thread: 2009-06-22 : Secrets: the Smelly Chamberlain
On 2009-06-22, Vincent wrote:
Bret: That's my take too. In the real world, it becomes true when the GM says "okay, but it's a still, muggy day. It doesn't help a bit," because that's when everyone at the table has finally understood and assented to it. At that moment it becomes retroactively true in the fiction, back to the first time Player 1's character edged over and opened the window. (Like how Darth Vader became retroactively Luke's father, back to Luke's birth. And later on he bacame retroactively Leia's father too, back to her birth, which she retroactively shared with Luke.)
Outcome 3, the GM fights it and the players relent, reconciles the shared fiction in the other direction: now everybody agrees that the Chamberlain retroactively never smelled bad. When player 1's character edged over and opened the window, retroactively he did it for some other reason.
And then if the group doesn't reconcile their shared fiction, it never becomes conclusively true or not true. Player 1's character really did edge over and open the window, nobody disputes that, but why? It's contentious.
