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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9228392" data-attributes="member: 42582">On "secret backstory".There is an approach to RPGing in which the GM "hoards" the secret backstory, and parcels it out in small bits, and only when the players declare the correct actions for their PCs to trigger such parcelling out. Depending on the RPG in question, and the details of those declared actions, this parcelling out may or may not be gated behind a check. Eg in classic D&D, if a player opens a door, the GM will tell them what their PC sees with no check required. Whereas listening at a door will typically trigger a check.The gameplay reason for this is fairly apparent - in classic D&D, opening a door may trigger an encounter (hence is a higher-stakes action) whereas listening at a door typically won't (and so, being a lower-stakes action, has a lower expected pay-off). Later, non-classic versions of D&D tend to retain this contrast in resolution methods even though the gameplay rationale has somewhat faded, though I'm sure some D&D players overlay a theory of the reliability of sight vs hearing as methods of obtaining knowledge via the senses.CoC uses a lot of checks, but not so much for listening at doors as for searching for and through esoteric volumes, studying art and architecture, etc. The gameplay reason for this is not apparent at all, and it's no surprise that GUMSHOE does away with many of these checks and replaces them with the same "GM narrates" approach as classic D&D uses for opened doors.In all these games, obtaining information from the GM is, at least to some reasonable extent, its own reward. It is a point of play.These games generally use task resolution in these information-gathering contexts.There is a different approach to RPGing in which the GM does not hoard the secret backstory, but reveals it at every opportunity, using it to frame the PCs (and thereby the players) into conflicts, using it to taunt the players or make ironic points, using it to confront them with questions or quandaries about what they should do - where the "should" there is the should of ethics or morality, not the should of expedience or rational calculation.Vincent Baker explains and illustrates this latter approach on pp 138-9 of the DitV rulebook:The town you’ve made has secrets. It has, quite likely, terrible secrets — blood and sex and murder and damnation. But you the GM, you don’t have secrets a’tall. Instead, you have cool things — bloody, sexy, murderous, damned cool things — that you can’t wait to share. . . . The PCs arrive in town. I have someone meet them. They ask how things are going. The person says that, well, things are going okay, mostly. The PCs say, “mostly?” And I’m like “uh oh. They’re going to figure out what’s wrong in the town! Better stonewall. Poker face: on!” And then I’m like “wait a sec. I want them to figure out what’s wrong in the town. In fact, I want to show them what’s wrong! Otherwise they’ll wander around waiting for me to drop them a clue, I’ll have my dumb poker face on, and we’ll be bored stupid the whole evening.” So instead of having the NPC say “oh no, I meant that things are going just fine, and I shut up now,” I have the NPC launch into his or her tirade. “Things are awful! This person’s sleeping with this other person not with me, they murdered the schoolteacher, blood pours down the meeting house walls every night!” ...Or sometimes, the NPC wants to lie, instead. That’s okay! I have the NPC lie. You’ve watched movies. You always can tell when you’re watching a movie who’s lying and who’s telling the truth. And wouldn’t you know it, most the time the players are looking at me with skeptical looks, and I give them a little sly nod that yep, she’s lying. And they get these great, mean, tooth-showing grins — because when someone lies to them, ho boy does it not work out. Then the game goes somewhere.The preceding is all under the heading Actively reveal the town in play.This is how the GM Drives play toward conflict and Escalates, Escalates, Escalates. By using this pre-authored material to provoke the players, respond to their choices, as Baker puts it (p 141) "'really? Even now? Even now? Really?'"The difference between the two approaches is a real thing.</blockquote>

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