"Sand Box" Adventures
Ron Edwards:
Hiya,
I'm going to pre-empt the lonnnnng post I'm drafting for this thread and hop in with a quick refinement of Marshall's post. I think my modification is not only a bit more accurate, but it will tie the point very strongly to your concerns, Louis.
Marshall wrote, and I have tweaked in bold,
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If you take a fictional character, and put him into an untenable situation that demands his action, and he deals with the situation in a way that stems from who he is (whether that means falling in line with who he is or breaking from it, or any combination thereof), and the situation ends up with some manner of resolution due in some extent to the character's actions, you will create a plot. Furthermore, that plot will express a theme which could not have been anticipated or expressed in the fiction until that moment of resolution. Whether you meant to or not.
I think this is key regarding the final point in your reply to me, Louis, where you wrote,
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On the point of it being "all about what is going on with one's character and their drive," I don't think my players and I would agree. "The Story" is our goal. Developing its rise, climax, and resolution with the reactions, interactions, and personalities of our players is what makes it enjoyable. Just wondering around being in-character and seeking out our own interests isn't enough for us. "The Story" is that unifying force that makes it a shared experience and keeps the pacing and tension in tandem for all the players. To try to make it clearer (by using a lame example) -it is not interesting to us to be "Luke Skywalker" and experiment with all his feelings, whimsies, abilities, and reactions within and open-ended and far stretching world that happens to have a Death Star in it. What is interesting to us is being Luke and applying his personna to the menace of the "Death Star" through a series of defined conflicts and situations that both the player and GM know are moving the story clock forward toward that point (I know this is a gut-wrenching example, but replace "Luke Skywalker" and the such with any PC in any story and it holds). Now, that doesn't mean the path to the Death Star should be narrow (we equally hate playing games where the PC's choices have no real effect). But there is a great medium out there where the players realize a plot and are able to act within a large swath to get to its climax and figure a way to resolve it. Without this, adventures seem to take too damn long or players feel they are in separate "cubicles" of play instead of on the same swath together...
Oh hey, we're on the same wave-length here. This is an old topic in my design-discussion history. I think you're underestimating what I mean by "drive." I do not refer merely to dressing up, verbally or literally. I refer to actions and decisions that most traditional GMs find terrifying and outright challenging to their sense of authority, authorship, and rules-role. Imagine a game in which Luke's decision to join the tie-fighters against the Death Star was generated solely by the player, and it carried with it the possibility of utterly failing to succeed. And in which (positing the original context in which Leia was actually the love-interest and not retroconned as his sister) doing so completely changed the relationship with Leia, bringing in the possibility, so far waaay unlikely, that she might become his lover.
That's a "drive" in my book. That's the kind of play and decision-making which, over time, often means that a GM's role abandons most of its "make Story happen" functions because the unifying force you're talking about is emergent from powerful game components, not the least of which are player-characters which are actually doing something.
More to follow soon. If it's OK with you, I'd appreciate holding off on replying before I get it posted. It'll be really hard to reply both to your previous post and a new one.
Best, Ron
Ron Edwards:
Hi Louis,
I'm not sure whether you've read my essay Narrativism: Story Now. If not, then I recommend checking out at least the first couple of pages, in which I argue that the phrase "to create a story" is actually a false lead in trying to understand goals of play, or at least, it becomes a false lead without further refinement of the concept.
I'm especially sympathetic to your points because what you do, how you and group interact about it, and your current solutions as well as frustrations are exactly my own experiences for many years. I also used the adventure module adaptation technique, which we can talk about later.
PART ONE: YOU, NARRATIVISM, AND YOUR GAME
Here's the thing: you're dealing with a false dichotomy of "character vs. story." As Marshall pointed out, and as I tried to refine, [if[/i] the characters act toward goals, respond to conditions, and commit toward things in a Premise-y way, then what happens is story (or to be fair, that's one way to get story, the "Now" way). If that's happening, then less and less story-planning, GM-adjusting, "ensuring there's a climax," et cetera, has to go on - in fact, such a GM role tends to become intrusive. I realize that's a weird concept. Hold off on it for a minute, let me develop it throughout the post.
To address whether your current play is Narrativist ... the following answer is tuned specifically toward your game and does not constitute a generalized definition; instead, it applies the general definition to this specific case.
