The care and feeding of emergent campaigns
GreatWolf:
Ron,
My copy of Sorcerer and Sword is on loan to someone else, but I'll look it over when it returns to me.
And Legends of Alyria....
In a way, I see In a Wicked Age as the meeting of Alyria-style scenarios with Sorcerer-style conflict resolution, all done with a distinctive Vincent flair. (Actually, playing IAWA has helped me understand Sorcerer better.) And I think that you're right that Legends of Alyria would support this type of play; I've just never done it and hadn't really thought about it much. When I was designing it, I wasn't thinking about campaign play of any kind.
But, In a Wicked Age has an advantage, in that it has formal tools in place for campaign purposes. I'm talking about the Owe list and the Oracles, of course. Due to the rule that you can interpret an Oracle to mean a recurring character, any player can insert any character at any time, technically speaking. However, if you are using the Oracle entry, you are also accepting additional information being created about the character. And, of course, the Owe list links in-game performance as the underdog to being a recurring character.
Trollbabe also has a mechanic to assist with this in its Scale. Over time, the game will eventually escalate to world-changing conflicts.
What other sorts of tools exist to assist this sort of behavior?
Also, we're generally focusing on setting tools. How would these apply to (say) 3:16, where the setting changes radically from session to session. (Or does it?)
Valamir:
Quote
But, there can be a fine line between coordinating our aesthetic and "playing before you play". How would you explain this line to someone else?
I think I would emphasize the difference between situation and plot...not with the idea of defining the two but in keep that distinction in mind when working up the explanation.
I would describe it in terms of an aesthetic check between players.
I think the question of "who do we think are the most likely main characters so far" ("so far" or "might be" being an important distinction from "are".
I think "where does this episode fit in the overall story arc" is a good question...though it may require some background in story arc plotting. PTA does a great job of this with its discussion of TV, spotlight episodes, and "next week on".
I think "spend alot of time discussing how the episode starts...what's the situation when things kick off; but no time speculating about how it ends or what twists there might be in the middle" is a good approach.
I think "Best Interests" are brilliant both as a concept and as implemented in IaWA*. Have two or maybe three of these...the specific phrase "it is in so-and-sos-best-interest-to...", the fact that you go around and build off each other's Best Interest, that you and only you have authority over what it is and what it means and how it manifests in play but that input and suggestions are welcome, and most importantly that there's absolutely no mechanical reinforcement around them at all. That's the key. It isn't a ring-the-bell-get-a-prize system like Artha or Spiritual Attributes (or even to some extent Kickers), its purely a story seed fiction generator. It's also crucially NOT a goal. Its a rudder, a guide, a thing to keep in mind...but not a thing to just drive for expeditiously (like it would be if there were mechanical reinforcement to it). For instance in Friday's game it was in Zahir's best interest to replace the proprieter of the Way Station. Not only did he not do so...but that whole thread never even came up in any way. The story drifted in a different direction and while I did spend some time thinking about how to go about getting control of the waystation in the end...it may have been in my best interest...but it didn't happen and there was no mechanical need to force it to. I think that's crucial to keep story generating mechanics from becoming a "sausage factory" as its been said.
*I think on the occasions where I've played Alyria we pretty much ad hoc'ed our way into defining the equivalent of "Best Interests" for the characters as part of the scenario creation / mapping. IIRC you do this before selecting characters rather than after...although I could make a case that its more effective to do it after selecting characters (basically because everyone is an advocate for their character at that point motivated to make sure everyone is equally interesting). If you wind up doing a rewrite of Alyria, I think I'd try to envision a way to make that "Its in my Best Interest to:" aspect even more strong
lumpley:
I'm GMing two campaign-style games right now, using the same resolution rules but radically different continuity rules. I'm learning some fun, fun things.
One game's continuity rules are the Anthology Engine's: episodes, oracle, owe list. We're doing an alien-world hard sf thing about contact between two distinct evolutionary branches of humanity. The Anthology Engine's rules are doing their thing, creating a story too big for any one character or even set of characters to encompass it. We're still in the expansive early stage that Ralph describes, the mysteries are just getting deeper, and by the time we turn that corner and start drawing threads together, we're going to have some genuinely Big Ideas in play.
