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View Full Version : What do you think of characters not knowing each other at the beginning of the game



Red Bear
2018-06-29, 01:38 PM
or having a lot of secrets in the background that the other characters/players don't know about? I have a player who likes to do these two things a lot but I think the game is much better when all the character and players are on the same page, knowing each other with no secrets, and even similar alignment and trust each other. What do you think?

JoeJ
2018-06-29, 02:07 PM
I think it's just fine if the players want that. In some kinds of games it's quite appropriate. For example, the PCs might be survivors of a shipwreck or a plane crash marooned somewhere. It's also a fun way to start a superhero game, because of the established comic book trope of heroes fighting each other when they first meet. OTOH, for the stereotypical fantasy or SF adventuring party, I think it's more plausible if the PCs know each other.

The one thing that is always a bad idea IMO is for one player (not character, player) and the GM to conspire together to keep secrets from the other players. If you want to keep secrets from some of the characters, tell those players what you want to do and ask them if they're willing to play their characters not knowing.

CharonsHelper
2018-06-29, 02:15 PM
The one thing that is always a bad idea IMO is for one player (not character, player) and the GM to conspire together to keep secrets from the other players. If you want to keep secrets from some of the characters, tell those players what you want to do and ask them if they're willing to play their characters not knowing.

I would say that that's true most of the time.

But for example, I once ran a short who-dunnint campaign where it turned out that one of the PCs had done it. I'd run a short session for him beforehand where he murdered someone (who kinda deserved it). It was interesting because the evidence made it obvious, but he was able to pass it off as a frame job combined with the other players KNOWING that he couldn't have done it.

Eventually they got too close and he murdered the other PCs, ending the 3 session campaign. (Not the climax I was hoping for since 2/4 of the other players were out that day.)

It would NOT have worked if the other players knew beforehand.


And it depends upon the game system. Some RPGs are designed to have PvP elements.

Haldir
2018-06-29, 02:57 PM
Demanding 100% information from other players is essentially telling them how to roleplay, which is bad. Suggesting that the DM can't use secret information in a players backstory to create interesting twists is limiting, which is also bad.
{Scrubbed}

icefractal
2018-06-29, 03:02 PM
It can be interesting, but it's not usually my preference, because it often brings the personalities of the PCs into conflict with the metagame reality of the group existing.

Not all PCs would want to team up with all other PCs. Even of those, some of them would take quite a while to fully trust the others. Yes, you can decide to react differently, but past a certain point you may as well have just played a very different character from the start.

With the PCs already having pre-existing relationships, that issue goes away. You can play a character who wouldn't just cheerfully team up with the first group he met in a tavern, and that's fine because he's had plenty of time to build trust, offscreen.

If you're playing a character who's willing to join anything that looks interesting, with anyone who feels like coming along for the ride, then this a moot issue, but sometimes I like to play other things.

Or for that matter, you can make the process of meeting up and becoming a team the focus of the game, but again, that's not what I want to do every campaign.

JoeJ
2018-06-29, 03:23 PM
Demanding 100% information from other players is essentially telling them how to roleplay, which is bad.

No, it's absolutely not telling somebody how to roleplay their character.

Jay R
2018-06-29, 07:56 PM
or having a lot of secrets in the background that the other characters/players don't know about? I have a player who likes to do these two things a lot but I think the game is much better when all the character and players are on the same page, knowing each other with no secrets, and even similar alignment and trust each other. What do you think?

You have hit on a crucial point.

Being on the same page and trusting each other has no particular inherent connection with having secrets or not kn owing each other at the start of the game.

If somebody is hiding his background to not be on the same page and not be trustworthy, then that's a problem. But the problem doesn't come from the secrets. The secrets came from not being on the same page and not being trustworthy.

My character Gustav is the only northerner in the party. When he first joined them, he claimed that his mission was, "to protect you from the Great Northern Forest. Or to protect the forest from you. I don't know which yet." He didn't claim to trust the party until they had saved each other a few times. I had a great time playing out that learning process -- and so did they.

And that last is the crucial point. A player who is playing his character in ways that the other players won't enjoy is a problem. The problem isn't the specific method used to not be fun for others. The problem is that the player doesn't want to make the game more fun for the other players. With this kind of player, banning a hidden background is merely trying to fix the symptoms, and it won't work. He will find some other way to not make fun for the others.

But somebody who wants to make the game fun for everybody can bring in fun with a hidden background.

Delta
2018-06-29, 08:06 PM
The one thing that is always a bad idea IMO is for one player (not character, player) and the GM to conspire together to keep secrets from the other players. If you want to keep secrets from some of the characters, tell those players what you want to do and ask them if they're willing to play their characters not knowing.

Definitely not always a bad idea, I've had that work out quite well sometimes (and less well other times)

One time in a Shadowrun campaign, one of the PCs was secretly an undercover cop, that went on for months and it ended up being great fun for everyone involved, if everyone had known before, I don't think that would've been any fun for anyone and just a bother.

Darth Ultron
2018-06-29, 08:23 PM
Well, just having the players not know each other is not so bad. Really all it does is waste game time. Far too many players waste way too much time with playing out the ''I don't know you" pointless stuff. And, the jerks that will just use it to ruin the game, of course.

It can lead to each player just doing whatever they want and not at all acting in a group. And you can easily waste dozens of game sessions with the players ''not knowing each other'' and ''not playing the game''.


In a general sense, keeping secrets is fine. Most PCs will have a secret, or at least an unknown about them. The big thing is more what the secret is. A good player might have any type of secret, even just a pure role playing one. The problem secrets come from when the player wants some type of jerk advantage over the other players. A classic example is the dumb Aragon type secret: My PC is super duper special as he is the king of the world...but he just acts like a five year old jerk ranger..hehe..because he is so cool.

A lot of problem secrets are where the jerk player wants and over powered character, and wants to keep that secret from the other PLAYERS, will the willing help of the DM.

But mostly players keeping secrets from the other players is just pointless. Like player A takes like five hours and lies and hides the fact that their character can change shape. Then, in hour six, the character changes shape to escape a trap and tells the other players the ''not big secret'', and the other players just shrug ''whatever''.

Tanarii
2018-06-29, 09:10 PM
Sounds pretty normal to me. For that matter, usually those secrets are secret from the player themselves. They mostly flesh out the background and personality as the game plays out.

OTOH secrets like "my character is actually the Ninja / Assassin class, not just another Rogue" aren't usual or particularly beneficial.

WindStruck
2018-06-29, 09:45 PM
It can be an excellent opportunity for roleplay.

But.. yeah, we all know who the PCs are, and that they're going to be working together? Not stabbing each other in the backs? Probably...

Anymage
2018-06-29, 10:23 PM
Being a "doesn't play well with others" type is a common stage of gamer evolution, where they rebel against the idea of being a tactically and mechanically optimized playing piece by going in the opposite direction. (Sometimes it's also a thing douchebags do to justify their behavior, but if you try to stop one avenue for that douchebags will just find another.) I find that giving character hooks beyond being a typical adventurer helps these people get a better handle on what they want.

Personally speaking, I like the PCs to have ties to the world, if for no other reason than that a sense of ownership is a really good motivator. Which here gets to a central issue. Secrets are fine, if they can be justified. The PCs should have a reason to band together beyond the simple metagame knowledge that they're all PCs. Both before and during play. If your secret, your backstory, or even your cooly disaffected archetype preclude that, to back to the drawing board.

Haldir
2018-06-29, 11:08 PM
No, it's absolutely not telling somebody how to roleplay their character.

In what goofy universe is "I need to know everything about your character, even the things that they keep secret" not telling them how to play their character?

CharonsHelper
2018-06-29, 11:56 PM
In what goofy universe is "I need to know everything about your character, even the things that they keep secret" not telling them how to play their character?

The same world where telling someone your RL secrets isn't giving up your free will?

JoeJ
2018-06-29, 11:59 PM
In what goofy universe is "I need to know everything about your character, even the things that they keep secret" not telling them how to play their character?

The real universe, obviously. There's nothing in that at all about how you should play your character.

Kelb_Panthera
2018-06-30, 12:15 AM
It can go either way depending on the details of how it's handled. I'm not against it in principle. If it's handled well, it can really enrich a game. If it's handled poorly it can destroy one. That's just all there is to it really.

Tanarii
2018-06-30, 12:42 AM
Players don't usually pay that much attention to each other's backgrounds that haven't come out in play. There isn't that much difference between a secret and something that hasn't actively come up in play.

What matters is when the 'secret' is something explicitly known to the player or player and GM that is going to eventually have a negative impact on the other players / party as a whole.

Which is why I used the AD&D Assassin and Ninja classes as examples. Players were explicitly supposed to keep their class secret, especially for the ninja. And those classes were often built in trouble to the party.

Edit: otoh they were designed in an era of gygaxian RPG clubs with lots of players, and tourneys. And of course PC-classed henchmen. It was a slightly different context from the common small group home game.

Hawkstar
2018-06-30, 01:04 AM
I have two vaguely relevant stories here. I once really badly bungled a game by making a character that "Didn't play well with others", because I tried making a Gnoll character, and playing it along the guidelines established by the culture established for Non-Evil Gnolls in Races of the Wild - The party had a chance meeting in a cave to shelter from a storm. I intended to play the gnoll as standoff-ish and defiant of the party - Making several mistakes I now recognize as "Terrible player" behavior - notably, taking all of the treasure from a chest, after (deliberately) tanking the trap attached to it. I'd intended to hand the treasure back out over the course of the RP, but I was also (Foolishly) in the mindset of not telling players more than I felt they needed to know about my character (So, I never outright told them "She's standoffish at the start, but I intend for her to warm up to them as she spends time around them, and give out the treasure."

Of course, it didn't help my plans that one of the players was trying too hard to be a 'team player' and eager to facilitate team-building, and making my gnoll extremely uncomfortable in the process (To the point that the campaign blew up when I had her react violently to him in an attempt to get him to 'back off'. No lethal intent - but a grapple escalated to him casting spells and everything went downhill from there)



The other idea revolving player secrets... Okay, so, actually, I was just going to make a "Mr. Roboto" reference.

MrSandman
2018-06-30, 01:56 AM
My personal preference (note: personal preference, neither the one right way to do it nor the absolute truth) is for characters to have a reason to stick together, whether they know one another beforehand or not. By this I mean that there should be a believable reason for them to want to work together to start with and a reason to continue to work together. It really annoys me when a character adds nothing to the group, actively works to hinder them from their goal, and the only reason it doesn't get dumped on the first village they find is the PC label on his clothing.

Regarding keeping secrets, I think it can be done well or poorly. To do it well, normally requires that the other players be on board with others keeping secrets, so they at least should know that someone may be keeping a secret. I've got a story about that, but no time to write it, I'll add it later.

Torack
2018-06-30, 06:42 AM
I honestly enjoy it a bit when there's a bit of both. Some of the characters know each other, like small clumps. Like in a four or five group party, two players know each other, and another three also know each other. I mean that way you get a bit of both worlds, where you have some distrust for the other PCs at first and get to build a relationship with them, while also having already having a strong bond with another PC.

Knaight
2018-06-30, 06:49 AM
Most of the time the whole "how did these characters meet and form a party" is the sort of thing that's really boring in play, and also one that can often stretch credulity. Having characters who all already know each other is an obvious solution to that, but it's not the only obvious solution. A shipwreck was already mentioned, but other possibilities include being hired by a common authority figure, being the only survivors of a raid, being abducted by aliens, and being pulled into a fantasy world and transformed into its magical knights. Obviously these all have genre restrictions, some more than others.

As for secrets, eh, whatever. I generally find it more fun for the players to all know the character secrets so they can deliberately make them interesting in game with their actions, but there's a case to be made for keeping secrets secret. It mostly comes down to how much you value immersion and how fragile your suspension of disbelief tends to be.

Delta
2018-06-30, 07:09 AM
I honestly enjoy it a bit when there's a bit of both. Some of the characters know each other, like small clumps. Like in a four or five group party, two players know each other, and another three also know each other. I mean that way you get a bit of both worlds, where you have some distrust for the other PCs at first and get to build a relationship with them, while also having already having a strong bond with another PC.

Yeah, this is an approach I like too.

Personally, as a GM, I ask everyone to have at least one "link" to the rest of the group. This can be as deep as "That other PC is my brother", or "Three of us went to the same school together", but at the same time, if someone wants to play the unknown guy, it can be rather remote links that one party doesn't even know about at first, like "I was once part of a mercenary group that fought for a bad guy, and I was there when we raided that other PC's home village", in the latter case, the other PC will most likely not even know that and probably find out during play (of course I would only do that if I was sure everyone involved could handle such a secret coming out later and the potential consequences)

Quertus
2018-06-30, 07:17 AM
What do I think of characters not knowing each other at the beginning of the game? It's the best! That way, the chatters can develop real attachments to one another over the course of the game, rather than begin play with artificial ones that feel, well, artificial.

Of course, replaying the character later, and actually knowing some of the members of your party is the best even moreso! In this scenario, you're starting play with actual developed connections to the other PCs.

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Having secrets that the other PCs don't know about? Um... I'd have to say, if that isn't the case, it really hurts verisimilitude. Who doesn't have secrets? :smallconfused: Ok, I kinda knew a guy who published all his passwords, including his bank account information, but, other than him, who doesn't have secrets?

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Having secrets that the other players don't know about? Yes, please. I don't want to read 100 pages of character background that my character doesn't know anything about - I want the joy of Exploration, of learning these things in character. Please don't take that away from me.

Also, I rarely game with/in groups composed solely of people who can keep player and character knowledge separate, so it really strains... everything... when they know anything that their characters don't.

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All the PCs having a reason to be together? Um, duh, if you don't have this, you're just asking for a gaming horror story.

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Ties to the world / setting / area? Yes, please. Please help my "not from around here" character to develop those by having an interesting world for him to interact with, a world that is worth caring about.

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Trusting each other because they have the same "alignment"? No thanks. :smallyuk:

Requiring an ideology echo chamber, and being unable to interact functionally with opposing points of view? No thanks. :smallyuk:

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I honestly enjoy it a bit when there's a bit of both. Some of the characters know each other, like small clumps. Like in a four or five group party, two players know each other, and another three also know each other. I mean that way you get a bit of both worlds, where you have some distrust for the other PCs at first and get to build a relationship with them, while also having already having a strong bond with another PC.

Done right, this can be really cool, and, as such, it's probably my favorite. But I've also seen it done wrong, and lead to cliques. So, word of warning, it isn't the perfect recipe for success by itself.

Tanarii
2018-06-30, 08:58 AM
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Trusting each other because they have the same "alignment"? No thanks. :smallyuk:

Requiring an ideology echo chamber, and being unable to interact functionally with opposing points of view? No thanks. :smallyuk:

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I dunno man, it's pretty realistic for folks to gravitate towards those. :smallamused:

Of course, for most "adventuring parties", they're something more akin a professional crew brought together for a contract job. Skill set and the ability to work together are likely to be far more relevant than ideological outlook.

But that isn't always the basis for a party.

Haldir
2018-06-30, 12:50 PM
The real universe, obviously. There's nothing in that at all about how you should play your character.

Telling you things about my character is a choice about how I want my character perceived, and how my character is perceived is an integral aspect of how my character is played. No matter how great you think you are at roleplaying and ignoring meta information, that information WILL bias in some way. If I choose not to tell others something about my character, that is my roleplay choice. Expecting or demanding otherwise absolutely infringes upon my roleplay choices.

JoeJ
2018-06-30, 01:01 PM
Telling you things about my character is a choice about how I want my character perceived, and how my character is perceived is an integral aspect of how my character is played. No matter how great you think you are at roleplaying and ignoring meta information, that information WILL bias in some way. If I choose not to tell others something about my character, that is my roleplay choice. Expecting or demanding otherwise absolutely infringes upon my roleplay choices.

You're confusing characters with players. Characters can keep secrets without the players doing so. If the table is okay with players keeping secrets, fine. But it's not your sole decision as to whether or not that's a part of the social contract.

Your statement, "No matter how great you think you are at roleplaying and ignoring meta information, that information WILL bias in some way," is very telling since it has nothing whatsoever with the way you play your character; it's a demand to control the way other players play their characters.

LordCdrMilitant
2018-06-30, 01:05 PM
I always start with the players knowing each other.

The first time I ever tried GM'ing, two halves of my party decided that, upon meeting each other, their characters weren't going to get along, so they basically formed rival parties until I forced them together.

Yora
2018-06-30, 01:14 PM
I am always completely in favor of all characters being created as an already existing and established party. Having them all meet in a bar with everyone knowing that they won't be leaving before they formed a party is both clunky and a waste of time. Having them start as a party also helps with avoiding smartass players who think they are super briliant by making an antisocial character who dislikes all the other PCs. It can work in fiction, but is just stupid in an RPG.

Haldir
2018-06-30, 01:31 PM
You're confusing characters with players. Characters can keep secrets without the players doing so. If the table is okay with players keeping secrets, fine. But it's not your sole decision as to whether or not that's a part of the social contract.

Your statement, "No matter how great you think you are at roleplaying and ignoring meta information, that information WILL bias in some way," is very telling since it has nothing whatsoever with the way you play your character; it's a demand to control the way other players play their characters.

So much fallacy. If you don't agree that players are responsible for creating the image of their characters, and that image is influenced by what other people know, I guess that's fine. You're wrong, but whatever. Gotta give you props for twisting "my characters image is my own to project" into "you're controlling my perceptions, therefore my character!" That is world class gaslighting.

Tanarii
2018-06-30, 01:35 PM
Meeting in a tavern is fine if they're all there for a reason that brings them together. Like needing to find a job and meeting a prospective employer / old man quest giver.

Especially if their job is "adventurer". Or if you prefer, mercenary-for-hire. Those kinds of characters would expect to work with a pick-up crew from time to time.

Of course, that doesn't preclude them from having worked together in the past.

In some campaigns this works best as the basis for adventuring parties forming. For example, west marches or wotc official play, in which "pick-up" parties are the norm, with the possibility of having worked together in previous adventures. For a single party game, it may not work as well.


Gotta give you props for twisting "my characters image is my own to project" into "you're controlling my perceptions, therefore my character!" From what I've seen so far, you're the one conflating those two things.

JoeJ
2018-06-30, 01:54 PM
So much fallacy. If you don't agree that players are responsible for creating the image of their characters, and that image is influenced by what other people know, I guess that's fine. You're wrong, but whatever. Gotta give you props for twisting "my characters image is my own to project" into "you're controlling my perceptions, therefore my character!" That is world class gaslighting.

You're still confusing what the other characters know with what the players know. As far as it affects your character, there's no difference between another player not knowing something and the player knowing but agreeing that their character doesn't know. The first situation is okay if and only if the players at the table are all in agreement that it's okay to keep secrets. That's not something one player gets to decide alone.

icefractal
2018-06-30, 02:13 PM
So much fallacy. If you don't agree that players are responsible for creating the image of their characters, and that image is influenced by what other people know, I guess that's fine.There's a difference between how you play your character and what kinds of characters are allowed, IMO. I don't think it's some outrageous demand to have a campaign where "No secret allegiances that cause you to backstab the party" is a char-gen rule, any more than it's ridiculous to say "You start at level 5, with standard gear; you can't just choose to be level 20 with a bunch of artifacts."

Because frankly, acting with the appropriate IC caution when there isn't any guarantee the rest of the party is really on your side eats up a lot of RL time! You can't just assume the info PCs discover gets distributed, you have to keep track of who said exactly what to whom. You can't just have one person handle identifying items, or keeping watch, or doing anything critical. The process of looking at different leads and deciding where to go next takes a lot longer, because everyone should be examining all the options themselves and can't trust that another PC who claims to have relevant knowledge is telling the truth. It's fun if you want espionage and investigation to be a major part of the campaign, but rather a time-waster otherwise.

Although sometimes what people seem to want - and I think this is what gives secretive characters a bad name - is "Everyone else thinks this is a normal party with an OOC assumption of cooperation, and takes no precautionary measures whatsoever. So when I spring my cunning betrayal, they're completely unprepared! Awesome!"
Which I'm not a fan of.

Hypersmith
2018-06-30, 05:09 PM
I think it can be done well, or crash and burn. In my experience, as long as there's a common goal that attracts the characters to stay together, strangers will quickly become companions become friends. But if you just slap down stuff in front of a couple guys in an inn, you run the risk of having a bunch of individuals traveling together. Soon as they hit the next city, it feels like the only thing keeping them together is OOC, which feels lame. Of course, it varies from group to group, but that's how it's usually felt for me.

Then again, I do tend to swing towards "There are no problem characters, only problem players." Of course, that isn't 100% true, but it applies for the most part. A good player and clearly set OOC terms will result in a tem that can mesh together with or without past, and often despite their differences, which is great.

Quertus
2018-06-30, 05:25 PM
I'm Oh so very confused. Why are people conflating "having secrets" with "betraying the party"?


I dunno man, it's pretty realistic for folks to gravitate towards those. :smallamused:

Are you saying that birds of a feather flock together? Because, if so, that rarely matches my experience, except on a highly superficial level.


You're confusing characters with players. Characters can keep secrets without the players doing so. If the table is okay with players keeping secrets, fine. But it's not your sole decision as to whether or not that's a part of the social contract.


You're still confusing what the other characters know with what the players know. As far as it affects your character, there's no difference between another player not knowing something and the player knowing but agreeing that their character doesn't know. The first situation is okay if and only if the players at the table are all in agreement that it's okay to keep secrets. That's not something one player gets to decide alone.

In most groups I've played with, one or more players had such a complete lack of role-playing skill that player knowledge == character knowledge. Even when playing with better roleplayers, OOC knowledge does taint the way that characters are played. Please don't taint my experience with unnecessary information!

Now, the notion that, absent a unified consensus otherwise, secrets are verboten is just plain wrong. Making that an unwritten assumption is just asking for trouble. If someone has an objection to secrets, it should be handled just like any other objection (like to spiders or sexual content).


Your statement, "No matter how great you think you are at roleplaying and ignoring meta information, that information WILL bias in some way," is very telling since it has nothing whatsoever with the way you play your character; it's a demand to control the way other players play their characters.

That's fair, I suppose. I ask that the players not read the module, avoid any content (like sexual content or spiders) that other players object to, and not provide OOC information that the PCs don't have access to. Yes, that's all controlling how others play the game.

However, the presence or absence of metagame information does also affect how I play my characters / NPCs, so it's not exclusively controlling others.

Tanarii
2018-06-30, 06:50 PM
I'm Oh so very confused. Why are people conflating "having secrets" with "betraying the party"?Probably because that's the combination that is a problem. :smallamused:


Are you saying that birds of a feather flock together? Because, if so, that rarely matches my experience, except on a highly superficial level.Yes. My experience is people gravitate to an echo chamber of their own beliefs. Unless they're going out looking for an argument.

But that's on a personal level. Not professional. So really it's a question of which of those two are you playing? Games about hero-types banding together to quest tend to be closer to a personal level. Or at the least, personal motivations.

Personally I prefer some kind of professional adventurer / subcontractor / mercenary mindset in PCs. Or working for an organization directly. Putting things on a professional basis, rather than personal.

JoeJ
2018-06-30, 08:31 PM
In most groups I've played with, one or more players had such a complete lack of role-playing skill that player knowledge == character knowledge. Even when playing with better roleplayers, OOC knowledge does taint the way that characters are played. Please don't taint my experience with unnecessary information!

So what if it does? Whether you think it's tainted or not, that other player gets to decide how to roleplay their character. If you don't trust somebody to rolepley their character in a way that's fun for everybody, don't play with them. The fact that you prefer not to have information that your character doesn't does not give you the right to make that choice for anybody else.


Now, the notion that, absent a unified consensus otherwise, secrets are verboten is just plain wrong. Making that an unwritten assumption is just asking for trouble. If someone has an objection to secrets, it should be handled just like any other objection (like to spiders or sexual content).

On the contrary, it's a basic part of the social contract. This is one of the things you don't do without first making sure that everybody is okay with it. (Sexual content is another one of those things.)

Darth Ultron
2018-06-30, 09:02 PM
I'm Oh so very confused. Why are people conflating "having secrets" with "betraying the party"?

Typically, keeping a secret is only for the reason of betraying the party, or worse, betraying the players.

The break down:

1)The rare fluff secret: Something about the character is a secret, and this has no effect in the game or outside of the game at all.

2)The spotlight secret: Something about the character is secret, has a game effect and both are a bit noticeable. The idea here is simple: the player with the secret wants the spotlight. At worst this makes the game only about the one player secret...and that player would just love to drag out the secret and get the power thrill of the other players not knowing about their characters secret.

3)The secret exploit: The character has a secret, a special mechanical or story thing that none of the other characters have. This is often done with the DMs approval and is very often unbalanced and powerful. Typically this is something like playing an adult dragon in a low level game, or being 'king of the world'.

4)The surprise secret: The player just wants the right moment to ''shock'' everyone with the secret, for their own personal fun.

5)Betray Secret: The character is against the others! And it's a secret! Great fun for the player with the secret character...often not so much fun for the rest. It can be done well, but it's often just a huge jerk move by a jerk player.

In a general sense, assuming your playing a ''good'' type game, there is no reason for the players to keep secrets from each other. It's just pointless. The players should know 'most' of everything about the player characters. Even more so the mechanics. You can have secrets the players know, but the characters don't know...and that is the best way to do it.

Of course, it is always a bad idea for one character to have a secret powerful mechanical thing....even more so if the main reason for the secret is so ''all the players don't do it/ask for it".

Quertus
2018-06-30, 09:26 PM
On the contrary, it's a basic part of the social contract. This is one of the things you don't do without first making sure that everybody is okay with it. (Sexual content is another one of those things.)

Clearly, we signed different social contracts. Mine has a "no spoilers!" clause. As such, I'm going to go so far as to say that you've got it backwards - no giving OOC information (or giving away key plot points / twists / endings of movies people haven't seen, books people haven't read, etc) unless everyone at the table is amenable to spoilers.

Cluedrew
2018-06-30, 09:33 PM
I've had two experience with campaigns that were shaped by inter-party conflict. One was destroyed by other issues. The other caused me a moment of surprise when the other PC opened file on me with a machine gun. Then I remembered that we had actually been told that this was going to happen during character creation. So I opened fire with a grenade launcher.

As for the not knowing each other thing: Have a reason to drive them together and if this is more than a one shot, to then stick together.

JoeJ
2018-06-30, 10:44 PM
Clearly, we signed different social contracts. Mine has a "no spoilers!" clause. As such, I'm going to go so far as to say that you've got it backwards - no giving OOC information (or giving away key plot points / twists / endings of movies people haven't seen, books people haven't read, etc) unless everyone at the table is amenable to spoilers.

So in your mind there's no difference between watching a movie and playing a RPG?

Let's try this: One of the secrets being kept is that the GM has privately told the other players all the things about your character that you thought were hidden. Now you think you're being clever, but everybody else already knows. They just haven't told you that they know, so it won't taint your roleplaying. Plus, you've already said you don't want spoilers, so everything is cool.

Psyren
2018-07-01, 12:24 AM
I personally prefer it if at least some of the characters know each other. This is easy in the groups I play in because a lot of us are married or otherwise in committed relationships. You often see the "agent + bodyguard" combo as a result, e.g. the priestess being escorted by the temple's muscle - a sentry, or even someone who was visiting but ended up being asked to escort her across dangerous lands as payment for whatever service he received.

But everyone being strangers works fine, you just have to contrive a reason for them to meet and/or want to watch each other's backs IC as well as OOC. And while taverns, prisons, and caravans are all cliché in this regard, well, the classics are often classics for a reason.

Quertus
2018-07-01, 05:58 AM
So in your mind there's no difference between watching a movie and playing a RPG?

No difference? They're highly related, but I wouldn't go that far. For one thing, a movie wastes far less of my time if some idiot spoils it.


Let's try this: One of the secrets being kept is that the GM has privately told the other players all the things about your character that you thought were hidden. Now you think you're being clever, but everybody else already knows. They just haven't told you that they know, so it won't taint your roleplaying. Plus, you've already said you don't want spoilers, so everything is cool.

That would be awesome, because it would mean that my GM was psychic, given that I didn't tell the GM any of my character's secrets, so as not to taint their role-playing of the NPCs.

Jay R
2018-07-01, 08:48 AM
There is a basic fact at the core of this discussion.


Having PC secrets and/or a hidden background is an excellent tool for a jerk player to be a jerk.

I agree with this, 100%. So I can see why some DMs might want to ban secrets. But I won't ban secrets from my table, because of the following two facts:


1. Having PC secrets and/or a hidden background is also an excellent tool for a good player to set up fun surprises, or to play a character well, and

2. Jerks have many tools to reduce the fun for other players. Deny them one, and they will find another.

You can't get anywhere by keeping the jerks and just banning certain actions. That will change their method, but won't change the results. The only solution to players being jerks to other players is for everyone to stop being jerks to other players.

Encourage players to be on the same side. Ideally, I want my allies to have the best weapons and armor possible; these are the people defending me. It's actually better for the long-term health of my character for the treasure to be divided equally.

I know that betraying the party is all too common in RPGs. But you won't fix it by taking away one tool. As long as there is player agency at all, betrayal will be possible.

So play with people who won't betray you. Sometimes this means explaining to players why their behavior is hurting the game for others. Sometimes it means not inviting them back.

I've been lucky lately. I've only had to deal with it once this century, and once the DM talked to him, he understood and said that it's not how his old group played. Then he started playing a loyal, trustworthy character -- with a few secrets, but ones that had nothing to do with hurting or outshining the party.

MrSandman
2018-07-01, 09:04 AM
That would be awesome, because it would mean that my GM was psychic, given that I didn't tell the GM any of my character's secrets, so as not to taint their role-playing of the NPCs.

What kind of secrets are you thinking about? Would you mind giving some examples?

All secrets I can think of fall in one of these two categories:
- Secrets that don't affect other characters, the story, or the world in any significant manner and therefore it is inconsequential whether you keep them from the game master/other players or not.
- Secrets that affect other characters, the story, or the world in some significant way and therefore the game master or and/or other players should know about it.

