This is spun off from a post Ron made in the (remarkably interesting) Actual Play thread A demoralising day which highlights a current dilemma I've been having:

How do you allow for the GM to maintain secrets in a game which permits player narration?

an example:

The PCs square off against a main villain in what is intended to be a climactic fight scene. The PCs have heard that this villain possesses some strange powers, but they haven't learned details. Now, the system supports the players narrating the scene, but the players don't know the capabilities of the NPC. How could you resolve this?

some options:

1) The players make up the powers.

2) The GM tells the players what the powers are.

3) The GM reserves some minor narration (or editing) rights, perhaps interjecting NPC capabilities as they become relevant.

Now, (3) might be - in some sense - the most satisfying, but it also seems like it would be the trickiest to implement in a way that didn't seem artificial.

Are there other options?

Stuart

. . . Since I really haven't played in any storyteller systems. But, hey, lack of knowledge have never been reason not to post! Right? ;)

szilard wrote: How do you allow for the GM to maintain secrets in a game which permits player narration?

The PCs square off against a main villain in what is intended to be a climactic fight scene. The PCs have heard that this villain possesses some strange powers, but they haven't learned details. Now, the system supports the players narrating the scene, but the players don't know the capabilities of the NPC. How could you resolve this?

some options:

1) The players make up the powers.

2) The GM tells the players what the powers are.

3) The GM reserves some minor narration (or editing) rights, perhaps interjecting NPC capabilities as they become relevant.

Now, (3) might be - in some sense - the most satisfying, but it also seems like it would be the trickiest to implement in a way that didn't seem artificial.

Are there other options?

StuartHow do you allow for the GM to maintain secrets in a game which permits player narration?

Kester,

That's not exactly what I was talking about. I'm trying to focus upon player narration task or conflict resolution. Sorry if I wasn't clear there.


Stuart

szilard wrote: How do you allow for the GM to maintain secrets in a game which permits player narration?

One of my games awards narration to whomever wins a check. The limits on that clearly state that while you're free to narrate whatever happens to the other character as a result of your action, you cannot narrate the other character's actions.

For example, you're fighting against an evil villain (played by the GM). You don't know what he can do. When you check, you win narration, so you narrate that you go over, grab the villain by the neck, and slam him a couple of times into the wall.

You may not say, "I slam him into the wall, and he starts screaming." If the villain is going to scream, that's for his player to decide.

In most cases, both parties will declare their actions before they challenge for narration. So the hero says, "I will run in and grab his neck," while the villain says, "I will fire bolts of liquid Deth at him," and if the hero wins, he can narrate dodging bolts of liquid Deth, or even getting hit by them. He cannot narrate the villain ceasing his bolts of liquid Deth, but he may narrate getting hit by them as he lifts the villain from the ground.

I'm still ironing that all out, but that's how I did it. It may put too many limits on the narration for some people's tastes.

I think your 3 options are all perfectly valid possibilities.

Universalis relies completely on option 1. This works well from the perspective of maintaining suspense. So if you're primary goal of the secret is to maintain that feeling that there's something more going on than we know about and it could come out and change things at any moment...this works well.

Most games that cede some narration power to the players use option two, because most such games reserve the right to GM veto. Adventure! uses this method for its Dramatic Editing rules.

Donjon uses option 3. Whoever wins the roll gets to narrate 1 Fact for every success that is absolutely carved in granite. The other party gets to narrate everything else. So if the player wins and uses their facts to narrate certain things, it is easy for the GM to come in and incorporate his "secrets" into the situation. If the GM wins he incorporates his "secrets" as part of his initial Facts. There is the possibiltiy of the player's using their Facts in a way that thwarts the secret, but that is unique to the way Donjon divies up the power and not I think required of all such possible systems.

An easy way would be for the GM to have all of the "Secrets" in the game written up on little 3x5 cards. When a player wins the right to narrate they are given an appropriate card which outlines items that are "Fact" and need to be incorporated.

Jay Turner wrote:
For example, you're fighting against an evil villain (played by the GM). You don't know what he can do. When you check, you win narration, so you narrate that you go over, grab the villain by the neck, and slam him a couple of times into the wall.

You may not say, "I slam him into the wall, and he starts screaming." If the villain is going to scream, that's for his player to decide.

Vincent's mini-rant #2: I don't think it's fair to call them "GM secrets." The GM can't actually know secret things, since group assent is what makes things true in the game.

Some play styles privilege the GM's plans to the point where if the GM planned it, the players have no social contract-sanctioned grounds to withhold their assent. Calling the GM's plans "secrets" comes from that style of play and is dangerously misleading when applied to any other. Dangerously misleading, I say! Think of the children!