Well, that depends. If the story is created at the table in terms of the key decisions and shifts of the resulting plot, then yes. If the story is enacted and produced at the table in terms of (for instance) one person's guidance, then no. You seem to be kind of stuck at the boundary of these two ideas, and as a long-term veteran of that stucked-ness, I know how hard it is to let go.
"But ... but ... someone has to make sure that what happens turns out to be a story, right?"
Yes and no. Yes, because without a certain mindfulness toward relevant, engaging conflicts arising, they won't happen, and you get that fucking flouncing around "be my character" garbage that, speaking as role-player and not theorist, I hate even more than you do (really). But also No, because "yes" usually translates in the long-term gamer's mind into a GM who either preps a story arc which will indeed occur, or who retrofits anything that happens in one session to be story-relevant meat for the next.
I call the first tactic Story Before, and the latter one Story After. Neither one is Story Now, which presupposes that everyone at the table is mindful toward the possibility of relevant, engaging conflicts arising, that no one plans what they will actually be in a rock-solid way, and finally, that everyone is committed to enjoying the creation of plot through the game system as a wave-front through actual play itself. GM and players have different responsibilities toward the imagined fiction, but their aesthetic goal (Creative Agenda) and mindfulness toward it are the same thing.
A big part of this is learning what you go in with. The sandboxing technique is actually one of the primary wonderful tools, because a good sandbox is unstable or at least hyper-reactive. I pioneered this in textual terms with The Sorcerer's Soul, and it has been refined in two ways: My Life with Master, which adapted it into a story-structure arc (in which the arc is not predetermined, just that "it" will happen); and Dogs in the Vineyard, which adapted it into a specific hyper-charged setting, character creation process, and reward mechanic (see also Dust Devils, Lacuna, Conspiracy of Shadows, and The Shadow of Yesterday). I was not alone; you can see the same stuff going on in other 2000-2002 games that were influenced by Sorcerer, like the revised versions of The Burning Wheel and The Riddle of Steel. In just a couple of years, stupendously sophisticated applications showed up, as in Polaris, carry, Nine Worlds, With Great Power, and more.
Also, I should stress that when I say "no one plans what (the crisis) will be," I am not advocating that we are talking about multi-person improvisation with no prep. This method does include the GM prepping stuff like "OK, next session, the orcs attack over the hill," and making up the orc commander and so on. What it does not include is dictating or even expecting how the players choose to have their characters respond, or pre-determining what aspect of the ensuing orc-attack situation will be most important to them.
Again, in such play and in using such games, flouncing around being in character is simply not possible. The characters are so in motion, and the setting/situation is so hyper-reactive, that stuff will fucking well happen. And it will be consequential stuff, such that Story is generated Now with no need at all to decide or create what it will be or what it was.
I'm combining some of your text differently from the order in your post because you bounced around a little. You also wrote,
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I kinda think I used your screwdown model. I had several events going on, many underlying plots and self-motivated (yet flexible) NPCs. The PCs dabbled in a given area and those actions led to new problems or the revelations of new plots/encounters. As the plots were followed or time was invested in any given one, the intensity would increase -some were increasing whether the players involved themselves in them or not (all these things were the "Bangs"). The problem was, the players never got to the point of having to "leave their fence." I originally wrote the adventure so that the player's interests, motives, and convictions would be the force that drove any given plot into a final climax. But they all just wondered about involving themselves in plots to the point it was boiling up -but do all they could to keep them from boiling over. Eventually I had to tag the whole "large-scale event" on to the experience to bring it to an end.
That's easy enough to understand, at least if my years of experience with Champions applies. You kept Banging insofar as your NPCs were concerned, but not insofar as the players were concerned - and yes, I mean the players, not the characters. A Bang isn't a Bang if it's just a clue that leads to a clue or a fight, or a fight that leads to a fight or a clue. Nor is it a Bang if the primary emotional connection to the players is supposed to be their appreciation of what one of your NPCs is doing or feeling.
Bangs aren't Bangs unless the players of the protagonists are gripped by a certain passionate fascination. The overall effect (not necessarily from a single Bang) involves not only what is done, but what cannot be done or must be abandoned in order to do it. I'm pretty sure that in your game, this wasn't happening. You had "stuff happen" but they did not seize upon it as opportunity for having their characters make irrevocable, significant, and (over time) cathartic decisions/actions.
