[Conspiracy-X, but widely applicable] Detective gaming and suspense
GregStolze:
Lemme see if I have this right. The tension you're contemplating is between (1) player fun derived from interacting with structured plot -- but at the cost of the GM's fun because it's all predestined, vs. (2) GM fun from seeing what those crazyass players do next... at the cost of the whole thing maybe turning into a muddled mess where the players can't get it over the goal line and are left scratching their heads over myriad dropped clues and unsolved plotlines.
The solution I see comes from Stephen Sondheim. (Yes, the musical theater genius.) He did a musical called "Into the Woods" which is a big, glorious train wreck of fairy-tale tropes. (The prince who's after Cinderella? Brother of the prince who's after Rapunzel, and by Act Two he's mackin' on Snow White. Or was it Sleeping Beauty?)
Here's the deal with "Into the Woods." The first act is a perfect of example of what I think of as "mechanical plot." EVERY plot that gets raised is addressed, every good person is rewarded, every bad person is punished, every thread is tidily tied off. This is your predestined plot, nu?
The second act is just the opposite. Everything is mushy and personal and ambiguous and painful. Instead of Act One's bilateral morality, you get an ethical grayout that prompts the Witch's contemptuous lines
You're all nice
You're not good, you're not bad you're just... nice.
I'm not good I'm not nice, I'm just right.
It ends with this great, mature uncertainty (that the characters recognize and acknowledge) contrasting heavily and deliberately with the first act's simplified patness. Plus, in the version I saw, the Baker's Wife was AWWWWESOME.
How does this apply to gaming? Well, the very flashback technique you discuss could be the key. Let's picture a very structured investigation game broken into three acts (which could very well be three gaming sessions).
ACT ONE: Discovery. This is railroaded, told in flashback, with the conclusion (the PCs Figure Out What's Going On) predetermined by the details of how they get there and what it costs them added in break-in narration.
ACT TWO: Comprehension. This is the unscripted, off-the-rails judgment arising from the flashback. The situation is still unresolved in some big way, but at least the outlines of events are understood.
ACT THREE: Conclusion. Also unscripted, the PCs go and clean house. If they succeed, yay rah. If they fail, at least it's a failure where the players understand the full ramifications of the tragedy.
-G.
Marshall Burns:
Quote from: lachek on May 02, 2008, 12:39:56 PM
Marshall, in that game, how did you handle pacing of vital information?
Did you have "trigger points" for the clues, like "the first person they meet will hand them X" followed by "some supernatural weirdness they do will provide Y" followed by "killing the first outlaw will yield Z"?
No, not really... I had every NPC mention the Fruit Fair, because that's where the evil plot was gonna go down. And every NPC besides the boatman who ferried them to town mentioned the crazy girl, because she was an important clue (as the test victim for the strange fruit). I also had several NPCs mention Gil Cutter, the villain, and had one elucidate on Gil's past with regard to losing his Pappy's land to the people who own the orchards (to set him up as the guy with the motive). The neat thing about this is that all of this stuff was just "the talk of the town," so it didn't seem contrived to have everyone flappin' their jaws about it. And when they talked to the girl's father, he mentioned Gil and said something about how Gil used to be sweet on the crazy girl.
Basically, if the information was really vital (as in, "there's no adventure without it, just a bunch of flailing around") I tried to reveal it in as natural a way as possible. There's no point in making them guess at the stuff that they HAVE to know just to get started.
Now, once they had that, they decided to perform a ritual using hair and a scrap of clothing taken from the crazy girl (which they had to fight for). The ritual was to be performed in the girl's room, the very place she had eaten her boyfriend, so they had to put her parents to sleep by drugging their food; getting invited to dinner was easy, because they had already put themselves over to the father as investigators from the Pinkertons, looking into cases like this (they're supposed to have a cover story, and keep all of their magic secret so's they don't get hanged for witchcraft). I had anticipated absolutely NONE of this, but it was easy to run with because it was within the scope of the game's setting and color; I just had them receive a vision, suitably vague, running backward in time that showed her eating a peach before going crazy, and also implicated Gil.
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In the playtest, there was a point where you steered the players back on the right path ("Okay, guys, I'm starting to feel bad about this...").
I only felt bad about it because I wanted to integrate what they had come up with, but I couldn't find a way to :) I could have let them burn down the whole orchard, and face the repercussions. Maybe I should have.
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Did you write a timeline for the villain's "evil deed"? Is that how you became uncertain whether or not the PCs would be able to stop it?
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Yes. They had two days from their arrival until the Fruit Fair, and even then they barely did away with the villain's evil pie before anyone ate it. Plus, there were other uncertainties; they might have been eaten by Gil's pet swamp gators, f'rinstance. I had even prepared for the event of people actually eating the pie, and becoming horrible, bloodthirsty crazies that the players would have to stop somehow before they ate the whole town. Or maybe the whole town would get eaten, and the PCs would have to retreat and telegraph for backup, and then a whole cadre of rangers comes in and blows the town to hell and damnation, and the PCs get a nice chewing-out from their CO.
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If your prep says to drop the information in the PC's lap without a fight, how does that make the game "investigative"? What part does player performance play in the game?
Not all information is given without a fight; just the stuff that's basically vital. Other stuff, particularly "how do we STOP this thing?" is held by the GM, perhaps with tiny hints here and there, until the players figure it out (although, in this case, fire was a pretty obvious solution; "How do you kill a tree?" "Burn it!"). And if it makes sense for an NPC to not wanna give up what they know, there's a Conflict right there. There was also a way to save the girl, but they never tried anything except asking the local preacher to perform an exorcism (which he had already tried, and failed, since she was possessed by a nature spirit, not a devil--that, and the preacher was an alcoholic and not particularly devout).
lachek:
Marshall and Greg, just wanted to let you know, your feedback has spurred quite a lot of inspiration and creativity. Some techniques are currently being worked out based on your suggestions. I'll be sure to post our findings and actual play results when it happens.
In the meantime, if anyone has further input on this subject (and it's a pretty darned deep subject, from what I can tell) please chime in!
Marshall Burns:
Awesome :)
At the risk of sounding like I'm full of shit, one of the players from the Witch Trails session called me up twice after the game to thank me and congratulate me for running it so well. He said that it felt like a really good CoC game, which I find very cool because most of the techniques I was using aren't CoC techniques.
I'm thinking it's an issue of structure. You can structure it all the way like CoC, and that will do the job, but it's a lot of work for the GM and it precludes a great deal of player power. Or you can structure the outside of it, the framework, and have the players do what they want within that framework. I'm gonna have to think about it more, but I think that there's something there.
GregStolze:
The frame creates the picture. Restrictions spur creativity. It's just that way.
-G.
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