I am totally new to RPGs and haven't participated in a single game yet. However, I'm interested in the topic and today, I found a link to Dungeon World on this site and started reading.
There's something in the introduction that I need some clarification about:
As you play, the players say what their characters say, think, and do. The GM describes everything else in the world.
Does this mean that a player who plays a character with a hidden agenda will say things like <weird voice>
Oh, you're going to sleep? Hee-hee, good, easier to poison you when you're asleep!</weird voice>
in addition to saying <other weird voice>
Oh, ok, good night then.</other weird voice>
?
Is that something that happens in most RPGs or is it more specific to this one? Other questions on this site mention interesting stories involving a player whose real character is only known to that player and a GM, but I don't know whether these are rare things that some people come up with or whether it's a common thing.
Best Answer
Sigh, I think others are making this more complicated than it is and aren't answering the right question.
Perhaps it will make more sense if you restate that brief blurb as:
You "say" what your character does, the GM "says" (aka determines) what everything else does. That's all that part of the rules is trying to convey to you. It's not making a statement about whether you speak your thoughts out loud or not.
Now for the truly tangential "do you say your thoughts," it depends on your style of game. If it's an in-character type of game you don't, you express yourself as your character would. If it's more storygaming, like in Dungeon World, you can say what you are really thinking, narrate lengthy flashbacks, and otherwise express your character's life of the mind, but this is situational, not stream of consciousness spouting. If you are more of a tactics player in say D&D you may or may not bother with such in-character frippery amidst the "you should flank him to get the extra +2 next round" table talk.