Okay, so I'm running a game where I've give folks the right to write for the NPCs, and to frame and describe scenes their character would know nothing about.

Additionally, I've given them the right to leave things ambiguous, sort of Schroedingers plotting. I don't ask them whether they're taking their Gun-Sword when they walk out the door, I just ask when it becomes relevant to the story (like going through a metal detector or leaping into combat).

And I've suddenly hit this strange synergy of the two that I'm not at all sure I like. So I'd like some advice.

I've got a tremendously creative player who is creating a spy story around his character, where he influences things from the shadows. So he'll go and pluck a flower from somewhere, and then later it will become clear why that's important, because the flower shows up as planted evidence to point another character to a false (but useful) conclusion. It's cool stuff. Not the way I thought ambiguity was going to be used, but very compelling.

Then he stopped telling anybody what he's doing. He'll just write things like "Dante ducks down the alley. Two shadowy figures emerge, and it is possible that money changes hands." And I'm sitting here thinking "shadowy figures? who are these guys? This is so cool, but how can I contribute anything to it without knowing what it is?"

But now he's got the NPCs doing it too. He's writing posts where his NPC enemies respond in shadowy, undefined ways to the shadowy, undefined things that he's done. So now I have no idea what they're doing either. And that's crossed out of my comfort zone.

I feel like I'm being shut out of actually participating in the story he's crafting. Not that it's not a cool story, I'm just not sure it's cooperative any more.

So I turn to the Forge List. Am I still kicking at the traces of my desire for UberControl? How do I contribute to a characters story when I can no longer describe situations or play NPCs?

I say contact him directly about the issue. Explain why this goes past your comfort zone, and admit the possibility that you may be over-controlling things but would like him to back up a tad. Give the flower example as a good thing, and ask him if he could do a little more of that.

I don't think you're being particularly over-controlling, since it sounds like it's primarily one player who's a little beyond the guard-rails. But you don't need to rein him sharply; as you say, he's doing good stuff, but going a tad far. Just explain to him more or less what you just explained to us. If you keep the tone very positive and excited, I imagine he's going to want others participating in his coolness and rein himself in.

Unless I'm grossly missing something here, this is the kind of problem I wish I had a lot more of!

How do the other Players feel about this?
Do they feel left out too?

The Players and the GM constitute the audience for the game.

Some styles of RP-ing demand separation, but I view things more from the TV show /movie viewpoint... whats going on with the villains and the other movers and shakers is a big part of what makes things important. Knowing what the vampires are up to in a Buffy episode doesn't ruin it, it makes it more interesting as it dovetails to a climax.

Your player may be rehashing old behaviour styles (keeping secrets), not realizing that much of the fun of the audience is seeing how the tensions build... the shadowy figures being led astray... or catching on to the scenet of the character and moving ever closer.

Audience interest means there won't be as many book reading, videogame playing, sleeping, people at games... they want to see whats going to happen next.

There's also a bit of GM infringment by the player having NPCs act secretly... now using that NPC as GM can be problematic because you can change his concept with a offhand action, unknowingly, possibly leading to player unhappiness.

I have some specific technical advice. This assumes that your social contract is all fine and dandy. So don't do this if it will cause problems, without sounding your players out first.

Basically, what your describing, is how I play all the time. The most important thing about this play style is that if it hasn't happened yet, *it isn't real.*

So, when your player posts interesting things about shadowy NPCs, that's all good. But any background story stuff or motivations he has in mind isn't official until he makes it so via actual play. As long as everyone understands this, anyone can do anything without stepping on any plot toes.

If he states that two shadowy figures come out and money may change hands, that's cool. That's what happened. Then if you state that one of the shadowy figures throws off his hood and blows the other figure away with an ithaca riot gun while screaming about his girlfriend, that's cool too.

So, the basic layer is that everyone can do anything; whoever gets to it first is official.

Of course, you can all kinds of layers to this at the SC level. A lot of times if I have something specific in mind, I'll ask my players to simply not do something. Or I'll establish specific meta-game info outside the narrative flow. (That shadowy figure? That's Jane's former lover.)

Bob McNamee wrote: How do the other Players feel about this?
Do they feel left out too?

