Drifting toward a better Sim
John Adams:
Damn. I can't believe it's been almost a year since I posted this thread. High time for an update! First, I can't thank you all enough for your help and thoughtful advice. I've learned a great deal and you have made a positive impact on my group. That's no small thing.
So now, a question. Given the goals and techniques I'll describe below, what else can I do in the same vein to improve my game?
Goals:
* Keep players creatively involved in the game at all times
* avoid GM-obstruction and Force
* focus on meaningful, meaty conflicts
* The PC's aren't moving around inside MY story, the story should be about the PCs
* Get more done, less fooling around and more focus
* Keep the backstory safe, GM retains Content Authority
Lessons Learned:
I first came to the Forge because my game had become boring and flat. Something was wrong, and I needed to find out what. Turns out I was (and still am) burnt out on the kind of hard-core Sim my group was used to running. I can answer the question Ron posed in his Sim essay: in my case, Sim was 'enough' for about 25 years. I'm done now. At the least I need a new kind of Sim, or maybe Narritivism is for me.
I think I have a better grip on Creative Agendas now, and I understand why changing the group's CA isn't the way to go. There will be breaks in the current campaign, and I'll work in some Nar games when we can. It will be a good diversion and I can 'get my Nar fix" without abandoning the main Sim game.
It's the "new kind of Sim" that I'm shooting for in my current game. I think most of the things on my goals list are things I associate with good Nar games, but I don't see any reason why they should apply only to Nar. Let me give you some concrete examples.
About a year ago we had a great Social Contract discussion about what each player liked, didn't like and wanted to get out of the game. Everyone agreed we spent too much time on unimportant things. This group had been running under the age-old Sim tenant that every moment of every day had to be accounted for. If it took 7 days to go from Town A to Town B, then all seven days had to at least be mentioned (usually in some detail) in the GM's narration. Basically, there was very little scene framing, Situation just flowed in one continuous stream. Aggressive scene framing totally changed my game; the plot is moving 100 times faster, we're getting to the bangs and everyone loves it.
Another thing we agreed to do was shoot economics in the head until it stopped moving, then shoot it a few more times just for good measure. Keeping track of how much you spent for a night at the inn wasn't adding to our fun. Now major purchases are negotiated and for the most part I can just "say yes." Our game just isn't about money anymore and again, everyone likes that.
Next: Hi, my name is John and I'm an Illusionist GM. "Welcome John, thanks for sharing." For decades my group ran illusionist games, varying in degrees of function and dysfunction ... just figuring it out for ourselves. I have a lot of bad habits to break. So these are "new" rules for the unwritten system that has guided all my games: Look out for GM Force. Just don't do it. If you slip up, cop to it immediately and give the players their due. Specifically, tell the players everything that might be relevant to the current situation, even if their characters are clueless. Let the dice decide if the PC's discover the secret, but stop trying to surprise the players.
So I started out looking for some magical mechanics that would "fix" my system and discovered that we got the most bang for our buck by working on the unwritten, procedural parts of the game. The game got a lot better just by changing our focus and by running things a bit differently.
Next Steps:
I want to focus even more on meaty, important conflicts. I'll be happy when we end up moving from one meaningful conflict to the next with almost nothing in between. I hope that Sim can be supported by what happens inside the conflicts. So far we don't miss the connecting filler at all.
I want to tweak the illusionist, GM-centered plot that the game is built on so that we make it a story about the PCs. Note that the players enjoy the GM plot lines and expect me to drive them forward and resolve them in a satisfying way, but I keep looking for tie-ins to make the story really revolve around the PCs as much as possible. In particular, I'd like to work in some meaty moral conflicts for the PCs but as a supporting feature, not as the end goal of our play. The conflicts are more likely to illuminate a specific feature of a character rather than force a true narrative choice, but we'll see. Either is OK with me, it puts the spotlight on the PCs which is where I want it.
More suggestions?
Callan S.:
Hi John,
I've begun to think aiming for a particular agenda, purely for its own sake, is a bad idea. If you think of the creative agenda's as tools like a saw or a wrench, then they are a means to an end, not the end itself. To aim for a sim or nar agenda is like saying 'I want wrench' or 'I want saw'. That doesn't make any sense. You don't want these things in and of themselves, you want them for some purpose - something needs to be cut in half, or tightened. 'I want to cut this plank in half...I want saw' makes sense.
What's the important thing you want to get at? When you start thinking and discussing how you want to get at it, you'll find yourself reaching for various tools to do so. Oh, and the important thing needs to exist already - either some idea from the real world or some imagined world or imagined thing you've already got in your head. It can't be story, that doesn't exist yet and tools are made to work on things that exist. Anyway, that's my short post and where I think it'd be a good idea to start. :)
David Berg:
I agree with Callan's points. That said, John, I think your list of 6 goals is a perfectly solid reason to pursue Sim play. I mean, if I envision achieving those while preserving my Right to Dream, it's hard for me envision not having fun.
