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Message: <blockquote data-quote="N'raac" data-source="post: 6121121" data-attributes="member: 6681948">Then this is a resriction on player agency.  The characters cannot have deep, dark secets which they strive to maintain.  All must be out in the open.  Is this also the case for the GM?  Are there mysteries kept from the players (ie the GM does, indeed, have more control than the players) or is full disclosure required here as well?It isn't a "better" or a "worse" restriction than any other we have discussed  - it cant be measured objectively.  But it is a restriction, and one I would consider significant, at least as much as any other resriction on player agency cited in these 113 pages!  As a player, I prefer to minimize the information that I have, but my character does not.  Having Bob say "well, Karnak the Kind has a terrible secret that his father is the Unspeakable Tyrant, and he was raised to commit acts of unspeakable cruelty, and now he seeks to redeem his own heinous acts, while keeping them secret due to his shame, and to defeat his father's evil aspiraions, so that's why he's being so secretive".  I prefer to see what Karnak does, not have a lengthy PC backstory narative outside the game. Again, until and unless there is a reveal to the PC's, I don't want a reveal to me, the player.  I'm fully OK with Bob's character deciding that he has enough faith in Tony's character (but not the rest of the team) to reveal his dark secret, or Fred's PC ferretting the secret out and using it to blackmail Bob's character, without my character OR ME knowing the secret.  That is,in fact, my preference.If it comes out in play, that's great.  If Bob is able to maintain the secret, or Tony helps him do so, that's terrific as well.  No, we don't know why Karnak is so fired up to take down the Unspeakable Tyrant, but he IS, and Bob's PC has earned my PC's friendship and loyalty and/or my PC also believes in feedom and liberty, so that's enough for my PC to participate.  Or it isn't, and we play out where that goes.  I don't need to see behin the curtain - if anything, it diminishes the game, at least for me.And I don't need to know Darth Vader is Luke's father, or that Leia is Luke's sister, to play Han Solo or Chewbacca (or, for that mater, Luke or Leia) - I know what is in my background, I know I left holes in it.  Let's PLAY!Because mysteries can be fun.  Mysteries for both the PC's and the players.  Would a dungeon crawl be enhanced or diminished if we just toss the whole map on the table, labelled neatly, and say "OK players, where do you want your PC's, who don't know any of this, to go?"  Would the original Star Wars trilogy have been enhanced if the opening verbiage in E IV included "Ben Kenobi, former master of Anakin Skywalker, now Darth Vader and father of Luke and Leia, alhough neither of the three are aware of this, has spent many years on Tattooine secetly watching young Luke grow to manhood, while Yoda the Jedi Master waits in the Dagobah system"?How does that make what Bob wants to do any more engaging to me?  Regardless of whether we made our characters together, or whether I know that Bob's engagement springs from some element of his background, dark secret or open book, I can clearly see  Bob is engaged.  You have clearly noted that the fact Bob is clearly engaged does not mean you cannot be disengaged/bored to tears.  The rest of the table may well be at various levels along that continuum - whether they know this links to Bob's background, or it just caught his fancy.It is not "perhaps" a restriction.  It is as much or more a restriction in the Player Agency you are demanding as being "required" to play through the desert if you want whatever waits on the other side, or even being plotted to "want" what is on the other side, forcing you to traverse the desert. To players who want control over their characters, I think this may well be deal just as big, or bigger.  I've played lots of great games that were enhanced as PC background elements came to the forefront to the surprise of the other players, rather than "well ho hum, we've known that since character creation".    A boring scenaio comes to an end.  Boring PC's stick around month after month.Recalling a D&D Session Past, I recall Sedric.  Sedric was a fighter with, to my mind, delusions of grandeur.  He refered to himself in the third person, constantly.  "Sedric the Hero; Sedric the Brave; Sedric the Strong; Sedric the Mighty"  His background told the bigger story.  It emerged in play, and the manner in which it emerged in play made Sedric a much more interesting character than if we were handed a dossier at the start of the campaign, and made the rest of our characters in their reactions, more interesting as well.  As I think on it, I can't recall any scenario I directly link with that specific game, nor many of the other characters.  But I remember Sedric, and I remember "Sedric moments" that linked to the campaign and, I'm sure, arose from long-forgotten campaign events.  Knowing everything up front wouldn't just fail to enhance that game - it would have made it far less enjoyable and much less memorable!Funny - I remember that after many years, but not scenes that bored or disengaged me.  I think I prefer having those memories to negative memories against "bad GM's" (for me or in general).  Thanks for the opportunity to reminisce!  I would much rather have had Sedric along than some nameless, cardboard warrior who thought only in terms of the best tactics for defeating this monster, and served only as a featureless sword arm.  Even if he would only appear once, and never be seen again.Do some characters, some backgrounds, some secrets fall flat?  Sure.  So pick up and move on.  But I find far more have made characters memorable to their players, even if not to the group as a whole, made for richer PC's, and made for a richer dynamic between the PC's.  From my perspective, perhaps all the other PC's are just as much sacenery as the NPC's, albeit scenery my PC interacts with to a much greater extent.  Just like the setting and those NPC's, I like them to be fleshed out indivdiuals with strengths and weaknesses, that can be discovered over time.  I neither need to, nor want to, see the other PC character sheets, backgrounds, etc. - let it come out in play!  He's not a L5 Fighter with +1 Plate Mail and a +2 Sword.  He's Sedric.  Sedric the Hero!  Not Sedric the Psychoanalyzed Heap of Game Mechanics.</blockquote>

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