[Dark Ages Vampire] Assessing Creative Agenda
Frank Tarcikowski:
Over in this thread, I talked about the relationship of Exploration, Techniques and Ephemera on the one hand and Creative Agenda on the other. Especially, how the former are not all that relevant for identifying the latter. I was asked to clarify. Instead of trying to analyze someone else’s game by description, I have decided I’ll use a game of my own as an example. I already mentioned the game in the parent thread. It was a game of Dark Ages Vampire.
So let’s go over all layers of the Big Model.
Social Contract: We were all very close friends. We met to play each Sunday, in a very relaxed atmosphere, and played pretty long sessions (8 hours +). We smoked cigarettes and drank single malt whisky. The time period I’m talking about here might have been half a year, or more. I fail to remember, it was a decade ago.
Exploration: Our characters came to the city of Constantinople around 1250 AD. They found out a lot about the city’s undead society. They found their place, chose which leader to follow. Picked their enemies. Picked their lovers. Lost their lovers. One (mine) created a new Vampire, a troubled relationship. One PC became the thrall in a blood bond to another PC. There were some dramatic scenes, fights and the likes, in between. Major NPCs died the final death. Around 1350 AD, the PCs fled the invasion by the Muslims.
Techniques and Ephemera: Plain old role-playing. The players played their characters, the GM did everything else. Rules were applied mostly as written. Significant dice rolls were about combat, the use of disciplines, and resisting frenzy. Willpower points were spent. Blood pool was used to boost attributes in combat. Combat did not happen every session, but when it happened, there was some serious rules strategizing going on. Across the game, OOC commentary was constantly present. A lot of scenes were played with only one character in the scene, but all players strongly engaged, making suggestions and comments.
(I’ve straightened the Techniques and Ephemera part out a bit. We had some minor bumps and changes there, but those would only complicate the example.)
So, now? After reading this, no one can say what our Shared Creative Agenda was, or even if we had any. (Well, Ron can, because he knows me and we’ve talked about that game, but that’s cheating.) The above is simply not enough information.
What you need to know is how feedback happened, among the group. How and about what appreciation was communicated. What stuff got talked about even months later. You need to identify the overall pattern in our play, over all those sessions, that expresses our fundamental goal, our essence of what made play worthwhile.
In that game, we had exiting combat with interesting rules strategies. We plotted sophisticated intrigues and showed a lot of guts in staging those against much more powerful foes. All that was fun, I wouldn’t have wanted to leave it out. But the “strategizing to win” was not our essence.
We also had intense relationships, both PC/PC and PC/NPC. These relationships were subject to changes, and so were our characters’ personalities. There was internal conflict, not only the classic Vampire one, but also a religious one on top (for my character). That was fantastic, I would never have wanted to leave that out. It was very important, especially to me and one other player, Michael. But these conflicts, and the decisions we as players made, were not our essence.
Our essence was our shared delight for “our Constantinople”. All those places, all those historical references with their bittersweet ring. All those fantastic NPCs with their mysterious past and cloudy agenda. So many things to find out, one by one, putting the picture together. You should have heard us, we could go on for hours and hours just marvelling at this thing, making silly sounds of admiration and debating which NPC was coolest. Each of us loved all of it, but our character was our medium for interacting with it, for reflecting it, for adding our own bit of flavour to the package. Also, the whole history of the Kindred, as per the White Wolf metaplot. Boy, did we dig it, and how it tied into our real world’s history. I mean, I met Dracon. You know? The actual Dracon. Ever heard the phrase “draconic punishment”? That Dracon. He was of course a Vampire and he became my mentor.
That, there, was our essence. In GNS terms, we were playing by a Simulationist Creative Agenda.
How can you tell? Well, as I said: From communicated appreciation. Sometimes game mechanics can be a good indicator. For example, when I play Sorcerer, the number of Humanity checks in a session is a good indicator of whether or not some Narrativism is going on. But Vampire, as it were, provided little to no mechanical indication like that.
So, Reithan, our group had the drama and the community thing you have stated as a goal for your own group. We played Sim. If you get your group in good shape and get to the drama and the community thing as well, then you might or might not end up playing Sim. Just as well, you might end up playing Nar, where your essence instead is the thematic choices of the players and the statements these choices include. Or (and I certainly don’t hope so) you might end up with Incoherence, where the participants go after different goals and it doesn’t work out even though you’ve got the drama and the community thing. (I’m not really seeing you end up playing Gam, from your description.)