So can we call them "GM plans" instead? That might point to solutions, or it might not, but at least it'll be clear what we're talking about.

Edited by me, Stuart wrote: How do you allow for the GM to maintain plans in a game which permits player narration?

Greetings szliard,

szilard wrote: That's not exactly what I was talking about. I'm trying to focus upon player narration task or conflict resolution. Sorry if I wasn't clear there.


Stuart

Vincent,

"Plans" might work, although "secrets" incorporates the possibility of both individual facts and patterns. "Plans" seems to lean more toward the patterns... but I'm not sure if this makes a big difference.

Yeah, I've read the Dragons and Jasmine thread. That was, I think, one of the things that got me thinking about this. Perhaps my concern might be better expressed as a concern about what happens when the GM's flexibility in planning gets overstretched to the point that - in order for the GM to continue having fun - the GM really needs to be inflexible on a point or two. Can such inflexibility be reconciled with giving players narrative rights?

Stuart

Stuart wrote: Perhaps my concern might be better expressed as a concern about what happens when the GM's flexibility in planning gets overstretched to the point that - in order for the GM to continue having fun - the GM really needs to be inflexible on a point or two. Can such inflexibility be reconciled with giving players narrative rights?

Hi Stuart,

I really need to get a better understanding of what you mean by "narrate."

Let's say we're playing old-school RuneQuest, perhaps of the Avalon Hill vintage. My character's action (already announced = attack the troll) "goes" on Strike Rank 7. It's Strike Rank 7, so I roll, and the troll rolls defensively. The outcome is absolutely certain based on the dice: I hit or miss. Turns out I hit - where does it land? Roll that d20 and find out, let's say it's the troll's pun'kin head. How much damage? Roll my (umm...) d8 + 1 + d6 for my weapon and STR bonus, and say I get a whopping 13. 13 to the head! The troll only has 1 point of armor there, so takes 12, and 12 to the head is way over his (um) 8 hits there. My sword goes "a-thunk" slicing right into his brain.

Either I or the GM could narrate (provide verbally) the final sentence in that paragraph. It makes absolutely no difference which of us does it, right?

Therefore, you must be talking about something else besides raw narration, when you use that word. What is it?

Best,
Ron

Can the GM have things that are unknown to the player that are set in stone that the player can change with his narration?

OK, obvioulsy not. Either they are set, or they are not. Somebody has to have the authority to say what's what, and (with the exception of the theoretical post-modern non-RPG where everyone has their own reality) that authority has to be final.

Now, are there ways to bend around this? Yes, lots. Are you interested in near hits, or are you insisting that what you want is a way to solve an insoluble problem. Because we can help you with the first, but not the second.

Mike

Ron,

I'm coming from this with an eye to how narration works in Destined, my game-in-development. I suppose that monologues of victory in the Pool are rather similar to what I'm going for here. Perhaps Donjon or InSpectres would be good to throw in as comparisons, though I think my concerns can't really surface in InSpectres, at least.

The way narration works in Destined is that players resolve situations via either Determination or Destiny, and it is typically their choice as to which to use. If they use the former, they narrate the outcome of the die roll. If the use the latter, the GM narrates the outcome. There's a bit more to it than that (particularly in terms of interpreting the die roll), but it isn't really relevant. What the die result measures (in a Determination roll, at least) is the degree of character satisfaction with the outcome of the situation. The player is supposed to narrate how that outcome is achieved.

Does that clear up what I'm concerned with?

Stuart

Mike Holmes wrote:
Now, are there ways to bend around this? Yes, lots. Are you interested in near hits, or are you insisting that what you want is a way to solve an insoluble problem. Because we can help you with the first, but not the second.

szilard wrote:
Hmmm...

Okay, but what if the villain has some strange magical effect that, say, makes him intangible? How would you handle it when the PC's narrated actions couldn't happen?

Stuart,

"Least costly" in terms of what? Player conceeding power, or GM conceeding power? Or both? Or something else?

Mike

Mike,

I knew you were going to ask that...

I refrained from specifying because, I suppose, minimizing cost in one area is going to increase the cost elsewhere. To a point, this is unavoidable. My goals here, though, are (in no particular order):

*Provide GM control over some facts
*Empower players with rights to narrate their PCs actions
*Minimize, where possible, obstructions to the flow of play
*Ensure that any mechanism utilized doesn't impair any party's fun

So, I guess, "both" and "something else."