Tanarii
2018-07-01, 09:08 AM
Having PC secrets and/or a hidden background is an excellent tool for a jerk player to be a jerk.
Allowing the wrong kind of PC secrets and/or a hidden background is an excellent way to have a not-normally-a-jerk player do something jerk-ish without even realizing they are being a jerk.

Especially if they're doing it cahoots with the GM, who is then also being a jerk, possibly without realizing it.

Otoh, as I said before, often "secrets" really just means the other players haven't paid attention to the other characters yet, or the player hasn't fleshed out the background yet.

It's definitely the nature of the "secret", and how it will affect the game, that matters. Not the mere existence of one, no matter how it is come by. Nor necessarily the nature of the player or DM. A destructive to the game background "secret" made up by the GM and player on the spot is just as bad as one planned all along. And they might not even realize it's going to be destructive, but rather expect it to be a "big reveal".

Quertus
2018-07-01, 10:21 AM
What kind of secrets are you thinking about? Would you mind giving some examples?

All secrets I can think of fall in one of these two categories:
- Secrets that don't affect other characters, the story, or the world in any significant manner and therefore it is inconsequential whether you keep them from the game master/other players or not.
- Secrets that affect other characters, the story, or the world in some significant way and therefore the game master or and/or other players should know about it.

Sure. Let's say... Hmmm... My character is allergic to grapes, has a Yuri(?)* fetish, and has a crush on one of the PCs.

My character has the cook skill, makes all his own (and the party's?) food, and doesn't drink, so as not to reveal his weakness. Because, why not, this character doesn't like to show weakness.

He has a secure location to hide his hidden pleasures, and has a habit of wasting large sums of money to support his fetish. Thus, like his comrades who blow their loot on ale and wenches, he's always in need of more money.

And my character tends to act differently around one of the characters. Depending on the group and their comfort levels, what is acceptable at the table will determine how I roleplay this crush.

All of this has a chance to affect the game, but mostly in the subtle character interaction ways that are much more fun for me than "+X to Y stat".

And much more fun when, apropos to the thread, the characters learn about each other in character.

Far more important to me is me getting the chance to observe how the other characters react to my character. See, I know why he does what he does - but watching how their characters react tells my character a great deal about them - which has a huge impact on the game. Take my cooking, for example. Do they take it as me being paranoid of poison? Do they show suspicion at my cooking for the party, thinking in terms of me poisoning them? Knowing how I roleplayed vs how they reacted tells me a great deal about them. This informs how my character interacts with theirs, what he suspects might be in their background, and what types of topics he is most likely to broach (or avoid) with whom. Or, if, during the game, the king is poisoned, it informs who he believes might suspect him vs who he believes might have had dealings with poison before / who might have useful contacts to squeeze for information.

When I was in 6th grade, I was given the opportunity to be team captain (ie, pick teams) for playground dodge ball. IIRC, I even got first pick.

Now, being me, I had carefully cataloged every player's skill set. While most kids made their selections based on social groups, I acted solely on optimization. With one exception - about halfway through, a friend of mine specifically requested that I pick him, and, as I deemed that his talents (reckless ball acquisition) would not be detrimental to my lineup, I acquiesced to his request.

When we were done picking teams, something utterly unprecedented happened: the two teams looked at each other, someone declared that my team would win, and new team captains were picked.

I never got to play my dream team. :smallfrown:

While this was my first lesson in "optimize to the group", more relevant to the thread topic and to the conversation at hand, it's also about the types of games I enjoy playing. I love playing the "understand the other characters" minigame - and I can't play it when that game is taken away from me through the distribution of OOC information.

In short, I don't have secrets just for me - I have secrets for what having secrets tells me about you. :smallwink:

* autocorrect says that this is a word, but it wasn't what I typed, so... Maybe what I meant, maybe not...

JoeJ
2018-07-01, 11:15 AM
That would be awesome, because it would mean that my GM was psychic, given that I didn't tell the GM any of my character's secrets, so as not to taint their role-playing of the NPCs.

I'm talking here about secrets that have a game effect, not silly things like the name of some childhood friend who will never appear. In every game system I know, your character don't have anything that effects the game unless the GM approves it. In some games the entire table has to agree. Either way, secret from the GM = does not exist.

Jay R
2018-07-01, 11:19 AM
Secrets are fine, if their ultimate effect is to increase enjoyment for everybody.

In an Old West game, I announced that I was going to build a character based on a TV western. I showed up with Cali Yang, a martial artist clearly patterned after Kwai-Chang Cain of *Kung Fu*. I had fun inventing eastern-style proverbs while fighting hand-to-hand.

Until about four sessions in, when he washed off the makeup and revealed himself as Cal Young, federal agent, patterned on the disguise artist Artemus Gordon from *Wild, Wild West*.

--------------

In a Champions game, I was playing a Superman-like flying brick named Hyperion. Hyperion had died, and I went on playing his sidekick Pinball. In fact, (as with most comic book deaths) he hadn't really died. The DM and I privately arranged that he would re-appear the first time he was really needed.

After a few sessions without him, the party was fighting a giant robot, and losing. At one point the DM said, "You hear a rush of air from above." I looked at him, he nodded privately at me, and Pinball yelled out, "Look! Up in the sky!" A couple of players burst out laughing. And that's how Hyperion returned to save the day.

---------------

In both cases, members of the party congratulated me later on a fun, exciting adventure moment.

Tanarii
2018-07-01, 11:20 AM
I'm talking here about secrets that have a game effect, not silly things like the name of some childhood friend who will never appear. In every game system I know, your character don't have anything that effects the game unless the GM approves it. In some games the entire table has to agree. Either way, secret from the GM = does not exist.
Player: I've secretly been working with the BBeG since day one! Party, stand shocked by my inevitable betrayal!
GM: ... wut?

Darth Ultron
2018-07-01, 11:56 AM
That would be awesome, because it would mean that my GM was psychic, given that I didn't tell the GM any of my character's secrets, so as not to taint their role-playing of the NPCs.

So, you are in favor of players keeping secrets from the DM? That is quite a leap. The DM should know and approve of everything. For a player to keep a secret from the DM is just a way for the player to be a jerk and ruin the game. Really, no good can come from such a secret. If it's not pointless, then the player will just use the secret to out right cheat and give the character anything they want at any time.


Allowing the wrong kind of PC secrets and/or a hidden background is an excellent way to have a not-normally-a-jerk player do something jerk-ish without even realizing they are being a jerk.

Especially if they're doing it cahoots with the GM, who is then also being a jerk, possibly without realizing it.


I'd point out again that normal good people do not do jerk things, ever, even by accident.

Person is a good person--->no matter what happens---->person does the good and right thing

Person is not a good person-->something happens---->person does a bad thing and or acts like a jerk


Sure. Let's say... Hmmm... My character is allergic to grapes, has a Yuri(?)* fetish, and has a crush on one of the PCs.


I'm not sure you are really talking about a 'secret', but more just 'unknown things'.

hamishspence
2018-07-01, 12:02 PM
normal good people do not do jerk things, ever, even by accident.

Person is a good person--->no matter what happens---->person does the good and right thing

Person is not a good person-->something happens---->person does a bad thing and or acts like a jerk


That's an overstatement - Plenty of D&D books state that Good people can do "not exactly good" things, and occasionally even downright evil things. What defines them is that they are good + non-evil most of the time - they do not have to be so all the time.

Good + Jerk = the Jerk With a Heart Of Gold trope. Maybe also the Knight In Sour Armor one.

Darth Ultron
2018-07-01, 12:09 PM
Good + Jerk = the Jerk With a Heart Of Gold trope. Maybe also the Knight In Sour Armor one.

Note that a jerk with a heart of gold.....is still a jerk.

hamishspence
2018-07-01, 12:11 PM
The point I'm trying to make is that, at least in D&D-related fiction, a character can be both "a good person" and "a jerk".

Cluedrew
2018-07-01, 12:15 PM
In a Champions game, I was playing a Superman-like flying brick named Hyperion. Hyperion had died, and I went on playing his sidekick Pinball. In fact, (as with most comic book deaths) he hadn't really died.Ah, comic books. Where death saving throws are replaced by death's saving throws. ... It messes one up eventually.

Otherwise good comments on secrets.

Darth Ultron
2018-07-01, 12:32 PM
The point I'm trying to make is that, at least in D&D-related fiction, a character can be both "a good person" and "a jerk".

Ok? In fiction and make believe a character can be both good and a jerk.

In real life, a real person player can not be both a good and jerk at the same time.

Knaight
2018-07-01, 12:33 PM
I'd point out again that normal good people do not do jerk things, ever, even by accident.

Person is a good person--->no matter what happens---->person does the good and right thing

Person is not a good person-->something happens---->person does a bad thing and or acts like a jerk

There's a level of "acts like a jerk" and "does a bad thing" where these are reasonable true statements, and if you're using them to refer to acts of that severity I'd agree with you. Below that severity though this is absolute nonsense. Generally decent people can still get frustrated and snap at other people every so often, or (to go back to the original context) do something a bit thoughtless in a game to make it fun for some players while accidentally making it worse for other players.

There are all sorts of conflicts that come out of people being imperfect without those people being awful people. That there are also all sorts of conflicts that come out of people being generally terrible doesn't diminish that.

JoeJ
2018-07-01, 12:33 PM
Player: I've secretly been working with the BBeG since day one! Party, stand shocked by my inevitable betrayal!
GM: ... wut?

LOL!

Or possibly...

Player: I lead the party to the secret hideout I've been maintaining.

GM: But when you arrive at the location, the hideout isn't there. In a horrible moment of clarity you realize it never was there, you just dreamed it.

MrSandman
2018-07-01, 01:10 PM
Sure. Let's say... Hmmm... My character is allergic to grapes, has a Yuri(?)* fetish, and has a crush on one of the PCs.

My character has the cook skill, makes all his own (and the party's?) food, and doesn't drink, so as not to reveal his weakness. Because, why not, this character doesn't like to show weakness.

He has a secure location to hide his hidden pleasures, and has a habit of wasting large sums of money to support his fetish. Thus, like his comrades who blow their loot on ale and wenches, he's always in need of more money.


Thanks. That helps me understand where you come from a lot better. I'm actually perfectly okay with what you describe. I even think it'd be a fun game to play. I do think, though, that it requires that all players be on board (either explicitly or implicitly) with that style of playing. It is different to make a character to play a particular story than to make a character to discover and be discovered by the other characters.

Personally I'm rather wary of players keeping secrets because, in my experience, they normally sort of derail from everybody's fun rather than enhancing it, or keeping it secret makes it irrelevant. I've got a couple of examples.

I played with a group in which we had made D&D 5ed. characters, and the game master had allowed us to create one magic item for our character (dependant on her approval, of course). In the middle of a skirmish, one of the guys all of a sudden shouts, "Fear not, for the bow of [epic-sounding name] has been found!" And do you know what happened? No one could care less. We didn't know who [epic-sounding name] was or that his bow had gone missing, and we obviously didn't know the significance of the bow being found. I'm sure that the guy had meant for that to be a sort of revealing, glorious moment, but he was the only one on board with the idea. He hadn't said anything about it to any of the players, and so, since we didn't know what all that was about, we mostly ignored it. I believe that if he had talked with us and told about this bow that he wanted to be a common piece of lore and that it was said to be so awesome, and blah blah blah, we could have enjoyed the revealing with him, and he'd have enjoyed it more. But since it was something he basically kept to himself, it became background noise for the rest of us.

In the same group, there was another player who had a character whose race was secret. The character looked like a human little girl, but we (players, not characters) knew it was something else. During our travelling time, the player would talk in secret with the game master every once in a while and his character would disappear to do who-knows-what. The player may have had a blast doing whatever he was doing, but whatever that was had zero impact on the story or the rest of the characters. So basically he ended up wasting everyone else's time in order to have his own private story.

And that's what annoys me. I find it annoying when secrets are wasted because someone wants to keep them secret, and they basically become a particular story that somebody is living and has little to do with the story that everybody else is playing. I think it is much better when you say, "Hey, I want to do/have this," so that we can answer, "Yeah, cool, let's make it part of the story." Or at the very least, "Hey, I want my character to keep an important secret."


Player: I've secretly been working with the BBeG since day one! Party, stand shocked by my inevitable betrayal!
GM: ... wut?

Next time I play a campaign until the end, I'll try that.

NovenFromTheSun
2018-07-01, 03:31 PM
The PCs not knowing each other works best if there's some outside force making it so that joining up is pragmatically the best decision. However, from what what I see on these discussions (I admittedly have little RP experience) the urge to avoid railroading means many players (both gamemasters and character players) are reluctant to accept this much of an external factor influencing the party, so therefore having the party start off loyal to each other is usually the best idea.

Quertus
2018-07-01, 06:00 PM
Player: I've secretly been working with the BBeG since day one! Party, stand shocked by my inevitable betrayal!
GM: ... wut?


Next time I play a campaign until the end, I'll try that.

This is an awesome idea! I mean, I've never seen a betrayal work out, and I'm generally against the idea about as much as, say, I'm against graphic portrayal of sexual acts in a game with minors, but, done right, I might make an exception in this case.

Hmmm... So, if the GM is outsourcing the BBEG, and one of the players is secretly working with the source of the BBEG to set this final scene up, it might almost work, and might almost be worth it.

But, still, probably not.


I'm talking here about secrets that have a game effect, not silly things like the name of some childhood friend who will never appear. In every game system I know, your character don't have anything that effects the game unless the GM approves it. In some games the entire table has to agree. Either way, secret from the GM = does not exist.


So, you are in favor of players keeping secrets from the DM? That is quite a leap. The DM should know and approve of everything. For a player to keep a secret from the DM is just a way for the player to be a jerk and ruin the game. Really, no good can come from such a secret. If it's not pointless, then the player will just use the secret to out right cheat and give the character anything they want at any time.

I'm not sure you are really talking about a 'secret', but more just 'unknown things'.

I'm not going to have the GM "approve" my character's sexual preferences, "actual" gender, fetishes, allergies, handedness, bank pin, or anything else that they consider secret. I will, however, do my best to make sure that my character is appropriate for the group.

Also, anything that I tell the GM may as well not exist - because I can't know that I came by any developments honest. Anything that they specifically tailor for me is of no value to me.


Thanks. That helps me understand where you come from a lot better. I'm actually perfectly okay with what you describe. I even think it'd be a fun game to play. I do think, though, that it requires that all players be on board (either explicitly or implicitly) with that style of playing. It is different to make a character to play a particular story than to make a character to discover and be discovered by the other characters.

Well, for me, it's not about being discovered, it's about running a character rather than a caricature. People - real people, with one possible exception IME - have secrets. The fact that other PCs have non-public information (not just secrets - this includes things that they'd tell you if asked, or even things that they're anxious for you to learn) feeds my Exploration aesthetic, which is my favorite part of the game aesthetic / which is generally my greatest source of fun in an RPG.


Personally I'm rather wary of players keeping secrets because, in my experience, they normally sort of derail from everybody's fun rather than enhancing it, or keeping it secret makes it irrelevant. I've got a couple of examples.

I played with a group in which we had made D&D 5ed. characters, and the game master had allowed us to create one magic item for our character (dependant on her approval, of course). In the middle of a skirmish, one of the guys all of a sudden shouts, "Fear not, for the bow of [epic-sounding name] has been found!" And do you know what happened? No one could care less. We didn't know who [epic-sounding name] was or that his bow had gone missing, and we obviously didn't know the significance of the bow being found. I'm sure that the guy had meant for that to be a sort of revealing, glorious moment, but he was the only one on board with the idea. He hadn't said anything about it to any of the players, and so, since we didn't know what all that was about, we mostly ignored it. I believe that if he had talked with us and told about this bow that he wanted to be a common piece of lore and that it was said to be so awesome, and blah blah blah, we could have enjoyed the revealing with him, and he'd have enjoyed it more. But since it was something he basically kept to himself, it became background noise for the rest of us.

In the same group, there was another player who had a character whose race was secret. The character looked like a human little girl, but we (players, not characters) knew it was something else. During our travelling time, the player would talk in secret with the game master every once in a while and his character would disappear to do who-knows-what. The player may have had a blast doing whatever he was doing, but whatever that was had zero impact on the story or the rest of the characters. So basically he ended up wasting everyone else's time in order to have his own private story.

And that's what annoys me. I find it annoying when secrets are wasted because someone wants to keep them secret, and they basically become a particular story that somebody is living and has little to do with the story that everybody else is playing. I think it is much better when you say, "Hey, I want to do/have this," so that we can answer, "Yeah, cool, let's make it part of the story." Or at the very least, "Hey, I want my character to keep an important secret."

I'm sorry that you've had issues with secrets, but, they can be done right, and, for me, being quite character-focused, they basically are the game.

Tanarii
2018-07-01, 06:21 PM
This is an awesome idea! I mean, I've never seen a betrayal work out, and I'm generally against the idea about as much as, say, I'm against graphic portrayal of sexual acts in a game with minors, but, done right, I might make an exception in this case.

Hmmm... So, if the GM is outsourcing the BBEG, and one of the players is secretly working with the source of the BBEG to set this final scene up, it might almost work, and might almost be worth it.

But, still, probably not.
Did you understand it was an joke about the player keeping a secret from the other players AND the GM?

Darth Ultron
2018-07-01, 06:46 PM
I'm not going to have the GM "approve" my character's sexual preferences, "actual" gender, fetishes, allergies, handedness, bank pin, or anything else that they consider secret. I will, however, do my best to make sure that my character is appropriate for the group.


Well, the DM does not really need to ''approve'' fluff, but it is still important for the DM to know the fluff.

The DM needs to know such things for when role playing comes up. Like knowing what the character is afraid of or likes and desires. It's typical that some game effect will make whatever the character fears; it's a very standard type thing. So the DM needs to know what it is. The DM just can't guess, as they will likely be wrong...and even if they are right the jerk player can always lie. And it's a huge waste of time to stop the game, ask the player the question, and then start the game back up....and that assumes the player won't be a jerk and not tell.



Also, anything that I tell the GM may as well not exist - because I can't know that I came by any developments honest. Anything that they specifically tailor for me is of no value to me.


This sounds very hostile to the DM, and sure sounds like a toxic way to play the game.

I guess your not talking about mechanics here, right? Like the DM tells you to take some damage and you just snicker as your character has been at -30 points for the last hour, but you just say ''oh, he still has a couple points left'' yet again.

Even role playing though this is so hostile. Ok, so your character is a big unknown secret. So you want the DM to just ignore you? If the DM knows nothing about your character how can they do anything except pure random stuff? And, as you might well ignore most of the random stuff, you will just waste game time making the DM 'fish' around trying to uncover your characters secrets.

And this is one of the worst types I mentioned above: The Player that wants the Spotlight. They want to make the whole game just about their character and their special character secrets.

Quertus
2018-07-01, 09:48 PM
The PCs not knowing each other works best if there's some outside force making it so that joining up is pragmatically the best decision. However, from what what I see on these discussions (I admittedly have little RP experience) the urge to avoid railroading means many players (both gamemasters and character players) are reluctant to accept this much of an external factor influencing the party, so therefore having the party start off loyal to each other is usually the best idea.

That's a good point. The issue, IMO, is that most GMs try to shoulder this burden alone. Having the group work together to make the party work alleviates the issue of GM railroading, and creates improved buy-in through ownership of the process.


Did you understand it was an joke about the player keeping a secret from the other players AND the GM?

At least as well as others likely understood the extent to which my post was tongue in cheek. :smalltongue:

Which is to say, I figured as much, but still think that it a) would be awesome - more awesome than any betrayal I've ever heard of, but b) like any other betrayal, ultimately a horrible plan.

That it happens to be a humorous thing for the GM to not be in the loop on is the only reason it's worth talking about.


Well, the DM does not really need to ''approve'' fluff, but it is still important for the DM to know the fluff.

The DM needs to know such things for when role playing comes up. Like knowing what the character is afraid of or likes and desires. It's typical that some game effect will make whatever the character fears; it's a very standard type thing. So the DM needs to know what it is. The DM just can't guess, as they will likely be wrong...and even if they are right the jerk player can always lie. And it's a huge waste of time to stop the game, ask the player the question, and then start the game back up....and that assumes the player won't be a jerk and not tell.

That is a really good point - well, the part about (presumably supernatural) elements resulting in the GM sometimes needing to know things that they ordinarily wouldn't is, at least. Discussing proper ways to handle that situation could easily be it's own thread. Because, IME, most players aren't accustomed to filing out extensive character psychological surveys (or, Heck, even giving their character a personality or background before play in many cases), and just asking for single elements (like deepest fears) kinda shows the GM's hand to even marginally awake players. But, if that's not a concern - if it's a known thing that there are monsters in Gaea (or whatever) that can create illusions of a person's strongest fears, and that common knowledge should probably be had by the PCs anyway, then there's no issue of OOC information bleeding through, because it should be IC information in the first place.


This sounds very hostile to the DM, and sure sounds like a toxic way to play the game.

While it's fair to say that I'm anti-GM, this is me hating on everyone at the table equally - myself included. The GM just happens to be in a position to do the most damage, and, thus, is often the worst party to let be informed.


I guess your not talking about mechanics here, right? Like the DM tells you to take some damage and you just snicker as your character has been at -30 points for the last hour, but you just say ''oh, he still has a couple points left'' yet again.

You are correct in that this has nothing to do with what I'm talking about.


Even role playing though this is so hostile. Ok, so your character is a big unknown secret. So you want the DM to just ignore you? If the DM knows nothing about your character how can they do anything except pure random stuff? And, as you might well ignore most of the random stuff, you will just waste game time making the DM 'fish' around trying to uncover your characters secrets.

Just run the module straight out of the book / Just run the world honest. Don't custom tailor things to my character - that cheapens everything. If it comes up, it comes up; if it doesn't, it doesn't. Simple as that.

Like I said, I don't make secrets to have people go fish - I do it to have a character rather than a caricature. And, as an added bonus, when people misunderstand my character, it tells me a lot about their biases / about their character.

Also secrets don't have to be "big". Although, to the character, they probably are a big deal, if they're actively making it a secret.


And this is one of the worst types I mentioned above: The Player that wants the Spotlight. They want to make the whole game just about their character and their special character secrets.

... I've gotta read the context on this to respond...

EDIT: um, how could you possibly translate "please don't custom tailor the world to my character, or make anything be about my character" into wanting the GM to make the game be about their character? :smallconfused:

So, um, no, you've completely missed the mark on this one.

Darth Ultron
2018-07-01, 11:06 PM
EDIT: um, how could you possibly translate "please don't custom tailor the world to my character, or make anything be about my character" into wanting the GM to make the game be about their character? :smallconfused:

So, um, no, you've completely missed the mark on this one.

If you make a character with secrets no one knows, and you keep them secret and they never come up at all during the game, then that is one thing.

But the ''fun'' for a lot of people is the Spotlight Secret. They:
1)Want everyone to know the character has secrets
2)Want everyone to ''try'' and find out the secrets
3)Want to get the jerk pleasure of dragging this on forever

It's a like like a typical kid with a secret: They will tell you they have ''a big secret'' and want you to ask about it.....and then they will say ''nah nah, I'm not goona tell you".

In a RPG this is even worse, as the player often has to waste huge amounts of time shinning the spotlight on the secret so others will notice in the first place.

After all, most RPGs focus on the 'game' and not every tiny character detail.

Like take the silly ''secret vampire'' that is quite popular. So the player has the vampire character...and no one knows! But the player wants that Secret Spotlight, so when food or meals come up, the player will always have the character skip the meal or food and ''sneak off to kill people". So every time food comes up in the game the player will be like ''Oh my character is not hungry''. And, chances are, most normal gamers will ignore this silliness and otherwise keep playing the game. So then the ''secret vampire'' player has to do more and more and more to get the spotlight on themselves...up to disrupting the game.

JoeJ
2018-07-02, 02:12 AM
Just run the module straight out of the book / Just run the world honest. Don't custom tailor things to my character - that cheapens everything. If it comes up, it comes up; if it doesn't, it doesn't. Simple as that.

Your character is a part of the world. Running the world honest means sometimes bringing in those people and things that connect to your character's backstory. Why else would they even be having this adventure at all?

Satinavian
2018-07-02, 04:13 AM
This is an awesome idea! I mean, I've never seen a betrayal work out, and I'm generally against the idea about as much as, say, I'm against graphic portrayal of sexual acts in a game with minors, but, done right, I might make an exception in this case.

Hmmm... So, if the GM is outsourcing the BBEG, and one of the players is secretly working with the source of the BBEG to set this final scene up, it might almost work, and might almost be worth it.

But, still, probably not.I have seen such betrayal in several decades only twice and both times it was quite ok.

The first time we had a very big group with several factions with vastly different goals. Shortly before the final battle the antagonist contacted everyone of one faction in secret and promised them things for a betrayal. And that betrayal happened. But the scretly contacted faction had not discussed it among each other and only half of them turned sides, while everyone of them had assumed that the rest of the faction would obviously choose the same way. Thus the betrayal failed but did enough damage that the group retreated.

The other event was when in one game one character discovered that her father was part of the big antagonist conspiracy. First she tried to hide her famaly involvment and lead the parter to more acceptable targets but when it seemed that the plot would not be concluded without her father taking a big influence hit or even being in danger, she sided with the famaly and tried to kill the other PCs. Was a fun campaign.


I'm not going to have the GM "approve" my character's sexual preferences, "actual" gender, fetishes, allergies, handedness, bank pin, or anything else that they consider secret. I will, however, do my best to make sure that my character is appropriate for the group.Depending on the system half of this stuff is actually handled by rules, allergies and handedness being the more common. If that is the case, your GM ha to approve. If not, it is background detail, he doesn't usually need to know. I wouldn't call it a secret only because it never comes up. And i would be surprised if you would lie about it to the GM if it actually did come up or he asked becasue it might come up. I also would think to expressly lie out of character about this stuff to be wrong.

Well, for me, it's not about being discovered, it's about running a character rather than a caricature. People - real people, with one possible exception IME - have secrets. The fact that other PCs have non-public information (not just secrets - this includes things that they'd tell you if asked, or even things that they're anxious for you to learn) feeds my Exploration aesthetic, which is my favorite part of the game aesthetic / which is generally my greatest source of fun in an RPG.I don't have problems with secrets. For me they are generally part of the regular playing experience.

If i look at my last SR group, none of the backstories was ever shared between players. Characters were introduced to each other through contacts while looking for a job opportunity. Everything the players know about each other character they know from in game events. Several characters have enemies. Some have secret goals. Some are part of a big and influencial faction and loyal to it. Some have crippling weaknesses that no one must know. Everyone has reasons why they don't belong to the normal society. Reasons not necessarily seen favorably by the rest of the group.
But of course players want that other players are able to figure that stuff out slowly, which is the main reason that happens.
Of course Shadowrun is a game with the base assumption of having secret idendities, at least three. The one as professional criminal, the one where you pretend to be a regular citicen instead and which is also built on lies and your real one.


I'm sorry that you've had issues with secrets, but, they can be done right, and, for me, being quite character-focused, they basically are the game.There are only two kind of secrets that are really bad imho.

- The secret is something that would blow the party apart instantly if revealed if not actually leading to instant PvP. Basically incompatible backstories, ideals, goals that would never be allowed in a normal party and that are just hidden instead of resolved. Aside from the typical deamon in a deamon hunter group its mostly incompatible goals leaving the party without any common direction.

- The secret that while not obvious to other PCs requires extensive mechanical effort rulewise and would be instantly obvious to all other players if they ever see it in play. Thus requiring either player and GM to keep rule resolution secret (lot of time and effort) or the player to not use most of her characters abilities basically becoming a dead weight just to keep the secret from the players.

Quertus
2018-07-02, 12:03 PM
Your character is a part of the world. Running the world honest means sometimes bringing in those people and things that connect to your character's backstory. Why else would they even be having this adventure at all?

"I'm not from around here" is quickly becoming something I should hotkey. I very much never want a GM to bring in connections from my backstory, so "I'm not from around here".

Bringing in connections I've formed in the campaign, however, are not just fair game, but encouraged.


Depending on the system half of this stuff is actually handled by rules, allergies and handedness being the more common. If that is the case, your GM ha to approve.

- The secret that while not obvious to other PCs requires extensive mechanical effort rulewise and would be instantly obvious to all other players if they ever see it in play. Thus requiring either player and GM to keep rule resolution secret (lot of time and effort) or the player to not use most of her characters abilities basically becoming a dead weight just to keep the secret from the players.

Handedness is a great example. Many systems, including D&D, have rules for using the off hand. By choosing to hide his handedness, my character is at a statistical disadvantage at certain tasks. And there's no reason for the GM to need to know or approve anything - I simply have to do the math, and follow the rules.

Now, if my character's role is "face", one can easily see how he could take those disadvantages and hide his handedness without becoming dead weight. In fact, it may be advantageous to do so as a balancing factor for a build which might otherwise not only succeed as a face, but also compete with or even overshadow other characters at their niche.

RPG combat is generally of little interest to me. I tend to focus my attention on other areas. To help others have the chance to shine in combat, I'll gladly optimize my contribution elsewhere on a character who is, say, hiding his handedness.

JoeJ
2018-07-02, 05:24 PM
"I'm not from around here" is quickly becoming something I should hotkey. I very much never want a GM to bring in connections from my backstory, so "I'm not from around here".

In most campaigns I would not allow a character who has no connection to any of the other PCs because it's too hard to explain why they're even part of this group in the first place. And I can't think of any situation where I would allow a character who didn't have a connection with the world. Not from around here isn't enough information; you have to be from somewhere.

To be a character and not a caricature, as you put it, means being involved in the world. It means there are both people and issues that you care about (not necessarily positively; if you thoroughly hate somebody you very much care what happens to them). Even if you were hired as a specialist for a team, somebody had to know you, either personally or by reputation. And if by reputation, it's reasonable to ask how much of that reputation is known to the other PCs, and to the opposition.

Otherwise you're likely to get something like this:

GM: "Okay, everybody introduce your character."
Player 1: "You can call me Lefty. I'm a wheelman from Queens, working with the Bartoli family."
Player 2: "They call me Knuckles. I've been working as muscle for the Miami mob."
Player 3:" I'm Rico. My partner Frankie and I have been robbing banks in L.A. for the past few years."
Player 4: "And I'm Frankie. Hi everyone."
Player 3: "In case anybody didn't know, Frankie was made last month."
Player 5: "My name is Quertus. I came here as an observer from another dimension."
GM: <singing> "One of these things is not like the others..."