Paganini wrote: So, when your player posts interesting things about shadowy NPCs, that's all good. But any background story stuff or motivations he has in mind isn't official until he makes it so via actual play. As long as everyone understands this, anyone can do anything without stepping on any plot toes.

Nathan does that style real well!

You might be surprised at how good an arc could be. This depends on all the players actually noticing the foreshadowing. Which was what I was haltingly mentioning.

The indie-netgaming folks are fairly notorious for remembering old comments and subtly bringing them into play down the line, or making several unrelated actons have new meaning based on a revelation of some sort. It helps that many of them are GM's without a group, but it works with any empowered attentinve player.

Letting go of GM control is nearly a requirement of some of the games the indie-netgamers have playtested. We've gotten used to doing that, so its fairly comfortable.

Games like the Pool, where a Players Monologue of Victory can radically impact the game.

We've seen so many cool things come from trusting all the players (GM included) that we aren't bothered by the letting go... (not something I would have been comfortable with back in the old days).

TonyLB - What if you throw your player the ball? Ask him what involvement he's expecting from you, maybe state an example, tell him you're unsure of his reaction if you were to take over any of his 'shadowy figures' and play. Who knows, he might believe that he's strewing invitations for GM involvement out like confetti and wonder why nothing ever comes of it.

Thanks, Bob!! :)

TonyLB wrote:
This sounds like it would really, really require the GM to be able to let go of their unconscious desire for control. Which is probably a good thing.

In your experience, how does the expectation that their foreshadowing may or may not be capitalized on (or explicitly ruined) by other players change their style?

I should add that, while the play techniques I described above work great for GM and player collaboration, they might totally crash and burn if you just start applying them all at once without talking to your group.

It's entirely possible that your guy is the player equivalent of an illusionist GM. He's got a preplanned story in mind to which he is applying every ounce of his effectiveness (fairly considerable since your group is playing with lots of director stance) to cause it to come to pass.

In this case, all the things other people have said about communication in this thread are very important. :)

Paganini wrote: I should add that, while the play techniques I described above work great for GM and player collaboration, they might totally crash and burn if you just start applying them all at once without talking to your group.

As is typical of "Actual Play" issues, events have progressed over time. I did comment to the player that the amount of shadowy NPC actions he was specifying was passing my comfort zone.

His response was interesting... first he assumed that I was asking for him to tell me what he had in mind, which is a perfectly plausible assumption. Second, he admitted that he could no longer remember what the secret actions he declared a few days earlier were supposed to have been, though he had thought them out carefully at the time.

At this point I'm bemused. This has been a very unexpected consequence of a loose and adaptive play-style. I don't think it's caused any major problems (unless I managed to offend the player and he's hiding it well), but it does leave me with a tremendous respect for how much the style I'm moving into is other than what I have played before. Some days I'm proud and some days I'm frightened, and mostly I'm both at the same time.

Mike, in retrospect, that really wasn't very much your fault at all. At the time I was still trying to comprehend the whole narrativism / stance thing and was totally confused about stance in framing a conflict, and stance in narrating the resolution of said conflict. :)

But, it is an incredibly slippery deal, even at the best of times. I really like it when a game specifically talks about who can do what. Makes things so much easier.

Im very interested in where this will go in your game-it raises the question of just how much the player had planned within the ambiguities he presented. The fact that he seems to have forgotten much of his intentions implies a certain ambiguity for him as well as everyone else.
Have other players (or you as GM) tried to 'take over' any of the ambiguities he created, for example: adding definition to a shadowy figure, perhaps a revelation of they are? Or has this been left completely to the player who introduced them?
I would have thought that generating such ambiguities would be an excellent way to generate interesting creative player interactions over 'plot' and character so long as nobody 'owns' them. If an ambiguity is left open for anyone to unravel it seems much more interesting and dynamic than leaving it up the player concerned, and your own worries about the number of cascading ambiguities would surely become less?
Or have I missed the point here?

Peter, I'm interested too. I have no idea how much the player was deliberately presenting ambiguity in order to fish for input, and how much he was doing it for stylistic reasons. It's a question worth asking him.

I think that what I'm largely missing is a clear notion in the Social Contract of when players should feel free to interfere with the actions of other players. I thought far enough ahead to make it clear that the GMs actions were always up for revision and hijacking, but I didn't know (at the time) to ask what the rules should be about player actions.