[Dead of Night] Nice Mr. Fitzgerald
Ron Edwards:
Hey Callan,
That precise combination you describe, of narration (or better, fiction as a whole up to this moment) and activating rules-mechanics, is how I and my groups play anything, all the way through. I don't say that to brag. I say it because it's baseline, a given for us, and I consider it a starting point rather than a goal.
I pose it as a contrast to either (a) essentially a mess of jockeying around for fiction-creation with some embedded, out-of-place feeling mechanics that usually disrupt things; or (b) a wind-up toy that delivers insta-fiction while the group is privileged to act it out or, as they say about the Renaissance painter apprentices, to color in the nipples.
Most traditional role-playing (not all) appears like (a) to me, and I specifically include my own history. Many post-2005 so-called story games in action appear like (b) to me, and I see that as no particular improvement on (a).
Dead of Night fits right in with the boom of ideas and application that is mainly seen in 2000-2004, with only a few real representatives since then (but they do exist). That's why I'm describing my own experience of role-playing over the past eight years or so, in contrast to the 21 years before that, because I'm trying to get across that in playing Dead of Night, what you're describing is expected and normal and above all easy, rather than exceptional or shoehorned in.
Best, Ron
David Berg:
Ron,
Thanks for spelling stuff out for me. It's not that I have ZERO familiarity with cinema horror; I just don't have enough to feel confident ad-libbing it and doing it particularly well.
I get "Color + Reward = game" (I think), and I get (at least partially) how the Reward mechanics assist and enable the GM's color-providing duties.
The part I'm blanking on is much more small-scale, and possibly specific to the AP I've read here. I'm sure I'd do fine deciding what my monster does, and giving it good color. What I'm less sure of is how to get the characters to see it. Do I open every scene by saying, "Now you're in an alley," or whatever, because that's where I want the monster? Do I open every scene by saying, "Where do you want to go now?" and then put the monster there? Do the players take care of this for me by relentlessly pursuing the monster?
I'm not looking for actual answers in a "Dave, do it this way" format. I'm just curious about whether the game guides this or leaves the GM to his own devices, based on his own genre understandings.
I don't mind if you'd rather say, "Play the damn game and find out for yourself!" at this point. All I can say is that you've grabbed my attention with statements like this:
Quote from: Ron Edwards on November 24, 2008, 09:26:47 AM
It's not so much building a whole scenario-book full of clues and signals and encounters, as simply how I present things and play them.
and I'm eagerly trying to wrap my brain around how and why that succeeds.
As for the other stuff:
1) Yeah, by "screwing the players", I actually meant "hammering the characters".
2) Glad to have it confirmed that the game works fine with player ignorance of Tension level.
Thanks,
-David
Callan S.:
Hi Ron,
That's how you play anything? Dead of night is sim focused, right? I'd have thought the amount of effort/enthusiasm for getting the play to fit snugly within the words, etc would be higher than the effort/enthusiasm to do that in, for example, a narrativist game?
jrs:
Hi David,
I played the Mrs. Florin character that died in the game Ron described. I'll try to answer a couple of your questions from a player perspective. I will not be able to answer specific rules questions because I have not read the text.
First, some context. This group has been playing together a long time and were very excited to play this game. We are also avid horror movie fans, some more than others, but we are very familiar with the genre. I specifically requested the rule that tension points could not be used by the GM in fights. I had in mind a Stepford Wives kind of horror which I don't think I stated out loud, but it was readily understood by the group.
You asked about the players' awareness of tension points and its affect on game play. Ron has already answered that he did not indicate the tension level to the players. I just want to add that I was fine not knowing the precise tension level. It became abundantly clear that tension was high solely through the description of scenes and effects on the characters. It's the interaction of the survival points with tension that had a greater effect on my experience of play. As the survival points drop (with the assumed increase in tension), the use of that resource has a greater degree of desperation with the increased vulnerability of the character. It nicely emulates the horror dynamic of mere character survival versus taking action that will likely be fatal.
As for this,
Quote from: David Berg on November 24, 2008, 07:02:36 PM
The part I'm blanking on is much more small-scale, and possibly specific to the AP I've read here. I'm sure I'd do fine deciding what my monster does, and giving it good color. What I'm less sure of is how to get the characters to see it. Do I open every scene by saying, "Now you're in an alley," or whatever, because that's where I want the monster? Do I open every scene by saying, "Where do you want to go now?" and then put the monster there? Do the players take care of this for me by relentlessly pursuing the monster?
I'd say it must be both the GM and character players that make this work. And a lot has to do with wanting to make a horror story. It starts at the very beginning with Ron saying, "I want the game to be set in a neighborhood just like this one, maybe a couple blocks that way," and the remaining players creating characters that have good reason to be there and care about what happens. Thus, the noisy Mrs. Florin that has only the best intentions for her neighbors. When Ron described a moving truck at a recently sold house, I, of course, had Mrs. Florin arrive with a casserole and attempt to be invited inside.
Does any of this help?
Julie
David Berg:
Julie,
Actually, that's perfect. That helps me tease apart game contributions, player contributions that any group could handle, and player contributions that your group made beyond that baseline.
It seems like you guys effectively mined a ton of shared, out-of-game references, and your ability to do so was based on:
1) the game explicitly said, "this is cinema horror", and you all knew what that is
2) your group used the game's instructions (to customize Tension use), plus plain old communication, to further whittle "cinema horror" into something even more specific, which you all also were quite familiar with
3) Ron was able to choose "a neighborhood like this one" because it worked well within the chosen subgenre -- and, whaddaya know, you're all familiar with the neighborhood too
In terms of making my GM duties easier and more spontaneous, I think that last one would be a key, and I feel silly for not taking that away from the opening post. Picking "the docks of a lonely fishing village in Nova Scotia", for example, would tax my brain a lot more -- that's a mistake I'd likely have made, because, y'know, it sounds cool. "Strive for the familiar" might be a good mantra if I wanted to make my job as easy as possible.
I still wonder how much "covering the bases"-type prep I'd need. So, I'll ask you, if you played another Dead of Night game set at a campsite, and the site was being stalked by a monster, would you have your character just leave? Not that that would be easy (most likely), but if you came up with a really slick way to get out of it, would you stop yourself, or challenge the GM to be resourceful and stop you?
I get the impression the player's job to uphold genre-celebration is paramount, and I wonder how far that extends and how natural it is to fulfill.
Thanks,
-David
P.S. In case it helps to know where I'm coming from: most of my Sim play has prioritized "run a simulation to see what happens" and high-concept/original conceits. I've never just grabbed onto a specific shared reference as overtly and explicitly as DoN does with Cinema Horror.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page