The unreliable narrator in crime fiction and rpgs

[incandescens]

In crime fiction, we often have a large part of the action described to us; either by the narrator of the book as a whole, or by witnesses providing evidence to the investigator/s. It is almost always accepted that the narrator will be reliable. He is not misreporting events; he tells it as he sees it. In the case of witnesses, they can be unreliable, but in that case there will be a logical reason in the story why they are unreliable, and quite often there are clues to the fact that they're unreliable, and why. (IE, the woman's lying because she's protecting her lover, the man's testimony is inaccurate because he's telling the truth but the clock was set to the wrong time, the child saw a woman in her aunt's dress and assumed it was her aunt, only seeing her from a distance.) Writing it otherwise isn't playing fair with the reader. It's no fun.

(There have been notable exceptions -- one of the best known, and one of the first, being The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie, where the narrator's testimony omits certain important points. It won acceptance partly because it was done well, and partly because it was a one-of-its-kind shock to the system.)

Now, in role-playing game sourcebooks, over the last decade or so, a trend has developed for providing chunks of background material "in voice", especially in books or sections focusing on particular groups or types of character. Whether it's Lasombra vampires in the modern World of Darkness, or Fire-Aspected Dragon-Blooded in high fantasy Exalted, or lots of other stuff, it's become quite common to present parts of the material as narratorial opinion on the subject, or other people's opinions on the narrators and their type.

(Frankly, I like writing it, but that's beside the point.)

It serves a useful purpose because it actually shows what a typical person of that kind might say, rather than just writing, "The Lasombra vampires look down on the Nosferatu, believing that they waste their time doing X and Y." (For example.)

But what makes it really interesting is the possibility of unreliable narration. One can not only demonstrate the facts that the narrator believes to be true, but also commonly held false beliefs, or natural misconstructions. Nothing like a really heartfelt denunciation of the foul Anathema to demonstrate (a) how people feel, (b) show up the logical inconsistencies in that feeling which most of said characters don't notice.

However, and conversely, one must at the same time make the truth perceptible, or at least hint that the narrator may not necessarily be accurate in all her beliefs. The reader of the above denunciation is aware that the narrator has had Immaculate monks providing teaching from childhood about how thoroughly evil the Anathema are, and can spot the lines of the catechism in between the vitriol. There has to be a clue, or an understanding with the reader, as with the witnesses in crime fiction who are lying or mistaken.

Otherwise, and as above, it's -- cheating.

(PS -- there is one exception to the above note on rpg unreliable narrators. It's when the writers of the series are planning a major revelation for later in the plotline. In this case, it's permissible to have unreliable narrators without telling the readers, but the writers have to make it clear later exactly how and why they were unreliable, and what the truth actually is. And it certainly shouldn't be done more than once.)

Comments

[rob-donoghue.livejournal.com]

I think the big fear is that the reader can never be sure when that last is not going to be true, so everything is suspect.

Fallible Narration has also been used from time to time to explain away work that is actually simply sloppy, which is a pity, as it does a great disservice to the mode. From an RPG perspective, I'm happy as a clam to have fallible narrators in what is clearly setting fiction: It's when it's part of the actual setting write up that I get very, very leery.

[longstrider.livejournal.com]

I agree on the 'enjoy it as background, dispise it for setting info.' I tend to characterize that as it's ok when it world information aimed at the players, but when it is aimed at the gm's I'm firmly of the opinion that it should be wholely accurate. The only time I don't think it's bad form to hedge to the gm is if the game gives accurate but incomplete information, even then I want it to be implied or even better out right stated, "look folks, there's more to come here." The only system that I've seen pull that off was 7th Sea and they were very explicit about it, in some cases not in the text but in talking about the products to the fans. I didn't like having to wait for some of the reveals, but enjoyed the system/setting enough that I was willing to wait.

[rob-donoghue.livejournal.com]

7th Sea also had the strength of hitting on a really solid schema for book organization that said "player stuff here, GM stuff here" that left me willing to forgive almost everything. The Almost qualifier for the Daughters of Sophia book, which I think is one of the examples of a bad secret - the organization presented in the book was so strongly at odds with the original presentation that is was shockign and annoying. Doubly so because they'd already demonstrated with Die Kreutzritter that they could introduce material that was WAY out of left field, but still fit in neatly with what had been published to date.

Not that I'm bitter. :)

[longstrider.livejournal.com]

Well Sophia's Daughters was basically retconed with the second printing of the gm's guide. Also if you just looked at a small portion of their agenda it could be characterized as what was described in the original gm's guide. The shift in creative leadership of 7th Sea was clearly felt in a couple books and that's one of the primary ones.

[rob-donoghue.livejournal.com]

The bile I feel for Sophia's Daughters aside, this is illustrative of another cause of the sort of surprises this started on. Even if a given twist or direction wasn't planned from the get-go, there' sno saying that all that you've come to know isn't going ot get turned on its ear when someone new takes over (or even if someone gets a new brilliant idea *cough*Star Crusade*cough*).

'Course, unlike other issues, I don't think there's much of a solution to this one.

[liralen.livejournal.com]

I agree about when it's cheating and when it isn't. I actually think that the PS is when it actually *is* cheating. If there are no hints or clues or supporting evidence for the contrary at all, then it's cheating . Kind of like revising the past to fit the new vision of the future...