In my experience, playing in the way you're describing tends to lead players to consider their characters as your (the GM's) catalysts. You provide the alchemical solution in terms of the sandbox; their characters are inserted as destabilizing agents; change happens among the elements of the solution; and now, the unchanged catalysts walk on to the next situation. Or, if they change, it's kind of an ongoing portraiture rather than transformation of actual values or resolution of powerful standing questions (and by values and questions, I'm talking about the people as authors and audience, not some purely-fictional element). After a while of playing like this, they tend to become a little bit ... well, unresponsive. They know that you will do all the work, so why should they bother "jumping in" when they know you'll plop the characters where they have to be sooner or later anyway? "Just point me at my cue line."
Whereas playing with Bangs in a context that does hit the players in their own humanity (and for which the trappings, fantasy, SF, horror, et cetera are reinforcers rather than an end in themselves) ... well. That's different. GMing isn't like directing a mostly-willing donkey, it's like having sex with a tiger. You better be willing to let the tiger take the lead a lot of the time.
PART TWO: YOU ARE MAKING NO SENSE, THAT WON'T WORK, YOU CAN'T MAKE ME DO IT ... GOD DAMN IT, HOW DO I DO IT?
Forgive me for my flip title to this section of the post. I can't help calling it that because I like to tease Jesse Burneko about torturing me for about five years with that exact reaction.
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... some of what you suggest will produce "real stories" such as the "commitment to the fiction-so-far and mindfulness to character breaking points" always leads to the split up of the PCs and the dreadful lag of running in-depth parallel stories for each PC. This has been my experience anyhow. You focus in too tightly on developing the character, the character's responsiveness to the environment/NPCs, and their interests and goals and pretty soon each player is waiting 30 minutes for their turn to "interact" with the story. It seems to wind up as simultaneous bits of fiction instead of a shared work.
Aaahhhh. Association and shared action across protagonists is an entirely different issue, and I suggest that it is completely independent of whether you "get story" or not. Fantastic story-creation can occur in play without teamed-up or even highly-associated protagonists; and team-ups and association can be functional and fun in role-playing that is practically devoid in any interest in "getting story."
Regarding any given play experience, everyone at the table basically has to choose: team play, ensemble play, or contrasting play, and to what degree that will be flexible or emergent. Even if the decision is made through simple habit or assumptions about how it's supposed to be done, it's still a decision.
If you want it to be a certain way, again, I do not think the idea that "I want story so the characters must be together" is valid. You're better off acknowledging that it's a specific desire, not a prerequisite for something else. And once you've decided, then it has to be run by and most likely accepted as a given by everyone else. Are or are we not a team? If not, then are or are we not enmeshed in a common crisis? If not, then are or are we not active in the same community? If not, then are or are not we engaged in individual stories that affect one another somehow?
I agree that if the answer to all of these is "not," then yes, you're basically running several separate stories. But if the answer to any of them is yes, even the loosest, then it's compatible with "get a story" in the sense that it's our story.
If you'd like, I can describe very specific techniques that not only connect disparate actions by different characters in different (if nearby) locales, but I can also do so in a way which does not inflict GM-centric story onto it, privileging "character drive" instead.
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I'm not sure if it is the same thing as the HeroQuest Goal system, but in Century's Edge each character has a pressing goal they are trying to achieve so that the player may advance the character to the next Rank. These goals are set up by the Narrator and the Player individually so as to facilitate a plot-driven game while giving a nod to the player's interests in their character's development. In this particular case we used the generic goals offered up in the main rule book -which definitely added to the issue of characters' being "climax-shy." These generic goals should have helped push the climax (for instance one character's goal was to obtain a new piece of technology which he could have more than easily done within Quisquis's lab), but still the players would explorer to the point of realizing how these goals could be accomplished but not attempt to accomplish them (i.e. find a nifty new technology, decide how it might be removed from the sultan's workshop, but then not actually attempt to remove it).