I have an idea for how to give players a lot of control in deciding what a game's about, while still enabling one GM to have full Content Authority. I call this idea the "seed adventure".
Basically, the GM thrusts the PCs into a situation with one clear goal and one clear path to that goal. Lots of talk must be done before play to make sure the players can get pumped about this goal. Tie-ins to backstory, a badass in-game reward, whatever motivates them.
The GM drops hooks for a million other adventures into his prep. Using his knowledge of what his play group likes, he comes up with vague ideas of adventures or campaigns, and leaves hints of these lying around where the PCs can't help but find them. A key, a map, a secret guild offering a deal, a crying peasant in need of help, a legend of a monster or palace or island, etc. etc.
Play the seed adventure.
Let the PCs decide what they want to do next. Hopefully this will result in a lively discussion with plenty of good options to choose from. The GM should pay attention and figure out why they're picking the option they're picking. Then he can build a campaign that requires no Force to pursue.
If the PCs change their minds ("This is too dangerous, let's go get rich first.")? Well, they've already seen other hooks that they can now pick from. "Okay, how should we get rich?" "Hmm, well there was that secret guild offer..."
I've found that long-term play in certain Settings eventually gets to the point where the players can always find something fun for the PCs to do. The "seed adventure" is intented to expedite the process of getting to that point.
John Adams:
Quote from: Callan S. on January 10, 2008, 03:36:33 PM
Hi John,
I've begun to think aiming for a particular agenda, purely for its own sake, is a bad idea. If you think of the creative agenda's as tools like a saw or a wrench, then they are a means to an end, not the end itself. To aim for a sim or nar agenda is like saying 'I want wrench' or 'I want saw'. That doesn't make any sense. You don't want these things in and of themselves, you want them for some purpose - something needs to be cut in half, or tightened. 'I want to cut this plank in half...I want saw' makes sense.
Callan:
Then I'm very confused about GNS. My understanding was that CA is the point of play, it's why we as a group have fun playing this game, over the long haul. You use other tools to get to your CA, the CA is not a tool itself, but a goal. A particular tool (technique) either supports or undercuts a particular CA. Futher, I (mis)understood that in any particular game the participants will derive their fun from all three modes, but only one is the point or the main goal, for this game. So RPGs are tripods, but one leg is always longer than the other two. (What I mean is there will always be some moments of "I win!", some thematic content and some pure exploration and all are fun, but which is the main goal for this group?)
Please jump in and help me understand this.
Quote
What's the important thing you want to get at? When you start thinking and discussing how you want to get at it, you'll find yourself reaching for various tools to do so. Oh, and the important thing needs to exist already - either some idea from the real world or some imagined world or imagined thing you've already got in your head. It can't be story, that doesn't exist yet and tools are made to work on things that exist. Anyway, that's my short post and where I think it'd be a good idea to start. :)
And this sounds a lot like "the package" of Sim play. Our package is my Fantasy Heartbreaker, system and setting included. I can describe it for you, but suffice to say it's negotiated by our group over the years, I have final authority over it for our group and we have a pretty good but imperfect idea of what to expect from each other. So in the sense you describe, our goal is "to play John's fantasy game" and we have a fairly clear idea of what that means.
David:
That is a great idea and I may use it someday. If the players choose to dump the existing plot lines and go in a different direction, I might pull this out of the toolbox and use the current scenario as the "seed".
For this game though, we have a good amount of plot already happening and the players are (finally) buying into it. But it still isn't their story. The plot for this campaign was my baby all the way, prepped as I was accustomed such that the players would know almost nothing at the outset and I would slowly reveal what was going on. Certain features come from that kind of prep:
1) All major plot events are caused by and primarily affect NPCs, not PCs.
2) The PCs theoretically carry out the wishes of one or more of these NPCs, so they're "involved", but only as a tangent.
3) Since the PC's don't know much about what's happening, the GM must railroad them to keep them in contact with the prepped plot lines ... we can't have them wandering off or they'll miss the action!
4) Players can't buy into the story until they see what the story is. This made the beginning of the campaign very flat.
Hopefully you see where I'm going here and why I see Nar play as a model. But that kind of PC-centered story need not be Nar, you should be able to do the same thing with a Sim agenda.
Here's how we solved the above problems (so far) and where I want us to go:
1) and 2)The "main plot" and the main question of the campaign are still rather remote from the PC's, but I'm tying them in every chance I get. One key is making them really care about these NPCs. Another is putting the important choices and conflicts in the player's laps, even when they are just agents of an NPC. We need to work on this more.
