Mastering Player Choice in Mystery & Horror RPGs
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- Опубліковано 18 вер 2024
- Player choice in Horror & Mystery games is very misunderstood with a lot of impractical advice. Today I'm discussing why I think total player agency is best for your Mystery or Horror game and how the partnership between these two genres creates the best immersive roleplaying experience.
#ttrpghorror #tabletopgames #mystery
Great vid. Also so happy to see more people play/run Delta Green ❤
Extremely cool system that is very evocative. The supplements are also absolutely top notch as well.
@@TrillTheDM What's your take on Impossible Landscapes? It's of course a rather linear story compared to what you talk about in this vid, though it is an amazing experience in my opinion.
@@zeehond23 I haven't read the entire thing but so far I think it's an amazing book. It is so well done that I think you could use it as a base then let the players run free and the starting details will be so engaging that anything that comes from it will be a great experience. Not sure if that'll still be the case once I get into the second half of it though!
@@TrillTheDM looking forward to hear your thoughts!
I concur with the putting the characters first as the way to go in mystery or horror. However, I think describing for each character personally what they perceive is for me already exactly an intrusion into their agency. I would suggest a different method to play unreliable narrator: make your descriptions metaphorical, anthropomorphise the environment, and then let the players Interpret how they want for their characters. Thus instead of saying: "There is fog in the woods" or intruding and telling one player "the branches of the trees in the fog seem to reach out for you" more something like "the fog creeps into the woods and the branches of the trees reaching out of the fog as if they try to grab for safety." With the last version, the player can decide they must imagine things and push it away, or they can lean into it and ask the other players if they think it is a good idea to go into the woods when such dense fog is coming up.
As additional framework to make the mystery stronger and more personal at the same time, I would suggest having an underlying theme, maybe even talk about the theme in session zero, that way you get then characters like in True Detective that can express themselves outside the case while still atmospherically it will tie back into the mystery. This also serves player agency, since the more players can toy with the themes on their own the more they have to work with to propel their characters through the investigation.
Yeah to your first point I'm fine with this being an intrusion into their agency. I am directly looking at the level of sanity their character has and making a judgement call to how they might perceive things exactly as you described. I think this is a necessary intrusion to start to imprint the psychological differences of their characters.
I'm not looking to gate any information or details behind rolls. So what they perceive is automatic, it is just dependent on their mental state. For instance I would give the kind of information as you described to one player with low sanity, but have the other player who is perfectly fine look out and see mundane fog in the woods. Not sure if that wasn't clear. I'm basically pointing out the difference in perception between multiple characters who perceive the same thing. If every character looks outside the window and sees the fog, depending on the state of their sanity, they might all perceive it differently.
Appreciate the thoughts! Theme is definitely important and should be discussed prior to the first session absolutely.
This sounds fascinating, but I don't understand how to implement it. If the mystery relies on player agency, how do I give clues? Do I even construct clues? If not, how does this mystery end. If I begin with: Jane Doe was killed by a cult, now what? How do I proceed without tainting their agency? You need to add more to this. Can we get a video on how this is done in practice?
Yeah I can drop a video in the future about exactly how I do this.
Essentially though the practice is built upon listening to the players as they investigate. Maybe I was a bit too limited when I suggested what to start out with as a base. Essentially I think you should know the who and how and then have a couple of ambiguous clues lying around. From that point on you improv and build on the stuff that the players throw your way that sounds interesting. Basically "Yes, and"ing everything. Then when the first session is over you have time between to get a few more interesting things lined up, dole it out and then again build on what the players give you.
@@TrillTheDM That's what your video was missing. I don't need video cuts. They didn't tell me anything. I hope you make a follow-up video showing this in practice. I would be looking forward to that. Thanks for responding.
Finally some delta green runners making content....you're doin God's work out here man, i'm a new subscriber but i'm liking what i see so far...keep it up!
I just thought of a joke you might appreciate:
What did the wanted poster for the escaped halfling Divination Wizard say? Small medium at large.
Another great piece!!