Plot transparency

[Hussar]

Red Tonic - totally agree. Thus the fence sitting above.

Sometimes it makes perfect sense that the PC's will not know that something is true. After all, if you travel to Ravenloft for the first time, through the Mists of Ravenloft, then it makes sense that your character, and thus you, won't know everything from the get go.

I really don't think you can make a single, one size fits all ruling on this. There's just too many variables to be able to say yes or no.

 

[enworldatemylogin]

I don't know. People bring a bunch of baggage into games. We may want to be more polite and call it preconceived notions. If I've never played in a game where the spell fireball does anything except fit nicely into the squares I target and burn the bad guys, I may be amused, annoyed, or confused when the DM finally tells me, "yeah, every time you do that an innocent kitten is killed somewhere else in the world".

 

[Aberzanzorax]

In my last homebrew there three very important towns on the barrier between the prime material and the hells.

Players and npcs were regularly resurrected.


The big reveal was....


....each ressurection splintered a piece of soul off of the individual, forming a fiend in the alternate plane....get rezzed 12 times and there are 12 fiends of about your power, and they know who you are.



That was a surprise, and a meaningful one, but it was story driven as well as mechanics defined (but without penalizing characters specifically for a "twist" in the gaming world). By that I mean, they were going to be fighting some bad guys, but what they did at earlier levels (whether they knew it or not) defined exactly which guys they'd be fighting at later levels.



The players ate it up in an "oh crap, what have we done, but 'cool twist' sort of way".

 

[Dantilla]

I think a lot of it really depends on reasonable in-game character knowledge. The rest depends on how much of a jerk the DM wants to be.

When I was monitoring character creation for my current game, I generally let the players do what they wanted and accepted what they gave me. It just so happened that they chose concepts that more or less worked. In the game I was running (Ravenloft), it just so happens that certain classes have disadvantages, and as DM I had some decisions to make.

Some classes simply would not have worked. Due to the nature of the world, classes that rely heavily on summoning would have been next to useless, as the land is cut off from other planes. Had anyone brought me a concept like that, I would have told them to make another character.

Otherwise, cetain spells do not function the same way as they do in "normal" D&D. This makes things a little more complicated for some of the spellcasters, as some of their spells went off differently than expected. However, since in the story the characters were spirited away from Oerth to Ravenloft, I judged it fair that they would have to learn about those things the hard way.

A lot of the decision making comes in when judging how good your players are at separating character knowledge and player knowledge.

 

[pemerton]

cetain spells do not function the same way as they do in "normal" D&D. This makes things a little more complicated for some of the spellcasters, as some of their spells went off differently than expected. However, since in the story the characters were spirited away from Oerth to Ravenloft, I judged it fair that they would have to learn about those things the hard way

A lot of the decision making comes in when judging how good your players are at separating character knowledge and player knowledge.

It also turns on what sort of control the players expect to have over their PCs, their action resolution choices, and the situations in which they find themselves.

These (potentially very varied) expectations will make a lot of difference to whether they will agree that it is fair for them to have to learn the hard way what it is that their PCs can do. I have played a game like this once (some sort of mostly free-form Harn variant) but (i) it wasn't my main game, (ii) I didn't have to do any work for PC creation, and (iii) the GM had indicated in advance that it would be a "discover who and where you are" game. Change one or more of those parameters and I think my opinion could be quite different.

 

[Nagol]

It also turns on what sort of control the players expect to have over their PCs, their action resolution choices, and the situations in which they find themselves.

These (potentially very varied) expectations will make a lot of difference to whether they will agree that it is fair for them to have to learn the hard way what it is that their PCs can do. I have played a game like this once (some sort of mostly free-form Harn variant) but (i) it wasn't my main game, (ii) I didn't have to do any work for PC creation, and (iii) the GM had indicated in advance that it would be a "discover who and where you are" game. Change one or more of those parameters and I think my opinion could be quite different.

Agreed. Over my history, there have been a few games where the parameters of play have been different enough from the expectation of character design that I've excused myself from the game.

