Drifting toward a better Sim
David Berg:
Quote from: John Adams on January 11, 2008, 09:50:54 AM
2) Contribute to everything via suggestions, even if you have no Authority over it
. . .
#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 gotta ask: is this a goal in itself, or do you just think it's necessary in order to serve goal #3?
Personally, I prefer to pursue goal #3 without doing #2, because I don't like how the world and plot "come across" if the players are complicit in them. But maybe that wouldn't be a problem for your players...?
Quote from: John Adams on January 11, 2008, 09:50:54 AM
3) Make meaningful choices.
. . .
#3 is the real bitch, and it's where all the "good stuff" lies
. . .
for Sim the player must be able to change the Situation.
Not sure if this'd be true for all Sim CAs, but it certainly has been true for most of my own Sim play, and I'll accept that it's true for yours too. As a GM, I've had good success finding ways to give the PCs the power to impact my world-altering plot-lines:
1) The PCs can do something useful that no one else in the world can do. Something that the world-changers (kings, generals, etc.) need. Of course, this doesn't work if the PCs have no leverage and can simply be coerced, so try to make their usefulness something that must be voluntarily given.
2) The PCs know something that no one else knows. Their decision of who to tell, and when, will tip whatever balance of power is in flux in the larger plot.
I've gotten immense mileage out of this latter, using everything from "the PCs know the Mandragon army has begun to march" to "the PCs know the Mandragon general is secretly a shape-shifting demon-worshipper." This had led to play in which the payoff scenes are largely communication scenes, updating and advising the world's powerful people. Want some combat? Someone tries to kill the PCs to stop them from delivering their info.
One slightly odd result of working this way has been that, if there's a Final Battle between the powers that be, the PCs usually don't contribute much to the outcome during the battle. This has been a disappointment, but rarely a major one (cuz often, the players made the battle happen in the first place!).
Allowing players to manipulate the plot's events via their characters is a more satisfying version of "getting players creatively involved in the whole game" for me personally than allowing them "plot" or "world" suggestions.
I'm not trying to convince you that my way would work for your group (without some Actual Play accounts of your game, I couldn't even guess), I'm just throwing another data point your way.
Callan S.:
Hi John,
When I say 'I've begun to think...' I really mean it. It's my line of thought - I may be deviating alot from the forge. Do not start doubting your own understanding of the theory - I'm merely offering my own conclusions to you.
In short (cause I just can do Ron length posts), lets take a game situation like a friend at work has commited fraud to support his gambling problem, and it's come to the point where you have to decide how your going to deal with that. This situation could be played in nar, gamist, or sim. Now lets take two designers who want to make a game about this situation and similar situations. One makes a nar game. One makes a gamist game. Why? If you asked them why they chose a certain CA, they'd give you all sorts of reasons (perhaps not articulated well, but they'd have strong reasons). Some part of that reasoning made them decide on a particular agenda. This reasoning is above agenda. It decides which agenda is used. Agenda isn't the whole point of play - that reasoning is. Agenda is decided from that reasoning, then techniques are decided from that agenda, and so on. But it starts at that reasoning!
What is your original reasoning about - what is it centered on (it has to be something that already exists)? It's not an easy question, but at the same time saying 'I don't know' is a fine start - because any sort of start is a good thing.
But...
Quote
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.
Final authority is a technique, and having a good idea of what to expect from each other is essentially a technique. I think I have to add techniques to the list of 'things that don't exist yet'. As in, they only exist once the original reasoning decides agenda, and agenda has determined what techniques to use. Talking about techniques is too far removed from the original reasoning, except perhaps when talking over a beer at a convention or something :) You'll have to dig deeper.
John Adams:
Callan, I'm afraid you lost me there. Maybe you could post an example of what you're talking about from one of your games and I'll see if I can relate.
David: That's close but I was thinking of small changes at a local level: "do we save the cheerleader," not so much "did we save the world?" It should be "SHOULD we save the cheerleader?" not just CAN we save her. I think the CAN part of the equation has a bigger role in Sim play and we would keep that, but the players should also consider outcomes where she dies and maybe work toward those. I was also thinking of many choices ... at least a couple every session, not just one or two big branch points in the campaign.