The two systems are similar in that a stated Goal is a stated element on one's character sheet, but as you describe Century's Edge, it's a little more focused, more tied to the reward mechanic. Close enough to analogize, though, because I actually don't think that stating an in-character goal as a single, fixed thing is the best way to evoke a player's commitment toward "character drive." In my experience, features like Muses in Nine Worlds and Keys in The Shadow of Yesterday (both derived from Spiritual Attributes in The Riddle of Steel) are far stronger, because they introduce flexibility toward the goals or principles. You can affirm the stated 'thing' or violate it, and either way there are consequences, many of which involve character transformation. And best of all, acting against is often more rewarding than following it, given certain system structures involved (too much to go into here). The dynamic, consequential elements of such mechanics are very engaging; they legitimately provide the player with a reason to invest in his or her character's actions exactly they way they want to, knowing that it matters.
Perhaps that idea can help explain why the players are acknowledging the characters' Goals, even sort of touching and feeling them during play, but not driving either at or against them.
PART THREE: PUBLISHED ADVENTURES AND NARRATIVIST PLAY
Quick clarifier: I did not write The Haunted Ruins (yikes!). That is an older supplement for RuneQuest from waaaay back, written by Greg Stafford and Sandy Peterson. I used the early-1990s Avalon Hill version of it in my Hero Wars game. At the risk of name-dropping, in 2000-2001, Greg and I were talking about scenario creation and Story Now play, and he referenced that supplement as his best attempt toward that end during his most active RuneQuest days. That's when I got it and studied it carefully.
Also, since Creative Agenda was not part of role-playing vocabulary when that supplement was published, and as Greg acknowledged, there was no known way to explain to the reader what to do in those terms, nor was there any general understanding that such focus was a good thing. Basically, if one were inclined toward Narrativist play, that supplement is like a lightning bolt of awesome goodness; if not, it can be read pretty much as an over-elaborate dungeon with some irrelevant family trees and personality traits included as mere color.
Now for your stated "real interest here." That's a biiiig question. To some extent it's better addressed in the Publishing forum, but I suspect more play-based discussion will be useful here before we hop it over that way. I'm going to focus on the play-elements that would be associated with a given product, rather than the product.
Successful publishing relies on identifying and reaching a particular audience. Really successful publishing means transcending that audience, but for now, I'll stick with the basic necessity. What I'm saying is that success isn't merely about purchase, for which all you need is a pretty box, but about use, continued use, and un-fabricated buzz about it. So how is that done for a sandbox item?
My view is probably predictable. I think the important thing to communicate is what Creative Agenda the material serves best. I do not agree with the notion that the 'best' publication is a mess that tries to satisfy any and every creative reason to role-play. Nor do I think the virtue of sandbox preparation is that one can do "anything" with it, which is one common manifestation of that mess.
All of that leads to one of your qualifiers: the product is supposed to be useful to a group that includes varying CAs. I consider that a red flag. Never mind my claim that satisfying varying CAs (or better stated, varying expectations for the group's shared CA) is pointless in the first place, whether for a product or a product-less play-ambition, whether a sandbox or anything else. That statement is a red flag on the simple basis that you're now talking about publishing "stuff" with no particular emphasis or even attention toward what the stuff is for.
Finally, and I hope I'm not being too picky, you used the verb "ensure" - and I feel forced to wave my arms around and say that a product can't ensure anything, ever. But again, this is an issue for the Publishing forum.
My current conclusion is simply not to do it as you describe, to re-assess what sort of sandbox presentation really expresses what you enjoy, and to focus your promotion to people who enjoy the same or similar things. I realize that this isn't 100% helpful, and for that I apologize, but I think I will leave it there. I'll hunt down some threads which have addressed this issue in detail and perhaps we can pick it up later in the thread.
Best, Ron
Ron Edwards:
Uh oh - Century's Edge isn't currently published, is it? I checked the website and just realized this thread probably belongs in Playtesting. Louis, can you confirm?
Best, Ron
hoefer:
A lot to read… A lot to digest… A lot to consider…
First, the answer to whether Century’s Edge is published is, “sort of.” I have previously released spiral bound versions of the game (ashcan sort of things perhaps???) locally and on a very small scale at cons. I am currently selling paperback Demo Booklets (which I hastily put together when I realized the full book wasn’t going to be ready in time for GenCon). The Demo booklet is a pretty solid summary of all the rules of play and a truncated version of character creation. The full-blown rulebook was supposed to be finished last month, but I decided to alter its layout and it’s taking me forever to readjust everything (a lot of work on tables and such…). Quickplay rules are available for free on my page as well as the GenCon adventure I ran (which is really stilted –do A, go to B, get C, but it’s not bad for a convention game and I actually had an very positive response from the players at GenCon, I’m, running it this weekend at PentaCon so it will be neat to see if I get similar responses.)
