[TSoY] I fought "The Party" and "The Party" won
Willem:
Guys, I think the fact that I didn't click with the flow has some valuable revelation in it. I feel like we're talking about me in the third person, and apologizing for it, as if some sunspot randomly made me act like a newbie story-gamer (well, a more newbie story-gamer). Don't worry about apologizing, but also I don't think that making it all about me 'choosing passivity' helps either. I think a fairly simple resolution lies in the middle of all this, even if I can't see it right now. To tell my story:
I chose the keys of compassion and cowardice.
I guided the players to the land of the forest people, out of danger, to follow these keys.
When personally requested by his sidekick, I followed and looked after Duval into the battle, in spite of my distaste for violence.
To end the battle and resolve my struggle, I looked for the governer in his mansion and tried to talk him into surrenduring.
So, I did all these things to follow the Keys, but I'll admit that I myself never felt that I had any struggle or character discord. I did indeed feel disconnected from the story. It felt like a "following the letter, but not the spirit" of the rules. I suppose in any one of those above instances, another character could have made the choice to act (or not) more difficult for me, but I hadn't made an agreement like that between Gilbert's Duvall and Zach's Goblin.
In "In A Wicked Age", to make best interests, you take a moment before you start to pick two best interests that you want to accomplish, at least one of which you preferably aim at another character (I actually don't know if the rules state it like this, but I do it this way). This ends up engaging everybody really strongly.
But Christopher's PtA story applies here too. How could my elf have found himself pushed into a hard choice? Or perhaps my elf just didn't belong in this story? Perhaps his Keys differed too much from other folks? Should the other Elf and I have consciously paired up for a challenging dynamic, specifically and intentionally, at the beginning? I got the "D&D vibe" from him, like he just wanted to kill stuff (which he did - a lot), instead of engaging in character. I also could have paired up with the Ratkin, I suppose. But I didn't understand what she wanted, either.
In all truth, I would have happily made a different character if it would have helped.
Joel P. Shempert:
Chris,
Quote from: Christopher Kubasik on April 07, 2008, 08:31:35 AM
A young man who arrived at at PtA game
[SNIP]
So, that's really the key for me. I try to rummage around and dig out things for the character sheets that I'm pretty sure the Players are interested in. And then I address those things. What's established SOCIALLY is more important than what I arrive with alone, if that makes any sense. And it seems to be working out pretty well.
That's a pretty instructive example. Thanks! It's becoming clear to me that I didn't do nearly all I could to promote engagement and interaction. I think a lot of it is a practice and confidence issue, and as I run more Indie games with a more diverse sample of people I'll continue to get better at it.
Gilbert,
Quote from: elegua on April 07, 2008, 09:35:57 AM
Petrea's character was the next best fit for intrinsic plot hooks, but nobody at the table really understood what she wanted. It seemed pretty clear from my seat that she wasn't comfortable creating her own story in the game. I don't think she was familiar enough with the style of game. I could speculate all sorts of reasons for this. My take is that learning to encourage folks like this to be more active in creating a dynamic character should be a focus of the community, particularly those who are trying to initiate new members.
I'd say your observation about her not wanting to "create her own story" is spot-on. My puzzlement arises from her reaction to the story I did feed her. She'd declared that she was about two things: Protecting the Zaru, and Collecting Zu. I didn't deliver much on the Zu front, but I gave her plenty of Zaru-protecting fodder, which mostly fell limp. Climactic example: "The Zaru are rushing to attack trained soldiers with only tools and clubs! The soldiers are turning on them to repulse them! What do you do?" "I wait and see if any of the Zaru need healing." My internal reaction--hbwhaaa? I only wish that some Zaru had been hurt or killed (as luck would have it, both the Zaru and the soldiers failed their fighting rolls. I ruled that the Zaru were routed without serious injury). Maybe I should have just decided the outcome of the battle (a bloody rout, death all around)? That seemed too heavy-handed. Meanwhile Petrea remained mostly a spectator to the story, despite my actually throwing her the strongest bangs in the game, I'd say.
