[IaWA] Breaking Bad Habits
Mike Holmes:
OK, I didn't really read through your example well. And I'm trying to fight through some confusion here. But in the example are you implying that if one player says "I want X to happen" and another player says, "I'm not letting it happen" that, in fact, either side can narrate whatever they want with regards to X? Or does the winner of the first round get to either take X, or prevent X from being taken?
My assumption has been - and this could well be wrong - that the system does resolve whether or not some particular element gets entered into the SIS. I mean that's what it sounds like, the other player's opportunity to say, "No, that doesn't happen." And then the system resolves whether or not it does.
But it seems like you're saying that all the system does is to give the player something to negotiate with mechanically if they win. But see... if the player can narrate anything they want, and the mechanics don't resolve which player gets his narration to be true, then how do we resolve any disputes between players?
Maybe I'm all brain damaged on this subject, but if I narrated X, then I want that narration. If you're opposing that narration, then you want something else. Doesn't the system exist to decide which narration occurs? If anyone can narrate anything about anything at any time, what power does the "stick" have in "negotiating with a stick?"
On the other hand, if you're suggesting that, in fact, the winner of the first round gets what they want, that works out fine mechanically, I guess. But why the first round? Or can it change round to round?
I guess what I'm saying is that, if I want the ring, and you want the ring (or even don't want me to have it), that's the "stakes." They're set up from the get go in terms of the narration that the players are going for. Negotiation, then, seems to me to be about negotiating further stakes, at the threat of the loser who doesn't agree getting injured or exhausted.
That works fine for me, if it's how it works. But it's very much not what you've said in other places.
I don't get it. In one place you say (paraphrasing), "if the other side doesn't allow it, then you don't get what you want, he just gets injured or exhausted." In this case it seems that you're saying something like, "You can resolve the issue at hand on the first round." What am I not getting?
As for "Turns" I think I was confusing the game with Blood Red Sands. But basically in the same way as player A says that he's going to get the ring, and gets it unless somebody opposes him, if you put another player on a desert isle in an attempt to "punish" them somehow, or prevent them from doing something else, he can counteract this simply by saying, "My character returns and attacks yours." The only prevention of which is another player opposing this action.
So it seems that no situational penalty you can ascribe to a character has any weight at all. Because there's no mechanical penalty associated with it. The player is prevented from doing precisely nothing by anything that they agree to in negotiation, other than, perhaps, having to direct their character out of the situation before doing anything else. Meaning that, at best, you can only keep the character on the desert isle by preventing him from leaving every time he says he's trying to get off.
Even worse, this seems to suffer from a problem of statement. That is, if I say, "My character is going to attack yours" without explaining how he got off the desert isle, do you have any recourse? If not, the problem is very bad, because a player can simply skip any actions he would have to have the character attempt to get to a place, and narrate doing what it was that the negotiated act was meant to prevent. Now if the player who put me on a desert isle can say, "Ah, but to get to me, that implies that you had to first leave the isle, and I oppose that" this is a terribly slippery slope. Basically any player can pre-empt any action by citing some presumable action that the other character would have had to take earlier to accomplish the task. Meaning that a player can't ever get to the contest they want, if another player doesn't want to let them.
For instance, in the case of the ring, if I say, "I'm getting the ring" you could say, "I'm going to ambush you on the road before you even get here." Of course that's non-problematic if, in fact, a player can always simply not let you get your goal by taking an injury or exhaustion...either way they can always prevent you from getting what you want. So taking away attempts isn't really any worse...
Alan... all I can say is that this is how the game left me feeling. Sure, your experience might differ. But we were playing by the same set of rules. It turns out we weren't playing wrong mechanically in any way that I can see. At worst it seems that we approached it in the wrong... spirit? The problem is that I don't think that I'll be able to change my approach to rules like these.
In fact, I'll be frank. When I see players failing to exploit "loopholes" I see a willingness to overlook flaws in a system, and make play work anyhow. And, no, that doesn't make me an asshole for feeling this way, either. To the extent that I feel that people aren't playing what the game promotes, I feel like they're very much saying that "system doesn't matter." And, well, for me, I'll just use a system that does do what I want instead of playing around the rules that promote something else.
Now your opinion may be that the rules promote something else, and that I'm wrong. But that doesn't change my perception, which is the only thing that matters. I'm willing to be convinced by an explanation of how I'm not seeing what the mechanics promote. But simply saying "it didn't for us" doesn't convince me of anything.
Let me put it this way. If I'm competing, I feel idiotic if I'm not taking full advantage of the system to compete as well as possible. The system, in such a case, has to serve to make play fun in that context.
Now, if we're not supposed to be competing in IAWA... well, again, the language and mechanics all scream competition to me. Yes, I can find other, creative, ways to have my character obtain his Best interest than neccessarily having him go straight for it, but why should I bother? It's much easier to simply say, "He goes and gets what he wants."
Mike
GreatWolf:
Quote from: Mike Holmes on April 23, 2008, 05:45:44 AM
Let me put it this way. If I'm competing, I feel idiotic if I'm not taking full advantage of the system to compete as well as possible. The system, in such a case, has to serve to make play fun in that context.
Now, if we're not supposed to be competing in IAWA... well, again, the language and mechanics all scream competition to me. Yes, I can find other, creative, ways to have my character obtain his Best interest than neccessarily having him go straight for it, but why should I bother? It's much easier to simply say, "He goes and gets what he wants."
