I was thinking today about
continuity. My initial thoughts were not, initially, in the narrative sense of
continuity, but in the sense of our frame of existence. Aside from memories and
physical evidence, we have no way of verifying if events in the past actually
happened. Normally, this isn’t a concern, memory and physical evidence is more
than enough. Those facts change when it comes to games.
When a game starts, players
typically have a back-story for their character and then the GM sets the scene.
Back-stories represent an individual character’s memories of the past and the
current scene is, in effect, the present. As play progresses, especially if the
GM improvises, individual scenes lose some details, the degree of which depends
on the group’s memories. I’ve lost notes before and the names or descriptions
of NPCs change as I’m forced to improvise the local bartender again.
A tactic I’ve used in horror or
suspense gaming is something called Gaslighting. Now, in the real world, this
is a pretty horrible thing to do to someone. In the context of a game, it can
help put the players on edge, something I think good horror roleplaying needs.
As an aside, there is a very fine line when using tactics like this on your
players. I would never condone, for example, using spiders to scare an
extremely arachnophobic player. Horror roleplaying is fun in the same way a
horror movie is fun. The players want to be scared, but there is a breach of
trust if you use information you know about your players to upset them. Nevertheless,
I digress.
Gaslighting,
to put it simply, is subtle manipulation of information in order to have people
question their senses and their memory. The players are entirely reliant on the
GM for information about the game world, barring any notes they take. Take the
local bartender I mentioned earlier, for example. If I say in one scene that
the bartender’s name is Rachel and in then, in the next session mention Rory
the bartender that can either be a mistake in continuity or deliberate. If the
players are a particular location looking for clues, or something similar,
changing small details can serve to heighten the tension. If I mention a brass
bell on a blue ribbon, and then later, describe the ribbon as black, this can
throw players off. If you use this tactic, use it subtly and sparingly. Using
it too much robs the players of their agency. For that matter, using it at all
robs the players of agency in a small way.
When you change information
intentionally, your players cannot act on information previously given. If I
say that a room has a door on the left, right, and center players choose a
course of action based on that information. If I change that detail by removing
the center door, this invalidates an option that the players might have picked.
This violation of player agency can, if done right, put your players on edge.
Their memories and the physical reality of the world don’t match up. Do it too
much and it’s more annoying than anything else.
Now, I brought up back-story
before for a reason. I wouldn’t recommend directly contradicting or changing
anything in a player’s back-story. They put in the effort to bring material to
your table, even if they’re the only one informed by it. By altering it, you
are again, violating both the trust of your players and their agency. As GM,
you are allowed a certain degree of editorial control of the content of the
material your players bring to the table, but that is something you work out
with the player, hopefully before the first session even starts.
A way to manipulate the information your players bring to the table without
cheapening their efforts is to change the context. Work with the material the
players include in their back-stories to create narrative twists and turns. Don’t
contradict any facts your players create, but write material to cast those
facts in a different light.
In terms of campaign structure, you can use manipulation of facts as the
basis of a game. Completely invalidating the advice I gave earlier, separate your
player’s back-stories into discrete events. Sort these events into two
categories, factual and non-factual. With these details, you create a horror or
investigative plot in which the mystery is the character’s own back-stories. With
this set-up, you are not only engaging with the materials your players create, but
also making it the focus of the game. I wouldn’t spring this kind of game on
your players, make sure their okay with it first, possibly by trying some other
tricks involving back-story first.
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