It's that nut I'd like to crack, in terms of how to handle a situation like that in the future.
Quote from: elegua on April 07, 2008, 09:35:57 AM
Neither of the elf characters seemed to be integrated with the setting at all. Neither of them had links to what was going on locally or any strong feelings about what to do about it. Not only that, but their general character motivations were completely opposite. This had opportunity for conflict, but Brandon was indulged in his bloodlust and Willem didn't find any sort of groove of interactivity, which is all the more important when you have 3-4 hours to do a complete story arc. This is probably most closely related to Joel's lack of engagement at 9am after short sleep as he just rolled with everything that was happening in character creation and didn't try to get players to build up those ties. I think this is what would have improved this particular session the most.
I'll totally cop that I dropped the ball on this game, especially during chargen. Sleep issues aside, I was caught in that "let everyone make the character they want" groove, which is a fine groove to be in provided it syncs up with the "all the characters 'click' in a story together" groove. I shied away from steering or dissenting during character creation, relying on my original pitch to do the work. Even when I had some red-flag issues, like not one but two Elves--how I expected two "aloof, don't care about anyone but themselves" archetypes to work in the same game consisting of strangers in a limited timeframe I'll never know.
I guess that's my particular hang-up of the "you can do whatever you want!" variety. A firmer hand, explaining and reiterating when necessary just what we're trying to do here (like in Chris' PTA example) would be preferable to, uh, to what I did.
Willem,
Quote from: Willem on April 07, 2008, 09:57:43 AM
So, I did all these things to follow the Keys, but I'll admit that I myself never felt that I had any struggle or character discord. I did indeed feel disconnected from the story. It felt like a "following the letter, but not the spirit" of the rules. I suppose in any one of those above instances, another character could have made the choice to act (or not) more difficult for me, but I hadn't made an agreement like that between Gilbert's Duvall and Zach's Goblin.
I'm not trying to marginalize you in the dialogue. Bu all means let's delve into your portion of the game and why it went the way it did. For starters, I totally forgot about you trying to talk the Magistrate into surrendering (possibly because Duval later tried to threaten him into doing the same thing). So you were driving toward your Keys more than I realized. I think I had a hard time tracking in my brain between the Key you first picked and the one you later settled on. In all honesty, I didn't really get what you were doing (even though a lot of it was right in front of me!) and so it didn't really look from my end like you were doing much of anything. I think I've got a lot to learn about the GMing practice of driving toward conflict. The goodness in our game came about mostly 'cuz I got lucky and Gilbert and Zach did most of my work for me.
Peace,
-Joel
Willem:
Quote from: Melinglor
I'm not trying to marginalize you in the dialogue. Bu all means let's delve into your portion of the game and why it went the way it did.
Alright, but I'd like to accent that I don't want to imply any marginalization of myself. As you hint at, I think my character just occupied a communal blindspot of some bizarre kind, something I saw happening as I made him but didn't know how to stop myself. :) Now I think I best could have simply said, "Hey everybody - I don't see how my character will stay hooked in the story. Could someone help me, much like Zach and Gilbert have decided to help each other?"
Especially as a story-game, the GM in TSOY has enough to worry about without also doing all the player's work for them. I've mentioned before that I felt I had dropped the ball, and now I suspect it happened when I didn't speak up. I made a character in a detached way, and ended up with a detached character storyline.
Player Empowerment Now!
Christopher Kubasik:
Hi Joel (and all!),
This is a big issue. And complicated. And almost impossible to do over the internet.
But some things leapt to my mind. I have no idea if I can break it out any further than what I'm about to say, so this might be it.
No player can "create her own story." I'm being very blunt and literal about this, just stating a fact. So I'm not trying to "catch" anyone here in a misstatement. I'm just stating a fact.
I was talking with Ron Edwards about this very issue last week.
Here's the thing. There's a reason why some games have GM. It's to provide resistance for what the Player's character cares about or is trying to do. Without that, there's no story. (Even, say, Polaris, which has no "GM" certainly puts Players in relation to each other so they're pushing conflict at other Players -- serving in the role of the GM, even if that role rotates.)
