To tell or not to Tell

[lankyogre]

This is my first time running a Fate System game and I have an opinion question. How much do you share with your players?

DFRPG (and Fate in general) is unique amongst RPGs in the amount of collaboration required. Most other games assume the world, NPCs, locations, etc are all constructs of the GM with no input from the players. DFRPG completely turns that on its head with the amount of player involvement. But once you get past deciding on faces and locations, how much do you share with your players about everything.

From other games, I have the desire to keep my players in the dark, so that they are introduced to things as their characters are, but I don't want to miss out on a part of Fate. In regards to Faces and Locations, once the group has decided on a name, motivation, and high concept; do you share the entire write-up with them. Or do you keep their skills and powers secret. It seems odd to me that the players may already know so much, but that may just be me.

I hope I have adequately expressed my question.

[mostlyawake]

It kind of depends. My group is all new to the system (as am I, as is everyone, I guess, since DFRPG is new. But we have no prior FATE experience, either), and writing up characters is a great way to learn. So we're set to have sessions where they will draw up NPCs - lovers, enemies, informants, everything.  So they'll know the stats for those npcs, which will be on google docs.


They know all of the aspects for the city, and themes and threats.  But, they know about the white court presence (one of the theme faces), with no stats.  So they don't know for sure that the Duke isn't also a sorcerer, ect.

Generally, if it's an ally, i share stats. If it's a bad guy, they know if it is a face or something, but no stats... i actually keep blank sheets and write in stats as they discover them.   Once the guy dies or is rendered moot, i share stats.

because we're playing up the detective angle of DF, i kind of can't tip my hand without ruining a mystery.  


Still, in the last battle (w/ a -19 refresh necromancer and his two -6 sidekicks) i openly had their sheets exposed so we could show how damage is tracked, ect.

[MijRai]

Share what the characters would know, and feed them what the characters would learn. They'd know the general state of the city (themes and such). They wouldn't know how tough the baddie is until they fight him/her.

[Lanodantheon]

I recommend telling players, A) what they need to make characters B) what their characters know and C) what you need to make a great game. Eschew details unnecessary from the City.

In my Supernatural Seattle Campaign, we've....eschewed most of the City Creation before-hand, instead opting for on-the-fly creation as needed.

Initially we made the Themes and Threat of the City, the power groups and various locations. But, we also left room to grow for the simple reason that although I am the GM currently, I eventually want to play, so the person who GMs will change.

So, I recommend to reveal Aspects of that character one at a time, when they are shown off or when a character Assesses them. tell them nothing they haven't seen or found out from other places such as a character's personal experience or high skill level.

We made it an unspoken rule that there would be parts of the city undefined so that we could spring it on players and have the oh....S$&% moments. But as a GM, I also decide on Faces that I thought would add more flavor to the place as needed.

Case-in-point: We had defined that the Red Court were Kurt Cobain styled Grungers and that a good number of the WCVs were on Capital Hill involved in politics and the Blampires were Dutch because of the history of the area. The first Vampire in the game was neither of these. 

The Second Session, I introduced my players to Lord Montague of the White Court. Just coming into his Adulthood in the White Court but head of the family locally, this man has been the Romeo of the Pacific Northwest since he was teenager. Gunrunner, Boozehound, Motorized-bandit, gambler, gunslinger, you name it. But his current profession made at least one player double-take and I would not have gotten it if I had told them about before hand. 

The first play session, our Dot-com Billionaire character had arranged for a future poker game with the Chief of Police as a throwaway declaration that would keep the group out of trouble.

Low and Behold after meeting Lord Montague, the Billionaire's Assistant (an NPC) asks him, "Are we still on for that poker game, Chief?"

They are still wondering what kind of man he is and I love it...

