So when you meet a complete stranger and want to “put a face to a name”, the MC tells you what Faction the stranger is. So you automatically know at least the Faction? Why? What if the MC wants to keep the players guessing what Faction that stranger is? What if the stranger is pretending to be in a Faction, or wants to lie the PCs about it?
So when you meet a complete stranger and want to “put a face to a name”, the MC tells you what Faction the stranger…
So when you meet a complete stranger and want to “put a face to a name”, the MC tells you what Faction the stranger…
If they are truly a complete stranger, how could someone put a name to a face? 😀
That makes sense. I assume you need to be able to justify possibly knowing a guy from somewhere before you can ask ‘Hey, don’t I know that guy from somewhere?’
To the part about shadow games and keeping information hidden: consider that Oracles (at least) can belong to more than one faction. When it comes to rolling for them, you decide at the time of the roll which faction most applies, so I’d use the same MO for NPCs. I’d assume if an NPC has a good enough ‘cover faction’ to actually fool anybody–remembering that the PCs aren’t wet behind the ears when it comes to faction politics, and have their fingers in just as many pies as anybody else–then that cover has enough of an identity to just have the PCs roll with whatever faction the NPC is pretending allegiance to.
Putting a Face to a Name, and faction moves in general, aren’t necessarily about knowing the truth; they’re about knowing what everybody thinks is the truth. So if everybody thinks that Jules is Night faction, working for their black-market blood traders, that’s what the PCs get–even if Jules is actually Wild and is working to take down that operation from the inside. Hitting the Streets with Wild could give them the real story, if they have reason to suspect the cover is fishy.
Thanks! Now I totally get it.
It’s also possible for the MC to just have them roll and mentally add in the appropriate faction number if you really, really want to keep things secret.