3) Let the PCs go off in other directions. Giving them the ability to teleport actually takes a lot of this pressure off ... they can go where they wish. I also loosened up the timing of the plot as much as possible, so when they want to engage a certain plotline they can TP to the correct location and the plot will be waiting for them.
4) Scene Framing let me focus on exposition, the plot is humming along and you can feel the momentum, so this is all good now. Freeing myself to talk to the players about the plot at a metagame level helped too.
So that's pretty good, but it's still not the same as a plot centered on the PCs, all the PCs tied together with grippy conflicts and so on. I just read Dogs in the Vinyard, and the issues I'm facing look a lot like the prep for a Dogs town. The PC's come riding in, how are they connected to the town? Why do they care about these people? Why do they care about each other? about the plot? My game doesn't have the benefit of all the crunchy goodness built into Dogs setting. You know the PCs are all Dogs, so they are connected by default. You know they are there to judge the town, so they have a built in reason to be there and they must take an interest in the town's plot or you don't have a game. Even at that I see a heavy reliance on "yeah, but she's your sister" to tie the PCs in further and give them more reasons to care about NPCs that the players are seeing for the first (and possibly last) time. In my case, the PCs are a pretty motley crew who happened to be hired by the same NPC. It's not exactly gripping drama there.
Any ideas on how to bridge that gap?
John Adams:
OK, so my last post was all about plot. This post is all about procedure and partly to help me get it straight in my head and force me to put it down on e-paper; but your suggestions and observations are badly needed.
Mapping Authority, the Impossible Thing Before Breakfast and What do the Players Do?
This is all one big jumble in my head. Pardon me while I try to untangle it. In this particular Sim game, what do you do as a player, exactly?
1) Illuminate your PCs
2) Contribute to everything via suggestions, even if you have no Authority over it
3) Make meaningful choices.
If the following shoe fits for your game, wear it.
You accomplish #1 through big conflicts and trivial bits of color, by pointing a flashlight at one aspect of the character and saying "here's what he is about." This is Exploration of Character. The GM can prompt this by pointing a flashlight in your direction, but it should be up to you to describe what's under the light. The GM doesn't tell you what your character is about, that should be a sacrosanct Authority of the player.
#2 should be obvious, but it's important to articulate it and it's key to my goal of getting players creatively involved in the whole game, not just in their PC's. I think a key to this on the GM side is to "Say Yes" as much a possible and let the player's ideas override GM prep which has not entered play. The GM should only edit the player's contributions to make them fit with established facts, and even then I'd be willing to retro-actively edit the fact if the player's idea was cooler and didn't cause major earthquakes in the continuity.
#3 is the real bitch, and it's where all the "good stuff" lies. I also think it's where the CA makes a big difference in the how, the when and the why. Meaningful choice is key, to be meaningful the outcomes need to be non-trivial and engage the player's interest, to be a choice there must be multiple outcomes with roughly equal weight in the player's mind.
For Nar, the player must be able to judge the Situation, for Gam the player must be able to exploit the Situation, and for Sim the player must be able to change the Situation. And I think that's key: my Sim players want their actions to really "make something happen", they want to have real control over resolving Situation A into Situation A-prime. Of course that can happen for any CA, but for Sim it's The Point of play, the tip of the spear for "what makes this game fun".
I think that may be a major thing that has been missing from my Sim play. It's not the whole nut, but not having it significantly hampers our CA.
Conflict Resolution:
We need it, we don't have it. My opinion is that conflict resolution is a necessary feature of System but it is often punted entirely to GM fiat (force, illusionism) or is negotiated free-form. In short, Task Resolution does nothing for me. Again, good Nar games have many attractive features that should work well in Sim.
* Who creates conflicts? When? How?
* How do we drive play toward conflict?
* How do we make sure the conflict is interesting to most or all of the players?
* Is the mechanic of resolution fun in itself?
* Is it challenging in a Step on Up sense? Just enough for the target CA, too little or too much?
* Do the mechanics require adding cool stuff to the SIS throughout resolution? (as opposed to only at the end)
* Are the resolutions produced consistently satisfying for the target CA?
So that's a gaping hole I need to deal with. What we have now is not very different from D20: stat + skill ranks + modifiers = chance of success. Straight task resolution is called for by the GM with no formal guidelines about when, how or what it all means. Here are some of the bits we use to improve on that.
* If I roll the dice, it must effect the outcome. (Anti-illusionist technique)
* Say Yes or roll the dice
* set stakes before you roll (this has been very uneven)
* if you roll, someone must add a chunk of narration to go with it. "You hit" isn't enough. (also uneven)
Whew! that's a lot to chew on. All thoughts, opinions, experiences and ideas are welcome!
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