[NWOD][VtR] New Game - New Possibilities - New Questions!
Reithan:
Quote from: Ron Edwards on September 11, 2008, 07:07:44 PM
What I don’t get is why you don’t just run the game with Brian and Charles alone, especially since they’re the ones all jazzed about the setting.
To take the most obvious if not currently-problematic example, why’d you even call that ex-group guy? He sounds like a disaster. You say you have no compulsion to keep people in the loop, but if that’s the case, then that little interaction need never have happened, and your mention of the other two players seems like a non sequitur.
More close to home, and uh, not really to cause any problems, but it’s not clear to me why you’re including your wife. I mean, she’s already started to carp in exactly the way you anticipated. “I also invited this person who always sticks her fork in my eye.” Um, why?
I think this goes to the unspoken flipside of the same coin. I don't compulsively feel the need to MAKE everyone play in my game, but on the same hand, I do have problems turning people away who offer to. Especially from games I'm actually interested in, because I get caught up in the enthusiam, and it gets infectious (I think) and I want to share it with other people who SEEM to have been infected.
Though, I would like to go back and re-visit to say that the 2 people who I ragged on a bit above haven't been ALL bad. The "ex-group guy" was actually a fun guy to play with and people have expressed wanting to have him back. But once he got into a funk over the game, it became a self-reinforcing death-spiral for him. Possibly I, or other players in my group, are to blame for that, it's hard to say. But at some point (during that game) he moved from "great guy to play with, seems to be having fun" to "drags everyone down, seems to want to quit."
My wife, also, HAS played some games in the past that she did maintain an interest in had HUGE fun playing and was a very good contributing player. Just one of the reasons she's awesome. :P
However, over the long run, that's turned into the exception, rather than the rule.
Why are either 'invited'? Well, to a point: they're not! The ex-group guy I do still talk to outside game circumstances and the game idea did come up. So it was kind of a "you're not interested are you?" The answer was originally "No. I'd rather play ADnD" but has slowly drifted to "Maybe, I'm more interested in Werewolf, though" and now in the past day or two to, "I AM really interested in the crusades period, though, think I could play?" My wife, obviously, has exposure to the things I do, and the idea of a vampire game hooked her, as she's into the genre, as mentioned before. But I specifically in the near past have avoided pushing any games on her, or even starting any game-related conversation with her, hoping that maybe the key to her getting disgruntled with the past games has been me pushing rather than her pulling? So, the fact that she actually went out of her way to get info on this game and seems somewhat interested is cool to me. Though, her initial complaints have me worried. Outside of the gender-swapping concerns raised by her (mentioned above) she's also voiced concerned over not liking the setting, the system, some of the players, and some other stuff.
So, not sure what to make of all that...if you could throw me a rope here, I might just be able to make myself a noose. lol
Quote from: Ron Edwards on September 11, 2008, 07:07:44 PM
Your prep is both impressive and slightly intimidating. You are going hog wild with the source material, and that can be a good thing or a not-good thing.
...
So, since you’re dealing with insanely complex history and nigh-equally insanely complex game-book source material, it seems like trying to draw anything you can find into things might not be the way to go.
I've been trying to walk a fine line on this one. I want enough historical 'points' and 'figures' and other general COLOR figured out that I can play off the Crusades setting well, without getting too campy, or having to gloss over too many "Gee, I don't know..." points, but I don't want to become a history major to do it, either. So far, I've been making judicious use of Wikipedia and focusing in on just one specific, narrow time-period and one specific, narrow location, to try to constrain what elements I actually have to know about. (Acre/Jerusalem area in 1185-1187)
As for pulling in too much stuff from sourcebooks. Guilty as charged. I often do that. I get to reading the material and get a bad case of the "Oh, that sounds cool!" and end up with about 100x more junk on my list of things I wanna do with my game than is even possible, much less reasonable. So, REALLY REALLY trying to throttle myself on that front, here.
Quote from: Ron Edwards on September 11, 2008, 07:07:44 PM
Oy, veh! “I plan to serve a vegetarian meal with a specific and perfectly timed dessert course … but oh yeah, everyone can eat whatever they want.” Isn’t the basic contradiction apparent?
Yes, it was apparent when I was first thinking it, when I was composing the post, when I typed it, when I proofread it....and I still don't know what the hell to do about it! ARGH!