I bring this all up, Joel, not to say you weren't doing this (from the posts so far, I kinda of get yes, and I kind of get no). I bring this up to say when I first grabbed at these new-fangled games, my attitude was, "Cool! I just set up all this narrative stuff, the Players decide what they want the story to be about, and WHAM! it all just happens!"
Man, was I wrong.
What it took me a while to realize was that without me, as GM, providing open conflict and resistance their characters actions and goals, nothing was going to happen. Without putting pressure on the PCs, there wasn't going to be much going on to help drive the game forward.
Remember in the thread where we were talking about your upcoming HeroQuest game, and I kept prodding you about having a PC group of mixed Luars and Heortlings. I couldn't figure out why that kept sticking in my brain. You kept saying, "Well, I want there to be all this conflict." And I finally figured out why it kept bothering me.
See, there might be conflict between the PCs. Or there might not be. That's up to the Players, and there's no way to know until the moment of play what is going to happen -- moment by moment.
What concerned me in ways I could not articulate or understand was that -- I think -- you were unwittingly abdicating your responsibility to provide pressure on the PCs yourself, handing (and hoping) the Players would pick that task up for you.
I'm not sure if this was the case. But I can assure you that for me a few years ago, it certainly was. I didn't want to step on the Player's empowerment and what not. I didn't want to deprotagonize and stop them from driving forward toward what they wanted play to be about.
But what I learned was, without the GM being a strong hand of resistance, nothing happens. I learned it mostly from PtA, by the way. When I first played I really thought I could sit back and enjoy the Players driving the story forward. And it became this mess. The next time I ran a game (the one I wrote about above, in fact), I kept my brain on fire coming up with conflicts over the PC's issues. I just kept thinking, "What's the worst thing that could happen now?" or "What's the last thing the character would want to happen now."
And because I stepped in with a strong hand and really pushed TROUBLE at the Players' characters, the game went really well.
Now, I wasn't at your game, so I don't want to make guesses at the micro-details of what was offered by the Players, what was proffered by you, and so on. But everything in your phrasing suggests that you're very much in line where I was when I first played Sorcerer and The Pool and other other games I found around here.
All I can say is, GMing TSoY or Sorcerer or these other crazy games isn't like how we used to GM D&D... But that doesn't mean there's not a lot to do. There's a lot to do! Like putting pressure on the PC's moment by moment.
I am going to get specific about one thing:
I want to clarify that the GM of these games never feeds anyone a story. A story is the accumulated events, and if we're making them up as we go along, there's nothing to be gained by expecting any character is going to have one kind of story or another. All the GM can do is keep putting pressure on the PC with fictional elements. If these fictional elements are call backs and heightening of ideas, NPCs, events and so from earlier in play, all the better.
So, when you wrote you "fed" Petrea a story I get a little jumpy. Now, you might think you didn't mean it that way. But let me point something out:
Petrea declared that her character was about Protecting the Zar. And then, later on, when the Zar enter combat she makes a tactical decision to stand back and heal as needed. And this disappointed you for some reason. I don't know why. What did she say she wanted her character to do? Protect Zar. What was she doing? Protecting Zar.
Now YOU as a player might have made a different choice. But you weren't the Player. She was.
Moreover, I'm a little confused as to how the battle played out. Were there other PCs involved, or just NPCs against NPCs. I ask, because the way you spoke of it, it sounds like NPCs vs. NPCs, and yet -- you "wished" the battle had gotten bloodier. To which I can only ask (if that was indeed the case), "Why didn't it get bloodier?" I mean, it's your choice, right?
And if you wanted her to get more involved, that would have done the trick. Right? Now it might not have been the whole thing you wanted her to do or whatever, but she would have been finding her way in a game where she is able to do what she wants to do. And you were providing opportunity to do it.