Darth Ultron
2018-07-02, 06:22 PM
And there's no reason for the GM to need to know or approve anything - I simply have to do the math, and follow the rules.

I find your hostility to the DM a bit odd, it would seem like you don't even want to play in a group with a DM. Guess your way works in the everybody is a player type game and each player just alters game reality on a whim.


In most campaigns I would not allow a character who has no connection to any of the other PCs because it's too hard to explain why they're even part of this group in the first place. And I can't think of any situation where I would allow a character who didn't have a connection with the world. Not from around here isn't enough information; you have to be from somewhere.


This, again, seems to be the Adventure Game vs Role Playing game.

Sinewmire
2018-07-03, 03:11 AM
As a DM I heartily approve of characters keeping secrets from each other.

My idea of character interaction is something like Loyalty quests in a computer game. You slowly build up trust with another person so that they feel comfortable to tell you a little more of their backstory, hopefully revealing their motivations and leading towards their in-game goal and allowing you to help them achieve it.

In a Dark Heresy group I played in, one character was playing as an outcast Sister of Battle (psycho warrior nun) with extreme survivors' guilt. She was fanatical and tight lipped, but as our characters bonded, she shared a little more of her back story. She'd been injured in a battle that had killed her squad, and felt responsible. She couldn't be whole until she'd avenged her sisters by killing traitors and heretics with pistol shells she'd engraved with their names.

It was pretty damn cool, and suddenly explained her hatred of some people and her martyrdom complex.

On the OTHER hand there's the other kind of secret.

A friend joined our DnD group for a month or two, as he was visiting. Turned out he'd been a vampire all along, was part of the big bad's plot, had been killing our contacts and allies behind us as we went. That's all very well, but the only reason we'd trusted him in the first place was we didn't want him to be sitting around for multiple sessions doing very little interaction because we didn't think we could trust anyone.

It didn't feel like a cool reveal, it felt like the DM had abused our OOC courtesy to the player.

So yeah, it can be done well, and it can be done badly. I encourage it, as long as it's not going to impact the party too badly.

Satinavian
2018-07-03, 03:18 AM
Handedness is a great example. Many systems, including D&D, have rules for using the off hand. By choosing to hide his handedness, my character is at a statistical disadvantage at certain tasks. And there's no reason for the GM to need to know or approve anything - I simply have to do the math, and follow the rules.The systems i am talking about are systems where handedness has a steep price in build ressources and gives considerable benefits in combat. (So much so in fact that only primary combat characters are anything but righthanded) To say something like this should be hidden is similar to saying that a D&D combatant should hide his feat selection.


Now, if my character's role is "face", one can easily see how he could take those disadvantages and hide his handedness without becoming dead weight. In fact, it may be advantageous to do so as a balancing factor for a build which might otherwise not only succeed as a face, but also compete with or even overshadow other characters at their niche.The most common instance of this kind of damaging secret is probably playing a primary spellcaster and trying to hide your magic ability. I have seen that dozens of times. And most often it didn't work very well. Someone who basically can only use their primary class abilities when no one is looking travelling in a group that doesn't like to split the party can very easily become a dead weight.

RPG combat is generally of little interest to me. I tend to focus my attention on other areas. To help others have the chance to shine in combat, I'll gladly optimize my contribution elsewhere on a character who is, say, hiding his handedness.I am not primarily playing D&D and most players i know are not really that interested in combat. What gave you the idea i was talking about combat ? It's more a series of "I have utility abilities that would be perfect to solve this seemingly unsurmountable problem the party faces. But oh no, they are flashy and would reveal my secret idendity, so i can't use them and have to be waiting in the back... again. I might not have thought it through when at character creation i invested nearly all my ressources in stuff the party must never know and which is obvious whenever used."

Delta
2018-07-03, 03:25 AM
So yeah, it can be done well, and it can be done badly. I encourage it, as long as it's not going to impact the party too badly.

Yeah, a betrayal that actually derails the party so hard has to be handled very carefully. Honestly, I'd be very hesitant to include something like that at all.

In the Shadowrun group with the undercover cop back in the day, things worked out pretty well. It was clear from the start between us that he was on an undercover mission to find out more about some mysterious new crime group working through the Shadows, so his goal was never to directly screw over the other PCs which I felt was important. He was just using his connections to sometimes help the group (like giving them a few minutes of extra time by creating a diversion to get out of a hot situation where it would've gotten to a massive shootout in the middle of a residential area had the cops shown up too early) but also of course sometimes it changed things for the worse (when he realized they were about to steal a massive amount of a highly experimental magical drug to sell on the streets, have made sure the cops got the stuff first so their run failed, but they weren't in any danger)

It was a lot of fun leading to some ridiculous out of game shenanigans, with players secretly going through the trash after the game to find what was written on little notes the player had passed on to me (which led to said player burning up the notes from then on during cigarette breaks...), since everyone knew something was going on yet everyone trusted me and the other player enough to know we wouldn't just try to ruin their fun, it all worked out rather fine. But I wouldn't pull something like that in a group I didn't know very well.

farothel
2018-07-03, 04:36 AM
I think a lot of it depends on the system as well. In a system where the characters are part of a hierarchy (like Star Trek, the Alternity Hoffmann Institute,...) there is no need for them to know each other up front, as their boss can simply order them together (also useful to get them to at least start whatever mission you as GM have prepared).

In other systems, someone who hires the characters to do something for a couple of sessions (Shadowrun is a good example here) can also give the group time to form their own bonds for when this plot is done. Another thing that is often done in for instance Shadowrun, is to give the characters one free contact they all share, as to create this common bond.

I'm not really in favour of having the characters know all of the other characters at the beginning, but the clique thing already mentioned here can help. Character A knowns B, who knows C and D and D knows E. We had to do something like this in our last L5R party and it works quite good.

As to keeping secrets, it also depends on the secret. I don't have to know all of the other character's backgrounds (in fact, it can be quite a lot of fun to find out), but I want as a player to know that there will be a party. What I mean is that none of the other players have a character that will totally disrupt the group (like in D&D one evil character in a party of good characters). While some conflict is no problem and in fact a lot of fun (one of the best session I've ever GM'ed was when two players held a one hour philosophical debate in character), in the end the group has to be able to work together. That for me is the most important thing. And if a player wants to hide certain things from their background, no problem.

Quertus
2018-07-03, 06:45 AM
In most campaigns I would not allow a character who has no connection to any of the other PCs because it's too hard to explain why they're even part of this group in the first place. And I can't think of any situation where I would allow a character who didn't have a connection with the world. Not from around here isn't enough information; you have to be from somewhere.

To be a character and not a caricature, as you put it, means being involved in the world. It means there are both people and issues that you care about (not necessarily positively; if you thoroughly hate somebody you very much care what happens to them). Even if you were hired as a specialist for a team, somebody had to know you, either personally or by reputation. And if by reputation, it's reasonable to ask how much of that reputation is known to the other PCs, and to the opposition.

Otherwise you're likely to get something like this:

GM: "Okay, everybody introduce your character."
Player 1: "You can call me Lefty. I'm a wheelman from Queens, working with the Bartoli family."
Player 2: "They call me Knuckles. I've been working as muscle for the Miami mob."
Player 3:" I'm Rico. My partner Frankie and I have been robbing banks in L.A. for the past few years."
Player 4: "And I'm Frankie. Hi everyone."
Player 3: "In case anybody didn't know, Frankie was made last month."
Player 5: "My name is Quertus. I came here as an observer from another dimension."
GM: <singing> "One of these things is not like the others..."

There's a difference between "not from around here" and not matching the game. Of course, since I probably wouldn't have any interest in playing a system set in modern earth without magic, if Lefty was an animated corpse who was missing an arm as the sacrifice necessary for resurrection, Knuckles was an anthropomorphic ape summoner, Rico was a time-traveling Martian, and Frankie was a golem, made last month, Quertus would almost fit in, aside from lacking a thematic name.

If Knuckles was the one who summoned Quertus to this reality yesterday, there, we've got my "connection to the world and the party", with me still knowing little enough to get to enjoy Exploring the world. And I needn't worry about the GM role-playing Quertus' friends and family, and all those things he cares about (not necessarily positively) poorly, because they're not around here.

Wins all around?


I find your hostility to the DM a bit odd, it would seem like you don't even want to play in a group with a DM. Guess your way works in the everybody is a player type game and each player just alters game reality on a whim.

GMs tend to be humans, with standard human failings. Turns out, they cannot spill the beans if they have no beans to spill in the first place.


The systems i am talking about are systems where handedness has a steep price in build ressources and gives considerable benefits in combat. (So much so in fact that only primary combat characters are anything but righthanded) To say something like this should be hidden is similar to saying that a D&D combatant should hide his feat selection.

Absolutely feat selection should be hidden from the GM! Otherwise, they might metagame, and custom tailor the experience or people's reactions to the character's capabilities, rather than to in-game reality, and observed behavior, respectively. :smalleek:


The most common instance of this kind of damaging secret is probably playing a primary spellcaster and trying to hide your magic ability. I have seen that dozens of times. And most often it didn't work very well. Someone who basically can only use their primary class abilities when no one is looking travelling in a group that doesn't like to split the party can very easily become a dead weight.

Sounds horrible, generally speaking. Although it could explain why Bob spends so long in the bathroom, or why Susan talks in her sleep. :smallamused:


I am not primarily playing D&D and most players i know are not really that interested in combat. What gave you the idea i was talking about combat ?

... I gave you an example of how one could take disadvantages to conceal their abilities while maintaining overall parity, and chose a D&D face for my example on a 3e-centric forum. And pointed out how, in this specific example, I, personally, wouldn't be missing out on anything that I cared about. What made you think I thought that you were talking about D&D, or combat?


It's more a series of "I have utility abilities that would be perfect to solve this seemingly unsurmountable problem the party faces. But oh no, they are flashy and would reveal my secret idendity, so i can't use them and have to be waiting in the back... again. I might not have thought it through when at character creation i invested nearly all my ressources in stuff the party must never know and which is obvious whenever used."

What makes you think everyone who has secrets is an idiot who doesn't think through the types of scenarios that their character might be in, and doesn't aim to create something in parity with the rest of the party?

Some people really enjoy the optimization minigame. So as not to overshadow the rest of the party, they have to start with a suboptimal chassis, like the 3e D&D ninja. Well, keeping secrets, and needing to choose suboptimal methods, is just another tool in their toolkit to not overshadow the rest of the party.

Delta
2018-07-03, 06:56 AM
What makes you think everyone who has secrets is an idiot who doesn't think through the types of scenarios that their character might be in, and doesn't aim to create something in parity with the rest of the party?

From what you've written here, you seem to assume everyone else involved in the game is at best an idiot or at worst out to ruin your fun. If someone approaches the game with that kind of attitude, it's only natural to expect the other players not to think any better of them.

Quertus
2018-07-03, 07:27 AM
From what you've written here, you seem to assume everyone else involved in the game is at best an idiot or at worst out to ruin your fun. If someone approaches the game with that kind of attitude, it's only natural to expect the other players not to think any better of them.

I mean, I tend to play with humans, who, in my decades of experience, tend to make certain very human mistakes, and I optimize my gaming experience accordingly. If people are too stupid to recognize human failings, even when they're pointed out to them, then, sure, they're idiots, I'll agree with your assessment there. If they do recognize human failings, care about my fun, and are capable of compromise, they'll be willing to discuss and work together to find ways to help me have my fun. If they recognize human failings, but are unwilling or unable to compromise or work together, well, they're not good team players in the first place. And if they don't care about my fun, why would I want to game with them?

So, are you concerned that I'm excluding playing with people who lack even a basic understanding of humanity, don't care whether I enjoy the game, or those who are horrible at teamwork and compromise? Because, personally, I'm not overly concerned about weeding out such problem players.


it's only natural to expect the other players not to think any better of them.

Curiously, most good groups have been quite happy that I understand what I enjoy in a game, and know how to get it, while caring about the fun of others. Although some GMs have needed scientific experiments to demonstrate this*, it's pretty basic human behavior. And some GMs have suggested alternatives that work better for their specific group.

But I've only really had problems with safeguarding my fun with "my way or the highway" GMs, who, honestly, I'd never get along with anyway.

So, curiously, I've gotten quite good feedback from my ability to understand and communicate the nature of both my and other's fun in a game. Why would you think otherwise?

* my characters had X secrets, of which I told the party half. The GMs watched how the PCs reacted to my character and his actions, and agreed that this knowledge tainted their interpretations of my actions.

Delta
2018-07-03, 07:54 AM
So, are you concerned that I'm excluding playing with people who lack even a basic understanding of humanity, don't care whether I enjoy the game, or those who are horrible at teamwork and compromise? Because, personally, I'm not overly concerned about weeding out such problem players.

To put it simple: I'd be concerned if I GMd a game and a player came to me and said "My character doesn't have a background. If he does, you're not allowed to know it because you would just try to make it part of the game and I'm sure you'd be doing it wrong. No one else is allowed to know anything about me either because they in turn would ruin my fun by doing it wrong, and ideally I'd prefer it if you didn't even look at my character sheet because then you'd only metagame because again, you're doing it wrong."

To reference another thread with an avid discussion on this board, that would trigger more red flags for me than a soviet military parade because as you pointed out, that does not sound like a player who cares whether anyone else enjoys the game or is willing to compromise in any way.

Now, for the rest, I'm not going into that because I don't actually believe you're like that in your actual groups so what happens there doesn't really have any relevance, but that's kind of the position you've been defending so far (unless I've misunderstood something)

Quertus
2018-07-03, 08:15 AM
To put it simple: I'd be concerned if I GMd a game and a player came to me and said "My character doesn't have a background. If he does, you're not allowed to know it because you would just try to make it part of the game and I'm sure you'd be doing it wrong. No one else is allowed to know anything about me either because they in turn would ruin my fun by doing it wrong, and ideally I'd prefer it if you didn't even look at my character sheet because then you'd only metagame because again, you're doing it wrong."

To reference another thread with an avid discussion on this board, that would trigger more red flags for me than a soviet military parade because as you pointed out, that does not sound like a player who cares whether anyone else enjoys the game or is willing to compromise in any way.

Now, for the rest, I'm not going into that because I don't actually believe you're like that in your actual groups so what happens there doesn't really have any relevance, but that's kind of the position you've been defending so far (unless I've misunderstood something)

Hmmm... You don't believe that I'm actually like the caricature you've described, but feel that I come off that way in discussing things here? That's fair. In person, real time, there's give and take, reading the other person, etc. In writing, I have to be a bit more... decisive... in my explanations.

"My character doesn't have a background" is a stance I've seen Playgrounders make that baffles me - it's not only not even a good caricature of me, but kinda opposed to my stance, actually.

Otherwise, your caricature describes the platonic ideal of a perfect game setup for me.

And, yes, I have actually done "scientific experiments" / demonstrations with dubious GMs (and fellow players - those were fun!) exactly like I described.

Tanarii
2018-07-03, 08:22 AM
There's a difference between "not from around here" and not matching the game. Of course, since I probably wouldn't have any interest in playing a system set in modern earth without magic, if Lefty was an animated corpse who was missing an arm as the sacrifice necessary for resurrection, Knuckles was an anthropomorphic ape summoner, Rico was a time-traveling Martian, and Frankie was a golem, made last month, Quertus would almost fit in, aside from lacking a thematic name.

If Knuckles was the one who summoned Quertus to this reality yesterday, there, we've got my "connection to the world and the party", with me still knowing little enough to get to enjoy Exploring the world. And I needn't worry about the GM role-playing Quertus' friends and family, and all those things he cares about (not necessarily positively) poorly, because they're not around here.

Wins all around?Sounds horrible, generally speaking.

And thats coming from someone that prefers minimal backstory, and characters with motivations instead, and exploring where play takes you, while occasionally making up some backstory as needed, in conjunction with the DM if it has affects on the world.

But if that's the kind of group and character necessary for me to do it, hand me four pages and a pen and I'll spin you a tragic tale of special snowflakeness! :smallamused:

Satinavian
2018-07-03, 08:23 AM
Absolutely feat selection should be hidden from the GM! Otherwise, they might metagame, and custom tailor the experience or people's reactions to the character's capabilities, rather than to in-game reality, and observed behavior, respectively. :smalleek:GMs don't need to know all character details. But GMs do need to have an idea what characters are generally able to to, just to make preparation easier and ensure that they fit the game. That is even more true when secrets are in play because the GM is the only one who can make sure that all those secrets are actually compatible.
That is why GM usually get a look at the character sheet before the game starts and get the backstory of everyone. Usually they will glance over it, forget most of the stuff instantly because it is not important for the particular plot or group. But it is still critical to take that look just in case something important is there that maybe even the player is not aware of due to missing context.

Hiding that stuff from your GM will usually lead to not being allowed to play. Lieing about this stuff and later revealing abilities that were not on the original sheet and that you didn't get by progression will will usually lead to those abilities being retconned away or you being kicked. It s a big breach of the social contract of nearly every gaming table.

Sounds horrible, generally speaking. Although it could explain why Bob spends so long in the bathroom, or why Susan talks in her sleep. :smallamused:It is horrible. And some systems even promote such character concepts as standard archetypes with nice fluffy descriptions leading to especcially new and unexperienced players to such a disappointing experience.


... I gave you an example of how one could take disadvantages to conceal their abilities while maintaining overall parity, and chose a D&D face for my example on a 3e-centric forum. And pointed out how, in this specific example, I, personally, wouldn't be missing out on anything that I cared about. And i wrote "In some systems" which would give you a hint that i was not argueing about D&D in particular.
And you started to write about your interest in RPG combat, not me.




What makes you think everyone who has secrets is an idiot who doesn't think through the types of scenarios that their character might be in, and doesn't aim to create something in parity with the rest of the party?
You might want to reread my posts.

I stated that in general i don't have problems with secret and gave examples of my own groups using then and then wrote about two particular cases where secrets do lead to problems. You picked one of those cases to dispute.



"My character doesn't have a background" is a stance I've seen Playgrounders make that baffles me - it's not only not even a good caricature of me, but kinda opposed to my stance, actually.

I can even understand your reluctance to trust GMs with your background. That is not that uncommon.

But the typical solution is to agree with the GM about how much he can/should use your background and how much of it is only there to define your PC as a person. Players do have very different taste regarding that. That would be a mature approach, not hiding it because you can't discuss preferences out of game.

Otherwise, as i understand it, you very often play at conventions with strangers and very short adventures. That is far from typical for most gamers. Where i live, conventions are not that important, most groups are set up for longer, usual adventures are 2-5 sessions long and characters live through several of those in a row while whole campaigns usually last a year with durations up to 5 years not really uncommon. That obviously influences expectations about how much PCs are involed in the setting, how much players should know about the setting and how welcome world hopper characters are.

Delta
2018-07-03, 08:34 AM
"My character doesn't have a background" is a stance I've seen Playgrounders make that baffles me - it's not only not even a good caricature of me, but kinda opposed to my stance, actually.

Because you fail to understand that from an external point of view, "My character doesn't have a background" and "My character has a background, but no one (including the GM) is allowed to know it!" are identical statements.

Your ideal setup seems to be to limit any meaningful interactions between you and everyone around the table to the absolute minimum out of fear someone else might ruin your fun by doing it wrong. I'm sorry, but that sounds like a terrible setup for what's supposed to be a group activity, if completely avoiding the risk of another human being intruding on my fun were so important to me, I'd rather just as well play a computer rpg.

Quertus
2018-07-03, 09:40 AM
That is even more true when secrets are in play because the GM is the only one who can make sure that all those secrets are actually compatible.

How is my handedness or allergies capable of being incompatible with anything? :smallconfused: Fine, I'll play devils advocate. See below.


GMs don't need to know all character details. But GMs do need to have an idea what characters are generally able to to, just to make preparation easier and ensure that they fit the game.



That is why GM usually get a look at the character sheet before the game starts and get the backstory of everyone. Usually they will glance over it, forget most of the stuff instantly because it is not important for the particular plot or group. But it is still critical to take that look just in case something important is there that maybe even the player is not aware of due to missing context.

Sigh. There is an issue when the GM's secrets and the players' secrets intersect. Like, all left-handed people are actually children of the gods or something.

In the event that such a scenario could be a possibility, the best answer I've seen is for the GM to outsource knowledge of secrets. That is, an outside party, who is not involved in the game, knows all the campaign secrets, and all the PCs secrets, and informs the GM when there is an overlap.

Either way, if it's not allowed, you're going to get a player wondering, "why the **** can't I play a left-handed character". If they are allowed to play demigods, well, the GM (and they?) know the relevant details.

Shrug. Being a software developer, I deal with information hiding all the time, so maybe it's just par for the course for me to think this way.


Hiding that stuff from your GM will usually lead to not being allowed to play.

Not in my experience. Rarely, I've had GMs (or fellow players) who (per my previous post, not in reply to you) lacked a basic comprehension of human behavior, the ability to compromise, or any concern for my enjoyment of the game, but, for the vast majority of much more reasonable people, this has not been an issue.


Lieing about this stuff and later revealing abilities that were not on the original sheet and that you didn't get by progression will will usually lead to those abilities being retconned away or you being kicked. It s a big breach of the social contract of nearly every gaming table.

I'm with you there, 100%.


You might want to reread my posts.

I stated that in general i don't have problems with secret and gave examples of my own groups using then and then wrote about two particular cases where secrets do lead to problems. You picked one of those cases to dispute.

Ah, you're still referencing the post I was referencing, rather than referencing my post directly. Got it. I wasn't disputing the specific case, but showing how the general case should not be generalized from it. Sorry for the confusion.

Quertus
2018-07-03, 10:15 AM
I can even understand your reluctance to trust GMs with your background. That is not that uncommon.

Cool. I must say, that's refreshing to hear. IME, even things like understanding that AC could be worse than 10 was me breaking new ground.


But the typical solution is to agree with the GM about how much he can/should use your background and how much of it is only there to define your PC as a person. Players do have very different taste regarding that. That would be a mature approach, not hiding it because you can't discuss preferences out of game.

That's a slight mischaracterization of my position. I do discuss outside the game that I have a background, and don't want it used - even subconsciously. See the experiments I've ran for GMs who didn't get / believe the concept of how OOC knowledge taints one's perceptions.


Otherwise, as i understand it, you very often play at conventions with strangers and very short adventures. That is far from typical for most gamers. Where i live, conventions are not that important, most groups are set up for longer, usual adventures are 2-5 sessions long and characters live through several of those in a row while whole campaigns usually last a year with durations up to 5 years not really uncommon. That obviously influences expectations about how much PCs are involed in the setting, how much players should know about the setting and how welcome world hopper characters are.

Eh, I have experience with multiple types of groups. Ignore world-hopping. If we're playing in 1950's Paris, I'm from Egypt or Japan - I'm "not from around here". I don't want my background to come up, and I don't want to know the setting in character, I want the joy of Exploration in character.

And, yes, I'll happily play this same character in the next game that takes place in 1952 New York, if they're otherwise appropriate.


Because you fail to understand that from an external point of view, "My character doesn't have a background" and "My character has a background, but no one (including the GM) is allowed to know it!" are identical statements.

Only for those who lack the ability to perceive the difference.


Your ideal setup seems to be to limit any meaningful interactions between you and everyone around the table to the absolute minimum

Quite the opposite! It encourages the maximum amount of meaningful interactions to occur in the game - rather than, apropos to this thread, being assumed to have happened before the game even begins. :smalltongue:


out of fear someone else might ruin your fun by doing it wrong. I'm sorry, but that sounds like a terrible setup for what's supposed to be a group activity, if completely avoiding the risk of another human being intruding on my fun were so important to me, I'd rather just as well play a computer rpg.

Taking away all the guns and knives from schools, courthouses, etc, must seem like a terrible setup for you, too, then? Seriously, what value could there be in giving people access to such dangerous things in this setting to merit their presence in what is supposed to be a (fun) group activity?

Satinavian
2018-07-03, 10:19 AM
How is my handedness or allergies capable of being incompatible with anything? :smallconfused: Fine, I'll play devils advocate. See below.It is usually other stuff that has compatibility problems. Like different players writing a connection to the same already established family of the setting. Handedness and allergies rarely lead to incompatibility. But at least allergies should be known to a GM for other reasons : so that he can mention allergenes that he would otherwise skip for irrelevance.

In the event that such a scenario could be a possibility, the best answer I've seen is for the GM to outsource knowledge of secrets. That is, an outside party, who is not involved in the game, knows all the campaign secrets, and all the PCs secrets, and informs the GM when there is an overlap.And who is supposed to invest time into a game while not getting to actually participate as player or GM but has still being able to be reached during game time ? That is not practical. Which is why the standard assumption is that the GM gets to know all the secrets.

Not in my experience. Rarely, I've had GMs (or fellow players) who (per my previous post, not in reply to you) lacked a basic comprehension of human behavior, the ability to compromise, or any concern for my enjoyment of the game, but, for the vast majority of much more reasonable people, this has not been an issue.Usually they would ask you why you want to keep the secrets, then trying to find a compromise but when you insist on your position, well, there are other players.
They have not any more reason to trust you that your secrets are not detrimental to the game than you have that they won't metagame or misuse your backstory.

Quertus
2018-07-03, 10:26 AM
And who is supposed to invest time into a game while not getting to actually participate as player or GM but has still being able to be reached during game time ?

No, not during the game - before it! If either party is inventing new secrets during the game, they need to be kicked!


Usually they would ask you why you want to keep the secrets, then trying to find a compromise but when you insist on your position, well, there are other players.

Usually? You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. Either that, or my vast experiences with people being much more reasonable than you assume is somehow atypical.

EDIT: also, have you read my posts? I know I'm more senile than I used to be, but I'm pretty sure I've explained that I want the world run honest, OOC information taints humans' perceptions, these things are related to my fun, and that I'm open to GMs making suggestions that work better for their groups (or, Heck, players making suggestions that work better for my groups).


They have not any more reason to trust you that your secrets are not detrimental to the game than you have that they won't metagame or misuse your backstory.

This is the value of the scientific experiment I mentioned: once I prove the negative value of their position, it shifts the burden of proving an equal or greater negative value in my position. Which lets me run characters with secrets (as an experiment, to test the hypothesis). Which don't negatively impact the game (and, in fact, generally positively affect the role-playing). Wins all around!

Satinavian
2018-07-03, 11:13 AM
EDIT: also, have you read my posts? I know I'm more senile than I used to be, but I'm pretty sure I've explained that I want the world run honest, OOC information taints humans' perceptions, these things are related to my fun, and that I'm open to GMs making suggestions that work better for their groups (or, Heck, players making suggestions that work better for my groups).Probably i did not read all of them.

Otherwise, yes, i also like the world to be ran honest. I don't thing OOC information is a big obstacle for that. I actually do thing OOC information makes communication way clearer due to shared context and that that is way more helpful in running an honest world than preconceptions are dangerous.


This is the value of the scientific experiment I mentioned: once I prove the negative value of their position, it shifts the burden of proving an equal or greater negative value in my position. Which lets me run characters with secrets (as an experiment, to test the hypothesis). Which don't negatively impact the game (and, in fact, generally positively affect the role-playing). Wins all around!But for every new GM you haven't shown it. And just to make your experiment they have to agree to play your way to compare. Groups rarelly want to waste their precious gaming time for social experiments.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-07-03, 11:25 AM
But for every new GM you haven't shown it. And just to make your experiment they have to agree to play your way to compare. Groups rarelly want to waste their precious gaming time for social experiments.

Especially "social experiments", because I strongly doubt there was anything scientific there at all. For one, since you're completely un-blind (both sides know they're being experimented on), you've got a ton of confounding variables. Plus the whole "sample size of 1" problem. And no, you can't aggregate over different tables for this--they're not from the same distribution since the situations vary.

It smells like that annoying player that people pretend to agree with just so he'll stop talking and get on with the game. And that's not a good look.

Delta
2018-07-03, 11:38 AM
Only for those who lack the ability to perceive the difference.

Everyone but you by definition lacks that ability. Seriously, for anyone that is not you, the difference between "That information does not exist" and "That information does exist, but no one but me may ever know it" is simply trivial.


Taking away all the guns and knives from schools, courthouses, etc, must seem like a terrible setup for you, too, then? Seriously, what value could there be in giving people access to such dangerous things in this setting to merit their presence in what is supposed to be a (fun) group activity?

Okay, I'm out, this is getting too ridiculous even for me to continue this discussion.

JoeJ
2018-07-03, 12:40 PM
There's a difference between "not from around here" and not matching the game. Of course, since I probably wouldn't have any interest in playing a system set in modern earth without magic, if Lefty was an animated corpse who was missing an arm as the sacrifice necessary for resurrection, Knuckles was an anthropomorphic ape summoner, Rico was a time-traveling Martian, and Frankie was a golem, made last month, Quertus would almost fit in, aside from lacking a thematic name.

If Knuckles was the one who summoned Quertus to this reality yesterday, there, we've got my "connection to the world and the party", with me still knowing little enough to get to enjoy Exploring the world. And I needn't worry about the GM role-playing Quertus' friends and family, and all those things he cares about (not necessarily positively) poorly, because they're not around here.

Wins all around?

So Knuckles knows Quertus and his background pretty well, because otherwise there's no reason to summon him in the first place, much less invite him to join in the adventure.

And of course somebody from Quertus' background will show up; a friend, a family member, an old rival or enemy. Why wouldn't they? If one person can make the transition between universes, others can too, and that's far too interesting a plot hook not to use. It's a good bet as well that at some point the entire party will travel the other way as well and visit Quertus' home universe.

Resileaf
2018-07-03, 12:41 PM
Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. It's very much a case-by-case kind of thing where you won't necessarily know how everyone will react until the right moment.
I once played a game where I was a drow disguised as a wood elf whose ultimate goal was to ascend to a drider form. She was cooperative with the party, she never stabbed them in the back or manipulated them into doing something, she just used them as cover for her own operations where needed (and sometimes acted behind their backs to get petty revenge on people she felt wronged her).
Game never went far, sadly, and when I revealed what the twist would have been, everyone seemed impressed about it.

