thread: 2009-06-22 : Secrets: the Smelly Chamberlain
On 2009-06-23, Vincent wrote:
Remember the setup, everyone!
Imagine that the players get together behind the GM's back and say "hey you know the NPC Chamberlain, our contact with the king? Let's all, no matter what the GM says about him, let's all react to him as though he smells bad. We can't insult him to his face, we need him, but let's be subtle and see what the GM does with it."
So they do.
The players know that they can't simply choose to make the Chamberlain smell bad. They know that if they said "hey GM, we've decided that the Chamberlain smells bad," the GM would say "huh? No."
I don't think that it became true in the fiction for them then, at their secret meeting. They're all like "let's act as though he smells bad and see what happens," they aren't like "from now on it's true that he smells bad."
So Simon!
Your answer: I chose an example that the players can act on without reaching outside of their characters' actions. They're just saying what their characters do, which is their job. It's to parallel the "shh, Betty's character's paranoid" example.
So stick with smelliness for now. You can put forward another outcome if you want (GM: "how about your characters really do find him stinky, but only they do in the world, so that's weird." Players: "yeah, okay").
But really my point isn't "what should happen?" at all. A bunch of different things CAN happen, I don't care which does.
My point is, is it a secret from the GM that the Chamberlain smells bad? Is it true that the Chamberlain smells bad, but the GM doesn't know it?