Now, the conflict and pressure. Let's say the battle's going really badly. She's providing healing support, but they might get wiped out. Could she even help? I mean, really. If there's this big battle going on, and everyone's dying, and she's one PC, what could she do? I have no idea. Maybe she was staying back at the early stages because she guessed, as seems to be the case, that if she invested too deeply she'd only be investing in a fight that she'd be certain to lose.
In other words, what could she do? Where was the ring of power that had to be destroyed? Where was the grail that could heal the Zar's leader who could win the final battle?
See this is where you come in. She can't make up the solutions to her own problems. Play and experimentation has proven this is dull. She wants to protect Zar. Fine. You want her engaged in the action on some bigger scale. Great. But give her something to do that will really test her in some larger and concrete manner.
If you describe the battle about to be lost and then offer up some prize that can save the day, my guess is she would have jumped at it. If you say there's a wizard wiping them all out, and she's seeing the Zar fall, and if that wizard falls the Zar have a chance, there would have been a narrative focus that would have given her direction in her action. Now she's got pressure -- can I get to that wizard before the Zar are killed. And what will I do to make that happen.
Was there anything like that? Or was it two armies fighting. Because if you had removed the plot shenanigans from The Lord of the Rings and dumped Frodo into a big battle between Gandalf and Morder -- sure Frodo would have participated in the War of the Ring... but he would have lasted two pages and it wouldn't have been much of a story.
And this isn't you getting in the way of her story or her imagination or her empowerment. It's you providing the opportunity to pursue those things in active play. Again,I wasn't there, but I sense a Player who was actually successfully doing (in that moment, at least) exactly what she claimed she wanted to do -- in the scale that was available to her. For a bigger scale, she'd need some sort of fiction/narrative socket to go after bigger scale stuff. Because she didn't know the rules of the world, because the threat wasn't present in such a way that one PC might be able to really make a difference.
If you go dig up the AP of Sorcerer game I ran at a local con last year, you'll see I made sure to lay out narrative details that Players could focus on to get things done in an actual plot. And in the HeroQuest game you read about, Daleeta, the pregnant worshipper of the Red Goddess became the focus of play. (The Players made her up, but if they hadn't, I would have had to come up with something.)
Go check out the Art Deco Melodrama thread (it's in four parts, all badly labeled! But you can find them!) and you'll see Ron doing the same thing of making objects and goals and specific fictional foci that give the Players something to hang on to.
We do this all the time in stories. Indie has to get the Ark of the Covenant. Neo has to rescue Morpheus. Frodo has to deliver the ring to Mount Doom. John McClaine has to protect his wife from the thieves.
It's the GM's job to provide specific shape and context for this stuff. Now how the PCs respond to it is, of course, the business of the Players. But without this shaping, there's no context, focus, direction, pressure and conflict. The GM must do this stuff. Its the job.
CK
elegua:
Quote from: Christopher Kubasik on April 07, 2008, 06:42:47 PM
Now, the conflict and pressure. Let's say the battle's going really badly. She's providing healing support, but they might get wiped out. Could she even help? I mean, really. If there's this big battle going on, and everyone's dying, and she's one PC, what could she do? I have no idea. Maybe she was staying back at the early stages because she guessed, as seems to be the case, that if she invested too deeply she'd only be investing in a fight that she'd be certain to lose.
In other words, what could she do? Where was the ring of power that had to be destroyed? Where was the grail that could heal the Zar's leader who could win the final battle?
See this is where you come in. She can't make up the solutions to her own problems. Play and experimentation has proven this is dull. She wants to protect Zar. Fine. You want her engaged in the action on some bigger scale. Great. But give her something to do that will really test her in some larger and concrete manner.
While I don't want to sound disagreeable to this approach, I would like to include a bit of nuance of the situation.
In order to intentionally leverage character motivations, those motivations need to be understood. The frustration here is that this character's motivations were never understood by anybody other than the player (if even). There were some clues dropped, some bits of information, but they seemed confusing and sometimes contradictory. If anything, getting better at communicating about intention with reluctant players would be a good result from this interaction.
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