First, given that the phrase "GM's secret backstory" has no currency in any forum I'm aware of outside my use of it, and given my use has been made abundantly clear, I think I'm at liberty to continue using it in that way.
Second, if it only comes into play as part of framing, then it's not secret, and hence is not secret backstory.
Well, you use it inconsistently, so perhaps that's the confusion. I had thought it meant 'stuff the DM made up that the players don't know' and that 'using this stuff secretly to determine the outcome of player declarations is bad' was separate. After reading this, I think that 'secret backstory' is just 'using this stuff secretly to determine the outcome of player declarations."
Which is a weird construct, but you're welcome to it. And my response to 'secret backstory' as you've framed is it that I don't use secret backstory in my DM driven games.
I presented an exampe of secret backstory being used to settle the outcome of an action declaration. That happens in RPGing. And as the responses in this thread have shown, it's not even particularly controversial.
What you describe is not an example of secret backstory being used to settle the outcome of an action declaration. It's an example of framing a challenge. But I don't think it's what [MENTION=6778044]Ilbranteloth[/MENTION] had in mind.
Ilbranteloth said "the intention is not to write or have material available that never comes into play. It's to have such material available in case it might come into play." In your example, who cares about haggling with merchants and smugglers? The player - in which case, it's an example of the GM "going where the action is". If that's how you run your game, then presumably it's not wildly different from how I run mine. But, again, I don't think that's what [MENTION=6778044]Ilbranteloth[/MENTION] meant, because when I said that I would be GMing blind without knowledge of what is motivating the players in their action declarations for their PCs (which is what one needs to know to "go where the action is"), Ilbranteloth didn't indixcate the same need.
If it's the GM deciding that it would be fun to have an episode of haggling with merchants and smugglers, then it's an example of what I would call GM-driven play (because, in introducing the fiction by way of framing, the GM is not having regard to the concerns/interests of the players as expressed through the build and play of their PCs).
Again, I'm glad we've decided that 'secret backstory' means 'using secret stuff secretly to determine the outcome of player declarations.' Much back and forth would have been avoided had you said this, and I'm sure that many posters that have responded to you may change their responses given the newly clarified definition.
A few things in response.
(1) The Forge's slogan for the sort of play that I have called "player-driven", that Eero Tuovinen calls "the standard narrativistic model", and that is set out in the introductory pages of BW that I quoted upthread, is story now.
I really do not care what the Forge calls things.
Ie it is not about "a good, well integrated story" in the future. It is about story now. Hence the injunction to the GM to "go where the action is". Hence the need, in each framing and each narration of a failed check, to have regard to the dramatic needs of the PC as established by the player through build and play.
Without having a full-fledged theory of dramatic composition, I think it's likely that a series of episode of story now, taken as a whole, will also probably exhibit "a good, well-integrated story". But that's a secondary concern.
My response was specifically generated by your holding out the on-the-spot generated 'foreshadowing' of the stealing of the mace by the Elf in the Elf poisoning the water-hole. That was you trying to show how your method can generate the same outcome as a more DM driven foreshadowed reveal. My entire point is that such 'story now' elements only create a good, well-integrated story because they're viewed through the lens of survivor bias -- the things that happened that ended up mattering are all that are considered; the things that ended up not mattering, but happened, are forgotten about.
In short, your idea of a good, well-integrated story is more akin to the anthropic principle: the things that happen had to happen for the story that emerged, therefore it was a good, well-intergrated story. This ignores all the things that happened that didn't matter to the story.
(2) Suppose the wastrel elf never figured again, because his dramatic work - testing the reaction of the elven ronin sworn always to keep the elven ways - had been done. How would that be inconsistent with anything? Or even atypical - all episodic fiction has it's one-off characters who figure prominently at some point but then fade into the background thereafter.
The good naga who helped the PCs in the Bright Desert may never figure in the game again. It was still fun at the time. And sowed the seeds for the dark naga, which has appeared in only one session but - due to its influence over the shaman PC - continues to be a significant presence in the the fiction of the game.
This cuts directly against your assertion that the Elf ended up as good foreshadowing, though, and goes, again, to survivor bias. Since the Elf ended up mattering, he's been remembered. Had a player not reintroduced the Elf as an important plot point later in the game, thereby authoring the backstory, then the Elf wouldn't have mattered and couldn't have been foreshadowing. If your best example of how your style exhibits foreshadowing can be dismissed so easily, then I challenge that it actually does this in the first place.
(3) Why would participants in a GM-driven game keep better notes, and have better memories, than participants in the sort of game that I run? Given that, as I posted, one constraint on authorship is consistency with the established fiction, why would you assume that I discard it rather than retain it? You assert that it is "overwritten", but have no actual evidence for that.
Why would you ask me? Did I say that? I've looked back, and it appears your authoring of that backstory is inconsistent with established events.
That said, I strongly doubt that you or your players review the playlogs for consistency when establishing new backstory. I'm uninterested in going through your curated logs for evidence, though, and am fully comfortable resting on the assumption that, at some point, you've all forgotten something that happened before because it was a one-off and have authored something that contravenes it.
And, to forestall the sputtering, I've done that in my more DM driven games. Assuming people forget stuff and countermand in by accident over multiple years of gaming isn't an attempted insult -- it's unavoidable.
(And what I said that I don't have to look up from 4 years ago is character goals. Because those infuse every moment of play. I mean, you know I have notes from 6 years ago that I can look up if I need to, because I posted about that in a reply to you.)
Ah, then I misread that, I recalled it as more open that just character goals. I've never forgotten character goals, either, because, as you say, the players really don't let you.
And now you're just making stuff up. The "realilty" you describe here has no life outside your own imagination.
If you want to see how my game actually works, follow some of the links that I've provided in this thread.
No, you've, once again, misunderstood a point. This was a continuation of things that integrate into a story. You just said that you have one-off characters, that do something in the moment and then move on, and that some are more lingering than others. So, you've just agreed with the point I just made -- some things get thrown at the story wall to see if they stick, some do, some don't. The Elf stuck. The Dark Naga stuck. The Good Naga is slithering towards the ground. I'm sure there's things you've forgotten happened that are further towards the ground than the Good Naga. This isn't an insult, it's an objective appraisal of how cooperative storytelling works: not everything is a hit.
And that point tied back into my wider point about survivor bias, which again seems relevant. If you can't even admit that not everything sticks around as part of the well-integrated story, then you've obviously unwilling to examine those things that were done and moved on and had little real impact on the players or story.
