This was never a secret. The organisation is called Syn, and it has a flying castle that is best described as ‘sinister-ish’. Even the Starter Set gives warning that the players should be suspicious about Syn and that the council shouldn’t be trusted; the RPG goes into length about that.
And yet, there’s a giant gap between “this was blatantly hinted at” and “this is a confirmed fact about the world”. They just feel different – having the GM telling you directly that something’s true, makes it a fact. Hearing about something from any other source – including sidelines in the rulebook, or NPCs – keeps it, potentially, as not-fact, and it feels in your mind like a different sort of thing. It’s one of the reasons I almost never tell my players “the door is red and there are skeletons on the other side”, but instead “you see a red door, and hear clicking on the other side; Hmm? Yes, I would say it sounds like skeletons, yeah.” I’ll link again to one of my fav episodes from my podcast, where I discuss this further.
Of course, even here we don’t have a concrete “confirmed fact” – it’s basically hearsay from a suspicious NPC – but he’s proven to be surprisingly truthful, and more importantly, the players are making checks to see if their characters can tell if he’s lying, and they’re succeeding, which means they believe it much more. The rules have spoken, and they are impartial; the man speaks what he truly believes. Which is, probably, what is truly the case.
Sure, Nadav can keep playing on this later – Ahhh, Tu’ali was actually told a lie by the real cabal, along the lines of what if they know that we know that they know that we’ve lied that they’ve lied – but that’s becoming too convoluted for a game that’s about high-spirited, colourful adventuring and not about trust games and conspiracies (it just features one).
This is so weird, for the past month we’ve been revealing basically 75% of everything we’ve kept hidden since this comic started. It feels weird!
News of Us
Aviv has started streaming Hades! Sign up for notifications for when she’s getting online.
A series of articles featuring the core of the Israeli RPG theory scene is currently being posted on Gnome Stew. I (Eran) edited them and helped sculpture the main argument. The first claims there are no characters, and the second claims everyone’s a GM. The provocative titles aside, they do, basically, claim these things, and for good reasons I believe. A third one’s coming this week, and it’s probably the most useful. They can be a bit heady, but the discussions going on in RPG.net and on the subreddit can help making things clearer.
I have also renewed playtesting for my RPG, Under the Ship of Souls, which is about people in a semi-weird low-fantasy world, working together to create opportunities to take down serious challenges using interesting descriptions and playing cards, in order to fight cultural stasis and bring change. Game slots are available starting this week, more details on the Discord.
Last Chance on Game and Merch!
We have some leftover stock from our Kickstarter on Amazon.com. Most of this is stuff we only sell personally in local conventions (that is, in the UK), so it’s a pretty rare opportunity to get it if you’re based in the US!
