Player Narration and GM Secrets

[Buddha Nature]

Fang's solution looks quite nice.  Keeping all characters soverign looks to be a great way to keep everything agreeable but still give enough narrative control to the player.  In fact this is going to go right into a game I am currently working on I think...

-Shane

[Jason Lee]

Stuart,

I have to ask a question:  Are players allowed to have secrets from other players?  If so, how would the system deal with it if one player's narration intruded upon the secrets of another?  I think the system should be the same for the GM.  Why have two rules where one will do?

I've got a slightly different suggestion from what Mike and Fang have both thrown out (but it really is the same concept).

Certain NPC's could be key figures in the plot, major antagonists.  As they are the equivalent to protagonists (the PCs) they fall under GM narration rights just as the players have narration rights of the PCs and minor foes during the rest of the story.  The GM might have a token he flips over or stuffed penguin he sets on the table to let the group know that someone in the scene belongs to him, and hence the players' rights to narrate beyond the actions of their characters are temporarily on hold.  Some kind of visual sign like this should, in theory, prevent unnecessary talk devoted to post-action tweaking.  Might even up the suspense ('Uh oh, the penguin's out, we're in trouble now').

[szilard]

A lot of this has been really helpful.

I think that I need to further clarify the concern. It really has to do with limits when there are conflicts between rights to narration. To that end, Fang's suggestion helps a great deal, as does Jason's.

I suspect that I was making a larger deal out of this than it deserved, and the best way to handle it is probably to just treat the NPC as if it were another PC. I must think about this a bit.

Stuart

[Piers]

Fang's suggestion about splitting into areas of responsibility is certainly one way of doing things, but I'm intrigued by Ralph's suggestion about cards:

Now this is where the suggestion I made earlier about having such secrets written out on 3x5 cards comes in.  In order for this not to sound like the GM ripping off the players MOV (or whatever) the cards provide a "I'm not making this up, its what the wizard would have done" moment.

The card (or whatever) serves just like an Interrupt card from Once Upon a Time.  "Aha...I have a matching card, I can seize the narrative here"

So here's the thought: rather than have cards played as an interruption which switches narration, how about making them facts (like in Donjon, only potentially far broader) that have to be included in the narration?  More significantly, how about making this the explicit basis of a game system?

Quick sketch:

Characters (or places, things, even situations) consist of two sets of traits--one associated with determining who has narration rights, as in the Pool or the determination/Destiny mechanic you describe, the other being a group of facts about the character (or whatever).

Once narration is determined, those involved may play, say, one (maybe more? we want to keep this simple) fact card in order to shape the subsequent description.  This can be a secret, as we are discussing here, or it can be something known to everyone--for instance, it could be "I am one of the world's greatest swordsmen, and I never lose a fight to a lesser opponent" or "Only those with a heart of stone would harm me."  

Likewise, cards which read "Only the true of heart may triumph against the Dark Lord", "A deadly river of lava runs through the center of the cave", ""Those who enter the forest are lead astray", and so on.  Facts should insist on a result, and stipulate a situation or condition (perhaps implicitly) which negates the effect.

In this sort of set up, whether or not the fact is a secret does not (for the most part) matter, though there might still be the need to roll things back in cases like the man dressed as a woman scenario laid out above.  Maybe in such cases it is appropriate to give the card to the narrator who can then choose to reveal the fact or not.
 
Thoughts?

Piers

[clehrich]

Just a thought, here.  Instead of indicating that certain things are GM property, you just don't fob such things off on the players.  So for example, why do you need to play NPCs that you don't care much about?  Push them off on the players.  Then any NPCs you do hold on to are clearly demarcated as not to be trifled with.

[Mike Holmes]

Chris,

Excellent. There would be PCs, GMCs, and NPCs. That is, characters owned by the players, characters owned by the GM, and characters owned by whomever wanted to narrate their outcomes. That's a very provacative idea.

Mike