[luminos]

Let them know as much as they are comfortable with knowing.  Strange advice, I know, but thats what I honestly think will work best for the DFRPG.  If it bothers them that you're giving them a bunch of information that their characters wouldn't know, if they'd rather stay in their characters head for a lot of the game, then restrict the information.  If, on the other hand, they want to take an active hand in authoring the story, rather than just acting it out, don't be afraid to let them have the information they need to do that.

[noclue]

Let's see. We're playing a game set in Los Angeles, where the theme aspect is "Out in the Cold" because we're all alone. The other player and I helped create the city of course, so we contributed to creating all the faces. We also knew that our mentor was going to sell us out to the Red Court Vampires that had been flocking to the city from South America and Mexico. Our PCs had no idea, however. So, when they went to dinner at her house, things felt pretty tense. Fighting our way through her and the RCVs was even more tense. Then when we ran to the local Warden, who we knew was going to be out to get us as well, because we helped establish him as the Face of "A City Divided" we weren't surprised when he hooded our characters and accused us of murdering our mentor and the other White Council wizards in the city.

So, I guess you can say we're real comfortable with players knowing stuff.

[Bruce Coulson]

It depends on what the group is comfortable with.  In my group, some places have advanced, been created, or changed as the players have asked about them.  After the initial city creation, most player knowledge is what their characters would reasonably know; who's important, who's not, and what's generally going on.  People in rl aren't a collection of stats, so I have descriptions based on the character's perceptions: "He seems friendly, sensuous, like he wants to be your best buddy", "A little, bird-like figure, with a cocked head and a genial expression, open to your inquiries", "She is dressed very fashionably, in a business cut suit that somehow seems more risque than an evening gown; but with a cold, calculating expression weighing how much she could buy you for".

[Wordmaker]

It's a common answer, but it really does depend on what your group enjoys. Mine, for example, enjoys helping to craft the setting, even making up stuff on the fly if it's not really going to have a huge bearing on the current scene (like our White Court vampire coming up with past events when trash-talking his cousin).

I also like when my players come to me with suggestions for scenes they'd like to have in the game, giving me time to work it into the story. Sure, the players sometimes know what to expect, but the anticipation for such a scene can sometimes be as much fun as the scene itself.

That said, there are still a lot of things I keep hidden from my players. One of our Boston themes is "Knowledge and Secrets," so there's a lot of mystery for them to solve.

[Bubba Amon Hotep]

with my group mystery is the glue that pulls them together and binds them.  Once they figure it out they split and go separate ways, until I can have something hit them again and cause a new mystery.  So I tell them very little they like discovering it.  And I have found that they discover just enough to "think" they know what is going on, charge in, find out they had it wrong, adapt on the fly and save the day.  They enjoy that.  I give it to them.

To answer your question though.  The players have to separate player knowledge from character knowledge.  I tend to punish players when they cross over.  It helps them see the error of mixing knowledge.

For instance.  Player 1 knows that a certain NPC is the crime lord in town because they helped create him via city creation.  However, does the character they created know it?  No.  So player 1 goes to the mobsters local club and walks right up to him telling him he knows about the big shipment and wants in.   I would have goons grab the player and beat him for information to learn how the character knows of them.  And the more he says no one told him, the more they are gonna play "lets torture the perfect stranger".

[Arcteryx]

I totally buy into the players knowing what they've had a hand in creating - but that being said, what they know isn't always the end of it - so this Face is the gang boss of this location, and we've created how he got there - but how cool is it to put a twist into his origin story that turns into an adventure all of its own, so that what you know isn't always the whole truth and nothing but the truth?

The players put him there, but you as the GM put them into his story.

This is real life - we hear one side of the story and make assumptions that don't always hold true.

When I listen to a lot of the city creation podcasts that're out there, one of the things that struck me is how many plot hooks, adventure seeds and story possibilities are baked into them, without them being explicitly referenced... one thing is suggested and written down, but often times there're tens of many other ideas that could flow from there - and those aren't necessarily known by the PCs, only to you as the GM, who of course writes it down and stores it for later use. And since they're driven by the setting creation process, when that story starts up, "Ohhhh yeah, remember how so-and-so got screwed by so-and-so? This is her daughter...and holy crap, she must be PISSED!"