JoeJ
2018-07-03, 12:55 PM
As a DM I heartily approve of characters keeping secrets from each other.

My idea of character interaction is something like Loyalty quests in a computer game. You slowly build up trust with another person so that they feel comfortable to tell you a little more of their backstory, hopefully revealing their motivations and leading towards their in-game goal and allowing you to help them achieve it.

In a Dark Heresy group I played in, one character was playing as an outcast Sister of Battle (psycho warrior nun) with extreme survivors' guilt. She was fanatical and tight lipped, but as our characters bonded, she shared a little more of her back story. She'd been injured in a battle that had killed her squad, and felt responsible. She couldn't be whole until she'd avenged her sisters by killing traitors and heretics with pistol shells she'd engraved with their names.

It was pretty damn cool, and suddenly explained her hatred of some people and her martyrdom complex.

Something like this, or really any game where the drama between characters makes up an essential part of the game, works best if the players know the characters' secrets so they can work together to set up the conflicts and big reveals. Doing it the other way risks letting the often very intense conflicts between characters turn into conflicts between players, which tend to tear the group apart.

Darth Ultron
2018-07-03, 01:50 PM
To put it simple: I'd be concerned if I GMd a game and a player came to me and said "My character doesn't have a background. If he does, you're not allowed to know it because you would just try to make it part of the game and I'm sure you'd be doing it wrong. No one else is allowed to know anything about me either because they in turn would ruin my fun by doing it wrong, and ideally I'd prefer it if you didn't even look at my character sheet because then you'd only metagame because again, you're doing it wrong."

This sounds like a very bad player to me. Any player that was so hostile to say ''everything you do is wrong GM!" would sure not be welcome in my game.

Though I such a player could lie to get into my game, and I guess sit way in the back, not even at the table with the other players. And it sure would be odd to have them just ''play the game with themselves'' and ignore the GM and other players. And, guess they would have fun with just themselves, in the only single way they demand they must have fun.

At worse, this hostile secret player would just be a jerk. Not only the worst Lone Wolf ever (''oh the rest of the group is being attacked. Well I don't like combat and I'm a hostile jerk so my character goes fishing.") but also the worst cheater ever (Dm-''the fireball does 30 damage!" Player Q- "HAHA, my character is Immune to Fire!").


And, yes, I have actually done "scientific experiments" / demonstrations with dubious GMs (and fellow players - those were fun!) exactly like I described.

I do wonder about your experiments, and the Barn Yard Targeting. You want X to happen, so you set up X to happen and then say ''see X always happens!"

And you are talking about pointless meaningless character fluff right? Not like the Secret Exploit stuff? Like where you secretly make your character a robot, that looks human. Then, when the DM says just about anything happens to your character you can just sit back, laugh and ignore it(Dm-"Everyone is hit by a stun ray!" Player Q-"HA, my character Q-Bert is immune because of his super secret you will never know HAHA!")

So what is an example of a 'super secret' you have wanted to keep from everyone and the corresponding example of how your own personal fun was ruined when you did the experiment of telling others?


GMs don't need to know all character details. .

GMs do need to know all the mechanical details and as much of the fluff as they want.




I can even understand your reluctance to trust GMs with your background. That is not that uncommon.


I'll say I don't get it. Is this just the ''everything the GM does will be wrong?"

Is this like you have the back ground where Pizza the Hutt killed your parents. So the DM uses that and makes Pizza a big, fat orc in the game. Then the player gets all upset as they wanted(but never said) that Pizza was in fact a hot woman, and now the GM has ''ruined'' the characters history.

Delta
2018-07-03, 02:22 PM
GMs do need to know all the mechanical details and as much of the fluff as they want.

That's the important thing. GM doesn't need to know everything, but he needs to be able to know everything he wants to know.

Quertus
2018-07-03, 02:43 PM
And just to make your experiment they have to agree to play your way to compare. Groups rarelly want to waste their precious gaming time for social experiments.

I cannot argue against this mindset strongly enough.

The best thing for the health of a game that I have experienced is this: Having a series of one-shots where players try out different characters, GMs try out different scenarios, and the group gets together and discusses what they think would make for a fun game. This is where people can work through differences in vocabulary - "when you said spy game, I thought...". This is how people can make informed decisions about what characters might work well together. This is, incidentally, one of the places where people usually ask me to play Quertus, my signature character, for whom this account is named. That few people plan their RPGs this intelligently is irrelevant to the fact that this is best practices, IME.

Thus, running such experiments is not wasting valuable gaming time - it is, in fact, using it wisely to produce an optimized experience, and comes free when following best practices.


But for every new GM you haven't shown it.

True. While it's rare that I'll encounter a GM oblivious enough to human nature, or to the varied nature of fun, to not get it when it is explained to them, it does happen. In such a scenario, I will simply repeat the experiment, as evidenced by the fact that I stated that I've run the experiment repeatedly.


Otherwise, yes, i also like the world to be ran honest. I don't thing OOC information is a big obstacle for that. I actually do thing OOC information makes communication way clearer due to shared context and that that is way more helpful in running an honest world than preconceptions are dangerous.

Some people don't think that rolling actual dice or having minis is a big deal - yet, to other people, it is.

One of the things that I don't like about Angry's eight aesthetic is that it assumes that everyone who loves a given thing loves it for the same reason, and loves it the same way. Given the number of things people, say, dip French fries in, let alone the way that they game, this is patently obviously false.

And learning what people mean when they use words is a great use for the one-shots I'm advocating.

Quertus
2018-07-03, 02:46 PM
That's the important thing. GM doesn't need to know everything, but he needs to be able to know everything he wants to know.

Wrong! Bad programmer! He needs to want to know only the things that he actually can and should want to know.

Again, I'm used to thinking this way. It takes practice.

Quertus
2018-07-03, 03:21 PM
Especially "social experiments", because I strongly doubt there was anything scientific there at all. For one, since you're completely un-blind (both sides know they're being experimented on), you've got a ton of confounding variables. Plus the whole "sample size of 1" problem. And no, you can't aggregate over different tables for this--they're not from the same distribution since the situations vary.

It smells like that annoying player that people pretend to agree with just so he'll stop talking and get on with the game. And that's not a good look.

The other players don't know the nature of the experiment. The GM gets to observe the difference in how that characters react to my behavior based on known and unknown secrets.

Usually, the GM then talks shop with me a lot after that, to learn from my obviously demonstrated superior experience and understanding of human behavior.

Wow. That's a scary thought. That I've had many GMs who understood people less well than I do.


Everyone but you by definition lacks that ability. Seriously, for anyone that is not you, the difference between "That information does not exist" and "That information does exist, but no one but me may ever know it" is simply trivial.



Okay, I'm out, this is getting too ridiculous even for me to continue this discussion.

I mean, if I'm the only person in the world who can tell the difference between a character and a caricature, so be it. But, personally, I don't believe that it's a unique skill.


So Knuckles knows Quertus and his background pretty well, because otherwise there's no reason to summon him in the first place, much less invite him to join in the adventure.

And of course somebody from Quertus' background will show up; a friend, a family member, an old rival or enemy. Why wouldn't they? If one person can make the transition between universes, others can too, and that's far too interesting a plot hook not to use. It's a good bet as well that at some point the entire party will travel the other way as well and visit Quertus' home universe.

Well, Knuckles may have summoned him blind. Shrug. I don't care either way. However, Quertus doesn't know any wizards of his level to complete his end of the ritual, so bringing in someone from Quertus' world that he doesn't know would be fine (if likely pointless).

Darth Ultron
2018-07-03, 03:40 PM
The best thing for the health of a game

I guess this is good for the ''health'' of the game, whatever that means. It does not sound like fun, though, and sounds a lot more like a 'social experiment'.

And guess it only works if you have a very open minded group that is willing to game at lot together for years. Then after all that time and effort, you might have a ''healthy'' game.

It's weird to say everyone must do things only the way you say, and think only the way you think and dismiss everything else. Like saying, ''ok, everyone, we must do all these one shots in exactly the way I want, and once we are done we will then be able to play a real healthy game.".

JoeJ
2018-07-03, 03:57 PM
Well, Knuckles may have summoned him blind. Shrug. I don't care either way. However, Quertus doesn't know any wizards of his level to complete his end of the ritual, so bringing in someone from Quertus' world that he doesn't know would be fine (if likely pointless).

It's not for you to say whether or not Knuckles summons somebody blind, that's the other player. And it absolutely would be people who know Quertus who come through, because that makes for a more interesting story. Quertus might pretend not to know them, but that doesn't change the fact that they know him.

More generally, you come across to me as if your main issue is that you don't trust other players, including the DM, to roleplay their characters properly. But that's not something that you have any legitimate say about. Trying to prevent other players from "tainting" their roleplay with metagaming is IMO manipulative and harmful to the group dynamic, and I would not allow it at my table. It's not any player's job to decide how the others should play their characters.

Friv
2018-07-03, 04:32 PM
The other players don't know the nature of the experiment. The GM gets to observe the difference in how that characters react to my behavior based on known and unknown secrets.

Usually, the GM then talks shop with me a lot after that, to learn from my obviously demonstrated superior experience and understanding of human behavior.

Wow. That's a scary thought. That I've had many GMs who understood people less well than I do.

This, right here?

This legitimately sounds like you are presenting a parody of a self-entitled jerk of a player. If you hadn't been really consistent throughout this thread, I would (especially having seen much more reasonable-sounding stuff from you in the past) assume that you were being extremely sarcastic right now in order to, I dunno, bait Darth Ultron some more, maybe.

To sum up: If a player comes to me and tells me that they have been taking actions in the game and not telling me, the answer is, "No, you haven't." If we're in the middle of a scene and you eat something and then tell me that you've been allergic to grapes the whole time, I'm going to say, "Wait, is that a new thing you want to do for this character?" and if you say, "No, it's always been the case, I just didn't trust you," then we are going to stop and have a hell of a long conversation.

Because frankly, if you don't trust me enough to tell me anything about your character, then you don't trust me to be your GM. And if you don't trust me to be your GM, why the heck are you even here?

Delta
2018-07-03, 04:49 PM
I mean, if I'm the only person in the world who can tell the difference between a character and a caricature, so be it. But, personally, I don't believe that it's a unique skill.

For anyone unable to read your mind (and in my experience, that includes everyone in the world except for you), there is literally no difference between a caricature without a background and a character with a deep background they are not allowed to know anything about.

But honestly, I've gone beyond the point of "Don't feed" twice now, and that's once more than should be necessary.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-07-03, 04:50 PM
This, right here?

This legitimately sounds like you are presenting a parody of a self-entitled jerk of a player. If you hadn't been really consistent throughout this thread, I would (especially having seen much more reasonable-sounding stuff from you in the past) assume that you were being extremely sarcastic right now in order to, I dunno, bait Darth Ultron some more, maybe.

To sum up: If a player comes to me and tells me that they have been taking actions in the game and not telling me, the answer is, "No, you haven't." If we're in the middle of a scene and you eat something and then tell me that you've been allergic to grapes the whole time, I'm going to say, "Wait, is that a new thing you want to do for this character?" and if you say, "No, it's always been the case, I just didn't trust you," then we are going to stop and have a hell of a long conversation.

Because frankly, if you don't trust me enough to tell me anything about your character, then you don't trust me to be your GM. And if you don't trust me to be your GM, why the heck are you even here?

My thoughts exactly. That's a huge set of red flags, nay, warning sirens going on there.

JoeJ
2018-07-03, 05:17 PM
This is the value of the scientific experiment I mentioned: once I prove the negative value of their position, it shifts the burden of proving an equal or greater negative value in my position. Which lets me run characters with secrets (as an experiment, to test the hypothesis). Which don't negatively impact the game (and, in fact, generally positively affect the role-playing). Wins all around!


The other players don't know the nature of the experiment. The GM gets to observe the difference in how that characters react to my behavior based on known and unknown secrets.

As a scientist in R/L, I have to object to this in the strongest possible terms. There are strict ethical guidelines about experimenting on human subjects, and the very first one is that the subjects must be fully informed and freely consent to participate in the experiment. It is not okay to experiment on people without their knowledge, regardless of whether or not that knowledge would affect the results.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-07-03, 05:55 PM
As a scientist in R/L, I have to object to this in the strongest possible terms. There are strict ethical guidelines about experimenting on human subjects, and the very first one is that the subjects must be fully informed and freely consent to participate in the experiment. It is not okay to experiment on people without their knowledge, regardless of whether or not that knowledge would affect the results.

Amen. That was part of my revulsion at that post.

Psikerlord
2018-07-03, 06:05 PM
I prefer either a zero level funnel adventure, where the adventure is how everyone knows each other, or a roll on a "party bonds" table.

As far as backgrounds go, i prefer a single sentence. If the player wants to expand on it more, they do so at the table, when we all learn about it at the same time. Not tucked away on a sheet that no-one reads (or remembers).

Astofel
2018-07-03, 06:21 PM
My thoughts on who should know what information go something like this:
Everyone at the table: knows the mechanics of every player character, class, race, feats, spell choices, etc. Sometimes the player characters might not know all of this, but I will never run or play in a game where someone is keeping a mechanical secret.
The GM: knows the backstories of the PCs insofar as they provide plot hooks for them to use. They should also be kept aware of the characters' motivations and goals, especially if they begin to conflict with the those of the rest of the party. The GM should also be told any other information they ask for. Assuming they're not a jerk, they'll have a good reason for doing so.
The Player: knows any other information they can be bothered to think of. Their character's eye colour, their favourite food, the birthday present they got on their 10th birthday, anything. Of course, if the GM asks for any of this information, the player should share it.

While I don't have a problem with characters who are 'not from around here' I have difficulty leaving it at just that. Why are they here as opposed to wherever they came from? Maybe it's because as a GM I love using the plot hooks from the characters' backstories, and when I'm a player I love it when the GM uses my backstory, especially if it's in a way I didn't expect.

As for whether the player characters should know each other, I can go either way. Typically, when I run a game it starts out with some incident that forces the characters to work together anyway, like a shipwreck or somehow waking up after a night of drinking to find themselves as sacrifices to some strange cult.

Mendicant
2018-07-04, 02:34 AM
I prefer for players to tell me how their characters know one or two other PCs, and what their motivation for adventuring with these other people is. Icefractal pointed out what for me is the most salient reason for this: gaming time is precious. I can't game as much as I would like to, and when I do run a game it's annoying to devote an inordinate amount of time to people's "why would I trust him" precautions and the OOC squabbles that tend to arise from too much IC backbiting and bickering. I certainly don't have time to run a dozen one-shots to test things out, or to run experiments on players that they didn't agree to in the first place.

Quertus
2018-07-04, 02:43 AM
As a scientist in R/L, I have to object to this in the strongest possible terms. There are strict ethical guidelines about experimenting on human subjects, and the very first one is that the subjects must be fully informed and freely consent to participate in the experiment. It is not okay to experiment on people without their knowledge, regardless of whether or not that knowledge would affect the results.


Amen. That was part of my revulsion at that post.

Do y'all have similar ethical issues with and revolution towards parents who don't tell children that they're eating something that they "hate" until after they've had the opportunity to tell how much they loved it? Or adults who do similar behaviors with one another? With friends who pull pranks on one another involving unknown information or outright deception? With lovers who lay hints and create false expectations regarding gifts? With humans who only reveal part of their personality, and observe the results of the experiment before expressing themselves further?

If so, I suspect that you will find that this world is not to your liking. If not, I suspect that your ethical compass is inconsistent.

Everyone is constantly being experimented on and observed. And sometimes even actively lied to. I fail to see why you would object to - of all things - the GM knowing the character's secrets, and getting their ignorance of human behavior removed by observing how players react differently to secrets that they, too, know than they do to ones that they are unaware of. Especially in comparison to the bulk of human behavior, which is generally far less benevolent.


If we're in the middle of a scene and you eat something and then tell me that you've been allergic to grapes the whole time, I'm going to say, "Wait, is that a new thing you want to do for this character?" and if you say, "No, it's always been the case, I just didn't trust you," then we are going to stop and have a hell of a long conversation.

Because frankly, if you don't trust me enough to tell me anything about your character, then you don't trust me to be your GM. And if you don't trust me to be your GM, why the heck are you even here?

Do I have trust issues? Sure. But I have yet to encounter a sufficiently inhuman group for those issues to be unmerited. Humans' behavior demonstrably cannot fail to be tainted by information. I trust fire to burn, pain to hurt, and humans to fail in very human ways. Thus far, that last one seems the most reliable of the three.

I'll hopefully get back to other parts of your post soon (I'm debating how to respond), but, for now, let me just say, thank you.

Satinavian
2018-07-04, 02:51 AM
I cannot argue against this mindset strongly enough.

The best thing for the health of a game that I have experienced is this: Having a series of one-shots where players try out different characters, GMs try out different scenarios, and the group gets together and discusses what they think would make for a fun game. This is where people can work through differences in vocabulary - "when you said spy game, I thought...". This is how people can make informed decisions about what characters might work well together. This is, incidentally, one of the places where people usually ask me to play Quertus, my signature character, for whom this account is named. That few people plan their RPGs this intelligently is irrelevant to the fact that this is best practices, IME.

Thus, running such experiments is not wasting valuable gaming time - it is, in fact, using it wisely to produce an optimized experience, and comes free when following best practices.Having a session zero and talking about expectations and trying to align them is good. Playing severeal unrelated one shot with wildly different characters you you don't particularly care about just to bbe better informed when you decide on your real character is nothing but a stupid waste of time. I am incredulous how you ever got several groups to do such a thing.

True. While it's rare that I'll encounter a GM oblivious enough to human nature, or to the varied nature of fun, to not get it when it is explained to them, it does happen. In such a scenario, I will simply repeat the experiment, as evidenced by the fact that I stated that I've run the experiment repeatedly.So if your experimental result doesn't fit your preconception or doesn't convince your target you repeat it until it is better ? That is real science here at work.

I am also a scientist and stuff like that makes me really angry.

I agree with those other two scientists about the ethical concerns too. But frankly, what you describe failed basic empiric principles at so many levels that it shouldn't be called scientific experimentation anyway.

Social science is esspeccially hard. Sampling is a problem. And there are so many subtle ways to influence the results due to interaction of experimentator and subject. Maybe you should start reading something about how how people found out they need double-blindness and the long history of social scientists fooling themself by mistakenly confirming their beliefs even dispite trying to do everything possible to avoid it.



And learning what people mean when they use words is a great use for the one-shots I'm advocating.And a still better way would be to just read the setting discription where it is actually explained. And for character related stuff one shots wouldn't help you get the missing context as that does not belong to the same character.



Do y'all have similar ethical issues with and revolution towards parents who don't tell children that they're eating something that they "hate" until after they've had the opportunity to tell how much they loved it? Or adults who do similar behaviors with one another? With friends who pull pranks on one another involving unknown information or outright deception? With lovers who lay hints and create false expectations regarding gifts? With humans who only reveal part of their personality, and observe the results of the experiment before expressing themselves further?Children and parents is different because parents are responsible to make certain decisions in the childs place. Yes, experimentation on children is handled differently and children get less and less to decide about it the younger they are and parents more.

And yes, doing stuff like that with an adult is unethical and likely to provoke anger. Pranks are not science and scientific ethical standards don't apply. But there is often disagreement about the morality and legality of "pranks". Similar for courtship. And yes, hiding part of your personality just to observe the reaction can be fishy too and people are often angry about it.


Everyone is constantly being experimented on and observed. And sometimes even actively lied to. I fail to see why you would object to - of all things - the GM knowing the character's secrets, and getting their ignorance of human behavior removed by observing how players react differently to secrets that they, too, know than they do to ones that they are unaware of. Especially in comparison to the bulk of human behavior, which is generally far less benevolent.We are talking about science and human experimentation, not about casual observation or about lies.


Do I have trust issues? Sure. But I have yet to encounter a sufficiently inhuman group for those issues to be unmerited. Humans' behavior demonstrably cannot fail to be tainted by information. I trust fire to burn, pain to hurt, and humans to fail in very human ways. Thus far, that last one seems the most reliable of the three.Frankly, i think you might be a problem player who has problems conforming to basic expectation of other roleplayers which might result in you often encountering problems with GMs and other players. And instead of reflecting on your behavior you start distrusting everyone else and try to limit every influence on your gaming experience from everyone else, thus of course making future problems only more likely.

Delta
2018-07-04, 02:53 AM
experiment

That word you keep using? It does not mean what you seem to think it means.

Koo Rehtorb
2018-07-04, 03:20 AM
I don't think it's an especially controversial point that players having metaknowledge will make them act differently than them not having that metaknowledge.

I think it is highly questionable to assert that this means them not having the knowledge is obviously the superior choice. And more than that, it isn't really your call to make. You don't get to unilaterally decide what makes for a better game.

Satinavian
2018-07-04, 03:29 AM
Is this like you have the back ground where Pizza the Hutt killed your parents. So the DM uses that and makes Pizza a big, fat orc in the game. Then the player gets all upset as they wanted(but never said) that Pizza was in fact a hot woman, and now the GM has ''ruined'' the characters history.Good GMs manage to avoid those problems by asking for missing details or even for permission to use certain elements or for the intentions players have regarding the use of character background.

I can't recall having an real argument about background use in decades and have played with many players who care a lot about background and can be pretty protective about it and with many GMs who like using it. Somehow that still works if people actually make some effort and respect the other side.

JoeJ
2018-07-04, 05:34 AM
Do y'all have similar ethical issues with and revolution towards parents who don't tell children that they're eating something that they "hate" until after they've had the opportunity to tell how much they loved it? Or adults who do similar behaviors with one another? With friends who pull pranks on one another involving unknown information or outright deception? With lovers who lay hints and create false expectations regarding gifts? With humans who only reveal part of their personality, and observe the results of the experiment before expressing themselves further?

False analogies do not justify unethical behavior.


I fail to see why you would object to - of all things - the GM knowing the character's secrets, and getting their ignorance of human behavior removed by observing how players react differently to secrets that they, too, know than they do to ones that they are unaware of.

The fact that you fail to see that is quite disturbing. As is your failure to see that the experiment you described provides no justification whatsoever for keeping secrets from the GM and other players for the purpose of altering their roleplay.


Humans' behavior demonstrably cannot fail to be tainted by information.

Not tainted, affected. Tainted is a value judgment, not a demonstrable fact. You're not wrong in believing that human behavior is affected by information, you're wrong in believing that this gives you the right to try and manipulate people into roleplaying their characters "correctly".

Cluedrew
2018-07-04, 08:12 AM
To Quertus: Didn't I have a conversation with you about experiments... a year or two ago? I don't know if you remember that conversation. I think I said something about thought experiments at the time. Although honestly this time around I think the term practice would be a better word. You can practice presenting different types of characters and gage your success off of people's reactions. Calling it an experiment is not incorrect, but it has some connotations that don't hold (see other posts for that).

I think practice is a better word because what described is a learning experience, but it is also informal and non-transferable compared to a scientific experiment. For instance I have let a lot of players not tell me things so they can do a big reveal later, not once has it actually worked out any better than similar things just laid out in the open. Of course even the similar things were not actually the same and happened with different groups, so I can't say it was because it was out in the open, but there does seem to be a trend in that direction. Actually that one is neither practice or experiment, but it is something I have learned from experience.

Tanarii
2018-07-04, 08:38 AM
That word you keep using? It does not mean what you seem to think it means.Seriously.

As someone trained heavily in science (although I don't use it much), it's pretty disturbing to see someone so willfully misuse the term.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-07-04, 08:57 AM
Seriously.

As someone trained heavily in science (although I don't use it much), it's pretty disturbing to see someone so willfully misuse the term.

It seems to also betray a belief that other players are there to be used for one's own ends, not as fellow companions in a fun social activity. If you think of others as experimental subjects to be manipulated into playing how you want...

Quertus
2018-07-04, 09:00 AM
That word you keep using? It does not mean what you seem to think it means.

That's fair. :smalltongue:


You're not wrong in believing that human behavior is affected by information


I don't think it's an especially controversial point that players having metaknowledge will make them act differently than them not having that metaknowledge.

Thanks. I've had a few GMs (and fellow players) who didn't believe this obvious truth, and needed to be educated on this topic, but, for the most part, most people I've met agree with your assessment that this is common knowledge.


I think it is highly questionable to assert that this means them not having the knowledge is obviously the superior choice. And more than that, it isn't really your call to make. You don't get to unilaterally decide what makes for a better game.


As is your failure to see that the experiment you described provides no justification whatsoever for keeping secrets from the GM and other players for the purpose of altering their roleplay.

you're wrong in believing that this gives you the right to try and manipulate people into roleplaying their characters "correctly".

You are correct - the "experiment" only demonstrates that there is a difference. I am the one explaining that my fun is enhanced by or dependent upon one and not the other. Thus begins the conversation wherein I / the GM / the group work to maximize everyone's fun. Well, in a good group. In a more dysfunctional group, something else happens, and I save myself the trouble of gaming with bad people.


To Quertus: Didn't I have a conversation with you about experiments... a year or two ago? I don't know if you remember that conversation. I think I said something about thought experiments at the time. Although honestly this time around I think the term practice would be a better word. You can practice presenting different types of characters and gage your success off of people's reactions. Calling it an experiment is not incorrect, but it has some connotations that don't hold (see other posts for that).

I think practice is a better word because what described is a learning experience, but it is also informal and non-transferable compared to a scientific experiment. For instance I have let a lot of players not tell me things so they can do a big reveal later, not once has it actually worked out any better than similar things just laid out in the open. Of course even the similar things were not actually the same and happened with different groups, so I can't say it was because it was out in the open, but there does seem to be a trend in that direction. Actually that one is neither practice or experiment, but it is something I have learned from experience.

Practice? Sure, that's a good word for the best practices I've described. A number of practice runs, to calibrate verbiage and expectations, and allow players to make informed decisions about enjoyable parties, scenarios, etc.


Having a session zero and talking about expectations and trying to align them is good. Playing severeal unrelated one shot with wildly different characters you you don't particularly care about just to bbe better informed when you decide on your real character is nothing but a stupid waste of time. I am incredulous how you ever got several groups to do such a thing.

Wow. There's so much wrong with such a short paragraph. The number of mistaken impressions is amazing.

First off, you'll note that I talked about how this is (one of the places) where people will ask me to play Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named. No, they aren't "characters you don't care about" - that would be dumb.

Although I hadn't intended to address this directly, I will admit, one-shots are a good opportunity to try out new characters, to make sure that you do care about them, rather than risk fielding an uncaredfor piece in a lengthy campaign.

I've never advocated this technique before - it's numerous groups that have convinced me of the value of the technique. And me very belatedly reporting my findings to the gaming community.



So if your experimental result doesn't fit your preconception or doesn't convince your target you repeat it until it is better ? That is real science here at work.

Confusion. I've never had to repeat the experiment in the same group, as humans have unfailingly displayed human failings.

I've had to repeat the experiment in multiple groups, because I've played with multiple groups that contained people too ignorant of human behavior to recognize such obvious truths.


I am also a scientist and stuff like that makes me really angry.

I agree with those other two scientists about the ethical concerns too. But frankly, what you describe failed basic empiric principles at so many levels that it shouldn't be called scientific experimentation anyway.

Social science is esspeccially hard. Sampling is a problem. And there are so many subtle ways to influence the results due to interaction of experimentator and subject. Maybe you should start reading something about how how people found out they need double-blindness and the long history of social scientists fooling themself by mistakenly confirming their beliefs even dispite trying to do everything possible to avoid it.

Or, if we rename it to what it really is, all this misplaced anger goes away.

Funny how important finding out what people mean when they use a word can be. It's almost like social interactions - like posting or games - might benefit from spending the time to test what people mean by words...


And a still better way would be to just read the setting discription where it is actually explained. And for character related stuff one shots wouldn't help you get the missing context as that does not belong to the same character.

How that could possibly help the mismatch where I assume "investigation" involves player skills, and the GM assumes it involves roll-playing, is beyond me. citation, please?


Frankly, i think you might be a problem player who has problems conforming to basic expectation of other roleplayers which might result in you often encountering problems with GMs and other players. And instead of reflecting on your behavior you start distrusting everyone else and try to limit every influence on your gaming experience from everyone else, thus of course making future problems only more likely.

Let's say that I enjoy rolling physical dice.

Most groups, I can roll dice, no problem.

Then I find a group that doesn't allow dice. So I ask why. I explain that my enjoyment of the game is heightened by or even requires the rolling of dice.

Some GMs don't believe that this is possible. So I point them to Angry's eight aesthetics, to educate them (sorry, I couldn't imagine an "experiment" to parallel here).

Once dealing with an educated GM, we return to my question of "why". We discuss whether there is any way to make the game fun for everyone.

Or the GM is completely unreasonable, not open to discussion, and I save myself the headache.

Please, explain how you consider this the behavior of a problem player.

Tanarii
2018-07-04, 09:40 AM
It seems to also betray a belief that other players are there to be used for one's own ends, not as fellow companions in a fun social activity. If you think of others as experimental subjects to be manipulated into playing how you want...The main point is "experimental subjects" and "to be manipulated [...] how you want" should never ever be in the same sentence. That's, like, the very worst of 20th century "science".

Cluedrew
2018-07-04, 09:49 AM
Practice? Sure, that's a good word for the best practices I've described. A number of practice runs, to calibrate verbiage and expectations, and allow players to make informed decisions about enjoyable parties, scenarios, etc.You misunderstand me or I misrepresent myself, same effect. I don't mean as in adding practice as part of good practices or anything like that. I mean that what you are doing is more practice than experiment. It is you (and your group) practicing to become better at playing roleplaying games. The purpose, the methodologies and the kinds of results you get are more inline with what is expected of practice (improvement, informal, personal/practical) then what people expect when you say experiment (discovery, exacting, general/theoretical).

I also disagree with the idea of a practice run, not because I think people shouldn't practice but because I don't think that should ever out weigh people having fun. I don't disagree with the idea of running some one shots that you can calibrate during but mostly because I think those one-shots can still be fun. The best campaigns I have played in have been two-shots. Is this just a word-choice thing? Welcome to the Playground.