Does that make sense? *g*
- Frank
Reithan:
Contrary to your statement, I think I had a pretty good bead on it being Sim even before you got the summary at the bottom. Due to a few factors here.
Quote from: Frank Tarcikowski on January 24, 2008, 04:15:35 PM
Exploration: Our characters came to the city of Constantinople around 1250 AD. They found out a lot about the city’s undead society. They found their place, chose which leader to follow. Picked their enemies. Picked their lovers. Lost their lovers. One (mine) created a new Vampire, a troubled relationship. One PC became the thrall in a blood bond to another PC. There were some dramatic scenes, fights and the likes, in between. Major NPCs died the final death. Around 1350 AD, the PCs fled the invasion by the Muslims.
Techniques and Ephemera: Plain old role-playing. The players played their characters, the GM did everything else. Rules were applied mostly as written. Significant dice rolls were about combat, the use of disciplines, and resisting frenzy. Willpower points were spent. Blood pool was used to boost attributes in combat. Combat did not happen every session, but when it happened, there was some serious rules strategizing going on. Across the game, OOC commentary was constantly present. A lot of scenes were played with only one character in the scene, but all players strongly engaged, making suggestions and comments.
Added a little formatting here to help pick things out.
1. You focused a lot on things like dates and name - historical-type info.
2. You described finding out about society there, nothing about themes or going in after phat lewts.
3. You mentioned 'dramtic scenes' and 'fights' and being 'in between' the other exploration, as-in secondary in importance.
4. The GM kept control of the setting and rules, while the players just hung out in his arena.
Now, as mentioned in the previous thread, nothing here is specifically a Sim technique or Exploratory focus, however, this overall theme of your Techniques, added to your overall focus in Exploration makes this a very Pro-Sim situation. Sure, even with all this in place, you could have played a decidedly Nar or Gam game, but the deck's stacked against that.
I suppose what I'm trying to say is, to me, similar to Ron's essay on "System Matters". The system matters, but so does everything else. Everything matters.
To me, it's a fallacy to say you can have a ton of Techniques, System, Exploration and Social Contract in place that all support a certain CA, and then say that those will have no bearing on what your final CA becomes. Even if you defy that leaning and go to a different CA, they're still going to make a mark on it.
If someone disagrees, I would like to find some example to the contrary. Find me an example of a cohesive, functioning game that has the majority of it's components slated towards a certain CA(CA1), yet the play itself ended up in another CA(CA2), without having CA1 even as a 'Secondary'.
I don't think it's possible outside of theory, personally.
Caldis:
Well I think your missing something Reithan. Frank gift wrapped it for you in the way he presented it and the fact that he mentioned it was a sim game in the previous thread plus he added it in his conclusion. Even then he's right that the short descriptions he gave could mean or describe any CA, his description could work for a very nar game of Heroquest as easily as it did his sim game of Vampire.
Now he also said a lot of things like, "We also had intense relationships, both PC/PC and PC/NPC. These relationships were subject to changes, and so were our characters’ personalities. There was internal conflict, not only the classic Vampire one, but also a religious one on top (for my character)." This could easily suggest his game was narrativist taken on it's own.
Or,
"In that game, we had exiting combat with interesting rules strategies. We plotted sophisticated intrigues and showed a lot of guts in staging those against much more powerful foes. All that was fun, I wouldn’t have wanted to leave it out." This easily suggests gamist.
So you see simple statements thrown into a bigger conversation can gum up the gears. You see one of the above and think he's talking gamism or nar but he's not.
I do believe getting a better idea of what CA your group is going for would help your discussion on getting characters invested in a community. But it cant just be stated that we want x you have to show what your group wants based on actions the players have taken towards the game and things they really seem to enjoy about it.
Frank started this thread so I dont want to derail it on him but I think this may be what he was going for with it. I'll let Frank decide if this is a derail or not so I wont post again till he responds. What I'd ask from you Reithan is you could give a summary of your game similar to the form Frank used. Social contract is big - who are the players in your group and what's your relationship with them. Give us more on the exploration - what kind of situations do the pc's find themselves in, what are the most memorable ones that you think the whole group enjoyed. Techniques and ephemera can help as well - when did the dice come out, are suggest from the other players allowed?
Another thing I'd ask is this, You want community to matter in this game but why? How do you see a strong player investment in community fitting back into what your group enjoys about the game?
