Secret Challenge Outcomes
I'm running a mystery and I have definitely hit a sour point. I want to create a challenge that ends (Strong or Weak) with the players finding a clue. However, I don't want them to know the clue until they find it.
I tried to work around it: In my Outcomes I said "You will find the clue, and/but..." (the rest being the Strong or Weak outcome). Then a player resolved the challenge with a Strong outcome, and was unable to narrate the scene correctly because he didn't know what the clue was that he found. He assumed it pointed to a location, but didn't know it would be one that the he and the NPCs were already familiar with.
That's not something I could have given away in the outcome text.
So I had to continue the scene and request a revision of his narration, which is a huge pain.
The other option is to include the clue in the outcome text, but then we get very "director stance" and it foils my attempts to run a mystery game in Storium.
Please implement secret challenge outcomes.
Anonymous
shared this idea
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Kirt Dankmyer commented
A much easier away around this is to implement "spoiler text" tag in Storium, much like many forums have.
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Eraille
commented
Or, rather than adding a third outcome, simply give the narrator a choice: "Toggle strong/weak result displays off until resolved", either by card or by game.
My big complaint with the system as it stands is that it tends to lead everything into a 'good/bad' outcome. Some of that can be laid at the Narrators' feet, of course, but some of it is due to players metagaming to the *outcome*, rather than playing to the *situation*.
As someone pointed out in another post, as well, a 'weakness' card play might in fact have a 'stronger', ie, more desirable outcome, in certain situations. It would be interesting if it were possible to peg cards to obstacles, and define what counts as strong/weak on a per-challenge basis. Lot more work for the narrator, but a lot more realism and flexibility, as well, IMO.
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Anonymous
commented
Technically you could cheat by making a move and playing cards (since you can play up to 3 at a time) to see the outcome, then changing your cards or even cancelling your move.
But you could probably ALSO cheat by viewing the page source, so it's more of a spoiler warning than a lock-box.
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Anonymous
commented
The way I see it, it would work like this: In the Outcomes dialog, there would be three boxes:
Strong Outcome (required)
Weak Outcome (required)
Hidden Outcome (optional)The players would only see the Strong and Weak outcomes until the challenge is completed. I know you have a state variable for challenge completion. The visibility of the Hidden outcome would be tied to that variable. Until it is complete, it would say "There is a Hidden Outcome for this Challenge" or some such. Players who view the page source could cheat and look at it, probably; but the point isn't to lock it away from them -- just to avoid spoilers!
After the challenge is complete, the Hidden Outcome would be visible to the player who completed it in the resolution dialog box. Just like the system greys out the outcomes that didn't happen, it would also reveal the hidden outcome, regardless of how the scene concluded. When a scene has an Uncertain outcome, the dialog would tell the player that the Narrator will reveal the Hidden outcome, and when the Narrator next Continued or Ended the scene, she or he would be prompted to include it.
In any case, once the challenge completed, it would be visible to all players who click on the Challenge card, regardless of whether it was Strong, Weak or Uncertain.
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Anonymous
commented
At least give us the option to have secret outcomes.
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Nayla Caruso commented
Can we keep the outcomes options invisible until the challenge has been conquered, I assumed from the beginning that they'd only be shown to the person playing the trumping card. It makes mystery games more difficult.