Establishing Premise in Serenity RPG
Marshall Burns:
Quote from: Christopher Kubasik on February 17, 2009, 04:19:08 PM
The thing about Story Now game is the flexibility of the statement about what the Protagonist values. It can slide all over the map during play, rising to a climax of one kind or another where the character commits, through action, to a final big decision about the thematic content.
As Callan points out, the characters of Story Now can shift their bearings and decisions all of the place. In fact, its a good game where the thematic issues get tested in a variety of ways -- with different emotions, relationships and responsibilities. That's how we find out who the character really is.
Yes! And this is precisely the distinction between the "reinforcement mechanics" and "authoring mechanics" that I made. Reinforcement mechanics are there to keep everything where it's supposed to be. In Serenity RPG, Mal's player gets Plot Points when his "Credo" trait gets him into trouble because Mal won't break a deal or whatever, because that's what happens in Firefly. On the other hand, if we were to do this with The Rustbelt, where Mal has a Faith trait labeled "Always hold your end of a bargain," the player will get a choice about whether to break the deal or not, and, whichever he picks, the Psyche mechanics provide support and reward in the form of fuel for making plot and transforming character. In particular, keeping the deal would enable him to be more effective when trying to do so, by allowing the player to use the "Push" mechanic to overcome a failed roll -- while breaking the deal forces the player to choose whether Mal a.) decides he doesn't care and loses the Faith, b.) feels bad about it and takes on a Woe trait (which will haunt him), or decides that he liked doing it and takes on a Vice trait related to conning folks.
And if you're looking at those options and saying, "But that's not what Mal's like!" then, well, that's EXACTLY my point. These kinds of rules are for creating your own story, not celebrating someone else's. That's the difference between authoring and reinforcement.
Marshall Burns:
Oh, crap, Martijn, I called you "Mathijs." Sorry. The similar use of J confused me.
Christopher Kubasik:
Quote from: Marshall Burns on February 17, 2009, 04:40:13 PM
And if you're looking at those options and saying, "But that's not what Mal's like!" then, well, that's EXACTLY my point...
And I would go even further. Go watch the pilot. Watch how Mal is ready to turn in Simon and River... Mal doesn't even act like Mal sometimes!
Okay. So, Rustbelt sounds great. But it isn't ready yet.
We've laid out what sort of qualities Martjin is looking for in a game. But now the question: how can he do this now?
mcv:
Quote from: Marshall Burns on February 17, 2009, 03:31:51 PM
Take Mal, for instance. The Black got to him when the Browncoats lost the war, and it ripped a big chunk out of him. We never see the bottom of the hole that this left; we see only glimpses of it, in "War Stories" and "Out of Gas" and the last act of Serenity. But the hole is obvious:
"In the time of war, we woulda never left a man behind."
"Yeah, well maybe that's why we lost."
Back then, he cared about people and things. A lot of people and things. Now, he just cares about "me and mine." That is, until the final act of Serenity, when he decides to make a stand for all the dead of Miranda.
There's lots of little things. During the war, he was very religious (you can see him kiss a cross in the pilot). He feels like God betrayed him at the battle of Serenity, and wants nothing to do with Him anymore. His religious ideals, goodwill towards all men, love thy enemy, it got him nothing. He doesn't live entirely for himself (unlike Jayne), but exactly whom he still owes loyalty to, is a big question. It starts with just his crew. And his war buddies. And any other underdogs down on their luck. And eventually it turns out that includes quite a lot of people.
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What you need is something that provides authoring tools: stuff that helps players address Premise by calling attention to the issues and providing "handles" to make conflict easier to establish, complicate, and escalate for maximally engaging stories. Some examples are Keys in The Shadow of Yesterday, Spiritual Attributes in The Riddle of Steel, Humanity and Lore in Sorcerer, and the Psyche and Push mechanics in The Rustbelt (yeah, I referenced my own game again, whatcha gonna do about it?). As a matter of fact, any of these could be made to work for a Firefly-themed Narrativist roleplaying experience. But none of them would be easy to "drop in" to Serenity RPG. And, while you can get along without something like this, it's that much easier when you have it.
Unfortunately I'm not familiar with any of those systems. I guess it's time to invest in some new games. I'm actually hoping our resident narrativist (at least, he says he doesn't like sim, has seen more than enough gam, and wants to try nar for a change) will GM a game in one of those systems he keeps mentioning.
Personally, while I appreciate escalating conflict as a basis for a good story in roleplaying (I don't have any experience with it, mind you), I'm not really willing to give up on the Dream altogether. I think, for me and a couple of other players in my group at least, the best games would have a bit of both. Or is that just Narrativism firmly gounded in Exploration? I do like immersion, in any case.
Quote from: Christopher Kubasik on February 17, 2009, 04:19:08 PM
As Callan points out, the characters of Story Now can shift their bearings and decisions all of the place. In fact, its a good game where the thematic issues get tested in a variety of ways -- with different emotions, relationships and responsibilities. That's how we find out who the character really is.
Is that an intentional Firefly quote? Didn't Niska say something like that when he tortured Mal to "meet the real you"?
Quote from: Marshall Burns on February 17, 2009, 04:40:13 PM
Yes! And this is precisely the distinction between the "reinforcement mechanics" and "authoring mechanics" that I made. Reinforcement mechanics are there to keep everything where it's supposed to be. In Serenity RPG, Mal's player gets Plot Points when his "Credo" trait gets him into trouble because Mal won't break a deal or whatever, because that's what happens in Firefly.
