[Nerdinburgh '08] Spione
Ron Edwards:
Hi Callan,
Actually, my point #1 refers to Supporting Cast insofar as they are present and affected by the story, but not protagonized in any full/complete way. To do so is perfectly viable but also would be kicking in the afterburner, not using the hover-widgets. I am claiming that attention to the Supporting Cast (which is to say, following the rules for Maneuvers) without necessarily protagonizing any of them is a strong hovercraft.
Regarding point #2, I am referring to a far more visceral, unconsidered experience with using the material than any sort of spoken or acknowledged activity. It may help to consider this point: that if you ask people about their politics or their relationship to historical events, you will typically get platitudes or vague denials; if they help to create a story which offers those issues as material, and if the story-creation process is Narrativist, then (a) you will discover more honest expressions of their reactions and associations, as well as (b) prompt reflection upon the issues afterwards.
Best, Ron
mindwanders:
Quote from: Ron Edwards on January 24, 2008, 10:22:19 AM
2. Scene creation and development follows the same logic as the protagonist idea. It's pretty much the exact opposite of Trollbabe or PTA - instead of saying, "This is a scene, with such-and-such a purpose," we instead have various components of location, persons, dialogue, actions, and color sort of adding up, and either we find ourselves in a capital-S scene, or we have a nice bit of relaxed characterization or imagery. I've noticed that new groups, especially with PTA-experienced folks, tend to drive toward conflicts and Flashpoints with an almost frantic reaction ... it makes perfect sense that they want to Bang things, but it's kind of funny that the primary criticism Matt received with PTA was "Gah! What about 'just playing' and letting the scenes develop into important or not important on their own?" So that's what Spione does, and now it's the opposite criticism, "Gah! How do we know whether the scene's important or what it's about?" That contrast leads me to think that both criticisms are about expectations, not about the intrinsic quality or function of what the game offers.
3. A bit of advice: it's perfectly OK for someone to say, "Hey everyone, I got it! I know exactly what [a character] will do," or something equally blurted-out and based on something specific the person wants in the story. If so, then it's perfectly OK for each person with a turn still remaining prior to this person to use the Color option, if they are all actually interested in responding to the stated desire. And if one person along the way has something of his or her own, and if that doesn't fly for the person who spoke, well, Flashpoints are there for that purpose too, because nothing said during Maneuvers has to be true. Flashpoints therefore can be either more like bidding in Universalis, or more like conflict resolution in (say) Dogs, or any combination of the two.
Ah...
OK, I think I get it now. We did do quite a lot of hurtling towards the Bangs at breakneck speed. Although I think it's interesting that all the players pushed the story towards flashpoint at quite different rates. Knowing what I know now, I spent a lot of time just adding colour and letting other push the story. Oddly, I think I would have enjoyed it more if we were all willing to sit back a little more and let the story move forward a little more sedately. With a bit more colour to flesh out the story, I think we would have come up with something more to my tastes.
Having looked over the Influences, I can see I'm going to have a problem. I've only heard of a few of them, and the only one I've had any contact with was a failed attempt to watch Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy :-) I think maybe my trepidation about this not being my kind of thing may be right.
I had a look over the rules diagrams PDF. They certainly seem to be useful in terms of staying on track as far as the procedure of play. I think the problem is that what I was looking for was a two page intro to the basics of how spy fiction works so that I would have more of an idea of the sort of story to expect.
I think I'm going to need borrow the book and come back to you with thoughts after I've read the text as well as just played in a single session.
Ron Edwards:
Hi Gordon,
You wrote,
Quote
We did do quite a lot of hurtling towards the Bangs at breakneck speed. Although I think it's interesting that all the players pushed the story towards flashpoint at quite different rates. Knowing what I know now, I spent a lot of time just adding colour and letting other push the story. Oddly, I think I would have enjoyed it more if we were all willing to sit back a little more and let the story move forward a little more sedately.
I don't think that's odd at all. Your current thought of what might have been more fun is totally accurate. The system is built to permit, in fact, to enforce the idea that anything interesting can arise through genuine inspiration, and that it never has to be pushed or forced. The great pleasure of Maneuvers in Spione is that conflicts can be entirely unpredictable and yet entirely logical given what has just happened. When it doesn't work, it's because someone has leaped ahead and tried (for instance) to make some character a psychopath or to put some entirely unrelated agency on full-bore attack mode, out of nowhere - in other words, because they have generated conflict that isn't, in emotional or thematic terms, particularly compelling.
I keep talking about the procedures of Spione as a "new thing" in a vague way which might be annoying to readers, and your posts are allowing me maybe to articulate it after all. Let's see if I can do so as a series of numbered points. When I say "we know," I'm referring to outcomes of multiple discussions, design attempts, and play-experiences here at the Forge.
1. We know that a group, working together, can generate fun and engaging fictional conflicts. That's one of the finest achievements of the Forge community, that this is now understood as a given, and previous notions about the issue, specifically that it's hard and can hardly ever be successful, have been set aside.
2. We also know that it can be done well or badly, and that the good version requires some mix of "is this interesting," "is this plausible," and "is this well-timed." How that mix is tuned, procedurally, comprises a critical element of game design (or fiction creation if you want to get more general).