Stuart

szilard wrote:
*Provide GM control over some facts
*Empower players with rights to narrate their PCs actions
*Minimize, where possible, obstructions to the flow of play
*Ensure that any mechanism utilized doesn't impair any party's fun

Stu, can we back up on step.

What about the more traditional Dramatic Editing rules of Adventure! aren't meeting your needs. Right now that seems like the ideal solution for you, but if its not, can you explain why?

By this I mean a very basic: Step 1) Here is the basic boundaries of the scope that the players are allowed to narrate, Step 2) Subject to the GM's approval / veto / editing.

That way the GM can step in at the point where a secret is being violated and tweak things as necessary.

Mike Holmes wrote:

szilard wrote:
*Provide GM control over some facts
*Empower players with rights to narrate their PCs actions
*Minimize, where possible, obstructions to the flow of play
*Ensure that any mechanism utilized doesn't impair any party's fun

The last one isn't an issue, really. There are games that allow no player narration. Are they less fun because the player's "right" to narrate has been infringed upon? No split is inherently more or less fun than another. It's the implementation of the split.

So, when you say, "some facts" what does that mean? Are these concrete details about the world? Or just ideas for where the plot is going in general? How often would these come up (I was going to ask what percentage of facts were "hard" but that's an absurd question)? That is, how many times a session is a player going to bump up on one of these facts? Once? Ten times?

If the answer is similarly vague (like anything the GM chooses, whenever he chooses it), then you really are trying to have it both ways.

The standard way around this is to just state that there are areas of inviolability. This might break the suspense, but in another way it might enhance it. So you might say, "Once you find Dr. Darkness, you can't narrate anything about his powers until I reveal them."

This leaves it the GMs responsibility to make his limits clear enough that mistakes do not occur. That way, he never has to use his implied veto.

Is that illuminating at all?

There was a thread by Pale Fire that went over all this previously that I can't find. Exact same question.

The problem, Ralph is that his system won't allow for it. It's like The Pool in that the player can choose to try for Narration at any time. No metagame points to limit them.

Stuart, it limits are a problem, play Freeform. Don't want to do that? Then you have to agree that limits are, counterintuitively, empowering. So don't worry. Players agree to the limits of these games because they believe that the limits make for a better game. So if they're playing, you've already won that basic battle. You only have to worry about honing the specifics.

How about giving the GM some metagame currency that he can use to take away player narration when he's afraid that they'll use it to disrupt a secret? Say four points a session or somesuch. Then when he spends the players understand that they're being limited in order to preserve some of the GM's well-crafted ideas. Call 'em Villain Points.

What about that?

Mike

Mike Holmes wrote:
How about giving the GM some metagame currency that he can use to take away player narration when he's afraid that they'll use it to disrupt a secret? Say four points a session or somesuch. Then when he spends the players understand that they're being limited in order to preserve some of the GM's well-crafted ideas. Call 'em Villain Points.

What about that?

Mike

Mike Holmes wrote: The problem, Ralph is that his system won't allow for it. It's like The Pool in that the player can choose to try for Narration at any time. No metagame points to limit them.

Hi all,

I'm not sure if this is going to cut through this knot, but I feel the following needs to be said:

Narration is not power.

Note that as long as the players only create narration out of the "reality" already established, there is no problem. Note that in Ron's experience with the Pool, player's narrate color, but don't go around creating "world-breaking" facts willy nilly.

I know this is a big hobby concern. It's why Director stance sends tremors down the spine of some GMs and the idea of passing around Narration seems radical to the point of inanity.... but the truth is, most folks don't really want to break the world or the story. And those that do you can make an explicit contract with ("No breaking the reality of what has come before; build only on what has come before.")

Director stance, Author stance, Actor stance and the power to narrate only change the manner in which the player interacts with the reality of a fictional moment. The reality is relatively stable.

My point: it's really, really not a big deal. It. Just. Isn't. (If you're terrified of it, it is; but in practice, it seems not to be.)

If the players start recreating reality during narration, they're not narrating, they're... Well, let's call it Playwrighting. Playwrighting is Power.

Playwrighting in is bad in a scene. It's when the movie stops cold as we get a monologue about how the strange new ways of a future earth came to be.

It's good *outside* of a scene. It's all the stuff the writer knows to be true and uses when writing. It's also good in OOC discussions during and RPG. ("I know. He's my father!" All at the table nod in agreement, and the scene continues.)

****

I just played my first game of Universalis last week. (Thanks for the great game guys! I can't wait to play again!) I saw plenty of playwrighting occurring -- on the index cards, when people paid coins for them outside of the scene. But when I tried to shoehorn some exposition into a scene -- I mean, stop a scene cold so new fact could be introduced to clarify the world's reality, the story stopped cold.

