screw subtlety

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I’m running another role-playing game right now, and several times of late I’ve found myself saying the same thing:

“Screw subtlety.”

It happens because I’ll be planning some kind of plot, and chasing my own tail trying to figure out how to introduce a new element without making the player-characters suspicious. This is difficult when the PCs are being run by players — people very familiar with narrative conventions. When I told one of them the prospective fiancée for his nobleman was a meek, sheltered girl, his reply was “Gamer brain calls bullshit. I expect she has twenty-five skeletons and four fresh corpses in her closet.”

In a novel, you can get away with a higher degree of subtlety, because you control your characters’ thoughts. They don’t know they’re in a story (not unless you’re writing something very metafictional), so they won’t reflect on things the same way a player will. And while the same thing is theoretically true of a PC, any time you ask the player to ignore something that’s obvious to them out-of-character, you create a disjunct. Sometimes this can be fun, but other times it’s frustrating, because they have to role-play their character being blind to an idea they can see. Looping back around to novels, again, the same thing can be true of a reader — but since the reader isn’t actively participating in the story, the frustration is usually less severe. If you write your characters well, the reader will go along for the ride, blind spots and all.

So this is why I keep saying “screw subtlety.” Rather than bending over backwards attempting to make something not suspicious, embrace the suspicion! Why yes, this is weird; you have every reason to give it the side-eye. Knowing that up front doesn’t tell you what’s really going on. You’ll have to work to get the rest.

Doing that is surprisingly liberating. I think it’s a cousin to the notion of “burning plot” — making the cool stuff happen now, and letting it generate more cool stuff later, rather than trying to save it and have the lead-up be flat and boring as a result. Instead of making plot out of the characters figuring out there’s something weird with X, let them know that from the start, and move on from there. It doesn’t work in all situations or for all kinds of stories, but where it does, the result can be a lot of energy and momentum.

Which is why this is something I try to keep in mind for novels as well as games. Am I better off trying to come up with a plausible cover story for a given narrative element, or should I just let it show its face to the world?

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0 Responses to “screw subtlety”

  1. marycatelli

    I still remember the first book I read where I figured out the culprit by noticing who was the least likely suspect.

    Annoying, that.

  2. maladaptive

    And while the same thing is theoretically true of a PC, any time you ask the player to ignore something that’s obvious to them out-of-character, you create a disjunct.

    Oh Lord, that’s one of the things that threw me out of tabletopping, period, because my first DM had the subtlety of a brick but required characters stay oblivious without giving the PCs a way to reconcile what they knew, what they knew their character should know, and what the character was allowed to know.

    Which. You know, to me, in a more RP heavy setting, fine, if you tell me “plot says X” my character will be oblivious because I come from a free-former background where I’m used to collectively constructing plots. I can come up with reasons for why my character wouldn’t notice, or say “no, my char would notice, why not present the plot element this way, so they won’t?” But in tabletop when you drop my character in a life-threatening situation and say “you don’t notice anything off about this super suspicious person! Nothing! Your detection* roll isn’t high enough.” I… can’t.

    *Or whatever it is in White Wolf that says “you need a higher roll to see your nose in front of your face.”

    • Marie Brennan

      Perception checks (or Alertness or Notice or whatever they get called in a particular system) are especially tricky, yeah. I often roll them on behalf of players, and only tell them I’ve done so if the result is successful; it’s twitch-inducing to be told “roll Perception” and then, after reporting my result, have the GM say “okay, nevermind.”

      A lot of it is in the presentation, though. There are ways to say “this super suspicious person seems okay” without trying to pretend they just don’t seem suspicious at all. And yes, some of that can be negotiated by letting players suggest why they don’t notice things. Case, in point, though it went the other way (NPC failing to notice suspicious PC behavior): last night, the NPC mercenaries the party lured into a trap were oblivious. Didn’t notice the door being barred behind them, didn’t guess the PC saying “I’m hiring mercenaries to get revenge for my dead brother” was talking about somebody they’d killed, didn’t even recognize the story of how the dead brother died until the PC said “I do have one clue, though” and showed them a gauntlet that had been stolen from one of them just recently — a gauntlet from the armor they stole off the dead brother’s body. We basically had to chalk it up to “the guy killed him four years ago; memory has faded” and “they really bought into the cover story that Gavin’s looking to hire some muscle” and “also, they were drinking a lot before they came out here to be ‘hired’.” Their rolls to notice these things were phenomenally bad.

    • marycatelli

      Every web comic that runs in a RPG universe is comic, and runs heavily on the notion that the characters are aware of it.

      • marycatelli

        Order of the Stick is the most self conscious, perhaps. One character can even outsmart himself with his knowledge of tropes.

      • marycatelli

        Rusty & Co is less so, but still uses it down to the basic premise: three monsters decide to play adventurers instead, realizing who has the easier time of it.

  3. bryant

    That’s really interesting. I am far more likely to play trope guessing games when reading fiction, because I’m not emotionally investing in immersion. When I’m playing tabletop, I derive a lot of pleasure from the discrepancy between what my PC notices and what I notice. (I am still thrown out of the game if the mechanics lead to my PC not noticing something that my mental model says the PC should notice, mind you.)

    But that’s just my style of RP.

    Hm. And trope guessing games when reading fiction is rarely irksome because, as you say, the character doesn’t belong to the reader. I’m fine with the author defining the blind spots.

    • Marie Brennan

      When I’m playing tabletop, I derive a lot of pleasure from the discrepancy between what my PC notices and what I notice. (I am still thrown out of the game if the mechanics lead to my PC not noticing something that my mental model says the PC should notice, mind you.)

      Oh, heck yes on the latter. Really, any case of my PC utterly failing at something they’re supposed to be good at.

      As for the former, I enjoy that a lot in some cases. If it creates comedy in the scene, or if it’s something that my PC is characteristically oblivious to, that’s a lot of fun. But it’s situational; in general, the PC not seeing something I can see is more a problem to be navigated (I have to figure out what actions she would take, given her ignorance of X) than something that feeds immersion in the scene.

      • bryant

        Yeah, I’ve definitely gone over the edge and lost immersion in the kind of case you describe. I think, hm… the obliviousness has to be fun for everyone. If the GM is thinking of it as a problem to be solved, and the players are trying to experience it as a fun situation to be enjoyed, there’s a problematic dichotomy.

        But this is totally, totally a preferences issue. Lots of different styles.

        (You guys still in the Bay Area, btw?)

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