Satinavian
2018-07-04, 10:00 AM
Wow. There's so much wrong with such a short paragraph. The number of mistaken impressions is amazing.

First off, you'll note that I talked about how this is (one of the places) where people will ask me to play Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named. No, they aren't "characters you don't care about" - that would be dumb.
It is not about you. I don't care if you care for the bunch of characters you want to play in this series of one shots. (And i am also somehow surprised that "series of one shots where people try out different characters to get a better idea of their preferences" somehow can mean that you get to play Quertus, the one character you probably already knows best.)

All other players would need to have a bunch of characters for that too and they have to be appropriate for all those scenarios. It is likely that most of those characters have to created from scratch and and will never see play again.


Please, explain how you consider this the behavior of a problem player.

- You have very uncommon wishes that are very likely to contradict preferences of other players and the GM and those wishes are very important to you. This makes compromises hard and agreement unlikely

- You do social experiments on players without their knowledge. Many people would be very offended if they ever find out.

- You have a distrust of all other players and GMs.

Quertus
2018-07-04, 10:08 AM
You misunderstand me or I misrepresent myself, same effect. I don't mean as in adding practice as part of good practices or anything like that. I mean that what you are doing is more practice than experiment. It is you (and your group) practicing to become better at playing roleplaying games. The purpose, the methodologies and the kinds of results you get are more inline with what is expected of practice (improvement, informal, personal/practical) then what people expect when you say experiment (discovery, exacting, general/theoretical).

I also disagree with the idea of a practice run, not because I think people shouldn't practice but because I don't think that should ever out weigh people having fun. I don't disagree with the idea of running some one shots that you can calibrate during but mostly because I think those one-shots can still be fun. The best campaigns I have played in have been two-shots. Is this just a word-choice thing? Welcome to the Playground.

Oh, I'll gladly cop to misunderstanding you. In fact, I'm likely to misunderstand most of this post, too. Sorry. Reading comprehension is not my strong suit.

So, you would call my "experiment" practice? Eh, it's something to test out very clearly opposed hypothesis ("my players won't react differently based on OOC information" "um, yes, they will"). It's arguably most akin to a wager, actually ("I'll bet you my ability to play characters with secrets on it"), although its purpose is less gamble and more educational, to facilitate an informed stance when discussing how to optimize the fun of the group.

If I read you correctly, I'm with you 100% on the importance of fun in the practice runs. (EDIT: in fact, most groups didn't explicitly call them practice runs, just one-shots). I'm just willing to sacrifice my fun on one run to guarantee it on longer campaigns when dealing with humans so ignorant of human behavior as to put my fun in jeopardy (while insisting on the impossibility of culpability) in the first place.

You know, I'm honestly not sure what I'd consider the best campaigns I was in. I'll have to think about that. EDIT: for example, I greatly enjoyed the first adventure / campaign in which I played Armus. But was it technically good? Start at first level, travel with artifact-wielding epic level self-insert DMPC. Most of the PCs were abducted from home worlds by the gods to deal with a(n already successful) genocidal invasion force (again, at first level). Oh, and the party was 7th level by the time I joined (at first level). Was this a technically good game? No, I'm pretty sure it's the stuff GM horror stories are made of. But I had fun with the character, the PCs, and many of the individual scenes. So how should I rate that?

Darth Ultron
2018-07-04, 11:44 AM
Do y'all have similar ethical issues with and revolution towards parents who don't tell children that they're eating something that they "hate" until after they've had the opportunity to tell how much they loved it?

It is wrong to treat children and adults the same.



Everyone is constantly being experimented on and observed.

Not by normal people.



And sometimes even actively lied to. I fail to see why you would object to - of all things - the GM knowing the character's secrets, and getting their ignorance of human behavior removed by observing how players react differently to secrets that they, too, know than they do to ones that they are unaware of. Especially in comparison to the bulk of human behavior, which is generally far less benevolent.

Except your talking about pointless fluff secrets, right? Ones that have no mechanical game effect or role playing game effect? So it utterly does not matter.


Actually that one is neither practice or experiment, but it is something I have learned from experience.

From experience I can say that having the characters not know each other at the start of the game play is often a bad idea. I have done this hundreds of times. All too often it leads to a group of solo games where the players down right refuse to do anything with any other player as they ''don't know that player's character''. The end result is a game where nothing happens and on one has fun. But a simple thing like ''all your characters grew up together and know each other'', and suddenly the players will play the game as a group.

Even when the 'unknown characters' works out, it still often wastes hours of game time as the characters ''get to know each other''. Some people do think that is the ''best role playing 4ever!", but I see it as a huge waste of time. I would much rather be keep deep in an adventure with everyone participating, then just sitting there and listing to a player done on about the novel they wrote for their character.

The only way 'unknown characters' really workout is when they are something like all part of a group so they ''have to'' work together.


I also disagree with the idea of a practice run

This really does not make sense in an RPG concept.You don't ''run a practice game'' to see if you like a character or setting or story or whatever. You just ''run a game''. In effect every game is a learning experience for everyone open to it for everything. And you can't really judge something like a character by just using them in a random game for a couple hours. You'd really need like a hundred hours and they would need to be personal game play where you used the character fully.

MrSandman
2018-07-04, 12:07 PM
Do I have trust issues? Sure. But I have yet to encounter a sufficiently inhuman group for those issues to be unmerited. Humans' behavior demonstrably cannot fail to be tainted by information. I trust fire to burn, pain to hurt, and humans to fail in very human ways. Thus far, that last one seems the most reliable of the three.


Before I proceed with my post, let me say that I wholeheartedly agree with what you said about humans failing in very human ways.

Now that that's out of the way, the problem I find with your position is that you talk as if any other way of playing role-playing games is a mistake and a failure.

Human beings choose their accions on the basis of the information they've got available. That is completely true. But it is a feature, not a bug. Trying to "fix" it doesn't work. The problem, I daresay, with sharing secrets is that you assume that then you must play as if you didn't know them.

There is no real fix to the situation of "I don't want my character's actions to be tainted by metagame information," because by their very nature, a lot of what happens in a role-playing game happens at the metagame level.

For example, let's say that I've got a character who every once in a while goes off by himself to do something secret that nobody else knows about. One time, as he's wandering off, another character realises about it, so the player says, "I follow him stealthily" (and his roll succeeds). Now, all of a sudden I've decided that my character is not going to do his secret thing, because it isn't time for the great reveal yet. Bam, information has tainted the game.

I'm assuming that things like "I follow him stealthily" are said in the public, because otherwise it gets ridiculous pretty quickly to the point where the game master is game-mastering five different games that at some points intersect each other and everyone else is having their own private fantasy.

This is just an obvious example. One could find loads of other examples in which such metagaming doesn't happen (or at least isn't as apparent), I agree with that. My sole point is that there are too many things going on at the metagame level to pretend that it is possible to have a game in which metagame doesn't affect the game.

Let's go back to the premise that humans choose their actions based on the information that they've got available. I say, let's use it. Don't make a game where you say stuff that then everyone is supposed to pretend that they don't know. Have them involved and be part of it.

I can have everyone wondering why my character always gets nervous in front of soldiers, keeps her hood on in taverns, and is reluctant to go into big populations, or I can tell them, "Hey, my character is going to be a princess of a neighbouring kingdom. She'll be lying low because her uncle has usurped the throne that is rightfully hers." And that is a great opportunity for the game master to say, "That sounds cool. He'll probably have some people working on finding you either to bring you back or to assassinate you." And then another player may say, "Maybe my knight fought with your father, and he dearly respected him because he was a man of honour, so when I find out, I'll make it my duty to protect you." And then we can decide how this secret will affect the story and how it'll be revealed together.

I personally find that much more rewarding because it creates characters that have a story and a relationship to the world. They are somebody who live in the imaginary world and have ties to it. The alternative of having a character who is secretly a runaway princess without anyone knowing it just sounds like a recipe for disaster. A runaway princess must have consequences, how is the game master going to do anything about it if they don't know? The sheer "unrealism" of not having it have any effect whatsoever in the story because not even the game master knows it would kill all the appeal of said character for me.

So, back to my point. I understand that you may like a game that focuses more on creating quirky characters who have no ties whatsoever with the world and their background is totally secret so as to open the possibility of getting to know them. I get that. But that's just one way among many to play role-playing games. Making decisions based on meta-information is not wrong, having a background is not wrong, the game master (and/or other players) having the story take a particular turn based on your background is not wrong, and having other people chip in and use your background to help create a game together is not wrong. None of these things are wrong, or an abuse of power, or an abuse of trust, or anything that requires people to stop trusting other people. It is just something that can be used in right and wrong ways to enhance the group's experience.

JoeJ
2018-07-04, 01:19 PM
You are correct - the "experiment" only demonstrates that there is a difference. I am the one explaining that my fun is enhanced by or dependent upon one and not the other.

And the bottom line is that it doesn't matter whether it enhances your fun or not. Manipulating people without their knowledge or consent is wrong. There are extreme cases where it is arguably the lesser evil, but making a game more fun is not one of them.

Quertus
2018-07-04, 02:03 PM
Except your talking about pointless fluff secrets, right? Ones that have no mechanical game effect or role playing game effect? So it utterly does not matter.

"I am not left handed".

JoeJ
2018-07-04, 02:13 PM
"I am not left handed".

GM: Yes you are. It says so right here on my copy of your character sheet.

<edit> It just occurred to me that this would actually work very well in Fate. Narrate that you're fighting with your off hand and use deceive (or sneaky in FAE) to create not left handed as an advantage that you can invoke in a future attack. Of course, you're not actually hiding anything from the other players, just the characters.

Cluedrew
2018-07-04, 02:25 PM
So, you would call my "experiment" practice? Eh, it's something to test out very clearly opposed hypothesis ("my players won't react differently based on OOC information" "um, yes, they will"). It's arguably most akin to a wager, actually ("I'll bet you my ability to play characters with secrets on it"), although its purpose is less gamble and more educational, to facilitate an informed stance when discussing how to optimize the fun of the group.... OK that kind of changes the appropriate word a bit, example is starting to come into focus. However as pointed out by others experiment carries a certain... formality that this lacks. What is your measurement error? Your control group? Your [insert other science words here as needed]? Of course on the other end of the scale:


You know, I'm honestly not sure what I'd consider the best campaigns I was in. I'll have to think about that. EDIT: for example, I greatly enjoyed the first adventure / campaign in which I played Armus. But was it technically good?What do you mean by "technically good"? Did you and the other people at the table (yes including GM) have fun? Then it was a good game. The best game is then the one everyone had the most fun. You could break out more measurements and conditions, but I don't see why you would.

The bit in the middle about practice games is fine and I have nothing to add.

Darth Ultron
2018-07-04, 02:32 PM
I can have everyone wondering why my character always gets nervous in front of soldiers, keeps her hood on in taverns, and is reluctant to go into big populations, or I can tell them, .

So this is a good example here. As part of the characters backstory they are a ''runaway from something'' and someone is looking for them. Ok, fine character back story.

1)You tell the other players the character back story. Then, in the game, when your character ''hides their face in a cloak'', the players know why it is being done and can say you are role playing your character. Everyone can participate in the role playing, as they know what is going on.

2)You keep it a secret from the other players. So now when you do something, at best other players just see you as hogging the spotlight and wasting time. They don't know your role playing your character, and just saying ''guys everything I do is ok" or whatever does not really cut it. Worse, you are only role playing with and for yourself: you are just forcing the other players to be your audience.

The worst here is where you really do want to hog the spotlight and every couple of minutes say a 'secret hint' as you want the other players to be curious and try to find out your secrets. And you will never tell them, haha, cue jerk power manipulation rush!

3)Keep it secret from everyone. So in most games this will mean whatever your secret is, it does not exist for real in the game as the DM does not know about it or approve it. So you can ''say to yourself'' your character is ''king of the world'', or whatever, but it won't be ''true'' in the world. So when your character encounters a royal guard...you can freak out to yourself and think that ''guard is looking for my character'', but you are just playing that game in your mind.

Koo Rehtorb
2018-07-04, 02:45 PM
For example, let's say that I've got a character who every once in a while goes off by himself to do something secret that nobody else knows about. One time, as he's wandering off, another character realises about it, so the player says, "I follow him stealthily" (and his roll succeeds). Now, all of a sudden I've decided that my character is not going to do his secret thing, because it isn't time for the great reveal yet. Bam, information has tainted the game.

This seems like a particularly poor counter example. This would, in fact, be highly obnoxious if that player metagamed and didn't do it after all because he knew OOCly that he was being followed.

One would hope that you're not playing with players who are bad enough to do this, but if you were playing with bad players then yes, telling the GM secretly that you were following him would be the necessary step that you had to take, I suppose.

Quertus
2018-07-04, 03:21 PM
And the bottom line is that it doesn't matter whether it enhances your fun or not. Manipulating people without their knowledge or consent is wrong. There are extreme cases where it is arguably the lesser evil, but making a game more fun is not one of them.

In what way do you perceive my position to involve manipulating people?


Before I proceed with my post, let me say that I wholeheartedly agree with what you said about humans failing in very human ways.

Cool. Thanks.


Now that that's out of the way, the problem I find with your position is that you talk as if any other way of playing role-playing games is a mistake and a failure.

Hmmm... that may be fair, if unintentional. I keep telling myself "I'll address other people's players next time", and never actually doing so. So, consider this a case of mms taking about my personal love of girls / cats / vanilla, and and my social skills / the internet making it seem like I'm demonizing love of boys / dogs / chocolate.

I know that I enjoy "rolling dice". Yes, it's a valid preference - do I really need to prove that? I do? Fine, have some proof. Now that I've demonstrated that it can make a difference to some people, allow me to restate that it makes a difference to me, so that we can get on with discussing the possibility of accommodating everyone's fun.


I can have everyone wondering why my character always gets nervous in front of soldiers, keeps her hood on in taverns, and is reluctant to go into big populations, or I can tell them, "Hey, my character is going to be a princess of a neighbouring kingdom. She'll be lying low because her uncle has usurped the throne that is rightfully hers." And that is a great opportunity for the game master to say, "That sounds cool. He'll probably have some people working on finding you either to bring you back or to assassinate you." And then another player may say, "Maybe my knight fought with your father, and he dearly respected him because he was a man of honour, so when I find out, I'll make it my duty to protect you." And then we can decide how this secret will affect the story and how it'll be revealed together.

Ah. I think I get people's objections now.

I'm not trying to say that that's not a valid way to play. Your princess is welcome to have her secrets revealed. Although, admittedly, it reduces my Exploration fun, so I ask that you not be a ****, and don't do so unless doing so adds to someone's fun.

Your princess, and your / the group's fun with her is part of why it's a discussion with the GM / group, not just me saying, "this easy is the only way". Admittedly, I'm not really accustomed to players working together to build a story the way you describe.

I try to build characters who are unlike your princess, whose story isn't prewritten, and who won't be so inherently influential and terribly missed as to automatically have nations hunting then.

MrSandman
2018-07-04, 03:26 PM
This seems like a particularly poor counter example. This would, in fact, be highly obnoxious if that player metagamed and didn't do it after all because he knew OOCly that he was being followed.

Is it though? No one knows why your character goes off to walk by himself. If this one time he feeds some wild animal that he's keeping secretly instead of preparing his fix of a potent drug, nobody will ever know. I'm not saying it's mature behaviour, but it wouldn't be the worst I've seen. You can just make up (or choose to show) any other secret to preserve the one that you don't want discovered.

EDIT: On the other hand, you may be right. It's late and I'm tired. Tomorrow I'll give it a couple more spins in my head. I do agree that my example is a pretty immature response.

MrSandman
2018-07-04, 03:34 PM
Hmmm... that may be fair, if unintentional. I keep telling myself "I'll address other people's players next time", and never actually doing so. So, consider this a case of mms taking about my personal love of girls / cats / vanilla, and and my social skills / the internet making it seem like I'm demonizing love of boys / dogs / chocolate.

I know that I enjoy "rolling dice". Yes, it's a valid preference - do I really need to prove that? I do? Fine, have some proof. Now that I've demonstrated that it can make a difference to some people, allow me to restate that it makes a difference to me, so that we can get on with discussing the possibility of accommodating everyone's fun.

Ah. I think I get people's objections now.

I'm not trying to say that that's not a valid way to play. Your princess is welcome to have her secrets revealed. Although, admittedly, it reduces my Exploration fun, so I ask that you not be a ****, and don't do so unless doing so adds to someone's fun.

Your princess, and your / the group's fun with her is part of why it's a discussion with the GM / group, not just me saying, "this easy is the only way". Admittedly, I'm not really accustomed to players working together to build a story the way you describe.

I try to build characters who are unlike your princess, whose story isn't prewritten, and who won't be so inherently influential and terribly missed as to automatically have nations hunting then.

We're cool now^^ I think we've reached a satisfactory understanding.

JoeJ
2018-07-04, 03:49 PM
In what way do you perceive my position to involve manipulating people?

Did you not say that you keep secrets specifically so that the way the other players roleplay their characters (including NPCs) will not be tainted by OOC knowledge? That's manipulation, which is not acceptable behavior unless those other players consent to being manipulated that way.

Quertus
2018-07-04, 07:18 PM
Did you not say that you keep secrets specifically so that the way the other players roleplay their characters (including NPCs) will not be tainted by OOC knowledge? That's manipulation, which is not acceptable behavior unless those other players consent to being manipulated that way.

So, wait, the Playgrounder's story, where he had to inform his fellow players of the concepts of role-playing and OOC information, where, just because the module had a vampire in the title, that wasn't information that they should be acting on - you don't view that as an issue for their ignorance, but for his unacceptable manipulation of the way that they play the game?

ImNotTrevor
2018-07-04, 07:19 PM
As someone with scientific experience, I'm surprised to see moral arguments about official, documented, thoroughly scientifically rigorous experimentation applied to what is essentially the equivalent of "let's see what happens if I do this" sort of experimentation, which is much less formal and pretty much harmless. (With obvious stupid exceptions to that notion excluded.)

Quertus isn't talking about doing the Stanford Prison Experiment, here. He's talking about unofficially seeing how people behave when he does certain things. Which fits the 2nd definition of Experiment:
Try new things and see how it goes. (Paraphrased, obviously.)

Apparently no Linguistics or Communications scientists around here because nobody figured that out (at least not that I saw)


But this is one of those threads where people start spouting opinions and try to assert why their preference is objectively correct while the occassional reasonable person comes through to say that it depends on the situation and the group. The endless cycling of threads like these is why I so rarely post anymore. In most threads I know exactly what I'm going to see. This is it.

JoeJ
2018-07-04, 09:21 PM
So, wait, the Playgrounder's story, where he had to inform his fellow players of the concepts of role-playing and OOC information, where, just because the module had a vampire in the title, that wasn't information that they should be acting on - you don't view that as an issue for their ignorance, but for his unacceptable manipulation of the way that they play the game?

Are you seriously trying to nitpick what is or isn't manipulation? Because that raises red flags with there.

I don't remember reading the story you're talking about, and I'm not going to go back through a long thread to find it. From what you're saying here, though, he informed the other players, which sure doesn't sound like something he could do without them being aware of it.

Cluedrew
2018-07-04, 09:36 PM
But this is one of those threads where people start spouting opinions and try to assert why their preference is objectively correct while the occassional reasonable person comes through to say that it depends on the situation and the group.Yeah, but the point is A) to be that occasional reasonable person and B) pulling apart "the situation and the group" to poke at the details.

Or it is for me, but I'm also trying to start "Deep Dive Threads" to actually try and pull apart issues. I've got a few successes, one recently I got a model that describes a couple of important points (character/player-story/challenge focus) that I am proud of. I'm still bouncing around ideas for the next one. So far I got a question about switching systems I might through out there, still working on it, things have been busy.

Delta
2018-07-05, 04:45 AM
Which fits the 2nd definition of Experiment:
Try new things and see how it goes. (Paraphrased, obviously.)

...

But this is one of those threads where people start spouting opinions and try to assert why their preference is objectively correct while the occassional reasonable person comes through to say that it depends on the situation and the group. The endless cycling of threads like these is why I so rarely post anymore. In most threads I know exactly what I'm going to see. This is it.

No, the problem started when Quertus spouted his opinion that he, if he has played in any significant number of groups, knows full well would be seen as extremely odd at best, disruptive and a breach of social contract at worst, and declared everyone who wasn't able to see his way of doing things was so clearly superiour to be complete idiots unable to understand the first thing about human behaviour (and even those who do understand move only one rung up to "idiots who at least are able to see they're complete idiots unable to play the game correctly"). I would wager in the vast, vast majority of groups, players keeping secrets from the GM would not be seen as acceptable (as very clearly indicated by the overwhelmingly one-sided reactions in this very thread)

(And his "experiment" was not even "Try new things and see how it goes", since he had no interest in "seeing how it goes", he had exactly one desired result and made sure that's what would happen. That doesn't even clear the very low bar of the 2nd definition you used, that's just trying to show off)

Yeah, that kind of behaviour leads to somewhat heated reactions regardless of topic, that shouldn't be a huge surprise for someone who knows something about typical human behaviour.

Cluedrew
2018-07-05, 07:18 AM
To Delta: I have gone back and forth with Quertus on a lot of issues and I have discovered several important facts about him: He's weird. He is aware of that. Not usually in a bad way.Also I am a GM who lets players not tell me their character's secrets (if I know the player). I wouldn't recommend it to them because most have fallen flat, but if they want to try they may. Which is a completely different reason than most other people.

I just had a bunch of ideas about how that aligns with player-story focused and Quertus's view aligns with character-story focused and... I think the general view is not actually connected to anything in the focus model, just minimize the risk of disruption.

Tanarii
2018-07-05, 07:20 AM
Quertus isn't talking about doing the Stanford Prison Experiment, here.
That's exactly what his "experiment" brings to mind, in terms of ethics and morality, and in terms of a total lack of understanding of what qualifies as experimental process.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-07-05, 07:36 AM
That's exactly what his "experiment" brings to mind, in terms of ethics and morality, and in terms of a total lack of understanding of what qualifies as experimental process.

Plus a strongly desired outcome in which the experimenter has a personal stake. Scientists who too closely identify with their theory make bad science.

Delta
2018-07-05, 07:48 AM
To Delta: I have gone back and forth with Quertus on a lot of issues and I have discovered several important facts about him: He's weird. He is aware of that. Not usually in a bad way.Also I am a GM who lets players not tell me their character's secrets (if I know the player). I wouldn't recommend it to them because most have fallen flat, but if they want to try they may. Which is a completely different reason than most other people.

Honestly, if a player came to me during session 0 and said "Hey, how about we try maybe everyone keeping one piece of background information secret from everyone, including the GM?" I might even be up for that. But I think everyone can agree that this is most definitely not standard behaviour for almost every group out there, a player showing up and expecting this kind of thing to just to be okay would be disappointed in literally every group I've ever played in.

And I know Quertus is well aware of him being weird, but a lot of the stuff he's been writing here has been flat out insulting to the point of just falling short of directly calling anyone not agreeing with him complete idiots, it's just that he's obviously smart enough to phrase the insults so he cleverly avoids words that would draw a moderator's attention. That's just not okay in my opinion and at least in that case, it's definitely weird in a bad way because instead of enabling a potentially interesting discussion about a weird idea he brought up, he's killing most of it through the way he's presenting and defending it.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-07-05, 08:07 AM
And I know Quertus is well aware of him being weird, but a lot of the stuff he's been writing here has been flat out insulting to the point of just falling short of directly calling anyone not agreeing with him complete idiots, it's just that he's obviously smart enough to phrase the insults so he cleverly avoids words that would draw a moderator's attention. That's just not okay in my opinion and at least in that case, it's definitely weird in a bad way because instead of enabling a potentially interesting discussion about a weird idea he brought up, he's killing most of it through the way he's presenting and defending it.

Agreed. The sense of "I'm sooo much smarter than you, and unless you agree with me you're stupid" is strongly off-putting. Whether intentional or not, that's what's coming across to me. Combined with a perceived disregard for the opinions and fun of others, it's a recipe for toxic conversations.

Quertus
2018-07-05, 08:14 AM
We're cool now^^ I think we've reached a satisfactory understanding.

:smallbiggrin:


To Delta: I have gone back and forth with Quertus on a lot of issues and I have discovered several important facts about him: He's weird. He is aware of that. Not usually in a bad way.

LoL. 'Tis a fair cop.


Also I am a GM who lets players not tell me their character's secrets (if I know the player). I wouldn't recommend it to them because most have fallen flat, but if they want to try they may. Which is a completely different reason than most other people.

For it to "fall flat" implies the likelihood of some purpose(s) beyond mine.


I just had a bunch of ideas about how that aligns with player-story focused and Quertus's view aligns with character-story focused and... I think the general view is not actually connected to anything in the focus model, just minimize the risk of disruption.

I'll agree that my stance is consistent with my character-focused mindset.

I think that the "general view" is based on a misunderstanding of my words, and fears, whether caused by internet stories or personal experience, that are largely unfounded IME.


Are you seriously trying to nitpick what is or isn't manipulation? Because that raises red flags with there.

I don't remember reading the story you're talking about, and I'm not going to go back through a long thread to find it. From what you're saying here, though, he informed the other players, which sure doesn't sound like something he could do without them being aware of it.

Sorry, didn't say it was from this thread - only explaining that it isn't my story, but I believe I stated all the relevant details.

So, when I informed the group that OOC information affects the way that the characters are played, and I informed the group about my play style preferences, and they consented to secrets, you have no issue, right?

So, now that we've had some practice with our words, you have no issues, right?

Cluedrew
2018-07-05, 08:22 AM
To Delta: I agree with the first part (except for the literally every bit). For the second I don't recall any direct insults but I suppose I could have missed some. More importantly, since we have been talking about human failings there is one I would like to mention: The tendency to get defensive when you feel you are under attack. And some people have really been tearing into Quertus this thread. Some with good points, but still an excess of aggression a lot of times. And other times just aggression. I don't remember how the cycle got started, but you need at least two sides to keep that back and forth going.

I'm getting kind of preachy here, which makes me a bit uncomfortable because I've probably messed this up myself, maybe even in this thread. But I think we can agree that this is too emotionally charged to make much progress right now.

(Although ironically in the post that has I have been hemming and hawing over how to put this, Quertus seems to of ignored it. Also will reply to your replies Quertus when I have time.)

Delta
2018-07-05, 08:37 AM
I'm getting kind of preachy here, which makes me a bit uncomfortable because I've probably messed this up myself, maybe even in this thread. But I think we can agree that this is too emotionally charged to make much progress right now.

At least that's what we can agree on, which is why I stopped responding to Quertus's posts a while ago. To the rest: I think PhoenixPyre summed up my impression of Quertus in this thread perfectly only a couple posts ago, and I feel like when someone behaves like that, aggressive reactions are to be expected and well deserved.

Quertus
2018-07-05, 08:57 AM
Plus a strongly desired outcome in which the experimenter has a personal stake. Scientists who too closely identify with their theory make bad science.

You assume incorrectly regarding what I would like the results of the experiment to be. I have a strong desire to game with people sufficiently inhuman as to lack human failings. Regrettably, despite testing for such, I have never found such a group. My scientific integrity is intact. :smallwink:


Honestly, if a player came to me during session 0 and said "Hey, how about we try maybe everyone keeping one piece of background information secret from everyone, including the GM?" I might even be up for that. But I think everyone can agree that this is most definitely not standard behaviour for almost every group out there, a player showing up and expecting this kind of thing to just to be okay would be disappointed in literally every group I've ever played in.

I have rarely encountered groups where every piece of background information being secret was a problem. So, while I agree that "one piece of background information secret" is not standard behavior, my experience regarding where standard lies is at the opposite end of the spectrum than you imply.


And I know Quertus is well aware of him being weird, but a lot of the stuff he's been writing here has been flat out insulting to the point of just falling short of directly calling anyone not agreeing with him complete idiots, it's just that he's obviously smart enough to phrase the insults so he cleverly avoids words that would draw a moderator's attention. That's just not okay in my opinion and at least in that case, it's definitely weird in a bad way because instead of enabling a potentially interesting discussion about a weird idea he brought up, he's killing most of it through the way he's presenting and defending it.

Multiple posters who have understood what I'm describing have also stated that what I'm talking about should be obviously true to everyone - I'm just stating that, IME, that isn't true, and some people are actually less aware of human behavior than some Playgrounders believe is humanly possible.

Different groups have different considerations; thus, "agree with me" is the meme of the idiot GM who cannot comprehend multiple ways of doing things / multiple types of fun, that would enforce bad policies, not of me, who is advocating discussing with the GM how to accommodate everyone's fun. Please don't insult me by lumping me with those fools at the opposite end of the openmindedness spectrum.


Agreed. The sense of "I'm sooo much smarter than you, and unless you agree with me you're stupid" is strongly off-putting. Whether intentional or not, that's what's coming across to me. Combined with a perceived disregard for the opinions and fun of others, it's a recipe for toxic conversations.

Another paragraph of concentrated misconception. The internet is not my most conducive conversational medium, it seems.

What part of discussing to maximize the fun of everyone makes it sound like I disregard the fun of others? What part of advocating practice sessions to allow people to make informed decisions regarding what they find fun makes it sound like I disregard the fun of others? Shouldn't you be more worried about those who argue against me on those points?

What part of discussing with the group makes it sound like I disregard the opinions of others? Shouldn't you be more concerned about those who aren't interested in discussing this idea with me, and flatly state that their way is right?


(Although ironically in the post that has I have been hemming and hawing over how to put this, Quertus seems to of ignored it. Also will reply to your replies Quertus when I have time.)

Sorry, I missed something important from you? Please, reiterate / copy and paste. I will endeavour to be more attentive.

Satinavian
2018-07-05, 09:26 AM
So, when I informed the group that OOC information affects the way that the characters are played, and I informed the group about my play style preferences, and they consented to secrets, you have no issue, right?Yes, that should obvious.

Strange how the little matter of informed consent can change the whole morality of a situation, isn't it ?

ImNotTrevor
2018-07-05, 10:41 AM
That's exactly what his "experiment" brings to mind, in terms of ethics and morality, and in terms of a total lack of understanding of what qualifies as experimental process.