Now on to my responses…
Fist off, I want to point out that my original thread was about getting a sandbox adventure to end in some form of fulfilling multi-player climactic scene. Most responses have been centered on changing the CA (?) of the adventure (now that its been pretty much pointed out that my adventure’s focus isn’t narativism), and leaving the characters to explore their own goals and pushing on those to create a climax that is cathartic to the individual players. Where as, this is a good response, and has given me much to consider, it has lad more to a discussion of what is narativism and story.
Unfortunately, the suggestions most people have offered are counter intuitive to me, as the closest experiences I have had to these sorts of games (hinging on shared narrative authority and player/character driven plot determination) have sucked…badly. I am guessing the problem is that the GM did not handle things right in these experiences, and they would have been more along the lines of what you guys are talking about, but for the quality/skill of the GM. In fact, I wonder if only a handful of GMs could proficiently/successfully run a game in the naratavist CA as you all have defined it. Anyhow, there was a lot in Ron’s last post that I just couldn’t wrap my mind around or that I’m not sure I have a correct understanding of.
Ron wrote:
A big part of this is learning what you go in with. The sandboxing technique is actually one of the primary wonderful tools, because a good sandbox is unstable or at least hyper-reactive…
I think I get the sandbox needing to be “unstable/hyper-reactive.” Do you mean that the conditions of the “sandbox environment” need to be written so that there is lots of conflict and tension between the NPCs present, and the diversity of moral and ethical situations that exist? In other words, in my game every NPC entity that was at the sultan’s palace had their own reasons for being there, their own goals for what wanted from the sultan, and their own reason for double-crossing/causing trouble for the others. Each also viewed the PCs in different lights (saviors, competition, xenophobic-ly, scapegoats, etc.). Even the physical environment of the sultan’s palace was conflicting. The ancient sandstone structure had been retro-fitted with technology and the floating island had crumbling parts, deserted wilds, and the expanses where Quiquis had inset different technologies to keep the island up in the air, steerable, and replete with power/fuel (i.e. hydrogen). These elements are described in a way so as often there was trouble with one part of the island or one system of technology that required perilous actions to attempt fixing (in one scene the players decided to help Quisquis engineers fix a broken propeller and had to make their way across the underbelly of the island on rickety catwalks, etc.). All this laid a hot bed of tension and possibility for any thing the players may have decided to do.
Ron also wrote:
I pioneered this in textual terms with The Sorcerer's Soul, and it has been refined in two ways: My Life with Master, which adapted it into a story-structure arc (in which the arc is not predetermined, just that "it" will happen); and Dogs in the Vineyard, which adapted it into a specific hyper-charged setting, character creation process, and reward mechanic (see also Dust Devils, Lacuna, Conspiracy of Shadows, and The Shadow of Yesterday).
I am totally clueless on how the story-structure arc works and what it looks like and how it might be integrated into the other things… Can anyone give me a simple example…
Ron also wrote:
Bangs aren't Bangs unless the players of the protagonists are gripped by a certain passionate fascination. The overall effect (not necessarily from a single Bang) involves not only what is done, but what cannot be done or must be abandoned in order to do it. I'm pretty sure that in your game, this wasn't happening. You had "stuff happen" but they did not seize upon it as opportunity for having their characters make irrevocable, significant, and (over time) cathartic decisions/actions… I'm talking about the people as authors and audience, not some purely-fictional element). After a while of playing like this, they tend to become a little bit ... well, unresponsive. They know that you will do all the work, so why should they bother "jumping in" when they know you'll plop the characters where they have to be sooner or later anyway? "Just point me at my cue line."
