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Thursday, June 2, 2016

Adventure Design: Unreliable Narrator You Wonderful Bastard




The unreliable narrator is one of my favorite literary devises.  I also apply it to the adventures I GM and write.  Here's why. 

Misdirection in an adventure or series of adventures can add a lot of fun to an adventure.  Many times it is assumed that the person inviting the group to adventure is honest with the situation and intentions.  When the party is presented with situations such as a young boy being sacrificed or a village is stricken with a plague, the extreme nature of the situation leaves little doubt that helping is a good thing.  The nature of the narrator is not called into question because of the situation.  Even if he is a no good bastard something needs to be done.  


But the narrator is omitting information.  Information that seems irreverent because of the dire situation.  Action is called for.  Adventurers excel at action.  Adventurers are much like sharks, creatures of motion and cease to exist when that movement stops.  So when the call for action is made, adventurers move.  This unreliable narrator relies on this trait, as should adventure designers.  Using the traits of adventurers (and your players) is to your advantage when developing a plot for your group. 

In my recent adventure, Grim Water Oasis, the situation presented is a young boy being sacrificed.  Not much gray area.  Seems a fairly straight forward reason to go kick some ass.  However, the situation gets more complex if the adventurers look deeper.  The sacrifice is made to feed the water spirit that feeds the oasis.  The oasis provides life for a tribe of desert people and the wildlife in the area.  If the adventurers go in crack’n skulls they have killed off dozens of more people, children and much of the wildlife.  


In the other situation where a village is stricken with a plague, the bearer of the news pleads with the party to save them all.  There is a cure.  In my adventure, The Malice House, the cure is with a hag that lives just over the boundary of hell.  She deals the adventuring party.  She will provide a cure if the party can collect on a debt owed to her.  This time the narrator is naïve of the situation behind the disease.  While saving the village is a good thing, the party must make a deal with a creature of pure evil.  The same creature that created the disease.


 Unreliable narrators, as I’ve given in the two examples, can be by choice or by ignorance.  Either way, it is an adventure element of discovery.  Unveiling the truth after the fact or during the adventure.  It puts the party’s ability to improvise to the test.  It adds depth to a simple situation and leaves the door option for further development of adventures.
 
There is of course a danger if overused.  The last thing you want to is make each potential adventure hook rife with deception.  A little goes a long way.  You can tell when your party has reached the point of saturation, they get a case of paralysis by analysis.  Or just call every needy villager or tavern patron a big fat liar.  


 Next time your writing an adventure or setting the hook in those adventurers mouth, add a little unreliability to the narrator.  Your players will thank you.  That last statement was brought to you by your friendly unreliable narrator. 

4 comments:

  1. The employer that omits crucial information is something that Traveller patrons all seemed to have in common. I found that once the players experienced that, they assumed all employers were underhanded, untrustworthy jerks that needed to be negotiated with viciously and suspected of being underhanded sneaky bastards. No matter what - "The high priest of the Good God wants you to feed any starving people you come across. He'll reward you if you do." "What's his real motive? We demand the payment up front! He can't be trusted! We're not wasting rations on his scheme!"

    One thing that occurs to me is that some groups will be in such a hurry to go adventure they won't even ask for pertinent details. What might make a twist on the twist is a reliable employer who just doesn't think of what could be important unless specifically asked. "Oh, yeah, there were dragon tracks near the place the kid went missing." Or "I didn't mention the orcs had hidden crossbow traps because you guys seemed so competent and raring to go - I figured you must have already known."

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  2. Great post, Tim. I like your term "unreliable" rather than "dishonest," since "unreliable" makes everything much more grey. Half-truths make things so much more complicated.

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  3. Great post! I must remember this for next time I"m GMing.

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  4. I noticed I have fallen off your "These people talk a lot" list, so here you go, a post for no reason other than to get back on the list.

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