Run what you want, but be honest with the players about what they're signing up to play. Launching a major and seemingly irrevocable "twist" early in campaign play ("You only thought this was a the radioactive ruins of the Mississippi delta! It's actually a pod on a giant starship a la StarLost!" -- true gaming story) doesn't intrigue me; it pisses me off.

 

[Hand of Evil]

No but do have the information available IF the character starts to look into it.

You find a ring, you put it on and become invisible, you get hunted down and attacked by evil beings. Sooner or later the player will connect the dots, the DM should have the knowledge available when the player starts to ask questions.

House rules - there are know and unknown, telling the players you have a procedure for handling information / effects is a house rule, what that information / effect is, is unknown until discovered. You then have your world myth, where you also provide information; example would be that all MU's know fire elements respond and become aggressive when fireballs are thrown about and there is a danger of summoning them. That is part of the world myth and falls under general knowledge: Magic User. The thief using a wand of fireball does not know it...oops, he does now and the magic user can yell at him!

 

[chaochou]

Basically, how much plot transparency is expected when the plot is tied to an item/ability when that specific item/ability is in the PC's control?

I don't know if anyone can really answer that, because what's most important is the expectations of your particular players...

In general, I think players like consistency throughout a particular game. If they are used to getting metagame information and then that dries up and a consequence is sprung it can feel like a GM 'gotcha!'.

If they're used to not getting that information and puzzling through stuff based on clues given to the character, suddenly handing out metagame info can feel a bit cheap and contrived.

My view is you either do it, or don't do it, straight off the bat and then stick to that - I wouldn't go chopping and changing my GM-ing style within the same game.

 

[karlindel]

I'll echo others that it depends. The main factors are the players, rule system, setting, and how the information relates to them.

Players:
Some players will make good use of metagame information to enhance the fun, other players would rather discover what's going on in game. Also, different kinds of players like different kinds of secret information.

Rule System:
Some rule systems give the players metagame powers designed to influence the narrative of the game, and surprise information can cause problems with this. Other games have well defined rules that players expect to work a certain way, and the players should probably be informed if deviations from these rules are standard.

Setting:
Sometimes, the setting or the particular adventure the GM has created calls for something to be different from the normal rules. If the difference is something that the characters are likely know about, it is probably best to just let the players know, or let them find out about it fairly easily. For example, if they are on a tropical island, the natives will likely let them know about the volcano beast that gets angry at anyone using fire magic on the island. If, on the other hand, it is not something they could find out about, then they should learn about it during play when they realize the consequences (we didn't realize those markings were territorial markers/warning signs/etc).

Personally, I like the players to have rules transparency as to the rules, and the mechanics of how a power works once it happens (if a monster heals, they should know if it is regeneration, a spell, a healing power, if I describe damage reduction as instant healing, they should know what it is mechanically, they should also know if enemies are resistant to an attack after they try the attack). I do not give details of mechanics for rules that the characters have not encountered and have no way of learning.

Although the occasional "gotcha" style encounter can be fun, "gotcha" encounters and abilities that the players have no way of learning about until it is sprung on them should generally be avoided. The consequences should be interesting and add to the game (I hate cursed items that simply kill characters that use them, for example), and should come up close enough in time that the characters can figure out what is going on.

 

[Elf Witch]

If handled right it can be fun. For example in a Kalamar game we were traveling on the sea in an area we had never been in. A weird storm came up and we were attacked by a kracken.

To our magic users dismay they found that the storm warps magic and sends part of the damage back on the caster. So it became a choice of do I cast magic or use weapons instead.

It was funny the cowardly wizard choose to fire crossbolts at it while yelling obscenities at the heavens. The paladin prayed to his god and just sucked up the damage.

Finally the wizard stepped up told us if he died he would haunt us forever and cast his most powerful spell. And then whined for days on end about the pain.

It was a lot of fun we all enjoyed it.

Now if it was an everyday or a 50/50 chance this would happen every time you cast magic then the DM needs to tell a player considering playing a magic user upfront.

But otherwise throwing in a surprise every now and then keeps the game fun and challenges the players.