Over on Hack & Slash, -C has written an interesting trio of posts on the matter of the Quantum Ogre:
If you enjoy some of the theoretical stuff I post around this neck of the woods, you’ll probably enjoy this stuff, too.
With that being said, however, I pretty strongly disagree with some of his advice. An addendum I’d like to point out: Players making a choice without having relevant information is only a problem if they don’t have the ability to gain that information. The choice to not get that information is a meaningful choice. (Or the failure to do so is a meaningful consequence.)
So any time he recommends giving players access to information that their characters don’t actually have access to, you can just imagine me shaking my head sadly. That technique is killing player agency just as dead as the quantum ogre is.
Thanks for the comments. 🙂
By the way, that one piece of advice, is probably the most misunderstood piece of advice in the whole article – perhaps because of the way it was presented.
I am not, as many people have interpreted, suggesting that /within the context of the game or a scene/ giving players access to information their characters don’t have access to.
I am saying that it is important not to forget that you are in a room of friendly intelligent people who are playing a game together. And when deciding on the in game activity you and your friends are going to share for the evening, you should not obfuscate the content of these choices, so you can turn around and say later, ‘hahaha you are dumb because you couldn’t guess what I put inside based on the cover’.
Specifically this refers to the idea that if the players want to kick in some doors and do some classic play, you should let them in on which hooks will lead to that. Same with if they’d rather do some in character talking and problem solving. The example linked to in the question section of ‘resurrecting’ is about a party consisting of treasure hunters exploring a totally empty building.
Is it better to put someone through 8 hours of an activity they don’t want to engage in? Or at the beginning of the evening when deciding what to do, just take the step and say “here is where the kick in the door/looting activity hooks are located, here’s where the questing/reward hooks are located, here’s where some role playing/detective/mysteries are located” if the players are under some kind of miscomprehension?
I agree 100% with your statement above in the post. Players die all the time in my games because they make choices without using their resources (intelligence, skills, spells, common sense) to acquire the information that is there. But the information doesn’t shift on them, and I don’t make them play mind reading games when they are looking for the fun.
As an aside, I’ve read your blog for a long time, and it really means a lot to me that you not only read these articles, but posted about them on your blog. Thanks!
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