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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 9570263" data-attributes="member: 4937">Requirement is such a loaded term.  Very few things are required, and of course this isn't among them.But the experience at the table of having your character tricked and you as the player being tricked are very different.  Having your character tricked but you not being tricked requires you to metagame how your character would behave if they were tricked without having the knowledge that you now have.  It is quite contrary to your conclusion, "performative thespianism" of the highest order.  You know the script, and now you must act as your character rather than yourself.   And there is some thespian value in this exercise.  But it's a very different experience than being a character in a story and then discovering that you've been tricked.  Only if the player is also tricked do you get this emotional connection to the story beats where you discover the tricks as a player and experience rather than imagine the sorts of emotions your character would have at that moment.  In other words, what's really being prioritized here is immersion and not "performative thespianism".   What's being prioritized here is the experience of the player.Note also the lack of symmetry in your discussion.  You speak of the character being tricked when the player isn't, but not of the character not being tricked when the player is tricked.  Why equivalently in your model can't you have the character taking actions as if they weren't tricked when the player has been tricked?  Because of course, the character and the player aren't separate the way you want them to be.  If the character starts taking actions on its own as if it hasn't been tricked, then the player observing the character is going to conclude that they have been tricked.  The character's knowledge would leak back to the player, because while the player is playing at a role, still the character is also in important ways the player.  Plus, the character has no will or volition of its own.  If the character is taking actions outside of the player's guidance, then someone else is playing the character and we really ought not say this is a player character.I think we can have dualities where there are symmetry and imagine that forced action by the character is potentially contrary to the player's desire and they have to imagine the performative roleplay either way, but not over the matter of having information about the fiction.  Thus, while it's certainly not required that you do anything, over the matter of the difference between the player and the character knowledge, I side pretty much entirely on the idea that pool of knowledge is entirely shared.  If the character knows anything the player doesn't, it should be told to the player, and anything that the player knows they are free to act on if they desire to.  Of course, they can engage in performative roleplay and pretend they don't know it and act on that imagined state if they want, but I won't enforce it.Ironically, last night I had a session where the player was being tricked but because of a fortuitous 4 6's on 4 dice roll, the character wasn't being tricked.  So I told the player not only that they were being tricked but also how, and yet somehow, despite this disclosure both the player and the character ended up tricked anyway, apparently helpless to effectively act on the information given to them.</blockquote>

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