Post originally by Bifi at 2003-06-16 06:17:46
Converted from Phorums BB System

Thanks, Jonathan, for your imaginative ideas. I would like to share also my experience and ask you for your council:

In the course of being a GM to the more traditional games I often stumbled upon a specific problem. The players usually don't get to know more than about 25% of the story. In a thoroughly designed environment/background, where different NPCs have their own different motivations and allegiances, the players (or their characters) simply are not able to credibly gain wider insight into the "inner workings" of the story. And, as it goes for a GM, I wanted to share with them as many of the elements of the story as possible.

It can be told to the players after the completion of the story/adventure, during an informal OOC session, sort of a "debriefing" (but revealing details this way often makes them lose a sense of mystery and the atmosphere suffers as well). It can be told during the story by certain NPCs (but the characters either mustn't know the details at that point or it simply isn't plausible for the NPCs or characters to know (or get to know) such details). It could be told by NPCs in a different story, creating a sense of continuity, but that's obviously not always a usable solution.

I had an idea of making breaks in the play at certain points to just really "tell the story" in the manner of a movie intermezzo, showing bad guys planning some horrible things to do to the good guys and cause as many innocent-bystander-casualties as possible. One of the problems is that it excludes the players from propelling the story at these points, although I might be reacting to their actions; secondly, it would take a lot of preparation to be able to respond to different outcomes, not even speaking about being able to tell a compelling story-piece without reading and to draw player attention - "the art of the story teller". There is one last option that falls to my mind - letting players handle/play the bad guys at that point, creating a "framed scene" with different elements and characters (something similar is being proposed in Nobilis).

And here arises the issue of "immersion". The players usually like to immerse into their roles, try to think as their characters would, and discover various facets of the character in the terms of its psychology, abilities, relations, etc. And they don't like to "switch characters", not to speak about the plays where the players ignorance/knowledge of certain things could matter a lot. Even in the case of a mature player the knowledge of certain things always influences the decision-making process of the player. It could be partially solved by creating a set of characters, all being played by the same player, one of them primary and the other ones secondary ("henchmen"), but playing multiple characters .

We are currently playing also a collection of short stories (each taking usually one session) in GURPS. The story itself plays out in the present day, with (of course) a few exceptions, one being mainly the existence of supernatural horror. The overarching story itself is dark, brooding, conspiratory, terrifying and occasionally violent (me being influenced mainly by Delta Green). The players play a collection of almost common-and-usual people, and, being confronted with the horror, responding to it as they are able, with the story mainly having the character of a paranormal investigation. At the beginning of the first story my idea for the players was to slowly build an "agency" through multiple sessions, creating "personnel files" and for each of the stories selecting a suitable character (and also the starting characters were strongly tied to the first story, where the next ones were different - with different needs/methods of solutions). This would also allow for higher flexibility in the terms of players' appearance and being able to introduce new players for just one session, and also it would support different styles of play. And again, the players' need for character immersion proved stronger, since they don't like to just switch/select a different character for each story.

Would anyone of you share your views or solutions to the mentioned problems? Thanks a lot.

Bifi