Hyperbolic comparison in the extreme.

Thats like saying rude service from the McDonalds employee puts you in mind of genocidal death camps.


And again:
You're applying a bizarrely rigorous standard to a very unofficial attempt to see how people react.


It's weirdly dogmatic for a field that is normally fairly tempered.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-07-05, 11:00 AM
I just want to apologize to Quertus and to anyone else I may have attacked. I got way too personally heated in my reactions to this topic. I'll bow out and do my best not to repeat the offense.

Darth Ultron
2018-07-05, 01:48 PM
Agreed. The sense of "I'm sooo much smarter than you, and unless you agree with me you're stupid" is strongly off-putting. Whether intentional or not, that's what's coming across to me. Combined with a perceived disregard for the opinions and fun of others, it's a recipe for toxic conversations.

It's like reading the text in a mirror.

JoeJ
2018-07-05, 02:14 PM
So, when I informed the group that OOC information affects the way that the characters are played, and I informed the group about my play style preferences, and they consented to secrets, you have no issue, right?

I've said all along that if everybody at the table agrees that it's okay to keep secrets, then it is. It's just not a decision that one player has a right to make unilaterally. But if you openly tell people and they agree, then you're fine. And if the others don't agree, you're free to either play the way they prefer, or find a different group.

Cluedrew
2018-07-05, 02:19 PM
It's like reading the text in a mirror.The irony of how often we can be or be doing the thing we degrade. We should always watch out for that.

And with that I am going to bow out of the discussion about the discussion and try to return to the original topic.


For it to "fall flat" implies the likelihood of some purpose(s) beyond mine.I just meant I've never seen a revelation in a role-playing game that felt like... like it deserved to be hidden. First because far to many of them died before people could do something interesting with them. Some caused issues with communication and contradicted world building details that someone forgot*. Any honestly not a single secret reveal has left me impressed.

Well there is sort of one. But it wasn't a reveal because we had actually been told it would happen back during character creation (this was session 2) and everyone just forgot. At least I did.

* No I don't care if you are not from around here, the massive spy network focusing on the town you are in would have noticed.

JoeJ
2018-07-05, 02:38 PM
I just meant I've never seen a revelation in a role-playing game that felt like... like it deserved to be hidden. First because far to many of them died before people could do something interesting with them. Some caused issues with communication and contradicted world building details that someone forgot*. Any honestly not a single secret reveal has left me impressed.

One that would probably work (although I haven't tried it) is for the GM to privately suggest to one of the players before the game, "What do you think of the party finding your character locked in a cell and realizing that the character they've been adventuring with is really a doppleganger spy working for Lord Evilton? You could then attack the others, or flee, or whatever, and your actual character would then rejoin the group." Essentially, it's giving the player a retroactive secret.

Quertus
2018-07-05, 02:59 PM
I just meant I've never seen a revelation in a role-playing game that felt like... like it deserved to be hidden. First because far to many of them died before people could do something interesting with them. Some caused issues with communication and contradicted world building details that someone forgot*. Any honestly not a single secret reveal has left me impressed.

Well there is sort of one. But it wasn't a reveal because we had actually been told it would happen back during character creation (this was session 2) and everyone just forgot. At least I did.

* No I don't care if you are not from around here, the massive spy network focusing on the town you are in would have noticed.

I have approximately zero interest in the revelation per se. So most of what you wrote is irrelevant to me / my stance / what I enjoy. I just wanted to make that clear before I continue.

So, what do I care about?

I care about running a character rather than a caricature. Real people have secrets, characters should, too. Now, I've played with a lot of war gamers who couldn't roleplay their way out of a wet paper bag (and some who could, mind - I'm not attacking war gamers, as I am one, merely stating that there are people who play RPGs exclusively for the war game (which I'm sure you know, but other readers may not)), and that's fine. I don't require high standards of (or any) role-playing from others, but I do aim for it myself.

I care about character interactions, how relationships form and develop. If a reveal happens, it is generally anticlimactic compared to how the secret influences social interaction and relationship growth (just like any other personality or character trait).

I care about the fun of everyone involved in the game. If my character hiding his handedness provides a sufficient statistical disadvantage to make him fit well with the group, great!

I care about a world that reacts predictably and reasonably. I care about exploring the human psyche / the human condition. Etc etc. But you knew this already.

Now, I am curious about your spy network comment, as you use my "not from around here" catchphrase. Just what would the spy network have noticed, and, if I infer correctly, why do you believe that I would be opposed to this / why do you believe that it would negatively impact my fun?

Cluedrew
2018-07-07, 02:45 PM
And time passes. Honestly I'm not sure what they wanted exactly, I'm not sure if they got it.

The spy network thing is from The Problem with Vincent, one of my role-playing game horror stories. Mostly a good player, but there was this problem with two groups of player secrets (GM's and Vincent's player's) interacting in some nonsensical ways. Some other problems as well.

Instead of that I'm going to talk about something completely different, the idea of the final authority of the game being the shared mental model. Everyone who plays in a game has a mental model of what is going on in it, most role-playing games actually rely on that a lot because besides some written descriptions, character sheet and the occasional battle mat there is no physical representation of what the game state is. So instead we have to communicate about it so everyone's mental model matches some standard and we can all make informed decisions. This is the shared mental model. Ideally everyone knows everything in it with no discrepancies, that rarely happens but people get close enough often.

That may have been excessive to explain my next point. What is the difference between this and the model of a single player? If there is information in the model of one player than only the elements they control are effected by that information. So yes the player can pretend their character doesn't know something better that way, but notably it means a bit more than the character doesn't know it, it means with respect to that character that information isn't true. So they cannot unexpectedly discover it or be effected by its fall out, knowingly or unknowingly. It has no effect on the world or characters besides the ones that one player controls. Especially if that player is not the GM, the hidden aspect of your character isn't true until you have shared it and it has become part of the shared mental model.

For something like your character's dislike of olives, that is probably fine. On the other hand if there is a run away princess from the next kingdom, how did the bard who keeps up on news to share between songs while traveling not heard of that? I mean not knowing what the princess looks like is reasonable but hearing absolutely nothing of the political unrest in the next country over is a bit harder to believe.

Quertus
2018-07-07, 07:20 PM
For something like your character's dislike of olives, that is probably fine. On the other hand if there is a run away princess from the next kingdom, how did the bard who keeps up on news to share between songs while traveling not heard of that? I mean not knowing what the princess looks like is reasonable but hearing absolutely nothing of the political unrest in the next country over is a bit harder to believe.

This seems the most obviously relevant to this thread, so I'll start here.

So, I generally endeavour not to run characters like the runaway princess, who inherently warp the campaign around themselves. Hmmm... There's several layers to this - the bardic tales are the most relevant, but not the most obvious layer. So let me try again.

I try to make my secrets as... Something... As possible. Independent? Self-contained? But, sometimes, you're in a world where, unbeknownst to the players, being left-handed means that you are the child of a god, and your secret handedness carries much more campaign connotation than anticipated.

This is why, under such a scenario where the GM knows that seemingly innocuous things can interact with campaign secrets, I advocated the GM revealing the campaign secrets to a neutral third party, and having them vet character secrets for potential issues.

But non-innocuous secrets, like being a runaway princess? No, as you pointed out, that has rather obvious ripples, and does not work as my style of GM-invisible secret. It's complicated to fully explain, but, for simplicity, I'll just say that I would never run such a character unless I was willing to let the GM be in on the secret, because they actually have a legitimate need to know (let alone common potential reasons to veto the character in the first place).

Similarly, when I knew how having the information would affect a player and the way that he played his character, and deemed it beneficial to the fun of all, I have also let particular players in on particular secrets of my characters.

So I'm not against it as a great Evil or anything - just as a general detriment to my fun (and, often, demonstrably, the group's fun, as well).


Instead of that I'm going to talk about something completely different, the idea of the final authority of the game being the shared mental model. Everyone who plays in a game has a mental model of what is going on in it, most role-playing games actually rely on that a lot because besides some written descriptions, character sheet and the occasional battle mat there is no physical representation of what the game state is. So instead we have to communicate about it so everyone's mental model matches some standard and we can all make informed decisions. This is the shared mental model. Ideally everyone knows everything in it with no discrepancies, that rarely happens but people get close enough often.

That may have been excessive to explain my next point. What is the difference between this and the model of a single player? If there is information in the model of one player than only the elements they control are effected by that information. So yes the player can pretend their character doesn't know something better that way, but notably it means a bit more than the character doesn't know it, it means with respect to that character that information isn't true. So they cannot unexpectedly discover it or be effected by its fall out, knowingly or unknowingly. It has no effect on the world or characters besides the ones that one player controls. Especially if that player is not the GM, the hidden aspect of your character isn't true until you have shared it and it has become part of the shared mental model.

So, I think I understand, and completely disagree. Let's see how I fair at explaining that.

So, despite my general stance against metagaming / OOC information, one of my best role-playing experiences was with a group that really understood this notion of mental models. For them, whenever a character did something unexpected that they could not reconcile with their understanding of the character, they would state that the version of the character in their mental model would not do that, and request that the player help them understand the character's motives better. For them, the original author was the final authority on the character. And I really don't see how that would be terribly contentious - is there not some commonly accepted rhyme about how the GM is everything else, but the players play their characters?

Note that this would also catch communication issues, where people had different visions of events, as well as helping players get different perspectives on events. It was great when someone was having an off day, or missed something that their character obviously would have noticed, that the group automatically helped them portray their character faithfully. It helped a bit with "this is what my character would do", as people got accustomed to seeing alternatives that were sometimes more true to the character than what they had initially envisioned.

I learned a lot, not just about role-playing, but about GMing, and catching and dealing with misunderstandings, from that group.

But, in short, no, I not only don't believe in the existence of the shared mental model, I actively disbelieve in it based on rather conclusive evidence to the contrary. I do believe that, in the general case, attempting to make everyone's personal mental model match as closely to the platonic ideal of a shared mental model is a good and desirable goal; however, in the specific case of secrets, the mental models should diverge, and, as with all things related to characters, the mental model belonging to the player of said character is the final authority.

Cluedrew
2018-07-07, 09:09 PM
So I'm not against it as a great Evil or anything - just as a general detriment to my fun (and, often, demonstrably, the group's fun, as well).OK, I think the mental model thing isn't going to help so much so I am going to drop that and go the other way, focusing in on this part. Playing with open secrets is often demonstrably a detriment to the group's fun. I believe the part about your fun out-of-hand (because I've talked to you before) but that part I... I'm going to need that demonstration.

Can you give me one? Or more than one because of the often? Do you have concrete examples of how an open secret made the game less fun?

Darth Ultron
2018-07-07, 09:28 PM
This is the shared mental model. Ideally everyone knows everything in it with no discrepancies, that rarely happens but people get close enough often.

Er, well, the ''mental model'' is a vast construct made by a GM, that they share with the players and interact with it, as the DM allows. As always, it's the GM doing 99%, and the player doing 1%.



What is the difference between this and the model of a single player?

The GM control of everything.



If there is information in the model of one player than only the elements they control are effected by that information. So yes the player can pretend their character doesn't know something better that way, but notably it means a bit more than the character doesn't know it, it means with respect to that character that information isn't true. So they cannot unexpectedly discover it or be effected by its fall out, knowingly or unknowingly. It has no effect on the world or characters besides the ones that one player controls. Especially if that player is not the GM, the hidden aspect of your character isn't true until you have shared it and it has become part of the shared mental model.

Well, to be a bit more accurate: a thing is only a thing if the GM says it is so. The player can request the GM add something to the game construct



For something like your character's dislike of olives, that is probably fine. On the other hand if there is a run away princess from the next kingdom, how did the bard who keeps up on news to share between songs while traveling not heard of that? I mean not knowing what the princess looks like is reasonable but hearing absolutely nothing of the political unrest in the next country over is a bit harder to believe.

True. This is why keeping secrets from a GM does not work.


OK, I think the mental model thing isn't going to help so much so I am going to drop that and go the other way, focusing in on this part. Playing with open secrets is often demonstrably a detriment to the group's fun. I believe the part about your fun out-of-hand (because I've talked to you before) but that part I... I'm going to need that demonstration.

Can you give me one? Or more than one because of the often? Do you have concrete examples of how an open secret made the game less fun?

How do you have an ''open secret'' in a RPG? Something is a secret, or it is known, there is no in between.

Quertus
2018-07-07, 10:03 PM
OK, I think the mental model thing isn't going to help so much so I am going to drop that and go the other way, focusing in on this part.

I'm sorry that you feel that way. I'd contend that it was one of the most helpful things I've encountered in my gaming career.


Playing with open secrets is often demonstrably a detriment to the group's fun. I believe the part about your fun out-of-hand (because I've talked to you before) but that part I... I'm going to need that demonstration.

Can you give me one? Or more than one because of the often? Do you have concrete examples of how an open secret made the game less fun?

Playing the game of Clue, it's a different experience when you know "Colonel Mustard did it in the Conservatory with the Wrench" than when that information is unknown to the players.

One GM I gamed with, halfway through the first session, I could accurately predict the campaign, down to exactly which characters would still be conscious at the conclusion of the final confrontation with the BBEG, because that's what (that GM believed) would make for the best story.

But, for the general case, characters interact with each other differently with known vs unknown secrets. Once exposed to both types of play, some people find that they enjoy one over the other. What I was saying really is that simple.

Well, almost. As stated previously in this thread, some types of secrets, like the runaway princess, are rather dysfunctional as hidden secrets, and, like in the Clue example, some types of secrets are rather dysfunctional as open / known secrets. Then there's the ones that work as both (and, arguably, the ones like betraying the party that are dysfunctional as both?).

For any specific group, one can always customize the types of known and unknown secrets to maximize the fun of the group, of course. Sometimes, this is necessary, rather than just the icing on the cake. Some people don't like being surprised that it's not a girl under that dress; others want to share their character's shock!

Darth Ultron
2018-07-07, 11:37 PM
Playing the game of Clue, it's a different experience when you know "Colonel Mustard did it in the Conservatory with the Wrench" than when that information is unknown to the players.

It is just about impossible for a player to play in an RPG as a player if they know too much about the story plot of the game. A couple of rare gamers can do it, but the vast bulk can not.




But, for the general case, characters interact with each other differently with known vs unknown secrets. Once exposed to both types of play, some people find that they enjoy one over the other. What I was saying really is that simple.

Game secrets are not the same as Player secrets, unless they are part of the game. Still, even if the character does have a game secret, it is pointless for the player to keep it secret from the other players.

Satinavian
2018-07-08, 12:52 AM
But, for the general case, characters interact with each other differently with known vs unknown secrets. Once exposed to both types of play, some people find that they enjoy one over the other. What I was saying really is that simple.

Well, almost. As stated previously in this thread, some types of secrets, like the runaway princess, are rather dysfunctional as hidden secrets, and, like in the Clue example, some types of secrets are rather dysfunctional as open / known secrets. Then there's the ones that work as both (and, arguably, the ones like betraying the party that are dysfunctional as both?).

For any specific group, one can always customize the types of known and unknown secrets to maximize the fun of the group, of course. Sometimes, this is necessary, rather than just the icing on the cake. Some people don't like being surprised that it's not a girl under that dress; others want to share their character's shock!
Yes, we should concentrate on the type of secrets.

You are stating that you want to keep secrets because humans behave differently when they don't know.

At the same time those secret should not be something like the runaway princess wich would warrant different behavior but only small self contained thing like handedness and allergies or other stuff that doens't have any big effect.


I don't think those two ideas go together well. How would people treat your character differently if they knew he was allergic to nuts ? Would anyone actually treat a left handed character differently than a right handed one ? The effect on player behavior of that kind of secret would be less than the rule wise consequences.

I can't imagine a secret that is really harmless, even if kept from the GM (i have always stated secrets kept from players alone are fine) but still actually leads to your character being treated differently in some significant way.

Darth Ultron
2018-07-08, 12:56 AM
I can't imagine a secret that is really harmless, even if kept from the GM (i have always stated secrets kept from players alone are fine) but still actually leads to your character being treated differently in some significant way.

Maybe we could get a character secret example you told a GM and then had the GM ruin your fun with it?

farothel
2018-07-08, 02:49 AM
One that would probably work (although I haven't tried it) is for the GM to privately suggest to one of the players before the game, "What do you think of the party finding your character locked in a cell and realizing that the character they've been adventuring with is really a doppleganger spy working for Lord Evilton? You could then attack the others, or flee, or whatever, and your actual character would then rejoin the group." Essentially, it's giving the player a retroactive secret.

It would depend on your group. Some groups can handle these things, some can't. I once wanted to try this with my group (they would have been thrilled at such a thing) but in the end I didn't go through with it for various reasons. I know they would love it because I managed to connect one character's divided loyalty to another character's powerful enemy. Quite a lot of fun when they figured that one out (and finally knew why that enemy Always seemed to know where they were). The fact that both characters had these flaws was known to the group, but in the course of the campaign they mostly forgot about it (especially the divided loyalty since I agreed with the player that he would have to give some progress reports and nothing more and then let it run under the radar). So not really a secret, but close enough to it.

Quertus
2018-07-08, 06:41 AM
Maybe we could get a character secret example you told a GM and then had the GM ruin your fun with it?

I believe that the Playground is rife with such stories. Off hand, I recall stories of characters whose race or gender did not match their appearance, and the GM either spilled the beans, or had NPCs unreasonably interact with truth rather than appearance.


It is just about impossible for a player to play in an RPG as a player if they know too much about the story plot of the game. A couple of rare gamers can do it, but the vast bulk can not.

I mean, it would greatly detract from my Exploration aesthetic, but, apparently, some groups enjoy running through the same module repeatedly.

But, good call for bringing up another way to explain my PoV: I imagine most gamers would understand the notion that it would be odd for the players to read through the module and learn all the campaign secrets before playing a game. I imagine most gamers would be opposed to this, feeling correctly that such knowledge would taint the PCs actions. (But, to play devil's advocate, if you did so, you could make an informed decision about which character / playing piece would be the most fun to bring, rather than being stuck with someone who doesn't fit.)

For me, reading through the module before the game is exactly the same feeling as having everyone knowing all the characters' secrets at the start of the game.


Yes, we should concentrate on the type of secrets.

You are stating that you want to keep secrets because humans behave differently when they don't know.

At the same time those secret should not be something like the runaway princess wich would warrant different behavior but only small self contained thing like handedness and allergies or other stuff that doens't have any big effect.

That's not quite right. The issue with the runaway princess isn't the size of the effect, but the fact that the effects are external to the character.


I don't think those two ideas go together well. How would people treat your character differently if they knew he was allergic to nuts ? Would anyone actually treat a left handed character differently than a right handed one ? The effect on player behavior of that kind of secret would be less than the rule wise consequences.

Well, I already coveted this, but clearly didn't get the point across. So let me try again.

My character makes his lunch, and offers to make everyone else's lunch, too. Then the same at dinner.

How do the PCs react?

If they know that I'm allergic to grapes, they'll react differently than of they know that I'm the son of the advisor of the last king (who died of poison), or the assassin who poisoned the last king. And they'll react differently than if they know that there is no secret (my character just has the "cook" skill, or enjoys a home cooked meal). And they'll react differently if they know that the potential size of the secret has been artificially limited.

How the characters react tells me a lot about the characters, and how they will react to other situations. I care about the character of the character, far more than I care about the playing piece. Take that knowledge away from me, and I can no longer make informed decisions interacting with the PCs when it really matters.

Thus, per the thread topic, I want characters to actually get to know each other, and learn each other's biases, mindset, focus, etc, in character, through experience. Thus, I greatly prefer characters start the game not knowing each other.


I can't imagine a secret that is really harmless, even if kept from the GM (i have always stated secrets kept from players alone are fine) but still actually leads to your character being treated differently in some significant way.

My character offers to make lunch...

Cluedrew
2018-07-08, 08:42 AM
I'm sorry that you feel that way. I'd contend that it was one of the most helpful things I've encountered in my gaming career.I think it is useful, I just think that this is not the place to hammer out all the details.


But, for the general case, characters interact with each other differently with known vs unknown secrets. Once exposed to both types of play, some people find that they enjoy one over the other. What I was saying really is that simple.I mean that sounds great but I still am having trouble seeing what makes people prefer the closed secrets. (Having a mild preference for open secrets myself.*) There is the tool for separation of in and out of character knowledge, but I would prefer people just learning how to separate that themselves. Then there is discovery (player side, character side discovery can still happen), but I think just playing the game and seeing how things progress already has a lot of discovering in it.

Maybe we have hit a first principle of taste (something that people like or don't like for a basic reason that can't be broken down) but I feel there is something else underneath it, but I just can't quite put my figure on it.

Quertus
2018-07-08, 08:50 AM
I think it is useful, I just think that this is not the place to hammer out all the details.

I mean that sounds great but I still am having trouble seeing what makes people prefer the closed secrets. (Having a mild preference for open secrets myself.*) There is the tool for separation of in and out of character knowledge, but I would prefer people just learning how to separate that themselves. Then there is discovery (player side, character side discovery can still happen), but I think just playing the game and seeing how things progress already has a lot of discovering in it.

Maybe we have hit a first principle of taste (something that people like or don't like for a basic reason that can't be broken down) but I feel there is something else underneath it, but I just can't quite put my figure on it.

Well, look at the notion of playing an RPG where you've already read the module, vs one filled with unknowns and surprises.

If you know what's coming, you can make an informed decision regarding your character, party composition, etc. You can accurately evaluate who you'd like to play, how you'll share the spotlight, treasure, etc, to ensure that everyone has fun, and there are no hard feelings. It's obviously the superior method of play - so why hasn't everyone adopted this superior technique? Why not just read the module, then separate in character and OOC knowledge?

Satinavian
2018-07-08, 09:16 AM
My character offers to make lunch...And the reaction will mostly depend on
a) How good is your cooching and does this specific character like it
b) do they trust your character
c) What other options there are.

It wouldn't change because of some allergy. If your character is allergic, he could still poison everyoe. And it doesn't make his meal better or worse.


Thus, per the thread topic, I want characters to actually get to know each other, and learn each other's biases, mindset, focus, etc, in character, through experience. Thus, I greatly prefer characters start the game not knowing each other.I understand this and have no problem with it.

Still doesn't explain the Secrets from the GM angle. If it is only players who don't know secrets, not only does that work, you also don't have to limit yourself to inconsequential small stuff. Even the hidden princess is OK if the GM is on board with it.

Quertus
2018-07-08, 09:46 AM
And the reaction will mostly depend on
a) How good is your cooching and does this specific character like it
b) do they trust your character
c) What other options there are.

It wouldn't change because of some allergy. If your character is allergic, he could still poison everyoe. And it doesn't make his meal better or worse.

So, here's the thing: how paranoid about being poisoned you play your character, and how much they like / hate the idea of my character making the food, tells me a lot about your character, and how they view my character. These kind of interactions let me see if your character has trust issues, is overly trusting, thinks in terms of poison, etc. It lets us develop and play out the nature of the characters' relationship to one another.

What types of food your character likes can also provide information about their background. And who they trust, and why? Those are biggies.

So, what does the reason behind the behavior matter?

Well, I could go into a huge rant about "what does the character having a history or personality matter? What value do those have? Why not just bring a new character every session?", but we'd lose the forest for the trees.

IMO, the best answer is this: when everyone roleplays their characters perfectly and, like watching a play, a neutral third party watching the game could tell you who had what secrets and who had what biases / personality traits, even though the characters often misinterpreted or overlooked things? That's the platonic ideal of my perfect game.

It's the parts that we care about and choose to follow up on that make the game. That's true of both GM content in a sandbox, and player content in what I'm describing.

Satinavian
2018-07-08, 09:57 AM
So, here's the thing: how paranoid about being poisoned you play your character, and how much they like / hate the idea of my character making the food, tells me a lot about your character, and how they view my character. These kind of interactions let me see if your character has trust issues, is overly trusting, thinks in terms of poison, etc. It lets us develop and play out the nature of the characters' relationship to one another.

What types of food your character likes can also provide information about their background. And who they trust, and why? Those are biggies.And nothing of that has anything to do with the allergy.

You are just praising the virtues of interactions, not actually secrets. The important thing here is that you want to cook for everyone and avoid food prepared by other people. That is what provokes reactions. And it is not actually a secret, it is something your character does quite openly.

IMO, the best answer is this: when everyone roleplays their characters perfectly and, like watching a play, a neutral third party watching the game could tell you who had what secrets and who had what biases / personality traits, even though the characters often misinterpreted or overlooked things? That's the platonic ideal of my perfect game.Really ?
This theoretical third party could tell that the reason you want to cook for the party do come from some secret allergy ?

Quertus
2018-07-08, 10:00 AM
I understand this and have no problem with it.

Still doesn't explain the Secrets from the GM angle. If it is only players who don't know secrets, not only does that work, you also don't have to limit yourself to inconsequential small stuff. Even the hidden princess is OK if the GM is on board with it.

Yes, there are classes of secrets that the GM needs to be in on. For those, the GM needs to be in on them, kinda by definition.

But for everything else? Since even a good GM can ruin the secret by accidentally spilling the beans (and there are plenty of bad to horrible GMs out there - including ones whose understanding of human behavior is so abysmal as to not include understanding common human failings), it is most efficient to take a page from software development, and practice information hiding, only providing access to information on a need to know basis.

So, any secrets that the GM needs to know about, sure, inform the GM, but keep the rest under raps.

But, while an allergy to grapes may seem inconsequential small to you, what my character learned about your character because of it, and the interactions we had and relationship we formed, may well have a huge impact on the campaign.

MrSandman
2018-07-08, 10:05 AM
Well, look at the notion of playing an RPG where you've already read the module, vs one filled with unknowns and surprises.

If you know what's coming, you can make an informed decision regarding your character, party composition, etc. You can accurately evaluate who you'd like to play, how you'll share the spotlight, treasure, etc, to ensure that everyone has fun, and there are no hard feelings. It's obviously the superior method of play - so why hasn't everyone adopted this superior technique? Why not just read the module, then separate in character and OOC knowledge?

It's not necessarily the superior method of play, but it's got its advantages. I'm not sure how it'd work with modules, as I think that modules often offer a game set for a different kind of play-style than my preferred one, but I can answer that from the way I run games.

I seem to recall reading about whether it was best to keep that someone, let's call him Count Lian, is a traitor and has killed someone. The assumption is that the game is about finding out who the murderer is and knowing it from the start would both ruin the fun and change how people play.

The truth is that I've never enjoyed an investigation RPG session, simply because I don't particularly like the genre and I haven't had a game master who could pull it off well. I once read a mystery book written by Agatha Christie, which was a masterpiece. She gives you all that you need to solve a mystery in chapter four, but she tells the story in such a way that it is hard for you to connect the pieces until the end. That works in books, in role-playing games, most often you end up with loads of dead ends, not enough information, and generally no clue whatsoever of what's going on and you need to let your game master railroad you until the mystery's solution.

But what would happen if I knew that Count Lian is the murderer from the start? Well, then I could play a knight who is extremely loyal to Count Lian, who will probably even do some of his dirty work for him (unbeknownst to my character, obviously, he is a good guy). Then, I could play the character development of a knight who is so utterly devoted to his lord that can't see his shadowy behaviour, who then starts understanding that something is off, who goes on a journey of accepting the increasing evidence that his lord might be a murderer, and who ends up having to choose between his loyalty to his lord and his loyalty to his ideals.
Now, I'd play this game over a game of cluelessly bumping into insufficient pieces of information until the game master decides that it's time for the big reveal every single time.

It's the same with knowing the story ahead of time. If everybody at the table knows the kind of story that we want to tell together (not necessarily the minor details, but the important ones), then we can make characters and plan interactions that make it much richer and more interesting than if we simply happen to be a bunch of random, unrelated people who stumble upon a huge mess in which they have no business.

Quertus
2018-07-08, 10:05 AM
You are just praising the virtues of interactions, not actually secrets.

Interactions which, according to my "experiments" with human failings, tend to not happen, or happen artificially, when the players already know the answer.

So, yes, if playing with a sufficiently inhuman group, the value I give interactions world not necessitate secrets. And we could probably read the module first, and make an informed decision regarding the optimal party composition to maximize the fun of the group.

Know any groups like that?

Satinavian
2018-07-08, 10:19 AM
Interactions which, according to my "experiments" with human failings, tend to not happen, or happen artificially, when the players already know the answer.Well, my experience differs here. I don't know a player who would react significantly different to this "My character offers to prepare foord for the whole group" depending on knowledge about some allergy. Would a charcter who just likes cooking be treatet that different on this occassion ?


So, yes, if playing with a sufficiently inhuman group, the value I give interactions world not necessitate secrets. And we could probably read the module first, and make an informed decision regarding the optimal party composition to maximize the fun of the group.

Know any groups like that?It actually can happen.

- It is not uncommon that some players do already know a module and others don't, if you make a group from several experienced players.

- Many systems have a metaplot and metaplot modules. If you play them a couple of years or decades later., most players already know the results and the fate of most NPCs straight out of the setting books.

Somehow those groups still manage to avoid excessive metagaming and playxers are quite able to seperate player and character knowledge.

Quertus
2018-07-08, 10:19 AM
I could play a knight who is extremely loyal to Count Lian, who will probably even do some of his dirty work for him (unbeknownst to my character, obviously, he is a good guy). Then, I could play the character development of a knight who is so utterly devoted to his lord that can't see his shadowy behaviour, who then starts understanding that something is off, who goes on a journey of accepting the increasing evidence that his lord might be a murderer, and who ends up having to choose between his loyalty to his lord and his loyalty to his ideals.

I've played that game (multiple times) as a player unaware of the nature of the campaign. Great fun, that. Highly recommend it.

Not sure I'd enjoy it if I'd already read the module, though.


Now, I'd play this game over a game of cluelessly bumping into insufficient pieces of information until the game master decides that it's time for the big reveal every single time.

You are conflating several things here. I'd rather play in a sandbox than listen to GM story time where the GM decides when the big reveal happens, too!

But I'd rather investigate on my own power, and succeed or fail on my own merits, than know from the start that Colonel Mustard did it in the Conservatory with the Wrench.


