Scenario and setting design, with GM and players in mind

[pemerton]

The way I see it is this: if the scenario the GM has presented requires certain things be true, then these are GM defined, immutable facts (who the BBEG is, for example).

My understanding of @Campbell's remark, that I set out in the OP, is that it is talking mostly about these immutable facts.

 

[Malmuria]

Recently started an OSE campaign, and as part of character creation I wrote 8 rumors and asked players to roll on the chart to see which rumor they had heard. But I presented them with the entire chart; the fact that their character had only heard one was just a narrative conceit. I also give them a handout detailing all the rumors/possible clues they heard in the last session so nothing is dependent on what they remember or their (theoretical) notes. I also think providing maps is helpful. There was a discussion of this sometime ago; I think a player map is an easy visual aid that presents a set of choices (the danger is that it also constrains those choices potentially).

 

[Campbell]

My understanding of @Campbell's remark, that I set out in the OP, is that it is talking mostly about these immutable facts.

Yeah. Basically how to design settings/scenarios for interactivity.

• High Information Environments
• Connections between setting elements that can be meaningfully leveraged.
• Tradeoffs instead of right answers.
• Long term fallout beyond this session/adventure.
  

 

[Lanefan]

That doesn't seem very related to play of the game.

In the moment, most of the time, it might not be. As a general underlying scene shift, however, it could be pretty big: the world isn't what the players/PCs thought it was.

This does seem related to the play of the game, and is an example of not doing what the OP suggests. To me it seems like GM solitaire play.

GM solitaire play? Hardly.

But then, you tend not to like like GM secrets; and without GM secrets there can't be any big reveals. It's not "solitaire play" for a GM to sit on a secret for a while.

 

[Lanefan]

Yeah. Basically how to design settings/scenarios for interactivity.

• High Information Environments
• Connections between setting elements that can be meaningfully leveraged.
• Tradeoffs instead of right answers.
• Long term fallout beyond this session/adventure.

Sure, sounds good; especially the last one.

The question in my mind relates to clause one - High Information Environments - and whether any of that presented information is "allowed" to be outright false be it due to PC misinterpretation (e.g. a poor roll regarding info-gathering opens the door for the GM to provide false information) or due to the GM maintaining some sort of in-fiction deception either through NPC roleplay or through narration of a scene that isn't what it appears to be.

And it doesn't always have to be the GM. A player can have their PC intentionally mis-report learned information (assuming the GM didn't tell the whole table at once even though only one PC learned it; IMO this is very poor GMing form) or unintentionally by misinterpreting what was learned (i.e. the PC is assumed to make the same error in the fiction that the player does at the table), and can also have their PC be part of a deception against NPCs, the other PCs, or some combination of these.

A simple example: a PC goes ahead to scout a castle's approaches and layout, then returns to report to the party. The player might for some reason intentionally have the PC not mention the five guards she saw; or (more commonly) the player - and thus the PC - might get wound up in reporting the physical layout and simply forget to mention the five guards.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Two games I’ve GMed recently come to mind. In both Blades in the Dark and Spire the player characters play inhabitants of the city in which the game takes place. Neither is the “stranger in a strange land” trope that’s common to many RPGs.

So the way to handle this as the GM is to provide them with plenty of information. They live in the city, they should know things. They have connections, they’ve been places, they know who’s doing what in different parts of the city. The more you give this info freely, the more comfortable the players become with it, and they start suggesting ideas themselves, which is great.

Give them an abundance of information and resources to bring to bear. Friends and allies, people who can be bribed or leveraged.

Spire goes a step further in that there are actual class abilities that allow players to declare truths of one sort or another about the city or its denizens. These are great, and they keep a GM on their toes. You can’t predetermine everything when play works that way.

These ideas have bled over into my other games, too, even more traditional ones like D&D. I’m very generous with details and I don’t gate anywhere near as much information behind rolls as I used to. I have secrets, sure, but they are there to be DISCOVERD by the players not REVEALED to them.

 

[Malmuria]

The question in my mind relates to clause one - High Information Environments - and whether any of that presented information is "allowed" to be outright false be it due to PC misinterpretation (e.g. a poor roll regarding info-gathering opens the door for the GM to provide false information) or due to the GM maintaining some sort of in-fiction deception either through NPC roleplay or through narration of a scene that isn't what it appears to be.

It sounds weird, but I feel like you have to learn that "false information" is a particular kind of trope in the game your playing before you are attentive to these things. So if I play with new players, or new players to a given system, I'll just 'metagame' comment on what happened in a scene in some way. But also I'm not exactly a thespian, so I'm likely not conveying a lot of things in any given npc interaction.

 

[Malmuria]

So the way to handle this as the GM is to provide them with plenty of information. They live in the city, they should know things. They have connections, they’ve been places, they know who’s doing what in different parts of the city. The more you give this info freely, the more comfortable the players become with it, and they start suggesting ideas themselves, which is great.

Yeah in that kind of game I'll just ask the players. Does your character have a connection in the city? How the h would I know if they have a connection?

 

[MGibster]

We can start with a precept - in an RPG, secrets that don't come out aren't of any value. They are pages the author wrote, but didn't publish.

This is so obviously true that I'm disappointed you needed to say it. (And it needed to be said!) There are a lot of investigative scenarios for various games out there that explain in full to the GM what's going on, but so much of it is going to remain hidden to the players that I can't help but think, "What's the point?"

As GMs and scenario designers, we can always make the antagonists so perfect that they never let any piece of information slip, and leave no clues. That becomes a block in our developing fictions.

Reading the Gumshoe system for the first time was an eye opening experience for me. I'm supposed to just give the players the clue necessary to move on to the next scene? What kind of heresy is this? But it worked so well for Gumshoe games that I started doing it for any game involving investigations and it really made it a lot more fun for everyone.

 

[MGibster]

How can we design scenarios and settings to enable players to find the facts on the ground and to provide them with enough levers in the fiction to interact with? What sorts of scenario and setting will generate an internal causality that is meaningfully knowable and comprehensible?

When I ran a Trail of Cthulhu campaign a few years back, I instructed the players to create characters that were connected ot the New York police department in some way. They could be beat cops, detectives, prosecutors, defense laywers, etc., etc., but they had to be someone with connections to the police force. I ended up with the following: Two police detectives, one doctor (coroner), one reporter on the crime beat, and a psychologist who consulted with the NYPD. Each investigator had levers to pull, a vested interest in solving the case, and understood what was going on. I designed the campaign around a weird series of crimes involving a mythos entity and it worked well. (The Investigators won, but they were all killed in the last scenario save for the PC who gave birth to herself.)

Once of the things I'd do, is tell the players when they were barking up the wrong tree based on what their characters would know. The of the detective Investigators tried to get information out of a mid-level mafia boss by threatning to arrest him. I paused the game for a moment and told him his character knows that this won't work, especially since he threatened the boss in front of his underlings. This NPC will not talk under such circumstances, but you might be able to get him to talk by threatening him in other ways, especially if his underlings don't hear you.