I've got a thought which might help here.
Sometime around Forge Midwest, IaWA clicked in my head. Silly me, it should have clicked earlier, but it didn't. Why "silly me"? Because, as best as I can figure it, IaWA uses the same approach to play as Legends of Alyria does.
It works like this. The group puts together a storymap/web of Best Interests, selecting the interesting characters as PCs, while the Narrator/GM takes the remaining ones. Then the players play out the storymap/pursue their Best Interests, while the Narrator/GM moderates the game, does scene framing, pushes with NPCs, and the like.. This is PvP play, which has a certain zest to it, but it is not Gamist play; the tools simply aren't there. Rather, the games make use of the PvP aspect of play to drive the story and ensure that each important character has a strong advocate at the table.
And maybe that's the best word for it. Your goal isn't to win; your goal is to be a strong advocate for your character within the fiction.
Think about it. A game like Blood Red Sands is supposed to be played to win. At the meta-level, the players' relationships are competitive ones. Anything within the rules is fair game, and the fiction exists to provide a context for the competition.
In a Wicked Age is different. At the meta-level, the players' relationships are collaborative ones. They are working together to tell a story; it's just that their cooperation contains vigorous elements of opposition. (Aside: I think that this is a distinctive of Forge-style roleplaying versus the Scandinavian freeform tradition.) The developing narrative within the fiction is the reason for the fiction.
Therefore, using the tactics that you describe would be okay in Blood Red Sands, if they were in keeping with the rules.The fiction is subordinate to the competition. (BTW, rules changes are underway to address these concerns.) Using these tactics in In a Wicked Age misses the point, because the competition is subordinate to the fiction.
Is this helpful, Mike?
Troels:
Quote from: GreatWolf on April 23, 2008, 06:49:08 AM
And maybe that's the best word for it. Your goal isn't to win; your goal is to be a strong advocate for your character within the fiction.
This makes sense to me. Thanks a bunch!
Yours, Troels
lumpley:
Mike, you are missing something really important. I'm going to keep trying to explain it to you, but it's going to take some explaining. This post doesn't sum it up, it's just the beginning. So:
What's at stake, in every single conflict, is who gets the exhaust/injure stick at the end, and nothing else. Understand the initial action to be the first attack in a conflict over who gets the stick.
Here's a Dogs in the Vineyard trick. "What's at stake is, who kills whom. Let's play the conflict as a quick draw: all the raises and sees have to happen between when the clock rings 12 and when the first person draws and shoots. The winner of the quick draw wins the stakes and thus kills the other."
In the Wicked Age, leaving the initial action unresolved past round 1 is the same kind of a trick. The rules allow it, because sometimes it's exactly what you want to do. Normally, though, you'll treat the initial action as the first move in the conflict, resolve it in round 1, and there'll be a whole new second action to resolve in round 2 (and so on).
Accordingly, this:
Quote from: Mike Holmes on April 23, 2008, 05:45:44 AM
In one place you say (paraphrasing), "if the other side doesn't allow it, then you don't get what you want, he just gets injured or exhausted."
You asked me (paraphrasing): "if we didn't resolve the initial action in round 1, round 2, or round 3, and then we don't resolve it in final negotiation, does it stay unresolved?" My answer: yes, of course it does. If you didn't resolve it at any of your many opportunities, you didn't resolve it. If you want it resolved, resolve it sometime instead.
Hence, my advice to you is to play as though the rules require you to resolve the initial action in round 1. Sooner or later you'll come to an initial action you don't want to resolve in round 1, and THEN you can play by the full rules.
I want you to accept that the above is how it works. I'm pretty sure that you won't believe me, because of this "narration" thing you keep saying, but take it on faith. Then we can talk about who says what about what, and I hope that'll help. Okay?
-Vincent
Eero Tuovinen:
I'm with Seth in this particular matter. There's a boatload of games that are predicated on players playing advocate for their characters while simultaneously upholding and respecting the shared imagined space, which among other things includes matters such as causality, believability and such. A player who's just insisting on "narrating" something disjointed while ignoring potential complications provided by the fictional situation will be as certain to ruin a game of IWaWA as they'd be in any other game - MLwM, Polaris, Alyria, Dogs, WGP, Dust Devils (goes double for Dust Devils, actually)... almost any narration-sharing narrativism-centered game I'd care to name depends on the players actually caring about the fiction and the cooperative creation of fiction as a whole, not just trying to blindly grab the ring. To make that kind of thing work you need an authoritative GM who simply filters all the stupidity and forces players to play along - but from the viewpoint of these games with weak GMs and strong narration techniques that's just stupid, as they kinda assume that the players are communicating and respecting each other's input, not just refusing to engage at all points.
In other words - this kind of game assumes that the players are cooperating while the characters are competing. Specifically, the players cooperate in upholding an aesthetically pleasing SIS while letting their characters go all out within the framework against or for each other. It's a pretty simple conceit, and really common for all manner of roleplaying games; there cannot be true roleplaying interaction without a solid basis of Exploration, as the theorist might say.
The reason why this might be important for the discussion seems to me to be that Mike has floated off into a generic critique of this kind of set-up, which has nearly nothing to do with In a Wicked Age. To tell the truth, his argument doesn't seem to be entirely in good faith, as I'm pretty certain that Mike himself has no trouble at all in actual play when it comes to respecting and caring for the shared imagined space even without somebody being there to tell him to not break the toys at the sandbox.
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