Hi Mxyzplk,
This is an excellent point and I'm glad you brought it up. The short answer is that ninety percent of the time, my players only vaguely recognize the situation. But most recently there was a time when my brother not only recognized it, he let slip that it was "all a cheesy rip off."
Despite how I may make it sound, there's quite a bit of shuffling to disguise exactly how things will play out. For example, the movie Phantoms, the book Phantoms, and the outline of what happens in the game were all blended together. So knowing the book, or just the movie, or just the scenario would not give a player an advantage. In fact, during the Convergence game in particular, George kept saying, "you know this plot seems familiar to me..." but he could never place it, and it certainly didn't influence his actions.
Jeremy, on the other hand, has been gaming with me for over twenty years and can now second guess me very effectively. He knows how I approach plots (nothing is too outrageous) and usually guesses, quite accurately, what happens next. The key is to stay one step ahead of him, so that even when his character does realize what's happening (or theorizes what will happen) the scenario is moving on to the next plot point.
That leaves my brother. I took a scene in a different scenario from Fight Club and because my brother recognized it, it ruined the scene for him. Of course, my brother and I have the same interests, so this is a risk I face in using popular media as inspiration.
That said, none of the players ever used the information they discovered to alter their course of action. Also, and this has become distressingly clear as I tinker with scenarios: 90% of them are already rip offs of existing horror movies. It's astonishing how many are Evil Dead II, The Thing, and Jaws rehashed in a scenario. By changing names around and switching up the monster, you can still keep players in the dark.
Unless they're related to you.
Linear Mode