Let me try to sum it up, perhaps with a better description of what I'm TRYING to plan to do. I want a BASIC, rudimentary outline of how the current NPCs and factions are in motion and what resolution this is moving to. That will be the 'foundation' plot. That's what happens is the players didn't exist, or somehow interacted with nothing. However, once the player characters hit the scene, everything that do will modify, edit or build ON that 'foundation', thus changing the endpoint.
I'm not sure if that's a feasible way to plan this or do this, though. As said, I tend towards a more 'reactive' style of GMing, though my players seem to prefer that I add a bit more plot 'interest' and more 'endpoints' in play. One player (Charles) commented at one point "The game just seems to go and go and go and go and we never WIN or LOSE anything. We just get beat on over and over and nothing is every finished."
I could really use some direction on this note.
Quote from: Ron Edwards on September 11, 2008, 07:07:44 PM
I did this a lot, back in my Champions days. I prepped in five-session sets (keeping in mind that our content/events per session were very, very high, especially for Champions), and usually I had a pretty good idea of who they’d be confronting in the fifth part, where, and under what basic circumstances.
Sorry, it's unclear here if you mean that you prepped plotlines or prepped reactive play? I'm guessing you're referring to the plotline-based prepping?
Quote from: Ron Edwards on September 11, 2008, 07:07:44 PM
So as far as tips and advice are concerned, I recommend loosening up the planning. Perhaps instead of planning endings and story-arcs, you might do better to look at the amorphous play you’ve done in the past and consider how to “screw down” the existing tensions and possible adversity that get generated as you go. That’s how climactic confrontations and shattering outcomes can arise through play itself.
This seem like good advice, but I'm unclear on what you mean by "screw down". Can you expand on this some more?
Quote from: Ron Edwards on September 11, 2008, 07:07:44 PM
Relationship maps may not be the tool you’re looking for. They are not, for instance, running records of how all the characters “relate” to one another in terms of feelings or organizational memberships. They’re a lot more basic: more like family trees, linking characters primarily through ties of kinship and sex.
Yeah, this was what I was looking to use it for, though I'd probably have a few more ties on there than just kinship and sex, but, as mentioned in some of the threads related that you linked, just 'permanent' ties.
I was thinking ties based on past events, membership in factions or religious orders, kinship (obviously), marriage, war, etc.
Nothing as fluid as "NPC1 dislikes NPC2". Basically, nothing on the relationship map should be anything that could conceivably change. If NPC1 and NPC2 are/were soldiers in the Knights Templar and fought in the battle of Hattin together, regardless of what happens down the road, or what they feel about each other now, that won't change, later.
That seem about right to what you're describing?
In closing, as always,
Thanks for all the insight and all the help. You are awesome.
Ron Edwards:
Here's another excellent, very recent thread with good relationship map comments: [Sorcerer] The Brotherhood. Also, here's a better way to get to the diagram: Sorcerer errata page, and go down to the bottom for the Enchanted Pool document.
As you might imagine, I'll have to take some time to compose a reply to your post, so please bear with me.
Best, Ron
Frank Tarcikowski:
Hi Reithan, welcome back! I wrote a reply to your post yesterday but then could not post it because The Forge was giving me a database error. I’ll post it now even though some of the issues have already been touched by Ron.
Sounds like the player who left was making excuses in order to not hurt the feelings of you guys. Which is a socially functional way of leaving a group. I’ve done something similar a month or two ago, where I was invited to a game and I just did not enjoy myself but did not see any reason to start a discussion because the rest of the players were obviously not finding anything wrong with the things that annoyed me. My point being, it was right not to try and talk him into joining your game again.
Regarding the crusades, I hope you get your creative motor going as you delve deeper into the source material (which is a rich background for sure). In my experience it’s absolutely crucial in a game with a “classic GM” that the GM digs the source material, regardless of Creative Agenda. I’ve never seen it turn out well with a GM being talked into running a game he was rather sceptical about. Maybe see if you can hunt down the old Constantinople source book for the old WoD (Dark Ages Vampire), it’s pretty fucking good and really fits the era and theme. I’ve only read the teasers for VtR but I believe it should work well together. But if you feel you don’t connect with the source material, my advice would be to call the game off and propose a different setting.
For preparing and running a plot-driven scenario without railroading, I humbly submit that you might find my recent thread on prepping for a game of The Pool of interest. I think your approach to prep while you research and let the one benefit from the other is the best way to go. It might be helpful to have one strong plot element or leitmotif already in mind before you start researching. Keep us posted on what you come up with!