I guess this might be the heart of the matter here. If I can get what exactly you mean, I should be able to understand the paradigm shift most of you guys are suggesting. Now again, I want to make sure everyone is focused on the right problem. The problem isn’t about “How do I make a sandbox adventure work within my gaming group” –solving that issue is rather insignificant to me. The bigger question is, how do you write a sandbox adventure (for publication/sale let’s say) such that the GM who reads and interprets it will have the tools they need to bring it to an ultimate conclusion that will likely maintain the feel of a good literary climax (old school, pre- “story about nothing” type of literature). So when we talk, let’s consider, “How would you write this” or “What all should be written” to guide the user (a GM) into helping the Sandbox climax for his/her group. You can see how from this perspective getting the players “gripped by a certain passionate fascination” may be daunting. Further I can’t see how these fascinations would come to cross paths and climax together unless your gaming group was really homogenous or you talked the story out ahead of time or practiced “revisionary” history over much of what the group had done in previous sessions. Talking the thing out ahead of time seems like such a suspense-killer and revising a previous game has always been a shameful act in my mind.
In response to the, “After a while of playing like this, they tend to become a little bit ... well, unresponsive. They know that you will do all the work, so why should they bother "jumping in" when they know you'll plop the characters where they have to be sooner or later anyway? "Just point me at my cue line.” We (especially in sandbox adventures) don’t really play this way. The players typically do all the “driving” and the GM (whether it’s me or not) plops down all the “roads” –but it’s not a “railroad.” That is, if a player makes a “left turn” the GM then (using the source material, their knowledge of the plot, and paying appropriate respect to setting’s realism and tone) plops down the intersections that lie along that “road.” Will the GM try to arc the player back toward a “story point” –yes, when the choices of the player make sense to bring them in that direction. Can the player get “downtown” by driving the wrong way down a “back alley” the GM hadn’t thought of? -yes, but we’ve found that sometimes this is to the player’s own dismay (if we talk later about what was out there, and the player realizes they missed a potential scene with an NPC they like, or a conflict that would have been important to their character). Here’s the big one, “Can the player take a “road” out of “town”? –no, of course as a GM I (or any of my group) could let them, but we’ve found once we do this the quality of play goes way down. The PCs typically lose their interdependence and direct effect on one another, the players end up playing in segmented turns instead of just going around the table. The story gains a “syndication” sort of feel, where there just seems to be a string of small resolutions instead of a point that everyone can say, “We did it!” or whatever. It’s like roads that just lead to other roads and on and on –occasionally there might be a neat diner or truck stop, but none of the “oohs” and “ahhs” of driving into the downtown metropolis. I would not say my players are typically unresponsive in the sense of stalling or waiting around for me to push the story –this phenomenon usually only happens when we do Sandbox games, and even then it’s not that they aren’t doing anything, its just that they are more into exploring and piddling around than pressing things into some major movement of plot. I feel like I’m repeating many of the other posts I’ve made in this thread, I’ll move on…
Ron said:
If you'd like, I can describe very specific techniques that not only connect disparate actions by different characters in different (if nearby) locales, but I can also do so in a way which does not inflict GM-centric story onto it, privileging "character drive" instead.
I lost you on this one, I would love to see the description, please don’t think me deft. Will the example be applicable to “prewritten” game material?
Also, is the supposition that the GM is orchestrating the story such a bad thing? This is part of what I look forward to when playing a game as a player. “What has the GM cooked up? How will the plot twist and turn? What can my character do to resolve the conflict inside of the character’s own mode of operating/conduct?” “Will my character’s conduct/mode have to change –how will this impact them?”
I’ve played only a few player-narrated games. They were fun, but they were totally different animals than the traditional RPGs I’ve played. For example, the Engle Matrix game I played (Dead Man on Campus) was great! It was fun! It felt like a party game. But, it wasn’t a serious game where we all were really following an interesting plot. The plot grew and turned and twisted in a very ridiculous way, and our characters acted in the midst of this as if it were real and normal to a point, but beyond it we simply one-upped each other on the audacity of our actions and interactions. Again, it was extremely fun, but not the tone I want in my Century’s Edge game. I could see the same system being played seriously, but I don’t see how the plot/reality woven by it could hold up with out a great deal of suspension of disbelief or some kind of previously stated “contract of play” (We will play like this, with this tone, and attempt to do this for this reason).
