pemerton said:
And with your particular example it also relates to the roll of secret backstory in action resolution - another fundamental matter.
What do you exactly mean by that?
By
secret backstory I mean elements of the fiction that are known only to the GM - and so in at least that sense are not part of a
shared fiction - but that nevertheless are used by the GM to inform the outcomes of action resolution.
Like all these things there can be complex cases and perhaps sometimes boundaries are blurred. But in
@Manbearcat's example we see it at work: the GM decides, "offscreen" ie unilaterally and secretly from the players, that the daimyo is dead. Now action declarations by the player in the general direction of "I kill the daimyo" or "I take steps to bring down the daimyo" all fizzle, because the daimyo is no longer around.
I think what I've just described needs to be kept distinct from GM preparation of material to use in framing (eg something like AW
fronts). Some of what can look like action declaration is, in my view, more of a device to press the GM to frame some more - eg
reading a charged situation in AW, if it succeeds, requires the GM to add some more detail to the current scene and share it with the player who succeeded. And that might draw upon prep.
(Not all perception-type checks are like this: eg in BW wises are just as often, or even more often, used by a player to establish new elements of the fiction.)
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
I GMed a session of Classic Traveller today, continuing the
Aliens meets Annic Nova scenario. As originally presented (ie in the published module Annic Nova), there is not a great deal more to this scenario than the players moving around the abandoned vessel learning backstory from the GM by performing variouis sorts of "moves" (some of which require checks, some of which are simply gated behind skill levels, and some of which have to be puzzled out by the players).
I call this sort of play
learning what it is in the GM's notes., For it to be interesting, I think the notes have to be pretty damn clever and the atmosphere etc well presented also. I've encountered this as a player in CoC one-shots, I don't think the Annic Nova scenario, as published, gets over the line.
So I've adapted it in a couple of ways. There is an external source of pressure, namely, an Imperial Navy cutter investigating the vessel and the PCs' interest in it. That came into play today and was handled in the standard way we resolve social encounters ie a roll on the reaction table, with a +1 DM because the PC in question was a noble like the naval officer he was dealing with, and was being relatively charming in his blather. The modified result was a 12, ie genuine friendship, and so the officer has come on board the PC's ship but has accepted their explanation that things on the abandoned ship (the Annic Nova) aren't yet suitable for inspection by the Navy. No secret backstory was at work here (I'd prepped the NPCs, but it wasn't
secret backstory eg the officer announced herself by her title -
Lady Commander Askol - and my explanation of the circumstances of the reaction check, including the +1 DM, was all out in the open) .
There's also an internal source of pressure, namely, aliens (or rather Aliens) on board the abandoned vessel. Because of the way Traveller works - eg pretty old-school resolution for combat, based on position on a map or more abstract bands (but in this case we're using floor plans from the module) - there is a lot of scope for secret backstory to affect things. In the session today I handled that by using the surprise mechanics together with the encounter distance mechanics to determine who got the drop on whom, in circumstances where - to use AW terminology - the
unwelcome truth of the aliens on board had already been well and truly revealed.
For other aspects of framing and so establishing possible action declarations, there were some INT checks, and a check where a bonus from EDU got the relevant PC over the line. None of this was at the AW-level of elegant narrative pressure, but I was using it to try and have the backstory come out and hence the framing established in ways that followed the established fiction (including the fiction of the relevant PCs) and tried to make the session about
more than just learning what's in the GM's notes while not using the content of those notes as a secret determiner of action resolution outcomes.
That's a bit rambly but I hope makes some sense and helps illustrate some of the more abstract points in the first half of the post.