How do you handle PC plot twists?

[miatoromatic]

I'm a big fan of plot twists, introducing magical items that change their (PC's) alignment or giving them an item that whispers evil things. I'm a pretty new DM though and has only ran one session so I don't have too much experience, but, how do you handle plot twists that deal with one character?

Do you plot them them in secret and then later reveal it to the entire table, or do you reveal the twist to the entire table and let the PC (unknowingly) experience it in character.

I personally think making it secretive would be fun because people will be reacting to it in real time, but it might frustrate some people.

 

[Celebrim]

Anything known or experienced by only one character is - when possible and especially when important - related only to the player of that character.

 

[Fuseboy]

We do it publicly. There's a certain delightful suspense you get knowing that a situation has this huge potential energetic charge, but not knowing exactly when it will go off. I find actual, real secrets (unless they're about tactical matters) to be slightly alienating when the knowing looks are going back and forth, and then disappointing when they're revealed. Most of the fun seems to be for the people in on it.

 

[miatoromatic]

Oh wow, I had completely forgotten about that, the possibility of people feeling excluded. I think the problem is that my players are pretty new so they can't really seem to separate the meta world from the RPing world. Hmmm

 

[Lindeloef]

Its one of those tough questions that is only answerable if you know your players. Always a problem is that a player might end up feeling betrayed (depending on the twist ofc).

On the other hand, some players are really bad handling player vs character knowledge and that can ruin any twist....

Like some player's character is secretly a werewolf and you let the players in on it. Suddenly one of them wants to deck himself in silver weapons even though there weren't any signs for the character to ever encounter a creature where silver would be useful.

 

[Janx]

as you have new players and such, keep in mind, having secrets that are player divisive isn't a functionally useful thing.

Obviously, mileage varies, but the last thing you need is to reveal PC2 is evil and have it tear up your party with in-fighting.

It's also not cool to out a PC's secret early, for no apparent story value/impact, or with no probable cause.

I played in a game, where a PC was actually a female in disguise. 2nd encounter in the session, the GM has the bad guy capture the party, strip them to their undies, which let the cat out of the bag about who wasn't who they said they were.

It was a bad new GM, and a bad adventure. Nobody came back for a second session.

 

[GMMichael]

I'm a big fan of plot twists, introducing magical items that change their (PC's) alignment or giving them an item that whispers evil things. . . how do you handle plot twists that deal with one character?

Do you plot them them in secret and then later reveal it to the entire table, or do you reveal the twist to the entire table and let the PC (unknowingly) experience it in character.

There are two ways to hijack a character: fairly or unfairly. The unfair way is to impose it with Rule Zero.

How you hijack a character fairly depends significantly on what game you're playing. In Fate, you offer a compel, which the player can turn down. In D&D, the PC gets a saving throw. In Modos RPG, GM and player agree on how to recover from Mostly Dead, Unconscious, or Catatonic. In Dungeon World you bust a move (sorry, I'm not a DW expert).

Personally, I'm not likely to plan a disaster for a particular character unless it has huge plot potential. Normally if something bad comes up, the campaign world generated it organically, and even then I'm likely to roll to see which PC is affected - just to keep things fair.

Some definitions are in order:[sblock]
Plot twist: a story event that is very difficult to predict.

PC Plot twist: a plot twist instigated by a PC, ala Fate or Dungeon World.

Hijacking a character: a significant change in character status, by the GM or a player.[/sblock]

 

[Hand of Evil]

Gaming is a team sport that has players and characters, plot twist are presented to the players as a group but it is expected that they know the difference between them and their characters. It is the character's choice to share with the party, the player is just playing the role of character and has reasons for that.

 

[Celebrim]

On the other hand, some players are really bad handling player vs character knowledge and that can ruin any twist....

Like some player's character is secretly a werewolf and you let the players in on it. Suddenly one of them wants to deck himself in silver weapons even though there weren't any signs for the character to ever encounter a creature where silver would be useful.

While that is true, I'd go further: no one is actually good at handling player vs. character knowledge. The difference in reading a mystery novel where you don't know "who done it" and the experience of reading one where you do, isn't merely in the satisfaction you have when it is revealed or the loss of engagement you have in figuring it out for yourself, but how you experience and note the clues the author provides. Deprived of firm knowledge, the clues in a story can pass you by as extraneous information, or naked facts which can't be connected to the larger narrative. But if you actually know who done it, everything you read will be checked against what you know about that character, and conversely every detail of that character will be received as a possible clue. In short, you are much more likely to realize the significance of everything you read than if you didn't have that context.

So metagaming is rarely as overt as you describe. The more usual effect that it has on a game is that the character acquires the player's knowledge, curiosity, suspicions and reasoning as soon as any clue is revealed. With firm knowledge regarding "the truth", the player's guidance for the character becomes a laser like focus whenever any in game knowledge is presented to the character. And the important thing to understand is, this sort of metagaming is entirely and completely unavoidable. It's certainly possible that the character/player could have had their curiosity aroused and begun a persistent investigation of something and figure out "the truth" or at least begin to strongly suspect it on the basis of a single clue. The player is placed in the position not merely of having to ignore what he knows, which is fairly easy, but to deliberately act stupidly and ignorantly in situations where the character also might reasonably know or suspect. The player could of course choose to act stupidly and ignorantly in the face of in game information, but if he does so he now is metagaming. So the player is placed in position which is not chosing whether to metagame or not, but rather chosing to metagame to his advantage or chosing to metagame to his disadvantage.

For the vast majority of traditional role-playing games, which require the player to advocate for his character, most reasons why you would choose to metagame to own's own disadvantage is not playing the game correctly. This is particularly true in cases where it would be playing the character against his personality or abilities to not be persistant, curious, insightful, rigorous and so forth.

Fundamentally, there is no way to pretend to be ignorant that accurately reflects how you'd behave when you actually were ignorant.

 

[Rune]

If the game hasn't started yet, you can have a character building session in which you distribute to each player a sheet with several background secrets. They then would each secretly choose one (with "none of the above" being an available choice).

These sheets might or might not be identical. Don't worry if there are duplicate background secrets in the mix--as long as the players don't know, they should play out differently. And provide an extra layer of surprise down the road.