3. One way it can be achieved is by designating moments in which all the conflict creation is wrapped up in a neat, group-understood package, as a transitional and initiatory part of beginning a new scene. What has occurred previously is entirely known, and this package-making is a defined and known process that re-shapes the upcoming void of what happens next. My Life with Master is one of the benchmark designs using this concept, and Contenders is a very direct offspring of MLWM. Primetime Adventures is another benchmark design and has spawned multiple progeny, or perhaps created a design environment in which they emerged. I deliberately designed It Was a Mutual Decision as a member of this "family."
4. This method is overwhelmingly functional relative to the "worthy conflicts are nigh-impossible" assumption, and it is also quite easy to buy into and to introduce to people who are grappling with that assumption. (Not 100%, but definitely easy.) As I tried to say in point #3, its key feature is to lock down the timing of conflict creation.
5. I do not find it hard to understand why most of the occasional frustration with PTA play arises from the "interesting" variable, rather than the timing (which is locked down and thus non-problematic) or than the plausibility, which is accounted for so well by creating the TV show together prior to play. When the conflict must be created nearly whole-cloth during these designated times, there is a kind of make-or-break for the interestingness which can be hitchy. Sometimes the group Drifts the rules to add a kind of brainstorming session at this point, making the process more interactive and nuanced, but also essentially leaving play in order to storyboard. It's productive and can be fun, but it's not play, and in my experience, can be prone to dominance issues.
6. This one is a bit of a side point. I have been frustrated for about three years now that the method I've just described has, for people who encountered it as their "escape" from agonizing and non-productive play, become practically synonymous with "good design." It's a fine thing, yes, but it's also a particular technique and not necessarily the best technique for a given topic, or in combination with other techniques. I have been especially annoyed, personally, with the co-opting of my term "conflict resolution" to describe it, which is intellectually abominable and has poisoned multiple discussions. All of this has set up a baseline of confusion, which is then manifested through a negative version of the technique, which is to propose "conflict" over competing narrations of what might happen next. (This is what people often call "stakes," even though the term means much more local and non-problematic things in the games themselves. It also began to enter texts in 2006, to the detriment of those games.)
7. Spione does it differently. The phase of play called Maneuvers steps far back, away and above, from either scene or conflict creation. It's an organized dialogue environment which is, in fact, much like that Drifted step in some groups' play of PTA, in which a group dialogue decides upon the scene and conflict. No one person can dominate, and the notion of "driving toward" a given intended conflict later should be jettisoned. One works with things as they are, when they arrive at your "go," or as you might suggest and chat about during others' "goes." It is important to let go of the notion of controlling what play is about to be about, and to trust that group interest will prompt such things into emergence with no need for negotiation.
8. Spione therefore arranges those three variables in a different way. It puts "is this interesting" into the top priority. The timing is locked down in the exact opposite way from PTA - instead of being packaged as a unit achievement, it must be piecemeal and emergent from the operating, in-action components that have been put into play (in this, it's more like Universalis). Another way to look at it is that unless the thing is indeed interesting, it doesn't happen, and that is OK - it's not a disagreement or cause for negotiation outside of the procedures of play.
9. To put it in the way which I hope makes most sense for anyone reading this, (a) if fun and engaging conflict can be made in a quick package that often relies on a side process of chat/negotiation, then (b) it can also be done by formalizing and extending the chat/negotiation, without needing to make the package so quick. The question "oh my god, what will the conflict be?" should not be a source of stress. We (and here I mean "we the players") should know that it can be done ... and we can relax into letting it happen, and permitting it to arise from characterization and location rather than through a decree.
10. What I'm seeing you describe, and which I've seen people grapple with when introduced to Spione, seems to be a form of desperate anxiety when faced with playing without a conflict firmly in place. I think the technique, so productive and fun in MLWM for instance, has become a crutch - perceived almost as a lifeline out of "no fun" play, and as such, to be seized and applied at all times, in any game, in fear of the "no fun" returning. That's not a good thing. I've seen groups spend nearly the whole of PTA- or other recents games-play waffling over what the conflict will be and how it might turn out, with the SIS basically being thrown out the window - it's unstructured story-conferencing, not story creation, and it blows big donkey dick. Since the Spione rules literally do not permit that particular activity, the only way for this anxiety to manifest itself is for someone to go ballistic and bring KGB assassins, CIA plots, Stasi repression, pornography, infidelity, and who knows what else into their next narration, prompting crazy-ass Flashpoints over nothing really.
Gordon, what do you think of that? Does it make sense? What do you think of the possibility of using Maneuvers as a creatively generous, extended process, instead of a yawning pit over which we must impose a conflict or fall?
Best, Ron
mindwanders:
Actually that all seems to make a lot of sense.
Now all I need to do is find a group for another session and see if I can get it to work at the table :-)
Callan S.:
Hi Ron,
From what I understand now - were the flashpoints in the AP happening a little fast? Or atleast faster than what might be the assumed average for the game? From what I've read here I'm getting the feeling there may be more of a slow boil - err, how to describe...like ingrediants are added one at a time to the soup, in a way that somehow suits the last ingrediant, but not toward a particular recipe. Not a bunch of ingrediants at once?
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