Creatively, meaningful choices are more engaging than suggestions, but why limit yourself? Take everything they can give you! Suggestions during play keep the players focused and should lead to more fun for everyone. Maybe some negative examples would illustrate it better:
* My players expect to spend entire sessions (3-5 hours) making minimal contributions to story lines which don't interest them. Another player has the spotlight, and everyone else is expected to ride along.
* Players yawning and even falling asleep at the table. (And yet they insist it was a good session! Go figure.) A less extreme but more frequent example is players flippingthrough other books, often unrelated to the game when they're not in the spotlight.
I want to shoot that damned spotlight.
David Berg:
My best solutions to the "give players meaningful choice" conundrum, short of improv, can be found here (Phase C will probably be of most interest to you).
As for your "spotlight" problem, how exactly does the spotlight get grabbed? Are the PCs all in the same place, or did one of them wander off to do something meaningful in private? What triggers spotlight grabbing? What triggers wandering off?
In my own experience, this has been solved during character creation, by vetting character personalities and motives against "what we're gonna do together".
John Adams:
We're playing tonight, and I'm going to try to inject some of those meaningful choices.
Player/Character: Mark/Tusk, Andy/Kenlei, George/Ephriam
Situation:
Tusk's race lost the Great War and was nearly destroyed. Fifty years later they live on the fringes of society, except for one last warlord named Blackbane who has rallied a sizable force and attacked the Empire. He has no hope of victory, he and his men are looking for an honorable death and to damage and disgrace the Empire as much as possible in the process. Tusk wants to kill Blackbane and save as many of his race as possible. He has tried and failed a couple of times now.
Kenlei's father is a Thane of a Noble Order of the Empire. The Noble Orders are all Clerics. The Empire created the Orders to separate military power from the Churches and bring it under direct Imperial control. So Kenlei's dad is a Cleric with strong religious loyalty to the Church, but he answers to the Chamberlain who answers directly to the Emperor, not to the head of the Church.
Tonight we will fight out the final battle between Blackbane and the Noble Orders. Kenlei's dad is there with Kenlei and the Chamberlain.
Now that's all good, but it doesn't provide the kind of meaningful choices I want.
1) One obvious way to go is to tie the result of the battle to the PC's success or failure. They could turn around a critical point in the fight or it could be more meta with the ebb and flow of the battle following their round-by-round success. Combat will give some tactical options and the players are already invested in the outcome of the battle.
But I'm not going to have a huge battle every week. I have some other things planned which are much closer to the bush I've been beating around in this thread. So here are good examples planned for tonight:
2) Tusk has promised he will do "anything" for another chance to kill Blackbane. The God of War heard him and possessed him with a Fire Spirit to give him the power he needs. Blackbane is almost certainly going down. Now there's a price ... "do anything" in this case means "kill the Chamberlain" once he's done with Blackbane. This will almost certainly put Kenlei and his dad against Tusk in battle. If they can't bring Tusk down, the Chamberlain dies.
This is tricky to pull off well. First, there is no chance Tusk will die. I recently convinced the group that PC death isn't a good thing for this game, and we agreed to have a go without it. (Fear of PC death forced me to pull my punches too much.) Second, this was Mark's suggestion, so I know he's invested in the outcome, but Andy doesn't have a clue. I may ask Andy before we start if he expected a fair chance to kill Blackbane himself. If so, this would amount to GM Force, so it needs to be fairly transparent. I might need to make it a "race" to see who kills Blackbane first.
Now meaningful choices will happen in that battle, but my hope is that the best stuff will come out afterward. Will Tusk decide to follow the God of War? Will Kenlei really trust Tusk after this? How will they explain this to the Chamberlain and Kenlei's dad, assuming they survive?
Hopefully you see how #2 is meatier than #1 and the fallout from #2 offers the most PC-centric story bits.
3) The flashlight. Last week George let a gem slip about his character. "I'm a healer" he said, "I'm here to save lives." Now to look at his PC you wouldn't guess that was so important, so that's precisely where I'm going to hit him. What about healing an enemy? what if he begs for you to let him die? (Wants an honorable death.)
4) This idea hit me out of the blue: Kenlei will fight a skilled warrior during this battle and when the final blow lands his opponent's helmet will fly off and he'll realize he was fighting a woman (Not typical for these folk) and she is badly injured and out of the fight, but alive. After the battle the Chamberlain (if he lives) will decree that Kenlei has the right to claim her as his slave. A beautiful, ass-kicking slave. Who is one of Tusk's race.
We'll see how that plays out!
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