Defer answers.
- Principle
- Defer answers.
- Type
- Cyclic Principle
- Stage
- Development, Young Adulthood
This principle tells us to build suspense by refusing to give definitive answers. Build tension and show the depth and complexity of the problems by finding the reason why every effort to fix the situation results in failure or falls short of what the characters hoped for.
#Examples
- Our characters expect to find the wizard in his hut, but you defer answers by bringing them to an empty hut, without any sign of where the wizard went or when he might return.
- Our characters hope to address a growing rift in the community, but you tell us about some new dimension that stymies their solution, revealing greater complexity to the problem and forcing them to search for a different solution.
- Layer more details and dimensions to the problems already established in the game.
- One of the main characters has found an old piece of metal in the ruins. She knows that the ancients could inscribe words on materials using the sort of signs that appear on this piece of metal, so she’s sought out a recluse familiar with this magic. You can defer answers here when the recluse tries to read the plate, but realizes it uses some language she does not speak. Or, you might have the recluse read it, but rather than satisfying our character’s curiosity, it only introduces new questions about what it means.
- The characters want to figure out why the deer seem to have disappeared. One of the characters, a wizard, describes his ecstatic trance to go find the Keeper of the Game. He spends a moment of awareness to ask an attentive question: “How could I get the deer to return?” You have to give a true and meaningful answer, but this principle tells you to defer answers. What do you do? Unless you come up with something more creative in the moment, you can generally solve this problem by providing a true and meaningful answer that just introduces new questions. In this case, you answer that last year the deer agreed that your community could take 8 of them, but you killed 9. The 9th deer they regard as murder. They regard this as betrayal, and the covenant between you as broken. This provides a meaningful answer to the question, but it only introduces new ones, like, “Who killed the 9th deer?” and “How will we repair our relationship with the deer?”