Its a beautiful thing.

[Arcteryx]

To answer your question though.  The players have to separate player knowledge from character knowledge.  I tend to punish players when they cross over.  It helps them see the error of mixing knowledge.

Or you can use it to your advantage to extend the universe. "Did you find out about the shipment by asking around on the street? Or did you ... sleep with his mistress? Or beat it out of one of his cronies? Or did you get the tip off from a contact?"

What happens if that "big shipment" was really a purposeful leak from him to find out who's the stool in his organization... and you just helped him out and inadvertently betrayed an inside source?

I mean, the player knows it... might as well make it part of the story and drive up the tension and conflict potential.

[Richard_Chilton]

We all sat down together to sketch out the themes, threats, locations, and groups.  Because of time constraints I ended up emailing out all the faces.

If you're playing an established person in the city, odds are you know most of the locations and faces.  Dresden knows most of them, and even Murphy knows all the non-supernatural ones, so if the PCs are part of the city they should know most of the major players - if only by rep.

But FATE can be weird and demand that the GM adjust things on the fly.  For example, during a recent session I pointed the PCs to a funeral parlor, basically having the funeral director being a money crazed dick who was being used as a cut out by a new Red Court Vampire in town (one that the PC's declared to be a Lesbian Red Court Vampire).  There was a viewing going on (allowing the general public access to the funeral parlor during certain hours) and I had things all planned out.  The body being viewed was of a girl who had been drained by the red court vampire and if they asked around they could get CLUES about where the vampire was operating.

But the players were concerned that their PCs weren't dressed appropriately to stop by a funeral home, and to give them an excuse to be there one of the players handed me a FATE chip and declared "The viewing is for an old friend of my PC's that he hasn't seen since high school".  That gave him a reason to be there, and he could tell the other PCs a bit about the dead guy and they could mingle with the others at the viewing.  So instead of it being someone drained by a vampire the corpse became a guy who had gone downhill since high school, who had become an addict who looked clean enough to mule drugs in for a biker gang that we had established during city creation but had yet to be used in play.

A scene or two later they were talking to a low life who the funeral director was supposed to pass on the message to the vampire - a drug dealing leader of a rival gang who didn't know anything about the supernatural and whose payment was the death of the mule.  He was perfectly willing to tell the PCs what he knew, as long as they helped the same way his current patron was (i.e. taking out bikers and their assets without it being traced back to him).  He and his gang had been established during city creation, but until now they hadn't seen in play.  And they wouldn't have, at least not that night, except that one of the players spent a chip to declare that he knew the corpse being viewed.

That one chip meant that most of the night didn't go as I planned, but it did more or less go towards finding the vampire they were looking for.  If I hadn't have mapped out most of the city (with the rough outlines from creation) I would have had to fly by the seat of my pants, but since everyone knew the rough outline they were able to follow which gang was doing which thing which time.  They even knew the names and motivations for the face men for the various gangs, and could debate how to handle which one.

Richard

[Captain Indigo]

Or you can use it to your advantage to extend the universe. "Did you find out about the shipment by asking around on the street? Or did you ... sleep with his mistress? Or beat it out of one of his cronies? Or did you get the tip off from a contact?"

What happens if that "big shipment" was really a purposeful leak from him to find out who's the stool in his organization... and you just helped him out and inadvertently betrayed an inside source?

I mean, the player knows it... might as well make it part of the story and drive up the tension and conflict potential.

I've played and run games for awhile now, but this is probably one of the most elegant responses to a player using OOC knowledge that I've ever heard of. My hat off to you sir.*

*an evil one, natch

[Arcteryx]

I've played and run games for awhile now, but this is probably one of the most elegant responses to a player using OOC knowledge that I've ever heard of. My hat off to you sir.*

*an evil one, natch

That's awfully kind. Thank you