[PTA] Players wanting their PCs to fail?
Arturo G.:
Quote from: Ron Edwards on July 16, 2008, 09:05:33 AM
I could also swear that there was a very deep thread about it after GenCon 2006, including an external link to a big conflict-resolution diagram I made, but I could not find it at all (remember the "chesting" term, anyone?).
I remember this thread at SG Big Gencon stakes discussion. It immediately came to my mind as I was reading the discussion.
The link to diagram is on its first page of comments. I copy it here for reference: Ron's diagram of conflict resolution.
Ron Edwards:
Whew! That explains it.
Thanks, Arturo, I thought I was going utterly mad. (cue smart-ass commentary)
Best, Ron
Paul Czege:
Hey Ron,
We've really been chewing on the "stakes" issue for over two years? And still it's at the stage where those who've experienced the issue are yet groping about for language to describe it! (My own recent effort is here at the Narrattiva forums.) Clearly it's an entrenched wrinkle of human (gamer?) psychology, as you seem to be suggesting.
I think where I was trying to go, in part, with my letter to Italian roleplayers was positive advice. Not only "don't drive for conflict, don't 'workshop' the scenes (in my parlance), don't negotiate conflict outcomes before you roll," but also advice on what you should do, "give yourself time to experience the scene," etc.
You use phrases above like "conflicts of interest" to stipulate what must be in play before the PtA resolution system is consulted, and I think you're exactly accurate with them. But I'm interested to know whether you think it's possible to put players into a constructive and fun frame of play behaviors more with good advice than with admonishments and stipulated requirements? And if so, what advice you'd give to achieve that?
Paul
Ron Edwards:
Hi Paul,
That's the very issue that's informing my rewrite of Trollbabe. I think the original text wasn't half-bad in that regard, and now, with the huge wealth of actual play and questions over the last five-plus years, I'm writing, or trying to write, much as you describe.
One point seems to be: do not provide a checklist of what is supposed to emerge from play. Instead of playing, people will simply go down the checklist. So with PTA, it's true, specific scenes are designated as Conflict Scenes from the outset. I see that as an agreement for everyone to be mindful, as we play, of the possibility of in-fiction, among-character conflicts of interest coming to be expressed by the characters in word or deed.
That leads to another point, concerning the phrase, "driving toward conflict," which, as I understand and have used it, is a good thing - but somehow gets translated into "negotiate about conflict entirely outside the context of the SIS." See, it's hard to go back and forth about this phrasing. In Trollbabe, one should use game-speak to one's fellow players, by saying "Conflict!" But the very next two requirements are the trollbabe's Goal and the Action Type for the conflict, which are necessarily couched only in fictional terms ... which is then clinched in the purely visual, purely fiction-creating "fair and clear" phase. So one only hops up out of the SIS for that formal one-word statement.
But what about before that? We're playing, and there the trollbabe is, helping a farmer heave a wagon out of the mud or something. Let's say a troll is underneath in the mud, holding the wagon down. Let's say the farmer's brother, who hates him, shows up drunk with their father's sword. Let's say the farmer decides he's sweet on the trollbabe. Let's say the magic curse lays its icy breath upon her. Let's say nothing happens.
Which? How? Who says? Why? These are very fundamental questions about the medium and activity itself, and the first thing I'm sure about for Trollbabe is not to pre-arrange them, not to pose them as a checklist, and not even to dictate them. A lot of the text I'm working up is how the adventure's Stakes (the original use of the term, which applies to a feature of GM situation-prep and not to conflicts) are the best guidepost to answer them for this game. I think identifying such guideposts and then discussing how dynamic decisions in play "spark" from them, is the way to go. RPGs are not toys. You don't wind them up and watch them go. You have to do something while playing, I think. That something, the author/audience blend that I claim is found elsewhere only in music, is what mechanics make possible - not what the mechanics do.
This makes the design-in-progress of Stranger Things very interesting, because it does treat some of these things like a storyboard. The question is what it leaves open such that the contraints would be fruitful.
It also makes me look at Spione and feel good. For example, Moreno and some friends played it a while back and realized they had to get out of this "stakes stuff" entirely and simply do what the rules said to do ... and wow, not only did the characters do things, but where they did them, and how it looked, was all going full blast, and they found themselves generating fictional conflicts left and right without having to dredge them up through some kind of story-conference chit-chat. This seems to be a consistent experience for people in our community who try their hand with it.
Best, Ron
jburneko:
I think Ron's analysis of the social issues resulting from the misapplication of Stakes is brilliant. For a while now I've been calling this phenomenon, "player-side railroading." Players build characters and then pre-play get all invested in the story their going to tell about that character. Then they use Stakes as the arbiter of who gets to deliver the next bit of their story.
This is the biggest hurdle I have when introducing Sorcerer to players who came to indie-games via Stakes oriented games taught to them badly. They end up whining about how little *direct* control over the direction of the narrative (i.e. outcomes) they really have. They feel like they're wrestling with the system to tell *their* story. They bitch about how they can't *make* anything happening. We're seeing this played out with In A Wicked Age... as well.
It's all classic Story Before except instead of one one person herding a group of players together it's six people fighting over who gets to herd next.
Jesse
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