Take the player aside, or not?

[Lloyd Dupont]

I don't really take player aside, because I don't like to create tension between players...

However it occurred to me that, if a character is, say, mentally influenced while alone and that if I take the player aside to do that, perhaps I can successfully create more drama that way!?

What say you?

[svensson]

4 minutes ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

I don't really take player aside, because I don't like to create tension between players...

However it occurred to me that, if a character is, say, mentally influenced while alone and that if I take the player aside to do that, perhaps I can successfully create more drama that way!?

What say you?

Well, it beats 'ninja notes' at the table.

Another thing you can do is confer with your player in between game sessions and explain the RP situation to him. Email is a handy tool for that because it actually makes you consider what you want to say to him and what to leave out, and you have a record of what you told him if any question arises.

[Psullie]

Not knowing is a huge part of horror. I've had some great sessions where I've been able to spilt the group and run them concurrently - just don't spend too long with either group. This can heighten the drama as you quick cut between scenes - my absolute favourite was when one group summoned a demon to rescue at the other group, when it 'arrived' at the other table they did everything they could to avoid being rescued as they didn't know it was sent by their friends. 

[Lloyd Dupont]

Just now, Psullie said:

Not knowing is a huge part of horror. I've had some great sessions where I've been able to spilt the group and run them concurrently - just don't spend too long with either group. This can heighten the drama as you quick cut between scenes - my absolute favourite was when one group summoned a demon to rescue at the other group, when it 'arrived' at the other table they did everything they could to avoid being rescued as they didn't know it was sent by their friends. 

Good sell! 🙂 

[Spence]

2 hours ago, Psullie said:

Not knowing is a huge part of horror.

Key point.  "Not knowing" and its close relative "misunderstanding the clue" are very key to a great horror game.

When running an RPG, especially horror/mystery, I have no issue taking one or more aside to impart info that the rest of the players do not know at the time.  Most role-players will already understand if not expect it.  And the rest are usually good with it once you explain the reasoning. 

I usually go over things like this in the games “session zero”.

And if a player cannot handle restricted information flow, and there are many, then perhaps horror/mystery is not a genre that they should play. 

I know that there are D&D players out there that honestly feel they should be able to read the entire adventure and the full details of the encounters just like the GM just in case the GM makes a mistake.  I don’t think they really understand the concept of role-playing, but I do know they exist. 

But for this kind of game, some kind of “secret” communication with players is almost a requirement. 

 

Edited April 17, 2021 by Spence

[EricW]

Anything to increase paranoia and sow disunity. If players can’t psychologically cope with having a few secrets in a game of Cthulhu they should stick to playing something less mentally demanding, like toon.

[Darius West]

On 4/18/2021 at 4:37 AM, Lloyd Dupont said:

I don't really take player aside, because I don't like to create tension between players...

However it occurred to me that, if a character is, say, mentally influenced while alone and that if I take the player aside to do that, perhaps I can successfully create more drama that way!?

What say you?

Creating tension between players is just fine.  Don't sweat it.  In fact passing them notes or taking them aside can be useful.  I would fully advocate passing them clues not available to other players in note form.  C'thulhu is supposed to be about nerve wracking situations.  If anyone complains, remind them that this is a horror game, and creating tension and mistrust is all part of the game, and not to blame each other for what happens as they will likely all die horribly or go insane anyhow regardless, and that is sort of the point. 

I once had a player working as a Mi-Go posing as his character for 6 months before the party eventually figured out what was going on, while his real character had been transferred into the body of a surgically deformed circus geek billed as "The Human Id".  The story was involved, epic, disgusting, and an hilarious comedy of errors, that largely slipped past the party because they were (read: "weren't") dealing with their own problems.

 

[wombat1]

If the player can be counted upon to be a stand-up participant and not give the thing away out of character, by all means take the player aside. When I've needed to heighten the suspense of matters as a Keeper, I always tried to come up with some small thing, and take each player aside with a slightly different item of information.  Character 'A' might have a disturbing dream.  Character 'B' might look in the corner and find a small bag of $20 gold coins with an address (in a 1920's game) (to chum the waters for the next scenario by setting up an NPC contact/patron) and so on.  Everybody gets a little thingumy, nothing that unbalances the game too much, so no one thinks anything of it when Character 'C' suddenly gets taken aside.

[wombat1]

As for the creating mistrust among the players of the party, I find they do that well enough on their own without further intervention on my part. The most recent example was a standard fantasy role playing game in which one of the players (character, a thief, masquerading as a dog trainer/kennel master) found the missing loot in a murder mystery scenario and promptly palmed it (entirely in character, he had only been running the same type character in various guises and games for 30 years to my certain knowledge).

ALSO par for the course, not one of the other player characters was keeping an eye on the activities of anyone. So this went undetected.

Now, as one of the criminals was a bear trainer, the party eventually ended up with the bear, and without the cash.  I, of course, took the chance to make a juvenile joke, about the bear, being out of the woods, being unable to 'go' and so, constipated.  Eventually a different player began chattering.  "I know why the bear can't go.  I know why..."

Finally, I asked him, "Ok, why do you think the bear has problems."

"Because the criminals fed him the loot and he has a blockage."  The other players thought this was brilliant.  I thought so too.  It was analytical.  It used all of the available facts.  There were no facts left over.  It satisfied Occham's Razor, and had, in my eyes, the virtue of still being completely and utterly wrong.  It had to be rewarded.

Thus was born "Bearnanke, the silver pooping bear of North-West Donara" and a new definition of 'quantitative easing.'

The players thought their characters had a finite resource.  Everyone else thought otherwise.  So it was quite easy to get them to trade the bear to a passing orc chieftain in exchange for a magical elf-killing axe, which they then handed to the elves in exchange for an empty box (for a relic) and the information that the elves never had the relic that went inside which was the "Wonderworking Finger of Most Holy Antwelm the Least.")

When they realized they had been duped, and were victims of their own misunderstandings, the howls were wonderful.