More Than One Viewpoint

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Traditionally, each player controls only one character in an RPG. Consequently, each player only sees the fictional world of the game through the eyes of only one character. And sometimes that is totally enough.

But sometimes it's not. Sometimes, the GM wants to impart information to the players (be it for reasons of atmosphere, mood, theme, tension, setting immersion or any other reason) that would not be available to their characters. Sometimes the players want to explore more aspects of the game world than one character would (easily, or believably) allow them to...

In these cases, consider that, in an RPG, the players are not only the protagonists, but also the audience. Anything you would show to the audience in a movie, or tell the reader in a book, should be possible to be told to the players at the table in order to create better stories.

This is why GM-narrated Exposition from Beyond Character Perception is a thing. Leaving the events that surround the group of playercharacters for a few moments, the GM narrates an intro, interlude, epilogue, flashback or flashforward, then returns to the normal gameflow. The characters are (supposed to act) none the wiser, but the players will have heard, and will enjoy and process what was said. Including such techniques is basically the first step to introduce multiple viewpoints in your chronicle.

The next step starts to involve the players, and gives them something more to do than just listen to the GM's prose poetry for a couple minutes... ;-) It allows them to become active, and experience the game world from yet another perspective by interacting with it while in some other fictional characters' shoes.

Have you ever considered giving players more than one character each? Why not? After all, the GM does it all the time. Surely your players could handle more than just a single role as well...

There are several approaches how to experiment with this idea:

Have them Play Side Chars for a scene or three.

Establish Multiple Parties for the entire chronicle. (Two or more mainchars for everyone, basically)

Play with a Cast of Thousands. (This is the above two taken to joyful extremes, in a nutshell)

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**Why you might wanna do this:**

* enables the ever-dreaded Party Split with much less friction than traditionally
* allows for Solo Scenes much more easily
* enriches the setting and atmosphere
* takes workload off the GM with regard to portraying NPCs
* in long-running campaigns, to provide some diversion and variety to the otherwise ever-same viewpoints

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**When to refrain from this:**

* if your players are still having trouble getting immersed into even one character
* if you want to convey a strong "us vs. the world" vibe, make the chars feel isolated, insecure about their surroundings, all alone in a hostile place... (anything in the dungeon crawl or horror genres, e.g.)
* if the playercharacters are going to be cheated, betrayed or tricked by the NPCs around them and you don't want your players to know

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**How you know you're overdoing it:**

* the plot bogs down from too many minor scenes
* the story's 'red thread' (if any) peters out under too many unconnected side threads
* when your main chars don't get enough screen time anymore
* when it becomes hard to even identify "main chars" anymore (and the group has a problem with that)

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