But it is still adding knowledge later that at the time wasn't there to influence what was happening in the moment.
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If the GM has made such a decision, and you-as-PC don't have this information and have had no reasonable in-fiction way yet to get it, then your character concept is free and clear. Ignorance is bliss.
And even after the reveal, your character concept remains the same; as does the meaning of your action declarations at the time they were made (which is the only time they matter). The new info will shed a different light on all of it, and in your two examples likely prompt some soul-searching on the PC's part.
I don't understand what your point about the context of choice is.
Of course in the Curse of the Golden Flower it is only out of ignorance that brother and sister choose to sleep together. That's why the revelation that their relationship was in fact incestuous is so significant. And that revelation shows that, in this case,
ignorance was not bliss. It was terrible. I won't spoil the movie any further, but the proper response is not "soul searching".
And it's simply not true that in these sorts of contexts the character concept remans the same eg if my concept of my PC is as
upright in all things, and then it is revealed via unilateral GM fiat that I have in fact committed incest, my character concept is blown away. And a new concept is also added, unilaterally: uwitting committer of incest.
If my concept of my PC is
stalwart defender of worthy folk and then it turns out via unilateral GM fiat that the folk in question are serial killers, my character concept is blown away. And a new concept is also added, in this case probably something along the lines of
sucker! although the context might establish something slightly different.
I don't think what I'm saying is hard to follow. A person isn't just what s/he
believes s/he is. If it was, people could never learn new things about themselves that make them ashamed or disappointed or (conversely) excited or proud.
the choices were still made at the time using the knowledge you had, and nothing changes that; and to say that it's all garbage now when it wasn't garbage then strikes me as a considerable over-reaction to a simple setback in the fiction.
With respect, this suggests a very shallow approach to fiction.
Suppose your PC is hired to assassinate someone, and does it - and then it turns out the victim is your father? Are you really going to tell me that that doesn't change things? That there is nothing to the game but the successful process of executing the intended hit?
You still successfully went out and found whatever it was, and dutifully brought it back. The sponsor's heel-turn doesn't change this.
My point is that
our actions are revealed as pointless, and we're revealed as suckers (both at PC and player level, which makes it doubly galling).
Finding stuff and taking it from A to B is not the stuff of which my RPGing is made. The purely tactical process of carrying out a hit is not the stuff of which my RPGing is made. What is key is the fiction that is established. If the GM uniaterally changes that fiction to invalidate the players' contributions, that is a sucky game.
Same sort of thing can happen in real life: you make a choice on something (say, you buy a new car) and later learn your choice was flat-out the wrong choice (though you've had ten years of great times in this car, newly-released studies have shown that particular model of car is very likely to have some dangerous flaws). You can regret that choice once this new info comes to light, but it doesn't invalidate all of what went before - you still had great times in the car, for example - and nor, really, should it.
That's comparison bears no relationship to what I'm talking about.
Here's a more apt comparison: 10 years after buying the car you learn that you had a brother, one who was adopted or fostered out before you were born, so you never met him. And now you try and track him down, but you learn that just over 10 years ago he was killed, hit by a car while crossing the road. And the owner of the car, who couldn't handle driving that car anymore, sold it. To you. And so now all your fond memories of your times in your car become memories of enjoying time spent in the car that killed the brother you never met. I think for many people that would make a big difference to those memories. Both in fiction
and in real life, those are the sorts of discoveries that can change a life. I doubt that many people would respond by way of "soul searching".
So far I've given examples that changes things in a bad way; sometimes people have things revealed to them that change their lives in a good way - I'm thinking now of the Balld of Bill Hubbard in Roger Water's album amused to death - a true story about a WWI soldier who'd been trying to carry a shot and dying comrade back into their trench but had to leave him in a shellhole in no man's land, and for years had lived with the burden that his friend was never found so that he might be buried and his death recorded; and then when he was an old man, he discovered his friend's name on a cenotaph roll, and - to quote - "It lightened my heart." (This example also helps us think about soul searching - as the soldier says when being interviewed, he had always wondered if there was something more he could have done to bring his friend back to the trench - but now that his heart is lightened, that soul searcing is no longer necessary.)
isn't this soul-searching just another variant on the type of challenge the likes of which a GM is supposed to put in front of a PC?
The GM's role is to provoke the players to make choices. This may or may not require soul searching on the player's parts (either for themselves, or as their PCs).
If the GM wants to introduce an apparently pleasant person into the fiction, who then turns out to be a serial killer or vampire (an old standby!) or whatever, maybe that will make for some good RPGing and some appropriate soul searching, depending on how it's handled and the mood of the table.
But I'm talking about a case where the player has already estabilshed that his PC is out adventuring so that he make the world safe for his dear dad. This is the character concept. And now the GM unilaterally determines that that concept is radically mistaken, and that dad actually isn't worth saving. Or in whatever other way, depending on the details, unilaterally reveals the PC's self-conception and motivation (which in typical cases is also the player's conception of the PC and the PC's motivation) to be radically misguided.
I can't think of any RPGing context in which that doesn't just suck.
do you happen to know whether the GM had this heel-turn planned right from the start, or was it something done on a whim?
I ask because for me if it was planned from the start then I'd very likely give the GM the benefit of the doubt on the assumption that he's got something bigger and better in mind over the long run
I assume it was planned, as it had all the hallmarks of ye olde raileroade.