Ron wrote:
In my experience, features like Muses in Nine Worlds and Keys in The Shadow of Yesterday (both derived from Spiritual Attributes in The Riddle of Steel) are far stronger, because they introduce flexibility toward the goals or principles. You can affirm the stated 'thing' or violate it, and either way there are consequences, many of which involve character transformation. And best of all, acting against is often more rewarding than following it, given certain system structures involved (too much to go into here). The dynamic, consequential elements of such mechanics are very engaging; they legitimately provide the player with a reason to invest in his or her character's actions exactly they way they want to, knowing that it matters.
I don’t really get this –sorry, you might have to give an example. In what way is the goal flexible (or –how is it stated flexibly). How/why would acting against a character’s principles be more rewarding? -Do you mean in a mechanical sense (i.e. you gain #XP for placing yourself in inner-turmoil) or a psychological sense (seeing your character change within a game).
I also don’t get the “reason to invest...actions the way they want to, knowing that it matters” A simple “I want to do it” seems reason enough for a player to have his/her character do something. If you’ve got a “good” player, than they want to do it because it’s right for their character’s personality or the tone/events of the story. If the player is “bad” they do an action because it interests them or settles their curiosity at the time and they didn’t conceive of having this yearning when they first created the character and his/her personality. (the player really isn’t bad, they just aren’t working “in character” –which has traditionally been seen as a bad thing).
On the last part, all actions matter in our games. To GM without response to a character’s action breaks the dynamic of play. Now, the players won’t always perform an action that has their intended effect, but the effects always match the tone, pace, and elements present in the GM’s story (yes, this goes back to the GM-centric narration). I would think that a game where the player’s actions always mead out their intended results would seem boring or at least different. It seems it would be more like sharing a story around a campfire than playing in a story and knowing that what you do changes the story (within loose bonds) and carries the possibility of success or failure…
For some reason every time I finish writing on this thread I feel I’ve only been rambling…damn! Thanks for walking me through this guys...
Louis Hoefer
www.wholesumentertainment.com
hoefer:
Having read the “Narrativism: Story Now” essay I can see more clearly what most of you are referring to as the CA Narrativism and where my gaming group (and my game) fit (outside of this CA). I got to say though, I'm not sure narrativism is a great term for the kind of play this CA describes. The term has such an authoritative literary feel (i.e. the narrator is the one telling the story –the concept of multiple narrators and shared narration is alien to the tradition of most literature) and it seems it really deals only with games where the play mode is "free-form" and the goal is to seek "theme" or "character development" (maybe the original “dramatist” term fits better). The kinds of things being described as climax and plots are more what I would think of a “rising actions” within a story and not a centralized plot or over arching climax. From most writers I’ve read (and grant it, these are writer’s like Stephen King –who many consider “low brow”) they talk about theme entering into a story as an after-though or piece that can’t be really recognized until the point of the first manuscript revision. Also, you all must admit there is a real "narrativism nazi" sort of feel to things a round here -maybe when I get a better grasp on what a narrativist CA feels like (when done right) I'll understand why...
Theme and character development are a (close) second string to a strong all-encompassing plot in the kinds of games I like and am producing. So I guess we'll go from that reference from here on. That is, the CA I’m trying to achieve is whatever (labeling it may be an exercise in futility) but the structure of the material is intended to manifest a palette of “story arcs” and “rising actions” that all move and move into a central plot that comes to a head in a final climax. This structure’s design is intended to be very open to player exploration and drive, yet narrow-enough that unifies what is going on in the story so that the players feel they are experiencing the same situation from different angles and not different situations from the same angle or whatever… I would like (when I get more time) to start a new thread elsewhere where you all can educate me on these sort of CAs and how they can work well.
Summarizing point: I’m not sure suggestions pushing the game toward full “narrativism” are going to be helpful for this particular game. That’s not to say some elements rescued from that direction might not be useful. For now, think of writing for a “traditional RPG” (please don’t give me crap about using the word “traditional” –I think it has the same accessible meaning to most gamers, think D&D if need be) and trying to put together a sandbox adventure that could guide “Joe GM” to ending the adventure with an intense climax satisfying the trails and encounters the characters might have experienced within the sandbox. What I want to steer around is just plopping down a crisis out of nowhere or making the conditions of the sandbox so tight that “all roads lead directly to Rome.”
Louis Hoefer
www.wholesumentertainment.com
p.s. Do we win some sort of reward for having the most drawn-out and lengthy posts in any forum thread ever known to mankind?
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