What to Do When the Story is the Uncertainty
Some stories are about the actions we take when we have incomplete information. This is something that is very true when it comes to stories about events where nobody has complete information. A prime example of this is War. In a war, even the most informed individuals always have an incomplete picture of the world, limited by time, by distance, by restricted information or simply by the uncertainty of the future. For people on the ground, in the thick of the action, it can be impossible to see and comprehend everything that is going on. If you look at history, there were often times when even the most informed people lacked very important information. For instance, during Sherman’s March to the Sea during the Civil War, the US government had no idea where the army even was or if it had gotten into any battles.
While this can make for interesting stories, it is difficult to pull off in a game setting. A lot of storytelling methods in the modern era opt towards sharing large amounts of information with the reader/player to the point that modern audiences are used to being very informed about current events within a story. In many cases, this is done with multiple perspective narration or direct info-dumps or opening text crawls about trade disputes.
However, LARPs and tabletops can be an excellent storytelling method for telling these stories differently. What is it like to make decisions with limited perspective and specific character goals? This ties into a general game design principle that Interesting Decisions make for Interesting Games(See Sid Meier’s talk at GDC2017). But this is a hard balance to strike. Players worry about making the wrong decisions, they worry that they are missing out on game, and sometimes information doesn’t flow quite how you expect. So, how do you make a game about limited information without highlighting the frustrations of limited information? Well, I don’t really have all the answers, but I do have a few tips.
Make the Story about the Local
The scale of information can be a way of playing with the notion of limited information. If there are large scale uncertainties going on, try and make more local things much more certain and much more relevant. Make games about what is done within a unit, not how massive armies move around. Make games about what is done in a department of city government, not an entire nation. Or at the very least, make it so that what is happening locally can be understood and acted upon.
Think Globally, Act Locally, is a principle in many activist circles, but given that game characters are often beings that want to enact larger change in the world, make sure that local action has consequences in the larger world that feel meaningful. Have a crucial battle of the war on the city streets, or an economic summit be hosted locally. Don’t necessarily overdo it. Not every event should happen to happen where the game is unless you want to stretch realism to a breaking point, but honestly, the story you are telling is about this place and these people and remember that.
Reassuring Players about the Unknown
One of the keys to allowing stories to be about uncertainty is making sure to not penalize players for lack of information. My general policy for LARP is that no "wrong" decision made in good faith should lead to negative consequences for the player. Decisions made in good faith with limited information should lead to interesting stories and increased storyteller investment, not penalties for 'wrong'ness.
Any decision made in a game is a risk on the part of the player and risks should be rewarded. And rewarded visibly, so that other players see that they aren't going to be smacked down for trying. Because in many games I've seen, players are hesitant to act at all because actions even slightly mistaken become excuses for the ST to lord over them that they don't know everything that's going on. NEVER DO THIS! As the ST, you are often the only person who knows what's going on, so don't make the game less fun because you aren't gaming with psychics.
Make Sure to Reveal NECESSARY Information
Of course, it's important to build out information flow in games. If you are working with uncertainty and doubt as a key game theme, make sure that there are flows of information so people do have SOMETHING to base their decisions on. Part of this is working out intentional information flow. Making sure that information you're putting out into game gets filtered out to others. My main rule is to never have only one player get a piece of information, always at least 2, generally 3 disconnected people. That way it is more certain to flow outwards. And give it to the least important people in a game's power structure if possible. Information flows upwards, but that allows the telling to be an interesting event.
I also recommend developing unintentional information flows, where there are rumors and facts that players are able to get at random. My current game has a rumor system that I fill up with true and false information so that every player gets a piece of information each game. It may be very relevant, it may be very irrelevant, but it's there.
Overall, having a game about incomplete information can be done, but always remember, it's most important for it to be fun.
