when the object was introduced into the story, it could be built up to later by narrating clues. For example, I could pay a token and narrate, "In the middle of the night, I notice that my sword begins glowing for no apparent reason for a few minutes." This would give it an "unknown magic" property that could be added onto later by further such events, and eventually turned into the revelation of its secrets.

But having a particular secret in mind, or even having foreshadowed it with established events, shouldn't give a player any special privileges when it comes to establishing it as a fact in play. If I decide my character (call him Nathan) is really the all-powerful creator of the universe with amnesia, I might successfully establish all sorts of hints and foreshadowing and mysterious flahses of strange powers throughout the story without challenge, but my attempt to reveal (that is, establish as a fact) my character's ultimate true secret might still fail or be overruled by the process of play. Then I'd have to come up with some other way for my story to go that's still consistent with the already established events.

- Walt