Unreliable Narrators and the Power of Narrative Dissonance in TTRPGs
“A story is a form of therapy; when it's done properly, everybody wins.”
— Ian McEwan, Atonement
In Atonement, Ian McEwan delivers one of the most quietly devastating narrative betrayals in modern fiction. What begins as a tragic tale of love and consequence slowly peels away to reveal itself as something far colder: a carefully written lie — crafted not to deceive the reader, but to comfort the author.
The result is deeply unsettling not because it is manipulative, but because it reveals something fundamental: the person telling the story has more power than those who lived it.
For GMs and zine creators, this idea is dynamite. Unreliable narration isn’t just a literary technique — it’s a tool for immersion, unease, and creative freedom. When wielded well, it makes your players second-guess everything they thought they understood. And that’s where the real tension begins.
What Is an Unreliable Narrator at the Table?
In traditional fiction, an unreliable narrator is a character who misleads the reader — intentionally or not. In TTRPGs, the narrator is more diffuse: the GM, the NPCs, the world-building documents, the players’ own memories.
This creates a unique opportunity: you can fracture truth across multiple voices and make the world feel unstable — not through chaos, but through contradiction.
You don’t have to lie.
You just have to tell more than one version of the truth.
In Echo Walkers: Echoes That Contradict Themselves
The metaphysical backbone of Echo Walkers is memory, recursion, and narrative instability. The Echo records what people believed, not what was. That belief can splinter, be contested, and be wrong.
Example: Competing Antagonists
One faction believes the Fall of Vas’Reth was an accident — a metaphysical breach no one could control.
Another claims it was sabotage, orchestrated by the Directorate to reassert narrative dominance over the Veil.
Both claim to have persuasive “proof.” Both contradict the recovered accounts from Moi T’Kana’s private log — which itself shifts when read under different lunar alignments in the Echo.
The truth may not exist in any absolute form.
Or worse — it may not matter.
Optional Mechanic: Memory as Currency
Let players hold on to “memory tokens” — fragments of narrative they believe to be true. They can spend these to alter events or gain insight, but each use erodes certainty. Are they shaping the Echo? Or is it shaping them?
In Sci-Fi and Fantasy: Systems That Lie
Unreliable narration doesn’t belong to any one genre. But when used in science fiction and fantasy, it can destabilise entire worlds.
From Silo to Systemic Deceit
In Hugh Howey’s Silo, society confines humanity underground and teaches that the surface world is uninhabitable. The video feeds confirm it. The laws reinforce it. And then someone discovers: it’s all curated. The monitors lie. They edited the truth.
But no one wants to know the truth. The lie is safer.
At your table, let the players discover a security log, a lost journal, a song passed down through generations — all offering incompatible narratives. Whose version of the story will build the world?
Zine as Dungeon: Layered Lies in Small Spaces
An earlier post showed that you don’t need 300 pages of world lore to build depth. A zine can contain an entire cosmology — not through exposition, but through conflicting perspectives, fragmented memory, and contradictions laid bare in the very layout.
1. Present Conflicting Documents
Instead of writing a full timeline, offer two short in-world texts:
A letter from a dying soldier claiming the war was started by false prophecy.
A hymn fragment sung by pilgrims that calls the war a divine necessity.
That alone creates tension. But to make it unsettling, go further.
2. Introduce Internal Inconsistencies
The soldier’s letter includes a PostScript dated 100 years earlier — referencing events that hadn’t happened yet.
Ruins that predate all recorded language contain the inscription of the hymn, even though the language wouldn’t be invented for another century.
Now you’re not just presenting a political disagreement. You’re breaking time, cause, and consequence.
3. Break the Form Itself
Page numbers skip or repeat.
Handwritten marginalia contradict the body text.
One page references a prior entry that doesn’t exist.
Let the zine itself become unreliable — a physical manifestation of narrative dissonance.
Suggested Sidebar Text:
“Both documents appear authenticated. Neither matches the official record.
Neither record agrees on what was ‘official.’
We recommend burning this page. But only if you’ve never read it aloud.”
Practical Tools for Designers and GMs
Conflicting Lore Fragments: Let your players piece together “truth” from opposing versions.
Narrative Scarcity: Withhold definitive answers. Let doubt become part of the setting.
Multiple NPC Truths: Each key figure tells a different story — and each believes they’re right.
Layout as Storytelling: Format your zine to suggest contamination, recursion, or decay.
Final Thought: The Lie Is the Lure
In Atonement, the author wrote the lie to soothe guilt. In Silo, it was told to preserve order. In your game, your zine, your world — the lie can be the trap, the tool, or the terror, or the zine itself.
Don’t just world-build. World-contradict.
Don’t just write lore. Write conflicting memories.
Let your players — and readers — wonder which version of the truth they’re standing on.
Truth in a world shaped by Echoes is only what has been screamed the loudest… and survived.