It's the same with knowing the story ahead of time. If everybody at the table knows the kind of story that we want to tell together (not necessarily the minor details, but the important ones), then we can make characters and plan interactions that make it much richer and more interesting than if we simply happen to be a bunch of random, unrelated people who stumble upon a huge mess in which they have no business.

Conflating several things again.

I'd rather a group of people who all have good reason to be here learn about each other and interact realistically than be exposed to more ham-fisted attempts to force a particular story.

Why do you assume that the players not knowing the module means that the GM controls when the players figure things out? Why do you assume that characters having secrets means that they're random, and have no reason to be here?

Quertus
2018-07-08, 10:33 AM
Well, my experience differs here. I don't know a player who would react significantly different to this "My character offers to prepare foord for the whole group" depending on knowledge about some allergy. Would a charcter who just likes cooking be treatet that different on this occassion ?

But would they react the same way if they knew that my secret is that I have had dealings with poison (as an assassin, or as a noble whose liege was poisoned), or if I was doing it because I was paranoid, or a freed slave? The point isn't them reacting to the reason. The point is them reacting (or not) to not knowing the reason.

Characters with dealings with nobility or poison are more likely to make poison-based assumptions, and give poison-based reactions. Those accustomed to slaves / house servants are more likely to treat my character accordingly. Those who are paranoid may suddenly realize that food is something to be paranoid about, too! Etc etc.

If they know my reasons, they are more likely to look at my actions through the lens of my reasons, and less likely to do so through the lens of their character.

As I commented in another thread, PCs are much more likely to accept quests from random strangers than from fellow PCs. As another Playgrounder pointed out, despite how they should trust one another more than the shady guy that they just meet in the tavern, it's an artifact of the "GM gives quests" mindset, and is so prevalent as to be observable phenomenon.

Same thing, different application. Players don't interact realistically with known OOC information.

Satinavian
2018-07-08, 10:44 AM
But would they react the same way if they knew that my secret is that I have had dealings with poison (as an assassin, or as a noble whose liege was poisoned), or if I was doing it because I was paranoid, or a freed slave? The point isn't them reacting to the reason. The point is them reacting (or not) to not knowing the reason.Actually probably they would react the same way.

Characters with dealings with nobility or poison are more likely to make poison-based assumptions, and give poison-based reactions. Those accustomed to slaves / house servants are more likely to treat my character accordingly. Those who are paranoid may suddenly realize that food is something to be paranoid about, too! Etc etc.Yes. That would be other players playing their characters and using the element you highlighted (cooking) to highlight their own backround. Your reasons to cook are not important for that.

As I commented in another thread, PCs are much more likely to accept quests from random strangers than from fellow PCs. As another Playgrounder pointed out, despite how they should trust one another more than the shady guy that they just meet in the tavern, it's an artifact of the "GM gives quests" mindset, and is so prevalent as to be observable phenomenon.Really ? Doens't fit my experience either. Taking quests from PCs is both common and unproblematic.

Koo Rehtorb
2018-07-08, 11:06 AM
As I commented in another thread, PCs are much more likely to accept quests from random strangers than from fellow PCs. As another Playgrounder pointed out, despite how they should trust one another more than the shady guy that they just meet in the tavern, it's an artifact of the "GM gives quests" mindset, and is so prevalent as to be observable phenomenon.

Have you considered just........ playing with better players?

MrSandman
2018-07-08, 11:25 AM
I've played that game (multiple times) as a player unaware of the nature of the campaign. Great fun, that. Highly recommend it.

I'd like more information about how to do that without being railroaded.



Conflating several things again.

I'd rather a group of people who all have good reason to be here learn about each other and interact realistically than be exposed to more ham-fisted attempts to force a particular story.

Why do you assume that the players not knowing the module means that the GM controls when the players figure things out? Why do you assume that characters having secrets means that they're random, and have no reason to be here?
Are you assuming that I'm answering to everything that had been said in this thread or to the whole of your position? I'm not. I haven't said anything about the GM inevitably controlling when a secret is let out or about characters having secrets. I've only made two points:

The secondary point is that I don't particularly enjoy mystery RPG because I don't like the genre and I've never had a game master do it well. It often ends up in a railroad to the answer (again, not a necessary outcome, just the most common in my experience)

The main point is that knowing the story we're going to play allows us to play characters who actually have a reason to get involved with the story to start with.
Characters having secrets doesn't mean that they'll be a random bunch with no reason to be there. Characters not having ties whatsoever with one another or the world almost certainly guarantees that they'll be a random bunch of people with no reason whatsoever to become involved with the story.

Darth Ultron
2018-07-08, 11:37 AM
I believe that the Playground is rife with such stories. Off hand, I recall stories of characters whose race or gender did not match their appearance, and the GM either spilled the beans, or had NPCs unreasonably interact with truth rather than appearance.

Is this really a good example though?

Ok, Creepy Bobby, makes a female character, and has the character hide under a cloak ''so on one knows what they are!" Then Bobby just plays the character as 'himself''. So Bobby wants to hide the characters gender from the players for no reason...so it has no effect when it comes out, other then everyone knows Bobby is weird, again.

Again, this is pointless, you hide X from the players for A)No Reason or B) To have a jerk power trip surprise reveal.



If they know that I'm allergic to grapes, they'll react differently than of they know that I'm the son of the advisor of the last king (who died of poison), or the assassin who poisoned the last king. And they'll react differently than if they know that there is no secret (my character just has the "cook" skill, or enjoys a home cooked meal). And they'll react differently if they know that the potential size of the secret has been artificially limited.

This is exactly what I'm talking about: The player here wants to steal the spotlight and focus it on their character, and to make it worse this player is not even playing the game, they are just fluffing the fluff.

This is a good example of a player being a jerk and not even playing the RPG. Most RPG's have a group of characters together in a group doing a task/quest. That is the whole game. It is not a fluffy soap opera reenactment. The game is about tracking down a killer werewolf, and here is jerk player, slamming their fist down on the table...stopping the game play and lapping on the fluff(''Ok, everyone I demand attention and that you react to my character making some food. Ok, lets go around the table I need a statement from everyone!")

Really why does not such a player just play the Smallville RPG, of the SOAP RPG?



Thus, per the thread topic, I want characters to actually get to know each other, and learn each other's biases, mindset, focus, etc, in character, through experience. Thus, I greatly prefer characters start the game not knowing each other.


Except this has nothing to do with ''secrets''. Sure if characters just meet they won't know anything about each other....but those are not ''secrets'', they are just ''unknowns''.



It's the parts that we care about and choose to follow up on that make the game. That's true of both GM content in a sandbox, and player content in what I'm describing.

This goes back to the hostile experiment though...YOU want to make the players have their characters sing and dance in exactly the way YOU want for YOUR fun and entertainment.

Bad enough this is side table DMing, as you are trying to take control of the game, but it is worse as you are donging as a Bad DM, or even a Bad Pearson. After all, other only reason you are doing it is your own selfish whims....and that is wrong.

Theophilus
2018-07-08, 12:33 PM
Characters banding over a common cause relies on the strength of the players. If the players can creatively associate their motley band (and prudently disassociate any out-of-character insight they have about other characters), then it matters little if their characters knew each other or know each other's secrets. Much of the issue is how these "secrets" tend to be used to disrupt the party or setting, poisoning the experience for others. Filling a backstory with hidden facets should be more to give the DM hooks to motivate the characters and to inspire interaction within the party. If they are making someone exclusive and antagonistic to the story and party, then it is better to start the group as a unit who have a common history and common cause.

John Campbell
2018-07-08, 12:37 PM
Really ? Doens't fit my experience either. Taking quests from PCs is both common and unproblematic.

My current party's to-do list currently looks something like:

1. Play off the major powers of the city against each other to derive the most profit and other benefit possible from the major artifact they found but can't actually use.

2. Have tea with the rogue's mom.

3. Wipe out a mercenary band, working their way as far up the chain as they can to whoever actually gave the orders.

4. Liberate a PC's ogre tribe from the control of an ogre-mage (putting them instead under the control of the PC ogre).

5. Lead the ogre tribe across the sea as mercenaries in support of another PC's homeland at war.

6. Find and hire some other mercenaries for the same purpose.

Of these, having tea with the rogue's mom is the only mission that was given them by an NPC. And the rogue's mom isn't exactly a hooded stranger in a tavern.

Everything else came directly out the PCs' minds. Except arguably the artifact thing, but while I'm the one that tossed the artifact at them, I didn't give them any directives about what to do with it, through NPCs or otherwise, and most of the notions they've come up have been things I didn't anticipate.

It's possible that Quertus's view of things is skewed because he refuses to play an actual character with goals and motives rooted in the campaign setting. Except the artifact, all of the things on my party's to-do list came directly out of PC backgrounds - and, more, from PC backgrounds bouncing off each other and in some cases being linked behind the scenes by me as DM.

Cluedrew
2018-07-08, 02:51 PM
Well, look at the notion of playing an RPG where you've already read the module, vs one filled with unknowns and surprises. [...]so why hasn't everyone adopted this superior technique? Why not just read the module, then separate in character and OOC knowledge?I do. Well I mean it isn't a proper module because why work all that out when it is going to be wrong. But I have played several campaigns where we sketched out the character development and their end state at the end of the campaign. Of the 9 characters in those campaigns, 3 were sort of in the end state laid out in character creation, the other 6 hit it right on the head.

I don't know why it isn't more common. Maybe it doesn't work for player-challenge focus, which seems to be the more common play style. Maybe not enough people understand how to make it work. Maybe in-/out-of-character separation is that much harder for some people. I mean I have been told by a player that they would betray me and hired their character within the minute, although it was also to get the plot moving.

Darth Ultron
2018-07-08, 06:19 PM
I do. Well I mean it isn't a proper module because why work all that out when it is going to be wrong. But I have played several campaigns where we sketched out the character development and their end state at the end of the campaign. Of the 9 characters in those campaigns, 3 were sort of in the end state laid out in character creation, the other 6 hit it right on the head.

I don't know why it isn't more common.

Because it is no fun? It's too much of a railroad? It's too gamey? It makes the players just actors following a script?

You can't play a character with the real 'role play experience' if you know what and when and how things will happen: the role play experience is based on the player not knowing. The player just role plays their characters reaction to things that happen.

Just take the standard 'Enemy Mind' plot that can be found in just about all wacky TV shows. Bob has his elf character Even who hates orcs. And Bob has a character development plan: Even will get trapped with an orc somewhere and the two of them will work together to get out. Then Even will think orcs are ''ok'' and solve Fantasy Racism Forever...and That is One to Grow on(shooting star.....)

To play out this railroaded script would not even be close to a typical RPG. And it would be bad enough if there was a real script: like as soon as the characters get trapped, page 1 has character Even say "Ok, we need to work together to get out of here, orc".

But it's worse if there is no script, as then the improvesed script will just be a lazy mess. Bob will just randomly have Even say ''um, we totally got to work together (as it's my character development, wink wink)" and the orc character will just be like ''yup''. You won't get any actual role playing of the characters, they will just be saying scripted lines.

Quertus
2018-07-09, 12:50 AM
Have you considered just........ playing with better players?

LoL. That might help, but, for all the groups I've played with, I can't say that I've seen one that would meet such standards overall... Or that I would necessarily fit in one that did. :smallfrown:


I'd like more information about how to do that without being railroaded.

Confusion. Start out with characters loyal to X. Unbeknownst to the players or characters, X is not a good guy. Sandbox away. Where is the issue?


The main point is that knowing the story we're going to play allows us to play characters who actually have a reason to get involved with the story to start with.
Characters having secrets doesn't mean that they'll be a random bunch with no reason to be there. Characters not having ties whatsoever with one another or the world almost certainly guarantees that they'll be a random bunch of people with no reason whatsoever to become involved with the story.

I may have misread you - apologies if that's the case. Reading comprehension is not my strength. Thanks for moving on to more productive conversation.

I thoroughly agree that all characters should have a reason to be there, and be involved. Note that this is not only in no way contradictory to my "not from around here" preference, but actually related to it. I don't trust my ability to explain that (although there's hints in some of my other replies), so I'll wait and see if anyone gets it before trying to explain it myself.

However, I'm left to wonder - if you don't see secrets as a detriment to cohesion, is this tangent related to this thread any longer?


Except this has nothing to do with ''secrets''. Sure if characters just meet they won't know anything about each other....but those are not ''secrets'', they are just ''unknowns''.

"So, when you say 'secrets', what you really mean is...". Yeah, I think that "unknowns" might have been a better word. We don't all use our words the same way. (I think that the two of us are among the furthest outliers in this department.)


Filling a backstory with hidden facets should be more to give the DM hooks to motivate the characters and to inspire interaction within the party.

I imagine I would be no more likely to agree to that than I would to the idea that the purpose of a character was to listen to "GM story time". Call me a purist, but, IMO, the primary purpose of every aspect of a charter should be to, you know, have a character. Although facilitating conversations with the GM regarding how to tie the character into the story, and inspiring interaction with the party do sound beneficial.

But not every character is easily compatible with every story. If the group is unable to devise a way to make the character work with the story (or the story to work with the character?), then the character (or the story?) should be replaced.


It's possible that Quertus's view of things is skewed because he refuses to play an actual character with goals and motives rooted in the campaign setting.

Well, I'd say that I all but insist on playing an actual character, with goals and motives. As to the rest, I leave it to the GM to participate in a conversation to provide the initial hook, and to create a world conducive to my character growing roots.

And, regarding the context of that snippet, I'm speaking primarily as an observer, watching the party choose not to take the plotlines put forth by other players, rather than as the player actively putting forth the idea or rejecting it. Funny how the math works when one prefers parties with double-digit players. So my idiosyncrasies don't really factor significantly into the equation.


I do. Well I mean it isn't a proper module because why work all that out when it is going to be wrong. But I have played several campaigns where we sketched out the character development and their end state at the end of the campaign. Of the 9 characters in those campaigns, 3 were sort of in the end state laid out in character creation, the other 6 hit it right on the head.

I don't know why it isn't more common. Maybe it doesn't work for player-challenge focus, which seems to be the more common play style. Maybe not enough people understand how to make it work. Maybe in-/out-of-character separation is that much harder for some people. I mean I have been told by a player that they would betray me and hired their character within the minute, although it was also to get the plot moving.

I stand by my implication, that campaign secrets and character secrets are sufficiently related as to be appropriate for similar groups, for similar reasons. But I'm curious what a game looks like that doesn't have either.

So, I come to your game with Quertus, my signature academia mage, for whom this account is named. I declare that his desired end state is that he'll be fundamentally the same, but with a few new tricks, and publish a book about the cool things he encountered. Ok, then what?

And, why not, I'll run multiple characters. Cutter comes in with my standard goals, only I make them his desired end state: by the end of the campaign, he's killed one or more gods, taken their power, and is trying to make a truly lasting positive change to the campaign world. What that change entails should be dependent upon what he sees in the world.

And Crystal? My desired end goal is that she finds her father, and returns home with him (to Ravenloft). And hopefully grows a bit along the way.

So... where does one of your games go from there? Or, if not from there, then from what not-there does your game go where?

Cluedrew
2018-07-09, 02:15 PM
I stand by my implication, that campaign secrets and character secrets are sufficiently related as to be appropriate for similar groups, for similar reasons. But I'm curious what a game looks like that doesn't have either.I guess that makes sense. In a weird way I don't feel that those things have no value but I don't get what the value is, so it probably doesn't apply to me. At least not nearly as often.


So, I come to your game with Quertus, my signature academia mage, for whom this account is named. I declare that his desired end state is that he'll be fundamentally the same, but with a few new tricks, and publish a book about the cool things he encountered. [...] So... where does one of your games go from there? Or, if not from there, then from what not-there does your game go where?The campaign goes where the player goals drive it. So the end for Quertus is "publish a book on the adventure", then we can add some notes about little things you might learn on the way, and probably display his tactical ineptitude at some point. By itself that doesn't drive things forward, but that's fine, let's say Cutter wants to kill the god of back alley muggings (have to start somewhere). That can drive the quest forward and might even give Quertus a topic for the book as they alternate between that and following leads on Crystal's father.

I think that is more or less how most campaigns advance. Well maybe not most, there are "GM reads plot point off of index card" campaigns and many other types but I think this kind is common enough. John Campbell's seems to match this general description. It just seems to result in better... weaving of the threads together, because everyone knows what the threads are ahead of time.

Dawgmoah
2018-07-09, 02:37 PM
or having a lot of secrets in the background that the other characters/players don't know about? I have a player who likes to do these two things a lot but I think the game is much better when all the character and players are on the same page, knowing each other with no secrets, and even similar alignment and trust each other. What do you think?

I've experienced a pretty even mix of player characters knowing each other, being related, or falling in with each other as well as the secrets and hidden things in a person's past. I leave it to the player to decide. Many times those hidden things and secrets get pulled into play to the surprise and consternation of the player.

Quertus
2018-07-09, 09:44 PM
I guess that makes sense. In a weird way I don't feel that those things have no value but I don't get what the value is, so it probably doesn't apply to me. At least not nearly as often.

The campaign goes where the player goals drive it. So the end for Quertus is "publish a book on the adventure", then we can add some notes about little things you might learn on the way, and probably display his tactical ineptitude at some point. By itself that doesn't drive things forward, but that's fine, let's say Cutter wants to kill the god of back alley muggings (have to start somewhere). That can drive the quest forward and might even give Quertus a topic for the book as they alternate between that and following leads on Crystal's father.

I think that is more or less how most campaigns advance. Well maybe not most, there are "GM reads plot point off of index card" campaigns and many other types but I think this kind is common enough. John Campbell's seems to match this general description. It just seems to result in better... weaving of the threads together, because everyone knows what the threads are ahead of time.

Ok, so... we get together with a group of people, who add their characters and goals to the pot... and then what? What does the gameplay look like?

I can see it working if it were a group storytelling exercise, where the primary gameplay is discussing how we'd like events to turn out in order to advance our individual plotlines. Where, say, Bob says that he'd like the party to deal with some high-profile threat to increase the party's fame, and maybe collect some evidence of the local lord's corruption. John adds that he'd like some corpses for his necromancer to animate and interrogate. I agree that some cool creatures for Quertus to draw and catalogue would be advantageous. So the three of us get together to discuss what would be cool to encounter, and animate, and add to our game. Then maybe Sue says that she'd like the party to be badly injured, and need to go to the church, to tie into her plotline. Maybe I think that a weakened party, rife with loot, sounds like a good opportunity to encounter the dark underbelly of the city, so I say that I'd like the party to be mugged on the way, so Cutter can form his enmity with mugging, and thereby with the god of mugging. Maybe Tim realizes that this would be a good opportunity to make underworld contacts, and makes some specifications about the encounter.

People could make suggestions about other people's plotlines, too, of course.

Under this style of play, I can see where having all your cards on the table would be advantageous. Everyone is working to make all these stories happen, and making sure that nothing they do hampers anyone else's story.

But what does your gameplay actually look like? How do we get from the statement, "I want Cutter to kill a god, take his power, and make lasting changes to the campaign world" to that happening? In particular, what part of the process removes the value of secrets / unknowns?

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Myself, in an RPG, I'm traditionally only interested in the victories that I "come by honest" - where I accomplish something that I never told anyone that I was trying to accomplish. Where they didn't manipulate events to make this happen.

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I think that is more or less how most campaigns advance. Well maybe not most, there are "GM reads plot point off of index card" campaigns and many other types but I think this kind is common enough.

I'm torn between giving an IMO and an IME.

IMO, the best sandboxes are a lot of content, of building blocks. The players - who didn't really enter into the game with much if any preconceived desires - look at this, and decide what to (try to) build out of it.

I don't think that sounds particularly like either of your options.

Pelle
2018-07-10, 04:43 AM
For me, reading through the module before the game is exactly the same feeling as having everyone knowing all the characters' secrets at the start of the game.


For me, those are completely different feelings. The first one is messing with the emergent story property, while the second is just having a better picture of the starting conditions.

Having secrets as a player can be fun, but I enjoy more to out-of-character know the secrets of the other players' characters. Then I can really appreciate the other players' roleplaying decisions, since I know the full meaning of them. Let's say the refugee princess decides to stand up against injustice to protect some commoners, publicly bringing attention to herself. She personally takes a big risk of being recognized, however this is unknown to the other characters in the party. If I know her secret as a player, I get to enjoy watching the cool decision my friend made. If not, it just appears as business as usual. Observing the behaviour of the characters as black boxes is a bit unsatisfying for me personally, and don't mind separating character and player knowledge for this purpose...

Quertus
2018-07-10, 06:08 AM
For me, those are completely different feelings. The first one is messing with the emergent story property, while the second is just having a better picture of the starting conditions.

Having secrets as a player can be fun, but I enjoy more to out-of-character know the secrets of the other players' characters. Then I can really appreciate the other players' roleplaying decisions, since I know the full meaning of them. Let's say the refugee princess decides to stand up against injustice to protect some commoners, publicly bringing attention to herself. She personally takes a big risk of being recognized, however this is unknown to the other characters in the party. If I know her secret as a player, I get to enjoy watching the cool decision my friend made. If not, it just appears as business as usual. Observing the behaviour of the characters as black boxes is a bit unsatisfying for me personally, and don't mind separating character and player knowledge for this purpose...

So, if the NPC is actually a runaway princess, wouldn't you rather have read through the module before the game begins, so that you can appreciate the GMs role-playing / the module-writer's cool decision?

Knaight
2018-07-10, 06:22 AM
So, if the NPC is actually a runaway princess, wouldn't you rather have read through the module before the game begins, so that you can appreciate the GMs role-playing / the module-writer's cool decision?

You put this forward like it's some gotcha hypothetical, but honestly? That's a totally valid method of play, and one that can be interesting.

The assumption that a module exists is a sticking point though.

Pelle
2018-07-10, 06:47 AM
So, if the NPC is actually a runaway princess, wouldn't you rather have read through the module before the game begins, so that you can appreciate the GMs role-playing / the module-writer's cool decision?

That's a good question actually. For me, it's due to what I prefer the different roles of GM and player should entail. It would be nice to also see the GM's decision making in progress, but the problem is that it can ruin too much of the discovery of what happens next. The game is about players making decisions for their characters, so those are the decisions I'd like to understand (and distinguish from non-decisons).

Quertus
2018-07-10, 06:53 AM
You put this forward like it's some gotcha hypothetical, but honestly? That's a totally valid method of play, and one that can be interesting.

The assumption that a module exists is a sticking point though.

Do note that "module" is my shorthand for the set that includes the capacity for the GM to write up the campaign notes, too.

I suppose purely extemporanious games fall outside this set. I'll have to think over the value of secrets in such conditions - and whether I would consider people suddenly "developing" secrets mid-game to be so verboten in such circumstances.

But, as to your point? Well, I'm not arguing against that being a valid form of play (even if it's not my cup of tea). I'm merely increasingly stating and less implying that it seems internally consistent to treat character secrets and campaign secrets the same way, as they have the same feel, per the runaway princess example.

Cluedrew
2018-07-10, 07:39 AM
Ok, so... we get together with a group of people, who add their characters and goals to the pot... and then what? What does the gameplay look like?Normally. Most of the differences happen during campaign set up (maybe if you played a multi-year campaign you would do it again between every arc) with play proceeding as it would. Except the GM has a couple of named bullets ready to fire.

Speaking of which, there seems to be this assumption that we are talking about how we will succeed. Often there are quite a few bits about how we will fail, what will come to hurt/stop us. Of the two main campaigns we did this way the one where we were "more successful" was the one where all (but 1) of the PCs died. So yeah winning isn't the point, except for "those who have fun win."

To the main point, most of the time the player roles are pretty standard, the main exception is during character creation where everyone handles some plot stuff. Most of the time it is "a group of people approach, what do you do?" and it is only later that I realize this is the old enemy plot hook I laid out for my character at the beginning of the campaign.


IMO, the best sandboxes are a lot of content, of building blocks. The players - who didn't really enter into the game with much if any preconceived desires - look at this, and decide what to (try to) build out of it.I had a whole thread about how my preferred mode of play was "dynamic collaborative storytelling". This definitely fits into that model although it isn't required. It isn't module play because that has a path to follow, it isn't a sandbox because (I feel) that is more about the setting, it certainly isn't a dungeon crawler either.

On a different note: Am I the only one who can't think of a way in which the runaway princess thing makes any sense. At least if it is any typical pseudo-historical setting.

Pelle
2018-07-10, 07:40 AM
I'm merely increasingly stating and less implying that it seems internally consistent to treat character secrets and campaign secrets the same way, as they have the same feel, per the runaway princess example.

Theoretically I agree, it seems consistent. In practice, I often feel GMs and players make/use these secrets for different purposes, hence my opinion of them not having the same feel. When GMs create secrets, the goal is usually to enhance the game for the (other) players, providing potential for interesting situations, etc. Often I see players using the secret mainly as a tool for what to base their roleplaying decisions on, just thinking about their own character. Instead of thinking about how having a secret could be interesting for more people than themselves, enhancing the game for the other players. This is just a reflection of how GMs generally seem to be more concious/reflective of what affects the group's enjoyment...

If the PC is secretly a runaway princess, the player should be kind of obliged to offer the other players opportunities to discover it, actively trying to use the secret to make the game more fun for the other players. Then it's ok to me. If not, better that the other players know the secret from the start instead, since they do not get the chance to interact with it.

Quertus
2018-07-10, 07:46 AM
That's a good question actually. For me, it's due to what I prefer the different roles of GM and player should entail. It would be nice to also see the GM's decision making in progress, but the problem is that it can ruin too much of the discovery of what happens next. The game is about players making decisions for their characters, so those are the decisions I'd like to understand (and distinguish from non-decisons).

I'm glad you understand and appreciate the question. :smallbiggrin:

Hmmm... I'm stumbling over my own thoughts here, so I may be even less clear than usual. :smalleek: I think that the clearest bit is at the end, for those who wish to avoid sanity loss.

The simultaneously best and worst way I can think to put it is, I think that it is valid to view the GMs role as different from that of the players, but, taken to extremes / in the wrong circumstances, that either view could become toxic.

If people - especially the GM! - forget that the GM is role-playing characters with drives and motives and personalities, I feel that it will really detract from the game. To the point of it no longer being something I'd call an RPG, IME. Yes, IME - I've played in such games.

When the PCs ignore what another PC does, because they already know the reason, when they would clearly act differently if an NPC did the same thing, it detracts from the game. Of course, when you go through the motions of investigating something (a PC trait, what it takes to kill werewolves, etc) that you already know, it detracts from the game, too. Already knowing the answer OOC seems like a no-win situation to me.

If the players have or develop the skills to suss out personality details from the GM's characters, nothing keeps them from applying those skills to the other PCs. In fact, knowing that the PCs have such secrets encourages the use and development of such skills. However, it increases the disadvantage held by those players who lack such skills.

And if the players enjoy the reveal from the GM's characters, why not enjoy that from PCs, too? If the players enjoy sussing out details from the NPCs, why not from the PCs, too? Much like the "PCs tend not to accept jobs from fellow PCs", I think that treating the roles differently leads to numerous issues.

But, if no-one enjoys the "suss out the details" minigame, what keeps the group from just metagaming all NPCs? "ok, GM, what do we need to do to get NPC x to do y?"

The PCs should be in the forefront of the game, game should be about the PCs. I couldn't agree more. But this leads to several questions.

Why do you value understanding PC decisions, but not PC discovery? Why do you (presumably) value NPC discovery, but not understanding NPC decisions?

Why not skip the NPCs entirely? Before you laugh, understand that I've seen such games. The entire cast of characters are all PCs. The only things that the PCs can interact with are other PCs. The PCs all have secrets, goals, etc, and are trying to interact with one another to accomplish their goals. Here, the GM is merely the rules arbiter, and had no NPCs to play. How would you feel about such a situation, where you don't understand why anyone is doing anything, and all your discovery comes from PCs?

Why don't I value understanding the decisions that the other PCs are making? Is it merely because I expect that I'll figure it out, or that I'll be told about it OOC at a later date? Or is it something else? Do I not appreciate the role-playing of not only non-professional, but not even amateur theater grade acting? Would knowing how badly they are failing to act out their role if I knew the inner workings of the character grate on my nerves? I'm honestly not sure, and I'm not even sure if I want to evaluate that further. Since Discovery is my favorite aesthetic, perhaps I'll just continue believing that that's the reason. The only reason. Yes, that must be it.

-----

There are movies that you want to watch at least twice because, the first time through, you don't know the secret. The second time through, you get to appreciate exactly what everyone was doing, and why.

If you knew that you would only get to watch the movie once, would you rather go in with spoilers?

I can see either being a valid preference. Myself, I'd prefer no spoilers - I can always try and appreciate evaluating the plot and the acting, knowing the secret, after the fact, even if I may miss a few details, but I cannot experience being clueless once my eyes have been opened.

Cluedrew
2018-07-10, 07:48 AM
This is just a reflection of how GMs generally seem to be more concious/reflective of what affects the group's enjoyment...I have this theory about "responsibility vacuum" for that actually. In that if something is repeatedly established as one person's responsibility than it is then not other people's responsibility. I think this is untrue, it is everyone's responsibility to make sure the group has fun. But the focus on how it is the GM's responsibility has made people forget (at least on an emotional level) that it is everyone else at the table's as well. I've got a longer version of this that goes on to explain why breaking down the GM role can be useful and helps explain why Darth Ultron has so many problem players. But that is getting off topic.

Quertus
2018-07-10, 07:57 AM
Theoretically I agree, it seems consistent. In practice, I often feel GMs and players make/use these secrets for different purposes, hence my opinion of them not having the same feel. When GMs create secrets, the goal is usually to enhance the game for the (other) players, providing potential for interesting situations, etc. Often I see players using the secret mainly as a tool for what to base their roleplaying decisions on, just thinking about their own character. Instead of thinking about how having a secret could be interesting for more people than themselves, enhancing the game for the other players. This is just a reflection of how GMs generally seem to be more concious/reflective of what affects the group's enjoyment...

If the PC is secretly a runaway princess, the player should be kind of obliged to offer the other players opportunities to discover it, actively trying to use the secret to make the game more fun for the other players. Then it's ok to me. If not, better that the other players know the secret from the start instead, since they do not get the chance to interact with it.

