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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hawkeyefan" data-source="post: 7582050" data-attributes="member: 6785785">No you don’t. I mean, we could be working with a different definition of retcon, but you don’t have to change anything. Everything happened as it did. There’s no reason the new element introduced needs to be contradictory.In the event of any possible contradictions, you figure out why there is no contradiction. The new element fits into the established fiction.Now, there of course could be cases where contradiction can’t be avoided, or there is just no satisfactory way toget the new thing to fit. In such cases, maybe the new element has to be denied or changed a bit. I think it’d be a case by case thing.I mean, Blades in the Dark allows for flashbacks. The players can call for a flashback to reveal something their character had done earlier. By your reasoning, this game element cannot work. Yet it does. Anything added to the fiction has the risk of being contradictory. Do you think it’s the case that the DM is better suited to avoiding such contradictions? Or that players are more susceptible?Are you worried only about what’s been established? Or are you equally worried about potential story elements that haven’t yet been introduced being contradicted?It seems like it could be a reasonable concern. Which game did you have in mind? Have you played any such games?  For me, I find that sharing the burden of tracking all this information with the players makes it easier. We talk about that stuff all the time...kind of recap things to make sure everything’s clear. I do this in bith my D&D game and my Blades in the Dark game. With Blades, that’s more the expected mode, but I find it useful in D&D as well. Funny enough, in D&D we don’t keep written campaign log of any kind. In Blades, I use the Score Tracker included in the game to keep a breif summary of each score. That’s a gokd question. I would hope that the game would address this in some way. I think most games that allow this kind of thing do have processes for how to handle this. Blades in the Dark works as a conversation between the players and GM, and does place final judgment with the GM. But it does allow for player introduced content, including flashbacks, and it also encourages discussion and trying to persuade the GM. In D&D, this isn’t the expected method of play, so it’s not really addressed. If a group wanted to play this way, they’d have to decide how such instances should be handled. In my game, we have a discussion about it and try to make the idea work. If we can’t, then we change it or deny it.</blockquote>

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