- Frank
Reithan:
Hi again.
Thanks for the link to the Pool prep thread, Frank. That one is very helpful. As to the Crusade, I'm finding there's so much awesome political strife, larger-than-life personalities, factions of MYTHIC proportions and general back-door politicking, backstabbing and thuggery going on during this time period is hard NOT to get 'into-it'.
The problem I AM finding, is with all the historical stuff going on, I'm almost at a loss for what else I can add to it without it getting totally overwhelming. Then add in the fiction that Mages were very prominent during this time period, so I need to have their political structure though out, so that means a Heirarch, several councilors, provosts for each and a handful of heralds and sentinels. Then, for good measure, you'd probably want to toss on a couple non-gov. figures there from various local cabals and orders just to make it seem more like a real faction and less like a disembodied government....
...and then I have to do the same for the vampires, as that's the players' community. Price, primogen (plural), harpies, priscus, whips, hound, sheriff, seneschal, keeper of elysium and at least one herald. Not to mention the obligatory smattering of non-gov. NPCs.
And we haven't even touched actually mortal community NPCs yet. I'm sure I should have a couple merchants, maybe some religious figures, a few crime-related figures, and who knows what else...
Then figuring out how to fit all these guys into the scene and get some sort of intrigue going here for the players to grab onto once the game starts...OI VEY!!
Color me overwhelmed. At least I can basically write-off the Changelings and Werewolves from planning, as the werewolves have no real set governing structure and will likely be off doing things that won't affect the players, and the Changelings mainly cluster around entraces to the hedge, which I can just say that there are none nearby...
On an upside, I'd like to share with you all a neat little bit of freeware I found for making RMaps that's AWESOME.
http://cmap.ihmc.us/
Eero Tuovinen:
Heh, I always find these history games such that trying to run the real history AND the imaginary secret history on top of it is actually highly-redundant. Either one or the other, not both. Real history has quite more than enough "happening" to satisfy plot needs, and adding more stuff to that just leaves one wondering how come the secret history doesn't end up overwhelming the real stuff which you presumably want to preserve. So what I like to do is to make the secret history subservient to the real stuff: instead of having the king controlled by a secret cabal of vampires who then has its own politics, have the king control a secret cabal of vampires that fulfills his politics. But that's just my experience.
As for the conflicting notion of prepared plot vs. player-driven plot, no contradiction needs to exist if you'll think of your plot preparation not as "prepared plot", but as "prepared backstory"! Backstory is all that stuff that happened to bring about the moment when the game starts, and that also includes the likely outcomes of it. Knowing all that in a solid way is a good GM habit simply because then you'll have material to work with. But it's very important to separate your knowledge of and authority over backstory from the actual events during play. Those are a wholly different thing, and if you want to have player-directed plot outcomes, then you as the GM need to desist from having any strong opinions or plans about where the story should or would go.
Different sorts of charts and maps, including relationship or story maps, are useful for knowing the backstory, but it's still just backstory, not plot preparation. Think in terms of putting the characters into interesting situations, not in terms of plot flow - the GMing materials in WW games teach the GM to think of his preparations as story preparations where he prepares forward in time from the first scene to the last, but doing that means that you're basicly working against yourself and other players: the more you prepare, the less play there is. That's why the smart move is to focus on going back in your preparation and focusing on what happened before the session's events.
To summarize the difference between story and backstory: you need to know who this NPC is and what he wants, but you don't need to know what he will do in his first scene. You need to make sure that these two NPCs have conflicting interests (to make drama), but you don't need to plan where, when and how the conflict comes to a head. You need to know how and why and when this NPC cares of what the player character does, but you don't need to know whether the player character will ever do that sort of thing. In a word, you need to have a handle on what is there in the world so you can initiate interesting situations as needed in play, and resolve NPC reactions appropriately when players do interesting things.
When you get story and backstory straightened, the rest of it is pretty simple: you just create a potentially significant situation, crew it with colorful NPCs with conflicting agendas (tying the PCs in at this stage is optional), and make sure that the NPCs have means and motivation to influence the PCs to get involved and aligned on some sides of the conflict. Then just have the characters react aggressively to whatever the PCs do. That's how story is made without preplotting it, in a nutshell.
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