Half-baked Mechanic: Secret Knowledge

[Notafish]

I'm not really sure how best to frame this - it's just an idea I had that might be fun in a game with themes of sanity, illusions, reality vs. simulation, or other themes related to a character's perception of the world.

Basically, the idea is that key information is occasionally delivered to players via face-down index cards or private message, rather than by description to the full table. Not the broad description of an entire room, but descriptions of certain NPCs, items or monsters, or responses to questions about the history of the world.

In real-time play, I think this would require a good deal of preparation, but if (for example) low-sanity/low-rolling characters get different descriptions of the monsters they are facing it could raise the tension considerably. Especially if the descriptions usually line up with the group narration and if the "insane" descriptions are sometimes true.

I might build this post out later in the replies if I think of specific ways to try this in practice, but for now I'm curious about whether you have run into something like this in your games, what hurdles something like this would run into in practice, and how it might best be framed when explaining the mechanics to the players.

[animorte]

I like to do this a lot. A lot of times I have prepared specific notes on something expected to show up. When the time comes, I will hand over the descriptive note (yes, on an index card if prepared before hand) for the relevant player. Unless it's something obvious for the entire party, this is extremely effective at portraying their perspective. I've also used pictures in this way for some monsters or settings.

I've never done this directly relevant to any gauge of sanity, as I've never been DM over any sanity mechanic (though I have played under it). The only difficulty I could find with it is how many different perspectives are you prepared to write/print out of the same instance. It would vary by sanity levels naturally, but what are those levels? How many different descriptions could possibly be needed for any given scenario? How many different scenarios would require multiple levels of sanity perspectives?

If not planning ahead, valuable table time could be at stake. Of course, the system I played under would function similarly to OneD&D Exhaustion (gradually increasing stat penalties) with an inclusion of random "fake" encounter table. Now, that was interesting.

[GloatingSwine]

I might build this post out later in the replies if I think of specific ways to try this in practice, but for now I'm curious about whether you have run into something like this in your games, what hurdles something like this would run into in practice, and how it might best be framed when explaining the mechanics to the players.

The only real "hurdle" is if the players can't be honest with it.

The amount of prep is going to depend on how much you want to anticipate the information you're giving in advance rather than quickly writing it down on eg. the back of a post it note so you can stick it down in front of the player (write upside-down on the back so the top is blank and they can fold it up to read).

So your "prep" is "buy post-it notes and a biro".