(This article is one of the backlog that piled up when I went off on a much needed vacation. As I slowly get back into blogging and prep for fall semester, I'll be working my way through these in addition to more NUNA, game design, Coyote & Crow, and Stormbringer posts)
In most RPGs, information on the adventure at hand comes from A Sage, a man in a tavern, a damsel in distress.
Ho hum.
These NPC dupes are always rife for manipulation or abuse, and are also overused and dull.
Here are few non-standard ways I use to get information across to the player. Also, some are quite cryptic, and I find that making players think more about the information gets more engagement than literal modes of communication.
1) WHAT DREAMS MAY COME
I used this a few years back in my Laughing Tower Stormbringer playtest, and the players really dug the vague images of slaughter and Chaotic mutation that were to come. Dreams can give snatches of a possible future, but should remain cryptic and not give too much away. They add colour or emotion to the adventure, a lot of which seems lacking these days.
2) PUPPET REGIME
In Frieren season 2, a puppet show is used to convey the historical background to their adventure. This is unsurprising in a Japanese anime, as in postwar Japan there was a tradition of Kamishibai (paper plays), where storytellers would go around on bicycle to city parks and give free entertainment while making money selling candy (details HERE). If the PCs need info, tell them in the square a puppeteer is putting on a play for kids (and selling candies to them), and that they can listen in. This breaks the GM and players out of the tiring pompous info dump mode and propels them into a more entertaining storytelling mode. Just get a few images together, make up a story with some clues and inconsistencies, and GO! Any GM worth his or her salt should enjoy themselves with a puppet play or kamishibai. In my Coyote & Crow game I had players make images before I did my kamishibai, and the engagement and fun was through the roof.
3) FAMOUS LAST WORDS
Another way to shake things up is have a dying character croak out their last words at the PC's feet. The upside is that players can't ask for further details, they just have to trust the words of someone on their last breath. Of course, in some games PCs may have revival magic or ways to speak to the dead, but once again GMs can have the ghost refuse to return, trapped by an evil presence, or so lost in the pain or peace of death that they aren't that helpful.
4) ODE TO A GRECIAN URN
What if the information the PCs need is inscribed on an urn or old tapestry? What if it is damaged and they need to find more pieces? And what if the visual message is so cryptic or oversimplified that they have to make their best guess as to what it means? I think lots of GMs want to control their information and make sure communication is flawless, but in this case, solving the mystery of the message is a huge adventure in and of itself. So let the need for control go, make or find a puzzling piece of art, and throw it at the players.
5) THE INFORMANT
For those of you into mystery or spy thrillers, having an informant that never meets directly but drops clues and information is a great way to keep players on their toes. The informant is always one step ahead, sending messages through lackeys, or in disguise, or any way that keeps them anonymous and safe. One issue is that you'll never know whose side they are truly on, or how they are subtly manipulating the PCs. In the Coyote & Crow scenario I ran here in Vancouver, the most liked NPC turned out to be the Big Bad at the end of the adventure. The players let out a collective 'WHOA!' when they realized it. It wasn't a fluke, I had planned the whole thing, but you can equally improvise a Kaizer Sose moment yourself to add depth to your game.
6) A LETTER
A letter from a lost or long dead person is also a poignant way to get information to players. Video games do this quite a lot. One thing to remember is that the letter writer is more interesting if they are an unreliable narrator, or write their narrative take that is at odds with the popular interpretation of events. It reminds me of The Last Ringbearer by Russian author Kirill Yeskov (1999), who reinterprets LotRs as heroic propaganda, and instead paints the orcs as working class people in a rationalist monarchy on the cusp of an industrial breakthrough that was destroyed by Gandalf and co. So if your orc den contains a letter by a survivng orc child that sounds like Anne Frank, you can really push your players' buttons.
7) BROKEN PALANTIR
Again from LotR, a piece of unreliable ancient tech is another great way to get unreliable messages across. If the PCs find a cracked orb or tainted ring, it could give them necessary hints but at a terrible price. It is definitely not to be trusted, admittedly useful, possibly manipulated by evildoers, and at some point may necessitate a quest to destroy it, but for the time being it
8) PSYCHIC MESSAGES
Having a psionic NPC contact the player characters is also a great device, and was hinted at famously in the Conan story 'Tower of the Elephant.' Although REH does not come out and explicitly state that the elephant-headed Yag-Kosha is manipulating Conan, I always felt that Conan's curiosity towards the Tower might have been planted by the alien wizard, and that when they touch he gets full access to Conan's mind. Have vague psychic flashes are like the dreams above, but with the added payoff of possibly meeting the psychic at some point in the adventure.
Other ideas? Drop them in the comments.
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