So, too here. If the players narrate their actions without trying to introduce new reality, all is well.

*****

I suspect that this ties into hyphz information/revelation concerns. A lot of adventure design hinges on the players getting "exposition" from an NPC one way or another. But exposition is bad. It stops the story. The story is the character taking action.

If a character beats the snot out of an NPC to get information (or lifts him by the neck and chokes him, his legs dangling) the character makes a choice on how to behave. That's what matters. If his victim doesn't spill the beans is the game over? No. He goes on to beat up the next person he *thinks* can help him. Getting the information isn't the key. *How* the character gets the information is.

As the story progresses there should be consequences to his beating the snot out of everybody. He might change his way in response to these consequences, or get gunned down by the cops. I don't care. But he's not waiting for the right bit of exposition. He's revealing himself by moving forward no matter what. But none of these choices effect the nature of the game world's reality.

****

So anyway. Playwrighting vs. Narration. That's the important distinction I'm making. I think there's something useful there.

Christopher

Valamir wrote:

The key is not metagame points. The key is "subject to GM approval".

I've yet to see any example at which this simple rule wouldn't completely solve the problem. Is it simply a desire to avoid this at all costs?

I mean is the issue really not "how to manage secrets in the face of players ability to narrate"

but rather "how to manage secrets in the face of completely 100% totally limitless, can say anything they want without boundaries ability to narrate?"

If the latter, I'd come down on the side of...impossible.
If the former, I'm stuck at "what's wrong with GM veto?"

Chris, it can even happen with color. And completely accidentally.

Let's say the secret is "Tim is a woman".

Bob's narrates his character Grimdahl in a brawl with Tim, and says, "In the fight, Grimdahl tears off Tim's shirt revealing Tim's hairy chest."

Now, either the GM has to veto, or he has to allow it to stand somehow (meaning either Tim's a very unusual woman, or Tim's a guy; secret blown).

The "problem" with GM veto is that it's ugly. Has to happen after the narration.

"Um, sorry, nope, Tim's got boobs."

These are far from insurmountable. But I can see how Stuart might want to see if there's something better.

Seems to me that if the secrets are as far and few between, that the GM should just be able to demark "do not trample" areas.

That said, from another perspective, Stuart, I can totally agree with the othe guys here that you're chasing shadows. That is, it's just not likely to be a problem so often that Veto isn't a good option. Or whatever mewthod. I think you just have to decide what's least objectionable, and get on with it.

Mike

Lets say the magical contingency is an amulet that permits the Wizard to teleport out of danger.

Player: The wizard fires off a bolt of eldritch energy which hits the hero's sword melting it to slag. He hurls the superheated stump of metal at his foe who get's singed as it passes through his hair. Taking advantage of the distraction the hero leaps forward and throttles the wizard who falls into unconciousness at his feet.

<interruption>

GM: Just as the wizard's vision starts to fade he reaches up and clutches a medalion on a chain around his neck. The hero finds his hand grasping nothing. The Wizard is gone.


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"

That sound doable?

The PC, a wily swordsman, is up against his opponent, a powerful (and paranoid) wizard. Now, the GM wants the wizard to have some secret magical effects prepared for emergencies (paranoid, remember?). The player gets narration. The player, of course, doesn't know about these magical contingencies, so they might never appear in the combat if the player keeps narration throughout it. The GM could interject and add things, but there's nothing really to veto.

How about this? Draw really explicit lines of 'ownership.' Whenever a narrative, the gamemaster's or a player's, goes to cross one of these lines, it comes up short.

'...Grimdahl pulls at Tim's shirt hard enough to rip it,' says the player.

'Tim's shirt tears revealing a surprisingly feminine torso,' responds the gamemaster.


'...He hurls the superheated stump of metal at his foe's hair. Taking advantage of the distraction the hero leaps forward to throttle the wizard.'

'Having ducked the singeing slag, the wizard finds his air supply cut off; the instant before losing consciousness he reveals a medalion on a chain around his neck. The hero finds his hand grasping nothing. The Wizard is gone.'

Each is sovereign over their domain. It takes a while getting used to saying, "I kick at his head" instead of "I kick his teeth in." I've found the task-resolution side of things very important for 'forcing the hand' of the receiver. (As in "Hmm, five points huh? Well, I'll take three as damage and two as a wound that will create a vicious scar, ruining my appearance and lighting a vendetta. 'I get you for that Locksley!'")

Is that a potential solution?

Fang Langford

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

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').

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

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:

Valamir wrote:
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"

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.

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