Reithan:
Quote from: Caldis on January 24, 2008, 06:22:41 PM
Well I think your missing something Reithan. Frank gift wrapped it for you in the way he presented it and the fact that he mentioned it was a sim game in the previous thread plus he added it in his conclusion. Even then he's right that the short descriptions he gave could mean or describe any CA, his description could work for a very nar game of Heroquest as easily as it did his sim game of Vampire.
[...]
So you see simple statements thrown into a bigger conversation can gum up the gears. You see one of the above and think he's talking gamism or nar but he's not.
I get what you're saying here, but I'm saying, look at the bigger picture. Sure he had 1-2 gamist things there, and he had 2-3 Narr things, but he had 4+ Sim leaning Techniques right there. So, overall, the trend in his playstyle was towards Sim.
Thus, his group would more EASILY be playing Sim here. Sure he COULD play Nar, or even Gamist. But it would require working AROUND those techniques, rather than just letting them do their thing.
I'll just refer back to Ron's "System Matters" article for an example of what I'm talking about - I think I'm citing it correctly here.
He said there, that a system that lent itself to one CA well COULD be shoehorned into another - but why bother? Why not just play a game more suited to what you want to be playing? In short, why try to do long-range sniping with a shotgun? Just use a rifle! Sure, shotguns are great, but for long range accuracy you'll end up modding it to hell, when you could have just picked up a rifle to start with.
Quote from: Caldis on January 24, 2008, 06:22:41 PM
I do believe getting a better idea of what CA your group is going for would help your discussion on getting characters invested in a community.
[...]
What I'd ask from you Reithan is you could give a summary of your game similar to the form Frank used. Social contract is big - who are the players in your group and what's your relationship with them. Give us more on the exploration - what kind of situations do the pc's find themselves in, what are the most memorable ones that you think the whole group enjoyed. Techniques and ephemera can help as well - when did the dice come out, are suggest from the other players allowed?
Another thing I'd ask is this, You want community to matter in this game but why? How do you see a strong player investment in community fitting back into what your group enjoys about the game?
Sure, I think this is a good idea, too. I'll see what I can do. It might not be as good as Frank's, though.
Social Contract: We're a group of players that met over an online MMO and after our guild in that game broke up after a few months we decided we had a friendship worth keeping around and looked into other things to do together. As such, we now play other online games together, as well as 2 RPGs that we play using a combination of MSN Messenger and Ventrillo voice chat. We're all adults (18+).
Exploration: The characters came into the game as newly indoctrinated into their respective orders and given a 'gift' of an area for their cabal to call its own. This is Monterey, CA. They, so far have met with several supernatural treats in their area, attempted politics with a few different groups and had both alliances and enemies made. (more the latter than the former). They engaged in some intra-party conflict and exploration of adult themes for a while. They tried investigating some local mysteries but gave up on that quickly. They've had their share of loss and gain (still, more the former than the latter).
Techniques and Ephemera: The players and GM collaborated on the setting, the 'goals' for play and the parameters for what was acceptable in characters and their behavior. One of the initally created characters was secretly (only that player and the GM knew) a hostile NPC spy. Dice rolls, due to restrictions from internet play are handled soley by the GM, and some of the players don't understand the system used very well. Rules apply MAINLY as written, with the exception of a few minor house rules to allow interesting character concepts and to eliminate some rules loopholes and confusions. Combat is actually fairly rare (maybe 1 out of 5 sessions) but battled intensely and in-detail when it happens. Willpower is spent often, as is mana. Most spells cast are improvised, though some characters are learning the importance of rotes in relation to character effectiveness.
Social roles are only called for in key situations or situations where one or the other party is directly opposed to the other (anything else is just sort of moot anyway). Scene framing is handled mainly by common suggestion and is open to all participants, though any element that's in-question usually comes down to a die-roll on a relevant attribute (Say, Intelligence+Streetwise to find an underground rave downtown). NPCs are authored mainly by the GM, as a default, though players may contribute as well.
Frank Tarcikowski:
Quote
To me, it's a fallacy to say you can have a ton of Techniques, System, Exploration and Social Contract in place that all support a certain CA, and then say that those will have no bearing on what your final CA becomes.
The point is: They don't. That description of Techniques and Ephemera up there? Fits 100% for the Reign game I'll play in tonight. Which is totally Narrativist.
- Frank
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