The other game, it's always the same main characters and it's not really episodic, although of course focus shifts and relationships get highlighted and backburnered and threats come and go. I'm using (essentially) Trollbabe's scale and stakes system. I'm varying from Trollbabe in that I've got several stakes at different scales in play at once, both nested and overlapping. Consequently, there are always open questions and the PCs are resolving them at their own erratic paces, not in any kind of session-episode drumbeat. Also, instead of ... let's see how to say this ... instead of creating the setting by jumping around place to place, element to element, and then tying them together, it's creating the setting by growing outward from the center.
It's a lot like a more short-storified version of Red Mars vs a less episodic version of Firefly (if that communicates anything).
-Vincent
Marshall Burns:
My game The Rustbelt is intended specifically for long-term episodic campaigns. It's based around what I term an "Interwoven Yarn" structure. That's when you take several short, independent stories (or Yarns) and weave them together to form a single narrative tapestry of sorts. I didn't invent this structure; you'll find it in the works of William S. Burroughs; Voice of the Fire by Alan Moore; The Martian Chronicles, From the Dust Returned, and, to a lesser extent, Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury; Sin City by Frank Miller (he even calls his "Yarns"). And probably plenty of other stuff that I don't know about. Someone told me that there's a fantasy series called Thieves' World that does it, but I don't know because I haven't read it.
In playing The Rustbelt, I don't worry about any story arc emerging from the individual Yarns. I find that they weave themselves together pretty nicely (granted, I like holes in it, unanswered questions, vagaries, ambiguities). The only requirement is that they're all set in the Rustbelt, and that they are, taken by themselves, stories, with rising action, a climax, and all that jazz. Sometimes they have the same characters, sometimes they're in the same cities, sometimes not. Sometimes they're in chronological order, sometimes not. Sometimes they contradict each other, and I let it happen. Because they're Yarns!
Like William S. Burroughs did when compiling various pieces of text to form Naked Lunch, I don't worry about reconciling the individual parts. They will take care of themselves well enough. A random draw of Tarot cards can be read to gain insights about a person, his past, his prospective futures; given a random pattern of dots, people will find pictures in it.
There's a technique to maintaining a continuity in this structure. You'll find it throughout the works I noted above, especially in Burroughs and Moore. I call it Tessellation. It's where you repeat things in different contexts over the long term. Phrases, descriptions, objects, names, situations, symbols, whatever. Tessellation has a really neat effect: the first time the symbol is repeated, it reminds you of its first appearance. That first appearance puts a certain spin on the new appearance. And the new appearance colors the first one retroactively. You end up with a whole that is more than the sum of its parts.
If I sound crazy, go read Voice of the Fire. Grit your teeth and slog through that first chapter, it's worth it. Watch carefully as the symbols are introduced, repeated, modified, aggregated. Then read it again.
-Marshall
GreatWolf:
Quote from: Marshall Burns on November 18, 2008, 04:18:26 PM
There's a technique to maintaining a continuity in this structure. You'll find it throughout the works I noted above, especially in Burroughs and Moore. I call it Tessellation. It's where you repeat things in different contexts over the long term. Phrases, descriptions, objects, names, situations, symbols, whatever. Tessellation has a really neat effect: the first time the symbol is repeated, it reminds you of its first appearance. That first appearance puts a certain spin on the new appearance. And the new appearance colors the first one retroactively. You end up with a whole that is more than the sum of its parts.
Ooh, that's good. We've seen that show up a couple of times. The best example is the Ashtari that I mentioned in my original post, which just emerged to explain a character who showed up in two different Chapters before we even knew that this group existed. That's a great example of that retroactivity that you mentioned.
So, it seems that some of the skill brought to the game is simply to remember symbols (and such) from previous episodes and be willing to introduce them in later episodes. (Yeah, I know that I just essentially defined "reincorporation".) And, because different players will resonate more strongly with different symbols, the group will together produce this Tessellation.
Are there good techniques to remember these various symbols? Would blue-booking be helpful in this context, for example? Something else?
Also, a question: where does the term "Tessellation" come from?
I know that I'm asking a lot of questions here, but I think that there are a number of techniques floating out there that are applicable. Hopefully, I'd like to begin to see some of them accumulate in this thread.
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