As a player, would you take this move?  As a GM, would you like it or would it drive you nuts?  Any other commentary?

As a player, would you take this move?  As a GM, would you like it or would it drive you nuts?  Any other commentary?

As a player, would you take this move?  As a GM, would you like it or would it drive you nuts?  Any other commentary?

Secret History: When you tell the table a just-so story known only to your people, some or all of it is true–or at least true enough. The GM decides what.

(For context: it’d be for a character who was from a nomadic minority, like the Rom.)

12 thoughts on “As a player, would you take this move?  As a GM, would you like it or would it drive you nuts?  Any other commentary?”

  1. As a GM, I wouldn’t call that a move, I’d just call it how I run a game. My players love to throw world-building at me; why make them take a move to make what they say into truth? 🙂

  2. Yes not really much of a move from the sound of it though you could do something for a wizard or some kind of dreamland where the story will partially shape reality in where the group is at.

  3. Fred Hicks, yeah, I can see that. Though in my experience, the dynamic is more:

    GM: “Nicolae, what do your people say about vampires?”

    Player: “Vampires? Oh, they’e all like descendants of Lilith. They don’t actually drink blood, they drink the passion out of mortals.”

    GM: “Cool!”

    Or…

    Player: “I think about my people’s folk lore. What do the stories say about vampires?  Spout Lore for 9!”

    GM: “They’re all like descendants of Lilith… They don’t actually drink blood, they drink the passion out of mortals.” 

    The goal is to change the dynamic, prompting the player to initiate this sort of world building and the authority to do so without rolling. Making it more like:

    GM: “Word about town is that this is the work of vampires!”

    Player: “Vampires? Y’know, according to my people, Lilith was the first vampire. When she was cast out of Paradise she was filled with emptiness and longing, and fell into this deep, horrible funk.  Centuries later, one of the children of Eve came upon her and the flame of his living soul filled Lilith with craving.  She seduced him and drained away every ounce of his passion, sating her hunger and filling her emptiness but making him just as empty.  He, in turn, became afflicted with her curse.  And in turn passed it on to others. And that’s where vampires came from.”

    GM: “What, really?”  Looks at his notes, makes some changes. “Huh, OK, cool!”

  4. That sort of prompt sounds great!

    So it should be a new basic move. Not a move you have to “take”.

    What I’m saying is that as a move you “pay” for with an allocation of your slots of moves you can take, it’s kinda overpriced. It’s the sort of thing everyone should be able to do.

  6. I’d say its a basic move if your character has bardic lore, know-it-all or the clerical domain of Knowledge/Hidden Things.

    Otherwise, you can declare whatever you’d like about your race/class secret, but you’d have to roll a Spout Lore to make it canonical. On a 6-, it’s just superstition and rumor — worse yet, you completely believe its true (see Infectious Lies from “Suddenly Ogres” in Grim Portents 1 for a consolation prize. More XP for over-commiting to your fictional fiction!)

  7. I guess I’m reading intent behind the move here, to prompt players to enthusiastically add facts to the fiction of the world. As such I don’t really detect a need to tie it to bards or clerics or whatever. If the fighter’s player wants to invent some historical battle-scene that took place at this very location, more power to him.

    That said, using Spout Lore to make that go the way of shenanigans is a greatness.

  8. Jeremy Strandberg it’s stepping on the narrative authority of the game pretty hard, and there’s a bunch of other stuff that would need to change (GM principles and agenda, for example) before it would survive play with the game as-is.

  10. Adam Koebel, can you elaborate on how you think it would affect (or need to affect) the principles & agenda?  It seems to me that it fits those pretty well.

    I totally agree that it’s stepping on the narrative authority and that it might not work in play (hence the initial post); I’m just not following your principles/agenda comment.  Seems like it would have a bigger impact on GM prep than anything else.

  11. I think Spout lore covers that really well already. As a player, I’m not sure I’d pick it (over another move) and as a GM I don’t understand what are my boundaries.

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