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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.)
(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.)