In Firefly Mal most definitely does break a deal (in The Train Job. And he gets into quite a lot of trouble because of it. But if I were GMing Serenity RPG, particularly if I were doing it with an eye towards Story Now, I'd definitely award Plot Points for breaking that deal. In my game, you'd get Plot Points for making your Traits relevant to the story, not for obeying them blindly.
The main thing that irks me about Complication traits in Serenity is that you get points back for them at character creation. Due to them being a source of Plot Points, Complications are already well worth taking.
In fact, that brings me to an issue that's been bothering me about GURPS disadvantages lately: they put the burden on the GM for screwing you over for taking a Disadvantage. If he doesn't, you just get free points. The Plot Point mechanism puts the burden on the player for making it relevant. That makes it much easier on the GM. Getting your reward in Plot Points during play rather than as character creation points at the start, also gives the player much more control over how to interpret the trait for that character.
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On the other hand, if we were to do this with The Rustbelt, where Mal has a Faith trait labeled "Always hold your end of a bargain," the player will get a choice about whether to break the deal or not, and, whichever he picks, the Psyche mechanics provide support and reward in the form of fuel for making plot and transforming character. In particular, keeping the deal would enable him to be more effective when trying to do so, by allowing the player to use the "Push" mechanic to overcome a failed roll -- while breaking the deal forces the player to choose whether Mal a.) decides he doesn't care and loses the Faith, b.) feels bad about it and takes on a Woe trait (which will haunt him), or decides that he liked doing it and takes on a Vice trait related to conning folks.
But none of those quite fits what happens in The Train Job. There, Mal breaks a deal, because he realises the deal would hurt people he doesn't want to hurt. He doesn't lose the Faith, he doesn't feel bad about it, and he doesn't like breaking deals either. He breaks it because it conflicts with something more important.
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And if you're looking at those options and saying, "But that's not what Mal's like!" then, well, that's EXACTLY my point. These kinds of rules are for creating your own story, not celebrating someone else's. That's the difference between authoring and reinforcement.
But don't you take away the option of handling that conflict just like Mal did? Not because that's what Mal did, but because you as a player at that moment feel that's the best way to deal with it?
In Serenity RPG, I'd definitely award Plot Points for that. Granted, that leaves everything to GM fiat and personal interpretations, but I'm not sure I like replacing that with game mechanics if those game mechanics limit or punish some very apropriate choices.
Another issue I'm still having with using game mechanics to drive story, is that game mechanics can be "gamed": manipulated for profit. I have no idea what Vice and Woe traits do, but they don't sound good. So that'd make Mal's choice one between gaining a bonus for sticking to his Faith, or gaining a new trait that he might not want. To me, that feels like interfering with his freedom to take his own responsibility for his choices. But maybe that's the simulationist in me.
Quote from: Christopher Kubasik on February 17, 2009, 05:01:57 PM
And I would go even further. Go watch the pilot. Watch how Mal is ready to turn in Simon and River... Mal doesn't even act like Mal sometimes!
He does act like Mal. Simon and River aren't part of "him and his", and they're endangering "him and his". The change in Mal is that he accepts them in his crew. Expanding his crew to embrace two fugitives (one of whom is a useless nutcase), is a big choice for him. Though it would be an unavoidable choice from a game perspective, because Simon and River are protagonists too, and it wouldn't make much of a game if you kick PCs out as if they were NPCs.
PCism is rather big in RPGs, and I don't like it much (because it breaks the Dream), but at the same time it's unavoidable if you want to keep playing.
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We've laid out what sort of qualities Martjin is looking for in a game. But now the question: how can he do this now?
I think I need to play a game with strong Story Now-oriented mechanics, just to experience how that would work out. Then I can decide if I prefer to use that for a pure Story Now Firefly game, or stick to Serenity for a sim-nar hybrid (which I think most of the group would be more comfortable with).
Quote from: Marshall Burns on February 17, 2009, 04:43:52 PM
Oh, crap, Martijn, I called you "Mathijs." Sorry. The similar use of J confused me.
No problem. The names sound very similar. In my previous job I had a co-worker called Mathijs, and people would often mix up our names.
Callan S.:
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Is that an intentional Firefly quote? Didn't Niska say something like that when he tortured Mal to "meet the real you"?
I've thought of narrativist play as 'torture the character' play. You warp and change the imagined space in order to find tools to torture them with and expose their emotional innards.
You don't have a plausible universe for the stake of a plausible universe. You have a plausible universe because it happens to be one of the most excellent torture tools to apply to a character (that's perhaps why some sim slips into nar, on rare occasions).
However, it's only one such tool, so you warp/set up situations and people that wouldn't have naturally occured otherwise, to provide other tools.
Also, from what I've seen, didn't Mel give back the advance payment on the train robbery? He didn't break the deal - he declined it and handed back the advance payment. He found a way to fit his own values into the situation (though I imagine it was a painful one - he needs the cash)
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Though it would be an unavoidable choice from a game perspective, because Simon and River are protagonists too, and it wouldn't make much of a game if you kick PCs out as if they were NPCs.
Look no, your screwing up address of premise/nar by forcing a character choice 'in the interest of a better story'
If you were setting it up as a group, you just do a bit of story before - before play you talk about characters you'd all like to see. Then you'd ask each other 'would they all stay on the ship'?
I could imagine a group that might have a few characters 'kicked out' by a Mel character during the brainstorming (and hell, maybe Mel might get kicked out - this is brain storming a campaign, not sticking to formula), before someone suggests River and Simon 'Aww, yeah, he'd take them, but only just!' 'GREAT, were good to go!'
As opposed to traditional character gen, where everyone goes off on their own to make characters in secret, then they find at play they just wouldn't be together (and worse, nar play is then fucked up because 'in the interest of a better story' character choices are forced into accepting each other).
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