Well, I'm the poster child for "yes, I have a backstory, but it's entirely for me, to inform my role-playing of the character", so I should be right at home in this discussion. Hmmm... I see where we, not so much disagree, as come at this with different assumptions. I don't believe that the GM should make secrets based on the goal of increasing the fun of the players. In fact, I view the two - player secrets and GM secrets - as functionally identical.

What do I mean by that?

I believe that every detail of a character should first and foremost have the purpose of having a character. I believe that every detail of the campaign world should first and foremost have the purpose of having a world.

Now, picking and choosing which world to create, which details are likely to be the most fun for the players is, to me, exactly the same as a player choosing to secretly be left-handed in order to nerf his character down to levels that would increase the fun of the group.

To me, these are exactly the same things. Exactly the same mindset.

Do you view them as different, and, if so, why?

Metahuman1
2018-07-10, 07:58 AM
It's a waste of everyone's time if the whole party are in lock step going in for them to not know one another.


And it let's the ******* player be an ******* and justify it easier. Instead of meeting up he runs off to go chase pick pockets so he can try to be lord of the shadows and thieves and master the goings on in dark ally ways and you wind up spending half your time dealing with just his shenanigans.

Satinavian
2018-07-10, 07:59 AM
But, as to your point? Well, I'm not arguing against that being a valid form of play (even if it's not my cup of tea). I'm merely increasingly stating and less implying that it seems internally consistent to treat character secrets and campaign secrets the same way, as they have the same feel, per the runaway princess example.
I have no problem treating them the same.

The players don't know them, the GM does.:smallamused:

Quertus
2018-07-10, 07:59 AM
I have this theory about "responsibility vacuum" for that actually. In that if something is repeatedly established as one person's responsibility than it is then not other people's responsibility. I think this is untrue, it is everyone's responsibility to make sure the group has fun. But the focus on how it is the GM's responsibility has made people forget (at least on an emotional level) that it is everyone else at the table's as well.

Fun is everyone's responsibility. Couldn't agree more. Kudos for expressing it well!

Quertus
2018-07-10, 08:09 AM
Normally. Except the GM has a couple of named bullets ready to fire.

only later that I realize this is the old enemy plot hook I laid out for my character at the beginning of the campaign.

You know, I can't recall this technique ever having worked out well for me, despite having tried it multiple times with multiple GMs. I even made a rant thread about this issue (and others?).

This sounds like my version of Hell. :smallfrown:

Quertus
2018-07-10, 09:11 AM
It's a waste of everyone's time if the whole party are in lock step going in for them to not know one another.


And it let's the ******* player be an ******* and justify it easier. Instead of meeting up he runs off to go chase pick pockets so he can try to be lord of the shadows and thieves and master the goings on in dark ally ways and you wind up spending half your time dealing with just his shenanigans.

Well, I'm not exactly nonconfrontational. Personally, were I to optimize a game, I'd make it as easy as possible for someone to obviously be a ****. Then I'd tell them, "hey, this thing you did right here? That was you being a ****. Here's how that's you being a ****. Now, are you physically / psychologically capable of not being a ****? If so, agree to stop being a ****; if not, gtfo."

And then my standard second chance of, "you agreed to do x. You did y. Here is how y is not x. Do you think you can actually do x?"

I'd much rather someone obviously be a ****, and have their behavior fixed, or get kicked for it, than have them ruin the game in more subtle ways.

Pelle
2018-07-10, 10:28 AM
Now, picking and choosing which world to create, which details are likely to be the most fun for the players is, to me, exactly the same as a player choosing to secretly be left-handed in order to nerf his character down to levels that would increase the fun of the group.

To me, these are exactly the same things. Exactly the same mindset.

Do you view them as different, and, if so, why?

I didn't really understand why nerfing the character would increase the fun of the group, so I can't answer that now.

I see the GMs job as creating a world which is fun to play in, with potential for interesting decisons. This is in prepping the situation, populating the sandbox, writing the module. When running the game the GM should roleplay the NPC according to their motivations and so on, but if that only leads to boring outcomes then the world was designed badly IMO. So if the GM spends time making an NPC with a secret, that secret should add to the game experience somehow, either by being something the players can interact with, or just to provide depth to the character. Either way, GMs are more used to designing to enhance the fun for other players.

Usually the focus of players is to just play their own character, creating a character they think will be fun to themselves. They are trying to do what their characters would do. If revealing a secret would be bad for the character, that easily means the other players will never be given opportunities to interact with it. It varies of course, but players generally have less experience in designing their character for others' fun than their own. For example by creating character traits that means some information is bound to slip or letting the character have motivations that are on a crash course with the secret. How can I create a character with secrets that will lead to the other players getting to make interesting decisions? If the secret will not lead to interesting decisions for the other players, then they might just as well get to know the secret as players so they can at least watch the ones the character who has it gets to make.

I think my assumptions are coloured by the experiences I have from the group I am playing with, though. Maybe if the players in my group had more storygaming than roleplaying focus, I would find player secrets working out better...

Cluedrew
2018-07-10, 01:23 PM
You know, I can't recall this technique ever having worked out well for me, despite having tried it multiple times with multiple GMs. I even made a rant thread about this issue (and others?).

This sounds like my version of Hell. :smallfrown:Two possibilities:
Your GM didn't do it right. There is an line between drawing hooks from your background and (accidentally?) punishing characters for having an interesting background. I've seen some threads on crossing that line which might be the rant threads you mentioned. But while "has many siblings" may not of supposed to be used as a source of conflict "has many old enemies" always was. Plus you know, using them to provide boons to the characters on occasion helps.
It is your version of hell any you should stay away. It wouldn't be as weird as your version of heaven (not for me at least).

As for the bit of the return to the main topic, yeah I think the players should know each other unless the campaign is set up to drive (& bind) them together from the start. Even if you are really into the dynamics of group formation, I say put them together and then let them work out the group dynamics. The problem with the question "Do they team up?" is that if the answer is no people have to roll up new characters or run things in parallel.

Darth Ultron
2018-07-10, 02:23 PM
So, if the NPC is actually a runaway princess, wouldn't you rather have read through the module before the game begins, so that you can appreciate the GMs role-playing / the module-writer's cool decision?

If you do it this way your not role playing, your acting. This is why GMs and players are different. The GM knows all the details, but is not a part of the story, they don't have a in game vested interest in the story. Very often they are just acting.

The player, on the other hand, has a character that is part of the story and they are vested in that story. The player is role playing the character.

The room has three treasure chests, two are traps, one has loot.

The DM, acting out the role playing of the greedy thief Zog go over to a random chest. If Zog is killed by the trap, the DM just shrugs

The player is role playing their character Ado, and they know about the room, chests and traps. It is hard...almost impossible..for the player to have Ado walk into a trap that they know about. The player will most often ''randomly''(wink wink) just pick the chest with the loot(hehe).

The way the GM plays the game is not the same as the way the players play the game. GMs and Players are different. In many ways.


Theoretically I agree, it seems consistent. In practice, I often feel GMs and players make/use these secrets for different purposes, hence my opinion of them not having the same feel. When GMs create secrets, the goal is usually to enhance the game for the (other) players, providing potential for interesting situations, etc. Often I see players using the secret mainly as a tool for what to base their roleplaying decisions on, just thinking about their own character

Again, this shows the huge differences between a GM and a Player.

GM: uses secrets to enhance the game for the sake of the game and the players.
Players: uses secrets to enhance only their own personal enjoyment

See the huge gap?



If the PC is secretly a runaway princess, the player should be kind of obliged to offer the other players opportunities to discover it, actively trying to use the secret to make the game more fun for the other players. Then it's ok to me. If not, better that the other players know the secret from the start instead, since they do not get the chance to interact with it.

Too often the ''player character secret history'' is just disruptive to the game.

1.Often it never even comes up. The secret is so secret, nobody ever knows...and the game rolls on.
2.Often it's pointless. Player Bob keeps the secret for 12 games, and during game 13 he is like ''Surprise!" and the other players just shrug "whatever" and the game rolls on.

3.The worst one. The jerk player wants their character to always be in the spotlight about their special secret. So, all the time they HAVE to drop hints, and they HAVE to hook the other players into chasing the hints. THIS very quickly can becomes the WHOLE game: ''what is Bob's players secret?"




If people - especially the GM! - forget that the GM is role-playing characters with drives and motives and personalities, I feel that it will really detract from the game. To the point of it no longer being something I'd call an RPG, IME. Yes, IME - I've played in such games.

If your just having a character do set things, then your acting, not role playing.

Technically, half of what a GM does is acting. A NPC has a 'script' or at least a 'set of notes', and that is all they are. The vast majority of NPCs are not ''full'' characters: they are thier as just part of the setting.



There are movies that you want to watch at least twice because, the first time through, you don't know the secret. The second time through, you get to appreciate exactly what everyone was doing, and why.

True. (I just watched Ready Player One five times...to try and catch all the eggs :) )

The 'default' RPG style for most players is the ''first time movie watching'' style. They don't want to know anything about anything and just want to see what happens. And Some players do like to do the ''redo'' where they do the same module, but ''try different things''.

But watching the movie for the second time does not have the same thrill as the first time, but you do get enjoyment from seeing it all unfold. But this only works as your a passive observer.

But this does not work for an rpg where you are actively playing.


Fun is everyone's responsibility. Couldn't agree more. Kudos for expressing it well!

This sounds great for a vague theory, or a bumper sticker.....but it's meaningless for real life.

Sadly, most people, and more so most players, don't think this way. Most players can care less about the ''game'' or anyone else: they are their for their own personal enjoyment and relaxation.

MrSandman
2018-07-10, 03:11 PM
Sorry for the delay in my answer. I've been busy and I wanted to dedicate this topic the time it deserves.



Confusion. Start out with characters loyal to X. Unbeknownst to the players or characters, X is not a good guy. Sandbox away. Where is the issue?

Well, I see two issues with it. The first one is that in your scenario, it is the game master who chooses it. She decides that my character will be loyal to his lord and that he'll get to know that his lord is not a good guy. But maybe this time I want to play something else. Maybe I want to play a commoner who has been abused by bad guy and tries to expose him. Not knowing the story we're going to play keeps me from choosing exactly what role I want to play in it.

The second is that it would require the game master knowing and using my character's background (he is a knight, he has a lord, the game master takes the lord out of his background and uses it for the story). As far as I'm aware, you oppose such behaviour.




I thoroughly agree that all characters should have a reason to be there, and be involved. Note that this is not only in no way contradictory to my "not from around here" preference, but actually related to it. I don't trust my ability to explain that (although there's hints in some of my other replies), so I'll wait and see if anyone gets it before trying to explain it myself.

However, I'm left to wonder - if you don't see secrets as a detriment to cohesion, is this tangent related to this thread any longer?

I'm happy to leave this discussion for another time. I think that the point of relation is that having open secrets (both regarding story and regarding characters) helps create something more relevant to the story and the other characters.

Quertus
2018-07-10, 09:44 PM
I didn't really understand why nerfing the character would increase the fun of the group, so I can't answer that now.

IIRC, the example I gave was of running a Face who happens to be as good in combat as the party Fighter, in a party that cares about game balance and/or niche protection.

In this scenario, I hope it's easy to see how nerfing the character would be conducive to the fun of the group.


I see the GMs job as creating a world which is fun to play in, with potential for interesting decisons. This is in prepping the situation, populating the sandbox, writing the module. When running the game the GM should roleplay the NPC according to their motivations and so on, but if that only leads to boring outcomes then the world was designed badly IMO. So if the GM spends time making an NPC with a secret, that secret should add to the game experience somehow, either by being something the players can interact with, or just to provide depth to the character. Either way, GMs are more used to designing to enhance the fun for other players.

Agree with you up to and especially including the bolded part. But that last sentence? You and DU may agree on that, but that hasn't been my experience. Nor do I consider it the optimal way to play. Fun is everyone's responsibility.


Usually the focus of players is to just play their own character, creating a character they think will be fun to themselves. They are trying to do what their characters would do. If revealing a secret would be bad for the character, that easily means the other players will never be given opportunities to interact with it. It varies of course, but players generally have less experience in designing their character for others' fun than their own. For example by creating character traits that means some information is bound to slip or letting the character have motivations that are on a crash course with the secret. How can I create a character with secrets that will lead to the other players getting to make interesting decisions? If the secret will not lead to interesting decisions for the other players, then they might just as well get to know the secret as players so they can at least watch the ones the character who has it gets to make.

Yes, players should make characters that are fun for them, but they should also think in terms of what is fun for others. To do otherwise is suboptimal. If I learned one thing from A Beautiful Mind, it's not to trust anyone, but I also learned that everyone prospers most when the individual does what is best for himself and the group.

Having secrets is more a "depth of character" thing for me. How can having secrets increase the fun of others? I'll bite.

By secretly having an allergy to grapes, it is easy for me to roleplay my character deciding to make his own food, and maybe even offering to make food for everyone. This little hook gives everyone else the opportunity to engage with it, and make interesting decisions. Do they start treating my character like a servant? Start becoming suspicious of poison? Ask if I know food from their homeland? It gives everyone an opportunity to characterize their character, even if they never investigate anything about mine.


I think my assumptions are coloured by the experiences I have from the group I am playing with, though. Maybe if the players in my group had more storygaming than roleplaying focus, I would find player secrets working out better...

Huh. That may be the first time anyone has suggested that this portion of my role-playing focus would be best suited for story-based games...


Two possibilities:
Your GM didn't do it right. There is an line between drawing hooks from your background and (accidentally?) punishing characters for having an interesting background. I've seen some threads on crossing that line which might be the rant threads you mentioned. But while "has many siblings" may not of supposed to be used as a source of conflict "has many old enemies" always was. Plus you know, using them to provide boons to the characters on occasion helps.
It is your version of hell any you should stay away. It wouldn't be as weird as your version of heaven (not for me at least).

As for the bit of the return to the main topic, yeah I think the players should know each other unless the campaign is set up to drive (& bind) them together from the start. Even if you are really into the dynamics of group formation, I say put them together and then let them work out the group dynamics. The problem with the question "Do they team up?" is that if the answer is no people have to roll up new characters or run things in parallel.

I guess it depends on his you define "know each other". I usually see people using that phrase talking about childhood friend, not someone they met 5 minutes ago during the mission briefing.

Point of it being my private Hell is, it'll take me a bit to imagine a good version of that, to understand how it affects the value of secrets.

And what was my heaven? Being a Pokemon and forced to fight meaningless battles over and over again? Or something more gaming related?


Well, I see two issues with it. The first one is that in your scenario, it is the game master who chooses it. She decides that my character will be loyal to his lord and that he'll get to know that his lord is not a good guy. But maybe this time I want to play something else. Maybe I want to play a commoner who has been abused by bad guy and tries to expose him. Not knowing the story we're going to play keeps me from choosing exactly what role I want to play in it.

Ah, let me try again.

You choose to be a knight. The GM has already created the lord(s), and knows that the one you chose (if there was a choice) was of the secretly villainous variety.

It does bring up an interesting point, though: entitlement. Personally, I hold that, all things being equal, insert more weasel words here, the player is entitled to play their character, but not to any particular role. Especially given the nebulous weasel words, I figure I'd best explain that.

So, Quertus is my signature tactically inept academia mage. Is he any less Quertus if someone (or everyone) else is playing mage? An academic? A tactically inept character? A sage? Someone with his amazing fashion sense and good taste?

For me, the answer is, "of course not!". In fact, I'd probably enjoy any of those scenarios (although the player who wasn't trying to be worse at tactics than Quertus... while it makes a good story, it probably wouldn't make a great campaign). Because I measure my characters more in an absolute sense than in a relative to the party sense. I am me, whether I'm hanging out with Einstein or Forest Gump. Same goes for my characters.


The second is that it would require the game master knowing and using my character's background (he is a knight, he has a lord, the game master takes the lord out of his background and uses it for the story). As far as I'm aware, you oppose such behaviour.

I oppose it from experience. Thus, I can simultaneously have done that, think that it's doable, and not want to do it again.


I'm happy to leave this discussion for another time. I think that the point of relation is that having open secrets (both regarding story and regarding characters) helps create something more relevant to the story and the other characters.

I'd need to be a Merilith if not a Hekatonkheire to handle all the "on the other hands" I'd need to go through to respond to this bit. Perhaps another day.

Pelle
2018-07-11, 04:51 AM
IIRC, the example I gave was of running a Face who happens to be as good in combat as the party Fighter, in a party that cares about game balance and/or niche protection.

In this scenario, I hope it's easy to see how nerfing the character would be conducive to the fun of the group.


So you incur penalties fighting woth you off-hand (without others noticing that), to compensate for you superior characterbuilding skills? I don't see why that should be a secret, seems kind of like Illusionism to me, but ok. Seems quite different to how I am thinking about secrets mainly to enhance the game through the fiction, but if you include it for the specific purpose of making it more fun for other players than yourself I guess it's similar in that respect...



Agree with you up to and especially including the bolded part. But that last sentence? You and DU may agree on that, but that hasn't been my experience. Nor do I consider it the optimal way to play. Fun is everyone's responsibility.


Always a bit scary when that happens, making me doubt myself. Yes, fun is everyone's responsibility. In my ideal world, players are eually good as GMs to design for others' fun. I'm just observing that reality doesn't match that, which I think is due to the different roles in the game that people are used to.

The 'average' GM is thinking constantly about the game and how to accomodate the different playstyle preferences of the players in the group, while the 'average' player just shows up on game night once a week, and may not even realize that other players have different preferences than their own, which they can't really articulate. Your observations may differ, especially if the players in your group are also experienced GMs. But typically, GMs are more used to taking the responsibility for everyone's fun, because they usually are the ones who want to play the most and try their best to keep their friends interested and coming back to game with them.



Yes, players should make characters that are fun for them, but they should also think in terms of what is fun for others. To do otherwise is suboptimal. If I learned one thing from A Beautiful Mind, it's not to trust anyone, but I also learned that everyone prospers most when the individual does what is best for himself and the group.

Having secrets is more a "depth of character" thing for me. How can having secrets increase the fun of others? I'll bite.

By secretly having an allergy to grapes, it is easy for me to roleplay my character deciding to make his own food, and maybe even offering to make food for everyone. This little hook gives everyone else the opportunity to engage with it, and make interesting decisions. Do they start treating my character like a servant? Start becoming suspicious of poison? Ask if I know food from their homeland? It gives everyone an opportunity to characterize their character, even if they never investigate anything about mine.


This I agree with, again I'm just making different observations and speculating why. If you take the responsibility as a player to make other players interact with your secret, that's great, and then it can work fine. I also like discovery of PC secrets, but in practice I find players are not as experienced in letting other players discover them.



Huh. That may be the first time anyone has suggested that this portion of my role-playing focus would be best suited for story-based games...


Yeah, I know. If you as a player choose to have your character make a meal, so that other players may interact with the secret, I would call that storygaming focus. It might also be what the character would do, but you choose to highlight something that is usually never 'shown on camera' in order to bring attention to it.

PersonMan
2018-07-11, 05:05 AM
I play a lot of Play-by-Post games, so the party being acquainted before the game begins requires a bit more work than normal, and it's more typical that none of the PCs know each other at the beginning. I don't think it really poses a problem, it's just something people's characters need to be able to do - quickly bond or learn to trust or grudgingly work with the rest of the party. Or the player makes someone less trusting, with some sort of "escape clause" to allow for cooperation (such as "once players are picked I'll figure out a reason for my PC to trust at least one other party member enough to not cause trouble").

Commenting on the matter of secrets, backstories and such: while I'm different in a lot of ways (I don't play the same exploration type games, for example) I agree with some of what Quertus is saying. I know I'm not a fan of having my characters' backstories brought into the game proper, and "secrets"* are present in most of my characters, meant to be something for me to use while playing them to keep them consistent and potentially being dug up if someone were to analyze their behavior long-term.

*Of the "that's not a secret, it's just information people don't know!" type. To answer the questions of 'why bother?' or 'what does it add?' that have come up earlier in the thread - because it's fun, and I like doing it. It adds something for me, and since it doesn't negatively impact anyone, that's all the "justification" needed.

MrSandman
2018-07-11, 05:25 AM
You choose to be a knight. The GM has already created the lord(s), and knows that the one you chose (if there was a choice) was of the secretly villainous variety.

It does bring up an interesting point, though: entitlement. Personally, I hold that, all things being equal, insert more weasel words here, the player is entitled to play their character, but not to any particular role.


And that's a fine way to play, so long as everyone is on board with it. But as everything, it's got its advantages and disadvantages. One of the disadvantages is that I can't choose whom I want to play in a particular story. I can choose my character's abilities and background, but I've only got a very limited way to decide her role in the story.

Other ways of handling it let me choose exactly which role my character is going to play in the story but have other disadvantages.

Pelle
2018-07-11, 05:29 AM
To answer the questions of 'why bother?' or 'what does it add?' that have come up earlier in the thread - because it's fun, and I like doing it. It adds something for me, and since it doesn't negatively impact anyone, that's all the "justification" needed.

That's fair eough, but would you consider sharing it with other players if that would positively impact any of them, however? Or is it just that you enjoy knowing something that others don't know, independent of what it is or does for your roleplaying?

Satinavian
2018-07-11, 06:05 AM
Ah, let me try again.

You choose to be a knight. The GM has already created the lord(s), and knows that the one you chose (if there was a choice) was of the secretly villainous variety.

It does bring up an interesting point, though: entitlement. Personally, I hold that, all things being equal, insert more weasel words here, the player is entitled to play their character, but not to any particular role. Especially given the nebulous weasel words, I figure I'd best explain that.

So, Quertus is my signature tactically inept academia mage. Is he any less Quertus if someone (or everyone) else is playing mage? An academic? A tactically inept character? A sage? Someone with his amazing fashion sense and good taste?You choose to be a tactically inept academia mage.

The GM has already created the academies and knows which one is linked to the main plot via some dark secret in the cellor. It will be the one you come from.


Same thing as with the knight, isn't it ?

Quertus
2018-07-11, 10:08 AM
And that's a fine way to play, so long as everyone is on board with it. But as everything, it's got its advantages and disadvantages. One of the disadvantages is that I can't choose whom I want to play in a particular story. I can choose my character's abilities and background, but I've only got a very limited way to decide her role in the story.

Other ways of handling it let me choose exactly which role my character is going to play in the story but have other disadvantages.

Ah, seems after I lost my post and recreated it, I left that part out. :smallfrown:

Yes, there are disadvantages to the described style. But "my style" includes copious amounts of communication, and the ability to ask the GM / group to modify things to optimize everyone's fun.

So, if you really want to play a particular role in a story, say so, and we'll work to figure out how to make that happen.

Thus, not an inherent right to a role, but something that one can negotiate towards.


You choose to be a tactically inept academia mage.

The GM has already created the academies and knows which one is linked to the main plot via some dark secret in the cellor. It will be the one you come from.

Same thing as with the knight, isn't it ?

... Ok, ignoring my standard "not from around here" clause (which is the source of my "not interested in doing it again" statement)... Yes, I believe it would be.

To make it properly parallel the example I gave, I'd have to have chosen to come from that academy. But I don't see that as a major sticking point for an alternate reality me who would play a character from the area, to be willing to let the GM set the stage to maximize the group's fun.

For actual me, if the GM wanted me to have some nominal connection to that academy, the game could start with Quertus researching something at that academy, or giving a speech there, or negotiating prices for selling his books there, or we could work together to make some other reasonable explanation for starting conditions conducive to the game.

Darth Ultron
2018-07-11, 10:32 AM
Always a bit scary when that happens, making me doubt myself. Yes, fun is everyone's responsibility. In my ideal world, players are eually good as GMs to design for others' fun. I'm just observing that reality doesn't match that, which I think is due to the different roles in the game that people are used to.

Most people, and most players don't think they are responsible for the fun. Most players just want to have fun...their own personal fun...and care about nothing else.



But typically, GMs are more used to taking the responsibility for everyone's fun, because they usually are the ones who want to play the most and try their best to keep their friends interested and coming back to game with them.

And, in most cases, the GM is the only one that can do anything to effect the fun anyway.


You choose to be a tactically inept academia mage.

The GM has already created the academies and knows which one is linked to the main plot via some dark secret in the cellor. It will be the one you come from.


Is the big question here the Gm taking control over the PCs history or back story?

Like the player wants X, and the GM does Y?

Quertus
2018-07-11, 11:55 AM
So you incur penalties fighting woth you off-hand (without others noticing that), to compensate for you superior characterbuilding skills? I don't see why that should be a secret, seems kind of like Illusionism to me, but ok. Seems quite different to how I am thinking about secrets mainly to enhance the game through the fiction, but if you include it for the specific purpose of making it more fun for other players than yourself I guess it's similar in that respect...

Eh, I chose that secret because it was one of the classic reveals in cinema, and gave clear statistical disadvantages. And because it was hilarious to imagine a setting where it was not an innocuous, self-contained secret (really? All lefties are demigods?).

A less fun example is when I ran a half-elf who was not proficient with the bow she carried. She was too embarrassed of failing to learn the traditional trappings of her heritage to admit her lack of skill.

This initial lack of proficiency helped characterize her as an eager if unskilled combatant, deeply concerned with fitting in with her mixed heritage. It helped characterize other characters by setting off their combat skills, their ability to evaluate combat skills (her secret didn't remain secret past the first session), their tactical (and tactful) assignment and assessment of her "skills", and their kind understanding and patient training.


The 'average' GM is thinking constantly about the game and how to accomodate the different playstyle preferences of the players in the group, while the 'average' player just shows up on game night once a week, and may not even realize that other players have different preferences than their own, which they can't really articulate. Your observations may differ, especially if the players in your group are also experienced GMs. But typically, GMs are more used to taking the responsibility for everyone's fun, because they usually are the ones who want to play the most and try their best to keep their friends interested and coming back to game with them.

Average? Mean, mode, or median? I've met plenty of GMs who could not comprehend that there were multiple "right" ways to play the game, multiple ways to have fun. I've even been such a GM. :smallredface:

Even recently, I've met plenty of GMs who lacked interest and/or capability to discuss play style preferences, insisting on being petty tyrants instead of facilitators of fun. Just look at the history of the Giant.

I fear you may overestimate the average GM.


This I agree with, again I'm just making different observations and speculating why. If you take the responsibility as a player to make other players interact with your secret, that's great, and then it can work fine. I also like discovery of PC secrets, but in practice I find players are not as experienced in letting other players discover them.

Many secrets are anticlimactic to discover. Most are best left as ways to enrich the character, adding to the fun of all through the depth of the character, rather than by other characters directly interacting with the secret.

Still, for some players, the fun is in the journey. The act of trying to understand the secret is what brings them joy. Or is good practice for them. So having secrets helps out that way, too.

Then, yes, occasionally, the revealed secret adds to the group's fun, but, for me, that's usually a tertiary consideration, at best.

Hmmm... I guess that is one difference between players and GMs. I advise linear GMs to follow the Rule of Three (as a sandbox GM, I don't give a **** whether the PCs discover any particular secret, and so ignore the Rule of Three), whereas, as a player, I follow no such formula, and would not necessarily advise it of other players, either, as "discovery" should not be the primary focus of most player secrets, IMO.


Yeah, I know. If you as a player choose to have your character make a meal, so that other players may interact with the secret, I would call that storygaming focus. It might also be what the character would do, but you choose to highlight something that is usually never 'shown on camera' in order to bring attention to it.

Hmmm... I'll have to consider this. I do try to find ways to vary the focus, to allow people to explore things often left off camera, if they so desire. Perhaps I'm not quite as anti-story as I believe? I'm not sure. I view it as framing scenes, and facilitating role-playing.

PersonMan
2018-07-11, 12:08 PM
That's fair eough, but would you consider sharing it with other players if that would positively impact any of them, however? Or is it just that you enjoy knowing something that others don't know, independent of what it is or does for your roleplaying?

Assuming a perfect-knowledge type scenario where I know it would improve things for them? Sure. But then it'd mostly be a matter of time - there's a lot of little things that I expect to eventually come up or be mentioned unless they're details that wouldn't fit into most games.

The closest to getting enjoyment from exclusive knowledge I get would be when I figure out some details that will probably never come up during the game itself; there are some backstory details I'm glad I have worked out but don't expect to ever be relevant (such as, for example, a character's romantic history; it's something that could possibly become relevant, but even then it would likely be a minor thing - an unusual openness towards someone resembling an old lover, or similar) and those fall into the "good that they exist, other players not expected to know", with in some cases me not telling the GM either due to it not feeling worth bringing up on its own.

Cluedrew
2018-07-11, 03:07 PM
I guess it depends on his you define "know each other". I usually see people using that phrase talking about childhood friend, not someone they met 5 minutes ago during the mission briefing.I usually see it as "they don't have to be introduced" so in some games I've played some character sort of knew each other by reputation, the didn't have to have any get to know each other time besides never having met before. Slightly different than situations throwing people together which just pushes that back a bit. Although if it splits it up enough it can seem to disappear. Put a different way the important difference is the one that effects how the campaign advances.

Point of it being my private Hell is, it'll take me a bit to imagine a good version of that, to understand how it affects the value of secrets.[/QUOTE]Well like... sorry what is "that" right now there are bunch of aspects of this conversation and I am not sure what part you are referring to right now, even with a quick review. Characters knowing each other? Open secrets? Revealed plans?


And what was my heaven? Being a Pokemon and forced to fight meaningless battles over and over again? Or something more gaming related?No, it was game related. In that a lot of things you seem to enjoy are different (or much more extreme) than a lot of other people. So what you dislike being different as well makes sense. I mean maybe it isn't all different, but my point is even under all that miscommunication it may also be that there is something I enjoy and you do not.

Morty
2018-07-13, 07:22 AM
I fondly recall a Vampire: the Requiem chronicle I played years ago, on this here forum - it proved surprisingly resilient for a PbP game. Our characters were all investigating an abandoned laboratory with research belonging to the Tremere, who were a covenant rather than a clan in this game, made with the help of a conversion guide. My character was a Tremere... but no other PCs knew that, even if their players did. The dynamic of my character trying to secure the knowledge for the Tremere and the eventual revelation that he was one was very fun to play out. So that's basically all the argument in favor of PCs having secrets I need.